Tighter thumbscrews

The BJP blames the Jaipur blasts on the scrapping of POTA, and wants tougher anti-terror laws to combat the menace; the UPA wants to create a federal agency to combat terror, probably on the lines of the US Department of Homeland Security; and the CPI - the only major party with a different view on the subject - is against laws like POTA. The BJP, unfortunately is echoing the sentiments of a majority of the population, who see such complex issues through tinted glasses. A couple of incidents like this, and with the UPA continuing with its current policies, might be enough for the BJP to go to the people and ask for their votes on the terrorism plank. We have the Gujarat experience to look back at, with even the Congress adopting a soft-Hindutva plank.

Our prior experiences with draconian laws - be it TADA or POTA - have shown that they are prone to abuse. How can POTA prevent terror attacks? At most, it can only come into play after the incident because there is no way laws can prevent crimes, except in science fiction. Department of Pre-Crime, anyone? Crimes can only be prevented if you have prior intelligence. And if you do have prior intelligence, why do you need POTA? Any law that limits the fundamental rights of the citizens of the country or acts on the basis of presumption of guilt is dangerous. And it will be misused. The plight of MDMK chief Vaiko is a case in point. The Vajpayee government got POTA enacted. And Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha used it to throw Vaiko in jail for more than a year. The MDMK was a member of the NDA, and Vajpayee could do nothing to get Vaiko released till the Supreme Court intervened into the matter. If this is how powerful political leaders can be treated, imagine the plight of the average man on the street. POTA: Lessons Learned From India’s Anti-Terror Act, has more on this draconian legislation.

Terrorism has existed for centuries in various forms. What we now face is probably more in-your-face than previous versions. But that does not mean we should go hide in caves or ask for tougher and tougher laws, because neither help. What will help is old fashioned law enforcement and better investigation techniques. Politicians like enacting laws because its easy. And when it does not work, you can always blame their not being tough enough. In the end, the only way people can be truly safe from terrorism is if they give up all their rights, and law enforcement is given carte blanche to do anything they want without oversight. That will probably end one kind of terrorism, but give rise to a different kind.

Ardh Satya

Twenty five years back, Govind Nihalani made a film on the decay that had set into society and the police’s role in it. Ardh Satya - the half truth - went on to become a classic.

Ananth Velankar (Om Puri) is a police officer who strives to be upright. He has a history - a domineering father (Amrish Puri) who is also a wife beater, and who made Ananth join the police force when he wanted to become a teacher/ professor. Ananth’s anger at not being able to stand up to his father and the memories of his mother being bashed up lie dormant within him. And those feelings erupt whenever he comes across cases of women being harassed. In all this, he meets, Jyotsna Gokhale (Smita Patil).

Jyotsna’s history is a mystery. All we know is that she works in some college. There are a few times when we get glimpses of how her mind works - like the time when she talks about finding the right man to marry and explains her fears to a friend - even after knowing someone for a long time, does one really know anything about them? The place where she works has a couple of interesting characters - men who pick up the latest topic from the newspapers and hold discussions on it. One day they corner her with a question on freedom of expression and want to know her views on the same. Unless you are willing to do something about an issue, there is no point discussing about it, Jyotsna says. Her friend (Ila Arun) though has a different view. Let them discuss, she says. Today they will talk about it. Tomorrow, they might do something about it.

Ananth soon has a run in with Rama Shetty (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), the local don who has all the cops in his pocket - except Ananth of course. One day, Ananth goes to arrest Shetty in a case of murder, but is forced by his superiors to bury the matter. A couple of similar incidents pour fuel into the fire and he starts drinking heavily. Jyotsna tries to bring him back to his senses. At one point of time she even tells him to quit his job, because, sooner or later, the difference between what a man is and what a man does, disappears. But he refuses to listen to her.

Things reach the tipping point when Ananth is passed over for a bravery medal in connection with a case. In a fit of rage, he end up killing a poor man accused of stealing a transistor radio in the lockup. He gets suspended as a result. And here comes the irony - the only one who can save his career is Rama Shetty who by now has become the local MLA with connections to the Chief Minister. Ananth has to make a choice - ignore his morals and try to save his career, or face the consequences. He meets Rama Shetty and immediately understands that he is getting into a deal with the devil. So he ends up killing Shetty and goes and surrenders to the police.

Why did Ananth do what he did? The answer to that lies in a poem - Ardh Satya - he read from Jyotsna’s book when they met in a coffee shop. He realizes that the system is like quicksand - the harder you fight, the deeper you get stuck; and that there is an uneasy balance between fighting it and working with it. And he could not live with it. The fact that throughout his life he had always given in without a fight made him feel impotent. That he took out his rage on a poor man, and that he was trying to get out of facing the consequences by begging in front of the very people who had brought the situation to where it stood probably made him hate himself. So, instead of pimping himself out further, he decided that if he was going down, he might just as well take one of his enemies down with him.

Ardh Satya

Chakravyuh mein ghusne se pehle,
kaun tha mein aur kaisa tha,
yeh mujhe yaad hi na rahega.

