Careless Whispers ...

"It is never too late to give up your prejudices"   - Henry David Thoreau 121 Parliamentary Constituencies (PC) go to polls tomorrow (17 th April) and 117 PC next week on 24 th  April. That makes it a whopping 238 PC, almost half the electorate will exercise their franchise on these two dates. I thought it would be an ideal time to re-visit some of my earlier posts, just to refresh and share them once again with the fellow Voters. Like someone rightly said: “If you don't Vote, you lose the right to complain”.  So yes, we must Vote! But what is even more important is to Vote with a Well-informed, Unbiased and Fearless mind. So sharing here some of my thoughts and ideas from past blogposts, only to put forward a perspective as a fellow Voter. Disclaimer at the outset would be in order:  This is not an 'appeal' to Vote for a Particular Party or a Candidate.  I am not making a pitch for NaMo as PM – he does not need it.  This is just a pers...

“Road to Hell is paved with Good intentions” AAP: Theatre of the absurd This post is not about Arvind Kejriwal (AK) - the person, the activist. He is way above those who would malign him on grounds of personal integrity, honesty, a genuine desire and intention to do something real good for the Nation. Of this, I am absolutely convinced. I also respect him for taking the plunge into active politics. By doing so, he showed the Sibals and Diggis that when push comes to shove, a common man like AK can pack them into the oblivion. In short, AK is a revolutionary and an activist for public good par excellence. The excitement is palpable The problem started when AK the activist, turns into a willing CM; on flimsy and compromised support of the same whom he was fighting against all these years. He would have done  wonders leading the opposition with 28 AAP MLAs on his side, using Activism to his full strength. Even if it called for an outside support to BJP. This ...

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters: ~ African Proverb The vast landscape of News, Information and General Knowledge on modern history and current affairs is populated in various intriguing ways in India. This has been a well established fact by now that the History taught in our schools through text-books has very little to do with actual facts and sequence of events. Contents of history text-books are collated in a particular way – read slanted ,  manoeuvred  and distorted . Important and crucial events are suppressed, ignored & censored from being exposed to the young minds. Idea is to push the young ones towards rote-learning by cramming up the historical dates of basic events, mostly birth and death anniversaries, and to a large extent the chronology. No wonder History is considered the most hated subject by the young minds as they do not find any value or interest whatsoever in remembering some dates and ...

"I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information,  the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skilful people." ~ John le Carré This is the third in a series of posts on NaMo, after the earlier ones: Decoding NaMo : From a Classical Liberal perspective Decoding NaMo : From Lutyens' Delhi perspective This post is dedicated to the millions of ordinary people: self-respecting, law-abiding, well-meaning citizens, who do their daily prayers, go through their daily routine balancing life between job, school, children, parents and family. Among all of this grind there is a routine mundane activity (and every Indian child is ceremoniously “cultured” to get into it over her formative years) that includes reading daily newspaper and watching TV News. Basically, follow the mainstream media to keep one updated with the current events, “knowledgable” debates and “intelligent” opinions, that would eventually shape the judgement and decision of each o...

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by sceptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.  We need men who can dream of things that never were." ~ John Keats This is a follow-up of the earlier post:  Decoding NaMo : From a Classical Liberal perspective   First off, let us understand the very concept of “Lutyens' Delhi”. If we look at the political history of India since independence, we notice that all of these years, we have been governed by a small group of people, hailing from a particular area of Lutyens' Delhi called “Lutyens' Bungalow Zone” (LBZ), which is spread over an area of about 2800 hectares. Poweratti: These people have worked their way up, either by virtue of their fine “pedigree” or through a high-powered social network and connections (read Coterie of Nepotist and Crony-Capitalists). In any case, they are obviously used to a fine life, full of “self-entitlements” and “perks”, whic...