07.30.08
Save Petrol, save money, Contain Inflation
Nice Logic – It May work!! Save petrol, Save money!!
A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the Kirana store he pays Rs. 12 a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won’t last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to Rs. 16. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are Rs. 22 a dozen.
When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, “The price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly”. This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.
As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there. He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.
Then week before Diwali the price of eggs shot up to Rs. 40 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, “Cakes and baking for the holiday”. The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen. This pattern continues until the price of eggs is Rs. 60 a dozen. The man says, ” There must be something we can do about the price of eggs”.
He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn’t work because everyone needed eggs.
Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.
The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn’t need any eggs.
Maybe wouldn’t need any all week.
The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn’t have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.
At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs. To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price.
The distributor said, ” I don’t have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free”. The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying
again.
The grocery store owner said, “I don’t have room for more eggs. The customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time. Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers
would start buying by the dozen again”.
The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers but the egg farmers liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, those chickens just kept on laying. Finally, the egg farmers lowered the
price of their eggs. But only a few paisa.
The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, “when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen.”
Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers.
The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn’t buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn’t need eggs for quite a while. And those chickens kept on laying. Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn’t sell.
The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price. And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.
Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.
What if everyone only bought Rs 200.00 worth of Petrol each time they pulled to the pump? The dealer’s tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the huge tanks. The tank farms wouldn’t have room for the petrol coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn’t have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the oil fiends.
Just Rs 200.00 each time you buy gas. Don’t fill up the tank of your car. You may have to stop for gas twice a week, but the price should come down.
Think about it.
Also, don’t buy anything else at the fuel station; don’t give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down…”
..just think of this concept for a while.
……………..please pass this concept around….reaching out to
the masses …the world …..
07.28.08
Only the wearer knows, where the shoe pinches
As the old saying goes, “Only the wearer knows, where the shoe pinches”, it fairly beautifully applies to the general attitude of people living in today’s society as well. The current society is plagued with innumerable problems ranging from lackluster attitude of civic authorities, to corrupt government officials to declining mental peace to eroding familial values to spreading terror in the society. But is anyone listening, is anyone bothered, does anybody have any time to devote to one of the problem areas that the society is facing and do something to at least create an awareness for it, if not make an attempt to solve it.
Everyone expects the garbage to be cleaned up by someone else conveniently ignoring certain basic facts that each one of us is, in some way or the other, responsible for the garbage. The society finds a very easy escape route of any problem that comes. There are basically three things that everyone in the society, in general, does to address a problem,
1) Ignore the problem,
2) Let the problem happen till a maxima is reached, and
3) Think that this problem is not going to hit me.
Unfortunately all the three approaches act as a positive catalyst in nourishing the monster that loves to devour the succor in the society. Pigmenting the core of problems with a plastic smile allows it to grow in isolation, assume an incurable form and steal nutrition from the same society that protects it like a parasite residing in a host.
Only those people are seen doing something to create awareness in the society, the ones who are badly smitten by some or the other problem in the society and even there the ratio of the total number of suffering people and those actually working to eradicate it maddeningly high. Only when the cornering and suffering grows beyond all tolerable levels within reasonable limits, do some people come forward to take the plunge into the dumping ground called ‘Society’ to cleanse it. Even then a majority of people think of suicide as a solution to end their problems.
One such reflection of incidences can be found in the alarmingly high number of suicides by married men of late. It is a well – known and an established fact that in any marital dispute the sentimental balance of the law, law – makers and law – executioners lies with the female partner as opposed to the male partner. With increasing number of false dowry harassment and domestic violence coming to forth and the number of divorces also rising alarmingly, it is no wonder that each year 56, 000 married men are committing suicides as opposed to 27, 000 married women.
The situation being so pathetic and despicable, yet do we see anyone doing anything about it. No. Even those who are affected by it want a quick fix and want others to do something about it. And those who are not affected by it have at most a few words of sympathy for them and nothing else. Save Indian Family Foundation, the largest and the only NGO in India, fighting for ‘Gender Equity’ and ‘Family Harmony’ receives over 200 distress calls from battered and shattered men all over India over its various help lines. But how many of them are ready to volunteer for a fight to eradicate this social evil of “Misuse of Women Protection Laws”. A discouragingly small number of a few hundreds.
