Some years ago I read about the inmates of a home for mentally handicapped. The directors, or someone of that ilk, decided to sterilize all the women inmates because they were repeatedly getting pregnant. The unscrupulous men who were forcing themselves upon these helpless women were not blamed because the directors, presumably, discovered that the act of getting pregnant was more serious than the act of rape. It also did not occur to them that sterilizing the men could have the same result. Even if that had occurred to them, they would not have dared to do that because imposing a punishment on normal people is not as easy as imposing a solution on hapless women.

The other day when private buses in our city went on strike for a small increase in the fare they can charge (which is strictly controlled by the government in the Kerala state), there was a big cry from commuters that all private buses should be nationalized. It never occurred to them that there are plenty of nationalized buses already in Kerala, and that their only contribution is to mock passengers standing at the bus stands because instead of stopping for them, the drivers vie with airplanes.

It is the private bus operators in Kerala who stop buses at every place and who are always sympathetic to the passengers, but the solution suggests that the helpless traffic system be eliminated so as to INCREASE passenger comfort. Idiotic solutions for real problems!

Coming to Compulsory Voting, pray tell me, what is the difference between the compulsory sterilization drive of the Sanjay Gandhi era, the coerced voting in communist countries, or forced emperor-worship in dictatorships?

What is more important, bringing reluctant people to the voting machine, or permitting them their freedom of choice. Why should a person vote if he does not feel like doing it. Why should the government make rules that all the people should take a bath twice a day so as to foster better health in the country? Or for that matter why should a government restrict the number of times a couple can cohabit per month so as to control population growth? What if one is forced to seek "government-permit" for such things that fall into the area of personal freedom!

Imagine the predicament of a surgeon on the day of election, who has to attend to five emergency life-saving surgeries that cannot be postponed, or the medical staff that attends to the procedures with him. What about the single mother or father who is attending to a very sick child. The pilot who is in the air, or all the people lying in a hospital, some on medical support systems. What about the tens of thousands who are on trains. What about people who are on shift duty away from home, leave alone those in the military or on the seas. Each one of them will be required to get a "clearance" from a bureaucracy that has already enslaved Indians from birth to death (and even after that). The number of new government departments and staff needed to handle clearance for the tens of millions who cannot vote due to genuine problems is mind boggling. It will open a new method to enslave free Indians. New methods to harass people, fine them,  new modes of corruption, novel ways to milk people out of their time and money, all will become a possibility through this kind of a dictatorial order.

Other than opposing and punishing moral/ethical wrongs, the government has no business interfering in personal freedom. There is no difference between compulsory voting and government/dictatorial coercion.  It is a kind of government fatwa.  Every enlightened person needs to oppose it with all his might.

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I have met numerous crusaders, reformers, and visionaries. I have seen them toiling all their lives, sacrificing all what they have. Yet, to my regret, I have seen many of them failing in their mission.

How is it that so many good, sincere, and committed men of integrity who devote all their lives to the benefit of others fail. How is it that their goodness is not recognized, and how is it that good people ditch good individuals.

There are no first-principles of philosophy from which one can deduce the answers, but there are plenty of case-studies from which one can draw conclusions based upon empirical observations, or at least upon observations that are as empirical as possible.

Madhaorao Scindia was a person whom I had seen from my childhood. I was a teenager when he got married. I  conversed with him freely during many professional and formal meeting. He sas intelligent, patriotic, and a very upright man. He was also a great visionary, exactly like his father the Late HH Jiwajirao Scindia. Yet Madhaorao never attained his full leadership potential in politics whereas lesser souls and people of no integrity rose to positions which should actually have been occupied by great statesmen like Madhaorao. Herein lies one trap of a democracy: democracy is government by all and for all, but the system is susceptible to manipulation by the shrewd so that often the good ones are left behind and the manipulators get in control of things.

I was brought up in the town in which Madhaorao Scindia and his ancestors lived. Most of them were wise and benevolont rulers. Gwalior attained great financial, social, and spiritual prosperity under them. Standing in the same line, Madhavrao was more educated, more capable, and was very very far-sighted. Whatever responsibility was given to him, he delivered result beyond any person’s wildest imagination.

