India Political Blog

The separation of powers has the Government handling policy and day to day running of the country, and the Courts have interpretation of laws and the handling of civil and criminal disputes under these laws. So, normally you would not hear of courts getting involved in the matter of process of setting policy, or taking operational matters into their hands and providing directions to Governments. However, in India, the Governments have proved incompetent in so many matters that the courts have thought it fit to intervene using the basis of the rights of quality of life for citizens. Otherwise, who would have thought that a court would give directions to a municipal department to ensure that dengue protection steps are taken:

Delhi High Court on Wednesday ordered the city government’s health department and its civic bodies, MCD and NDMC to take all necessary steps to prevent the recurrence of dengue in the city.
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Electricity billing is not supposed to be a high-tech area, and something that is being done fairly accurately and successfully by a large number of countries. Hence it seems somewhat strange that we see many cities having billing problems in terms of electricity. Seems like a casual attitude, or maybe not enough control over what is happening. Or maybe the powers be have not taken a good look at the problem to come up with a good solution, instead of keeping on trying to find new solutions. One of the signs of good governance is that So, read on as to what the Pune electricity department has to say about why it cannot do billing properly:

Speaking to TOI, Gautam said that the MSEDCL was in the process of switching over from spot billing system — where bills were issued on the spot after taking meter readings — to digital photo reading in the city. “And this transition was leading to many billing complaints,” he claimed.
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For quite some time now, the Indian Supreme Court has been taking the stand that if a man offers a pledge of marriage to a women, and then has sex with her, and then moves away from his pledge of marriage, he can be convicted of rape. This was always a surprise, because even if you accept that in a relationship in this country, with its societal emphasis of marriage for a women, consensual sex cannot be equated with marriage. Even with a relationship of unequals, as long as the act of physical relations was voluntary, to call it a rape would seem illogical. After all, the scope for misuse is tremendous, relationships can break up after some period of cohabitation. The existing understanding seemed to be heavily biased against men. Well, it seems that the Supreme Court has thought again about this stand, and wants to evaluate it on a case by case basis:
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It has been fairly surprising to see the statements by the BJP over the nuclear deal when it was announced. If you refer to my previous post, it would seem that the BJP, for the sake of being in opposition, was going against a deal that it would have supported in all cases if it was in power.

If you consider the deal in all its points, there are many positive factors for the deal from the perspectives of the BJP such as
1. Closer engagement with the US,
2. Access to more dual-use technology that was restricted in the past,
3. Agreement by a number of experts in the nuclear field and strategic fields that this deal seems to be a good one,
4. Deal seems to be more in tune with what the middle class in this country wants,
5. Agreement with the Indian-American community that wants a closer relationship between the US and India
All these are factors that are valued by the support base of the US, and one would have expected the BJP to try to claim credit for the nuclear deal by claiming that the deal was following the path set by it.
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Travelers on buses are normally a harried and troubled lot. Information about bus services are hard to come by, with bus schedules many times not being accurate, and it gets difficult to plan for a journey. Many times, people are found to spend hours in the bus terminal, not knowing when the next bus is available. At such times, there is a lot of cursing about why this information is not available more easily. Well, in Gujarat the Road Transport Corporation has started a free SMS service whereby travelers can get to know route information easily through an SMS:

As a pilot test, the project was taken up in a part of the state where nearly 41,000 people used the service. Three of these requests for bus services, came from phone numbers in the UK and 306 from other states in India.
Secretary, GSRTC, P D Patel claimed that the methodology for receiving information is user friendly. Service seekers have to follow a particular format and send an SMS to 9998805656.
Soon after that they will receive an SMS on their mobile phone. The SMS will incorporate timings of the first five buses. If more information is required, passengers have to send the message again. This facility is also applicable for all state and inter-state routes. Patel said that this service was free.

Such a service, if followed properly and accurately, can be a big boon to users. People opting to get information using this service will no longer have to queue up, or ask all sorts of people about schedules and maybe even get wrong information. This is a good model that other states should replicate.

I have been a supporter of the BJP for most of my adult life, and I can right now visualize that this is unlikely to continue if the party continues to act like it has been doing. When it was in power, and doing good, it was still difficult to condone the violent and threatening doings of the zealots of the VHP and Bajrang Dal, but somehow one accepted this. And then came the riots of Gujarat that were a big shock; never in my dreams would I have believed that the party could condone riots that killed thousands of Indian citizens.
But the BJP has always seemed to be the natural choice for citizens of many urban areas, propounding policies that seem to be nationalistic and more liberal than the policies of the Congress and other emerging parties. However, in the recent past, they seem to be going down the path of destruction.
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The Indian Left is right now in the spotlight as they have never been before. Used to calling the shots with the Congress Government, including forcing humiliating about-turns on the various reform policies tried out by the Congress, they must have found it strange that that suddenly the Congress seems to have developed a spine and refused to do their bidding. And for days now, most analysts, a lot of public reaction and media analysis has accused the Communists of being China lackeys, being fossils, anti-development and progress, die-hard members of the anti-US coalition, etc. But what does the Left really want in all the discussion on the nuclear deal ? I found this article to be an interesting pointer to what their main objections are:

In a stern warning to the UPA government against implementing the civil nuclear deal with America, the CPM said it should decide whether it would go with the US or ‘remain firmly with the people’. “The Manmohan Singh government has to decide within a few weeks from now whether to go with the US or remain firmly with the people of India,” CPM general secretary Prakash Karat told a public meeting.
Asserting that the Left parties were strongly opposed to any kind of strategic alliance with the US, he said it was a tragedy that the Central government had ‘compromised’ on the independent foreign policy stand enunciated by late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

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In a bizarre case of utmost dereliction of normal working norms by a Government department, a Pune based Colonel, fighting to get regular electricity bills for the past 7 years, was suddenly provided 3 bills for the same period, with a lump sum demanded for the entire period. In addition, the lump sum was different for the 3 different bills, with the even number of units being consumed being different. Now he has to run from pillar to post to try and work this out, with the department being of course least bothered about why this was allowed to happen, and not really caring about helping him out.
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(Prime Minister leaving for US)

Of I fly to the Land,

The virtual capital of this new world is where I go.

Let me make a deal,

A deal for the posterity.

(Seeing Bush)

Here you man!

I can walk as fast as you can!!!!!!!!

(Probably the fastest walking Indian Prime minister)

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This is getting to be a comedy. The Left has defined the relationship between itself and the UPA in terms of marriage, divorce, separation, issue based support, and so on. It is just as well that they have not gone more personal and intimate in describing the relationship :-). That would have been unbearable to read about.
So, read the latest comments from the central group of the Left parties:

The Left parties put brakes on the controversial Indo-US nuclear deal by warning the government of ‘serious consequences’ of operationalising it, but stopped short of withdrawing support to the UPA coalition.
Turning up the heat on the government, the CPM Politburo passed a resolution describing the deal as ‘unacceptable’ and demanding that the government should not proceed further on it by commencing negotiations with the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA for safeguards which would bind India in perpetuity.
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