More recently we had a spate of unfortunate and merciless terror attacks in the form of 8 low intensity serial blasts in Bangalore and 19 high intensity ones in Ahmadabad and 2 futile attempts in Surat. Analysis puts it as a total failure on part of the intelligence and surveillance agencies compounded with a condemnable low preparedness of the state governments in dealing with such situations. And these blasts are not something new. We had quite a number of them in the last few years be it Lucknow, Delhi or Malegaon. And yet such a big intelligence lapse!
But who is bothered? Everyone thinks as long as we are safe, nothing needs to be done. And truly no one will do anything either. People will discuss for a few days (perhaps I hope so, or maybe I am over – optimistic), media channels will run the stories for a few days, electronic and print media shall cover the event till they get something more sensational and then life will carry on as usual.
Even those terrorists who do this, know very well, that nothing is gonna happen and this fact is the largest confidence – booster for them. So this question goes to the society that be it the case of any problem, does it still want to wait till the lightning strikes it or is it ready to sensitize itself to sense over – impending social catastrophes and take steps to shatter its impact? Only the wearer should not know the pinch.
07.26.08
Marriage – The other side of the coin
Marital problems have started contributing to stress in a very big way. Day in and day out we hear people succumbing to marital problems with the growing numbers of suicides among married people especially males. As per suicide statistics provided by National Crime Records Bureau, for the years 2005 and 2006, close to 52, 000 and 56, 000 married men committed suicide respectively. And the same years noted a splurge in the number of dowry harassment cases filed as reflected in the number of such cases filed – 58319 and 63128. Coupled with that, if a study conducted by Center for Social Research on the conviction rate of such cases is anything to go by, it shockingly reveals that there is only 2 % conviction in such cases. This means 98 % of such cases are false, and thus a false claim of dowry harassment was made.
Not only that, based on that false statement, the husband and his entire family was arrested, put behind bars, made to cough out huge amounts to get a bail and had no choice but to fight a legal battle in an otherwise defunct and dead judicial outreach and was also subjected to malicious prosecution. For the charge of dowry harassment being false, the concocted stories of alleged torture would also bear no ground. Having thus said, section 498A IPC, being heavily misused has actually turned out into an assassin’s weapon rather a protector’s shield as rightly pointed out by the Honorable Supreme Court of India. Instead of making families, it is breaking families, for any woman who has falsely implicated her husband and in – laws in a false criminal case has lost their trust and the marriage has been dead for all practical purposes.
A recent study in Mumbai claimed 40 % of marriages registered in Mumbai end in a divorce. And most of such cases involve filing of a false dowry case in order to get a quick divorce with a hefty alimony. Unscrupulous girls, supported by ill – minded parents, especially mother, pampered by a biased legal system who is highly de – sensitized to husbands (read married men) have found this as a very easy way to earn tax – free money. And to add to that all of those so called marriages have been performed on some auspicious date / time in consultation with some purohit / pundit etc.
When marriages could last so strongly for ages down the memory lane, and those too were conducted on some auspicious date / time in consultation with some purohit / pundit etc., what has changed so drastically in recent times that marriages have become a source of business opportunity for women and a source of ignominy and stress for men? Save Indian Family Foundation, the single largest NGO committed to the cause of spreading the message of Gender Equity and Family Harmony in addition to providing free legal, moral and psychological support to the victims of false dowry harassment and Domestic Violence cases, receives on an average of 200 calls a week over its various help lines spread all over India and abroad as well from battered and harassed men who are either victims of the misuse of these laws or are subjected to Domestic Violence at the hands of their wives.
Have we come of the time to consult a lawyer rather than a pundit or a purohit to decide a marital knot? Especially a male does need to do so before tying the knot. For if the marriage does not work (which is quite possible in today’s dynamic socio – economic scenario), he will have to bear the brunt of the fallacy. A false case lodged with the help of the corrupt police force, sleeping judiciary and mercenary lawyers robs the man of his health, wealth, life, career and happiness. Even with a low conviction rate, the mental trauma that the man and his family including his mother and sisters and his father and other relatives undergo cannot be described in words and is by no means less than actual conviction.
But does life end there? Is the end of marriage, the end of life? Perhaps yes, but probably no. Looking at the alarmingly high and surprisingly suppressed suicide statistics of married males as mentioned in the first paragraph, it is probably true that for married males, end of marriage is end of life. But seeing the spirits of a few thousand volunteers at Save Indian Family Foundation, reality shifts. Here people have not only gathered strength to fight against the system and stride against the tide, but have also developed high amount of positivity in their life and learned to remain happy despite a despicable and pathetic married life.
