Do we invite invasion of privacy?

There is always a hue and cry whenever a news item about new measures from either a website or the government that can potentially affect citizen/user privacy surfaces and rightly so. I believe that each individual is entitled to some amount of personal privacy.

However social networks offer a glimpse into something slightly different also. I am sure research has already been done or is being done or will be done on this issue. Human beings love attention. We love being pampered and what is this without attention? A social network offers us an opportunity like never before to gain attention. To be completely honest I believe even a blogger is part of this crowd. There might be a desire to disseminate one's views to the larger public. But there is an underlying motive of gaining attention in this also. For e.g., whenever I write a new post I share the link on Twitter and Facebook. I regularly check the number of page views. Frankly to me this is an ego boost though I am nowhere in the list of at least widely followed bloggers.

I frankly however (maybe hypocritically) find it irritating when people air their display of affection publicly. It is one thing to post photos. Here one might want to share these with one's friends and relatives. It is completely a different thing to air grievances like "Why me, God?" and "I miss my koochikoo" on social networks. This would, at least in my opinion be diabetical without being sweet. Assume my friend's boy/girl friend just dumped her/him. S/he puts up a status saying something like, "Why me?" or something else similarly cryptic. Now s/he will get sympathetic (from those in the know or those who understand) or questioning comments below the post. Now will s/he be willing to answer publicly the posts which ask what happened? I assume that s/he will not be. In such a case what is the point of airing the grievances publicly? If one is looking for support and expresses one's sorrows publicly would it not make sense to come out completely?

This was not the case before the advent of social networks. If such a situation happened previously a girl's friends would sit with her and say unmentionable things about the boy and his unmentionables (I got this from a girl, so ladies, please don't protest). In essence there will be intense bitching against the guy. If the guy is the dumpee his friends sit with him and try to tell him that there are more important things in life without the bitching. At least this is what a guy is supposed to do. Look how the world changes!

Is Digvijay Singh serious?

First of all I have a doubt. Unless I am wrong I believe that it is legally wrong to suppress truth about a crime when you know a crime has taken place. Look at this article. Digvijay Singh says that family should not be attacked. He claims to have evidence against Vajpayee's son-in-law but does not want to mention it. Can someone from the police department please question this man? This person says his party has never attacked family members. If my memory serves me right, some time before Vajpayee became the PM there was a comment either from Sonia Gandhi or (most probably) Ghulam Nabi Azad. The quote was to the effect that Vajpayee is a bachelor. So how come he has a daughter? Vajpayee retorted that he had never seen that kind of character assassination in politics. I am not a career politician. Digvijay Singh is. I believe he should get his facts right before he goes onto national press or television.

Also if I am not mistaken in many cases it is the relatives and family members of politicians who help in hoarding unaccounted-for wealth. So I believe Digvijay Singh wants all politicians to go scot free. They should only remember to keep their black money with family members, no questions asked!

He is said to be the political guru of Rahul Gandhi. There is a tale by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Apparently he came across a big frog being swallowed by one variety of snake. The frog was too big for the snake. However it was not willing to let the frog go. Thus both were suffering. Had it been a cobra it would have long since consumed the frog. Sri Ramakrishna says that this was like the relationship between an unfit guru and his disciple. If the guru is not proper both have to suffer. Is this the reason why in spite of all his "efforts"Rahul Gandhi does not seem to be making any headway anywhere (apart from maybe in the Congress and in some select foreign holiday destinations)?

Further what is it with Beni Prasad Verma? This man is bent on shoving his foot into his mouth whenever he opens it. Unfortunately I do not remember his previous gems. Detractors of Salman Khurshid must have been cackling with laughter when they heard his remarks - that 71 lakhs was too small an amount for a central minister to embezzle. True, in this day of 2G and coalgate when the scams are in hundreds if not thousands, sorry thousands if not lakhs of crores 71 lakhs is too small an amount!

Remove individual sports bodies!

Moving to the second topic, I came across this article recently. I had earlier talked here and here about BCCI and other sports. Let us get a few things straight:
1. In my opinion any organization which claims to do anything representative of the nation has to be open to public scrutiny irrespective of the source of its funds.
2. Cricket is the richest sport and BCCI - India's richest sports body - claims to select an Indian cricket team.
3. There is a sports ministry which is responsible for sports overall.
4. Various key positions in sports organizations today are manned by politicians.

