it is impossible for any military general to initiate any kind of military action - military movement, arming of the troops or anything - without ratification by the parliament.
Just to give a historical example:- the last (and only) time this actually happened was in 1998. Admiral Vishnu Bhagawat became the first military personnel of his rank to be impeached for this very reason.
. If such an action is indeed observed, India has a stop first, ask questions later policy.
During the military buildup in Kashmir in the days following the Parliament attacks in 2001, we moved our troops so fast to the border that Pakistan (which otherwise observes all this very closely) DIDN'T KNOW where our battalions were. As a historical note, this, more than anything else, contributed to the political tension between the two countries; Musharraf, thinking like a military man that he is, was sure that India would attack Pakistan at a moment's notice. (Different matter that it would have been political, and moral, harakiri for us to do so).
The point of narrating all this is simple:- the Parliament (ie the Legislature) alone can't stand up against a committed army.
And incidentally, no three generals of the three armed forces (army, navy, airforce) can meet at the same time except in the presence of the President, and even then not under pre-ordained conditions.
But, despite what I've said earlier, the Army *has* been reined in just about everywhere, except in 'disturbed areas' (aka, Manipur, Nagaland, J&K, etc). The trick here is to use the bureaucracy; the primary role of the Ministry of Defence is basically two-fold:- to entangle the Army in red-tape (so our folk with guns focus more on silly things like applications, forms etc and less on using them on ourselves), and to maintain political seperation (so a recommendation letter from a neta will still not help Johnny Jawan get a promotion).
The political leadership, so far, has also played a part in this:- Indira Gandhi, in her Emergency rule that you rightly mention, took care to NOT use the army in enforcing her rule. As also, the Election Commission does NOT use the army in conducting elections (EXCEPT in 'disturbed areas'). The Army, therefore, sees no reason why it should play political games during election time, unlike the local constabulary, which directly reports to the political leadership du jour.
The Indian system has been staunchly designed to withstand any kind of military takeover, hostile or civil, after the British colonialism.
Not everything needs to be linked back to the colonial times. Fact is, we're a democratic island in a region beset with military takeovers; ALL our neighbours have had problems with democracy at some or the other time in our post-Independence history. In fact, till 1990-ish, we were the ONLY democracy in South Asia.
The army protects us from external danger, the paramilitary forces from internal danger, and the Ministry of Defence from ourselves. Think about it.
all them criminal types certainly made a damn nice country down here.
Mars would be fine methinks, but I hear the mutinous settlement at one of those remote asteroids between Mars and Jupiter has some problems; seems there's been systemic paedophily out there.
Hey, no fair, the Martian pitches have less gravity; the ball stays longer in the air, so you can flight it better!
That said, I really would like to see the Tri-series between Earth, Moon and Mars played at Halley's Comet; not only is the pitch bouncy, but also will you have to think circular:- the ball would launch itself into an orbit around the Comet before coming back to you.
While this is a popular quote among geeks, I, for one, still haven't found a single, credible reference suggesting where the Mahatma said such a thing. For one, the sentence construct isn't quite how you'd expect a fairly successful, British-educated lawyer to say; back then, people preferred to use a flowery, ornate language riddled with passive voice. That's NOT how leaders of those times would have put it; they'd have said something like, "First one is ignored, then laughed at, then attacked, and finally, one wins". Or something to that effect; the usage of Second Person in formal speaking is a fairly recent phenomenon, at least in Indian English.
Which, of course, is not to say Gandhiji couldn't have said it, just that, I find it difficult to believe he did. Which brings us to the second point; this little thing called *context*. You see, even if Gandhiji did say the quote in question, you'd want to know where he said it. If, for instance, he said it with reference to the Quit India movement at the August Kranthi session in 1942, you reaaaaallly dont want to apply that to popularity of blogs; it's not just an apples-to-oranges comparison, but, I don't know, apples-to-e-oranges or whatever comparison.
Heheh, I grew up learning English, Malayalam and Telugu (in addition to Hindi and French, and of course, started learning the salsa recently). You is teh sux.;-)
Seriously though, I recently realised something; seems like I think in a certain proto-grammar that's a superset of English and Telugu (Telugu being my mother tongue) grammars, and more often than not, translate those proto-sentences into the second-order languages (Hindi, Malayalam, French) that I speak. Which is why I often jump over linguistic nuances when I speak, say, Hindi; never really cared for, for instance, the way Hindi grammar grants gender to the subject and object. That said, I do agree with you in that we bi-lingual Indians are pretty good when it comes to linguistic skills; that, if anything, is the primary explanation for why tend to gossip so much.;-)
As any psychologist will tell you, self-analysis is probably unscientific and all that, so ymmv.
