Heal the World, Read Times of India..

If you want to know all that is wrong in India, all you need to do is pay the newspaper vendor 2 bucks and get a copy of the Times of India.

Like the other day, as part of its new found aura of social responsibility it had a wonderfully long article on the front page of the Pune Times on the evils of ragging. Needless to say, since Pune Times is an “Advertorial and Promotional feature” and the article was bloody long (at least longer than what I normally get the chance to read”, there was no way for me to know whether it wanted to advertise & promote ragging in colleges or dissuade people from ragging in colleges.

This article had all the standard Pune Times “glamour”. It had some Bollywood photo depicting ragging (3 Idiots, but of course). It had some two-pence celebrities telling their experiences of ragging in colleges. One smart ass actually told the story of how his cousin was ragged in college, and how that was an emotionally traumatic experience for him. For some reason he also mentioned in the same quote that his cousin has forgotten that incident, but this dude was traumatised enough to make a movie about it. 

I skipped through most of it, (I mean, who reads Pune Times for its journalistic excellence?) till I came to very the end, in a bright red box with bold white font was my absolute favourite TOI section.

Times View.

In case you have not heard about it, Times View is where the editors of ToI decide that they should show off their vast and superior knowledge of all that is just and fair in this world, and you know, for the benefit of the reader guide him through what is an absolute horror that this world has now become. This applies to politics, sports, civics and everything else where the ToI believes that the nation has a right to know. (It is another matter that with a circulation of approx. 7.65 million in a country of 1.2 billion, TOI has the eyes of roughly 0.58% of India’s population, or as a wise Parsi man once told me – “A dimple on the arse of an ant that sits on the arse of an elephant”)

Anyway, such insignificant details should not bother us.

This beautiful piece of socially relevant journalism had this fabulous insight.

Those found ragging should be punished severely, so it acts as a deterrent. We need stricter laws, applicable nationwide. Institutions should be vigilant and take immediate disciplinary action against senior students who rag.

Now, raise your hands all those who think that what we need in India is stricter laws.

Seriously?? We waste 7 million trees every day on tripe like this??

We have laws made from the 1860’s still in place.

We have laws where you can face serious jail time for a speech.

We have laws where a Facebook post can cause you to be booked for sedition (it’s never been done 

before, but it’s possible. Look it up).

We have laws which still allow the death penalty.

That’s how strict our laws are.  

Our problem is not that we don’t have enough strict laws. Our problem is that we have too many strict laws.

In case you haven’t figured out yet, I have serious issues with this state of affairs. Two serious issues, at least.

One, given the strictness of the laws, the system always has to decide whether a. a crime was committed and if it was, then b. whether the crime merits the strictest possible punishment. This takes up a lot of time, (especially since we have 1.2 billion people, so the possible permutations are beyond the standard excel sheet). This, delays the entire judicial process and the justice is served at times when it is completely irrelevant.

And that is not taking into account frivolous charges, for which there is no penalty on someone placing frivolous charges.

Two, when someone is caught for the crime, everyone involved (investigator, investigated, support resources) takes all this into account and then individually determines whether it is worth going through this rigmarole or negotiate a suitable punishment among all concerned instead of going through the entire judicial system. Some people call this corruption, but in essence it is a bargaining tool for not having to go through years of litigation.  

All this nonsense about the government needing to be a stricter school principal is hogwash and cynical.

School principals need to be better at being school principals.

The world will then be a better place.. 

Letting the Truth prevail...

Dear Mr. Khan,


You don't know me, but I do know you. I mean, who doesn't? But, turns out we're related. Related in a weirdass way, that only Indians would consider each other related in such way. Your wife's grandmother was my grandfather's first cousin. Or something like that. In other words, I believe I have relatives, who are also related to your wife.

But that's obviously not why I am writing this open letter.

Let me first start with congratulating you on your wonderful new show. It is a great concept, and the right topics seem to be selected. Also, the show has the right amount of gravitas, and needless to say, an anchor with the exact amount of credibility needed to bring out the seriousness of the issue. As you said in the promos, “Dil pe lagegi, tabhi baat banegi”.

Consider “baat dil pe lagi”

So much so, that I am going to come out with the truth, since the truth always prevails:

I didn’t watch the show.

Not that I didn’t want to, or had no interest in watching it. I did, trust me. But I had other things to do.

Not outside, but in and around the house. Minding the kids, while the wife was out. Paying the cheques for the bills that came, this week being the first week of the month, you see. Putting the clothes out to dry.

