The Mumbai Traffic Jam

I was trapped in the typical Mumbai traffic with a friend in the passenger seat. I try to do something from time to time. I tried and observed the gigantic mass of cars and auto rickshaws before my buffalo car. I noticed that time was sucking us. You feel like blurting out that had this road been private, we wouldn’t have been suffering so much in this jam. We don’t wait in the endless lines at the private grocery road or private car rental. So why are we putting up with state ownership and management of the roads? The roads should be privately built, owned and managed.



My imaginary friend in the passenger seat was shocked. He was also alarmed! He probably thought that I was really zany. Roads are damned too expensive to be built by private entrepreneurs. We would be bumping into toll booths every few metres. Some over ambitious shot would raise the prices and probably also restrict the access. We would always be dependent on the rich guy with the road title and our freedom to move around would either be curbed or would come to an end. Why depend on the private exploiter when our government exists to provide us this wonderful service for free?


Meanwhile we sit there helplessly, stuck and almost motionless. Too many cars were attempting to crawl around too few roads. We spend billions of hours per year, knotted up in these congested roads.



Then there is the road construction, which the Government agency decided to undertake whenever and wherever it so desires, reducing a four lane to a one lane road in the name of expanding it to a six lane road. The six lane road comes up in the next generation. From then on, we drive in those hazardous roads.


Then there are accidents which knot up the traffic for kilometers and hours. The entire system is oddly unprepared for anything to go wrong, although something does go wrong every day. The accidents and jams keep happening and everyone just sits there waiting for the government to send its police, its ambulance, its cranes and other equipments, so that traffic can continue.


Sometime back I got caught in a traffic jam and thereby missed my flight. I had to eat my Rs 5K Ticket. I also had to buy another one on a different airline and paid another Rs.5.5K. Normally in a private market, if some service is responsible for making you lose Rs10.5K, say a CD in some software package is blank, you would have some recourse. But who am I going to charge for my losses due to shoddy road management? The BMC? Forget it!


___“My imaginary friend in the passenger seat was shocked. He was also alarmed! He probably thought that I was really zany_____..... Why depend on the private exploiter when our government exists to provide us this wonderful service for free?”___________




There are other costs. We pay through our nose for petrol and diesel so that this is funded for road construction and maintenance. Thousands, (if not lakhs) of people breathe their last on government roads every year. We are constantly harassed by policeman who hand out ‘parchees’ for doing things that hurts no one, like driving fast, changing lanes without signals. Do these really endanger others? Sometimes perhaps, but that is not the reason that we get ‘parchees’. We get ‘parchees’ because they provide a constant revenue outlet for the state and central government.


Road failures define a massive portion of our life. They influence us on where we live or where we choose to work. They gobble away our household budgets. They introduce us to the horrible tragedies of our lives, when our friends and children are disfigured or pass away on the killing fields of public road

Our Education Structure

On a fine morning in one of those days our Govt. as per the Minimum Wage Act 1948, fixed and enforced the minimum wages to Rs. 100.00 a day. This was in Nov. 2009. Is this another way of saying that unemployment is mandatory for anyone who is otherwise willing to work for less? Does this mean that you have no freedom to negotiate or lower the price of your service? You are valued at this rate or you are out of the labour market. I am not referring to the fact that Rs. 100.00 is an abysmal amount to even mention, leave alone the fact what can actually be bought by that paltry sum.


Let us say that I have never been a good cook. So if I were to work in a restaurant, where the cook is supposed to churn out the best grub, the cost to the management would be more to hire me at a rate which would definitely be high, since I would not be able to bring them the revenue. Consequently I would be a sure money loser for the restaurant. So now, the Govt. has in effect made it illegal for me to attempt this kind of world. They say it was done to help me.


