Concerned World Citizen

Writing after a long time. Hope to be a lot more regular in times to come.  Half of the topic I've chosen to write today is the flavour of the season.  Everyone seems to have woken up to the need to get our country clean. India's current Prime Minster (Narendra D. Modi) has been trumpeting the need to keep clean almost since the day he joined office - maybe before as well when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Our country that has been termed filthy, dirty and adjectives such as these for a long, long while now. It has AGAIN been given a shot in the arm to clean-up its act. This is not the first time this activity has been taken up at the national level. Will this catch the nation's imagination and stick such that it becomes part of the psyche? Or will this be another attempt that will fizzle out? And then another political war will start with the opposition stating "I told you so"!  Let us first understand what the aim is. "We need to make ...

60 years of Indian parliamentary system. What do I make of it? A simple thing: more and more people in India reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. More and more people liking the civil society activists. More and more people all over the world angered by the Indian economic policies and procedures. More and more people in India are talking about the Arab Spring. More and more people... The list goes on and on...and people are not happy with the way things are neither at the Center nor at the state (federal) levels. What do people think of politicians? Dirty, corrupt pigs. What do people think of government officials ('babus')? Lazy, corrupt pigs. Is this correct? It doesn't matter. What people think about you is who you are to the rest of the world! And there has to be a grain of truth if most people think of you the way they do. How has this come to pass? We are a country who have had expert statesmen like Sardar Patel, Rajagopalachari and Vajpayee...all politicians...

Should the Commonwealth Games be allowed to go on in India? Firstly, I am sure that the material used is substandard. This would put the participant sports persons and the viewing public and dignitaries at risk. Secondly, it has caused enough havoc, death and generally looting of tax-payers money to get this shameful blot on beautiful city like New Delhi. The ministers and the organizing committee who are part of this mess should be first removed from their positions. An enquiry should be done on these corrupt people and the entire money that they have eaten up unearthed and ploughed back into other development activities. When sports is no big deal in India, when work and studies are the only criteria for importance, why should this country host an event of this magnitude? When there are millions of poor people, illiterate people, a population that is beyond control, dirt and grime on the streets, lack of sanitation, lack of proper drinking water why should this country be spen...