Manish’s Scribble Board

Finally the Mumbai encounter is over, after claiming more than 200 lives in this incident of blasts and shootouts. Terrorists are targeting important locations one after the other. The valour showed by the NSG and maritime commandos is commendable. They deserve their appreciations except that our country lost encounter specialists and one NSG commando while clearing the hotels.

After each such attack, its the politicians who are criticized for their acts. Contrary to the past records, this time the Electronic Media has surpassed the politicians for gathering their share of criticisms.

Maharashtra’s Home Minister RR Patil has dubbed this great incident as small incidents which happen in big cities like Mumbai. Means the life of people is worthless? They get tight Z-cover security, due to which they don’t know the plight of common man! Shameless creatures who don’t deserve to be holding any government servant post.

News channels like IBNLive went as low as no can even dream of. They were in mad rush of Live telecast of such sensitive information. At that situation even those sitting in front of TV screen were busy criticising them. They set up a new standard of Desperate Journalism.

Our own Kargil ki Rani and Padma Shree award winner “Barkha Dutt” was no behind and was seen moving along with those cheap journalist who were there just for covering some sensation. She disappointed a lot of her fans, whom she made for her braveness in Kargil War. Just imagined that you have been rescued by forces and your husband/wife is still stuck up in hostel. Then suddenly Barkha Dutt arrives from nowhere and asks since your better half is still stuck inside, so “How are you feeling?” What would you reply? Speechless? I was once a fan of her long ago, but slowly I have lost confidence even in Media after losing confidence in Politicians. Now its only the judiciary on which I put my faith.

What more stupid questions can the media frame? They can ask Ratan Tata by calling him over. How many terrorists do you think are there inside? What is the damage to the structure? Any estimates? I think a small workaround may be to ban Live Reporting, but that’s impractical seeing how desperate and strong media is in our country.

The media was in forefront to disclose any commando action for cheap publicity. They were showing commandos land on hotel rooftop, what is the positioning of troops around the hotel. How many troops have been dispatched. What ammos they are carrying. They were also desperate to show how people were stuck up and calling for help at windows. They used all operations like focussing and zooming to pile up as much of sensation as they can on the already worse situation. When pushed aside by forces for getting more room, they were even quick to report “So you can see the police doesn’t want us to cover this event, you may miss this sensual and important event due to them”. I am really sick of these cheap activities. The only news channel which I like now is “DD News”, straight and to the point, no sensation, hype and all those crap.

Media is hyping this as India’s 9/11. Sorry! Its not India’s 9/11 since after that event US dared to attack Afganistan to show its might, even though it may be wrong. Our politicians would just condemn this attack and its all over. No one has the guts and most of the ministers in our present government are cowards. The situation of Kashmir is worse than what happened in Mumbai, the North-East is not better. Media - please think before you say. You caused more fear in people that the terrorist can themselves. Why show dead bodies on the first page? Why on newspapers itself? No one wants to start their day after having even a glance on it.

I just hope that Indian Media grows up on time, and we people stop watching their 3rd class reporting methods. If we stop watching, they would stop showing, just a hope. The chances are bleak, but still it is there.

This time it’s chance of Jharkhand to enjoy the taste of political instability. Multi party system was introduced in India to give the representation of the whole country, since national parties were felt to be inadequate. This could have been a good theme at the time of Independence but not at this time. We have seen so much of unrest in last few years such that it makes me think twice.

Most of the political instability is faced in states which are small in size of have very small seats in Assembly. Since these states have limited Assembly strength, according to an act passed some years ago, these states should not have more than 14 ministers. This is the main cause of unrest in most states though I strongly support that act.

Jharkhand is a state which has made news to some very unexpected developments. Once the Governer called up Shibu Soren to form the government even though it was clear that he didn’t have to majority. Sometime an independent becomes the CM of state. This was the first time in history of India. Shibu Soren has asked Madhu Koda to resign to make way for him. Shibu Soren is facing punishment for massacres, still he wants to become the CM. I can only say WTF!

Years passing and watching all these political drama, I have become more staunch supporter of two-party system. It can stop bribes, cash-for-votes like scams and many more dirt privailing in our current politics. Buying an MLA/MP for cash has become a common news even though anti-defection rules are in place.

I dont have much to say, this post was just to bring my heart out on the feeling which I cant express. Having lived in Jharkhand for so many years, only god can save it one day.

This surely reflects the changing scenario of Indian politics. Modi has long been accused of using hatred politics and emotional issues for instigating people to garner votes. This time he had no such issues except developments and progress. People have given their verdict. BJP won by two-third majority alone and Congress with allies got some 65 seats.

I dont want to comment on emotional issues which so called intellectual people always think when the name of Modi crops up. These are those category of people who are equally responsible for instigating such acts. If they surely think that Modi is doing wrong, they should give him less coverage. Instead these people make him so much in lime-light that he has really become a hero.

Not only is Narendra Modi a hero, but he deserves to be. Its not that am his supporter, but am not even completely for him. I greatly cherish his plans for prosperous Gujarat. Those Chief Ministers who criticize him for riots should first look into their states, how people in their states live, such a pathetic situation. I could never believe that Surat- the city completely destroyed by plague once is again shining and is set to give even the metros a tough fight. Gujarat is the best place to start a business. Whatsoever be the situation, the reality is that it is that state which has the least terrorism. All other states are affected by some or the other internal security issues like naxalism, terrorism etc except Gujarat. The situation may become such that one day it can even stand on its own without center’s aid, like a free country.

Becoming a bit technical, I re-installed Ubuntu on my system. The other ext3 partition is remaining useless, unless I go back to pave its way for Fedora 8. My APTonCD backup rescued me a lot. Installed all basic softwares like gstreamer, libxine, abiword, geany, bluefish, bluetooth, gnochm, gparted, apache2, mysql5, php5, mod_fastcgi, audacious and many more thus saving my bandwidth. Three Cheers for the APTonCD project.

Getting a passport in “Republic of India” is not so easy,  you have to toil a lot and run desk to desk to get your work done.  Its a natural scenario in all government offices. The passport office is not less. Last week the police officials came to my hostel for the verification. I was very pleased, now i didnt have to ferry witnesses to police station. All work were easy, but suddenly!

One of the officers called me and said lightly-”You have to atleast bear the expenses of the the verification and the transportation costs”. What was this? Clearly-They were asking for bribes. I had to shell out 150 bucks out of my pockets and passed it in the hands of those public servants. Just see the switness after being bribed. My appication moved on so swiftly that I cant even believe myself.

Yesterday I got a call for the photo verification at 8PM. As usual I hurried up to their den in bad weather, it took 15 mins for all the formalities, said “Thanks You!” to the Inspector and its all done. Just observe the swiftness. Bribing is against my belief, but no other option was left, if I had denied I would had to run pillar to pillar for this great document. After all this is India, my Motherland.