Letter to Rajat Sharma and Anupam Kher

Dear Mr. Rajat Sharma  and Anupam Kher,

Reports suggest that you both are in the government's final list for single seat nomination of Rajya Sabha. One of you may feel disappointed when final candidate is announced. Connecting the dots in past, it doesn't surprise me and many countrymen that you both have controversial past.

Since Rajya Sabha candidates are not directly elected by people of India, instead by elected government. Now based on your controversial past and pro-government statements in recent years, makes me curious if such statements really helps? I think its time for both of you to come up with an explanation that "why you should be nominated?" Your explanation and government decision will help voters of India. This will help Indian voters to decide if they have voted for right government and if they haven't whom will they vote for next?

Your response to following questions will be really appreciated.

1. Why you should nominated, what is your agenda?
2. How your past supports your agenda?
3. Have you done anything favorable to present government?
4. Have you served for any government post or advisor?
5. What is your future plan for next 5 years? 

Thank you

When it is non-elected minister-in-charge then why not qualified one?

This has always been a matter of debate that a minister in-charge of a particular department should be an elected representative. Opinions matter from person to person. Talking about recent history of past 10 years, there has been examples when a non-elected representative have been selected as minister-in-charge for a department.  

Former prime minister of India (May 2004 - May 2014) with
Congress president Sonia Gandhi

Talking about former Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was also known as the great economist and most suitable person for the prime minister post, wasn't a public elected candidate and successfully completed 2 consecutive terms. There can be multiple reasons for economic crisis but people still believe that he was best suitable person for the post. 

"we can ignore the fact that only elected candidates can be minister-in-charge for a given department. Now the question is when a non-elected candidate can be minister-in-charge then why not qualified candidates? "

10 years of tiring governance and plunging economy, Indian voters elected NDA govt in May 2014 in the hope of Ache Din and growing economy. Controversy doesn't stop here and this govt also got 2 non elected minister-in-charge.  

Arun Jaitley, Minister of Finance
 (May 2014 - Till Date) 

 Arun Jaitley, who lost election from Amritsar is present finance minister who also held several key positions during past NDA government. Instead of working for key positions with Govt. of India he faces corruption and financial irregularities in DDCA scam. Some NDA party member raise voice against him alleging that he entered to Ministry of Finance through back-door as he is not an elected candidate. 

Smriti Irani, Minister of Human Resource Development
(May 2014  - Till Date) 

Next name on non-elected minister-in-charge is Smriti Irani, who is Minister of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) and have been in controversy since she joined this office as minister. She is alleged of providing different education qualifications with Election Commission of India (ECI) in the declaration form. Though her final qualification is not known yet and we consider her maximum qualification wouldn't be more than graduation. Recently court has asked University of Delhi and ECI to submit documents related to her qualifications. 

Smriti Irani was defeated by UPA vice-president Rahul Gandhi where Dr. Kumar Viswas from AAP was also running from that constituency. Usually high profile candidates selects safe seat as their running constituency and win that constituency by huge margin. This safe seat is either based on other party candidates or fixing the other party candidates. This was first time when two high profile candidates fought against each other when Aam Aadmi Party challenged them to contest. After this defeat it seems like a deal was finalized at the beginning when she accepted the AAP challenge. And the deal was either loose or win this high profile election collision, you will be awarded with one ministry. 

After seeing these three examples, we can ignore the fact that only elected candidates can be minister-in-charge for a given department. Now the question is when a non-elected candidate can be minister-in-charge then why not qualified candidates? Why we have run after controversial candidates who dent that position while being in-charge of that. If we explore our country we can find 1000 of qualified and experienced people, who are ready to serve for that position. What policy does stop them? Give those power hungry people some roles where they feel powerful and assign important and policy making posts to qualified and experienced ones. 

Party leaders can argue that such people will dent party image by their acts. In case of such party-denting activities from those chosen people, party can make it clear (or warn) to them before they join the office and even-though they are found in such activities, they can be released from their post. 

Good people always do good and great leaders always lead the nation. 

