The first scam of Independent India.

Today corruption is probably the most debated topic in India. It has its roots so deep, it seems impossible to imagine a nation which would be corruption free, an honest state working for the betterment of its people, a paradise where rulers may seek power, but do not seek wealth. A government that is uninterested in profit.

I always believed in goodness of our folks, it always intrigued me, how a country which was united against the British just 50 years back, overthrowing one of the greatest powers of history by practicing non-violence, degrade to such lowly state, where people who are supposed to be our brothers and sisters, exhort bribes from their own countrymen, steal the money for medicines of poor, sell-out their motherland's security for the love of Gandhi (printed on notes).

In the beginning of the great adventure of building a new country from the numerous identities of diverse princely states, linguistic identities, tribes and religions, the people involved were those who were real nationalists, who has loved this country more that their lives, people who had sacrificed their youth for freedom, people who had been lathicharged, assaulted, abused and massacred everyday, for centuries oppressed and enslaved, this soul of India had finally found utterance. For a decade everyone evolved in governance had been a freedom fighter, though now very good in administration, economics, management or statistics, they were guided by the love for their nation. Pandit Jawarhar Lal Nehru, guided us through the troubled waters of partition, the Kashmir issue, the tribal trouble, the communists, the right wing opportunists and other divisors. But after a decade there finally arrived peace.

But as they rightly say, with greater peace, comes greater prosperity. A country ruled for a decade by a single party which was virtually unopposed, meant that the entire government was running with full accelerator and no-brakes. No opposition brings great evils. And short-sighted communal opposition brings greater evils. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha and similar parties had just one agenda, Hindutva, such communal forces had to be thwarted at all costs, but a progressive modern opposition was the need of the hour, sadly though our country still doesn't have one.

The World of Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien's monogram.

As I watched The Hobbit today, I was intrigued by the level of grandeur and the expansive of the plot. It was quite different from what I had read in the book by Tolkien. I started googling stuff that I thought wasn't sure was a part of the original story, like the sequence about Thorin Oakenshield & Azog is depicted, it was not in the book. I didn't think that these padding could have been invented by Peter Jackson, just to stretch the movie series into a trilogy. On further research I found the there more to the children's tale of the Hobbit than what meets the eye.

Those who have seen the The Lord of the Rings trilogy must have been impressed with imagination of the parallel world created in the movies. The adaptation of the books has been done quite intelligently in contrast to what is usually seen when movies are based on novels, they usually leave the fans begging for more. But with this particular trilogy it is like watching imagination come to life. (I experienced this in reverse though, watched the movies and then read the books.) It is still a mystery to me though, that why didn't the fantasy fiction of Tolkien get the popularity and hype that it deserved. I presume that it is just because he never wrote for the sake of writing novels. Most of his books and literature has been salvaged from his letters to friends, and his notes, by his son Christopher. The father of modern fantasy fiction only published the Hobbit and TLOTR. But in fact he had created a whole new universe. The Middle Earth.

When everyone's a super, no one is.

Nowadays you could just throw a rock, and you're bound to hit a Software Engineer. I myself am one of them. So this is some kind of a confession as I am completing my graduation.

Today, a majority of Computer Engineers in our country don't even have a clue about what is happening inside a computer. The toughest computer problem that they know how to solve successfully is, finding the factorial of a number, or checking whether a number is prime or not. I could do them when I was at school, so I threw away all my college time, thinking I was way ahead of others, but now I realize, though its a bit late, that I never was even a peeling of a real Bachelor of Technology.

Memorable slogans of Indian politics

Even in times when the Bollywood has been accused of getting 'inspired' from foreign works quite frequently, there has been a plenty of room for authentic creativity in the Indian political sphere. The nameless poets of these witty, simple and memorable slogans popularized their causes using these catchy lines.
I've listed some quite famous and witty ones that I've come across.




Any story about Indian Democracy would be incomplete without these.

"Chini hamla hote hain, Menon sahab sote hain Sona hai to sone do, Kriplani ji to aane do."	चीनी हमला होते हैं , मेनन साहब सोते हैं  सोना है तो सोने दो  कृपलानी जी तो आने दो !
Against Defence Minister  V. K. Menon for complacency during the War in 1962
"Jana Sangh ko vote do, Bidi peena chhod do, Bidi me tambaaku hai, Congress waale daaku hain."	जन संघ को वोट दो, बीडी पीना छोर दो, बीडी में तम्बाकू है, कांग्रेस वाले डाकू हैं!
By Jana Sangh in the General Elections of 1967
"Janata ka dil bol raha hai, Indira ka singhasan dol raha hai"	जनता का दिल बोल रहा है  इंदिरा का सिंघासन दोल रहा है !
In JP's Revolution of 1975