Girish's Blog

The Chief Minister has actually intervened in stopping minor repairs to Peddar Road –can you imagine the CM intervening over road repairs?! That is sheer casteism if you ask me! Has the CM ever intervened while major surgery has taken place on various roads in Mumbai and the operation left incomplete for months on end? Nope. Those roads are not used by the rich and the famous nor do they lead to the CM’s residence, you see. Elsewhere in the civilized world, when road repair works are about to commence, a public notice is put up warning the users that the road will be closed for repairs from this day to this day and if the repairs are to be carried out in a few hours, they are usually carried out at night with no inconvenience to the public! In India, “sabh kuch chalta hai” that’s why you find roads works starting just before the onset of the monsoon, specially in March because the budgets are likely to lapse. So to utilize the money before it lapses contracts are awarded to hand-in-glo...

Why is it that every sordid story about abuse of women’s rights has some other woman behind it somewhere in the background actively participating in violation of a fellow woman’s rights? Take the recent case of Mira Road where a tantric – so called medicine man – convinced a man to rape his daughter for 9 years and he too participated in the violation of the girl from the age of 12! In this case promises were made that by so doing the man will gain spiritually and financially. In this journey his wife also participated and encouraged him to violate their daughter. Not only did she let the father rape the child but also the tantric – how can a mother be so hard hearted as to allow such a fate to fall on her daughter? It completely baffles me as to why this had to happen at all. Do people not have the courage or the heart to decipher between right and wrong – specially when it comes to their own! The same fate was to befall the younger daughter, that is when the elder one took courage in...

The Maharashtra government has proposed to increase traffic fines manifold to deter vehicle owners from breaking traffic rules- this actually is long overdue and should have been implemented quite a few years ago. The trouble with rules is they are enforced by human beings who are not only under paid but also many a times not paid in time. I am sure the collection of the government through traffic fines will definitely go up in arithmetic progression, I am confident that the private collection of the traffic police will grow in geometric progression. I am sure all of you have at some point or the other experienced a traffic policeman who has come out of hiding to catch you for supposedly going through a red light – what happened after that is something each one of you needs to ask him/herself! See what I mean?! Instead of creating more room for corruption if the government creates an infrastructure which encourages the public to use public transport instead of their own vehicles for co...

Been kind of busy, with the financial year coming to a close, things are kind of hectic hence the gaps in putting up posts. I think I have got to you with the title, haven’t I? You guys must be wondering what the hell is a “povertician”. I have coined a new word for our ubiquitous politicians who come election time, always harps on alleviating poverty! This word is actually a new one for the “wiktionary” – “a povertician is a politician who while claiming to alleviate poverty enriches himself with the funds to be used for poverty alleviation”. I have been thinking of writing this post for the past four days but was not finding the time. It has actually been prompted by Jairam Ramesh’s claim that the Congress has done the most to alleviate poverty in this country! He also made a claim that the baggage of 3000 years cannot be done away with in just 60 years after independence. “Baggage of 3000 years” – that is a very strong statement – he is probably alluding to the caste system and how ...

Lalit Modi is shifting the IPL – a big money spinner to either UK or South Africa – this is the compromise formula worked out by the IPL in conjunction with the BCCI, as the various state governments where the matches were to be held have refused to provide security to the event. After working around with various permutations and combinations the IPL eventually decided to have a truncated tournament and shifted quite a few matches to Maharashtra on the assurance that security would be provided. In the meanwhile, with the national elections round the corner, Sharad Pawar voiced his aspirations for Prime Ministership and the seat sharing formula with the Congress in Maharashtra came under pressure. Ashok Chavan who, whether you like it or not, is the proxy for Vilasrao Deshmukh who continues to do a Rabri with Ashok as Laloo did in Bihar with his wife. Also the UPA seems to be losing the ‘U’ in the acronym with various allies flexing their muscles and going their own separate ways. The u...

The case reported a couple of days ago in the newspapers where a young girl appearing for her S.S.C. examinations committed suicide is shocking to say the least. There have been a spate of suicides across the country in exam related stress during the last one month, but the one I am talking about takes the cake. The invigilators should understand that all students are not crooks, students do carry notes to study at the last minute. This student, Bhavi, was “caught” with the chits outside the classroom BEFORE the exams had started, hence taking a signed statement from the student saying that she was caught with chits is nothing less than outright high handedness. I hope the person who caught this girl would mete out the same treatment to his child in a similar situation. Children appearing for their first public exam are as it is under a high degree of stress due to peer pressure plus parental expectations. I can imagine the turmoil in a young mind trying to look friends in the eye and ...

This is something I have wanted to express for quite some time, so here goes. Most of the people who work spend more than half their waking hours in office – so in a way you can say your office becomes your home away from home. Many people find soul-mates with whom they share their innermost secrets – secrets which people at home may not know. Psychologists and behavioral studies have shown and thrown up the concept of “office spouses” where even people who are married find a person in whom they can confide or bitch about safely without getting into trouble. This is a kind of stress reliever and helps the individual to get their problems, issues out of their system and increases productivity in an organization. Then in such a situation, when it comes to mundane things like basic hygiene, attitude and consumption patterns why do individuals behave differently in office from the way they would at home? Let me give you a few examples – at home do you litter your house? Do you leave the fa...