The man, his attainments, his agonies and his movement within political circles are very lucidly described in this book. Particularly absorbing are the portions that deal with the Emergency days and his intense concern for the safety of his extended family.  One cannot keep it down after the reading the first page. It is hisotry as well as analysis. The analysis is accurate, straightforeward, and eye opening. I would recommend everyone aspiring to be a leader of any movment to read this book both to understand the man as well as to understand how any democratic system can hinder a person from performing all what he can, or what he wises to do.

The ruler and shepherd of people, Madhaorao, never realized that one can do all what one wishes in a democracy only if he manages his commitment as well as his political. He was committed, but he ignored political realities. Thus people of far less vision and commitment often sidelined him. Thus the nation lost the potential services of a great statsman. The book is a must read.

Madhavrao Scindia, Vir Sanghvi and Namita Bhandare, Penguin/Viking, 2009, 354 pp, Rs. 550

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Since the time the Honorable Indian Court struck down the antuquated law that criminalized homosexuality, there has been much enthusiasm, merry-making, and talk on this subject in India.

Picture: A shot from the American Homosexual Parade of 2009

Sexual attraction between people of the opposite sex is common, but at times people of the same sex develop sexual attraction to each other. Those who then choose to express it practically are known as homosexuals, and the practice is known as homosexuality where the word “homo” stands for “the same”.

Male homosexuals now call themselves “Gay” a word that removes the stigma associated with homosexuality and presents it in a very pleasing manner. Similarly, female homosexuals now call themselves Lesbians, the history of which will be given in another post.

Picture: Approximately 3000 year old Egyptian picture of two homosexual lovers

Sexual attraction and marriage between the opposite sexes have received social and religious sanction for many millennia, but the situation is different in case of homosexual attraction and marriage. Such attraction and marriages have been seen as an aberration and even as a crime. A microscopic minority has practiced homosexuality in spite of this social problem.

Homosexuals became open and aggressive in the twentieth century, and have been able to gain many victories. With that their is a phenomenal increase in their canvassing for people to enter this kind of lifestyle, and this has resulted in an increase in their population.

We will look at many facts of homosexuality in this series which will have at least six articles.

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The other day my daughter and I spotted a small snake, about 18 inches long, but no thicker than a pencil. It was crawling to its way from the tarred road to the abandoned grassland close to our house. Bystanders wanted to kill it, but we did not allow them to touch it.

They thought we were sissies in not killing a snake. But they were the real sissies in wanting to kill a tiny and helpless creature. We stood guard till it found a place of safety. That evening the two us had the satisfaction of having done a good thing, the right thing to have done.

Snakes are an essential part of our eco-system. Sissy people, instead of fighting with their equals, have been after these helpless creatures — destroying the eco-system in the long run.

If you feel that you are a hero, do something heroic not dastardly. In that process you will discover your cold feet, and would also spare the Nature without which we would soon become another Sahara.

Please do not allow people to kill snakes, unless it is a life-threatening situation. There are any number of organizations which would be willing to catch the snake from your courtyard and release it in the wild.

[Creative Commons Picture by Benimoto]

Just by Potassium permanganate worth Rs. 50, divide into 10 parts, and give one of them to the roadside teashop that your frequent every day. Show him how to make a solution. Ask him to drop all cups, saucers, and tumblers into it for five minutes before the final washing.

This is not a difficult thing to do, but by doing that you would save hundreds of people that month from getting amebic infection and other kinds of infection that are spread through shared drinking vessels.

If you can find ten people whom you can persuade to do so, the 50 rupee that you invest will eventually result in tens of thousands of healthy people, hundreds of thousands of saved man hours, and millions of rupees saved.

We need to work for the welfare of India. We talk about projects worth millions of rupees. Sure, they are needed. But there are thousands of things that can be done for our Motherland for far less. So less that it is embarrassing even to speak of the small amounts involved.

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Science-blogs can do transform the society in ways beyond imagination. All what is needed is a will to do something for Mother India.

Take the problem of Amebic infection in the country. It is estimated that a large proportion of Indians have got it, some get treatment, but most of them get it back quickly. The problem is our lifestyle – insufficient washing of hands.

