This article today about a Dowry harassment case against an Andhra minister triggered a few questions.

• In a democracy, the voter’s right to freely available information about their elected leaders is crucial. While we have the RTI, that’s not the same as having a freely accessible online database of our elected leaders’ foibles than can help a voter make informed choices before an election. I am imagining an SMS based service that can send an Indian citizen the track record of any candidate before he chooses to vote.

• While it is true that our immature democracy still largely thrives on illiterate villagers being ferried by trucks to attend political rallies and vote for the side that gives them more plates of biriyani for their efforts, I wonder if we need to be planning ahead for India’s future as opposed to sit back on the comfortable excuses of present day realpolitik.

• Since today’s Indian media tends to possess a memory whose half life is about half that of weapons-grade Plutonium, how do we ensure that a news story, such as the one cited above about the Andhra minister, does not get lost and buried during the media mela that is election time?

Your thoughts?

Taranaa.com announces the Taranaa Idols 2007 singing contest. You are invited to particpate in this web contest where the Taraana members from around the world are showcasing their talent. If singing is not your forte, you can just stop by and give a listen to the performances by their members.

Follow this link to contest page:

http://taranaa.com/Tarang/index.php?title=Taranaa_Idols_2007_Solo_Round

This contest has 2 rounds: solo round and duet round. Instructions can be found here:

http://taranaa.com/Tarang/index.php?title=Taranaa_Idols_2007

Write to info@taranaa.com if you have any questions.

Photo: The street lights still shining at 1:00 PM (13:00 hours)
Place: Aristo Junction (heart of the city of Thiruvananthapuram), near Malayala Manorama office
Date: June 29, 2007 (yesterday)

Now read this:

The Federation of Residents Associations, Thiruvananthapuram (FRAT) has threatened to launch an agitation against the decision of the KSEB to levy additional security deposit from consumers.

Flaying the KSEB’s contention that the additional deposit was mandated by the Electricity Act 2003, FRAT pointed out that the same Act had recommended the dissolution of electricity boards, trifurcation and privatisation of power sector, the Government’s withdrawal from rural electrification and scrapping the cross subsidy system. “When all these recommendations were put aside following stiff resistance from KSEB employees, why should the KSEB insist on implementing the additional security deposit scheme?� the press note asked.

The KSEB guys never stop doing such things. About an year back, they put a high voltage transformer next to our house to give a new connection to the school in the back of our house. They put two new electric posts which was not legal although the school authority and the local KSEB engineer tried to claim it was. They put the heavy voltage electric lines across our plot, just above the house which could cause serious harm if its broken or fallen for any reason. And legally they had no rights to put these electric line across a residential plot. They did all this while there was no one in our house except the old mother and father.

We made a complaint and a senior officer from the district office came for inspection. She had found out that the two posts were illegal and the local asst. engineer made some excuses. I really doubt that he was bribed by the school authority headed by an un-priestly priest (throughout the whole episode, that priest was utterly silent and observing from a distance while the asst. engineer was trying to claim his lies to the senior officer). The officer was a very nice lady and she was convinced that what we told was right and asked the asst. engineer to take the necessary steps on the very next day and the issue got solved.

The man whose hate community membership in Orkut is outnumbered only by soap queen Ekta Kapoors did finally take off his cap. And no, it wasn’t for a shower. That has to wait.
For now he decided that he has a million fans ready to swarm him on his visit to a dargah. So he did what his equivalent, Michael ‘my nose is like a butterfly’ Jackson, once did in the Middle East - wear a burqa. Nothing wrong with it, except that the 36,500 members of the Himesh Hate Club and the general public had a good laugh at his photos which appeared in almost all the leading news papers the next day. On top of it he had to issue an apology for ‘disrespecting the burqa’.

I think the next time he goes to a surgeon for a nose job (to improve his voice that is), he should try a better disguise like the one shown here. I’m sure people wouldn’t notice.

 

The Police Report submitted by IGP Sandhya has found P J Joseph, chairman of Kerala Congress (ally of of the ruling LDF), prima facie guilty of sexual misconduct against Mrs. Lakshmi Gopakumar on a flight from Kochi to Chennai on August 3, 2006.

Following a Right to Information Act application filed by a local advocate, the report was made public after being kept under wraps for almost a year. The report submitted after cross examination of both parties and some passengers states that  the former minister was allotted seat 17-A, but sat on seat 9-A just behind Mrs. Gopakumar before the flight took off.  Mr Joseph went on to do something worse than singing, he did and unfortunately for him, the passenger screamed, called the airhostess and submitted a complaint.

But alas, Mr. Joseph alleges a conspiracy theory and not surprisingly blames the media for the state of things.  There is no way we can be certain about what happened on that Kingfisher flight - the man might be innocent, a mile high or maybe it is a different story altogether down here.

I Really wonder if the staff and management of goAIR understand the phrase, ‘Time is money’.

I was once warned about the delay in goAIR  flights by my father ,whose flight scheduled to arrive at 6 arrived at 9.But I fell prey to the low cost, their ‘Rs. 0 tickets ’offer(Paid Rs.1375), their Slogan ‘Come on India, Lets Fly Smart’ and ofcourse Miss PZ on their posters.

The goAIR counter at Nedumbassery Domestic Airport.

