PCman

I have recently excavated this game from some odd site and nostalgia caught me. This wonderful game was designed in 1982. It takes no time to learn the rules of the game and one can easily get addicted to it. I first played this game on a 286 machine some 14 years ago. Now I find it extremely playable again.

Migration Complete

So, managed to import the posts from my blogger blog.  

Life is just

Hello. I have just migrated to WordPress from Blogger. Life is so just here. The first user name that i had tried worked for me. I don't remember an instance when this happened to me earlier. Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, Blogger, …… On blogger i had racked my brains to come up with something that hadn't been taken already. Oh, life is so just here.

Then, the look is so cool. So, many more features here than at blogger. Don't have to bother going into the html code for each minute change.

I even saw somewhere a feature to import posts from blogger.

Arjun Singh’s Hidden Agenda

Decision on quota is final: Arjun

In an interview with Karan Thapar, this is what Mr. Singh said. Take a look at his answers, not a single question answered properly. He had nothing to say to any of the statistics and figures provided by Mandal, NSSO, National Family & Health Survey, media, UGC, IITs, Parliamentary committees.

All he has to say is that everything has been decided already, or that the group of ministers is looking into it. "So far as I can see, it is a closed chapter and that is why I have to implement what all Parliament has said".

I am not talking now about the desirability of the reservations. That is a different issue. I am talking of the attitude of our HRD minister to such an important issue. At times he says that a decision cannot be taken by just a few people and the very next moment he says everything is decided. "I have said what I had to say and the point is that that is not an issue for us to now debate". Then in that case, why is he not forthcoming in providing the details. If the government wants to implement some scheme without regard to public or expert (National Knowledge Commission) opinion and push it down our throats, then all one can say is that government and in this case Mr. Arjun Singh in particular has a 'hidden agenda'.

Congress was among those who shouted till they were hoarse for five years during the BJP ( NDA) rule, that the BJP had an 'hidden agenda'. Regardless of BJP's intentions, they had atleast talked of having a national debate on some of their controversial aims. Makes me wonder who is more 'fascist' Advani or Arjun Singh?

A Two Party System in India ?

Rajinder Puri writes here how we can move Towards A Two-Party System in India. But I am surprised how little he has analysed and written about why the present situation exists. He mentions the lack of intra party democracy, but at a very shallow level. There are no state units in congress. Even the appointment of the Chief Minister of state is first decided by the ‘high command’ at Delhi, and then the chosen person is ‘voted’ by the MLAs as the CM.

Then, there is the problem of ageing leaders. Arjun Singh, Vajpayee, Advani, Karunanidhi, Achutanadan, Bal Thackery. They just don’t want to retire. In U.K, U.S, where the two party system seems to be working so well, the leader of the political party resigns and retires from active politics if his party loses the election. There they have a huge process to elect a political party leader, in which the opposing candidates fight it out as if it were a true national election. We have none of this. None of the parties have it, national or regional.

Then there is also the problem of party whip when parliament or sate assemblies vote on a bill. So, no MP or MLA can have an opinion different from that of his party. I agree that there have been many cases of horse trading, but then the Parliament is divided into rigid blocks and the way these blocks vote is completely determined by a few individuals, the so called ‘high command’. What it means is that there is a lack of democracy not just within the party but even in the parliament and hence in the country. That is why we have so many breakaway parties. The younger leaders’ aspirations and ambitions cannot be met with such a scenario.

So, as Mr. Puri suggests, if we have a quasi national party, then these problems are still not solved. Hence, it is not possible and probably not desirable either.
But with so many small paries, there is also lack of stability sometimes. Sometimes the elction results are determined by the alliances rather than the issues and the performance of the government ( ex: TN in the latest election ).

I feel that alliances of ‘blocks’ ( controlled by ‘high commands’ , and ‘ammas’ ) is still the better option.

Yuga Purana

Just been reading about Yuga Purana on these two sites.
A Gap in Puranic History
Yuga Purana – Wikipedia

Interesting. It is actually a part of a larger text named Vriddha Gargiya Jyotisha.It seems to have been written at around 1st – 2nd century A.D. It is said to give a detailed accounts of the invasions by the Greeks and the Scythians among other things. The references to Gargiya Jyotisha in some other Puranas show that it was written earlier than atleast these Puranas.
Interestingly, it completely ignores Ramayana and avatarhood. It mentions the MahaBharata war but not by that name. On this basis, one of the articles says that this text must have been written before the epics themselves. But, Yuga Purana mentions other figures like Parasurama and Krishna.
So, if the dating of this text and its interpretation are correct, it would mean that the epics were composed after 2nd century A.D.