Shahjahan’s “Moorti” and Other Absurdities in Agra

Re: # 54 that is what we want to do, and visited various countries around to see if this would bring any joy.

I agree with you,this tendering will soon become a global thing and the expensive coder from SF and the guy in the village in India will be bidding for the work....it will bring down the cost of code per line....and make the US just as competitive. Time will tell.

Re: # 53

I dunno if you will be surprised, I was down with a viral fever and decided to opt out for 10 days. We had some work and the client was ok to let me work from home. A colleague who broke his leg also did the same thing for a month.

Tender system gonna happen sooner than we expect :-).

Re: # 51 that will only happen if the project is broken down into pieces and each piece put out to tender (a weblist). Then the single guy from his terminal in a village in the bondooks bids for this piece of work and delivers it.

Unfortunately that aint going to happen very soon - in the future maybe. Till then you canot avoid the commute to work unless you are a mega_bucks man and run the show.

And all other ugly side effects.


Read:- And avoid all other ugly side effects.

Re: # 49

Tvarad,

I am expecting the day when 'work from home' becomes the norm. In a way I do the same thing in the office. I work on the metaframe of my client's machine, which I can easily do from home. When a majority of us get that liberty, Bangalore's congestion woes might lessen. You see its all in the mind. I would prefer to go back to my village, live with my parents and do the work from there.

If this happens on a large scale, Bangalore will have
1. Surplus water and power
2. Lesser traffic and pollution
3. Affordable real estate and essential commodities

And all other ugly side effects.

I will also get to take care of our horticulture :-).

Khan Ayub Khan,
Tumhe Parha-Likha Samajh kar Parh liya thaa.
Tum tau pakistani nikle.

vengataramanan #45:

"Only when the lowest common denominator of the society feels bad about the state of the surrounding we will start to behave responsibly towards our environment and also start demanding the governing bodies vociferously."

Well said. I don't think India can force decisions from the top down as China is doing to affect social change. We Indians are, to use Amartya Sen's words, too argumentative to embrace the Confucian work ethic. Planning can happen only after stomachs are full.

That said, it just grates to see how broken municipal government is. Bangalore International Airport was started a few years ago by a private consortium and is going to be ready in a few months. It's a good 20-30 miles to the city centre, the existing roads to it are clogged and the city planners are only now talking about how people are going to reach it. I think of the tremendous loss in terms of efficiency, the jobs that could have been created and so on.

Re: # 44

ekalavya, bhayya, kya haalchal hain.

Sri Khan sahib Mian is on a trip why spoil it for him with rational.

You need to do a shock horror thing and reinforce his prejudices. You are failing in your duties.

Ayub,

It is so terrible for you to hear the khabar of jahangir being called a murti and some hindus chanting Om at taj. Terrible insult to a religion.

Do you have any opinion on the bombing of budha statues recently in pakistan. I am sure that islam says that idols should be smashed. So it is OK for you as muslim.

Pathetic Ayub...simply pathetic for an educated pakistani.

The thing about "Shahjahan ki moorti" and the saffron-robed man reciting Om in a congregation of Muslims look concocted to say the least.

Tvarad,

It is very common among us to blame the faults in the governing mechanisms rather than looking at the causes. I believe whatever mechanisms we put in practice, they are bound to fail. It is the case of giving a corn to a starving farmer. We have a multi-layered society which has different needs, convictions and ideas. What is important to people belonging to one plane need not be important for the rest of the population.

We have varying
1. Standards in terms of honesty, cleanliness etc...(Any drainage system would be a great thing to have for a man who has not seen one)
2. Needs (also conflicting)
3. Ethics

And the list can go on.

These variations can be levelled only by time. Common people aspire to reach the next immediate comfort level. Only when the lowest common denominator of the society feels bad about the state of the surrounding we will start to behave responsibly towards our environment and also start demanding the governing bodies vociferously. Even the men who form the governing bodies would have developed taste when the LCM acquires that.

Ayub Khan

Don't know whether you are from UP or not, but you can be 200% sure that poor kid said "Yehan shahjahan ki mitti padi hai" not "Yehan shahjahan ki moorti hai."

That 'mitti' expression is not that uncommon for graves, although I heard it used only in the villages. May be the kid was a first generation city dweller, like me.

You smart shahari log have to be a little more patient with us.

-----------

No Hindu in his right mind would call a grave a moorti. You probably don't realize how absurd that thought is, Mr. Oak notwithstanding.

Tvarad,

(One of the first steps, to solving a lot of these problems, is to mandate state level government powers to cities that cross a certain population, say 5 million. This will be in the highest traditions of democracy to provide urban populations with accountable governments. There would obviously be opposition from linguistic nationalists (imagine Bal Thakerey thundering about outsiders setting Mumbai's agenda). Also, state level politicians would be very reluctant to let go of their milch cows.)

What do you guys think?

Right on both counts. Correct solution and will be opposed for the same reason that you have cited.

Regards

I have been doing a lot of thinking about why so many cities in India are teetering on the edge in terms of planning, providing services and the like. Obviously Agra is no exception. Here are my thoughts:

1) Democracy has placed power in the hands of people who have never tasted it before and, worse, don't know how to handle it. Most of these guys come from hand to mouth existence backgrounds and town planning is an alien concept. It's like giving responsibility for the seed corn to a starving farmer. Most likely result is that there is not going to be a crop!

2) Cities have always been seen as the stepchild to rural areas and the concept of rapacious townspeople ripping off poor innocent villagers of their share of development pie has been actively encouraged to seek popular support. So towns have been neglected in favor of villages (to be truthful, the latter are not much better off either).

3) Successive governments have not encouraged decentralized growth, i.e encouraging multiple metropolitan cities to emerge in states. Hence people stream into established cities from rural areas in search of employment and overwhelm any efforts at enforcing town planning.

4) Government payroll is basically used for social experiments. Hence municipal corporations are filled with people without the requisite expertise, which means that town planning again suffers.

5) Most municipal decision-making positions are filled by political patronage and are essential in maintaining the parallel political economy that is based mostly on bribes being collected by officials and sent upwards to the party in power. This results in poor urban planning and implementation decisions being made.

One of the first steps, to solving a lot of these problems, is to mandate state level government powers to cities that cross a certain population, say 5 million. This will be in the highest traditions of democracy to provide urban populations with accountable governments. There would obviously be opposition from linguistic nationalists (imagine Bal Thakerey thundering about outsiders setting Mumbai's agenda). Also, state level politicians would be very reluctant to let go of their milch cows.

What do you guys think?

Ayub sahib's article symbolizes that same disease of the abnormal allergic hypersensitiveness that has been lately afflicting the Muslims all around the world -- chooee tu mooiee.

Benadryl my friends Benadryl.

by the way where did those Multani Morons got the "Multani mitti" without Multan in India?

Re: # 37

Captain,

My Punjabi friends enjoyed Laloo-Khaith aka Liaqtabad, then there is Mukka Chowk in Azizabad (home of AH), a sight to see.