Anna and the Circus

My wife went to express support for Anna Hazare and the Jan Lokpal Bill today. She protested empty stomach for close to 3 hours in Bhubaneswar and also gave a speech to a gathering of few hundreds - all supporters. I will be joining the candle light vigil in the evening for the support.

I have been following Anna and the Jan Lokpal cause for some time now and have been into many arguments and agreements with friends, acquaintances, family, strangers. There have been people I regard as intelligent and incompetent. Some are people who can barely be regarded as people. Strangely the agreement and arguments are normally distributed. What seemed to make perfect sense to me is suddenly seeming debatable. So I thought let me summarize thoughts here.

Another Partition
The people of India have been divided into 4 clear groups due to the recent events

1. People who support Anna and his call for Jan Lokpal Bill
2. People who support Anna but think Jan Lokpal Bill is counter-productive or trivial
3. People who don't support Anna or the Jan Lokpal Bill but think suppression of protest is wrong.
4. People who neither support Anna nor the Jan Lokpal cause and think the govt. was right in arresting Anna and Anna is creating nuisance in fact Anna is stopping India's march towards development
5. People who think Anna is fraud. The Govt. is Fraud. No Lokpal is worth anything. If you are Indian your only hope is to migrate to some other country (aside from Libya, Egypt Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast...heck all of Africa maybe)

In summary:

	Support Anna	Support Jan Lokpal Bill	Support Govt.
Group 1	Yes	Yes	No
Group 2	Yes	No	No
Group 3	No	No	No
Group 4	No	No	Yes
Group 5	No	No	No

There are several arguments given by Leading Media personalities, self-styled Intelligentsia, self-styled patriots and other miscellaneous breeds.

1. Lokpal will be another layer of bureaucracy over the already all-pervading red-tape
   It might become that. Whatever be the bill that is presented and whatever be the bill that is made a law. This is a real danger.
   Excessive legislation is a bad thing, like anything else (in excess that is)
2. Jan Lokpal

What Pains me

1. The so-called intelligentsia question your intelligence if you support
2. Anna
3. The so-called intelligentsia question your intelligence if you have hope in anything are not cynical

Edit note - This was written a long time ago and not published till today.

Turns out Anna is a fool being played by another group of fools looking to change the lives of a billion fools. 

Laziness has no cure!

I found out, yet again that laziness has got absolutely no cure! See, I am writing again after almost 10 months. Not that I was swamped with work, but lethargy and combination of passion for other things conspired against letting me write! Anyways, as they say in Hindi - "देर आये दुरुस्त आये!"

I will definitely be more regular from today onwards. Promise. No, really, honest.

So here are a few things for today. 

1. http://humorbeings.in is one of the bravest, most honest and most original things I have seen in my life. All respect to the CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer) Rivaldo, also known in another life as Nitin Gupta.
   For the uninitiated, Rivaldo is one of the most original standup comedy actors in India. He usually also comments on social issues and speaks a language that is very close to all IITians. That's because Rivaldo's an IITian himself. It takes you back to those days of PJs. But he takes PJs and injects them with raw energy to make them stupendous standup acts.
   The above act is one of his most acerbic attacks on the leaders of the country. Definitely worth a look and many a laugh!
   Few more links to Rivaldo's humor, in case you like it.
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EDxYnj7MdA
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xCCh88xBlM
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=4VfP02Bx7lQ
2. One of the things that caught my attention was regarding our ex-finance minister, Shri P Chidambaram. Rivaldo mentions that he has brought in participatory notes, but of course we don't know about it. and of course I didn't know about it. Because the participatory notes were not brought in by our man  Chidambaram.
   It is a fairly unknown scam and it baffles me why. Some time in 2007 the SEBI said that Participatory Notes were no longer going to work. Which led to a huge crash at the stock exchange. As you know most of these crashes and subsequent revival means a lot of wealth was destroyed....and created. Retail investors lost heavily and it is rumored that Sir Chidambaram and co. made a windfall.
3. Sustainable Architecture is something the missus is really interested in these days. What I really liked was the portable classroom given on the same wikipedia page. Now I have long term plans of developing a portable school module that can be scaled up to ensure affordable, quality education in remote places, where acquiring land might be a problem or cost-intensive. A lot of work needs to happen on this front. 
4. For more on sustainable and green architecture, please head over to http://www.greenexamacademy.com/, a wonderful site by a guy who was appearing for LEED certification and subsequently out there to help other people seeking the same.
5. While writing this blog Zee Studio was playing Stick it. Stick it is a 2006 movie starring Jeff Bridges with the storyline on gymnastics and how it is a nasty sport. Likeable movie but they way competitive spirit is undermined in the movie might not sit well with a lot of people. 

OK. That's it for today.