All you need to know about Ram Nath Kovind and Meira Kumar

Comparison between 2017 presidential candidates Ram Nath Kevind and Meira Kumar.
All you need to know except caste and religion.

	Ram Nath Kovind [1][2]**	Meira Kumar [3][4]
Education	B Com, LLB	MA, LLB, BA
Year of Birth	1945	1945
Criminal Cases	None	None
Professional Career	Advocate (24 Years)	Indian Foreign Services Officer (15 Years)
Years in Professional Career	24	15
Political Career	MP (2 times)	MP (5 times)
Years in Political Career	12	24
Position Held	Governor (Aug 2015 - Jun 2017)	Lok Sabha Speaker (2009 - 2014)
Ministry Held	None	1. Social Justice and Empowerment (2004-09) 2. Ministry of Water Resources (3 days)
Assets	~1 Crore (2007 ADR)	~38 Crore (2014 ADR)
Movable Assets	~12 Lacs	~2 Crore
Immovable Assets	~94 Lacs	~36 Crore
Liabilities	~27,000 (2007 ADR)	Nill
Committee Member	1. Welfare of Scheduled Castes/Tribes 2. Home Affairs 3. Petroleum and Natural Gas 4. Social Justice and Empowerment 5. Law and Justice 6. Rajya Sabha House	1. Indian Parliamentary Group 2. Consultative Committee, Ministry of External Affairs 3. Public Accounts Committee 4. Empowerment of Women 5. Education and Health program 6. Home Affairs 7. Personnel policy of central para-military forces 8. Food and Consumer Affairs 9. Environment and Forest 10. Rules committee 11. CSPOC 12. All India Congress Committee
Social and Cultural	NA	1. All India Samta Movement 2. RVAKV Society 3. Ravidas Smarak Society 4. Jagjivan Seva Ashram, Sasaram 5. Meera Kala Mandir, Udaipur 6. Jagjivan Ram Sanatorium 7. Rajendra Bhavan Trust 8. Senate, Patna University 9. Indian Council for Cultural Relations 10. Central advisory for Board of Education 11. DDA advisory council 12. National commission on population 13. National integration council
Position with Political Party	1. BJP Dalit Morcha 2. All India Koli Samaj	NA
Other Languages	English	English, Spanish
Controversy	Dalit remarks and Bangaru Laxman	Bunglow controversy
Awards	NA	NA

** Couldn't open the official profile of Ram Nath Kovind from archive.india.gov.in. Will update the information once I get access to the website. 

You can read original article here: The dilemma of Presidential nominations in India :: can we have another Missile Man? 

The dilemma of Presidential nominations in India :: can we have another Missile Man?

BHU has a large campus, lot of programs and students. In the year 2007, we gathered for the  convocation in order to receive our degrees. The venue was packed full and students were everywhere. We were not able to see main guests and our professors. Then the chief guest started addressing the students. Because he was far and out of our line of sight, so we gathered around the nearby loudspeaker and started listening to his inspirational speech. He was our beloved and favourite President Late Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. That was the dream convocation one can imagine. 

I have no idea what happened back in 2002 among political parties that we got him as the most beloved President of India. The party who nominated him at the time might have felt guilty of doing so because of some political developments afterwards. Apart from all those political ups and downs, we had a president who inspired students, yes the future generation: the key players to decide future of their country. All his achievements, publications, books and associations are available in various libraries and online. 

The president term is almost over and political parties are in hunt for another one. A president can use his/her powers to overtake prime minister, return bill, stop/execute a criminal's plea and many other things, but no party would like to have a presidential candidate who can be dangerous for them. In 2017, the process of electing president nominees is almost over and we have a ruling party nominee Ram Nath Kovind, and opposition nominee Meira Kumar. I would not have cared for this process of nominating candidates if we did not have Dr. Kalam as a president previously. Both the present nominees carry political background and have served the country in different roles. So I thought to dig a little bit deeper into their profile and see who did what. Even though it is not necessary to carry forward your experience to be elected as president, but if one has performed (not very well defined) enough for the country, more likely he or she will be loved more and may represent our country better.