Marriage can definitely be the first step towards family foundation but cannot substitute life itself. Life is too big and diverse and there are many things to be done in life than to waste it in crying over the split milk called a bad marriage. Like the volunteers at Save Indian Family Foundation has taken cudgels against not only the biased laws and their faulty implementation but also against the mindset that a woman will not break away from a marriage without justifiable reason. This is a bitter truth which the society needs to know, imbibe and live with it, till the time it refuses to change itself.
07.16.08
Open Letter to the Indian Embassy
I would like to introduce myself as a member of Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), an NGO in India, dedicated to the cause of spreading the message of Gender Equality, Family Harmony in India, in addition to giving free legal, moral and psychological advice to people who are caught on the wrong side of marital laws related to complaints of dowry harassment and Domestic Violence.
When I say, “to be caught on the wrong side” what I mean is to highlight the practice of implicating innocents falsely under these legal provisions and then harassing them, terrorizing them to make them accede to illegal demands.
IPC 498A The most draconian law highlights the major marketable features of this law. In short, under this law, any married woman can get her husband and in-laws behind bars at a mere complaint. No investigation is done in such cases and the police and the authorities behave in a totally one – sided manner to extort as much money as possible from innocent law abiding citizens.
As per a study conducted by the Center for Social Research there is only 2 % conviction in such cases and as such 98 % cases are false and are settled out of court after gross financial extortion of men and their families in the process taking advangtage of a defunct legal system and a corrupt executive environment.
Yet such draconian laws are existing and terrorizing citizens to the point of driving them to suicides. The suicide statistics for married men in the year 2005 and 2006 stand at 52, 000 and 56, 000 respectively whereas the same for married women stand at 26, 000 and 28, 000 respectively. More than double the number of men are committing suicides being exasperrated with a biased society and government.
This despite being the fact that men pay 82 % of taxes in India. But still they are yet to get a National Commission for Men and Men’s Welfare Ministry to redress their concerns. Men in India have no support system, no helpline to fall back upon in times of distress.
International studies world over have proved that both men and women have equal probability to be both victims and perpetrators of Domestic Violence, but still the Domestic Violence Act 2005, in India does not allow men to be complainants or women to be respondents. Only women can make a complaint and that too only against a man. How can such a stupidly drafted law be used to curb violence? It will only act as a catalyst for more violence to occur.
I do not expect any results out of this long email. My only intention is to create awareness about this grave miscarriage of justice going on in the name of WOMEN EMPOWERMENT in the country.
07.15.08
The Convenient Male Victim Theory
Dr. Rajesh Talwar finally gets a bail and will soon be acquitted as well since the police have failed to produce / gather any motive for the murder let alone any evidence against him. Over a month of harassment of a father who lost his daughter and that too police interrogation. Will the police answer for the reason of apprehending Dr. Rajesh for the murder without doing proper homework and just succumbing to outblown media trials.
Sensation crazy and TRP hungry media channels were flashing the case like some detective murder story and put so much pressure on the authorities that they caught the father as per the “Convenient Male Victim Theory” and harassed him for so many days without reason without even allowing him to sink in the fact that his beloved daughter is no more and has been murdered at a tender age of 14.
After he was released on bail, the media was happy celebrating, forgetting the fact that it was the same media whose pressure had led the father to being harassed beyond limits and was also made to take the blame of his daughter’s murder upon him. He was projected as a villain in the media ab initio and the media was projecting him in a very bad light even before either the motive of the murder was established or any evidence found against him, the media had already reconstructed the event – folding and flashed it across.
This was highly demeaning of national media acting in a highly immature manner just to gather publicity and riding on its convenient male victim theory. When no clear motive / evidence were available, catch hold of the nearest male relative of the murdered and frame a story to explain their conclusions. Now the media is happily flashing the bail news of Dr. Rajesh, and also showing the three actual accused, what accountability it will take to justify the harassment Dr. Talwar underwent.
If Dr. Talwar had committed the crime, why would he do it in his own house staying inside? Everyone ignored this simple question and happily believed the father to be the murderer of his own daughter. For how long will the males in society in general, and Indian society in particular, continue to live in suspicion? Suspicion of committing a crime, suspicion of having done something gravely wrong for being subjected to injustice, suspicion of breaking a relationship.
