Slashdot Mirror
India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society
An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid has a fascinating roundup of news stories surrounding the latest surveillance laws passed in India, including a first-hand account of someone writing from inside India. The legislation in question is the Information Technology Act's amendment bill 2006, which was recently passed in the Indian parliament. Things you can't do with the new legislation include surfing for news in Bollywood and looking up porn on the internet. The legislation also allows all transmissions over the internet to be monitored for any form of lawbreaking and permits a sub-inspector to break into your house to make sure you aren't browsing porn on your computer."
The internet is really really great...
A government wanting to decrease people's access to information, bit by bit. What a surprising turn of events.
Seems that a good government ass-kicking is may be in order. Course, that seems to be the case in several places.
If they took all the porn off the internet, there would be only one website left: www.bringbacktheporn.com
I've got a fast connection, so I don't have to wait...
Make the idiot masses panic with a spectacular, loud, but in all honestly tiny (a few psychopaths with boats and guns) action. Foolish laws are drawn up despite everyone "knowing" where they go. If there's any sign that the society is not going there, repeat to set it back on course to its own destruction if possible.
Considering it's India, I'd be more inclined to thank the lasting Victorian influence of the British Empire.
tl;dr
There's always some new site...
FOR PORN.
I browse all day and night.
FOR PORN.
It's like I'm surfing at the speed of liiiiight...
I can already see Indian sub-inspectors extorting people with records of porn they watched. Seriously, a morality police is among the worst things imaginable, it is like the crown of this totalitarian bill.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
This post has been deleted by the `Surveillance Task Force Under-ops'. (STFU.)
Good to know the Raj isn't over. O_o
Also, WhopperVirgins.com has been banned, for EVERY POSSIBLE reason.
If there's one thing that you really can't control today is the flow of information.
Constructing an Orwellian society is impossible because geeks are always going to be many steps ahead.
Sadly though, the mentallity of many governments is still stuck in the past and most politicians have no clue what PGP is.
Hi, I've been in India for the past 2 decades, and let me tell you, the /. headline is nothing but fearmongering. The legislation in question might have those provisions, however, like in Russia and the erstwhile Sovet Union, Indian laws are actually never enforced to the letter. Most of this stuff will never happen. So Dear /., nothing to worry about. This is a country where law enforcement agencies are entangled in red tape & politics to the extent that they've been unable to stop a terror attack(Mumbai 26-11), inspite of intelligence from the US 2 MONTHS in advance. This will never actually happen. Shame on /. for the sensationalist headline.
The sensationalism is getting worse by the day!
Thank you for reading my post. You owe me a BJ.
FTFA:
"Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device, â" (a) any content that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or (b) any content which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will... shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and with fine."
>> This provision seems to be a way to enforce acts online which would otherwise be quite serious in person. You can't threaten to kill someone IRL, so don't do it on the internet either...
"Whoever publishes/ transmits/ causes to be published/ transmitted in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either prescription for a term which may extend to two years and with fine which may extend to five lakh rupees and in the event of second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and also with fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees.
If the material is sexually explicit act or conduct then the punishment on first conviction is imprisonment which may extend to five years and a fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees. In the event of second or subsequent conviction imprisonment may extend to seven years and fine to ten lakh rupees."
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this one looks like it prevents people from UPLOADING porn, not from looking at it. I am not aware of the current state of censorship laws in India (I'm sure some slashdotter out there does know), but I would assume that this is in place because publishing physical copies of porn is already illegal in India. I am totally just guessing here.
ZeroPaid has always gotten a boner about sensationalist material though. I'd be quite surprised if this wasn't completely misinterpreted...
Seriously, loads of Indian laws are notoriously unenforceable. Besides, IIRC, viewing pornography isn't illegal, it's distributing it that is illegal.
Anyway, it's interesting how little the average Indian knows about surveillance, and even more interesting how little he cares. Take me, for instance, until Research In Motion said that they couldn't allow the Indian Government to read email and stuff from Blackberries, I did not know that the Government could do that with my messages or phone calls.
