The following piece in the HT 07-10-08 reflects what people like me are going through today ..hence I present it here for you verbatim...

- about the current state of affairs of the nation and how it has impacted people like me..

The last line underscores the mindset of people like me, who feel helpless about the law and order situation around me, are seeking... and believe me, we are not insane, when we demand a gun for ours and our family protection....

are we not looking at signs of what one can call.. a civil war????

on a side note, I see a parallel between India today and the US of the past, which might have led the gun laws to be set up there 'cos I think the US has probably gone through similar times before it reached today's state.
But that does not help me today 'cos my safety is at stake and I need protection from what the state has failed to control... increasing violence and reducing value of the human life....
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Searching high and low for the law - Gautam Chikermane, (HT)

There are two forces of physics acting upon a changing India today. On the economic front, as India expands into global terrains, a centripetal force is gathering momentum, best represented by the country’s 8 per cent growth rate. This force, however, is being pulled back, through an equally strong centrifugal force that looks inward, is fragmented and savage in its execution. Caught in between are the rest of us. If economic development and mass prosperity have to be delivered, the politics of violence that the centrifugal force represents needs to die. And there lies a political opportunity for
Elections 2009.

The most high-profile wart of this centrifugal force is the Nano’s undignified exit from Singur. Last week Ratan Tata had said that Mamata Banerjee had pulled “the trigger on his head”, forcing him to move out of West Bengal to Gujarat, the trigger being his employees’ safety.
Earlier, L.K. Chaudhury, CEO of the Italian company Graziano Trasmissioni, was beaten to death by workers in Greater Noida, some 20 minutes from the national capital, with the Labour Minister subtly trying to build political capital from the crime by saying, “This should serve as a warning for managements.” (He later backtracked, but the damage was done.)
North Indians are being targeted in Mumbai by Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena as an investment into future elections to garner jingoistic support. Churches are being burnt in Orissa and nuns raped under the blind eyes of the police while the state’s highly articulate Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik says he’s doing his job.
A young journalist dies a mysterious death in Delhi and its Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit says women should not be “adventurous” and that companies, not the police, should take responsibility for their safety.
The message from our politicians who have built walls of protection with taxpayers’ money around themselves and their families: India is,and will continue to be, run by thugs, so please watch out for yourselves.

As the rest of us take events like these in stride and get desensitised by the never-ending images on TV, permanent headlines in newspapers and infinite opinions on blogs, never has the need for law and order as the first and foremost electoral expectation of voters been so high, so acute. Law and order is something we are supposed to take for granted. It is only riding this safety infrastructure that we can do anything else — pursue jobs, buy groceries, watch films.
On the other hand, we are gradually beginning to accept lawlessness,particularly by the rich, the powerful and the organised mobs they manage to cobble, as one more dinner-table discussion — ‘Pass the death toll, please.’ As this anarchy gets political support, we are gradually being pushed into a corner, where an unvoiced frustration with governance is systematically eating into our democratic and civilised innards. With weapons in the hands of a small clutch of ineligible political aspirants, the man on the street has never been in as much physical danger as today.

Lawmakers are breaking the law as if it’s their birth right. And when stopped — as Virendra Kumar Khatik was, as he tried to barricade the arms of the law from an anti-encroachment drive, only to face collateral damage — action is taken, not against the honourable Member of Parliament for attempting to come in the way of the law, but against the junior policemen who tried to implement it. They’ve been charged with an attempt to murder and have been suspended from duty. Shed a tear for them.

Those whom voters have entrusted with democratic power and white car privileges — and with them the responsibility to provide law and order — are all but numbed into submission under this new force gathering strength, issue by issue, in state after state. Leadership at the highest levels is reeling under the weight of a moral compulsion to let people, who any right-minded person would call murderers, rapists, repeat offenders, and bad characters, have a free run on the rest of us, feed on our livelihoods, our fears. And our freedoms. (“Today, terrorists are being worshipped,” said Justice J.N. Patel referring to Raj Thackeray, who, in turn, instead of feeling the fear of the law as any law-abiding citizen should, is brazenly asking the court to “define a terrorist”.)

The CPI(M)’s West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee virtually offered a free hand to Mamata Banerjee and her mob to stop workers seeking nothing more than an honest day’s job from working. The Congress’s Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is standing still, watching non-Maharashtrian citizens of India being beaten and threatened, their businesses, taxis and trade being destroyed. The Biju Janata Dal’s Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has nothing more than lofty words to offer Christians being mauled in his state.

