Too much data

                     "Data,data everywhere,nor any byte to devour".A modern Mariner navigating the high seas of the web, would have this cried out in desperation.It is estimated that the data generated by us doubles every year.Creation and dissemination of data has never been so easy and so instant as it is today.Everyday we produce millions of smses,emails,blogs,tweets, videos,news articles with accompanied comments in their billions and all other forms of digital junk.From being on the lips of buzzword-savvy IT industry, "Big Data"entered the policy discussions of powerful governments.Let us here understand how this data deluge affects our mental harmony.

                        As Jeffery D sachs observes in his book The price of civilization, "Our brains hence personalities,decision making capabilities,and values are subject to extensive and continued neural rewriting over time.We are also what we see and hear,since these literally change our brains,minds and future judgements".

                       We are consuming more trivial information than is necessary for the sane functioning of the mind.A forwarded mail flashes until you are forced to open it.We are  exposed a portion of a shared video even we are least interested in viewing it.As over exposure to easily available porn induces men(includes woman) to crave for more of it,for the same level of short-term dopamine boost  which affects their social behaviour,or just like the ubiquitous availability of  fatty foods and refined sugars that appeal to our tongue and assault our health,overexposure to digital information affects our mental make-up.
         
                       The interconnected maze that is the web,makes us difficult to seek the content selectively without consuming some of the related offerings.When you search the you tube for a particular video,you seldom come out without watching at least one of the suggested video.Cometh the digital social network,that promises to turn each of its member into an ego maniac narcisst,where maintaining social relation reduces to performing in a circus show organized in a vanity fair.In this virtual world you are measured by the size of your uploads.You are what you brag.Every one can become an armchair-anything.You can be an armchair patriot,an arm chair social activist,an arm chair humanitarian,an armchair art afficinado,an arm chair sports analyst,an arm chair economist,an arm chair culture critique,in short a life size hypocrite.Only here you  will have the opportunity to experience the sort of tranquil bliss when you are instantly made aware of "what's on the mind" of your friend's friends's friend's distant relative.When you are greeted by  many on your birthday,you would start wondering for some time(if not, it is not your mistake),what made your birth worth remembering its day by so many friends.No!, I don't say it is the remainder that starts flashing on the dashboards of every one you befriended that alerted them in advance.Because,be it is in fact a daemon they configured,that greeted you automatically.You return their(the automatic programmes') well wishes with a heartful thanks for "making your day".

                               You would naturally "like" in a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" a few among the million  photographs of your friend's puppy uploaded on the occasion of her(the dog)finding her mate.Oscar Wilde would have attributed this reflex action to "emotions recollected in the rebirth".            

                                Reading news paper was once a simple and short affair of reading some  news,editorials and op-Ed.Not any more in their electronic avatar.Lot of news on the homepage,with loads of trivia.With links to videos and blogs by experts.pop up of news items related the one being read.some analyses like five ways to  impress your boss to 10 ways to endure this crap sold in the name of news et cetera.
                              In an increasingly philistine world that storms us with information,what we need now are effective filters to save us from junk.Wish my browser intelligently alerts me if I navigate deep into the interconnected links from where I have begun.Pray my conciousness guides me in limiting my web usage to moderation.

Disclaimer:This writer is found to suffer from delusions of supreme grandeur,hence rightfully considers himself not only an expert on everything but also as the brightest beacon whose light  will illuminate the oncoming world civilization in the moments of its darkest moral crisis.He is not in anyway responsible if your mental harmony is afflicted beyond repair after your reading this blog post.


       

.

From Palm leaves to Palmtops - An elegy to the physical book.

The printed book as we know it today,is on its death bed.The book in its present form,since it was first brought forth by the Chinese Buddhists to propagate The Diamond Sutra,or perfected later by Gutenberg to publish The Bible has been man's most convenient companion to disseminate knowledge.

Long before script came into vogue,man relied on his memory to store large sequences of meaningful sentences that could run into hundreds of pages.Advances in the scientifc analysis of phonetics and skillful use of meter proved to be essential in this endevour.This is the first physical form of the book.The poetic raptures of one of the ancient man's of awe and excitement,fear and gratitude towards the enigmatic nature surrounding him, have been passed down to us in this form.Changes in the networking of neuronal synapses of the human brain is the only hardware employed in this form.

The invention of script for the language and subsequent discovery of certain leaves like palm or papyrus that allow in making the impressions of the alphabet on them ushered in the second generation in the avatar of the books.