Even otherwise, I find it hard to care, because even if intelligence gathering is done, it'll probably get stuck in a file somewhere, with nothing done. Really, incompetence cuts both ways - helps the militants, helps us.
Ideally, of course, it would be hard to make legislation like this and there would be protests and discussions about why laws like this do nothing to actually prevent terrorism, and how our essential liberties are being threatened. But try pulling stuff like that in a country where 120,000 people have starved to death or committed suicide for lack of a harvest. The large majority of Indians have more immediate issues to worry about, and the few who care can bypass these stupid strictures easily.
In addition, it's always been easy to be 'hard on terrorism', it's actually much much harder to have the resolve to fight it properly. And Indian politicians have rarely had the resolve to do anything.
When are we, as humans, going to learn that we don't have to cater to the whiny religious/moral nutcases out there?
Politicians: GROW A SPINE. When a whiny anti-sex/anti-drugs/anti-rock-and-roll nutcase writes you, complaining that their sensibilities are affected by the private actions of others, tell them to get bent.
Please, please, please. For the good of society and the world. Tell those miserable people that they can stick their pathetic little psychosis where the sun doesn't shine.
We rely on you. You are our leaders. Please act like it!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
India, despite honouring itself as the largest democracy in the world, is - on the ground, at least - an exemplar of the class system.
Your higher classes are the rich families who go to boarding schools then usually foreign universities. The "better" ones may train as doctors, lawyers, etc., but many dabble in politics, where they take advantage of the pretty much universal corruption (especially in poorer areas) and ease with which one can lie to a mostly uneducated set of voters. I have a few family friends in this class.. some have minor royal titles (good enough to get HM The Queen to visit their wedidngs etc.). For them, money by Indian standards is no object, and while they may be socially restricted by tradition - childhood arranged marriage, for example - there's nothing that can't be wrangled out of with $ appropriately channeled to make it look like everyone's still behaving. The unwanted wife becomes a minor tax to pay and ignore.
What's more interesting, however, is the gap between the small middle class and the often illiterate, uneducated, unhealthy, dirt-poor, often racially inferior (by Indian standards) remainder. If you were you, in India, as a regular middle class Joe, you would have servants. I can't emphasise the extent to which a man's attitude to his fellow man changes when he keeps a gaggle of servants:
(1) It is not customary to treat your servants as equals in your employ, but as entities who must look up to you and talk to you with deference. From the moment you become aware of your household as a child you are taught to see these humans who are in some way less human than you. Once you can do that with one subgroup of humans, you can do it for any.
(2) These aren't well paid, well-educated guys with a calling to household service. These are people who need a job and whose fallback on hard times is a dusty street. It is easy to bully a man who cannot talk back.
In the USA and Western Europe, the significant quibble is - contrary to the perception of the average (Slashdotting) progressive political activist, whose opinions align with only a minority - between working and middle classes. As the blue collar moves up to white, or unionises, he increases costs and competition for the existing white. But in India, there is such a deep, desperate blue collar pool that the whites are under no threat.
In India, the primary concern is - as in any feudal state - that of the higher classes for the power of the middle. Laws must be written for arbitrary application to any undesirables in this class, while preserving that squeaky clean image for the ignorant voting proletariat that keeps them on your side.
This is merely one such law.
I live in India and I can assure you that, there are no think of the children or think of the terrorists laws in India (Except POTA for terrorism, which was repealed two years ago, and a bill which is under discussion right now).
From a glance at the bill, I believe they wanted to cover all immoral acts and also leave the interpretation wide open. This is partly because of incompetence and stupidity of the person who wrote the law and partly because the law will be passed without a discussion in the Lok Sabha (one of the two parliamentary chambers), where I am sure not a single person would even have a vague idea of what the bill is, and subsequently though the Rajya Sabha(thought it does have few bright and technically sound people)
As Heinlein's Razor" said, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
That said, in India, it is always how the laws are enforced that matters; there are a number of laws, which even lawyers, judges, police do not follow.
And I do hope these change soon.
