Free speech in India. Bad joke.

We boast ourselves claiming the world’s largest functioning democracy. But I do not see free speech is allowed in this country. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – French Revolution, one of the greatest events of modern history taught this way back in the late 18^th century (arguably, this was written by Voltaire in one of his letters). The political class in this country are so ill-educated that even after 62 years of us becoming an official Republic they have not learnt the idea of free speech and democracy. We see intolerance across the parties throughout the country whenever there is any voice against any kind of establishment. In this age of social networking, when the entire world is becoming boundary less, much more maturity was expected from the bosses of the so called ‘largest functioning democracy’ on the planet. But sadly, we see a medieval age mindset still prevailing among our leaders.

Over the last few months we have seen our government trying to dictate the social networking websites on a number of occasions. The telecom ministry’s absurd demand to screen the posts of each and every individual on the social sites before they get published is nothing short of a military dictators’ or communist rulers’ wish list. In the state of West Bengal we have seen a tyrant at the Writers’ Building getting agitated by anyone questioning her government. Simply for raising basic questions on a national television programme a student gets the Maoist tag by the Chief Minister, a peasant gets arrested at the instruction of the state boss for questioning her about the fertilizer price. And the very famous Jadavpur University professor incident – the teacher was arrested by the ‘Gestapo’ forces of Calcutta for forwarding a caricature featuring the lady boss of the state. I was scared during that time as I myself too posted that caricature on my social account :P.

The Aseem Trivedi incident in Bombay is just the latest in this growing trend of intolerance at the government systems in the country. I have checked Aseem Trivedi's Faebook account and I did not find his cartoon on Indian Parliament is of a good taste at all. But arresting him because of creating that cartoon is against the very idea of democratic values. Political class in the country should learn that tolerance is a virtue and one of the most important ingredients of any modern democracy. I would also bat for having one or two funny bones for the rulers in our country ;).

I think looting Rupees 1.76 lakh crore is not that great a crime in the eyes of the bosses of our country, but ridiculing them for that action must be a sever crime!

Celebration of winning a sporting event (?)..

The ongoing celebration in Calcutta for winning this year's version of IPL by KKR is absolutely unprecedented by many standards. The victory by the franchise team is being hailed by many Calcuttans as something bigger than winning the last year's ICC World Cup by India. Few facts around this celebration have raised eyebrows. The unofficial local mouthpiece of the party in power in the state (The Daily Sangbad Pratidin) has been uncomplicated in describing the win as the win of change in the state. The Trinamool Congress propaganda machine went on as far as claiming that since the CP(I)M influenced Sourav Ganguly (what the shit!!) was not in the team, this time Shahrukh Khan and Gautam Gambhir took the challenge with lot of enthusiasm and the CM Shreemati Bandyapadhyay was always next to them in this battle. Wow!!!

http://epratidin.in/Details.aspx?id=8296&boxid=145735515 (my non-Bengali friends won't be able to read this, but I have already translated the first few lines of the crap).

The CM who always complains about lack of funds in the state government treasury, had shown that she has a kind heart by spending millions of Rupees of the taxpayers for the victory celebration of a franchise team. When Shreemati Bandyapadhyay hails the victory and relates it with the 'pariwartan' (change) of party in power in Writers' Building we must think that IPL is a political event, not a sporting one. In fact that's not that big a shock keeping Shreemati Bandyapadhyay's track record in mind of nonsense comments on hundreds of matters. But it was a real beamer when the President of India appointee, the Governor of West Bengal joined the chorus with the Trinamool Congress leader. Shree Narayanan described the victory of the sporting event (?) as the beginning of real 'pariwartan' in the state. I thought the Governor's role had nothing to do with any party being in power. I am aware that the governors in our country in general are not free of political bias all the time. But a person of his stature comparing the win of the sporting event as the political change in the state - frankly speaking, I have not heard anything like this before.

One more train accident..

One more train accident, loss of many lives and then the announcement of compensation to the victims' families. We have been watching this reality show of Indian Railways for decades now. Yesterday's train accident in Andhra Pradesh is just the latest in that decades' old reality show. In fact, we, the common men have accepted this reality as our fate and have learnt to be patient to be killed by the next train accident. That's why I do not see any public outrage after such a tragedy. The callous attitude in general among people about the death toll of 26 makes me feel sick. Such attitude of ours encourages the ever opportunistic politicians to indulge into cheap and populist vote bank politics. Railway Ministers have not increased the passenger fares for almost a decade now (apart from higher range fares). Former Railway Minister Shreejukto Trivedi wanted to bring some changes in that trend, he proposed to increase the passenger fares for all the classes in his much discussed Railway Budget, he wanted to bail Indian Railways out of ICCU. It is no secret that the largest PSU of the country has no financial arm either to provide the safety and security to it's passengers or to go for it's long pending modernization, definitely the hike of passenger fares was the need of the hour. The supremo of his party Shreemati Bandyapadhyay's wish of a populist budget was compromised - absolutely unacceptable - result: all of us know. And the situation remains unchanged. We, the common men are responsible to a great extent for letting our Ministers like Shreeman Ray (the present Railway Minister) wash their hands of playing with our lives by allowing them just to declare some compensation and set an inquiry commission after every tragedy, I do not see any public disgust being expressed towards the decision makers for their gallery shows. We hear about the anti collision device after every train accident in the country, but do not know when that is going to be a reality (or is that just an Utopian expectation?). We do not know how many losses of lives are enough for our politicians to to be shaken - to wake up and make more realistic and lesser populist decisions. Shreeman Ray, people won't mind spending few Rupees more if they are guaranteed of a much safer journey. Wish you could think about that rising above your and a certain Shreemati Bandyapadhyay's street level politics of cheap populism.

here i go..

Welcome to my blog!! It's been quite sometime I have been nurturing the thought of starting my blog. So here I am. What am I going to talk about? Well, nothing specific and everything in particular.. politics, cricket, football, religion, movies, adventures and et cetera et cetera. It is going to be kind of my diary - as my blog title suggests.