Sunday 12 June 2011

Corruption! whose problem is it anyway???

Well..Baba Ramdev finally ended his fast unto death....amidst controversy of course !...for the sake of argument lets just focus on the REAL ISSUE here....and keep Anna Hazare's or Baba Ramdev's aside.
so what are we really dealing with here ...CORRUPTION...and yes it does include grassroot corruption to which all of us are party to...haven't we participated in this great Indian tradition of corruption, in one capacity or the other??...well if you are born and brought up in india...at least i can't imagine anyone not having sweet or sour (depending on the situation :)) memories of either receiving or giving bribe.... a trip down memory lane....sarkari daftars...birth certificates...school admissions (dignified term "donations"), driving license...passport, ration cards, ..and most common if you are living in a city...Trafficwala's....so all those die hard supporters of Anna and Baba (including me) can anyone really claim that they have reached where they are (at times with that candle in their hand as mark of solidarity) without being touched by this modern demon called CORRUPTIONSURA....Oh! yes i know we do have a valid reason and a escape route...SYSTEM...

For the sake of argument lets also ignore this grassroot type of corruption...social activist claim that this will automatically disappear if we are able to successfully uproot corruption amongst powerful...people who are supposed custodians of law/values.....
now some interesting statistics to put things in perspective...i wasn't prompted to write this blog because of hunger strike of Anna Hazare or Baba Ramdev....something else caught my attention...few days back there was a news in leading newpapers quoting Income Tax dept reports suggesting a little over 10000 individuals file tax return of over 1 crore.....in a country of 1.25 Billion people its hard to imagine that only 10000 have annual income of over a crore. ...another contrasting report appeared a week later, India has 1.3 Lacs Dollar millionaire's (people having investible surplus of about 5 crore and more) ...little maths and guesstimation...we may be talking about more than 5 Lac crorepatis...and since data only deals with white measurable wealth so if we extend our maths a bit and include black crorepatis (not as in colour of the skin :) ...color of money..honey) ...then actual number of Crorepatis is anyone's guess..
Any takers for these numbers ???? if anyone of you come across any relevant research on this aspect do share.....
Also my guess is most of these 10000 individuals (unfortunate ones...probably with no escape route) will be poor salarywallas.... (poor not in literal terms ...of course if you earn a salary of over a crore than you aint poor :)    )....now if anyone has some data please share....
and one can be rest assured that not even a single politician (you see with all those allegations of corruptions running into thousands of crores) will be part of this elite but unfortunate club of 10000 people...
Three cheers for India Shining then...............


Saturday 4 June 2011

C'mmon stupid..lets talk

After a lot of procrastination and deliberation (which included creating different Blog IDs on different blog sites :) ) ..i think i am ready to write my first blog....well i guess firstly Google team will be quite happy that my months of research on chosing right blogging platform finally ended with blogger.com (Google platform) being the winner...(a disclaimer first that i am no expert in blogging so not sure if my opinion counts at this stage)...but as a first timer and a amature blogger i believe it to be the best...(of course my primary reason for chosing blogger.com is its ability to sync with my gmail account...
Mumbai just witnessed its first Monsoon showers ....mumbai rains are known to lift your mood and make you do strange things....may be this was the final push i needed to cut loose all inhibitions and start blogging...too much of thinking anyways doesnt take you anywhere its only actions which matter....as a matter of fact it also guarantees that i will at least continue my new found interest (i.e. it) till last shower of monsoon.... sounds little filmy isnt it ....remember gabbar...(jab tek tere pao chalenge...iski saanse chalangi...)....jab tek monsoon chalega mera blog chalega....uske baad kya hoga ??...only time will tell..
So HERE I AM....