Innocent until proven guilty?

Better to let 100 guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man, Innocent until proven guilty. These principles epitomize Indian democracy. The freedom that all of us enjoy, the sense of security that we feel, is because of this principle. Unfortunately today, I feel that some parts of the media have made a complete mockery of this. I do agree that all news channels to certain extend support the alleged victims to a certain extend, but certain other channels find it their duty to play the role of judiciary. I don’t watch all the news channels in India, but from the few I watch I found that, the news channel "Times Now"" is ridiculously amateur, completely unethical and out right stupid. Most of the murder cases that get covered by the media, they decided to come to a judgment just on the basis of what the alleged victim says.  

Recently a goa minister’s son was accused of committing a rape of a German minor girl. The son might very well have done it. From him looks and his fathers track record its very likely that the son was guilty. An average person on the street can come to such a conclusion and may be tell every one but news channels need to be more responsible. Media has a huge impact on the public. It shapes their views. To blindly come to a judgment is ridiculous. To move ahead without even considering the fact that the allegation could be false is utterly dumb. It could well be a political propaganda.  

I have a problem with this news channel. My parents seem to love it. They say they get politically unbiased views from this channel. They might get a politically unbiased view, but the views that they get are utterly stupid. Its one thing to have your own opinion on issues, but to spread ridiculously stupid views to the entire country and there by misleading the entire nation is unacceptable. Watching this channel made me realize what the term "evils of the media" really meant. They blow things completely out of proportion. Sensationalize things to the core. Take what people said completely out of context and put the worst possible meaning into it. There have been instances where their reports have been found to be false. They like to play with the emotions of the public.  

I do agree that we got a few good news channels here and if this channel follows the same path with its amateur reporters they would go bankrupt. I can understand spicing up the news but taking the soul out of the news, i.e. the truth, is showing disrespect to their profession. Don’t get me started with the way in which their editor talks. He takes ages to come to the point, stutters like anything and his questions are so dumb.  

Any way coming back to the topic, the role of the judiciary should be left to the judiciary. The medias role is to ensure that justice is done and not to give out judgments. They should look into the hindrances in the justice system and not play the role of a judge. They should always respect the fact that there could be a 1% chance that the accused could be innocent and keeping that in mind should refrain from defaming the person. I believe the role of the media is to report objectively. They can show passion in their reporting but should have a sense of reality with that. News channels influence a lot of people and they should always keep that in mind

Realization

The dog incident reminded me how things can change within seconds. The dog and his friend were simply walking around, playing and all of a sudden one of them gets hit by a car and is badly injured (not sure if it is dead by now or is still alive). Neither of the dogs would have ever imagined such a thing would happen. The whole incident shook me, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. The sense that I own my destiny, I am in control of my future, just got knocked out of me. It reminded me that anything can happen to any one, reminded me that life is full of uncertainties.  

My grand mother used to tell me that the reason why we have sorrows or bad situations is that god wants to test our faith. Another version is that god wants to ensure that we are reminded that he controls every thing and we give him the due respect. The question of the existence           of god is debatable and we can never have a final word in this issue. But I do believe that incidents such as the one I had happens so that we are brought back to the ground. Humans tend to have this false sense of assurance that every thing is under control. People tend to take for granted that they are going to live one second from now. People take for granted that nothing will go wrong. I believe that such incidents happen when one looses a sense of reality. To ensure that we get our feet back in the ground faith or what ever one wants to call it make sure that we get our feet back in the ground and recognize the fact that we are just insignificant mortals in the large scheme of things. 

Its not a dogs world

Our society is not very kind to our animal friends. Today as I was coming back home in my bike, a dog jumped in front of me and luckily I didn’t hit him. 2 seconds later, the dog runs across the road and gets hit by a car. I hear sounds of the dog crying, my dad who was sitting behind me was telling me, move on the dog died. Fortunately the dog didn’t die. On second look, I found that the dog was injured badly and it was bleeding. The immediate response of the people who were standing by was to drive that dog away. The dog ran away. It was in excruciating pain. The whole incident tells us two things. One that I am a faint hearted person and second, we as a society seriously should change in the way we treat our animal friends. 