Vehicle driving education will bring road incidents down

Objective

Statistics says that there is 1 death in every three minutes due to road accidents in India. According to road collision article in Wikipedia “In New Delhi, the capital of India, the frequency of traffic collisions is 40 times higher than the rate in London, the capital of the United Kingdom.” [1]. (A lot of statistical data can be presented here but the problem will be same until some action is not taken to handle this) India, where number of vehicles are less than any developed country but more road accidents. These accidents causes many people to lose their life, property, money and time. As a result this causes damage to human life either physically or economically. If by some means, we can reduce these accidents it will be a great achievement for human life in India.

Motivation

frequently occurring accidents on roads which causes damage to human life. If one analyse any accidents, it can be easily find that it happened due to someone fault. Whoever was faulty, but it causes damage to human life afterwards. We can’t stop natural accidents but can reduce risks due to such accidents by taking some precautionary safety steps. For example, chance of death/damage in an accident can be reduced by 50% just by using seat-belt in a car. These deaths/damage can be further reduced by proper follow-up with traffic rules.

Problem Statement

There exist road driving instructions for every country, state and city. Some countries applies one set of rules across all the states some apply similar rules (with some differences) to each state. Now it is drivers responsibility to go through these rules and follow-up while drivings. In India, there is provision of written test and road test to get a driving licence. Unfortunately it is not being followed everywhere except few major cities. One can also get a licence very easily by paying bribe to concern officers. This way drivers don’t get chance to go through the road driving instructions and they don’t follow proper rules while driving on roads. If anyhow we can manage for drivers to go through road driving rules, we can reduce the number of accidents on roads. Not all the people who gone through rules, do follow while driving. But the number of drivers who follow road driving rule can be increased. Also, there are people who wants to follow traffic rules but due to lack of proper knowledge, they don’t follow them.

Implementation

Our aim is to teach people/drivers about road driving rules such that they follow these rules while driving. Safe driving will also reduce number of road accidents. At present since most of us don’t know proper rules and meaning of road signs. We need to implement a system such that everyone knows about road driving rules and proper meaning of road signs. There can be two ways of implementation.

1. School instructions as a course in Secondary and Higher Secondary Education
2. 32 hours (4 days or more) in class instructions from driving schools

Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Course Instructions

It is true that secondary and higher secondary education age is critical for all students. All the good and bad things they learn at this age, do last longer (sometime never lost). If a student learn good things at this stage, he never forget those good things and always try to implement in his/her life. Hence, if we manage to arrange road driving rules as instructional course for secondary and higher secondary education it will be great success. This way not only students will be benefited but they can also teach to their parents about these rules. Since this will directly related to their daily life, students will find it and easy and start implementing as soon as they know about these.

There are only limited number of road driving rules and road signs. These can be divided into three categories.

1. Category 1 driving rules and signs for Class 6, 7 and 8 (Secondary Education)

2. Category 2 driving rules and signs for Class 9 and 10 (High School Education)

3. Category 3 driving rules and signs for Class 11 and 12 (Intermediate Education)

Due to huge pressure from other courses and competitive exams, this course (for each above mentioned category) should be designed in such a way that students don’t feel any extra pressure. Only Pass and Fail should be awarded as result from this exam. Remember, our aim is to teach people about road driving rules and road signs, not to judge them by grades. Also, Pass/Fail award will not create any stress among students as grades from other subjects do.

Same course can be repeated each year under each category or each year it can include some new instructions (including previous year instructions) under each category. Class instructions can be once (or twice) in a week and exam will be half yearly. At the end students must pass 4 exams in Category 1 and 3 exams in Category 2 and 3 (every half yearly (or semester) exam is counted as one exam). In case of failure to pass number of required exams, schools/board provide a provision of re-exam for this subject only. Student can make 3 attempts to pass required number of exams. These attempts can be made at any time depending on students wish. A summary of course division is given in Table 1.

Table 1: Road Driving Rules and Road Sign course division

Category	Education	Total No of Half Yearly/Semester Exams	Min Exams Required to Pass	Board/ School
Category 1	Secondary	6	4	All
Category 2	High School	4	3	All
Category 3	Intermediate	4	3	All

Driving School Instructions

Transport departments in each state should identify driving schools (or give licence to driving schools) who provide  in-class instructions about road driving rules and road signs including road safety issues. These schools should charge appropriate fee from students. These instructions must be completed by each students in driving school before they go for road driving test with instruction driver. If any student miss any of the instructional class, he/she must go for make-up class before going to road driving with school instructor.