Advent of the printing press brings in the third generation.Books of this generation,can be felt,can be smelled,weigh and occupy physical space.Also position of a certain sentence or paragraph is always fixed and remains the same once the book is printed.

These books can be borrowed;especially before the examinations,they can be easily photocopied.They can be easily stolen and required pages can be tored off comfortably from university libraries.Used books are also sold in the second hand market.At times,one may find a rarebook offered almost for free of cost on the pavement.Pages of the old books,like the ones bought by great grand father,turn brittle,mellow into yellow tinge and break at the slightest stress.

Digitization is the latest trend in the evolution of the physical form of the books.These fourth generation Books,or ebooks as they are reffered to,are stored in the large clouds of the internet companies, sold and distributed wirelessly.To borrow a book,one may need to borrow the tablet of the owner,or may be credentials of his account.Nothing much can be said at this stage, as the etiquette has not yet evolved.No longer a future Tolstoy would need to borrow shelves to keep his borrowed books.Nolonger a Vivekananda of the coming age could resolve the exact page number of the topic he was asked from the encyclopedia books,though he could reproduce verbatim,to the consternation of the awed enquirer,it's content.Gone are the days, when a studious law maker like Ambedkar needs a spacious house in order to accommodate his half lakh book personal library.

Misgivings of a midway child

Having been born in the year of release of The Midnight's Children,I fall in the age cohort of midway children a term used to by Rama Bijapurkar in her book on the Indian consumer market titled 'We are like that only'.

Two decades have elapsed since Dr Manmohan Singh,the then finance minister,concluded his speech in the parliament quoting the words of Victor Hugo that "No force on earth could stop an idea whose time has come" signalling the country's integration into the free market economy. Much ice has melted from the Himalayan glaciers since then(much more than it did in the previous decade,thanks to Global warming) and flooded the north Indian rivers.

As the heretic movement born in the Mecca of free market economy that pledges to occupy the wall street gathers followers and spreads to all the nations that share the same religious credentials, let us review the trends in the society after our nation did convert to this creed.Some of them are the direct offshoots of the economic policy, others though not related to economic policy are the trends in the society that do not augur well for a nation that generates lot of hope.

The two Indias:That the country is increasingly being divided into(in addition to the usual billion divisions) Bharat( rural,extremely poor, poorer than sub Saharan Africa,hungry,deprived) while India is shining,growing with 8% growth rates,reaping the dividends of the reforms growing increasingly confident,harbouring desires of becoming a super power is an established cliché now.With glaring inequalities in economic distribution the genie of reforms unleashed two decades ago,that miraculously brought about astonishing growth rates for an economy accustomed to the hindu rate of growth,has failed to reduce the Gini coefficient*.

The immediate interests of the two Indias are never more divergent than when it comes to procuring the agricultural land for various development needs that a growing nation requires. Archaic land acquisition laws of the colonial era often results in popular upsurge that the opportunistic politicians never miss to exploit.

Maoist insurgency:From Tirupati in Andhra pradesh to Pashupati(nath) in Nepal* along the ancient Dandakaranya a red curtain has descended across the subcontinent.Prime minister himself acknowledged that " in many ways, left-wing extremism poses perhaps the gravest internal security threat our country faces." discrimination of the indigenous people in the forested districts by the state machinery helped the cause of maoists who often receive the support of the local people.

Insensitive media: Media, owned and controlled by the rich that forced upon the people with renewed enthusiasm.The rural India is in a state of distress more than the media wants to us realize.It required a supreme court judge to remind us that 512 journalists were invited to cover a fashion show, when a mere 2 journalists reported the Vidharbha suicides.*

Increase in the female foeticide among the educated:Though the availability of cheap technology for the determination of sex and the insecurity of raising a female child may be the reasons,the growing demand for dowry in an increasingly consumerist society can not be ignored.

May be it is too early to draw conclusions, when the country finally looks poised,but a doubt arises whether capitalism based on the faith on individual's greed (aided by the increasingly affluent middle class) help the nation pull the bottom millions out of abject poverty.

Can India exploit the once-in-an-eon opportunity before its current generation in the form of demographic dividend to its advantage to grow into an economic power without much income disparities,ensuring food security to its teeming billions and without negatively impacting the ecology of the planet.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

Gini coefficient

From Tirupati to Pashupati?