Do the society, the media and the government consider males as human beings having some basic rights? Every year 80, 000 males are committing suicide as per suicide statistics provided by National Crime Records Bureau, yet males in this country do not have a single helpline to fall back upon in case of a crisis, let alone a National Commission for Men or a Men’s Welfare Ministry to redress their grievances. This dismal state of males continues to exist irrespective of the fact that males contribute to 82 % of the taxes paid in the country.
Who will restore the lost pride, integrity and moments of togetherness with his wife Nupur Talwar when they had lost their child? The media had even finished the trial based on what they seemed to have happened and also showed mock interrogation sessions. Is this some kind of a joke that the media is playing. The media needs to sensitize itself highly in dealing with matters concerned with males. Males are just treated as criminals in the media for no fault of theirs. Aarushi had the Women and Child Development minister Renuka Choudhary speaking for her, but who spoke for Dr. Rajesh? None.
The convenient male victim theory needs to be dropped. In the whole episode, the invisible victim, Hemraj was conveniently forgotten just because he was a male.
Once again the civil society and the government are urged to look into the issues faced by the men of today. How they are being made convenient scapegoats in blind compliance with the Convenient Male Victim Theory? This cornering is leading the society towards an impending catastrophe waiting to happen, the consequences of which will remain unforeseen, untold and perhaps unbearable.
Redefining Dowry Death
Another potshot taken by the National Commission of Women at the social fabric, after the horrendous proposition to include alimony for live – in partners and removal of the adultery clause as a ground to deny maintenance to wives. This time it is related to the issue of dowry deaths. Their suggestion is to include all unnatural causes of death of a married woman within any time frame of married life to be viewed and investigated as a dowry case.
This is a totally uncalled for proposition and a logical rationale fails to understand how a biased assumption can bring down a social evil. Unnatural death “is a category used by coroners and vital statistics specialists for classifying all human deaths not properly describable as death by natural causes. Hence it would include events such as accident, execution, misadventure (being attacked by insects, reptiles, fishes, lions, tigers, bears, stingrays, or other wild animals), adverse outcome of surgery, suicide, terrorism, war.”
Classifying all these deaths as dowry deaths within 7 years of marriage is in itself absurd. To top on it, now a totally mindless amendment to remove the 7 years ceiling is not becoming of National Commission of Women, a body claiming to be the champion of women’s causes. Such propositions only lead to unnecessary bloating of statistics related to crime against women and create aggravated panic in the society for women. No one will want to have a daughter fearing that she might be killed for dowry and this false fear is giving rise to female foeticide and infanticide in the society.
Moreover IPC already has sections to deal with murder, IPC 302, abetment of suicide, IPC 306. There is no need to provide a special section to married women when the same is not available to men. Every year 56, 000 married men are committing suicide, but those 56, 000 husband killers are roaming freely in the society. IPC 304B related to dowry deaths cannot be entrusted to be generating the correct and dependable statistics of the menace called dowry because the law itself is biased and based on assumption. It assumes all deaths of a married woman within 7 years of marriage as ‘Dowry Death’. Classifying all deaths as dowry deaths is nothing but an attempt by radical organizations like NCW to create fear in the society by blowing out of proportions the statistics related to crime against women as these outblown statistics fetch them money from national and international organizations.
It will be a grave injustice to the husband and his family to book them under dowry harassment charges and put them under legal prosecution when he has just lost his life partner to an accident. Most of the suicides by married women for various reasons are just linked to a single cause of dowry and a bloated picture is presented to the society by the money hungry radical organizations like NCW who fail to recognize the mothers and sisters of men as women.
Is the pain of a mother / sister less when her son / brother dies than when her daughter / sister dies? NCW needs to answer this question. Who is going to give justice to those 56, 000 aggrieved mothers / sisters who lost their son / brother to a torturous wife? Yet the wife is roaming freely in the society. Why no punishment to the wife when on the death of the wife (due to any reason) the husband and his whole family put behind bars on a mere assumption that the death is dowry related.
