India Shining...

Can you spot the trend in the following news items that we have been seeing over the past couple of months?

India fails to extradite Quattrochhi: To top it all, we may have to pay his legal fees as well. Thankfully he is not talking about damages! Oops! Now apparently, he is, too...

Moninder Singh Pandher, of the Nithari serial killings (in)fame, gets off almost all the charge sheets being filed: Reason - The CBI has found no evidence to implicate him in the actual crimes...

India and Pakistan discuss possible safe passage to enable armed militants to return home from operations in Jammu and Kashmir: A rare delegation of leaders from Azad Kashmir are talking of “heart to heart” talks with Indian interlocutors...

Dawood Ibrahim’s sister, and then his brother, walk away from punishment scot-free: Rumor has it that his other brother, Noora, is supposedly coming down to Mumbai, openly, to manage their affairs here. The reason for both: bungling of epic proportions by the police and administrative machinery...

No to Kalam for 2nd term as President. UPA zeroes in on Pratibha Patil: Pratibha who???? The Presidency of India is not decided on the basis of relevant parameters like ability, personality, and charisma. It is decided on the basis of obnoxious, irrelevant, yet vital parameters in the Indian context like caste, religion, passivity, etc.

The person who would have been the best choice for President (Mr. Kalam) is probably not going to make it, for political and other such reasons. I am sure the entire nation would more or less back his candidature, but matters are no longer in the hands of the entire nation; it is in the hands of the thugs and pimps we have elected as our representatives. Instead, we have a woman who is standing, mouth wide open, to kiss any ass shoved at her face so she gets to be the Prez...

It is things like these, and the thousand others we see, hear, and read about that make me ashamed to call myself an Indian. I would like to switch tracks for an instant, and then jump back.

Sometime last year, I saw the movie Rang de Basanti. I have always maintained that Rang de Basanti, while being a well-made film with brilliant performances by all the actors, has fascist overtones – killing off a corrupt man cannot obviously be the solution in civil society, however necessary it may seem. More and more, I am forced to revise my opinion about my country. More and more I think may be we are not a civil society after all...

Considering the fact that we actually burn alive the woman that the son of the house marries, mostly with his collusion, and that we have people that are elected representatives in Parliament who have criminal cases like rape and murder on their heads, the solution shown in Rang de Basanti is probably the only way things will work in this country.