In such a scenario I propose that there be modifications made to the overall structure.
1. There will be a sports minister and ministry above all.
2. Let there be IAS officers in-charge of the day-to-day administration of individual sports. These should be assisted in an advisory role by a respected sports player.
3. However for selection only experienced sportsperson should be present. Further they should also play a clear and prominent role to decide the training needs of the sportspersons.
4. There should not be any individual purses for the various sports bodies. Let there be a common pool for all funds. This might sound unjustified to some. Why should the funds obtained through sponsorship rights of say a cricket match be used for tennis? Well, I pay tax to the government. Do I have the right to claim that the government provide solely for my needs only? Is it justified (I am pretty sure Ayn Rand is turning in her grave)? However sportspersons represent the nation on the global stage. It is the government's responsibility to ensure they are properly trained. Let us not participate for participation's sake.
5. The news article mentioned above talks about funds being given to sports bodies run by PT Usha et al. This is a great idea. These are people who have won laurels for the country and themselves. Let there be all possible help for them.
6. However in all cases there should be accountability. This is zero today. Suresh Kalmadi was never penalized during his entire tenure as head of India's Olympics Committee for our dismal performance year-after-year.
7. We cannot avoid politicians in India. Let them be the overall bosses only if required. Please let our boards not be populated by them unnecessarily.

What right do the likes of Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley and Rajeev Shukla claim to be on the boards of cricket bodies? Today there is money in cricket. We find politicians in profusion there. Tomorrow if there is money elsewhere we will find them there.

Final year projects for sale!

There is a lot of hue and cry about the employability of graduates and post graduates in India, so much so that some companies have started programs to train the work force before they actually begin work. I come from an engineering background (these days, who doesn't?). I occasionally put a question to my peers - are you an engineer or did you pass engineering? In my opinion people who actually go into design and to some extent implementation/maintenance of equipment are true engineers. I shall leave my readers to judge which category I fall into!

Whether it is post graduation or graduation students get worked up when it is time to decide the final year projects and guides. I am sure most engineering graduates will confess to have approached seniors for their projects. This was taken to a whole new level by a poster I saw today. Bhubaneswar has a lot of engineering colleges in and around it. I stay very close to one of the more prominent ones and hence the area I live in has a large student population. Today I had gone into the market to purchase some items when I found a notice pasted on the wall outside a shop. It advertised a phone number which students could contact for "professional-looking" final year projects. I might be paraphrasing but that was the gist of it. I was taken aback by the sheer brazenness of the poster.

Is this a sign of the things to come? There were apparently days long gone when people were pure (probably no one alive today has seen them). Then there was a time when injustice or acts of dishonesty etc were perpetrated but stealthily. Have we finally come to the day when a dishonest act does not need to be cloaked?

What Kejriwal should learn from Chanakya

There was a Telugu movie some time back titled Leader. It features the now-hunk and he-of-the-single-expression Rana Daggubati. It was about the son of an assassinated Chief Minister who becomes the CM in line with his dying father's wishes and sets about cleaning up the state's corruption-ridden politics. I don't see this movie actually happening in the real world but it is a good watch.

In the movie the protagonist moots in the state legislature a proposal to set up an anti-corruption body which will have the power to prosecute everyone. There is vigorous opposition from politicians cutting across political lines (sounds familiar?). He is advised by an elderly politician to remove politicians from the list of people the body can investigate and this immediately finds favour. The logic was that the people in the upper echelons depend on bribes from the lower echelons. If the lower echelons were trapped automatically the bribes for the top will stop. So he was employing one class against the other.

Now coming to today's India Kejriwal and team seem to be after all politicians in India. He must remember a few things. The memory of people is short-lived. Indira Gandhi was voted out of power in 1977 post the emergency. However she came back to power soon. This was at least in some measure due to the incompetence of the Janata government. However people were willing to forgive her. Salman Khan has been accused in hit-and-run and animal hunting cases. In the recent past he is probably the cinema actor whose films have grossed the most at the box office. Kejriwal has decided to take on the entire political establishment. This is foolish, to say the least. For one, in my opinion people of our country don't care enough. Even if they do they care for a very brief time. Look at the fate of Anna Hazare's movement. Hence Kejriwal needs to take a leaf out of Chanakya's book.

What Chanakya had done was probably not ethical but was steeped in realpolitik. He first took the help of some rulers like Malayaketu to remove the Nanda dynasty. Later he removed Malayaketu as he was a threat to Chandragupta. I request correction if I get my facts wrong. Kejriwal should understand and apply the concept of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". If he is correct he should use the current opposition parties to rid the ruling coalition of unwanted elements. Later on he should focus on the current opposition. I remember a discussion on NDTV where there was an NCP representative, Prakash Javadekar from the BJP (I seriously think he should be replaced) and Ms Damania among others. The discussion, or should I say arguments started with Ajit Pawar. The NCP rep who is also the head of one of Air India's pilots' union was brazen in his arguments which was quite irritating. He was being cornered when Damania raised the issue of Gadkari and she and Javadekar started fighting much to the relief of the NCP rep. In this din the whole issue gets forgotten.

So my dear Kejriwalji, please get your focus right. Apparently comedy is all about timing. Let us ensure that the current anti-corruption movement does not end up as a sad joke.