That kind of stuff.

But anyway, I’m not going to bore you with details of why I didn’t watch the show. I don’t think you missed me.

Airtel, Reliance, Star Plus probably did, but that’s beside the point.

What I am more concerned with, is that whatever I heard of the show, somewhat disappointed me.

Not that it’s not a great show. It may be. But if you truly want me to watch your show, you need to bring out a show, where not only do you promote a cause; you come up with actionable solutions. Not SMS to 575757 (or whatever) where Airtel provides special Re. 1. charge to petition the government to do something.

Do you truly, truly believe that my SMS will ensure that other people don’t kill a girl child? Pandering to the lowest common denominator with such gimmicks suggest to me that all this somewhere is a marketing brainwave for Star Plus, Airtel, Reliance, etc.. Tugging at our heart strings, making an emotional connection, and then making a profit.

Plus I am more of an ESPN, Idea, ICICI Prudential kind of guy

But I will still send that SMS, like how I go to a temple. Not sure of whether it would help, but it will sure make someone happy. And if that someone is happy, then I am happy. I may be the holier-than-thou, cynical, so-and-so that my wife says I am, or even worse, but I am a practical holier-than-thou cynical so-and-so.

But here’s what you need to do for me:

Forget going to Ashok Gehlot asking for help. Instead, help that poor lady who came to your show and held us to emotional ransom on national television, lodge a police complaint against her mother-in-law knowingly and willing pushed her baby girl down the flight of stairs, for attempted murder. Lodge a complaint against her husband and father-in-law for aiding and abetting the murder. Surely if what she says is true, a crime was committed, and the criminals should be punished.

Similarly, help mothers register cases against their family members who are killing the girl child. A hotline, an NGO, something that will provide them the emotional support. They need our support for showing courage, that what they’re doing is right. That, going against the family, is what is needed to get rid of this cruel practice.

Encourage people to register births and deaths. Lobby the governments to make it easier to register these. You see, the mother-in-law in the above case, would very likely get off scot free, because most likely the birth of those twins was never registered in the first place. How do you prove a murder in the court of law, of someone who there is no record of being born in the first place? There is a law signed in 1969 making it mandatory to register births and deaths. And as of 2001, only 61% of all births were registered.

And if you want to meet Gehlot for something, ask him to lift the ban on the sex determination tests. Instead, lobby him make them mandatory. You see, by banning the test, we’re killing the messenger. The tests, are to date, the only way of knowing whether there is a girl or a boy in the womb. If someone is killing the girls, the tests are pretty much the only piece of solid non-refutable evidence, admissible in the court of law, which can then be used to prove culpable guilt. Keeping the prohibition will only encourage people to approach quacks and practice unsafe practices.

Let’s encourage the use the technology we have, to eradicate a menace. Use the forum of your show to encourage people to do all those things which will help the government catch wrongdoers.

Help people bring the truth out in the open.

Because as you rightly put it, the truth always prevails.

See you Sunday, at 11am to rediscover my television viewing experience.


Best regards,
---


(PS: I spent more time writing this letter, than I would otherwise have spent watching your show. As I said previously, “Baat dil pe lagi”)

An angry post... A frustrated post..

Let’s do a small role play:

Imagine you’re driving on an open city road, when you approach a traffic light. About 50 yards or so from the light, the green light turns amber. You’re at that point where it is a split second decision whether you accelerate or take your foot off the pedal. You know for a fact that you may be able to cross the threshold but you will not clear the square before the light turns red.

Do you step on it, or do you follow the rules?

Let’s say now, you decide, using some miraculous sense of right and wrong, to stay within the limits of the rules and stop before the line. You’re waiting for the light to turn green, so you can proceed. And along comes a speeding vehicle, which seeing the road ahead open, decides to not bother with the rules, and just go ahead.

What do you do now?

You know no one is going to catch you. You are almost guaranteed to not be punished for not following the rules.

Do you still wait?

Exactly why do we follow rules, laws, processes, or guidelines?

Or more to the point, why do we need to follow these?

Or even more to the point, why do we follow some rules, laws, processes or guidelines and not some others?

Why, for example, do we have prashad with our right hand, and right hand only, after wiping the hand on the trouser, but not follow traffic laws?

Even when the prashad rule is an unwritten convention, barely mandatory, and hardly matters in the larger scheme of things, whereas the traffic law is written in our legal system, agreed to by representatives of our society, and implemented / enforced (at least superficially) by the protectors of law and order and an error could literally cost lives?