'Nuff sed.
When first they came for the criminals I did not speak
Then they began to take the Jews
When they fetched the people who were members of trade unions
I did not speak
When they took the Bible students, rounded up the homosexuals
Then they gathered up the immigrants and the gypsies
I did not speak, I did not speak
Eventually they came for me and there was no one left to speak
Hmm, seems vaguely familiar.
Reality is much different here:
Like the stupid ideas of the British Parliamentarians who propose outlandish laws, these are also the same kind of crap.
The constitution contains a STRONG reference to freedom of speech and expression: Porn being one of them. So the upper house will either return it back or hold it.
Secondly, the police have lots of other things to do than look at each image and text as porn or not. The ratio is close to 1:1,6333 cops:people. Hence rest assured, this is one law that will not cross the door.
Thirdly, The Supreme Court is a HUGE people-friendly institution here that does not shy away from arresting and imprisoning even the biggest politician here. Hell, they get a kick out of doing it just for fun. This law will be challenged by an NGO and surely be banned outright, or struck down.
Lastly, the ruling party is a middle-path: Neither the right-wing BJP nor the extreme left-wing communists. Their priorities right now are the economy and Pakistan, so this law will be forgotten instantly even if passed.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Apu's quick guide to cyber-anonymity:
Buy laptop with cash.
Buy a tiny 4gb+ usb thumbdrive with it.
Wipe hard-drive using any linux live-cd.
Make 2 or more partitions on the hard drive.
On the last partition setup Windows XP so that authorities have something to work with if they check your computer.
Setup your preferred linux distro on the first partition.
If option is offered encrypt your home directory.
If not use truecrypt and encrypt your entire linux partition. Leave Windows XP naked.
Setup GRUB so that:
-WinXP boots by default
-Grub doesn't show up at all unless desired combination is pressed upon bootup.
Label the linux partition as Recovery or Backup, be creative.
Do all your deemed illegal things on linux, and your "civilized" things on windows.
Use TrueCrypt hidden volumes for storing sensitive information, in case you are extorted.
Use HotspotShield VPN or Ultrasurf proxy for browsing the web.
If you can get a hold of a linux box in europe set-up openvpn with it.
Have a bootable livelinux on your thumbdrive just in case, along with portable truecrypt and stored hidden volumes if necessary.
Don't ever backup the same thing twice.
Use sneakernet or snailmail for sharing information with friends.
GnuPG is your best friend.
????
Profit!
Damn...Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet and George W. Bush already has a job writing new laws in India...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
This reminds me of an incident where a TV show was taken off air because the show parodied Gandhi. It's sad that people of India have to depend on the abysmal incompetency of law-enforcing bodies to keep their privacy and freedom of speech alive.
Not really. Guys, this is India, the country in which "sodomy" is still illegal and punished by several years in jail.
I personally think this is kind of awesome, but I am a dork. I love when they say shanti, which means ace in English.
Indian Thiller
Things you can't do with the new legislation include...looking up porn on the internet.
What moral standard are they claiming compels them to make this restriction?
I don't get the impression that Hinduism is very strict regarding one's sexual conduct.
Here is a copy of The Bill.
I just read through it, it makes several strong references to child pornography, couldn't find anything on "regular" porn though.
But anyway, this worldwide erosion of rights and freedom impacts the rich and poor countries alike. Except that in a country like India, you would have fewer voices speaking out because of other issues which are more important (like Hunger for instance). Such laws become tools for any state to silence dissidents.
You could silence critics by jailing them for looking at Porn. wow.
Life is just a conviction.
This really pushes back the date of my visit to India from never, to never +1!
Seriously folks, this is India you are talking about. It's easier to have a list of things you can do in India. I'm not trolling, I really feel this way.
"Once you can do that with one subgroup of humans, you can do it for any."
To a westener in India it stands out like dogs-balls but if you look again you will find all humans spend a lot of time behaving like this, wealth just makes the behaviour more potent. Once you see that, all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense. Not saying it's right or wrong it's just the way our wetware bios works.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Actually he has a point. Modern India (the same is true of Sri Lanka) has much more strict sexual mores than they once did. The change is undoubtedly due to British and Islamic influences: although nationalists will not thank you for pointing it out.