Medical Doctors who are into Community Medicine opine that as much as 80% of the spread can be prevented by simple washing of hands with soap. People should do that before they eat their food, after they leave the toilet, and after they travel in buses and trains (where their hands collect copious amounts of these micro organisms). Bloggers can educate people, and they can also motivate these people to educate others — particularly servants and menial workers in their homes.

Can science blogging help India? You bet it can!

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The word Blog, and particularly Weblog, conjures up images of personal diaries in the minds of old timers.

[Photograph: the author with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. Based upon the principles of quantum physics, the equivalent optical magnification of this machine exceeds 200,000X. It us used to study the surface of materials in the physics of extremely small things]

However, just as every other technological breakthrough has been adapted for a wide variety of uses in the net-world, blogs and the blogging platforms are now finding wide application. More so because of the ease with which blog software can be used to create exceptionally attractive and readable websites even by novices. Any number of plugins are available to make the blog platform a virtual Swiss Army Knife.

With things being so, I urge Indian bloggers to launch more Science-related blogs because ultimately almost all material progress in society comes only through science (where science is defined as an objective study of the material and the non material world).

The spread of science in any country results in long-term prosperity — at every level of life, as I will mention in the forthcoming articles.

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Picture: World’s Largest Silver Pot

The India of my childhood (the 1950s) was a poor India. Money was scarce, food was scarce, and good cloths were a luxury. Thus it was easy for me to believe the false propaganda that India has always been a poor nation that needed a bit of help from Europe for its upliftment.

Time has come for truth to be told, for our national pride depends both upon what we are and also upon what we were. Ancient India was known to be a house full of gold, and that is the reason why all kind of people came from the north-western borders for the loot. And loot they got because of the divisions within the country.

It is business that made India rich. Business in every conceivable thing. So much so that coins were common in India around 1000 BC. What is more, instead of being made of base metals (that comes out of the present-day mints), almost all coins were of silver. Hundreds of thousands of them have survived! There were also plenty of gold coins, but it has not survived in that great numbers due to loot, melting, and the smaller number in any country of currency of the highest value.

Consider this only as a seed-thought to my readers to look into the great past that India had, and then declare it to boost the morale while we ride crest of financial bliss.

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Two statements made by British writers often come to my mind. The first one in effect said/implied that the knowledge/wisdom of the greatest native Indian scholar was not more that that of a tenth standard boy of Europe. The second one in effect said that all the books written by natives at that time would not fill even a single European cupboard.

Interestingly, the very Europeans burned thousands upon thousands of precious handwritten material on one pretext or another. They had a few centuries to do that, and they did their job without going on a holiday. In spite of that, more than one million handwritten manuscripts are said to have survived in India.

The biggest question now is, the Europeans burned, destroyed, and plundered handwritten manuscripts from India for two centuries or more, and in spite of that reportedly more than a million identified manuscripts are left in India. The number of yet to be discovered manuscripts might be ten times that figure. On the other hand, the British have no comparable ancient written wealth to show.

The question now is, did we ever need education from a group of people who did not have anything comparable when Indian sages were authoring multi-volume treatises? The statement that the British gave us education is a modern lie. They probably gave us the Western education, with all its moral ills, but they were not the first to bring education and literacy to India.

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Read Today on Sarathi Hindi:

• चिट्ठा-कुंठासुर: एक विश्लेषण

When there is a fire, most people pour water on the top of it. Experienced people direct the jet to the root of the fire — the place were the inflammable material really is.

Only a few people in any given society at any given time recognize the root cause of everything, things that move the society. Then they go about influencing at that level. This is what the British did in their long drawn-out process in enslaving India. Most people saw the enslavement at the physical level, but the real subduing took place at the invisible level.

They left, but the scars remain. Nay, the slavery remains. Worse, it becomes stronger each day exactly the way many strong drinks become stronger with time. Today the media, the education system, even the very through process of educated Indians is permeated with ideas alien to India and the Indian ideals. We need to change this mental slavery.

Sarathi will work towards this goal of freedom and empowerment. Come and join us by interacting with us, critiquing us, and also by spreading the word.

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