We, the silent majority, have allowed this small band of hoodlums to decide whether we have the right to work, to religion, to celebration, to life, to love. Too busy to look beyond the prosperity that the economic centripetal force has brought, in the form of our 2-BHKs and iPhones, we are allowing a new political culture to invade our country.
It’s almost as if we are being conquered all over again, this time by some of the smartest minds this country has produced, minds — like the smart lawyers, accountants and financial engineers who recently ran the global financial system aground — that are finding and punching holes in the law to usurp power.
A leveraged buyout is underway, where a small bunch of private interest groups cobble together to create visible damage for maximum impact. We are being forced into believing that violence is the currency of political or social intercourse in a modern, trillion-dollar economy. That if we want something bad enough, we can just go out and collect thugs. This faith needs to be destroyed. These mobs and their political masters need to be dragged under the purview of the law, before this belief system becomes a mass religion. For any responsible party, this presents a so-far ignored political opportunity. In the last elections, with a focus on economic growth, our attention moved from ‘roti-kapda-makaan’ to ‘bijli-sadak-pani’. It’s time now to go back to basics and devise a new slogan around ‘suraksha-kanoon-dand’ (safety-law-punishment) — and implement it ruthlessly. Political profits are guaranteed.

Until that happens, can anyone tell me where I can buy a gun?
(C) HT 07-10-2008

I have been attached to this city over a long time. I in a way fell for it's open grounds, spaces and greenery which have always been a part of my living times all along.
So it was probably nature that makes me connect with this city.
But with the recent times, even that connection seems to be wearing off.
The city wears a deserted look, with all the big trees, 50-100 yr old trees being felled for want of space.

I have lately reached a conclusion that this city is on the verge of going into negative growth in real terms than really showing all round growth.

I will explain with simple instances of locations which anyone would assume would have changed positively over the last 10 yrs. But unfortunately, the situation is in the exact opposite.

before I write anything about the locations or the city in general, I must admit that the attitude of the citizens of this city has degraded to the worse that one can experience.
The reasons are many - the city has an influx of people from the nearby villages (which themselves are in the state of becoming small towns or extensions of towns).
The citizens have a VERY HIGH LEVEL of immaturity written all over their face and they inherit the aggressiveness that comes with this immaturity.

The citizens have very limited levels of patience and those who belong to the uncivilised gentry have no patience at all.
I have had instances when people would ram their bikes into mine though i am right at the edge of the traffic and then turn around showing aggression lest their show gets spoilt.

On the other hand, the apathy also has increased towards any incident. There have been incidents where people have been hit by vehicles or have been attacked at the slightest provocation and the rest have just watched the duel unfold.

People carry knives and sickles which they have no qualms about taking out at the time of any slight altercation to show their might, and they would not think twice using it either 'cos the law and order has taken a back seat and takes no action on erring citizens. money power has come to rule the roost as in most cities of the country.

coming to the degrading situation of public attitude, the locations which are these symbols of deteriration are
a. Jail road - the junction and the area around there has turned into a virtual mayhem. Especially the signal where there is no order in following the rules of traffic.
People do not care about pedestrians at any place in the city, esp. now with the city roads being dug up or being dug out since ages, where there seems no scope for any road to exist and unruly people driving bikes, scooters, autos and 4 wheelers consider the road their sole domain to drive.
Imagine a 100 thousand people thinking this way on narrow streets and you have the situation of the city roads and junctions.

On top of this, the parking of vehicles has assumed hugely mismanaged proportions.
The city has NO parking system. You would find streets where people have parked bikes, hapazardly, and next to the bikes, you would find 2 rows of cars parked. Effectively a 40 ft road is reduced to a 10 ft for both sides of traffic, with SUVs and cars and autos not only plying along those roads but also making random U-turns and reversing to get into bylanes where there is virtually no parking rule.

Another aspect of driving esp. at night is that everyone drives with their headlights on high-beam. On top of this, there are some folks who, in order to show off their new found immaturity put white neon headlamps and drive with full high beam, virtually blinding people driving on the opposite side. Esp. since there are no road dividers, the chances of one individual getting blinded and tailgating the one in front is very high.