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2526971.ece

India Journal: Our Troubled Tryst With Capitalism

Requirement Analysis for Democracy 2.0

Let us for a moment assume Niall Ferguson's argument to be true that democracy is also one of the Six killer apps downloaded by us orientals (Civilization the west and the rest)from the western civilization as if it is a western idea unheard of anywhere in the east of Suez.(Do not jump on your feet to argue that there are democratic states before the birth of The Mauryan empire or clear your throat to the explain the existence of the village democracies of The Chola age)

Even if we go by Ferguson's logic we have customized this particular Democracy app that was downloaded 64 years ago,to suit the complex needs of our complex nation.

We have started as a multi party democracy with universal adult franchise ( where as the western democracies had taken ages to allow theit fairer sex suffer the travails of the suffrage)and after the demise of the age of a single party rule entered successfully into the era coalition governments.corruption seeped in,at first as an exception then as a rule and manifested itself as the only grease that runs the gigantic,rusted wheels of the government machinery.

During these 64 years for a brief 22 months period, this App was put in disuse by a paranoid but a popular system admin citing some intrusion by foreign hackers and security reasons(but never found in the logs and traces) and installed another app called Emergency.Though this was certified by the then CEO,this app itself was a virus that contained many a trojan horses to trap the political opponents and to obtain personal gains for the administrator.Though the old app was brought back eventually,the infrastructure was corrupted beyond repair while hosting the 'Emergency', that observers could perceive a considerable decrease in the performance after the relaunch.Religious chauvinism and sectarian differences at times prove a menace to running this application.

Some twenty years ago,the application for the financial management changed from Fabian socialism to Market based economy,out of compulsion. While the this helped cut the red tape and delays in some key industries and fostered growth in general,Some neo-liberal updates of the later times also facilitated in large scale pillages by unscrupulous politician turned unscrupulous businessmen.

Politicians found the incentive in keeping the status quo, maintaining the vote banks, reviving the divisions in the society. Majority of the middle class prided itself in its ability to keep away from the process and in the vociferousness of its criticism of the politics and its practitioners.The masses, intelligent though illiterate participated and(often auctioning their democratic decision making powers to the highest bidder) some how provided the fuel for the functioning of the engines of democracy.All the while allowing corruption to gnaw at the vitals of the society.

Can Democracy 2.0 allow the for feedback from the popular judgement influence the law making.May be a Gandhian with a long history of social work and unimpeachable integrity could awaken the usually somnolent middle class of the country to support the cause.

Is this the subversion of democracy by a bunch of self styled unelected,unelectable individuals?

Or is it asserting that the means to find a solution to a critical problem that reached unusual proportions can also be equally unusual?.

Or this is the course correction that is long due for a process that has been subverted by vested interests that are too reluctant to change the system, which is faulty by design.

Can sartorial patriotism by sporting a Gandhi cap and waving the national flag and lighting a candle amount popular dissent?

Can twitter feeds and Facebook likes and other paraphernalia of Web 2.0 coupled with media created hype effect a change in design of the new version of the Democracy App.?

What explains the fact that this protest could force the largest number of ordinary citizens to come out on to the streets for an apolitical,secular cause in the history of independent India.

This surely is another test for the effectiveness of the greatest social experiment that is being conducted successfully for the past 64 years in the crucible of human society, i.e, to keep together (almost) one fifth of the planet's population of incalculable differences under the flag of a popularly elected government.

May be user base increased multiple times since release of the first version, and this is the new method of accessing the App that appeals to the newer generation that is increasingly interested to use and experiment with this app for maximum benefits.

Let us hope this feature to tap the popular feedback(though not expressed through the traditional channel that is opened every five years) to make structural changes into the system proves to be the reason for the better performance of Democracy 2.0.

On a Great Indian Novel

This is on the book,"The Great Indian Novel" by Dr Shashi Tharoor. There are many adaptations and re-tellings of our twin epics.The Ramayana that commands more knowledge of Indian geography than The Mahabharatha has various varieties and flavours with variations in the story line and is widely known through out south east asia.It is also probably retold in many Indian languages than is the case with the latter.The Mahabharatha,the longest of the two is not as much globalised(asianized to be more precise) as its epic cousin.