Political strategies are derived by money, caste and religion; and even president candidate search is not free from these. Caste based strategies already infected present ruling party in selecting its candidate until opposition didn't select their candidate. Fortunately both the nominated candidates belong to similar caste group so the caste card won't play and people have started talking about their work and capability. I wish this was the agenda in debates since the beginning. I'm not interested in caste or religion, I was just looking if any of them can be loved as late Dr. Kalam who could bring the countrymen together by leaving the politics behind.

I searched the credentials of Meira Kumar and Ram Nath Kovind online. Unfortunately, information available was nothing significant. Most of the articles were recent (around June 19) from the media pages. All of them were discussing how they got nominated, what position they were working on, and for how long they worked. That's it! Wikipedia biography can be trusted in case of politicians as it contains a good number of citations and our government portals don't carry biography like wikipedia does. But even Wiki does not have significant information about all the politicians and most of the citations are recent based on news articles on president nomination. I looked into some other sources as well. 

	Ram Nath Kovind [1][2]**	Meira Kumar [3][4]
Education	B Com, LLB	MA, LLB, BA
Year of Birth	1945	1945
Criminal Cases	None	None
Professional Career	Advocate (24 Years)	Indian Foreign Services Officer (15 Years)
Years in Professional Career	24	15
Political Career	MP (2 times)	MP (5 times)
Years in Political Career	12	24
Position Held	Governor (Aug 2015 - Jun 2017)	Lok Sabha Speaker (2009 - 2014)
Ministry Held	None	1. Social Justice and Empowerment (2004-09) 2. Ministry of Water Resources (3 days)
Assets	~1 Crore (2007 ADR)	~38 Crore (2014 ADR)
Movable Assets	~12 Lacs	~2 Crore
Immovable Assets	~94 Lacs	~36 Crore
Liabilities	~27,000 (2007 ADR)	Nill
Committee Member	1. Welfare of Scheduled Castes/Tribes 2. Home Affairs 3. Petroleum and Natural Gas 4. Social Justice and Empowerment 5. Law and Justice 6. Rajya Sabha House	1. Indian Parliamentary Group 2. Consultative Committee, Ministry of External Affairs 3. Public Accounts Committee 4. Empowerment of Women 5. Education and Health program 6. Home Affairs 7. Personnel policy of central para-military forces 8. Food and Consumer Affairs 9. Environment and Forest 10. Rules committee 11. CSPOC 12. All India Congress Committee
Social and Cultural	NA	1. All India Samta Movement 2. RVAKV Society 3. Ravidas Smarak Society 4. Jagjivan Seva Ashram, Sasaram 5. Meera Kala Mandir, Udaipur 6. Jagjivan Ram Sanatorium 7. Rajendra Bhavan Trust 8. Senate, Patna University 9. Indian Council for Cultural Relations 10. Central advisory for Board of Education 11. DDA advisory council 12. National commission on population 13. National integration council
Position with Political Party	1. BJP Dalit Morcha 2. All India Koli Samaj	NA
Other Languages	English	English, Spanish
Controversy	Dalit remarks and Bangaru Laxman	Bunglow controversy
Awards	NA	NA

** Couldn't open the official profile of Ram Nath Kovind from archive.india.gov.in. Will update the information once I get access to the website. 

For a presidential candidate, some of the qualities I am looking for includes: national or international recognition or representation, have been any activist, have written any book, have chaired any game changing project, have associated with any movement, have done significant work as MP/MLA etc. Both the candidates have done their best in representing parliamentary committees. Comparing one to another, Meira Kumar has done better in committee representation and social activism. However, I couldn't find anything that proved to be as significant as the Missile Man.

For the presidential elections we are indirectly responsible as the president is elected by our elected representatives. If our MPs are efficient, free of criminal and corruption activities; then we can possibly expect some reliable decisions from them. There could have been a better face as the next president of India, but we are stuck between the candidates nominated by the members elected by us in the political parties. 

