Control system and the present state of nation

Certainly this is something big. Same day in Times of India, there are four columns by Bachi Karkaria, Jug Suraiya, Shashi Tharoor and Taurn Vijay. All lashing out against oust of Taslima Nasreen from India. Apart from the slight Hindu angle by Tarun Vijay (which is expected) all others speak of freedom of expression at different levels.

The root problem is that we are succumbing to a very small group of people. And the reason is obvious. Because this small group of people always vote. (or are they made to vote?) I still remember my mom voted only once and that too because a local party worker provided her and her friends a ride to the polling booth. Well, we so called educated people feel lazy to vote. We need some stimuli which will make us vote. Certainly the poorer classes of the people get those stimuli. They are targeted by the politicians during the run up to elections that their needs will be met. They are the people who attend the mass rallies. We conveniently sit in our couches and listen to the Sagarikas and the Barkhas. Whatever they present to us, we discuss all about it but on the crucial day we chicken out. I have heard during elections, politicians do come door to door to ask for vote. But I have never seen anybody at my door asking my parents to come and vote. Only once did the local municipal leader come and that was the only time Maa voted. Is it the way the politicians treat us or the way we treat the politicians that has made the middle middle class and upper middle class disconnected from politics. Worse still is with India Shining, this middle middle class and upper middle class is increasing. And so we are seeing a growing political disinterest amongst people. And sure enough, politicians are all out to woo the lower middle class and the poor and not in a proper way but the cheap tactics. The result: 60000 Cr loans, Oust of Taslima and many many more. By the way, the tax slabs are such that the lower middle class and lower class doesn’t pay taxes.

What’s the end result? The taxpayers’ money goes towards cheap appeasement and creating vote bank of the non tax payers. It doesn’t need a control system engineer to say that this is an unstable system. It needs a feedback loop (well the control engineer in me says that open loops can be stable too and closed loops can still be unstable).

Well how did this happen? Let’s say that the open loop system was stable and the transient responses (independence, emergency) being over, it was the steady state responses that were taking effect. This system can now go unstable because of some external disturbances. I don’t know the creator of disturbances, but I can see the kind of disturbances. It’s religion. I have been taught all along that all religions are equal and I believed it without even questioning it. And so did everybody. We all thought Sanskrit as an ancient language which defines India. Was it so Hindu? We all learnt shlokas as a part of pur curriculum. So did we learn the stories of Jesus and all the Muslim soofis. We learnt ramayan and mahabharat as stories. I enjoyed the complex characters, the wars and every bit of it. I bet all of my Christian and Muslim friends did too. After all it was a nice story, and the way it was presented was a story and we didn’t sit with flowers and agarbattis in our hands to read these books. So were the stories from old testaments and Akbar and Mughals. It all came to us as a natural course. We never thought of it as religion. But then one day (thankfully after I passed out of school) some moron politician started rethinking the curriculum. They thought Mughal portion is more and it should be otherwise. Well it started with that. The other party came to power and not only vetoed this decision but also made sure that vande Mataram is not sung in schools. Saraswati is a hindu goddess and not the goddess of knowledge. I think soon the Ramayan and mahabharat will be banned from school and our morning prayers, though still will have

“Vatan ke waaste hi jeena, watan ke waaste hi marna”, it won’t have “Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah, sarve bhadrani pashyantu, Ma kashchid dukhbhagbhavet, om shant shanty shantihi”.

Everything we were taught had been dissected. We were not told that Hinduism is a way of living. We just accepted it not as Hinduism but as Indianness. We always liked Christianity not because God is great, but we associated it with God loves children (the pictures showed so) and Christians make cakes which are good to eat. We even had a faint hope of getting fairer. But all that went on in a subconscious level. It is the new age politics which is putting finger in eye and and saying this act is Hindu, this act is muslim and so on. The disturbance made the loop unstable.

The solution? There can be 2 ways: the engineer may want to introduce a feedback loop which will make it stable even against disturbances. But then I guess this loop will be that educationàpolpulation circular loop. Unless we tackle polulation, we can’t educate people, we can’t stop population unless we educate people.

The other solution is cut off the disturbance. After all, its there in Gita:

“Yada yada hi dharmasya ( countrysya) glanirbhavatu bharatah”

“Abhyutthanam adharmasya (bad people) sambhavami yugey yugey” Only this time, it won’t be Kalki, it has to be all of us.

News I am keeping an eye on

Well, yet again, I want to write something but not have anything to write about. So I do the usual, news that I am following nowadays. The comments to the blog have reached an all time low so this post will help me later when I try to think "What was I thinking that time?"

To begin with, the most nonsense piece but which is talked about everywhere but is of least significance I think. US elections. My local friend says US has never withdrawn troops from any country it ever attacked (like even Japan), so no way anybody who comes will have chance to do anything different. The healthcare plan both Obama and Hillary talk about is nonsense. It can never match India's healthcare system where you can afford to go to a doctor even if you sneeze in the morning. And whenever people talk about "First colored President" or "First Woman President", I get reminded of the great president of India who inspite of being the "First woman president of world's largest democracy", fills me with shame. Nobody can deny that she is in noway more talented than our kaamwali bai - Parvatibai Gayakwad.

Next ofcourse is the bloggers favorite: The great 60000 Cr Rs loan waiver to Indian farmers. This topic hurts me lots and I tend to avoid it but so many people constantly writing about it leaves me with no choice but to read. My Take: This may be a bad step, but which govt hasnot done something this foolish before the elections?


Getting on to better topics, IPL. The money game. It cannot be anything other than that. Right now, none of my firnds seem to be too much interested in that but soon they will be. And we will have to choose a team. But I will be waiting for more teams that are planned for future. I will wait for Nagpur team. Let's see when the "Nagpur Narangis" are ready to rock.

WLIFW or Wills LifeStyle India Fashion Week. Offlate it seems that this event is not a yearly but a quarterly event. And ofcourse none of the clothes they have makes any sense to me. But then the best part of every IFW is Bipasha's commitment to fashion industry. She always comes and wears some funny clothes and surely there is John to cheer her up and rediff and Hindol Sengupta of IBNLIVE to cover the news.

Aamir Khan blogs. They have been a news item in themselves as I have seen Times of India and Rediff making news articles out of his blogs. It's utterly funny because Aamir's blog are so amateurish. I guess he doesn't know anything about blogging but still I bet his blogs are most read and most commented (May be in the world)

And ofcourse the evergreen Bipasha Basu. Well, she is never out of news and if Google News is to be believed, she makes it to some news on Times Of India everyday. After her disastrous Dhan Dhana dhan goal, and the splitting and making up stories with John, latest she is in news for her "Classic Bob Cut" and her saucy role in Race. Well, but the funniest of all that was Bipasha saying she doesn't like makeup ( I can't find the link where I read this). And here is the news I just read today. This news is surely written for the visually impaired:

"Bipasha showed her curves in a jersey knit black halter top with a revealing neckline and a short tube skirt. Her top was accented with a satin bow at the center of the V-neckline.

She wore two necklaces with lovely pendants in silver tone and a black wide bracelet in her right arm.

Bipasha's newly acquired bob cut is still in place and continues to look great on her. It compliments her facial cut and gives her an air of confidence."

Well that's all I follow. Thanks rediff, for my complimenting my interests. :)