India is setting up a polling booth in Ladhakh for just 10 people!

Yes, there are only 10 registered voters in this booth (No. 10) at Sunudo in Nobra frontier region, making it the smallest polling station in these elections, perhaps even the smallest ever in an Indian election.

This TOI story on polling preparations in J&K has some other interesting statistics.

I started giving a little more than a passing attention to reports on him after I read a story about him putting sycophants in Congress in their place. Compared to the near militant politics that is currently prevalent in most parts of the country by young, aspiring politicians, I have found his views and style to be far more restrained, mature, and generally sensible.

The fact that he is touring India in unannounced, almost secretive trips to understand her people better and is undoubtedly a future Prime Minister only bodes well for the general masses.

What prompted me into writing this? Rahul’s answer to why Afzal’s sentence hasn’t been carried out yet. He almost manages to sound like a regular guy.

The editorial puts an interesting spin on capital punishment.

But the same logic you apply to urge Indians to look down upon capital punishment, almost calling it immoral but at least suggesting it to be inhuman, can be applied to any punishment…

Why should state have the right to ‘murder’ a criminal you ask. So I ask:

• Why should state have the right to ‘try’ anybody for any crime?
• Why should state spend my tax money to feed and tend to ‘criminals’?
• Why should state lock up anybody?

Just because capital punishment ‘kills’ you call it murder from your standpoint of this notion of right of life. So doesn’t locking up prisoners infringe on their right to be free? Who is a judge or a law to decide if a person will be allowed to roam free or locked up in a small room, and for how long?

You say capital punish is not an able deterrent. Is any other punishment? So why have punishments at all? Let’s just keep a public record of reprimands a person has been given for committing what we, for now, call ‘crimes’ and hope that public embarrassment will keep people from committing them. But then, somebody will write a song about how somebody got inspired into collecting most such reprimands and you will label this system a failure too, perhaps even calling it an inhuman infringement of a person’s human right not to be publicly embarrassed.

If you dare dismiss the above with a wave of your hand, perhaps calling it an over-reaction or irrelevant, or try to walk the fine line of how it is OK to do anything but take one’s life or be ‘barbaric’ in meting out punishment, I question you on your definition and notion of this inhumanity. If it’s inhumanity to you to infringe a person’s right to life, perhaps to some so is the infringement of a person’s right to freedom. Where does it stop?

So who are you to suggest a person’s life be spared when that person did not care in taking another’s in whatever emotional state of being? Call capital punishment revenge or call it state sponsored murder if it gives you satisfaction and a moral high-ground from where to scream at us barbaric inhumans while we rejoice when a killer is killed in revenge/justice.

It’s a sad, sad day.

Updated October 11: The Supreme Court of India sent an indirect message to the President by quashing a politically inspired pardon by a Governor in response to a PIL and made it clear that any clemency granted because of extraneous factors where it “eliminates conviction witoutout addressing the guilt” would be subject to judicial review.

All hostels in Panjab University, Chandigarh are disallowing independent access to the Net to residents, irrespective of their departments or level of education, because they are “not mature enough to access the Internet”. These pearls of wisdom belong to none other than the Dean, Student Welfare, Prof. Nirmal Singh, who opines that, “All they do is open bad sites.”

It makes me wonder if those in power to take such decisions and have them implemented are really so clueless, or is doing so more like an ego-trip for them, since whatever be the reason, in the end, only the end-user suffers and the organisation’s image (whether it be a University or a country) that takes a hit.

A military government can never solve the problems with India, including Kashmir. Because if they do it, the reason of their existence disappears. Pakistan has the fifth or sixth largest army in the world and it is not there to fight either Iran, China or Russia.

I don’t see a merger of Pakistan back into India possible anymore though I still would like to think that us people can do it if we build up enough momentum. Military or political decimation of any other type of the smaller country is an impossibility of course.

Enemies forever?

I am tempted to write to PMO to reject the resolution in IAEA irrespective of our independant analysis and take on the situation in Iran, just to show Lantos and his peers the middle finger for bad-mouthing thus.

And I wonder if he realises that he’s pissing off a lot of NRIs in California (his home state I believe).

It clubs RSS as a NRM (New Religious Movement). It goes to the extent of naming it in the same sentence mentioning al-Qaeda!

NRMs can be found in Hinduism (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS), Israel (Gush Emunim), Christianity (the U.S.-based Identity Movement) and Islam, including Al Qaeda, a global network with a transcendent vision that draws support in the defense of Islam.

I find that sentence incredibly repulsive. That’s like saying “It was because of great leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler and Mussolini that people of their respective nations came together for a greater glory of their country.” That’s exactly how different in ideology, methods and intent RSS is from the rest of the organisations mentioned in the same sentence.

New? Puhleeeeze! It was established formally in 1925 though it’s basically the renamed incarnate of Abhinev Bharat which was founded in 1904. That makes it over a century old!

Religious? Gimme a break! It makes my skin crawl when people refer to Hindutva as a ‘religion’. The word ‘Dharm’ or ‘Dharma’ (sic) translates to religion as closely as defining a skateboard as a ‘4-wheeled transport vehicle’. Yet we do it because there really isn’t any word in English that is a direct translation and this is the one that comes even anywhere near.

The essay points out how long, pointed kitchen knives are being used to, can you believe it, stab people to death! Oh the horror! And the solution is very easy: get rid of the tip.

While people like Peter Hamm of Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in the US feel envious of England for having such problems since

In America, we can’t even come to an agreement that guns are dangerous and we should make them safer.

on the other side of the pond, The Register takes a shot at the report by looking forward to…

…proposals for the rubber housebrick (a common bludgeoning weapon), the papier mache baseball bat (ditto) and the soft plastic claw hammer (ditto).

Meanwhile, I wonder if there will be a follow-up essay in the BMJ calling for dull knives next, since a sharp edge can be used for slashing…