Role of PM and his Council of Ministers

Who should be PM and who should all be in his Cabinet? Is the whole council supposed to include the intellectual or is it supposed to represent the people?
From what I can infer from whatever I was taught in Civics in my bachpan its meant to be the latter. So then why are Members of Rajya Sabha allowed in this council? As the Members of Rajya Sabha are supposedly best brains of the country (not just best brains but best citizens in general) then why should they be in Council? They dont have the peoples mandate. They have not been elected by the people.

Now this is in reference to the current council. First of all I'd like to clarify few things:

• I know Manmohan Singh is very popular so everybody would like to see him continue as PM.
• Also in this election there was a mandate for Manmohan Singh himself. Officially it cant be said as such because he didnt contest from anywhere but we all know that he was projected as PM so people voted for him (unlike 2004 when people voted for Sonia Gandhi).

The main purpose of the council is to run a country in such a way that is beneficial for the people. As the council is supposedly answerable to public so it is expected that they will do best for people (we all know the reality when all big politicians are corrupt so it isnt true for them. but lets just talk what was the intention of the constitution in ideal scenario!). This council will be helped by the best brain of the country which form the bureaucracy (here again we know how much best brain goes and how much 'best' it remains). But what is happening now is not how the Council should behave. There are demands to make Montek as our Finance Minister. Granted he is a good economist and can handle all his files well. But does he really know what India wants. Not just the Indian Industry but also the poor. Will he run this country like a company for maximum profit (GDP, sensex or whatever be the scale) or will he run such that all sections of the society benefit (although even if he just help industries it will 'someday' help the poor too. probably). Same with Manmohan Singh. Give him a free hand and he will start all the disinvestment and all the international business practices. It was because of both Left and Congress Party leadership that he brought out schemes like Guaranteed Employment and others. I concede that by now he will be wiser and will behave more like a politician with Congress party's future at stake.
But I still believe that Council should only for elected representatives. Who are supposed to take care of the public. If technical knowledge was deemed necessary for such posts then constitution would have provided for some entrance test and not elections. It is upto the people to choose wisely. If they cant do that then it is their loss.
As for all the brains of such topics (take any ministry), they should just be adviser's to the Government. Not the Government itself.

Well these are just my views though I fully support Congress Government :)

Role of Lawyers

Was having this discussion about how the defense lawyer for Kasab was trying to stall his case. For that I got one reply that "Thats the job of Defense lawyer". But is it?
Well I dont know what was the aim of our constitution or what is the legal point of view but here is what I feel:
Lawyers are just means who help the court in reaching the truth. Aim of every lawyer whether prosecution or defense is to find the truth. The only difference is that a prosecution lawyer will hear one side of the story while defence lawyer will hear out accused side of story. This system shall just ensure that judgement is reached without taking both sides of view. Role of defence lawyer is not to defend the client. Its just to help him present his side of the case. Also care should be taken of lawyer-client confidentiality (whatever that might be). It should not be misused to save the client even by performing illegal acts.
As in this case stalling the case by presenting stupid facts is not part of his job.

I dont know what exactly is the law in this regard but this is how I feel.

My experience till now with GSoC and SIP community!

Well exactly 10 days have passed since I seriously started working on the project. It is difficult to concentrate on it when you are meant to be enjoying two months at home, but still have been able to give it some time and achieve some tasks. Well am not writing this post to list out my achievements but just to share my experience till now.

Firstly, coding is the simplest part. But what to code is difficult. Have till now gone through 2 completely different API's (smack and jml) and am currently trying to get a hang of third one (joscar). For the first one (smack) there was proper documentation and such. But for the rest there is hardly any. Eve the javadocs are not updated. So it is a big problem to find out what you need in such API's. The solution ofcourse is to contact developers who till now have been willing to help me for even the simplest problems. Also Googling (wish I had googling skills of Mittal) helps but not always (for jml Google was more interested in teaching me about Java Modelling Language than the api I needed. And yes I donno what Java Modelling Language is!). Then community mailing list helps (for joscar its my only help :) ).

