I Spy Hope

It makes sense that one of India’s most successful films of all times is one called 3 Idiots. Being idiotic seems to be a national pastime, particularly if you’re in the government. We have a Home Ministry whose representative, the Additional Solicitor General, thinks homosexuality is against the order of nature. The ministry later clarified that despite whatever its representative may say in a court of law, the Home Ministry doesn’t have a position on homosexuality. Why its representative is spouting his personal opinions in court has not been explained in the press statement. The Additional Solicitor General’s logic is superb though. He essentially said that the widespread societal disapproval of homosexuality was reason enough to criminalise homosexuality. If we’re going to decide whether a practice is criminal on the basis of its popular votes, then the widespread societal support of female infanticide should be reason enough to make it legal.

Then you have the country’s Telecom Minister, Kapil Sibal, who thinks social media should have the same regulations as print and electronic media (presumably because it has the word ‘media’ in it). That social media is nowhere near the same animal as news media is obviously a detail that he can’t be bothered to notice. Possibly because he’s too busy writing poetry. Yes, our Telecom Minister is also a poet, a creator of verses that include lines like the following (some of which were, fittingly enough, written on his phone):

Antarctica –

it beckons us.

We must just

let it be.

and

Geospatial images in

digital mode display

enabling introspection

in a most effective way.

Just when you think this country is going to hell in a handbasket, there’s a faint flicker of hope. Ladies and gentlemen, on 31st January 1947, before India was born, in the southern city of Kochi (or Ernakulam) something very special happened. James Bond was born.

Ok, so we lost him to USA, but let us say thanks that he is there. And he has an Overseas Citizen of India card. So we shouldn’t lose hope. Because if not anything else, at least one person in the Indian bureaucracy has a sense of humour.