blog@Yantrajaal

By clamouring for a Lok Pal, the anti-corruption campaign is barking up the wrong tree. We have laws against corruption for citizens. We have police and the other government agencies to enforce these laws but they are corrupt as well. So we have higher agencies like the CBI and CVC but they are corrupt as well. Now we want another layer, the Lok Pal, but by recursive extension there is nothing to stop the Lok Pal from being corrupt. We can go higher and higher, Parliamentary Sub Committee, President of India …  but even if we involve the Divine Lord Krishna himself, the nation will surely find a way to make him corrupt as well! So let us look at another model -- that of the notorious American gangster, Al Capone. and read the story of how he was caught and brought to justice, not by some muscular policeman but by some very nerdy, if not wimpish, men from the IRS -- the US equivalent of our Income Tax Department. Mr Capone was too smart to be caught out on his main crimes, namely...

adjacent to the dakshineshwar temple

where humanity transformed into divinity

 Ever since the Independence of India, Kashmir has been the leitmotif of the hostility that has poisoned the relationship between the two South Asian neighbours. Born in the crucible of Hindu-Muslim antagonism that is erroneously attributed to the British policy of Divide & Rule but in reality has its origins in the clash of civilisations that has reverberated through the past 800 years, the Kashmir "problem" has been in the headlines for nearly half a century. The Himalayas are an important part of the cultural heritage of India and Kashmir is no exception. Unfortunately, the Muslim rule of India that began with Qutb-ud-din-Aibak in Delhi (around 1206 CE) and ended with the deportation of Bahadur Shah Zafar to Rangoon (1857) has had the effect of rubbing out most of the Hindu footprint from Kashmir. Today, despite the uniqueness of Kashmir of being a beautiful valley situated high in the Himalayas, a geographic feature that is found nowhere else in the region, Kashmir...

After a long time I saw a double decker bus - actually a fleet of them - on their way to Bangladesh. Photographed at the Dhulagarh toll booth on NH6