Delhi Terror Attack

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, "This is a cowardly act. We will deal with it. We will not succumb to pressure of terrorism." He added, "This is a long war in which all political parties, all people of India should stand united so that the scourge of terrorism is crushed."

You will deal with jack squat, Mr.Prime Minister.

All you will do is add more strip searches in malls and groping in movie lines. You will add more "security" guys who will eyeball car trunks but wont even glance inside the cars or ask whats inside my backpack. You will have more cops on the streets to take bribes from people to allow them right of passage. All this when what failed is intelligence.

Not sure why this is a cowardly act when they just flip us off every time and tell us that they did it and you can do nothing. You cannot prove anything and you cannot get us justice. You are the coward Mr. Singh, not them. You do not have the cajones to do what it takes to bring the perpetrators to justice (the masterminds, not the ones who pulled the trigger or pressed a button). This is war and you have zip to prove it. You will talk a lot of trash and your posse will talk a lot of trash. But nothing will happen. You will make sure that this is a long war.

I don't even know what "we will not succumb to pressure of terrorism" means to the families of the people who got killed. On the face of it, it looks like you are saying that tomorrow is going to be business as usual. That nothing will change. You are saying that they can kill some more and nothing will change.

All the political parties, all the people of India, we will all stand united and we will gawk. We will stand up and we will think that just the mere act of being united will crush the scourge of terrorism.

You suck sir. Big time.

Do Ends Justify Means?

Here's how democracy works:

• people elect their representatives in order to govern themselves
• the representatives introduce and vote on legislature
• most of the legislature that gets introduced by the representatives will be done keeping the interest of their respective constituents
  (otherwise, the people wouldn't elect them next time)
• the representatives vote on each piece of legislature keeping the interest of their respective constituents
  (majority of the constituents, because it may not be possible to get the full population to agree on something and also it is the majority they need to get elected back into power)
• if a majority of representatives vote for a piece of legislature (keeping in mind the interest of the majority of their constituents), the legislature becomes law

Here is how Anna Hazare and Team got the Jan Lokpal bill passed:

• They wrote a piece of legislature
• They forced parliament to vote on it
• With the threat of the mob, they forced the parliament to pass it

Here are some reasons why I didn't like how it was achieved:

• The way this goal was achieved sets a bad precedent - anyone can start fasting and ask for any piece of legislature to be introduced/passed
• Out of a population of over 1 billion people, less than 1% decided what should be law

Most people ask me, "but the cause is just, how can you be not supporting him?". Yes, the cause is just. The goal to remove corruption is noble. I have nothing against it. I myself am frustrated at the rampant corruption in this country. It is the path taken to achieve the goal that I have a problem with. Anna Hazare is touted to be a Gandhian because of his non-violent methods and his fasting. How can he be a disciple of Gandhi when he is just using Gandhi's weapons and has forgotten/ignored Gandhi's principles; the most important one being, "ends do not justify means".

Democracy is a beautiful concept, but it is also very tricky to maintain. It’s a very fine balancing act. What Anna Hazare did can have major ramifications that can debilitate and weaken an already ruptured system that we currently have. The system is flawed not because of the politicians but because of the people. The people who do not insist on telling their representative what they want and the people who do not hold their representative accountable. People (majority of the people, that is) of this republic have no interest in taking any role in its governance. This government is not representative of the people of this country because the people have decided not to communicate to their representatives. The people have not shown a desire to do so. The people have not been educated to hope for such a system let alone demand it.

Instead of cultivating such a system, the media and Hazare have reinforced the idea that the government will never be representative of the people and that you have to take to the streets and threaten the government with anarchy if you want something. Conversely, it reinforces the system where my government can ignore anything I want unless I threaten (and display the wherewithal) to throw the country into chaos.

One big talking point in support of Hazare is that he had the people behind him, and that it was a people’s movement. Here are some statistics I got from the internet:

• When Hazare and Team asked people to give missed calls to show support and solidarity, they received 100 lakh calls from 77 lakh unique numbers
• I think we can safely assume that the number of people on the streets will be less than the number of people who gave a missed call
  (the logic being, giving a missed call is far easier; if you are on the streets, you definitely can give a missed call)
• That is 8 million people, out of a population of 1.2 billion
• All they had to was give a missed call, and less than 1 percent of the population did that
• Even if I take just the mobile subscriber base in India, the figure is 8 million out of 850 million subscribers.

But still, 8 million is a considerable number. Why were they on the streets supporting Hazare? Obviously Hazare couldn’t have paid all of them for their support. (hang on there you crazies, I am not saying he did, I am saying he couldn't have) The fact that there are so many people vociferously supporting this movement should mean something; and it does. It says the people are vexed. The people are frustrated with the current state of affairs. They are sick and tired of hearing of corruption and having to deal with it. People are so desperate that they are clutching at anything that even remotely looks like a solution. But a country this desperate is a threat to itself.

I've been told that no one in the right state of mind could be against Hazare unless they are corrupt themselves. "Are you saying you want corruption?" they'd ask me. That is a logical fallacy. I can want India to be free of corruption and still not approve of Hazare's tactics or his solution. I can want corruption to be rooted out but still be worried that Hazare's solution will create another monster. As Nietzsche says, "Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one." This Jan Lokpal can become the monster we are fighting (but that is a separate discussion altogether).

People say, "This is the only way that works for these politicians", but it is the people that put the politicians there. And, this incident does nothing to fix how the polity works. The media, which has given so much free publicity to this movement does nothing to educate the masses that they should be demanding things from their representatives and how they should be communicating with their representatives about what they want. Movie after movie has reinforced the idea that the politicians are incorrigible and the system is irreparable. We all talk about how the system is rotten, but do we know how we want the system to function? If we have the power to control people’s minds and reprogram them to be honest, do we know exactly how they should function? What does the ideal politician do? How does the ideal government operate? If you were the MLA, MP or Minister, what bills would you introduce?

By Arvind Kejriwal's own admission in The Hindu, "when we conducted referendums on the JLB, we used to try and explain its contents to people. But they said they did not want to understand the details. They just wanted to put a mohar [stamp] on Anna" To me, this is scary. That is why the number of people on the streets does not mean much to me. They don't know the details of what they are supporting and the crux is in the details. 

How are these people any different from the people following KCR and burning down public property because they want a separate state? They are not burning anything down, but they sure are threatening to, unless the Parliament buckles down and gives what their Anna wants.

So tomorrow, if some people want to come in and remove reservation in this country, and gets the support of 10 million people, should we do it? What about the opposite; if someone wants 100% reservation, and gets the support of 10 million people, should the Parliament go ahead and pass that bill?