On a sabbatical........

Few more weeks before i scribble something here................
tks,
Pranay

Was Adam made for Eve only, or for Steve also?

The hungama surrounding the reading down of article 377 by the Delhi High Court has been selling like a hot cake in e-media. Kuchh bhi kaho- it has divided the country down the middle inviting sharp reactions from different walks of life.

It was sheer fun to watch Suhel Seth shouting his sh** out on the custodians of Indian religions (they claim so!!! ) couple of days ago on one of the news channels. Suhel baba, calm down. You don’t need to call them “bizarre’!
Is it really to do with the larger question of whether India is ready to come to terms with ‘modern’ times? I don’t know. But hearing the arguments and counter arguments on whether it is ‘ok’ to decriminalize consensual sex between two adults of same sex, I was left scratching my head. Well, did not really find anything ‘convincing’. So thought of just sitting back and waiting for the next round of hearing at the apex court.

However, personally I feel it was too early/premature for the Naaz folks to celebrate the way they did. At the very outset, it looked like a welcome move by the Delhi high court. But then the parade was little too over-the-top, as if a nation got freedom from a foreign reign.

Whatever an adult (defined legally in India) does inside his/her bedroom should NOT be anyone’s business! But then, getting on to the street to go ga-ga over the private life was little too much. I am not quite sure whether homosexuality gets sanction from any religious code of conduct(?). But nothing legal should not write off an adult of his/her choice.

It was so funny to hear the astrologer guy (some Kaushal from delhi) who has filed the recent petition against the ruling (it seems to be his 30 seconds to fame). He said and I quote “even animals do get indulged in this kind of act”..wow what a piece of wisdom. He apparently means human beings should do what animals do…..God bless him. By the way, animals don’t care for mothers and sisters when it comes to sex. Doesn’t Mr Kaushal know that?

Baba Ram dev (another wise man on the planet) considers homosexuality as a disease..wow, baba, now you get another chance to sell your medicines (?)…are these people feeling insecure??? Baba, you cannot weed out a set of people that you are uncomfortable with. By the way, is celibacy a ‘good’ thing? Isn’t it unnatural?
Look what Mahabharata says, “repay your debt to your ancestors by procreating”. And it was so big a statement that in case of Pandu, it was expected and ok to send his wife to a stranger to get impregnated by him.


Religion seems to be having headway into anything and everything in this country. Well am not surprised any longer. But then we have to say at some point in time that it’s enough. Give the progressive Indians a break. How can a religion (which one has not chosen for him/herself as his/her identity) govern everything about someone’s life. Forget about its take on homosexuality. It’s been there in every sphere of one’s life. Why can’t we just let religion alone as a ‘belief’. And moral policing??? Boy oh boy!!! This country has millions of such people. The Managalore pub incident is still fresh in people’s memory. A bunch of people will decide whether a girl should or should not go to a pub!!! What rubbish!!!
I don’t have a problem with who the other guy is sleeping with as long as that not hampering my life. And hey, on a lighter note- I think India should promote this same sex marriage. I think that’s the only solution for growing population (am sure many would agree that population is the root cause of all the problem in India, at least the health minister who feels that people should delay marriage and people should remain awake watching TV in order to stay away from bed as much as possible !!!)

The real question here is not whether gayness is a disease or not, socially acceptable or not. The courts judgment had nothing to do with that. It's about individual liberty: can the government tell you where to stick your junk? Time has changed (or let me say- is changing). So everything else has to alter in order to maintain pace. It’s as simple as that.

Passions

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living ( adopted from B Russel)

Pranab Da's Top spin

Many called it a routine budget. BJP called it a timid one. Left is yet to say something to merit a headline (quite uncharacteristic of them as Pranab Mukherjee was smart enough to play Left’s thump card). I am sure they will take time to find a flaw or two. While corporates were watchful in their criticism of the Union Budget, individuals had much to cheer about, with a Rs 10,000 hike in the minimum threshold limit for tax payable and scrapping of the 10 per cent surcharge on the tax.

With job loss making headlines everywhere, raising the wage under NREGS to Rs 100/ per day is certainly a welcome move. This reinforces the claim of Congress that its hand is with the common man. There could be more political than practical in the increased outlay for the job guarantee scheme as UPA clearly rode on its NREGS glory in the recent parliament. So it is a pay back time and who knows this might turn out to be a 5-yr fixed deposit for the Congress led government at the centre.

Dalal street went to the red zone by the time the Finance Minister (FM) hit the last line of his speech. To explain this, Deepak Parekh, Chairman of HDFC was blunt enough to say that markets did not understand the budget. Sunil Munjal, MD Hero Honda was visibly excited about the renewed focus on rural areas. And, the FM rightly said in the post budget interview that markets expected too much from him. He was candid enough to admit that an annual budget cannot change things upside down. It had to be a gradual process and the FM has just started the match with love-all.

Raising I-T exemption limit was expected by many. However, scrapping FBT was a pleasant surprise for the India Inc. Many HR heads have already started restructuring the compensation. The FM may have missed a trick by not unleashing a wide-ranging e-governance program to pull out more economic efficiencies. However, the corporate sector, especially the IT industry gets a huge relief by the STPI extension by a year.

Crop loan at 6% interest for the farmers does sound like a sensible move forward following up of the loan waiver that Chidambaram had gifted to the farmers couple of years ago. Another Rs 1,000 crore has been promised for programmes for the development of irrigation. However, what remains to be seen is if this gets supported by the decline in farmers’ suicide which has been a major concern in past few years.

The focus on infrastructure comes out load and clear as the FM increased the planned spend for the Bharat Nirman programme by nearly 50 per cent and gave a Rs 12,000 crore boost to the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. With a fiscal deficit of 6.8% (of the GDP) one cannot certainly expect more than what Pranab babu has offered (he is hopeful of the deficit to be brought down to 5% in 2010!). However, increasing concentration on JNNURM and NREGS will do the balancing act for the Rurban India.

With nearly 70 per cent of India's 1.2 billion people live in villages and agriculture contributes about 21 per cent to India's $1.3 trillion economy, the enhanced spending in rural areas does not raise many eye-brows. However, since the budget has come less than two months after the UPA government, led by the Congress party came to poser, the FM appears to have played to the gallery and tried to address the population that has helped the UPA return to power for a second-term. I would have personally liked to see a clearer road map for boosting rural economy than just greater spending on rural infrastructure.