COMMENTS ON March 1, 2014

http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/government-official-found-dead-with-wife-and-children-at-delhi-home-489967?pfrom=home-lateststories

Some steps to reduce supply of subsidized gas cylinders:

Commercial establishments who are charges very heavily for gas cylinders buy on the sly gas cylinders available to general public after subsidy. To discourage this and also to encourage efficient use, government can think of variable subsidy. If a consumer eligible for 3 cylinders in a quarter buys only 2 and surrenders back the third, he should be allowed at least a part of the subsidy saved by him while buying the fourth and when the last cylinder of the year is bought, all balance subsidy available to him should be adjusted in its price. Cylinders should be embossed with a serial number and associated with delivery. Later when commercial establishments are checked the cylinders lying there should be verified so as to eliminate black market. In poor areas, surprise checks should be made to see if the cylinders supplied are actually being used, by weighing their content after about two/three weeks and those who are found to be selling these cylinders in black market, should be banned from future supplies at least for a couple of years. These steps will go a long way in eradicating black market.

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/sc-verdict-on-death-sentence-commutation-patently-illegal-centre/

Death Penalty - Supreme Court is wrong

In this matter one will have to agree with the Government's stand. Impending death will of course cause mental agony to anybody. But any delay in execution cannot be viewed only as a cruel act. The condemned might even consider it as a boon because it gets him some more time to live, albeit in jail; but compared to the crime which he had committed and for which he had been condemned to death, any agony, if at all, he feels will be nothing terrible. Hope is a great feeling when you are faced with calamity. When his date of condemnation seems to be moving farther and farther away, more likely the condemned feels more and more hopeful about ultimate freedom and less and less afflicted with cruelty. After all, hope is life. Is it also not a fact that as time passes, even the worst or the best of emotions run out of steam? It is known that those who are condemned and who could afford, exhaust every which way they could prolong the date when they would be meeting Him. If it were really so cruel leading to excruciating pain, don't you think everyone who is condemned to death will rather commit suicide than waiting to be hanged, which he knows will be worse than suicide? It will be cruel if you condemn an innocent to death and also make him wait for that to come. But it will not be cruel in the case of those who have been held to have committed one of the rarest of rare crimes, i.e. killing another human being cruelly.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Indias-bestspeakers-to-cross-swords-at-TOI-debate/articleshow/31192465.cms

Not all popular ideas are good ideas:

Not everything popular can ever be good for the populace, like governance. Governance demands discrimination between what is urgent / important / economical / possible and what is not, besides a lot of control over everything. It requires implementation of any decision taken after due consideration and consultation, without diluting or changing it. It will, of course, affect some adversely, but the if the decision was taken in the interest of many, the government should be willing to put up with any amount of criticism. It is quite possible that the government might rightly believe that certain decisions taken today will be in the interest of the nation in the long run, but there might be some hue and cry from vested interest to look as though the government is wrong. Most such decisions will NOT be popular. What we need is a leader who will have the trust of the people who believe the leader has always had their interest at heart and he will not be doing something against their interest in the short or long run. The nation gets into problems when the leader starts twisting policies to increase his popularity. If he does, in the long run, he will not only lose his popularity, the nation will also lose many years of development.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kapil-Dev-bats-for-Subrata-Roy-says-hes-a-patriotic-man/articleshow/31236687.cms#write

Subrata Roy is not a cinema star!

We see the courts giving months of leave from jail for a cinema actor, because of the alleged sickness of his wife who is not even in the hospital and the Supreme Court refusing to give a few days extension to an industrialist to appear before it, so that he could attend to his mother who is in hospital probably on deathbed! No wonder our courts and justices do not have any credibility!