This one was easy

Think of it as a warming up session. It wasn’t so much our victory as their loss. It is the next one that will be real battle, comrades: Modi vs Rahul. If the Congress becomes overconfident (such a big victory cannot be without side-effects) and botches up the next few years, we’ll have a much, much harder fight next time. I feel all melodramatic now: it is not yet time to sit back, let alone sleep in peace. Jaagte Raho!

ps. Chidambaram riding ahead at the very end of the count seemed rather suspicious. Ditto with Shibu Soren and Laloo at Pataliputra. No?

Voting

So the booth was this government school. Most people were queued up outside the main building but we were directed to a little room at the back where there were no observers, no agents, not even the mandatory policeman. Only some very bored looking teachers on duty who cheered up somewhat when we turned up. They looked at the card, located my number on the list, marked it off, marked my finger with ink (which is manufactured in Mysore, by the way) and made me sign against my name on yet another list and gave me some receipt-like thing which I handed to yet another officer who then pointed me to the Electronic Voting Machine.

It was on a small, rickety table with the voter’s privacy protected by a corrugated cardboard box whose bottom and one side had been removed and the rest placed around the EVM. To make sure it didn’t get blown away, some brown packing tape had been used.

That was it. The nation’s fate hung on one long beep. And the secret ballot amounted to a recycled cardboard box. But the potential symbolism, that went right through the roof.

Internet on the Shatabdi

Free wireless internet. On the Shatabdi Express. Discovered entirely by accident. Provided by a Chennai-based company called Zylog. Being used to post this.

Clearly, I am too thrilled to speak (type) in full, coherent sentences.

Updated to ask: Who does one thank for this marvellousness? Been trying to locate a number to call, an email or regular mail address to write to, a name I can use in what is likely to be a rhapsodic communication, but can’t find anything. May have to resort to writing a letter to some editor.

Conversion

L, the lady who comes to help my mother with chores around the house was crying today. I asked her why and she said her daughter had converted to another religion. Her daughter works at a small scale factory, making some plastic ware. She discovered the religious pendant on her daughter’s chain yesterday.

When confronted by the family, her daughter told her that everyone in the factory had been coerced into converting. Refusal meant losing the job. When I suggested she could find work elsewhere, L sobbed louder and said all factories were the same. They all wanted you to convert.

I am not particularly religious, and don’t see the problem if the whole world were to convert overnight to one or another religion. What does bother me is the use of coercion. Forcing anything on anyone, whether a religion or a food habit or a clothing sensibility, gets my hackles all raised and my neck bristling.

I feel helpless for L, because they need the money her daughter brings home desperately. Buying their religious allegiance is blatant exploitation. Being told if you don’t want to convert, you are free to quit the job is clearly giving you a false choice. But I don’t know what options she has, considering her daughter did not even complete class 8. If anyone reading this has something to suggest, I would be happy to hear it.

Post some Pink Chaddis

The Pink Chaddi Campaign kicked off on 5 February 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Sena. The campaign is growing exponentially and that is not surprising. Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.

The first part of the campaign is to gift Muthalik and his goons with pink underwear on Valentine’s Day. Everyone is invited to mail in their pair of the pinks!

Am sending off a large parcel first thing tomorrow to:

The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
C/O Alternate Law Forum,
122/4 Infantry Road (opposite Infantry Wedding House)
Bangalore 560001
Karnataka

Contact persons:
Nithin (9886081269)
Jasmeen (9886840612)
Divya (9845535406)
Nisha ( 09899228060)

Welcome to our police state

From here.

In the name of fighting terrorism governments across the world have been creating new regulations that infinitely augment the state power of surveillance with no meaningful public or parliamentary debate.

The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 passed by the Indian Parliament recently allows the government to intercept messages from mobile phones, computers and other communication devices to investigate any offence. Not just cognizable offence, the kind you witnessed in Mumbai 26/11, but any offence.

Any email you send, any message you text are now open to the prying eyes of the government. So are the contents of your computer you surfed in the privacy of your home.

Around 45 amendments have been made to the original Act, which now treats both publishers of online pornography and its consumers on equal footing. A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not. It’s the personal morality of the official that will decide whether the picture/content you were looking at was lascivious or appeals to prurient interest.

For worse go read the article. More information on Wikipedia.

Read, please

I don’t often post links. In fact I can’t recall the last time I posted a random link and asked people to read. But this one demands it. No, that isn’t right. It does no demanding at all. It simply lies in a corner of a busy news site, unread, ignored and very, very still.

Bihar: http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/showcolumns.aspx?id=COLEN20080066718