Online availability of drugs in Delhi hospitals

There are 67 locations (hospitals and warehouses) listed on Delhi Govt website where anyone can search the availability of drugs. Follow these simple steps to search for drug availability. 

1. Go to: http://dshm.delhi.gov.in/mis/storeposition.html 

2. Select the Hospital name from drop-down. Pin-Code is given with hospital name such that you can identify the nearby hospital in case you are not sure about its location. Even though if you don't know where the hospital is located, search on Google Maps by typing hospital name and pin code. 

3. Type the item or drug name. If any of three consecutive characters (e.g. ace) are matched with existing drug in list, its name will appear in the popup (please be patient, it might be slow depending on your network) and select the name you are looking for. If you are not sure about spell of drug name, you can see the list of available drug by clicking here. 

 

4. After selecting drug name, click on Show Store Position and drug availability will appear. The search will show Item Code, Item Name, Item Type, Form, Strength Specification and Current available quantity in the selected hospital. In addition, it also shows the report date and time such that you can verify at the hopital while you are at the hospital queue. 

5. Repeat steps 1 to 4 to see availability at another hospital or repeat steps 3 to 4 to see availability of another drug at the same hospital. 

This is it, next time you are planning to pick your prescription drug, or with doctor while the drug is being prescribed, please check its availability in nearby hospital. If drug is not available, you can request doctor to prescribe an available alternative. If it shows that drug is not available in the particular hospital, you can save your and other's time. 

Please share such that we all know about this service and its application. 

a third celebration to show our patriotism - India Vs Pakistan cricket game

Patriotism, used to come forward only on two occasions. 1. Independence Day (Aug 15) and 2. Republic Day (Jan 26). While some of patriots are serious that they exchanged the dates or did not bother to understand the difference between these two. Time kept going, politics kept changing and in this process we developed another occasion to show our pride. Yes the day of India Vs Pakistan cricket game. There is no doubt that sport games bring people together, but too much passion mixed with patriotism is dangerous for ourselves and our players. Things go worst when some of us start acting on behalf of law, decide the guilty and punish them. Imagine, where we are heading too? 

Now coming back to topic of newly developed occasion of showing our love to our country. Yes, the cricket game between India and Pakistan. Like many other games, every countrymen wants their team to win. And in sport, only one team is winner at the end. So, if we can celebrate a win, we should also have ability to celebrate a defeat. A celebration of defeat can also bring the countrymen together and show the sportsmanship to each other. But this has not happened during recent Champions Trophy final match. Defeat of team India put some of us (including some politicians and players) on fire and we behaved so un-mature that we became enemy of each other within our country. 

In the process of acting fast, we forgot that our action may bite our society. This all started from social media, where some super emotional people took in-charge and started a campaign to show patriotism. News media picked these from social media and showed their love for country. Rest of the well wishers of team India either fell in the trap or did not bother to check facts whether the video/picture is real and belong to current time. The people who got hurt during this process are like ghosts, who see what they want to see and believe in what they want to believe. The ghosts don't see each other, but there was Social Media Hoax Slayer who took in-charge and tried it's best to expose all the lies. 

Look at the incidents when some and us and news media fell in trap of fake and morphed claims. The posts and articles claimed that the incident was the celebration of Pakistan wins in Champion Trophy final. 

1. A video surfaced on social media claiming to be celebration of Pakistan win in Mumbai while the actual video was from Pakistan. Yes countrymen were celebrating win of their country. 

Image Source: http://smhoaxslayer.com/this-celebration-is-in-pakistan-not-mira-road-mumbai/ 

2. A video surfaced on social media claiming be celebration of Pakistan win from West Bengal. In reality, the video is neither the match win celebration nor from West Bengal. The actual video from Mar 2017 doesn't not contain Pakistan flag. 

