It is a pity that Qawwali has become almost extinct even as Gazhal thrives. In a way it is understandable, compared to Qawwali, Gazhal is safer because of its melody. On the other hand, there are high chances of botching up a Qawali. However if done right Qawali is eclectic, in fact, and I assure you, it will definitely give you goosebumps.
Now that we are done with obligatory preface, to my only readers I present.
Reason is like electromagnetic radiation. Freedom is like mutation. Use discretion.
Related posts 1,2,3
This is related to the previous post, and something about which I have thought now and then. That governance in India leaves much to be desired is quite an understatement. This reason this happened is accident of history depending about how we define the initial state. However while it is an interesting and relevant discussion, let's restrict our focus to what we can do about it. A short answer to this is in democracy we get the government we deserve (and before people object that it is a cliche, understand that cliches are nothing but truth made tedious by familiarity). A more detailed explanation follows. Our political system as it exists today, can be best understood in terms of patron - client model with government acting as a patron, dispensing favors to interest groups who are its client at the expense of others, the ending is similar to that in the parable of the monkey and the cats. If Indians wish to prosper that present arrangement must be superseded by a better one. Now I have not yet arrived at precise details of such an arrangement but broadly speaking it should be an ownership model, where the accepted political culture observes the right of ownership, it means by and large citizens understand that the proper, or dharmic, way for prosperity is by their own ingenuity and entrepreneurship, and not by extorting wealth from fellow citizens. How to reach from present condition to desirable condition should inform our politics as well as policy decisions.
TOI headline for budget is , FM revises tax slabs to give more money to consumers. Now I am not a libertarian, if anything I find them nearly insufferable. Even so I find this headline disturbing because it implies government by default owns whatever the citizen has earned, and when it reduces the taxes it is actually giving to citizers. This violates the principle of the citizen’s ownership of his earnings which is bedrock of not just modern democracy but also civilization. Ultimately such an assumption leads to gradual enslavement of citizenry.
How green taxes hurt poor. While I am not convinced about taxes on SUV/big car, levying cess on coal doesn’t seem like a good idea, considering how coal is a primary source of energy for poor as well as for economy, this may end hurting poor as well as overall economy.
It’s a good thing I don’t watch news, or read newspapers, this way my sanity is protected from the transparent deception that secular liberal establishment continue to peddle.
Nothing infuriates me as much as the business of conferring legitimacy on the Naxal insurrection on the grounds that it aims to resist oppression of the poor, or police brutality. This is, to cut very long story short, bovine excreta.
I agree to certain extent with bleeding hearts when they point out that poor esp. tribals are exploited. Now if only there was some mechanism for addressing their grievances, a system whereby, you know the poor, the dispossessed, could elect government for their welfare. Wait we already have that, it is democracy!
Now people can point out the democracy as it is practiced in
Regarding police brutality, this is a serious charge, and one with which I agree with. I happen to believe police reforms are something which are long overdue. Even conceding this, the reality is systematic police brutality is more often than not a reaction to violence, this is certainly true in this case. Which is why those giving even an iota of support to Maobadis are nothing but handmaiden of evil.
I was almost lost to temptations of devil but I resisted and saved myself from limbo of worthless cricket discussions. Cricket remains opiate of masses.
1. No babus don't take bribes because public is masochist and likes to be screwed by the babus, they do because they can.
It's kind of late to comment upon Koregaon blast which is old news as far as blogging cycle is concerned, but for what it's worth, here is what I think about it.
The attack appears to be hurriedly planned. There are many other locations in Pune where the damage inflicted would have been much higher (in fact we were in one such place when bakery was bombed). The reason terrorists selected bakery for attack could be either of following two.
One, their initial target was different (for example Osho Ashram, very near to bakery) but they had to change the target at the last moment due to some reason, most probably security.
Second reason however is more interesting, which is perpetrators were in hurry because they had some urgent strategic goal. The only strategic goal I can think of, is thwarting the proposed talks behind India and Pakistan. This is kind of intriguing as I have always considered talks to kabuki theater at best, however the fact that the powers that be in land of pure were desperate to thwart the talks suggests the impossibly viz. these talks might result in some result, to be precise, result not favorable to Pakistan.
