The Bored Engineer

India being a socialist democracy committed to equitable growth of our citizens has always had a set of strong welfare policies aim at various problems namely poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality rates etc. These policies have often been a target of a section of society that is wary of the amount we spend on subsidies and the welfare programs; and when these schemes fails to meet the desired objectives they are quick to point out at their failure and how this is an ill use of our tax rupees. We often forget that it is imperative for us as a nation to ensure that the fruits of development are shared equally by all sections of the society if we are to progress into becoming a developed nation. You can’t underpay your domestic help, the homely maid and then complain about her children’s contributions to the malnutrition statistic. India’s educated elite have failed this nation (and the blame squarely goes on our political leadership especially the Grand Indian Political party...

A couple of years back, Facebook launched a new feature titled “See First” which basically meant that if you interact with certain people more than others on Facebook, these ‘preferred’ people would get a precedence. Couple this with the change in Facebook’s algorithms wherein this change was internalized making your ‘interactive’ contacts appear first, the entire social media experience was polarized. I have about 350 friends but after these features were implemented my interaction was limited with a selected group of 5-7 people basically turning Facebook into a Stalking Machine. Moving on from Facebook, this feature was rapidly embraced by other platforms as well including many news outlets and apps which show you the tailor made news feed, specially customized for you. The drawbacks of this system were soon realized as people found – just as in the case of Facebook – that this had led to shrinking of their online reach and they were now getting a lot of stories related to a same...

While we are here sitting in relatively comfortable dwellings gossiping about college, cricket or even Bollywood, complaining about stuff we don’t have and what we deserve as a nation in the 21 st century (internet connectivity is surely gonna top that list!), while we go on with our lives there is a woman raped in some war torn African nation, a child orphaned in some Arab nation under siege by a terrorist group, a country’s heritage is being destroyed, the natural wealth of some place in India is being plundered, the basic democratic rights of people in China are being trampled. We have fixated our eyes so strongly on the brightness that our future promises to hold that we miss out on the darkness spread wide in present times. We go on with our lives and there isn’t much that we can do as individuals to change the course of some place thousands of miles from where we are, but does that absolve all our responsibilities as a global citizen. Isn’t every murder that is happening...

‘Kashmir’ - an issue so volatile it can polarize the sanest of the minds into mind numbing extremism. Whenever Kashmir is on the boil or in the headline for any reason even the most liberal sounding people on my Facebook friend-list suddenly tear apart all their identities and fall into two categories: Kashmiris (mostly living outside the state and in other parts of India) who suddenly feel the need to highlight the ‘human right abuses’ which may or may not have been happening and people from rest of India who feel the need to thump their chest and abuse Kashmiris. While the silent majority looks on, occasionally expressing its dismay over the human right abuses and occasionally supporting the anti-terror operations of our armed forces (anti –terror not anti-protestors). I have been a part of the silent majority as well, looking around at people from both sides calling each other names and ‘highlighting’ facts which in their view are suppressed by ‘vested interests’. I do not ...

What is the one thing that defines most of us Indians and still is inherently devoid of any logic? You may well be tempted to mention our quest for getting our children enrolled in an Engineering/Medical college (irrespective of their abilities and aptitude, of course. Where is the fun otherwise?), but no. The one thing that connects us all, that one trait fostering our unity in diversity is our inability to not get offended or simple ignore things that really don’t matter to us (and about the things that truly matter; well who has the time for that! More on that later) and consequentially ban things arbitrarily. Take for example the recent controversy surrounding a video by comedian Tanmay Bhat, impersonating Bharat Ratan Sachin Tendulkar and Bharat Ratan Lata Mangeshkar. Now the video may seem a bit derogatory and in bad humour to many (including me) but why can’t we simply ignore a comedian who is just doing his job. He may not be up to our expected standards (although ...

India is often referred to as the nation of contrasting nature, assimilating various hues and shades that seem to defy the very presence of the other. Our vibrant democracy has also in certain cases led to situations that may surprise the novice observer. For example while four states in India share two capitals each (Haryana - Punjab = Chandigarh & Telangana - Andhra Pradesh = Hyderabad) we also have a state that has two capitals, Jammu and Kashmir having Jammu and Srinagar as its winter and summer capitals respectively. While Chandigarh & Hyderabad are examples where the states involved have shown inability to create/maintain capitals of their own (although Andhra Pradesh is working on its separate capital), Jammu and Kashmir boasts of two functional capitals for a single state. While many feel that maintaining two capitals leads to wastage of precious public funds and time, an equally compelling argument in its favor is that it maintains regional stability. The...

In the run-up to the recently concluded Delhi Assembly Elections many personal allegations made their way onto national media. Some of them utterly nonsensical while others made a little sense although their relevance in an election campaign was questionable. Once such issue that cropped up was that Arvind Kejriwal who always made a hue and cry about being an Aam Aadmi and denounced other politicians for being Elitist and pro-capitalists totally ignoring the majority population and favouring the few Khaas Aadmi . To make his point he even travelled in Delhi Metro on the way to his inauguration ceremony, refused security cover and to a certain extent endorsed a somewhat messed-up ‘fashion- statement’ resembling more of a rickshawala (although I don’t mean to imply that dressing like that is deplorable, but well at certain times it didn’t meet the dress code of the event he was attending). But all things aside, he made his version of Aam Aadmi into a very successful brand, su...

World’s largest democracy, India. A nation of 1.25 billion people uniting themselves under the Tricolour abiding by their fundamental duties as well as enjoying the fruits of being a free nation. Our constitution guarantees us freedom of expression, religion and in return expects us to respect the national flag, constitution and educate ourselves so that we may serve the nation better. Now as lucrative as it may seem, the reality is quite otherwise. We as a nation despise freedom. We look down upon youngsters (mostly females) and their dressing sense, we hate it when a woman asking for civil rights has been on a fast for more than 10 years, and we don’t like a person from some other state makes a living in our state. We hate it all. Our politics is not about liking a politician or their policies, rather we hate other politicians. We take pride on calling ourselves a pluralistic society but look around you and see how much we hate the economic or social diversity. We hate ...