Teenagers who may be looking for work cannot find employment at the existing rate. This is the time that teenagers learn valuable skills and work ethic that they carry with them throughout their life. They meet a variety of people and learn to cooperate with different temperament and personalities whilst at work. They learn how to do things that they do not want to do and discover how work and reward are related. They gain experience and learn to use money independently. They learn how to acquire and how to spend.
College students are short of work experience so they don't have a pragmatic understanding of what the real work world requires of them. They acquire degrees in "management" and visualize that, with this marvelous degree - they will have the right to earn big bucks by bossing people around. A degree in "communications" will get them on BBC World News. An engineering degree will provide the opportunity and the right build cities, bridges and highway systems.


Then one day, they graduate and reality dawns on them real hard. They find out that there is no one out there who wants them for what then know. They begin to understand that they know very little that makes them useful. Their CVs are sterile lacking even a single professional reference. All they really know is how to loiter around in the college campus and mingle with peers on nights and weekends.


One would be shocked to learn that the average college guy does not have the basic software skills. In today’s world a basic software skill is a must in any professional position. Today this skill is termed as common knowledge. But the college guy graduates with skills that do not even need to manage a FB page!

I also have my doubts that these grads, somewhere down the line do not have any concept of basic work ethics and the ability to add value to an organization.

But come to think to it – Is it their fault?


Human character is the most significant thing. But our education structure cages the students and imprisons them in garbage boxes. After graduation, they are dumped outside to a world which is cold and cruel, a condition for which they are not prepared.

The consequences are in front of us.

"Adopt Industrial Revolution"

Of late I have been really leading a period of my life in anguish. I see around and read about the development nations have made in the last several decades, and I experience that not so great a progress India has made, in a relative sense.

I wonder why do our rulers concentrate, deliberate and bicker about things that do not bring economical growth, benefits, freedom and happiness to us.

Instead of whiling away time and money, it would have been great, had our rulers combined an assortment of steps and taken necessary measures to bring us happiness. I am neither an economist nor a politician. Nevertheless my commonsense signals me the following:


* The Govt. should control debt, and encourage savings. Spend on the necessities of life and avoid ‘spending indulgence.’

* Concentrate on increasing our manufacturing base. Produce quality goods with an eye to export.

* Keep workers happy. Upgrade their skills. Train them. Instill a sense of loyalty and pride.

* Basic reformation like concentrating on establishing a social security net, have pension schemes for private workers too, expand health care system, increase retirement age and have a sound retirement benefits.

* Control wage prudently

* Control and monitor corruption

* Control population (like China?)

* Aggressively drive literacy. BA/BSc/BCom does not land one a job. Reform education system and have a job oriented education system

* And above all “Adopt Industrial Revolution”

With all the great think tanks that we have in our Govt. department, I think if we are able to do this little bit, I am sure we will have a better standard of living.

Pitfall

If you imagine that your corporate life is a lackluster one, that you are trapped in the domestic and employment rut, that you life is already under six feet of shit, you are not thinking anything new. A typical middle class family man who goes to office and comes back home, and is actually able to time the events of the day may not exactly be a person who has his life well under control. Some may term that life as a disciplined one; others may yearn for stimulation in their day to day life.

All this was depicted compactly in Pitfall, a 1948 classic movie, starring Dick Powell, who somewhat may remind us of our very own Balraj Sahni. Somewhere the film also gives a feeling of the typical American dream of chasing the materialistic life to sustain a middle class lifestyle, to procure love by bribing in the form of expensive gifts; by hinting that all is not quite as well as it looks, the unhappiness of a mundane, boring life which even the extravagance does not provide satisfaction.



The movie though was made in 1948, inadvertently indicated a façade of the American way of life, thoughts, economy which may have resulted in periodic recession that are being experience these days.

In search of a better world, subsequently

Comprising and existing in a world minus corruption is impossible. When you take away whatever is impossible – we have truth. The truth is that man by nature is corrupt and the people who we choose to rule over us are perhaps a bit more corrupt. Subsequently, all this hue and cry over whether Mr. Suresh Kalmadi is guilty of corruption or not - does not make sense. Corruption here is a way of life. We cannot have the impossible. We cannot do away with them - we cannot have any other forms of government.