Proper functioning (delivering instructions) of driving school must be monitored by transport department.

It should be mandatory for a driver with learning licence that he/she must drive (or learn) the car/bike with a person (in passenger seat) having minimum driving experience of 2 years. He/she should not drive car/bike with more than one passenger while learning the car/bike. Once he/she got the licence, there must be restricted passengers in car/bike for certain years after he/she got the permanent licence. (new drivers make more mistakes than experienced, limited passengers will cause less distraction and less damage to others life)

Why one should go to Driving School??  

This is open question that why one should go to driving school and spent money there. The government can answer/implement this in indirect way. Every driver have an insurance and he pay premium for that insurance. This premium might be low which can be increased by increasing insured amount. Drivers who took driving courses have less probability of collision because they know rules well and will not hit any car. This way there is less chance that insurance company is paying any compensation for this trained driver. So if driver has gone to driving school, there is less chance of collision so Insurance company can give a discount to persons who learnt driving from certified driving schools. This discount should be significant if one don’t go to driving school. This will motivate people to go to driving school and have proper training/knowledge about road driving rules and road signs. And finally number of collisions will be decreased.

Insurance company can also give certain discount to students who passed all the exams during their secondary and higher secondary education. This will motivate student to perform well in this course during their education.

Driving Records and Insurance Companies

Driving records (Fines, tickets, challans, accidents/collisions etc.) should be shared with insurance company. Based on driver’s history, they can decide insurance premium. Insurance premium must go down with time if a driver have no incident history and go higher if driver is involved in any incidents. This will motivate drivers to drive safe. Safe driving will always results into less collisions, which is our aim.

Road Signs and Their Placement

In India most of the places are lacking road signs (except national and state highways). While releasing a tender of road construction, PWD department (or other concerned department) must mention about proper placement road signs and road markings. Proper placement of road signs must be cross checked after completion of road work. There are instructions about type of road signs and their placement, contractor must follow them. If road is constructed and contractor is failed to place proper road signs, concerned engineer must be responsible for that. There should be a system where a normal person can complain about it (Because now he/she knows about proper road signs, it’s meaning and necessity) and action should be taken.

Conclusions

Our aim is to reduce frequency of road accidents, god is not there to save us. It’s our job to drive safe and proper. We can reduce the chances of accidents. Better knowledge and better implementation will lead us towards better life.

Remarks  

The above described implementation about driving school is applicable to all kind of vehicles which require driving licence.

References

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collisions_in_India (Last accessed June 9th, 2014)

Real-Fake-Morphed-and-Internet

It depends on internet user what to hunt for. Internet is the source of information where all kind of information is available. While some users upload real information on internet including social media and others upload fake or morphed information.

When saying information, it can be a photo, video, written text, cartoon etc.

Social media is the easiest and accessible to everyone tool to share information. People uses social media for everything starting from business promotion, expression of opinion, spreading useful information, daily digest, religious belief, spreading lies and keep counting. While browsing through social media; one can find +ve, -ve, neutral, all kind of information.

Everything is available on internet, one just need to
verify first if the information is true/false

 

The easiest part in social media is spreading the information, which takes less than a second to like, re-tweet and share. Once any of these activities are initiated, information spread very fast.

While some people create original post and share true/false information, most of us are busy in spreading it without giving a second thought on it's impact on society. Some people do verify an information from multiple sources before spreading it but most of us don't verify and keep it sharing.

Sharing a true information will definitely make a positive impact on society because that info comes directly from society but think about sharing wrong/false/morphed information. Will it make any positive impact on society? And if the information shared made a negative impact on society (including we as humans) who will be responsible for that impact?

A self-explanatory pic about information on social media

Many social media users believe that any information spread on social media is true. And any information becomes Ultra-True if there is photo/video attached with it. When we have good and bad people in our society so they are on social media. Their action on social media will reflect their action on society and vice-versa.

At last I will appeal to all social media users to verify the information before spreading it. That information can make a big impact (+ve or -ve) on our society.

Thank you for reading this blog and hope you liked it. If you are agree with this please share and help social media users in building society we live in.

Adi