Chakravyuh mein ghusne ke baad,
mere aur chakravyuh ke beech,
sirf jaanleva nikat ta thi,
iska mujhe pata hi naa chalega.

Chakravyuh se baahar nikal ne par,
main mukt ho jaoon bhale hi,
phir bhi chakravyuh ki rachna mein,
fark hi na padega.

Maroon ya maaroon,
maara jaoon ya jaan se maar doon,
iska faisla kabhi naa ho payega.

Soya hua aadmi jab,
neend mein se uthkar chalna shuru karta hai,
tab sapnon ka sansaar us se,
dobara dikh hi naa payega.

Us roshni mein jo nirnay ki roshni hai,
sab kuch samaan hoga kya?

Ek palade mein napunsakta,
doosre palade mein pourush,
aur theek taraazu ke kaante par,
ardh satya.

- Dilip Chitre

Rough English Translation:
I will no longer have any memories of myself the way I was before I entered this labyrinth.
I will not know that after I have entered this labyrinth, the only thing that separates us is death itself.
Even though I will be free when I come out of the labyrinth, this fact will have no impact on the labyrinth itself.
Whether I should get killed or kill someone myself, this question will have no answers.
A man who wakes up from his sleep can no longer experience the world of dreams he has left behind.
Will things remain the same in the light of judgment?
On one hand there is cowardice, on the other - courage, and right between them is the half truth.

Ardh Satya on IMDb

A private farce

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries has shut down its gas stations because it couldn’t sell its oil at prices lower than the competition. Now, one would not have given this piece of news a second thought if the competition had been fair. After all, businesses keep going bust all around the world. But what is different in this case is that the competitor is none other than the government.

While on one hand the government levies heavy taxes on oil to shore up its budgetary revenues, it also forces state run oil marketing companies to sell petrol and diesel at a loss as a matter of political compulsion. Now, if companies sell their products at a price substantially below cost, sooner or later they will go bankrupt. To fix this problem, the government issues long term bonds (called oil bonds) to these companies, which then sell them in the market at a discount in return for cold cash.

The value of these bonds is in tens of thousands of crores. And they represent current expenditure in the form of subsidy. But the finance minister keeps this figure out of the budget estimates and only mentions them in a separate note as a future liability, effectively understating government expenditure by that figure. You can sue Arthur Anderson, liquidate Enron and throw the World Com CEO in jail. But what do you do when the government indulges in such creative accounting practices?

This is the primary reason why private oil marketing companies cannot compete. They pay taxes on the oil, but don’t get a share in the oil bonds. So, either they have to sell at a loss to compete with the government, or sell at cost + profit and lose a substantial chunk of customers.

Private oil companies are not subject to pricing restrictions by the Government and are free to take their pricing decisions on commercial considerations, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora says. I hope he knows that he is joking.

Quota Raj

When you find yourself in a deep ditch, there are many ways you can try to get out of it. But digging a deeper ditch is not one of them. The same logic applies to society. You cannot uplift certain sections of society by targeting certain other sections - it has not worked; it does not work; it will not work. But that doesn’t stop bleeding hearts - people who don’t mind using force on others, as long as what they think should be done gets done - from following such strange ideas. Ironically, such perverted ideas come to be known as social justice measures. The bill that, when approved by both houses of parliament, will ensure that 1/3 of all seats in all legislatures go to women, is a striking example of the same.

The policy of quotas in higher education elicited a huge response from people, mostly students who could see their carefully constructed plans of higher education disappear before their very eyes. But the women’s reservation bill will have a near-zero impact as far as most people go because it is limited to the field of politics in general, and elections to parliament in particular. That is why there is a huge fight going on - not on the streets - but between various political formations. The SP has been demanding a quota within a quota for women from the backward classes and minorities. Laloo too is not exactly pleased with the situation. And the Congress and BJP are pretending that they support the measure while most MPs are fearful of losing their constituencies. Mayawati wants the backward classes quota outside the 1/3 ceiling, with a 50% ceiling on the entire quota.

Given such opposition to the bill, especially in the form of poison pills prescribed by the SP that are designed to derail the legislation, no one really expects it to pass, except the communists, who are the ones behind the phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes move. It seems that not one day goes by without them creating some kind of public nuisance. Uncle Ben was wrong, if they are anything to go by, for their motto is - with great power comes zero responsibility.

As the TOI article says, after having made the right noises, the bill will be put in deep freeze. With the general elections approaching, no one really has the time or inclination to tackle this bill. Thankfully, for once our political system has done the right thing by not doing anything. A cynical view, this. But the right one.

Endgame: Singularity

Endgame: Singularity is a game developed in python and released under GPL by Evil Mr Henry and Phil Bordeleon. In the game you play the role of an advanced AI whose aim is world conquest (the word Singularity was made famous by Vernor Vinge when he predicted that within the next couple of decades, humans would be successful in creating AI more intelligent than ourselves).

To play the same, you will need three things -

• The game itself - download page
• Python - download page
• Pygame - download page

Ubuntu users can simply do a sudo apt-get install singularity. But that will only install v 0.26a of the game.

Highly addictive! Hence highly recommended!