Oh, and the Taj Mahal really is the most beautiful building on earth.
Considering this is the place that gave the world the Kama Sutra, yeah...things have certainly changed.
From conversations some Indian nationals at work, school, and a few in-laws, there's a much greater diversity of infrastructure than most other countries in the world. Though the larger cities might be near the US in terms of infrastructure, in many of the rural areas, have reliable electrical power is more of a concern than having internet access, much less it being monitored by the state.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
who sells those CDs.
Without a "permit" he cant sell CDs and the permit is a virtual bill of about 100-200 bucks a day.
Now which corrupt cop will want to stop earning a third of the month's salary for doing nothing?
To uphold a law passed in a North Indian office called Parliament where people are busy collecting other "permit fees"?
Gimme a break!
Porn sells like ... well, porn, and you can't get the cop to stop it - he loves the cash - and he watches the porn too.
That's the problem for parents, not the law.
Girls get pregnant at such "porn viewing sessions"(No, not from personal experience...).
And that's considered horrible in Indian culture - she might not get married EVER if its known to ANYONE. India is a different place. Premarital sex is the worst shame in India - and probably rightly so for our society. It's fraught with risks like STD infections, emotional turmoil, possibility of mental problems, addiction to drugs and God knows what else.
Parents know this and that's why this law - parents vote, after all.
Of course, flame me to death for talking against your sensibilities, but India has a different culture.
Things you can't do with the new legislation include...looking up porn on the internet.
What moral standard are they claiming compels them to make this restriction? I don't get the impression that Hinduism is very strict regarding one's sexual conduct.
Karma Sutra! Yeah, Baby!
In India everything is run by bribes. They won't invade your house or monitor your internet usage. It's just another way to add someone to the list of people you have to pay off to avoid being hassled.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
"Thank You! Cum Again....!"
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Does this sub-inspector happen to be a hot chick?
People "like you and me" don't run governments, so we don't morph into anything. The reason governments and bureaucracies are so bad is because they attract power hungry people who don't know their own limitations. I mean, would you be callous or stupid enough to order the Iraq war? How can someone like Palin possibly think she is capable of running the country?
It's the same with police. Who do you think joins the police force? What kind of person do you think wants to deal day-in and day-out with drunks, drug addicts, and violence? What kind of person do you think wants to carry a gun, knowing that they may have to use it occasionally? It's either people who are very naive, or people who enjoy violence, or people who simply don't have a choice.
No, sorry, police and government are not made up of "people like you and me".
Your classification doesn't make sense. By your reasoning, the Middle Eastern terrorists aren't terrorists for religious reasons either: all they want is for the US to get out of the Middle East and for the nations of the Middle East to be unified again.
The point is that whenever the government sees you as an undesirable, they now have a new law to throw at you as an excuse to put you in jail.
The best way to have complete control over your citizens is to make every one of them a criminal without necessarily enforcing it. You just enforce it whenever it's convenient to you.
The convenient thing about terrorism these days is that 'probable cause' pretty much went out the window when it comes to getting a warrant, so people better darn well be white as snow if they cross the government.
Mind the frickin' laser...
From out here in the midwest, it looks like a simple pissing contest. When the big push came for gay marriage, the complaint was that privacy requirements, adoption laws and probate laws were the reason gay marriage were necessary. Now the rules have suddenly changed. Civil unions granting all the supposed benefits of marriage without the name are just an insult. Both sides are in a pissing contest over the "respectability" of gay marriage; nothing else.
they have their uses, Kate. In particular, they don't need batteries...
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and thus clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless stream of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H. L. Mencken
I love Slashdot.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's tolerated in Goa somewhat, and there are Bhang shops that are govt regulated which sell a very, very potent marijuana based drink used on traditional holidays....but other than that it's illegal....This is my understanding anyway.
