Archive for January, 2010

Compulsory Voting: The New Fatwa?

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Voter apathy is something to be lamented about. However, the quick-fix solutions that politicians and people offer for national (and also for the not the larger) problems is to be lamented even more. It seems that idiocy is at a premium when it comes to solving problems that affect the masses.

Some years ago I read about the inmates of a home for mentally handicapped. The directors, or someone of that ilk, decided to sterilize all the women inmates because they were repeatedly getting pregnant. The unscrupulous men who were forcing themselves upon these helpless women were not blamed because the directors, presumably, discovered that the act of getting pregnant was more serious than the act of rape. It also did not occur to them that sterilizing the men could have the same result. Even if that had occurred to them, they would not have dared to do that because imposing a punishment on normal people is not as easy as imposing a solution on hapless women.

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Truth Does Not Always Prevail!

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

We Indians have always believed in Satyamev Jayate, and rightly so. Truth shall prevail, and only truth shall prevail. However, often we fail to grasp the practical outworking of moral and philosophical truths.

While it is true that Truth shall prevail, and that ultimately only that which is true shall prevail, this does not automatically mean that things that are true and people that are truthful shall be victorious in the short run. Not does it mean that the declaration of the truth will automatically cause people to fall upon each other to embrace it. If the crowd rises to fall upon each other, it would in all probability to kill the messenger of truth, and the other way round.

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