What Can Governments Do for You

John F. Kennedy had called upon the people to “ask not what the nation can do for you…”, it is now time to ask “what governments can do for the people”. They can with their half-baked projects make your life more miserable, raise taxes when you are already breaking your back on rising prices. Make the poor poorer. Go to the moon when earth needs attention. Poison water bodies with chemicals meant to increase agricultural productivity. The list is very long.

I remember the time when we could drink water directly from the tap. Now if you do that you will have near death experience and so we need to pay for the water to the water board, pay electricity bills to run the water purifier, and pay the water purifier company annual maintenance fee. And all this incurs service tax and vat. So the cost of water has gone up and you are also paying the government water bills, to give you purified water.

Every five years you elect a new government, hoping that it will be better than the old one, what a joke, it turns out to be worse. They bicker among themselves and the real issues get bogged down. There is higher unemployment, because the needed reforms are not forthcoming, prices rise and there is unrest. In a nutshell things are back to normal.

So should you stop voting, no you shouldn’t because there could be a nut case who can actually bring change by coming to power.

Radio to Television

A revolution occurred in India when Radio became portable. People could be seen with their families on a bicycle with a portable radio hanging from the handle bar. This image was used by the official media and the advertisers to portray growth in the countryside while facts were quite different.

The radio was controlled by the government. The news was slanted to give the government view, this was more so during a particular period of contemporary Indian history, when citizens were incarcerated for expressing an opinion. Even before the imposition of Emergency in India the radio was not free. There was no question of the Internet, it came later, and existed in a form only the scientific community could use.

The radio post Internet has not broken the shackles. Here is the dilemma, there is a need for an official view more than there ever was. The private TV news channels sensationalize news stories, while the radio news gives the government opinion. There is a very vital need for balanced coverage of important events, so that people can make an educated decision, this very important in a democracy. However, there is an absence of this vital ingredient. There are no private radio news channels in India which carry news. They are not allowed to. The government is afraid, that as it happened on TV, the audiences would prefer the private channel over the government one. It is said that except in the small towns and rural areas, no one watches the official Doordarshan TV channel for news.
Well it is not the viewers fault…

Trading Accusations while Syria Burns

Syria has become a political nightmare in the international arena. The two “superpowers” are not as cooperative as they should be. The nightmare that the civilians in Syria are going through is something that the world community can only watch helplessly. The UN was constituted to ensure that nightmares like the one in Syria could be avoided through dialogue.

The problem is that the events that took place happened within the confines of the borders of Syria. That makes it more or less an internal affair, however it has gone beyond the strict definition of “internal affairs” as the regime is pounding the populace with heavy artillery. This annihilation of its own people by the regime in Syria is a matter that needs international intervention.

The two powers that vetoed the UN resolution on some specious ground is indicative of the divisions in the world community. Bringing the world to bear upon the situation at hand would greatly help the people in Syria.

A Shift from Khakee

The government is planning to change the uniform of the Delhi Police from Khakee to something more modern. They plan to use the New York model. That is laudable, since the khakee represents the brutal colonial police. The mindset, though, has not changed.

This is my point and the focus of this blog. Unless one changes the person who wears the uniform one cannot change the way the police approach their work. Consider this, the present day police is only slightly different in India from their colonial brethren. The rules that govern police functioning are more or less the same. The laws, the Criminal Procedure Code,  is based, almost entirely, on the colonial model.

All this, plus the lack of proper education makes the constable and junior officers unable to change.

A more evolutionary approach to the transition would be apt, much water has flowed through the Yamuna, many lives lost, much bad blood created between the public and the police. The uniform should be the tail end of the transition. This would be the better way to improving policing in Delhi.