Its raining crap

Proud of the fact that I managed to stay away from the political discussions on social media so far. Though I have to concede that it was difficult.  I've never been a blind supporter or hater of any political campaigns. Call me old fashioned but I still believe that political practitioners need to be social servants first and elections are a way to empower them to do their bit for the society/ nation. Needless to say, I've lost this battle of beliefs long time back. More dismaying is the fact that politics and religion are now irreversibly entwined. I have seen WhatsApp discussions in my school group turning to "now we know the Hindus will only vote for BJP".  Today my wife had another conversation with a neighbour which started off with "you must be very happy that BJP has won, right?" What troubles me is that my neighbours and friends have now started seeing me as 'them'. While I could see many anti-BJP Hindus, I'm not sure...

What is so great about South Africa, that makes it in-vulnerable to an election? Or what is so bad in India that makes it vulnerable to IPL? South Africa had their general elections on 22 nd April. The day when Deccan Chargers won their 2 nd match   thanks to Adam Gilchrist & Rohit Sharma’s exploits. ( Click for match info ) While elections   - and the fear of a security lapse were the main concerns to shift the IPL to SA, how come it could be managed so well in SA. This debate would have already suffered the fate of a once fearsome cobra ending up as a soup in a street side ‘thela’ in Cape Town; but guess the after-taste is keeping the cobra from a peaceful digestion. Agreed that the magnitude of elections, the size of the electorate, the cultural diversity, civic apathy etc are insurmountable walls of difference between the two countries.   Just statistic is enough to kill the debate on similarity of the two nations - India is twenty times larger (over 1 billion peopl...

So the monsoons have arrived in Mumbai. On the outset, I do not think that the civic infrastructure has improved to tackle the monsoons, atleast not yet. Roads are still dug up, trains were slow even for the pre-monsoon showers. Mithi river, the arterial dumping ground, sewerage, mangrove nourisher et al is still not cleared…and so on and so forth. Mumbai presents a rather apocalyptic picture of what unplanned development can do. Development has been a poll promise since independence. From 1947 to today, civic infrastructure has not kept pace with the aspirations of the citizens. From the municipal elections, corporate elections, legislative and parliament elections to the presidential elections, there is just this mirage that we try and paint. And my theory is this is a political conspiracy. If we are given what we want…how will they come back to power again? The promise of a better tomorrow is the only thing that drives the poor to the poll booths. And time after time, they have obl...