Crying shame

Full disclosure - I have never voted in my life. Before I was eligible to vote I left India, and have never been in Bombay during any election cycle. Since India does not have proxy voting, I have never had the opportunity to exercise this fundamental right and obligation. This time around I was hoping I might have a chance but, in my defense, I would have had to skip work and fly down in the middle of the week to vote.

So who am I to throw stones? Nevertheless - I am still pissed. Less than a year ago the streets were overflowing with throngs of people demanding change and better governance. What a farce! Turn out was the lowest in 4 elections - a paltry 43%. One of the lowest turnouts across the nation!

I don't get the Bombay electorate. After one of the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the nation, people came out in force against the poor governance and the weak response. Bombay is no more secure today than it was in November. But when they actually had the chance to do something about it...wait for it...drum roll...THEY STAYED HOME! If a terror siege can't shake people out of complacency, what will?

The theories for voter apathy is the heat and people going away for the long weekend. What a crock. This after I saw some of the most intensive celebrity endorsed get out the vote campaigns. I am embarrassed for my city.

I really would like to see the voting stats. If anyone comes across a breakdown of the voting trends in Bombay, please post a link here. And if you know of any organizations that are lobbying the government to implement proxy voting, I want to know about them too.

Water

My time back here in India has been an interestingly humbling experience. While I am more confident, I am definitely less arrogant. It's a lot like growing up, with a number of illusions being supplanted with reality.

As the summer heat surges past 105 degrees (this is just the beginning), it's natural for water to be uppermost in my mind. But you never really think that water will ever be a problem. Till the taps started to run dry in the afternoon here at Drishtee. I put it off as a plumbing issue. Then the next day I see this elaborate contraption digging right in front of the office building.



Apparently Noida (where my office is located) has acute water issues, and everyone has private bore wells on their property to supplement the municipal water supply. I can imagine houses having to do this, but corporate office buildings!? And it is illegal to have a bore well. And here we are digging in broad daylight. As if this was not alarming enough - the building already has a bore well, but the water levels have dropped so they are digging another 40 feet to access to ground water supplies. Ultimate example of citizens doing what they must - a libertarians paradise. Gives some perspective to why India is so chaotic.

I did a few google searches on water scarcity in India, here is what I found.
* Most fresh water supplies come from inter state rivers, setting up the stage for big water disputes down the line.
* Ground water has been over exploited since 1997-98
* There are promising rain water harvesting solutions
* Things you can do

If you have any suggestions on water conservation I'd love to hear about them.

Mayawati: India's Obama?

Newsweek has an interesting article describing Mayawati as the "anti-Obama". From a certain perspective she is a threat to the established order very much like Obama and comes from the long oppressed section of India and is the quintessential "outsider". I'm still unsure what to make of it, let me know what you think of it.

For starters though I seriously doubt that Mayawati will become PM. So all this comparison to Obama is extremely premature. Personally, I would *NOT* want to see her as PM, and would definitely change my mind on returning to India if she came to power. I have a number of rational reasons I could spout for this position (enunciated in the article), but I wonder if it's just the "established order" in me that's reacting to this remote possibility.

Nevertheless though, she is the poster child for affirmative action and a fascinating example of Indian democracy in action.

The unexpected

I come back from the States to an unexpected incident.

Delhi is back to being sunny and warm, and things are familiar again. The first morning back, my house mate Andy greets me with my car keys and the following tale -

Our landlord had informed Andy a few weeks back that she was interested in selling the flat and that people would be by to look at the apartment. The weekend before I returned, a man shows up at our place on Saturday to look at the place. Andy has asked our landlord to give us a heads up before someone came over, but hadn't heard anything from our landlord about this guy coming over. The guy knew the landlords as well as Andy's name and looks fairly legit, so Andy lets the guy in and gives him the tour.

All of us are anxious about what a future landlord will do with the place and this guy tells Andy that he'd be happy to continue renting it to him. All through the tour the guys talking on his cell phone and he seems to like the place. Andy's just glad that a potential new landlord won't be kicking him out. He wants his wife and brother-in-law to see the place as well and Andy says it's okay for him to wait here for his wife to come over. He sits him down in front of the TV, gets him water, makes him comfortable etc. At this point guys phone, that he's been talking on the entire time, runs out of juice and borrows Andy's phone to call his wife. Andy returns to his room to continue working at his desk. What follows is the sound of the main door closing. Andy comes out to find our potential future landlord has left with his cell phone! This is Andy's first weekend in the house alone (I'm in the States and Mrig's in South Africa), and he gets burgled. With us out, he doesn't know what else could have been taken from our rooms. He tries calling his phone but the bugger has turned his phone off. Next he calls Airtel and they give him the last number dialed from his phone. Apparently this dude called someone else in our neighborhood about a car that the guy was selling. With his phone turned off, Andys got no way of finding the guy.

But wait - it gets better. Now I've never dealt with Indian cops directly because we all know how useless and frustrating the experience can be. It's impossible to get them to even lodge a case let alone hear you out. Andy calls the cops. And 5 cops show up to investigate a stolen cell phone! First 2 come, and while he's trying to communicate with them, there's a knock on the door and 1 more joins, then 5 mins later another knock, and after that again another knock, and we end up with 5 cops in our living room. Now this is a fairly complicated story and Andy's non-existant Hindi isn't going to help him much in this situation. He suggests the policemen talk to his friend on the phone who can translate. The landline being in his bedroom, all 5 cops follow him into the bedroom. So Andy gets to spend Sat afternoon with 5 uniformed men in his bedroom :)

Since then he's been called in to photo ID people. They've shown him 2 pics, one was clearly not the guy and the other was a small 2x2 newspaper print quality picture. But for Andy (like most white people) all brown guys look the same. So I don't see much hope in him every ID'ing the guy.

I joke about it, but in all seriousness it's pretty annoying to have someone walk into your home and walk out with you phone. And even more annoying is that Andy can get 5 cops to show up and register a case but my friends who had their car smashed the other night couldn't get them to register anything. As the saying goes - yeh hai Dilli mere yaar...