Along with corruption, violence is natural to man. We humans are either physically violent or possess violent thoughts. So far democracy has been established as the best form of government for us. Whatever flaws that democracy offers, whatever name that we choose for a government to rule us, violence exist is both a democratic form of government and in a tyrannical form of government. Otherwise how do we explain the violence in the Kashmir region or the Maoist thoughts that begins and ends with violence, or the religious violence, the political violence, the caste violence, the domestic violence et al? Violence is the most uncivilized, barbaric, crudest, and filthiest form of existence.

Nazism and Fascism may comprehensively have been defeated but by no ways or by any means we have eradicated barbarism or brutality.

We human beings have complicated histories. Our present cannot in any way be disassociated from the past. Corruption and Violence always existed in a particular place or time throughout history. We cannot discard our past and start with a scratch. By the time we mature and are able to make some conscious choice, we have already categorized ourselves in terms of our thoughts, languages, and behaviors, like generations before us who reached the same extent of development


It is not a question of being proved right. It is a question of learning from others. Not learning by just adopting the views and opinions of others, but by allowing others to criticize his ideas and theories and by being allowed by others to criticize their thoughts. Criticizing ideas and theories and not the person is a good way of learning. Nobody is in possession of the truth. Sheer criticism also does not offer new ideas. You either accept or reject an idea or a theory. But critical discussion of a theory may give us the maturity to comprehend ideas from different angles and perhaps draw a conclusion.

It has become our tradition to hold great men in awe, in respect, in reverence, a custom which we are not able to shake off. Great men make great mistakes. These great men have tremendous influence over the mass, an influence which is hardly challenged. This leads to these great men continuing to mislead the mass – into corruption and violence.

Violence is a path for non-rationalist. A violent person does not attempt to reach a decision by argument or compromise. He uses violence. He is a man who wants to be successful not by convincing another man by argument, but by crushing him by force, by intimidating him and by threatening him. He might also use persuasive propaganda.

Violence, in the name of religion which professes love and kindness, cannot be forgotten or eradicated. Bodies were burnt alive; people were cut to pieces, tortured and shot. We still have not given up our authoritarian attitude or opinion. We are yet to adopt a give and take attitude. We are not ready to learn from other people. We have however tried and hoped to control violence stimulated by godliness, piousness and duty.

The main difficulty is that one cannot have a reasonable discussion with another man, who prefers to shoot you rather being convinced by you or making his own point. It is hard to create an environment where people wouldn’t want to talk anyone into anything. There is no need to convince anyone. One can be wrong and may convince someone of something which may be wrong. People do not value the intellectual independence of others, otherwise why is it necessary to convince someone? Human nature does not welcome contradiction, or else the world would have been a better place, had a man instead of convincing someone, arouse the thoughts and challenge others to form free opinions. Sometimes even trying to convince someone may and can be interpreted as a violent act.

Bernard Shaw Quotes –

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.


I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

You're not a man, you're a machine.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.



Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.

I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot.

An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country


The apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible Gods… Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the profoundest Methodist and the crudest idolater are equally at home in it.
Islam is very different, being ferociously intolerant. What I may call Manifold Monotheism becomes in the minds of very simple folk an absurdly polytheistic idolatry, just as European peasants not only worship Saints and the Virgin as Gods, but will fight fanatically for their faith in the ugly little black doll who is the Virgin of their own Church against the black doll of the next village. When the Arabs had run this sort of idolatry to such extremes ... they did this without black dolls and worshipped any stone that looked funny, Mahomet rose up at the risk of his life and insulted the stones shockingly, declaring that there is only one God, Allah, the glorious, the great… And there was to be no nonsense about toleration. You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. Mahomet was a great Protestant religious force, like George Fox or Wesley….
There is actually a great Hindu sect, the Jains, with Temples of amazing magnificence, which abolish God, not on materialist atheist considerations, but as unspeakable and unknowable, transcending all human comprehension.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.

The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.
The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.

There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.

I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

You can't be a hero without being a coward.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.