In this book the plot is the story of Indian history roughly from the begining of the 20th century till the time India Gandhi declares emergency in 1977 and losts the subsequent general elections.The story is narrated with the characters of the Mahabharata,the deftness and creativity of the auther shines in choosing the appropriate characters from the Great epic and mapping them with the historical personalities who shaped India during freedom struggle and the aftermath.During the course of the book both the stories proceed parellerly without compromising on the originality and chrnological order of either of them.It is a wonderful experience reading the story as it is narrated, picking up the parellers,disentangling the pun,unmasking the historical personality out of the character enacting the familiar scenes of the national story but donning epic robes.

In a country where the dividing line between mythology and history is very thin and where very often the former is misunderstood to be the latter,the latter metamorphoses into the former as it gets older,an attempt to narrate the former in the light of the latter is an interesting experiment.

But the idea to narrate the history in the light of The Mahabharatha itself has a long history.Attempts to compare the political situation of the the existing times with the story of this epic is not new.Probably Indian writers never missed any chance to tweak and retell it when ever possible, to suit the social milieu of their times.

The work of the Kannada poet Pampa vikramarjuna vijaya,an adaptation of this epic, is narrated with Arjuna(who also serves as a metaphor for the king with the same name who patronized this poet) being the centre of the story whom he consecrated on the throne after the great war instead of Yudhishtira.A millenium ago in the present day Andhra Pradesh the story of a ruling family where the feud among the cousins that runs for two generations curiosly takes the same shape and the substance of The Mahabharata.This story is famous till today,the main reason for its immortality being its similarity with the great epic.Balladeers sang the paeans of its heroes,Poet Srinadha chiselled it in immortal ink in his work Palanati Veera Charitra.In Hindi,Ramdhari Singh Dinakar's 'Kurukshetra' is written keeping in mind the destructive memories of the second world war.

Returning to our current story,It has 18 chapters same as in the original.It begins with the birth of Ved Vyasa,(the writer of original Mahabharata) in British India and later becomes associated with the royal family of Hastinapur,a princely state in north India.The main hero of this story Gangaji, is Bhishma of The Mahabharata, who is a euphemism for Mahatma Gandhi himself.This role is properly narrated as the comparison is deftly carved out.Dhritarashtra is Nehru, Pandu is Subhash Bose,Drona is Jayaprakash Narayana etc.

If you are interested to untangle the skeins of the comparisons yourself,read it without any aid and enjoy the happiness as when the character is identified,but if you want to test your findings and to find out more about the significance of the nomenclature of each of the eighteen chapters, go through the wikipedia entry on this book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Indian_Novel

Surely Patel is more than the Vidura of TGIN. His role is abridged in both size and stature.Vidura appears more like the secratary to Patel's minstry

V.P Menon.The Actual heroes of the story,the Pandavas are represented as the personifications of the institutions of democratic India such as the judiciary,the armed forces,the press,the buerocracy and the diplomacy.Draupadi,personification of the Indian Constitution marries the five Pandavas. Except for very few characters, there is no direct mapping from the epic characters to their twentieth century counter parts.Some times one character at times represents a real person and at times becomes personification of an institution.Like that of Yudhistir, it represents Morarji Desai in personand at times figuratively stands as an epitome of the judiciary, righteouness, rule of law etc.

This version of the story where Pandu lives longer and plays a heroic role (worthy of his counter part Subhash Chandra Bose)than dying a premature death as in the beginning (of the of the original story),where Karna(Mohammad Ali Jinnah) and the Kauravas (The Congress party) take opposite sides,where the earlier generations play a significant role, which their less illustrious successors struggle to emulate is a feast for the mind.

Read this book to understand the mind and methods of Gangaji.As Ved Vyas explains to Ganapati during the Great Mango March that 'they were not led by a saint with his head in the clouds,but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground'.Roles of Mohammed Ali Karna and Jayaprakash Drona illustrate the important roles they played in the history.

But some important characters are conspicuous by their absence,Like Ambedkar.

some stories are unnecessarily added only to keep the connection with the original alive, as the story of Bhim killing a bully and marrying his sister.Some important incidents like Yakshaprashnas and Bhishma's discussion with Yudhishtira on Dharma on the former's death bed of the epic were completely ignored where there is much room for creativity.Towards the end in the last chapter the reasoning that explains Pandava's falling one after the other in their great ascent and Duryodhani's royal luxuries in the court of history are examples of imagination of the highest order.

peppered through out the book are the pithy aphorisms that Tharoor is famous for,his stunning observations in over simplified yet scintillating similes smeared in alliterative phrases.

One interesting scheme employed by the author is that the narrator of the story Ved Vyas falls in to a dream whenever relating the story with the original looks impossible otherwise.

