The Opti-Mystic

India will vote electronically...

The Election Commission (EC) of India has announced that it plans to conduct the general elections, due next year, wholly using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

About one million EVMs will be required to accomplish this mammoth task. Also, the voter's identity card will be a mandatory requirement for voting during the general elections.

I found this link via slashdot.org where I spent a long time going through the comments on this piece of news.

SC directs govt to introduce Uniform Civil Code

Yet again, SC directs govt to introduce Uniform Civil Code.

In a major development, the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the government to implement a Uniform Civil Code.

The directive was given by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice V N Khare while hearing a petition filed by a Christian priest challenging the Accession Act.

Even though the BJP is a proponent of the UCC, I do not see it being able to introduce it given the feeble excuses it is fond of offering, in the form of "compulsions of coalition politics".

Few days back, there was an interesting discussion on this topic on Shanti's blog. It's available here if you want to go through some insightful comments.

Cannon fodder for Anti-Outsourcing lobby

IBM says that it sees the need to shift jobs overseas to India and elsewhere to keep up with the competitors who are doing so and saving money.

I'm now waiting for the anti-outsourcing irrationalists to up their ante.

At what point would you say 'Enough is enough'?

At what point would you say 'Enough is enough'? is a heartfelt article by Lalit Koul, a Kashmiri Pandit who's just one of the lakhs who've been displaced from their homes and about whom the government seems to have conveniently forgotten.

Maybe it is just me.

Maybe it is just me who cannot ignore 400,000+ Kashmiri Hindus living as refugees in their own free country. Maybe it is just me who cannot erase the pictures of the lifeless faces of thousands of older Kashmiri Hindus who lost all that they had in their old age, and are now on the roads.

Maybe it is just me

...

We have continued to surrender even after we got our well-deserved freedom. We have surrendered the rights of the majority to appease the minorities. We surrendered to the wishes of a few and agreed to Article 370 of the Constitution. We call ourselves a one billion people-strong nation and yet we surrendered to half-a-dozen terrorists and let Maulana Masood Azhar, Omar Ahmed Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargar free to save lives of 153 civilians. How many more civilians and security forces personnel have been killed since that shameful night of December 31, 1999? That night will go down as the weakest point in the history of India.

The emphasis is mine... because thats what I think has been the chief bane that has weakened the Indian state over the years. This "you scratch my butt and I'll kiss yours" attitude which has been nurtured under the euphemism of "votebank politics" is continuing to wreck India and people like Lalit Koul and others like him have felt the brunt of it.

The checklist for a war...

Was just going through the comments on Shanti's post titled, Should I say it?, when I came across Dean Esmay's comment which said, among other things...

"A war must be 1) morally justifiable, 2) must have clearly achievable objectives, and 3) must involve U.S. national security interests.

All three were met in the case of Iraq, in my view."

As he says, its his view and I respect that completely. Moreover, I feel that these three points of reference are a good barometer to justify a war.

But...

do the events, before, during and after the war against Iraq truly stand the test of these three points. Lets see...

1. A war must be morally justifiable
To be very frank, I don't know how to exactly define "morally justifiable". Looking at the events that transpired before the war actually began... one can now say that there was a general lack of morals on the part of the US and UK administrations. Some valid, some slightly-less-than-true claims while some downright preposterous claims made up the US and British case for war. Talk of morality in such a case seems out of place. Moreover, the 16-word sentence in Bush's State of the Union address almost amounts to hearsay. Not a very 'moral' thing to do when you are the biggest superpower on this planet and have intentions of attacking a sovereign nation. Last, but certainly not the least, David Kelly may have committed suicide or he may have been silenced. But it sure as hell brings down Downing Street's image to subterranean levels.
So, I can cross out "morally justifiable" from the checklist.

2. A war must have clearly achievable objectives.
This war certainly had a clearly defined objective - the toppling of the tyrant Saddam Hussain. The search for WMDs, breaking up of Iraq-Al-Qaida links (if indeed, they existed), liberation of Iraqi people... were the sub-objectives... which could be ahieved just by overthrowing Saddam. So... the Alliance of the willing did have clearly defined and achievable objectives. This point in the checklist checks out.