Never bothered to look up the exact details [mostly to do with not having enough $$$ to buy property:-)], but out here in Singapore, I'm told you can't technically "buy" land for your descendants; the land returns to the government after 99 years. Or something like that.
Relax man. Take a breather, drink some NEWater from the tap.
Now consider this: even if M'sia cuts off all our water tomorrow, we WILL NOT go thirsty. You see, not only do we have desalination efforts going on, we also have this secret water project in Indonesia on which we can rely on in the near long-term.
The NEWater project has three primary goals:-
Industrial water supply (there are some chip factories in Kranji etc that need water)
Awesome diplomatic firepower when that water link treaty comes up for re-negotiation.
Making space for ourselves: sg is currently 4 mil people. By 2020, gov.sg wants that number to swell to 9 mil, either through emigration, or through "natural" growth (aka baby bonuses)
I mean, if even it is Bumiputra-first M'sia, I really don't think politicians there are reckless enough to break treaties. The Malay Muslim Nutcracker is less strong than you think.:-)
Pantip Plaza! That's the name I was searching for!:-)
Seriously, I doubt if the bootleggers in Asian cities get their stuff off the net; I'm told the Triad (and their siblings, the Indian Bhais, and the Russian mafia) is (are) more to blame.
Nobel prize winning or not, authors often respond to challenges/constraints placed on them through various means. It is a sort of a creative inspiration for them.
I doubt Marquez meant this as a piracy stopper, but as a potential reader, I can't but be thrilled:- I now have one-and-three-quarters books to look forward to.:-)
Every response to the parent has been negative....
It's called "Slashdot Groupthink" and it surfaces particularly when someone voices an opinion that's contrary to the Slashdot Worldview.
Not that attacking minority views isn't something unique to/. of course. For instance, out here in Singapore, you definitely don't want to shout out "Faye Wong sucks balls" in a random hawker centre, if you hold your teh tarik and chicken rice dear. The key difference though, is in terms of acerbity and misplaced intensity; notice how sarcastic most of the replies were to what is essentially one poster's opinion.
I'll say this about Slashdot Groupthink though; in all cases I can think of, I've found the exact opposite to be true. The junta thinks iPod Minis are lame? Well, they out-sell other mp3 players by a wide margin. Groupthink says RIAA/MPAA crackdowns have no effect? Most of my old FTP/IRC warez servers no longer exist. Groupthink demands that I call M$ an evil empire and focus on OSS instead? I got my current job because of my.net skills. Therefore, by principle of induction, you know where I stand on this compile-once-versus-compile-many issue:- OF COURSE you want to code everything down and then worry about the details.
Now watch this post get modded to hell. Not that I care of course.
The parent I was responding to was Indian and was hinting that the Indian dialect was somehow inferior. I was merely pointing out otherwise; it is as mainstream as, I don't know, Queen's English or something.
Sure in the long run you are better off with the more complex jobs, but in the short run you need to eat.
What makes you think we need call center jobs to eat? You think Indians don't do any other jobs? You really need to look through the hype, my friend; the BPO industry wasn't even the fastest growing sector last year.
Note that in the US we have a dialect we call southern. I cannot easily understand those people either (generally they can understand me, by whatever quirk radio and TV has chosen my accent to be the easy to understand one, and thus they hear it often).
Not really relevant here, but surprisingly enough, I'm pretty okay with the Southern twang, really, was always fun to hear my ex-critical-thinking prof speak.
Your problems are not unique. I'm not willing to suggest you change.
I was hinting at this in my earlier post without explicitly saying it, but my essential point is this:- there will be a certain, shall we say, mainstream-isation, of Ind-glish, if it hasn't occured already. Cultures will have to accommodate others, yes, but that holds true for your culture as much as mine.
However if you are not willing to change I'm not willing to send easy money tech support jobs over there, and I demand more out of your other skills before I'm willing to send other work to you. So you will find it easier to get ahead if you can change your accent.
Again, you seem to be under the impression that call-center jobs matter comprise a huge chunk of the Indian economy. Let's not be under any wrong impression here:- BPO will not rescue India from poverty. Discussing what will, is, of course, a different matter altogether.
Did I say pointing out incorrect grammar was being racist? No, of course not, I only said the stereotyping was racist.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to defend shoddy call center service. I'm just saying that very few Indians speak that way; most of us are fairly articulate and comprehensible at international fora, and that since the joke apparently celebrates (if you will) a smaller minority at the expense of this larger sub-set, it is unfair, insulting and yes, racist.