Not to be missed are his unrelated references to the things very much Indian like cricket,slowness of the judiciary,The Kamasutra and The Taj Mahal(India's best known mascots abroad during the ancient and medieval times respectively) the arresting originality of the caustic remarks showcase the naked reality that is often difficult to discern.

Never skip the poetic renditions where ever they are be it the story of the end of Pandu,or Vidur's saving the Pandavas from the house of lac.Especially significant is the narration of Gita to Arjun.When Priya Durodhani announces elections after lifting the emergency,Arjun vacillates whether to file his nomination for the opposition or to just wield his pen more effectively.Krishna induces him to fight the election.This conversation was in verse that pays' iambic tribute to the tetrameter'.

Though Tharoor gives a disclaimer on the name of this work 'The Great Indian Novel' on the lines of Voltairean appraisal of 'The Holy Roman Empire' and ascribes it to the literal meaning of term 'The Mahabharata',this is aptly named.It is undoubtedly Great,quintessentially Indian,although an allusive imitation of an epic,refreshingly Novel.

May be some time from now,the tower of babel could be built

On 26 January 2010, an 85 year old woman of Bo indigenous community in the Andaman Islands died and with her death another storey is added to the already heightening tower of babel.*

Every day hundreds of languages of the planet are facing extinction or on their way to this ill-fated destiny.Though this is a global phenomenon let us study it's effect on India, the land of rich linguistic diversity,a prime reason that earned this country the sobriquet of sub continent.

when a language dies all the natural feelings, centuries of refinement, a wealth of knowledge accumulated over generations stored in the folklore also die with it.

There was a time in India when new vernaculars developed out of the rich soil left behind by ancient languages of Sanskrit and Prakrit.Literature in these languages flourished despite some initial resistance.Now a days we are witnessing the opposite.We are moving towards the merger and consolidations in the linguistic arena that threatens to create a motley tongue which is neither fully English nor fully Indian.

Recently during a conversation,somebody passionately listed the titles that won Booker prize and Nobel prize in literature along with their authors.Some of these works are not even original works in English,but only translations.He has studied most of them and commented on them.Out of curiosity I have inquired if he could name the author who won Jnanpith award this year,or any author who won Jnanpith anytime in his mother tongue.But the answer is in the negative.Today most of us do not even have time know the works that won Jnanpith or a Sahitya academy award,but we would miss no opportunity to let this happen to an English title.

Even though the Europeans,the Chines,the Japanese and the Russians too are anxious not to miss the fast moving ship of globalization,are they deeming it incumbent to burn their boats of native languages as a prerequisite and jumping into the alien waters as we are doing? Aren't they using them as a natural means to ferry them to the destined ship sailing in the deep waters?

What irrational market force decrees us to even publish the titles of our movies in the Roman script? Why do we take pride in denying our children even the basic knowledge in the mother tongue and raise them as cultural orphans?

If globalization is only an economic activity of the market place that makes national boundaries irrelevant and English is only a tool to participate in it,why do we Indians let it seep into our cultural ecosystem to the extent that towards our own mother tongues we are turning out to be irreverent? Or does the history of our indifference towards our languages predates the twenty first century globalization and is the result of our centuries of subjugation that resulted in our craving to mimic the habits of our victors?

This aversion of globalization towards linguistic diversity is a new found phenomenon.

The trans-world trade along the ancient silk route,which is the old world equivalent of the present day globalization is particularly congenial to the reach of new languages to different cultures and societies.Many ideas and thoughts were shared and many books from different languages were translated thus unlocking the ideas stored in one culture to the other.

The fact that the first ever printed book,Chinese translation of a Sanskrit Buddhist work exemplifies this symbiosis.

Then may be the greed of the present day globalization is gobbling our languages.

Today languages in our country are facing the same fate as that of our rivers, mighty as though they appear(all our national languages have millions of speakers),choking slowly with the garbage thrown in.The catchment areas getting shrunk day by day.Unable to give birth to fresh and original thoughts they are becoming the dumping yards of ideas exported from elsewhere.

At one end the pressures of globalization are killing the languages at the other hand,at the other end the state of the art information processing techniques(aided by globalization)make it easy to digitize the ancient works that were compiled over millennia than at any point in the past.This is a highly deplorable situation because even though we are best equipped with all the necessary hardware to attain the mastery over this wealth of literature,we are fast loosing the necessary software to achieve this.

