Lalu Prasad Yadav For Defence Minister

After seeing the picture below, I have no doubt that he’s the man for the job:

(Picture by PTI.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 17 December, 2008 in India | Politics

Beauty And Terror

In a PTI report about a Pakistani beauty queen, Natasha Paracha, I find the WTF Q&A of the day:

Asked how she would tackle terrorism as Miss Pakistan, Paracha said, “As Miss Pakistan and as a young woman representing the nation and I can definitely think that I would like to promote the country and show that Pakistani women are strong and we can definitely do a lot to represent the nation a lot on the global sphere.”

Paracha’s answer may remind you of a certain Miss Teen South Carolina, but my heart goes out to the poor girl. What answer can you give to a question like that?

Update: Lekhni writes in to inform me that Ms Paracha was in the news recently for appearing on CNN to “condone" the Mumbai attacks.

Speaking of people being out of their depth, let me point you to this marvellous video that I presume someone made as an audition tape. Warning: Please do not try this at home.

(Video link via email from Lalbadshah.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 December, 2008 in News | WTF

Dhoni Not Allowed To Watch Dostana

So he tries his hand at shooting an AK-47 instead.

I wonder how Priyanka Chopra feels about this.

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 December, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | India | News

Grains, Grains Everywhere

This is quite the WTF headline of the day:

Govt may run out of space to store grains

I find it astonishing that no one questions the existence of the Food Corporation of India. If the free market was allowed to operate in agriculture, prices would be lower and distribution would be far more efficient, as supply would follow demand. We certainly wouldn’t have the perverse situation where lakhs of people are in danger of starving while government godowns overflow with grain. (Some of this grain, a friend informs me, may be as much as two decades old, which is beyond surreal.)

Imagine if there was a Soap Corporation of India, doing to soap what the FCI does to food. What a stink there would be.

(Link via email from Rajeev Mantri.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 December, 2008 in Economics | Freedom | India | News | Politics | WTF

Against All Odds

In an interview by Tasha Robinson, Danny Boyle is asked if it was difficult to get permissions while filming Slumdog Millionaire in India. Boyle replies:

There’s lots of things that can be solved with cash. [Snickers.] And there’s occasional things that can’t be solved with cash, which become a bureaucratic nightmare for some reason, and there’s no distinction between the two. There’s no way of reading a situation and saying, “Yes, that’ll be a bureaucratic nightmare, but that one we’ll be able to buy off.” It just depends on the day, apparently. The most extraordinary thing, you’d be given permission for, and then the weirdest, simplest things, you just wouldn’t be able to obtain permissions. And it would go on and on and on forever and ever, and there was no way to know. You have to kind of approach it with an open, quite optimistic mind, no matter what’s thrown at you, because it will only ever result in damaging the film if you let any kind of despondency get to you. You have to remain optimistic, and that’s clearly how people live their lives there. Against all the odds, they retain kind of a spirit which allows them to get through against insufferable odds. The poverty, the traffic, the lack of infrastructure, the flooding during the monsoons—there’s just so many things that are coming at you at the whole time that your spirit has to remain, and that’s certainly true.

“The poverty, the traffic, the lack of infrastructure, the flooding during the monsoons”—and the bureaucracy: Are the first four made worse by the fifth, you think? If we’re reconciled to that, are we not then automatically reconciled to the rest?

(Link via email from Arun Simha.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 December, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | Freedom | India | Small thoughts

A Call To Regulate God

Now, this is one kind of regulation I wholeheartedly agree with. After all, wasn’t it God who caused the financial crisis?

On a tangent, followers of my religion should take inspiration from this and make Flying Spaghetti Monster rangoli. Manish Vij, my man, are you listening?

(Links via emails from Gaspode and Anand respectively.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 December, 2008 in Miscellaneous

Zen And The Art Of Mumbai Maintenance

The comment of the day comes from a Dilip D’Souza post in which Dilip asks why people in India are angry about 26/11, but haven’t demonstrated the same outrage for 1984, 1992-3, 2002 etc—a worthy rhetorical question. Anyway, an (unfortunately) anonymous commenter writes:

Dilip, lets be honest. Nobody is angry. People are watching Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in record numbers. Everybody’s planning for New Year party. Celebrations are on in full swing. Who is angry ? Of course if you purposely go to some angry gathering you will find some angry people, but that is a tautology. By & large, Mumbai carries on just the same.