Are rules and processes the crutch we use only when we don’t want to do something?

Why do we say “Satyameva Jayate” when the reality is that it’s more a case of “Jayatyameva Satya”?

Why am I bothering to teach my kids to always do the right thing, when right and wrong are becoming increasingly subjective?

What, exactly, is the point of all this hypocrisy?

The Times of Bullshit..

Over the last few days, my window to the world has been the Times of India. Kinda like life was, when I was a few years older than Annika. That's how it used to be. Regardless of what the 9 pm news said, life was what was written in the TOI. The rules of the English language were based on what was written in the TOI

But that was then. This is now.

Now is when winners of the "prestigious" TOI Social Impact Award get considered for the Padma awards, no matter that the award is in its inaugural year.

Now is when the Times Insight group, writes 10th standard essays on the petrol price in India being the 3rd highest by purchasing power parity, that grace the front page of the Sunday edition, while comparing the prices of gasoline in India today, with those in January 2011 for the rest of the world..

Now is when the Times of India leads a so-called ACT - Against Corruption Together to support the Anna Hazare campaign, but conveniently leaves out any mention of any dissenting voice.. (Could it have something to do with this development, I wonder.. but that's for another day.. )

Now is when the Times sells its masthead and its front page to anyone and everyone who will pay them top dollar.

Now is also when the Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. Wikipedia page, reads the following disclaimer:

This article is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.

Now is when, accused of  found guilty of misleading readers through paid articles that look like actual articles through Medianet and Private Treaties, the CEO of BCCL has this to say:

Even if you make an advertisement, and put a circle around it, how is that important? Why is it important that it should be made clear to the reader?

At this point, does it matter what the TOI prints on a daily basis? Maybe they could just print receipts for their patrons in their daily tripe..

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Harry G. Frankfurt

- On Bullshit..  

Putting your money where your mouth is..

The genesis of this idea comes from my friend Mohd. Haris, who calls his thoughts "erratic, random and sometimes stupid". But his idea of listing down things that people do in the full knowledge that they are wrong in doing so, yet do so with full approval from their conscience gave me an entrepreneurial idea.

It may not ethical, but hey, neither is the one the old man is fasting for. So here goes:

As mentioned, I as an individual, do things that I know are wrong, yet do them. I am in good mental and (mostly) physical health when I do so. For the sake of this example, let's just say, I know that I ought to not tweak my expense accounts, but you know, an odd fuel bill isn't so bad.. But now that I am protesting against corruption of the others, I must do something to show that I am not a bloody hypocrite. So what do I do?

That's where this new entrepreneurial venture comes in. Let's call it Paisa.com for sake of argument.

What is Paisa.com, you ask? Well, it is a customized portal which helps you to speculate on your own intentions. The intention has to be noble, (I shall not cheat in exams /  I shall not tweak on my expense reports / I shall not cheat on my wife/girlfriend, whatever). So I go to this portal, and say for the next 1 year (or 2 months or decade or whatever), I shall not do whatever it is that I know I am not supposed to do.

Still with me? Seems doable? I think so, but probably not practical. People will come in and pledge whatever the hell they want to pledge.

That's where Paisa.com's USP lies. The pledge stands valid, only if I am willing to put some money down in an escrow account for the duration of the pledge. It will have rates like you have at the temple for pooja, Cheat on taxes = 20% on taxable income, Cheat on girlfriend = 1 lakh, something.. But something substantial.

Once I've pledged it, comes the second catch. I have to provide phones and email ids of 10 friends who will be told that this is what you're planning to do. Unless they validate that you are truly capable of paying up, the pledge doesn't come through. Once they validate me, they will be told that should they ever catch me doing whatever it is that I am betting that I will not do, if they report me to Paisa.com, they will get the entire money, post due diligence based on current savings rates. They are free to forward to anyone they like to add more sets of watchful eyes on me.

Should I successfully avoid getting caught over the duration of the pledge, I get the escrow money plus interest.

Benefits:

- Acts like a fixed deposit of sorts

- Acts like a deterrant. I know I can tweak my expense reports, but if I were to get caught, I might end up losing 1 lakh..

- Makes me a bit more honest.

- Friends watch over me, but have a financial incentive in ensuring that if I am doing wrong, I will get caught. If I don't get caught, no harm no foul.

Liabilities:

- Suddenly, har ek friend zaroori nahi hota hai :)

- Is it ethical?

- Can you think of anything else?

What do you think? Will work? Should I fast for this??