Image Source: http://smhoaxslayer.com/neither-this-is-pakistani-flag-nor-is-this-celebration-of-pakistans-win/ 

Many other fake and morphed photos/videos can be found on social media. This was not enough, some of our fellas crossed another line and started abusing our players. 

Remember, these are the same players who bring charm on our faces when team India wins. It is our turn to show them our support and make them smile to overcome emotional damage from the recent match. 

A good read from The Logical Indian on India Pakistan Cricket match and people reaction across India can be read here. People got panic and broke their TV set and protested on street. The situation was so fearful that extra security personnel were deployed in MS Dhoni house in Ranchi. 

Image Source: https://thelogicalindian.com/opinion/icc-pakistan-india/ 

Remember, we can say whatever we want as our constitution give us this right. But be responsible at the same time and don't spread lies. Ethics don't allows us to spread lies. 

The Forgotten CWG Scam and Shunglu Committee

You might remember about Shunglu Committee from the chapter of Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party. You can read full story here. The committee did a really good job for the assigned task in Aug 2016 by submitting its findings in Dec 2016. And, thanks to LG office for taking a quick action on committee findings. Shunglu Committee findings and action taken can easily be understood as they don't have as many zeros as any other scam. 

Now why I'm mentioning about Shunglu Committee here? You will figure it out if you remember the 2010 CWG Scam. A scam discussed worldwide and which exposed our broken system to the whole world by demonstrating it in real time. This is year 2017; 7 anniversaries of scams and no major action on the accused; no recovery from the damn scam!!! A few more years, the files will disappear, burnt, evidences will be erased and accused will get another big opportunity and responsibility. If you remember, it was the same Shunglu Committee which was given the responsibility to find out irregularities in the 2010 CWG Scam. 

It was Oct 2010 when Shunglu Committee was formed to look into the irregularities of CWG scam (link 1, link 2) and submit its report in 3 months. After seeking more time in Jan 2011, committee submitted its report in Mar 2011 (link 1, link 2) and everyone went silent except some media debates. After 2 months of report submission, in May 2011, as every other accused, the Delhi Govt rejected all the findings from report and sent its response to Home Ministry. 

After some back and forth debates, in the next month (Jun 2011) PMO started examining the Shunglu committee report. FYI, by then, committee had submitted total 6 reports. A file photo of Vijender Gupta (Present leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly) can be seen along with other leaders submitting a memorandum to the Shunglu Committee Chairperson. In the photo, I'm not sure what the other leaders are involved in at present but both Vijender Gupta and Shunglu Committee are still active. 

Delhi BJP President Vijender Gupta along with Senior leaders Madan Lal Khurana, Mange Ram Garg and other delegation members meeting Shunglu Committee Chairman, V.K.Shunglu to submit a memorandum against the CWG corruption. A file photo: S. Subramanium. 

 PMO started examining the report on CWG scam in Jun 2011 and it took 2.5 years for them to complete its examination and take any action based on recommendation. It was Dec 2013, when PMO refused to release any information related to action taken in the alleged 2010 CWG scam. 3 years of inaction by the UPA govt as the accused were never tried, CWG scam became favourite dialogue among different political leaders. And believe me, this dialogue played a critical role in 2014 parliament and Delhi assembly election. It was again the month of Oct, 6th anniversary of CWG scam and different government (it used to be in opposition in 2013 when PMO refused to release any info) when CVC denied to share CWG probe report and we still don't know what actually were the findings in Shunglu Committee report and whether any actions were taken? Forget about it!!

In Dec 2016, after CVC denial, the 2010 CWG Scam main accused Suresh Kalmani almost got a bigger opportunity in Indian Olympic Association as Life President but due to some developments it lasted for less than 24 hours. For whatever reason (most likely the CWG Scam) he didn't (or couldn't ) accept the Life Presidency of IOA, but his choice of being a president itself is questionable. And this confirms that, no matter what kind of murder, accusation, IPC act you are facing; if you get political backing, you can't be stopped. 