 The dog got hit by a car, it was an accident. It happens very often here. But the sad part is, no one knows what to do with an injured animal. The kind of animal control that is popular here is the ones that are there to electrocute them. I do not know any place where one can contact to take care of an injured animal. Even if such a place is there it’s not popular enough. Animals unlike humans are so sweet and honest. They are pure at heart. If treatment and care is available for anti social thugs, shouldn’t these animals get some kind of help? There needs to be a place where people get paid to rehabilitate injured animals. They should have the resources to get these animals from the street and given them proper care. As the fundamentals of our economy are very strong I do not see any reason for not having such an organization or institute. To run such a place the help of both the government and individuals are necessary.

 Taking care of animals is not an easy task. For starters animals don’t pay you. Like the many charitable organizations that we have, we need one for animals too, a place where animals are taken care of instead of being electrocuted. On my part, an animal shelter goes into my "things to do before I die" list. No animal deserves to die alone in pain. 

Elections 2009

General elections are around the corner and I was wondering about the strategy that various parties would adopt to fight the next election. What I have noticed is that the Congress party has seriously under marketed their achievements. Unless you are a really curious person and wants to know about the achievements of the present government and is willing to spend quite a lot of time searching google or news paper archives for the information, its most likely that one would be clueless about what the present government did(apart from the Indo-US nuclear deal which by the way wont win you any elections any where).  

When the previous government was in power they used to have 100's of ads enlightening the people about their vision for India, India shining, golden quadrilateral etc etc. They had an excellent marketing strategy. They ensured that every single policy they had was highlighted. But after doing all that they lot the elections.  

Thus the question arise, is marketing really necessary for wining elections? I started following various social issues only about 8-10 years ago and hence my knowledge about the stuff that happened before that is limited. I strongly believe that a right marketing strategy would be crucial for winning an election. A huge majority of Indian voters do not have televisions and cables.  One of the main reasons why BJP's strategy did not pay of is that they just concentrated on the small minority of voters(people with TV and stuff, basically the people who belong to the middle class and above), another reason being that the people were appalled with their communal/ hate politics that they had adopted. 

I haven’t seen any ads of the congress government, even if there are its very few. As the cable TV viewing public is a small minority of the Indian voters, even if they don’t come up with any ads it really doesn’t matter. The various debates that happen in TV will get the message through to the urban voter. What really matters is if they are getting their message through to the ruler voter who is going to make or break their election. 6 or 7 months back i would have said that the congress had no chance in hell of winning or even competing in the coming election. Thanks to the various antics of the BJP the congress is back in the running. People in India do not want violence and they certainly wont support any party that is the root cause of this violence.  

Marketing remains the key in this election also. The mantra of marketing is politics is same as in the normal marketing.  Identify your target customers (voters), ensure that your message is received by the loud and clear. I do not think that the congress is going to win this election with a majority no matter what they do now. What they can do now is ensure that their policies and vision publicized in the right places. The congress came into power on the votes of the aam aadmi and they must ensure that the aam aadmi would trust them and believe in their policies once again for coming into power

I had completely ruled out the left from the 2009 elections but thanks to the trinamool unfortunately that is not going to happen. The happenings of the past few months have ensured that a clear winner won’t be there after the elections. What happens in the coming months will be very crucial. History has shown us that Indian elections are unpredictable. This one will be no different.  

I am sooo happy

Today the High Court has termed Raj Thackery and MNS as terrorist. It had a few harsh words for the police and the Maharashtra government. That just made my day. Finally better sense has prevailed. The icing on the cake would be to arrest Raj Thackery on the charge of disruption of peace and inciting communal violence, attempted murder and may be hindrance to national unity as well and put him behind bars for the rest of his sorry life and to that ban MNS as an organization citing national security reasons. Its shame that such creatures as Raj Thackery are allowed to move around freely in India. Gonda rule should not be allowed. People who are affected by his sorry excuse for an ideology should get together and beat the living crap out of these guys. 