And this bring to our final conclusion, which is it is possible Obama administration is working behind the scenes to force Pakistan to make concession to India.
We all are pigeons. This is a problem but it can be mitigated to some extent, if we recognize that we are pigeons and we choose our pigeonholes wisely.
Liberalism* has many problems, but its main problem, the one which ensures that Liberalism is doomed**, is its assumption that it is possible to completely override, or rather discard, the biology.
* When I say liberalism, I include both socialism and libertarianism.
** There are only two possibilities, either liberalism dies alone, or it dies with its host civilization.
From the archives of Jane Galt here is a post where Megan Mcardle takes certain critic of LOTR to task. The post is worth reading in its entirety, but the money quote is the concluding paragraph,
Little wonder that so few of them evinced any genuine love of books or words -- they were far too busy trying to figure out what books they should like, to ever discover which ones they did. Saying that you're not allowed to like Tolkien, or like Tolkien better than other authors, because he doesn't add up well on the hierarchy of literary traits that Soskis has assigned is no better than declaring that you like a writer merely because he does
Some of you might have been familiar with the concept called market for lemons. In brief this phrase deals with the markets in cases of asymmetrical information.
Now I have never understood the concept per se* and this post is not about it. Rather it is about a different case. Now I am sure I am not the only one who believes that quality of serials was, in general, far better when we had only channel (i.e. Doordarshan) than present scenario, and this applies across all genres. Now I am not someone best described as a passive viewer, so I don’t mind ordinary junk, but for some reason almost all the serials have descended to the melodramatic depth that they deserve a special category for hazardous effect (unparalleled emotional atyaachaar, to borrow from Dev D ). Why this has happened is not at all clear to me (hence the question mark). In general competition is supposed to be good, yet what has happened is the opposite. I do understand that when competition is cutthroat, it is not possible for a generic channel to broadcast anything except what it thinks is the safest bet (in this case despairing melodrama). However this doesn’t explain absence of even a niche channel for such programming. Which is why it will be interesting to find out if this phenomenon can be explained if modeled in terms of economics.
* More accurate would be to say that I was not convinced by the example cited for this, viz that of second hand cars. The explanation went that since seller always had more information about the used car than the buyer the resulting asymmetry will prevent formation of a stable market. My problem is, the same applies to the case of first hand goods also (i.e. seller knowing more than the buyer), but that’s hardly a problem there.
Here is an admission. Frogji's comments on my earlier post have kind of perplexed me. He asked why language in bollywood cinema so infused with Urdu. This was news to me. Assuming he is talking about contemporary bollywood cinema, its language is that its audience is most comfortable with, i.e. Hindi/Hindustani. Urdu ceased to be a language of cinema long ago, and since use of Sanskritized Hindi was never widespread it is hardly an option.
Then it struck me that the reason why our observations are so divergent has to do with our experience. Frogji not hailing from Hindi heartland is obviously not familiar with Hindi the way it is spoken there. Therefore it makes sense to make explicit my reference point, which is the video embedded below. This is what I will consider Urdu infused language.
A note here, this too is relative. For my father's generation which actually could read and write Urdu this video won't be very difficult to understand.
No flame wars, no heated argument spanning over multiple blogs, no mocking, damn, I really miss 2005 (that’s when I started reading blogs).
(I think) I just missed the era of Jivha (who I know, much like Carvakians, only via rebuttals of Ravikiran)
Anyway the first, and, although I have been fortunate enough to enjoy other flame wars (I have never been part of any AFAIK), most memorable, flame war I witnessed was between bleeding hearts (DCubed, his boy toy etc.) and cartel. That all is now water under bridge though, the present silence reminding one of graveyard.
Though I have to admit, I do find absence of a certain passive aggressive neo-con a relief.
May be I am easily excitable but by the mace of mighty Mahabali this is made of pure awesome, in fact it is epic.
*Derived from generic programming.