I ask not to challenge the parent post, but rather I'd like to avoid making a reference like that down the road if it's a problem. Until I read parent post, I never really thought an Apu reference would be considered racist. I'm open to being enlightened here.
Posted earlier on why I'd find such jokes racist. Apu jokes I'm not sure though, mostly coz you're joking on a popular character and not on Indians, get what I'm saying?
And besides, there is some truth to it. The problem is we in India, though are tought english from the first grade, rarely use it in everyday converstaion , so our conversation skills are limited.
We can't create simple short meaningful sentences. We use words like "basically", "actually", "technically" etc. ad nauseam and all at wrong places.
Stick to the thread: was the OP lampooning that?
If we really want to keep these "outsourced" jobs we need to buckle up and improve our skills , rather than accuse Americans of being racist.
See, my friend, the problem is when you start using words like "we", "us", "them" and so on. Three points about your defence of the earlier attempt at humour:
a) Face it, we speak a different English dialect, a dialect that I, for one, beginning to be proud of. See, the way I speak English defines me as an Indian; the moment I start speaking, people know I am from India. See, that's instant linguistic brand recognition, and that's something that not all English-speaking populations have.
b) Indeed, Ind-glish is one dialect with a chequered history; we've had Indian-origin words in English from the first OED itself.
c) Racial stereotyping == racism. You may find it funny, but the fact remains that the OP chose to portray that all Indians speak like that. That, of course, is simply not true; given my earlier point about being proud of Ind-glish, you'll probably understand why people like me would find it insulting as well.
Let me repeat my point once again:- racial stereotyping, even if you find it funny, is racism.
From my prespective we should rather do RnD stuff, for our own benefits rather than pacify some pissed of customer 7 seas across, who can barely figure out what we are speaking.
Someone found a business oppurtunity and decided to cash in on that. Good for them. If I may respectfully ask, since when did your views on this matter to anyone?
Oh, trust me, folks in the chaostics field hate the misuse of terms as much as anyone else. It's all because of these MBA folks who started using clearly defined scientific terms in "metaphorical" situations and thus mucking up their real meanings.
Don't worry man, as long as you are not, say, Brit Indian, nobody will worry. It's only the Indians they are worried about, you know those funny-speaking, brown-skinned scum of the earth who magically appear from nowhere and steal jobs.
Hell, I like that. Indians, the Job Gnomes of the World! Okay, so we don't get to be heroes, at least we're the villains!
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The point of narrating all this is simple:- the Parliament (ie the Legislature) alone can't stand up against a committed army.
But, despite what I've said earlier, the Army *has* been reined in just about everywhere, except in 'disturbed areas' (aka, Manipur, Nagaland, J&K, etc). The trick here is to use the bureaucracy; the primary role of the Ministry of Defence is basically two-fold:- to entangle the Army in red-tape (so our folk with guns focus more on silly things like applications, forms etc and less on using them on ourselves), and to maintain political seperation (so a recommendation letter from a neta will still not help Johnny Jawan get a promotion).The political leadership, so far, has also played a part in this:- Indira Gandhi, in her Emergency rule that you rightly mention, took care to NOT use the army in enforcing her rule. As also, the Election Commission does NOT use the army in conducting elections (EXCEPT in 'disturbed areas'). The Army, therefore, sees no reason why it should play political games during election time, unlike the local constabulary, which directly reports to the political leadership du jour.
Not everything needs to be linked back to the colonial times. Fact is, we're a democratic island in a region beset with military takeovers; ALL our neighbours have had problems with democracy at some or the other time in our post-Independence history. In fact, till 1990-ish, we were the ONLY democracy in South Asia.The army protects us from external danger, the paramilitary forces from internal danger, and the Ministry of Defence from ourselves. Think about it.
That said, I really would like to see the Tri-series between Earth, Moon and Mars played at Halley's Comet; not only is the pitch bouncy, but also will you have to think circular:- the ball would launch itself into an orbit around the Comet before coming back to you.
Which, of course, is not to say Gandhiji couldn't have said it, just that, I find it difficult to believe he did. Which brings us to the second point; this little thing called *context*. You see, even if Gandhiji did say the quote in question, you'd want to know where he said it. If, for instance, he said it with reference to the Quit India movement at the August Kranthi session in 1942, you reaaaaallly dont want to apply that to popularity of blogs; it's not just an apples-to-oranges comparison, but, I don't know, apples-to-e-oranges or whatever comparison.
