India Political Blog

In the current agitation, consider the events so far over the 2 separate agitations that has taken place in 2007, and 2008. Crores worth of public property has been destroyed, the railways has lost massively both because of destruction of railways lines and equipment and due to large scale cancellation of trains. Tourism in the region will take a knock (especially with the bombs of just a few weeks back in Jaipur) with advisories already having been issued and coverage of these protests in the international media; and normal people have been put to massive hardships. But, this is not the end. As long as the politics of reservation will keep on getting patronized by various Governments, they will face such kind of issues. For example, who would have believed that the North East could see such a problem:

SHILLONG: As protests of the Gujjars, who are demanding ST status, spread to fresh areas, the community living in the North-East will also take up the cudgels and launch an agitation in support of the cause.
Representatives of the community from the entire region met in Guwahati on Friday to chalk out a programme to join the protests.

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Drunk driving is a problem the world over. There are many countries that have tackled this in a very effective manner, through a combination of education and enforcement. It is a given that in countries such as Singapore, and in many parts of the Unites States, if you are detected driving drunk, then you are in for some jail time, with the possibility of your license getting affected in many countries around the world. Such practices have helped in making people more careful about driving when drunk, and reduced the levels of accidents as well.
However, in India, neither the level of education, nor of enforcement is prevalent. Drunk driving is very prevalent in our society, and a lot of that can be blamed on our belief that laws are not applicable on us individually. The other major reason driving this belief is the lax enforcement of laws and hence people would never have seen anybody convicted for drunk driving. However, in small ways, this is set to change. Mumbai has seen a major drive against drunk driving, and even Delhi police from time to time act against drunk drivers. Here is what Chennai police did:

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A very simple case, but leads to a major moral dilemma. A girl, 15 years old, gets pregnant with the child of her boyfriend, hides this from her parents until it becomes impossible to conceal. When the father of the bride filed a complaint, the relatives of both sides decided to settle the complaint by getting the 15 year old girl and the 19 year old boy married off, and guess who helped in getting this done ? The police, who are supposed to help in enforcing the law that does not allow marriage below the age of 18 and 21 respectively for a girl and a boy.
There is always a certain amount of questions that one may have in such a case - after all, there is always a certain amount of problem in going by a purely legal framework where the boy could be prosecuted for statutory rape and sent to jail. Such a situation would be problematic in the case where the relation was voluntary and a child is involved.

CHENNAI: When a 15-year-old girl could no longer hide her pregnancy after she got too intimate with her teenager boyfriend and the girl’s parents panicked, the Tamil Nadu police decided to play matchmaker, despite the girl not being of a marriageable age. The minor girl, who had been in love with her neighbour Deepan (19), had conceived around seven months ago. She had not told anything about the relationship to her parents, but they had got suspicious a few days ago as the girl could not hide her pregnancy.

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If you have ever read the agreement for insurance, there will be a number of items in fine print, including exceptions. So, for example, if you are taking insurance for your car or other vehicle, the Insurance company would have added exceptions to the order of driving the vehicle illegally, or using it for racing, or for a unqualified person to be driving the vehicle. Such clauses could also mean that if you need a certificate from the transport department for driving the vehicle, and don’t have the certificate, an insurance company could claim that you are violating the law while using the vehicle, and hence there is no ground for insurance. This particular attempt to use the law violation to deny the claim has been struck down by the Chennai Consumer Commission as being used to deny justice to the consumer.

The National Consumer Commission has held that insurance companies, if the terms of the policy were not breached, cannot refuse to entertain claims on the pretext that the insured violated some other laws or conditions.
It was deciding a petition filed against the Chennai State Consumer Commission verdict, justifying the repudiation of an accident claim by the United India Insurance Company Ltd on the ground that the car, at the time of accident, was being plied without the ‘fitness certificate’ as required under the Motor Vehicle Act.

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Sometimes one feels that the state of governance in India is really the pits, and we have a long way to go before we can claim to be anywhere near a developed country. We only need to take a look at our critical infrastructure (such as power, water, roads, ports, etc) that are necessary to develop well and provide a good standard of living to our citizens, and to provide a good jumping ground to our industries. It is only the satisfactory development of our industries and economy that can drive up the overall development of the country.
And what is the state of governance in our country? Good governance means being able to provide a good government to people, which in turn breaks down into a number of steps such as being able to provide basic amenities, law and order, and so on. Providing dependable medical care is one of these requirements. But does anybody really think that we are providing a good medical infrastructure to our citizens, especially those who cannot afford the luxury of going to private hospitals. Well, if you do believe that our Governments are behaving well, take a look at this report:
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