Countercurrents.org is an ultra-leftist site that supports violent Maoists and writes apologia for Islamist Jihadis. This is merely an alarmist piece from someone who fears that the future of Maoism and Islamism in India is threatened. Ultra-Leftists thrive on attention. They are best ignored.
The website quoted here, countercurrents.org, is a far-left extremely anti-India hate site full of racist conspiracy theories and assorted bullshit
Some examples:
1.Recent Mumbai attacks were a "Hindu-Jewish false flag operation" (Pakistani media propaganda)
http://www.countercurrents.org/misra031208.htm
2. The holocaust never happened and 9/11 was "an Israeli onspiracy" - by American neo-Nazi Wendy Campbell
http://www.countercurrents.org/campbell060108.htm
http://www.countercurrents.org/campbell240108.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Campbell
I would not take such websites seriously if I were you. It's disgusting that this vile trash even made it through to a page here. Slashdot's standards are slipping.
If this were any other country or ethnic group other than India or Indians, this would have been caught out.
But Hawaii is next to India?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"But every now and then the other person that I am talking to from India just looks at me and says that it is the will of the Gods that these people are in such a horrible condition. That they are this way because in previous lives they were horrible people and if they were to be helped, then the Gods themselves would be angry at us for meddling with their placement of people on the earth and that we could end up as lepers and beggars ourselves in our next lives if we were to help them."
That's a fabulous argument! Doesn't this basically justify ignoring anything that could hurt ANYONE just because god made it so? India is attacked by terrorists? No problem. It was god's will. Disease? Don't bother to cure them, it is the will of god that they are sick.
I believe you were correctly labeled a troll.
The reasons India is such a poor place are manifold. But a minimal amount of reading and just a little bit more of effort into turning yourself into a well-read individual (instead of a Western prick) would have resulted in you knowing that the most probable cause is that India was a colony of the British Empire and has basically been plundered for centuries, you dickhead.
So, please, stick your "Christian European/American" sensibility and upbringing and go read some History.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
So "thulla" is the singular form? (just curious)
This Simonetta creature is just another vanilla Neo-Nazi with Indophobic racialist obsessions and relies on old British-colonial propaganda to justify her views.
"This Simonetta creature" ??? Not woman?, not person?, not citizen? but creature!! That's a good one.
Rhetorical exuberance aside, "this Simonetta creature" lives in a city that has no leper beggars selling their babies. We got vanilla people, we got Neo-Nazis, we got Indophobes, we got racialists, we got obsessives, we have beggars, we even have a few Daughters of the American Revolution, which is about as close to British-colonial propaganda as we're likely to ever get,...
But..
We have no god-damn lepers selling their children in the streets of MY city...Because we are civilized and we have certain basic fundamental standards of the inalienable quality of life for all persons who exist in MY city!
So deal with your lepers before you call me a 'creature', motherfucker!
Yes its singular
Evolution is great grand mother of Revolution.....
West Bengal(Kolkata/Calcutta) is the sick State/Province of India. It is being ruled by the Communists. "That's a fabulous argument! Doesn't this basically justify ignoring anything that could hurt ANYONE just because god made it so? India is attacked by terrorists? No problem. It was god's will. Disease? Don't bother to cure them, it is the will of god that they are sick." Who told you that. Those who say such things are sick(mentally and socially) people. They don't even know Hinduism and claim themselves to be Hindus. Helping the poor is a good deed. Well you said you visited Kolkata way back in 1968. Things have changed. The beggars you will now see are the ones not out of compulsion but out of choice.I shameful to admit that many of these so called beggars have a fortune more that any ordinary Indian Citizens(Yeah! right they became millionaires by begging- exploiting the helping attitude of Indians). Â According to Hinduism Helping a deprived fellow is a good deed. Â Have you ever seen beggars with cellphones. You can see them in India. Leprosy is curable and Government is providing free treatment for the affected. Â Also don't give us a lesson about civilization. How old is your civilization?? There are only two Civilizations from stone age to have survived till date-India and China, that's more than 7000 years(the time when Hinduism was being Documented). For such an old civilization there is bound to be wear and tear of social fabric. The current India Civilization is a result of millenniums of inter-mixing of cultural and religious practices. The typical Indian scenario has changed considerably. Â The current economic depression hasn't affected our business sectors much like Banking, Power. Only IT Cos were affected here. Â I think you guys can see someone rise from Rags to riches. That's why you(people) criticized Our Moon Mission Chandrayaan-I as a waste of money.