Yesterday morning saw passengers of the goAIR Flight G8 - 456 from Cochin to Mumbai via Bangalore, including elderly citizens and children, stranded at Nedumbassery
Airport for more than 5 hours. Unfortunately, I was one of them. The goAIR ground staff themselves were unaware of the reasons of the delay and kept making up confirmed departure times for their flight.

Angry Passengers confront the Manager of goAIR counter at Nedumbassery.
The flight was due to arrive from Mumbai and was yet to take off because of what some goAIR  staff said was a technical snag and others mentioned as weather problems. They couldn’t get their act in place.

A security guard signals to another to stop me from taking pictures, while a goAIR staff tries to calm down passengers.

While problem makers were hushed away to different flights and passengers who had international connecting flights  put on other flights 3 hours later, the normal traveler was kept waiting. There was also an instance when the Manager of the goAIR office at the Airport, Mr Deepu , yelled at a fellow passenger.

A goAIR staff at the counter informed me that goAIR has 4 Aircrafts operating in the various sectors all across the country. I dint believe it till Wikipedia confirmed it. They have 4 aircrafts operating over 13 destinations and 396 weekly flights. I understand that the Wadiya group is into business(Bombay dyeing and Britannia Biscuits), but please understand that  you cannot use your business tactics in the services industry.

The flight finally was confirmed to take off at 15:10 Hrs and managed to take off at 15:40 hours.

The flight finally confirmed for 15:10 still on ground at 15:35. 

Mr.Wadia, please get your flights on time, teach your staff how to behave with passengers or pay all the stranded passengers for their time, coz otherwise flaunting your son’s Lady Love on posters ain’t gonna help.

Please India, Fly smart, Dont Fly goAIR !
 

This is how you tackle the law which states that, the rider needs a helmet and pillion needn’t.

Pic taken near Thiruvananthapuram Medical College. Mallus are indeed intelligent!!!

What is more important? Hindutva brotherhood or Maratha brotherhood?

I mean what’s more important for the Sangh Parivar? Their own parivar member Bhairon Singh Shekhawat or evil-Congress-run-by-an-Italian-supported-by-Leftist Pratibha Patil? For Shiv Sena, Maratha pride seems to be more important. I’m guessing that if the left put forward one of their comrades from Maharashtra for the post of Vice President, they would support him or her too.

For me, this episode, where we see a clash between regionalism and comunalism is  great example of the lack of ideological depth that the Sangh Parivar faces. 

I would really like to know from the Shiv Sena, why they would vote against Bhairon Singh Shekhawat? Isn’t he a son of Bharat Mata too? Or does being a Maratha mean much more?

The answer, we might never know. ….(play X-Flies theme here)….

I wonder if ICICI Bank’s insurance covers ‘death by hired goons’. This must be what Y Yadaiah’s family might be thinking of now.

Y Yadaiah’s family realised when the recovery agents of the local branch of ICICI Bank allegedly beat the 42-year-old Andhra government employee to death while trying to recover a loan of just Rs 15,000.

Now here’s the interesting part, first, the police version:

Punjagutta police station Inspector G Narsaiah said that investigation had revealed that Raju had picked up Yadaiah from a bus stop near Yapral on Friday and forcibly took him to his office in Ameerpet to recover the loan amount.

Later, the agency’s three partners confined Yadaiah in their office and threatened him of dire consequences if he failed to repay the loan amount immediately. Narasaiah claims the bank agents had admitted to having taken Yadaiah to their office in Ameerpet and asking him to clear his debts.

OK, now here’s the ICICI Bank’s version:

ICICI Bank said Yadaiah had said he was feeling “unwell” when he had gone to the office of Elite Financial Services “for making payments of overdue installments”. It said Elite’s representatives provided “all possible support for his medical treatment”.

So believable. For all those interested, here is a copy of ICICI Bank’s code of ethics. Nowhere on that document is it mentioned that they will hire goons or human life is not worth 15,000 rupees.

Thank you ICICI Bank for your bullshit. I will surely keep in mind what you did to Yadaiah and his family every time you advertise and try to sell me your services.

The story New trends:Kids outsource homework caught my attention today and I wondered what really are the key issues here. NDTV seems to completely skirt around the crux of the matter.

” Mandeep Singh, 31, is a busy man these days. With schools in the Capital set to reopen in the first week of July, he has little time left to finish ‘homework’. He’s not a student but is working overtime to make life easier for those who are.
He specialises in models, projects and charts for prices ranging between Rs 200-4,000 and on a busy day, he completes upto 100 models.”

Wikipedia and Google have now made research easier than ever for kids. The ability to navigate from topic to relevant topic is in fact providing a way for kids to pick up knowledge from a broader perspective than was possible in the past. But the problem here seems to be the way schools define homework in the first place, something that NDTV’s article seems to completely miss. What is the point of making paper models and complicated charts that simply replicate information freely available on the web? What are we actually trying to get the kids to learn?

I think teachers need to realize that the information memorization and regurgitation paradigm (also called the Swallow in class and Vomit in exam paradigm) is the real crux of the issue here. The homework we give kids should inspire them to bring their own perspectives on issues rather than the usual backbreaking fact-finding missions they tend to be. The internet has solved the fact-finding problem once and for all folks. Let’s ask our children to visualize and interpret knowledge, instead of asking them search ,discover and replicate information.

Your thoughts?