3. A war must involve U.S. national interests
Personally, I have always felt that this was the dodgiest of all the justifications that US put forward while going in for the war. In the eleven odd years since the first Gulf war, there were no overt or covert attempts made by Iraq to harm US national interests. Development of a nuclear programme by one country is not a direct threat to another country unless that country specifically mentions it explicitly. Basing its threat perception on Iraq's nuclear and chemical weapons program was unbecoming of America. Saddam in his rule as Iraq's dictator had hardly shown ambitions of trying to rise on the world stage. He was content in playing a ruthless dictator at home and had regional ambitions at best. Hitler was a global threat... Saddam was not. Moreover, claiming that Iraq had links with Al-Qaida does not help much. Al-Qaida seemingly has trained over 100,000 terrorists. Now, its obvious that these numbers are made up of recruits from around the world. For example... there would undoubtedly be more than a few from the Kashmir valley. Now would this mean that India has links with Al-Qaida and is therefore a threat to US national interests??! I mean, after all... it was the Indian Government who secured the release of Maulana Masood Azhar... who is a known Al-Qaida associate!! I know this is a naive example... but thats what the US administration seems to think of us... the people across the world... naive! Pointing to tenuous links between the two or over-emphasizing the threat with grave words (the kind that Blair is so given to using) does not establish links. In any case... as the events have unfolded after the war, many of the claims of threats that the US/UK perceived before the war have not borne out based on evidence or the lack of it.
So, I cross out this third poitn from the checklist.

And what I have before me is just one valid point. Going to war with a clear objective... but without a clear-cut justification.

But thats only my view!

By the way... I'm all for what the war achieved in the end... end of Saddam's rule with not too heavy losses on either side. Which brings us to that much-debated question... Do the ends justify the means? ;-) ... But I digress!

Dubya's nightmare

For all the Bushisms that US President George Bush has been mouthing for years now, he would've never imagined that the following line made up of 16 perfectly understandable and acceptable English words would come back to haunt him,

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"
- State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

And heads are starting to roll now.

Our "man goes" to China

If nothing else, our PM AB Vajpayee at least managed to sell mangoes to the Chinese!

Delusions of grandeur

The new chairman of APHC, Moulvi Abbas Ansari says "it would be below my dignity" to meet and talk to Centre's interlocutor N N Vohra.

He's just taken over as the APHC chief and already Ansari seems to have been afflicted by delusions of false grandeur!

Another thing that he says in his telephonic interview with Rediff is...

The war in Iraq had changed a lot of things and it was important to resolve outstanding matters through talks, according to him. "We have realised that the matters cannot be solved through the barrel of the gun."

Hmmm... interesting!!

Flying coffins

MiG-21 crashes in Srinagar, 2 killed. These crashes have become so commonplace these days that they've lost all shock-value. And still, few days back our air chief took the refuge of statistics to defend the safety record of the MiG-21.

Cyber Coolies??... No way!!

IT experts or cyber-coolies?

The success of India's information technology industry and related businesses has produced such a euphoric and exuberant reaction that some of its more enthusiastic celebrants have already declared India a 'knowledge-based society' and 'information superpower' which qualifies it for special global status.

This 'knowledge-based' description sounds odd, to put it mildly, in a society in which almost half the population is illiterate, the general level of skills very low, and transmission of knowledge severely restricted by the hierarchies of class, caste and gender.

It's true that calling India, a 'knowledge-based' socirty is stretching it a bit too far, but it is also true that India has made long strides towards achieving complete literacy. Praful Bidwai conveniently hides behind the hackneyed phrase, "almost half the population is illiterate". Perhaps he does not know that the 2001 census put the literacy figures at 66 percent and the rate of growth of literacy has never been faster than it has been in the last decade. Moreover, Bidwai's brief description of the Indian society projects a very dark and backward image of it (those who will harp on "being realistic" can go take a hike).