Evolution is great grand mother of Revolution.....
There have been many comments here on the Amendments to Information Technology Act 2000. The amendments of far reaching consequence were passed in the Parliament without any debate. Despite my personal efforts to raise the alarm as soon as the Bill was presented, none of the legislators understood the importance of the Bill. The ruling party also rushed through the process of passign the legislation deliberately to avoid the discussions. As a result the Act now provides enormous powers of surveillance to the Government of India. It will now have powers to monitor, censor, order decryption of any content either in transmission or in storage. It also continues to make publishing and transmission of obscene information punishable and additionally also makes it an offence to view Child Pornography. (For details, please view the Bill at http://www.naavi.org/ita_2008 as well as the comments at http://www.naavi.org/ The Bill has now gone for the assent of the President and will be effective once the rules are notified after the Presidential assent. There is no doubt that the provisions are amenable to be abused and will be abused in due course. I personally advocate strong enabling laws to counter crimes and restore the usability of Internet by the masses but at the same time am concerned about the possible abuse. The solution I suggest is establishing checks and balances. In the present case, I strongly urge the Government of India to set up a "Netizen's Rights Commission" on the lines of the Human Rights Commission, with statutory powers to take complaints from the public about misuse of any powers under the Act, conduct investigations and prosecute or advise prosecution of offenders. It should have representation of Netizens and relevant organizations outside the Government. I look forward to the support from concerned Netizens in this regard. Now what is left is some corrective action.
So was America. But we revolted instead of letting the British fuck us over. If that makes us "dickheads," then at least that's better than the people who bent over, took it, and used it as an excuse for the next few hundred years!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What a fucking idiot you are. Is that what you learn at the American public school system? No wonder you elected Georgie twice.
Let me give you a few reading tips: go out and search for literature on models of colonization and examine why "America" (or more correctly, the United States, since America is a continent) was founded versus, for instance, what was the aim of the Spanish conquistadores from the Spanish kingdom; next, search for colonialism; read Democracy in America, by De Tocqueville; learn about your civil war and how even in America, those that wanted to keep the yoke of a backwards slave-based economy gave a lot of trouble. Next: imagine that in a country where Her Majesty threw the full weight of Her Empire into crushing the spine of the people - and consider the country had a very different culture than that of the American Revolution - to the point their major resistance leader was one Mahatma Gandhi.
You are so stupid you need to get off /. and get some reading done. Quit with home-grown apple-pie yankee-doodle-dee bottom-line thinking and try to understand the world in more hues than black or white.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
The full copy of the Act is available here: http://www.naavi.org/ita_2008/
Thanks for posting the contents of your India factbook from the 50s.
India, despite honouring itself as the largest democracy in the world, is - on the ground, at least - an exemplar of the class system.
Your higher classes are the rich families who go to boarding schools then usually foreign universities. The "better" ones may train as doctors, lawyers, etc., but many dabble in politics, where they take advantage of the pretty much universal corruption (especially in poorer areas) and ease with which one can lie to a mostly uneducated set of voters. I have a few family friends in this class.. some have minor royal titles (good enough to get HM The Queen to visit their wedidngs etc.). For them, money by Indian standards is no object, and while they may be socially restricted by tradition - childhood arranged marriage, for example - there's nothing that can't be wrangled out of with $ appropriately channeled to make it look like everyone's still behaving. The unwanted wife becomes a minor tax to pay and ignore.
Maybe you can tell us how many friends you have in the illiterate, uneducated, ... class so that we can truly assess your intimacy with the issues at hand.