Secondly being part of the SIP community is just great. You can expect real time help from all the developers. For jml it would not have been possible without such help. Also we are encouraged more to be part of the community than just finish our projects.

Next update: after I integrate something (anything!) into SC.

Is this betting?

We all know that betting is illegal in our country.

Now consider a scenario:
Just before elections I organise a quiz like "Test your political knowledge". There is entry fees of Rs 100 and all persons who answer with error of +/-10 (or whatever scale you want to keep like satta) will be joint winners.

Now it is very much similar to betting but will it be called as such?
And is betting allowed with no money involved? Is such a thing even called as betting. Would sure like to know laws in this regard.

Summers with GSoC

Although its a little old news but writing just for the sake of writing. I was selected for Google Summer of Code 2009. This took away the burden of intern away from me (which I was not getting anyways). So well my work would be working for the development of SIP Communicator which is an instant messenger that supports multiple protocols. For this Google would be paying me cool 4500$ (only if I complete the work which shouldn't be too hard). Atleast I will be able to work from the comforts of my home (really missing home right now).

This year a total of 1000 students were selected worldwide out of which 101 are from India and 8 from our college :)
Hope this number steadily keeps increasing (all the numbers may increase). Last year it was 3, last to last just 1. Atleast now its 8.

http://socghop.appspot.com/ Summer of Code Homepage

http://www.sip-communicator.org/ SIP Communicator Homepage

PS: Its not in any way an intern with Google. They wont even know me after giving out the payments.

Timepass: Omegle

These days www.omegle.com is getting popular in our college. Well its a very nice concept of one to one chatting. When you start you are randomly connected to any other person to chat with. There is no concept of nick names or any kind of registration. The main idea is that you can freely chat with strangers without revealing your identity.

Well its a very good timepass as you can be sure that atleast you will have to bear up with many persons before you find someone interesting enough. And if you do find and chat for hours you may find out that the person was a fake :)
So this site is not for someone who get senti easily. It is strictly for fun. And yeah you need to devise ways to confirm the identity of the person (atleast ensure that the country they claim is correct).

One thing that is troublesome is when you are having an interesting chat and suddenly BHU net comes and form and access denied (depicted in omegle as 'connection imploded')
Another thing, its much better to chat at hours when normal BHU net is down to not find another one from our lobby as the person you are chatting with (and yeah in multiple tabs I have even chatted with myself :)) )

Fixed term of Government

This is regarding the suggestion made by L K Advani that a government should have a 'fixed tenure' of 5 years and polls should be simultaneously held every 5 years in months of February.

Now the benefits are very obvious:

• Huge (I really mean huge) decrease in poll expenditure (both of EC and political parties)
• Better voting percentage (February weather along with voting once every 5 years will surely move many more voters out of their homes than now)

Although the benefits may be counted as 2, both of them will have a large scale effect on how government works. First of all model code of conduct days which very much limit governments options will be less. Secondly government will be able to focus more on managing the country instead of campaigning every now and then.

But here comes the problem. How do we really implement it?
Advani said that if a party loses majority then a next government should take over immediately. But what if (as is usually the case) no party has majority? It will lead to hell lot of horse trading with too much scope for corruption. Not a good option.
Also its but obvious that a minority government can hardly work.

Also he said that our government system was following that of Britain and India should adapt the system to its needs. Very well said but it would have been much better if he would have specified atleast some adaptations to atleast initiate a debate. Also I dont thing there is anything wrong with the system, Its just that parties are not good enough to get a majority.

One suggestion that I even gave before and that still can be done is:

• Completely de-link the role of MP with development of the constituency. MP should only be there to raise issues of national importance. Development should only be linked with the State government.
  

I know there can be several arguments against it (I can myself think of many) but still I fell this is one way that can help in improving the current scenario. I feel that all the things that affect day to day life of public should be subject of state. Also more tax should be levied by the state government and not by the central government.

I know that this can have many negative effects but it is one direction debate can be initiated in.

Till then am happy with the current system :)