But euphoria over it could be misplaced -- not only because growth has now slowed down to 26 per cent, according to the latest figures.

Err... hasn't Mr. Bidwai forgotten that little fact about globally depressed market conditions?? 26-30 per cent growth in these times is impressive!!

Even if the ITES/BPO business grows five or eight-fold over the coming five years, as optimistic projections estimate, its contribution to India's GDP will remain relatively small.

Are we talking about India's status as a "information superpower" or are we talking about the contribution of the Indian software sector to the GDP?? I thought it was the earlier point that Mr. Bidwai was talking about! So the correct figure to flaunt here would be to say that India's share in the global offshore BPO market is a whopping 66 percent!!

There are other basic constraints on IT growth too, such as poor infrastructure, low telecom density (just 5 out of 100 Indians are connected), and one of the poorest levels of penetration of computers (less than 6 machines per one thousand people, as compared to China's 19).

But does Mr. Bidwai know that India is placed much higher than China or Russia on the Network Readiness Index??! Moreover, there is a much higher economic freedom in India than there is in these other countries.

Another thread that Mr. Praful Bidwai picks up is the one about the protests in the West against outsourcing of jobs to India. Now this is one issue that has been flogged to death in the media in recent times.

Similarly, in Britain, The Sunday Times carried the 'shock and horror' headline: 'Banks prepare to shift 200,000 jobs to India.' This has so alarmed British trade unionists that they have decided to launch a campaign against India's call centres and software industry which, they feel, are big 'job-snatchers.'

Now first thing here is that the Sunday Times headline was nothing more than a cheap shot! The media resorts to sensationalism and creates an unhealthy hype that hurts both the sides. The facts of the matter are entirely different. The US/UK businesses are outsourcing their work to India out of need to cut costs. Its this desperate need which if not addressed would anyway lead to job cuts if those businesses cannot bear the losses. Moreover, the money that these businesses save by outsourcing can then be plowed back into the market, something that will slowly perk up the cash starved markets!! Job cuts are an inevitable repurcussion of recession and blaming it on outsourcing is childish and vile at the same time!

In the US, Silicon Valley programmer Kevin Flanagan recently shot himself to death, because he couldn't face the prospect of losing his job to outsourcing. Ironically, before being given the marching orders, the programmer helped train the very same Indian workers who were supposed to take over his job. Flanagan's suicide was an extreme step. But his circumstances were by no means exceptional. He was one of some 800,000 Americans who have lost their jobs to outsourcing in the past year alone.

With due respect to the departed, I must say that Flanagan's step was foolish!! Morover, India isn't a stranger to this phenomenon. Thousands of mill-workers were displaced in Mumbai alone when the once-flourishing textile mills were shutdown one after the other during the past decade... and that too when the entire country was going ga-ga over the process of economic-liberalisation in India! There were many many such suicide cases as skilled workers suddenly found themselves out of work and livelihood. But is the scene still so depressed??! ... No!! Things sort out over a period of time. There's no need to make a hue and cry over these things!

The crux, the key, is low wages. That's the bottom-line! India's ITES-BPO, like its computer software business, is heavily concentrated in low-paid jobs and low value-addition segments.

This argument is as old as the Indian Software industry and doesn't even merit consideration anymore! We all know that Indian software industry is built upon the foundation of "cost-advantage".

Thus, a good proportion of the sub-programmes in Windows 95 and 98 were developed by Indian engineers. But it's Bill Gates who skimmed off the profits!

Surely Mr. Bidwai, you are mature enough to know that this was an almost idiotic argument in a serious discussion!!

There are lots of valid points in the article and I quite agree with many of them. But the general tone of the article is so downright pessimistic and condescending that it rankles!! The article finishes off on a low note projecting Western companies as the oppressors and the Indians as the victims... mind less cyber coolies with no rights or securities labouring. As an Indian software developer, i find that insulting and demeaning... and totally untrue!!