The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows dont understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can't see the quintessential equality of all the religions.



It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

GBS :Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Actress : My goodness, Well, I'd certainly think about it
GBS : Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress : Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
GBS : Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

Drinking with the consent of the law.

There was once upon a time some decades ago, no law for drinking. Drinking regulation was decided by the society, by what the families say, what the community say, what the religious leader say. Kids use to drink themselves silly (well you and I know {hic!} that this does not happen these days!). But seriously many kids did learn how to drink responsibly from an early age, even drinking at breakfast!


There is a national law in each country that prohibits the sale of liquor to anyone under the age of 18 or 21 depending on how developed and matured that country is. There are countries like Germany and Austria that allows even 16 years old to buy wine and beer. Meanwhile the police are busting up teen parties, rave parties, shutting down bars, intimidating restaurants, fining liquor shops and bullying people to live a life without liquor! We watch TV and read news and comment, “crazy kids, they shouldn’t be doing this!”

We see young people finding ways around these ridiculous restrictions that are hardly ever questioned, absorbing booze with contempt for the law and inspiring themselves with criminal thoughts while overindulging in drinking sessions.

Young people try about to beat the system by acquiring fake IDs, buying booze and entering restaurants and bars. It is not that the liquor store owners or restaurant and bar waiters or managers don’t know about these fake cards. The do know that students enter their premises with fake ID cards. They nevertheless pretend that these cards are real so as to give themselves some degree of legal protection if someone gets caught. The whole thing is a gargantuan sham. It’s a massively mass exercise in the open – hypocrisy - and everyone knows it.



Human beings are remarkable things: when they want to do something, no amount of tyranny, even that of jail can stop them. These goes especially for young people who as they approach the circumference of adulthood life start by rebelling against parents, authorities, systems and regulations.

Nonetheless we cannot silence the screams of the holy guys who advocate prohibition and sketch and connect every car accident among teen drivers to alcohol. Their propaganda blames alcohol for the destruction of family life, to the doggedness life of poverty, the high rate of crime, the crisis of illiteracy and the presence of sin in general. Whatever it may be, but their arguments are usually accepted even though it is a huge and erroneous mix up of cause and effect.

Is it true that liquor causes all these terrible things? Or is it that people who gets involved and exhibit in such terrible behaviors also have a tendency to drink? Abolishing or prohibiting drinks won’t solve or fix the problems of the human heart or his nature.

Thus this is so for teenage drinking. A report said that around two third people under the age of 21 have consumed some form of alcohol. This is obvious that the law is doing nothing except providing colossal excuse for illogical and atrocious police-state imposition on the liberty of human beings. This leads to young people socializing with hypocritical and law breaking section of the society. Its like – “the authorities pretend to regulate us and we pretend to be regulated.”
Still, shouldn't it be illegal for young people to drink and drive?
Only the obviously committed crime should be illegal and punished. Let us concentrate more on the act of crime and not outlaw alcohol. We then can also reduce crimes committed not under the influence of alcohol


Every year on Republic and Independence Day we hear our public speakers, including the politicians and those special TV commentators and anchors (with their judgmental views and opinions on practically everything) on the glory of India, our liberty and all the sacrifices that have been made to preserve it. Do we really believe it? Did our founders, establishers and liberators of our nation ever imagined that such a thing like a national law regulating the age at which beer, wine, port and other alcoholic beverages are to be consumed?

Do we really believe it? The founders would have never imagined such a thing as a national law regulating the age at which beer, wine, port, and other alcoholic beverages are consumed. Are we really serious about visualizing a free society? Or are we a nation of people who just utter words which are unsubstantial, rotten, hollow, trash and deceptive?


Shouldn’t we do something which is more practical and would have remarkable and immediate effects on our entire generation? Shouldn’t we go ahead and revoke the national minimum drinking age law and let the parents take up the responsibilities of their teenage sons and daughters?

Do you think this is unthinkable? If you so say so - then I really believe that you do not believe in human liberty!