Why this injustice to men? Do they not have basic human rights? 82 % of taxes are paid by men and yet no their no welfare ministry for them. And to add to that, men are subjected to heavy misuse of stringent legal provisions targeted against them like IPC 304B which deprives them of basic right of being proclaimed innocent until proven guilty as prescribed by Amnesty International, the International Human Rights Organization. There have been instances of men and their relatives prosecuted under 304B (Dowry Death) and the girl has been found living with some other man. Who will account for the harassment that the innocent husband and his relatives went through because of a biased legal provision and a defunct legal system? And the girl is not even punished!!!
It’s high time that radical and gender obsessed women’s organizations stop spreading lies in the society in the name of crime against women and stop breaking families in the name of women empowerment. We, Save Indian Family Foundation, an organization dedicated to the cause of spreading family harmony and awareness about the misuse of dowry related and other marital laws severely condemn the recent amendments proposed by NCW and make the following recommendations to the government.
1) Section 304(B) should not be retained in the law; IPC Section 302 already covers murder and IPC Section 306 covers abetment of suicide, and therefore Section 304(B) is only a duplication of law, which is gender-biased.
2) All cases of murder, including murder for dowry should be dealt with under IPC Section 302.
3) All cases of abetment of suicide, including those allegedly done for dowry, should be dealt with under IPC Section 306.
4) If IPC Section 304(B) is not removed from Indian law, then it should be amended and made applicable to men and women equally. Specifically, the word “husband/wife” should be replaced by the word spouse.
5) Section 304(B) treats the accused as guilty until proven innocent, thus, violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which proclaims that “everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty”. The law needs to be amended so that no arrests of any of the accused (man, woman or child) are made without proper investigation and written approval of police officials of the rank of DCP or above.
6) Those who misuse the section for settling personal scores should be heavily penalized because false allegations and prosecution can cause irreparable damage to the accused parties even if they are later declared not guilty.
07.09.08
Males, Non – Males and Females
All the characters in the blog are imaginary and have no resemblance to any person living or dead. Any co – incidence is purely co – incidental.
Kamini is married to Sanjeev keeping in mind his hi – paying job and the fact that his sister Natasha is married, their ancestral property, so post marriage she will be reaping all the benefits and will be able to repay her father’s losses. But things go awry as she finds it difficult to tame Sanjeev and decides to threaten him with a false dowry case to extort money from them in conjunction with her parents.
They set the setting with the local Circle Inspector (henceforth referred to as CI) and decide to teach Sanjeev, his parents and his married sister and her husband, a lesson. Police calls all of them to the police station and harasses them unnecessarily.
CI: “We have received a complaint of dowry harassment against you all by your daughter – in – law Kamini. So we will have to arrest you as per the law.”
Sanjeev: “But this is a false complaint, officer.”
Sanjeev was unable to comprehend the situation, as to why a false allegation has been leveled against him.
CI: “That will be decided by the court, as per law I have to arrest you till your bail happens. But if you listen to what she says, she is ready to take back the complaint.”
Now everyone is clear, that Kamini and her parents are trying to get upper hand in the marriage by fear and terrorizing them misusing the law meant to protect women and the police is hand in gloves with them.
Sanjeev: “But officer, we have evidences to prove them false here itself, there is no need to register a case for this. Give us a chance to present them.”
CI: “So now you are going to teach me legal procedure. We are not supposed to do any investigation. We have to convert the complaint to FIR and book all of you in the dowry harassment case and arrest all of you. Otherwise listen to what your wife says.”
Sanjeev’s mother spoke up now.
Mom: “But officer, my son is innocent and these laws are meant to protect females. How can you arrest us on mere complaint?”
CI: “I don’t know all that. For me the complainant is a female whom I have to protect. The complaint is against a male and other relatives are non – males for me. So I have to arrest all those males and non – males who are harassing this innocent female.”
Kamini’s in – laws try a lot to convince the CI that they are innocent but to no avail. Being innocent they refuse to cough up Kamini’s extortion demand. Thus, the 3 males (Sanjeev, his father and his brother –in – law) and the 2 non – males (his mom and Sister Natasha) are arrested on the female Kamini’s false complaint.
Strange but true. This is what happens in most of the police stations when a complaint of dowry harassment is received. One female wreaks havoc on all and sundry in the family, small children, senior citizens, pregnant sisters and yet the government is turning a blind eye to this Legal Terrorism simply playing it down saying they are doing all this to protect women and the misuse is very low to realize some political vendetta best known to them.