During the middle ages the fusion of Indian and persian/arabic ways of life and mingling of populace of different cultures did not do a damage to our languages but in turn enriched the vocabularies and literary traditions of many an Indian languages.At the heights of this harmonious syncretism it gave birth to another Indian language,Urdu.Indian linguistic bio diversity that survived the tyranny of colonization is seeming to be incapable of enduring the promise of instant opulence offered by coca-colonization.

However before English,many other languages attained the status of a world language at different times in history,as Sanskrit in the south east Asia,Persian/Arabic during the middle ages in many parts of Asia and French in the Europe.But none was able to retain its hold and fell from this status.Yet the hegemony of English is particularly threatening and its effect on other languages seems to be permanent.The twin factors that it is the language of the world commerce at the time of greedy globalization,and it is the dominant language of the scientific community of the previous century that has seen unprecedented growth in science and technology seem to cement its place for ever.Only future shall venture to decide otherwise.

Is the day not far when our future generations look at the great works of our literary masters at a museum, much like a contemporary Egyptian looks at the cuneiforms composed by his forefathers?

Is this only the case of Darwinism among the many competing languages and the small price we need to pay in our ascent to global heights,or a serious threat to our identity and ingenuity and symbol of our shattering confidence?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*According to the Bible,Many a eons ago people decided to build a tower up-to the sky.But God wished otherwise.He caused them to speak different languages in order to confuse them among themselves.Those people,unable to understand one another,abandon their project and the tower remained unfinished.

The Great Indian Democratic Kumbhamela

The exercise of general elections in India is completed and the new parliment is convened..An event whose pentennial recurrence proved Winston Churchill to be a poor prophet.

In a period of two months the voters of our country braving the usually unrepentant Sub Continental Sun had decided the members to be of the most prominent rotunda of Lutyn's Delhi.

Once again those who need not bother where their next meal comes from have abstained en masse.Those whose destiny in life is to make the both ends meet have been herded off in hordres.The great Indian middle class is once again possessed by the Great Indian indifference.
Hoping to make a great difference to the voter turn out of these polls,ventured to convince some of my friends (some of whom have never seen the inside of a polling booth) to excersise their franchise.
Most were reluctant to get their names included in the election rolls even after they were told the where abouts and what-to-do-insides of the enrolling offices,for flimsy excuses. (One wished the office to enrol his name on the weekends and another friend could not afford to travel to the place where his street ends.)
A one time voter with a grand vision of the 'Suffrage in the digital age" wished the elections to be conducted on line so that he could vote on site(without having the need to visit a polling booth). In a country where election officials had to deploy elephants to camels, boats to helicopters to meet the logistical needs of geographically inaccessible polling stations to reach till last eligible voter, one can understand the feasibility of conducting elections online.
A virgin voter who never had had his nail smeared with the election ink asked me to show him at least one candidate with integrity among the contestents in his constituency so that he can vote for. It reminded me of the conversation of Buddha and the woman who lost her son where in Buddha asks her "Fetch me a fistful of mustard seeds from a house where no one had died".Realized that going by the anology I am enacting the role of the loser; changed the topic of discussion.
A tea company joined by an NGO awakened the Indians to vote.Many young,educated,urban Indians who were targeted by the Clarion call yawned loudly,declaring a new age has dawned. But on the polling day most of them have gone back to deep sleep.
Atal Bihari vajpayee, the former prime minister of India was apt when he compared the elections with Kumbhmela.It is the only other exercise which draws comparable no of crowds for a single cause.It is held for every 12 years.There are many more similarities for the two events apart from the periodical recurrence.The no of political parties in India is growing day by day and without loss of sensibility can be compared to the no of Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu patheon.Each piligrim pays homage to his or her favourite God or Goddess based on his own idiocyncrasies,while taking a plunge into the filthy(but sufficiently holy) waters of Ganges, just like the voter inside the polling booth chooses his favourite candidate based on the amount he was handed on the election eve, pedigree,caste,religion,region and very rarely the merit and competativeness of the contestant.Both involve many colours and multitude of symbols,vociferous and chaotic.Again both the actors (piligrim and voter) are happy because they are very much content with what they get.They never give importance to the the return on investment (ROI) as much as to the return of the event (No one doubts the divine providence they recieve by dint of the holy dips or any increase in the living standards they obtain by virtue of the legislative acts).
Is our democracy going to be a rule of the despicable made possible by the mandate of the gullible for the absence of the sensible?