There is no doubt that our system has developed in a way that it requires political willingness to take any action. You name any type of incident, there will be examples when political willingness mattered even though the inquiring agency and office of execution remains same. Recent actions in AAP episode is a perfect example. It is the same Shunglu committee recommendation which made Delhi LG Office (under control of central govt) to take action. All this happened while the proceedings on the recommendations on 2010 CWG Scam from the same Shunglu committee are not taken by the same govt. 

Rest, Aam Aadmi Party also promised to open 2010 CWG Scam and ACB registered FIR against Shiela Dixit in CWG street light scam during their first 49 days of government. In another case of the same scam, 4 MCD officials and 2 others were jailed and the firm was fined. But, ACB case couldn't make much progress after its registration (haven't seen any report on this). Most likely this case doesn't have any political backup. 

At the moment, active politician and present leader of opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta (with experience as petitioner and political connection with the present BJP govt), present Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party and once upon a time party of opposition (present ruling party); if all come together then the present opposition forces can't stop them in accelerating all the pending CWG Scam cases and punish the guilty. A single example of this kind may stop some of the future scams.

TV Debates and Panelists

Below are the faces of panelists from Aaj Tak live TV debate on recent farmer crisis in MP where 5 farmers have been shot dead by police. Except Master Shyoraj Sing (Kisan Neta) and Yogendra Yadav (he has been associated with Jai Kisan Andolan for long and understands the statistics); everyone else is picked up randomly from each political party. This is not just about this debate, similar situations have been observed in most of the TV debates. Political Party spoke persons are fixed and their time with news channel is also fixed. In the selection of rest of the panelists, journalist (or show host) does not do homework and calls one person from rest of the parties.  

Faces on Aaj Talk Live TV debate on farmers crisis in MP (on June 8, 2017)

With highly dynamic politics and changing topics day by day, we may not blame journalist for fair selection of panelists. Journalists and TV hosts don't have time to do homework and if any of them have time to do so, there is no airtime for them because by the time they are ready with list of panelists, there is another trending topic to be focused on. With this dynamics, we forget the issues very soon and move on. Who cares if the problem (which was problem at some point of time) is solved or not. Real and neutral journalism is diminishing with the rise of WhatsApp, Facebook and twitter news. 

Going back to the TV debate discussion... We still have some space on TV screen and in future, few other party rep will fill in another rectangle. Journalists are doing fair job in bringing politicians (public rep) to TV debates. Some of TV debates with such panelists have gone worse and ended up in shouting and fighting. Even some of the TV hosts don't allow their panelists to speak. In case there is any neutral or expert invitee in the panel, he/she is silent or ignored in most of debates. Sometime one-to-one interview with subject matter expert is more fruitful than congested TV debates. 

Other potential debate panelists which could have been integral part of this debate but are missing would have been: 

1. Agriculture advisor to central/provincial ministry 
2. Member of agriculture policy committee 
3. A non-political professor or statistician who worked on farmer suicide data  
4. A retired (or on duty) judge who has given verdict in the past related to farmers issues 
5. A senior journalist who brought major farmers issues in past 
6. A NGO rep who is working for betterment of farmers for a long time 

From the panelist faces given in the picture, only KC Tyagi has committee experience and you know which committee? Yes, Parliamentary standing committee on Industry and not on agriculture/farming (or related). But he is not a bad choice to be a panelist. Baburav Mane from Shiv Sena is 10th pass, facing criminal charge under IPC Section 143, 145, 146, 147 and 174 (more info); what fruitful outcome we can expect from him. 

I won't count Agriculture, Finance, HRD or Home minister to be part of these debates as they are very busy and avoid appearance on TV debates but advisors would have been a better option. Having such people will not only make the debate fruitful, but also it will be more likely that discussed changes might occur as part of policy change/update in future because panelists are the real person working behind the curtains. 