Seriously though, I recently realised something; seems like I think in a certain proto-grammar that's a superset of English and Telugu (Telugu being my mother tongue) grammars, and more often than not, translate those proto-sentences into the second-order languages (Hindi, Malayalam, French) that I speak. Which is why I often jump over linguistic nuances when I speak, say, Hindi; never really cared for, for instance, the way Hindi grammar grants gender to the subject and object. That said, I do agree with you in that we bi-lingual Indians are pretty good when it comes to linguistic skills; that, if anything, is the primary explanation for why tend to gossip so much. ;-)
As any psychologist will tell you, self-analysis is probably unscientific and all that, so ymmv.
Google for her on Wikipedia:- she's an out-of-the-closet lesbian who's partner is an activist (or something) for a GLBT-related cause.
Never bothered to look up the exact details [mostly to do with not having enough $$$ to buy property :-)], but out here in Singapore, I'm told you can't technically "buy" land for your descendants; the land returns to the government after 99 years. Or something like that.
Now consider this: even if M'sia cuts off all our water tomorrow, we WILL NOT go thirsty. You see, not only do we have desalination efforts going on, we also have this secret water project in Indonesia on which we can rely on in the near long-term.
The NEWater project has three primary goals:-
Industrial water supply (there are some chip factories in Kranji etc that need water)
Awesome diplomatic firepower when that water link treaty comes up for re-negotiation.
Making space for ourselves: sg is currently 4 mil people. By 2020, gov.sg wants that number to swell to 9 mil, either through emigration, or through "natural" growth (aka baby bonuses)
I mean, if even it is Bumiputra-first M'sia, I really don't think politicians there are reckless enough to break treaties. The Malay Muslim Nutcracker is less strong than you think. :-)
Sale of "medicinal" chewing gum (ie Wrigley's) is allowed in pharmacies. You'll have to show your I/C though or something.
Thanks for the pointer, bro, you've now given me an excuse to continue on Mountain Dew.
That said, this is pretty old news already; we've had NEWater out here in sg for, what, two years now..?
Seriously, I doubt if the bootleggers in Asian cities get their stuff off the net; I'm told the Triad (and their siblings, the Indian Bhais, and the Russian mafia) is (are) more to blame.
I doubt Marquez meant this as a piracy stopper, but as a potential reader, I can't but be thrilled:- I now have one-and-three-quarters books to look forward to. :-)
Not that attacking minority views isn't something unique to /. of course. For instance, out here in Singapore, you definitely don't want to shout out "Faye Wong sucks balls" in a random hawker centre, if you hold your teh tarik and chicken rice dear. The key difference though, is in terms of acerbity and misplaced intensity; notice how sarcastic most of the replies were to what is essentially one poster's opinion.
I'll say this about Slashdot Groupthink though; in all cases I can think of, I've found the exact opposite to be true. The junta thinks iPod Minis are lame? Well, they out-sell other mp3 players by a wide margin. Groupthink says RIAA/MPAA crackdowns have no effect? Most of my old FTP/IRC warez servers no longer exist. Groupthink demands that I call M$ an evil empire and focus on OSS instead? I got my current job because of my .net skills. Therefore, by principle of induction, you know where I stand on this compile-once-versus-compile-many issue:- OF COURSE you want to code everything down and then worry about the details.
Now watch this post get modded to hell. Not that I care of course.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to defend shoddy call center service. I'm just saying that very few Indians speak that way; most of us are fairly articulate and comprehensible at international fora, and that since the joke apparently celebrates (if you will) a smaller minority at the expense of this larger sub-set, it is unfair, insulting and yes, racist.
Do I identify by the term "Indian"? Yes.
Is the original joke lampooning "Indians"? Yes.
Do I think that the lampooning was unfair? Yes.
Hence my post.
a) Face it, we speak a different English dialect, a dialect that I, for one, beginning to be proud of. See, the way I speak English defines me as an Indian; the moment I start speaking, people know I am from India. See, that's instant linguistic brand recognition, and that's something that not all English-speaking populations have.
b) Indeed, Ind-glish is one dialect with a chequered history; we've had Indian-origin words in English from the first OED itself.
c) Racial stereotyping == racism. You may find it funny, but the fact remains that the OP chose to portray that all Indians speak like that. That, of course, is simply not true; given my earlier point about being proud of Ind-glish, you'll probably understand why people like me would find it insulting as well.
Let me repeat my point once again:- racial stereotyping, even if you find it funny, is racism.
Someone found a business oppurtunity and decided to cash in on that. Good for them. If I may respectfully ask, since when did your views on this matter to anyone?Oh, trust me, folks in the chaostics field hate the misuse of terms as much as anyone else. It's all because of these MBA folks who started using clearly defined scientific terms in "metaphorical" situations and thus mucking up their real meanings.
Hell, I like that. Indians, the Job Gnomes of the World! Okay, so we don't get to be heroes, at least we're the villains!
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