What's more interesting, however, is the gap between the small middle class and the often illiterate, uneducated, unhealthy, dirt-poor, often racially inferior (by Indian standards) remainder. If you were you, in India, as a regular middle class Joe, you would have servants. I can't emphasise the extent to which a man's attitude to his fellow man changes when he keeps a gaggle of servants:
In the USA and Western Europe, the significant quibble is - contrary to the perception of the average (Slashdotting) progressive political activist, whose opinions align with only a minority - between working and middle classes. As the blue collar moves up to white, or unionises, he increases costs and competition for the existing white. But in India, there is such a deep, desperate blue collar pool that the whites are under no threat.
Maybe the Indian friends you have display such tendencies. I grew up in a middle class Indian family, and the domestic help worked with us only because both my parents worked long hours. Our domestic help was not suppressed or bought to work, she was as good as a nanny, a member of the family. It was to her benefit that she could find a job with her lack of education, and when it came to her children to be educated, my mother was the first person she looked to for guidance. (As an aside, the middle class is not small anymore).
In India, the primary concern is - as in any feudal state - that of the higher classes for the power of the middle. Laws must be written for arbitrary application to any undesirables in this class, while preserving that squeaky clean image for the ignorant voting proletariat that keeps them on your side.
{{Citation needed}}
This is merely one such law.
Finally, I have no idea what your diatribe relates to the porn law. Worse still, it smacks of the common argument that I see atleast once on every Slashdot article featuring India. What surprises me is that those comments were rated down rapidly, while yours was rated "5 Informative", which it certainly is not. (This common argument can be summarised as: "Look at the other systemic evils in India. Club it with this latest article. Hence any worthy achievement by India has the blood of oppressed people on its hands. Which we in the first world will not and cannot appreciate.")
Noone denies that the caste s
Get off your high horse and do some reading yourself, dude. If the Brits had truly thrown the full weight of Her Empire into crushing the spine of the people, India would probably look more like the Congo than the flourishing Democracy it is today. If you were capable of following your own advice by trying to understand the world in more hues than black or white you would remember that the Brits brought India an educated civil service and an independent judiciary among other useful tools of government as well as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and other assorted nastiness. And if you had actually done all of that reading you claim, you would be aware that the effects of 100 or so years of Euro colonialism that ended 60 years ago are a tiny pinprick on Indian society and politics when compared to the effects of over 3000 years of human habitation on the subcontinent.
FreeSpeech.org
Glad to hear you have "beggars", because if you don't have them it probably means the authorities are doing something quietly to make them disappear. This is generally what "doing something about the homeless" translates into.
(On the general subject of sleepwalking to totalitarianism.)
I suppose old Indian Buddhism is using the old third eye to see into the hearts and minds of their billions of citizens. Can you say, "Oh, my curry, see what Mr. and Mrs. Raffa are doing doggystyle, while watching illegal porn. Hurry, Officer Ghandi Wind, get over there and bring them some lubrication, so you can seperate them, and bring them down to the police station, right away! If they don't answer, just break down their door!" "Stop by the qwicky mart on the way back, and get me some of Mahatma's donuts with the bigger holes, and make sure they got a little chocolate in them. I'm hungry and need something to eat." That means, the government will be the ones watching porn, watching all those people getting on their porn sites, doing unimaginable things! Shegads!
Hinduism is nothing but a covert mask to socio-economic collusion in India since 12th century aka Casteism.
Hinduism's caste system is a religious-based system of separating groups and keeping one class (the Brahmins) over everyone else.
In America there is no system in place today that forces people to remain separate or keeps one class subservient to another.
If you were born the son of a street sweeper, but excelled, you could become a doctor or lawyer or some celebrity or entrepreneur - and at the same time you would be fully accepted by your peers.
Not so in India. The caste system freezes everyone in place. It is extremely difficult - almost impossible - for someone from the lowest caste to rise in education and social status.
A Dalit would never be allowed to marry into one of the higher castes and would never be accepted as an equal.
And for a Dalit to make it into medical school or become a member of high society in India is very rare indeed.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
is the root of all evil.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
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