The whole purpose of me writing this is, hate politics should be dealt with extreme hate. People who think that they can do whatever they please and get away with it should be taken to task. In fact laws like POTA should be there to deal with such antisocial, antinational excuses of a human being. In a country in which the media is very dominant, where the people will always have the last say such creatures shouldn’t be allow to live freely. We should nip such behaviors in the bud itself. Frankly speaking if the "sorry excuse for a human being" continues to be arrogant and adamant and violates the Indian constitution one more site, a shoot at site order should be given against that "sorry excuse for a human being". This is ridiculous. I really hope next time when I hear about news about any violence caused by the “sorry excuses for a human being” its followed by the news of him being dead in an encounter or a news of his arrest followed by him getting a life sentence

Jai Hind

The Third world war

It has been said or I may have made it up my self that the third world war is going to be fought over resources. With every passing day the thought seems to be coming closer to a reality. In fact we even have instances where battles have been fought for resources. I believe at this point of time humans are the only living creatures that does not follow(at least to a certain extend)Darwin’s "survival of the fittest" theory. When it comes to humans, the weakest are given the at most care. This is soon going to change. Its a fact that the resources in our planet are fast getting depleted. The time is not far from now when humans would have to fight for their survival. We can try and slow the process but it’s going to be inevitable. Too many people competing for too little resources.  

Had humans followed Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest all the problems that we are facing now would never have occurred. Only the strongest would have survived and there will be plenty of resources for all. I believe all the natural and unnatural calamities are nature’s way to restore balance. As medical science has advanced so much that chances of one dying has been reduced to a great extend the scope of nature’s survival of the fittest policy.  

A time will come when each country would have no choice but to attack other countries to get the resources it needs. That is why people say that the third world war will mark the end of the world. A war for resources will finish only when all the resources are depleted. (at a later stage people will fight against each other for resources).  

Man is known for his resilience and innovations. We have faced all sort of atrocities and invariable have come on top. Since we are known to get going when the going gets tough, our only hope is that before such a situation happens or even after it has happened, man will come up with some innovations which will ensure the supply side shortage is overcome. I do believe that there is a limit to what man can do. Unless human being evolve into something that can live on land, air and water and can adapt to what ever is there in the world even if the world doesn’t end, Homo-sapiens as we know now will get extinct(Technically if man evolves into something else homo-sapiens will end there itself). 

The fall of Lehman Brothers

As I was watching the news i was shocked to hear that Lehman Brothers were going to file for bankruptcy. Even though this has not officially happened yet, its said that its just a matter of time. I am not sure if people saw this coming but I definitely didn’t. It was something like a wake up call for me even though I am in now away (at least directly) affected by the fall of the company. Naturally when a company files for bankruptcy the future of its employees won’t be that bright. That’s one of the reasons for my shock and fear. 

Lehman Brothers is an old and a really big company. It’s a company which is supposedly trusted by many and till now in the wildest of my dreams i never expected this to happen. I have no particular liking for Lehman Brothers but the fall represents a bigger issue. Till today morning I was under the impression that if you have a good education, if you are reasonably smart the chances of you going broke is very little. Even though the people associated with Lehman brothers will or may get settled in various other jobs this is a reminder that anything can happen to any one. I never thought that the employees of the company would ever have to worry about such a situation arising. This shows that no one is safe in this day and age. Even if you are the richest, most established company in the world you could go bankrupt in the blink of an eye(at least form an outsiders point of view). 

I don’t know if the bankruptcy is a part of a greater fraud or anything, but it has opened my eyes. Even though I have always have heard people say always reinvent yourself, innovate, never relax etc, its now that I am getting tangible evidence for the need to do the same. It tells us that we should never let our guard down. 

What will happen to the employees? I don’t know.  This has given me a harsh reminder on how harsh the private sector can be. Other companies have fallen before, but most of the times we always used to see it coming. Even though Lehman Brothers is not the first company to surprise the world by declaring bankruptcy, it’s not going to be the last. The number of such established companies going broke is rising alarmingly. Is this a part of the cycle where after a period of robust economic growth and security the depression starts which in turn will lead to another period of economic growth? I got absolutely no clue. What I know is, the resources in this planet is being used up at a rapid rate, unless there are some big time innovations the situation in the future is going to be very bleak. The concept of survival of the fittest will be taken to a all new level