Karachi trains a person to kill 17 Indians on average. Send 10 such persons, you get 11/26. What if they sent 100 such persons ? Then also nothing will happen. People will watch Chandni Chowk to China in record numbers and get on with life.

Your city is beyond anger, cynicism, disgust, beyond all human emotions. Mumbai has achieved what Buddhist monks call Zen. Nothing or nobody can make you angry. Say Karachi sends 1 lakh persons tomorrow on some Cruise ship to Mumbai. Each one takes on 17 Indians. 17 lakh Indians will be minus. The rest will watch Billo Barber.

I love the last line. I don’t actually agree with the comment—people in Mumbai are getting on with their lives because we have no choice, not because we feel no emotion—but that’s a minor quibble.

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 December, 2008 in India

The Unintended Consequences Of Traffic

I recently discovered something I hadn’t known about the 2005 terrorist attacks in Bangalore:

Intelligence agencies consider the attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalaru on December 28, 2005, as one that went horribly wrong for the terrorists. An attack that could have ended with a very high body count went awry because a terrorist with a bagful of grenades was caught in one of Bangalore’s nightmarish traffic jams and could not make it to the venue on time.

The shooter, who was waiting at the IISc campus and who was supposed to open fire on the crowd after the planned grenade explosions, lost patience and started firing.

The terrorist trapped in traffic, later identified as Abu Hamza, swiftly escaped to Pakistan.

Just imagine if Hamza had been overcome by road rage. Dude in the car in front is slow to react to green light because he’s on the phone, because of that they both miss the signal, and Hamza has to wait another six minutes while the dude ahead keeps jabbering. And there are grenades…

(Link via email from Ambuj.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 15 December, 2008 in India | Miscellaneous | News

Mayawati Likes Enrique Iglesias

Just check out the Wallpaper section of the Bahujan Samaj Party website. Superb variety on offer.

They have wallpapers for Alien vs Predator, interestingly. I wonder if Behenji was thinking of Soniaji and Advaniji when she got that section added.

(Link via email from Archana Sinha.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 15 December, 2008 in India | Politics | WTF

Adultery And The Indian Penal Code

A couple of years ago, I’d blogged about the law that makes adultery a criminal offense in the Indian Penal Code:

497. Adultery

Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery, and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine, or with both. In such case the wife shall be punishable as an abettor.

I had two issues with this. One, I found the wording of the law to be extremely offensive-- by invoking “the consent or connivance” of the husband, it implies that women are merely property of their spouses, not humans with autonomy and volition. Given that the IPC was framed by the British in Victorian times, it’s hardly surprising that the law is worded thus. By why does it still apply to us?

My second objection was that adultery should not be a criminal matter. Marriage is basically a contract between two people, and if that contract is breached, it should be a civil case, not a criminal one. (It’s a separate problem that two individuals cannot frame the terms of their own contract, and have to go by a standard template enforced on them, but leave that for now.) For cops to come and arrest one of the parties involved is ridiculous—especially when, according to the law above, it’s the outside dude, who is not even breaching anyone’s trust.

But that said, barring violence and suchlike, which is a separate criminal case, the police should not be involved at all. Well, guess what: our enlightened government is planning reform—but instead of scrapping the law, they are expanding its scope. The Times of India reports:

A woman who cheats on her husband may land in the dock if the Union home ministry has its way.

Despite vehement protests from the National Commission for Women (NCW) two years ago, the Centre is quietly going about seeking a response from each of the 30-odd state governments to the Mallimath committee’s recommendation that adulterous wives be penalised.

Double WTFness. First, WTFness at the law itself; and then, WTFness at our government planning to extend it to women instead of scrapping it entirely. The 21st century, did you say?

Previous posts on stupid IPC laws:

Don’t Insult Pasta (on 295-a)
The Matunga Racket (on 377)

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 December, 2008 in Freedom | India | News | WTF