Developments since May 2017 on India-made EVMs

May 9th, 2017 when AAP's software engineer turned MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj demoed EVM tampering in Delhi Assembly. The debate on EVM tampering (which is not new) was going on among people and some media channels also started discussing. I still believe that EVMs are hackable and this belief is not because of Arvind Kejriwal. He is the latest person to bring this issue up and I supported this idea since 2014. Our system works differently and we lack independent organizations which can make some independent analysis with experts and submit their report from time-to-time. Even if there is such institution, our govt and commission should welcome them and accept their report/analysis. 

Lets have a look at recent developments after Saurabh Bhardwaj demo in Delhi Assembly. 

May 4: EVM hackathon in last week of May, announces Election Commission 

Such reports were on media news and there was no official press release on ECI website. 

May 9: Saurabh Bhardwaj demo in Delhi  Assembly (see video above). 

May 9:  ECI Press release that EVMs are non-hackable (ECI press release) 

May 9: Status report non-hackable EVM (ECI report). You can also read my previous blog on this.  

May 12: All party meet organized by ECI (ECI press release). In this press release it was mentioned that: 

CEC also informed the political representatives that the Commission will hold a challenge and offer opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that EVMs used in the recently concluded Assemblies elections were tampered OR that EVMs can be tampered even under the laid down Technical & Administrative Safeguards

May 12: Media reports surfaced that ECI will hold an ECM hackathon challenge while there was no such official press release from ECI except the above mentioned paragraph. 

Report 1: Election Commission To Hold EVM Hackathon Challenge 

Report 2: Open Hacking Challenge at End of May, says Election Commission

In the meantime, India-made EVM hackathon challenge organized in Botswana surfaced in the news and it was claimed that Bharat Electrical Limited (BEL) will be part of it. Later BEL declined such reports and distant itself from the challenge after the claim that Botswana hackathon challenge can't hack India-made EVM. This episode got over after this as BEL is not part of it anymore whereas BEL did give a demo on operation of EVM in Botswana. 

Remember Kapil Mishra from AAP episode in between and the amount of media coverage and debates? 

May 20: ECI announced EVM challenge on its press release (ECI press release) stating a detailed report similar to EVM status report released on May 9th. The rules about participation were also mentioned here and only two mode of EVM tampering were allowed. 

a. Using press of combination of keys on CU or BU or BOTH, or

b. By communication to CU or BU or Both via external wireless/Bluetooth/mobile phone etc. 

This press release again mentioned EVM history, strong room security, EVM history from The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and USA. Report strongly mentioned that EVMs are tamper proof and proposed challenge on Jun 3rd does not allow any physical modification to EVMs. 

Citing this restriction, AAP wrote to ECI on May 26th that why it is running away from "no-holds-barred hackathon" as reported by media around May 12 (as I mentioned there was no such press release from ECI), ECI returned to AAP that there no such promise made. You can read full letter here. I still don't understand that it was media who reported it wrong or it was someone from ECI that leaked this information to media? Factually, if something is not released officially then it should not exist. Same issue was raised by Arvind Kejriwal in his tweet after such news surfaced around May 12. 

By the deadline to inform ECI about the intention to participate in the challenge, only two parties submitted their interest. Later on June 3rd, on the day of actual challenge (I wont call it Hackathon as it never existed) both the parties didn't participate and ended up with some suggestions about educating people. You can read full press release here. 

About the questions raised for municipal elections, ECI turned away saying that EVMs for municipal elections are not provided by ECI so it can't be held accounted for. Yes, we will agree with you as one should not be held accounted for a work one is not responsible for. Even though both the EVMs looks similar and may have the possibility of getting mixed up with other elections, then why??? Because there are super cops and 3rd generation strong room. 

So far with the EVM episode, I have learnt a lot about present EVM, their security, strong room and recent development in different countries about the use of EVMs. In two important press releases, ECI cited history of EVMs in The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and USA using various sources (link available in press release) but forgot to cite conference paper which described the detailed procedure of hacking the India-made EVM. When it happened, ECI discarded the hacking technique used in the research paper and jailed the author Hari K Prasad for EVM theft. Yes, EVM was stolen from the most secure strong room of ECI.