Just got my driving licence renewed in Delhi. My British licence is valid till the age of seventy years but the Delhi licence has to be renewed every five years. First you have to drive fifteen kilometres to Janakpuri in West Delhi. The roads are potholed and the entire building is filthy. There is no public toilet so men use the back wall and the stench is so pungent that it is impossible to breathe. What poor women do I have no idea. You queue up at one counter to pay some fees then at other counters to pay for the photo fellow, for finger printing, for photograph, to submit your form and then wait at a point on the verandah for over an hour when suddenly a fellow appears and begins shouting out names and handing out new licences. By then most people are reduced to wrecks and pocket their licences gratefully, never mind the mistakes. As close to hell as you can imagine. Naturally touts abound and the officials earn twice their salaries in bribes. In Delhi all new cars have to follow European standards of emission to reduce pollution. All cars have fuel injection systems and you cannot tune your car higher like in the carbrettor. Still everyone has to get a pollution check certificate every three months which means wasting time at one of these places and paying Rs. 50 for the privilege. Nice way to earn money for friends of politicians and unnecessary harassment for people. Even new cars are not exempt. If a car gets stolen and the police find it they will only return after stamping the registration document with ' superdari'. Naturally you have to run around to get it cancelled before you can sell your car. Clearly you do not need guns to be a police state. India aspires to be a soft power in the world, it is already a soft police state.

Fellow come to the clinic with his wife who is complaining of dizziness. Fellow is eighteen years old, works as day labour and has been married two and a half years. The girl does not know her age. Looks about fifteen years old and would have been about twelve or thirteen when she was married off. Turns out she is pregnant. I get furious and tell the fellow he should be hanged but he looks completely blank. He has no idea that he has committed a crime by marrying an underage girl and is guilty of rape under Indian law. The girl looks bewildered not having any idea what pregnancy means or what the future holds. Even after thirty years of medicine it is heart breaking. Repeated pregnancies, chronic malnutrition, a long miserable struggle to bring up children and may be a merciful early death. Next day I attend the Annual Sports day at a local school. Girls of all ages laughing, screaming and bouncing around the sports field while proud parents took photographs. No confusion here. These girls looked happy in the present and confident of the future. Unfortunately such girls are in the minority in India. Even among the middle classes boys are prized while girls are seen as liability. Among poor paople girls are seen as curses and millions are aborted or killed just after birth. No one seems to realize that without women you cannot have sons. Two women are in the news this week. Both married without parental consent, one of them married a fellow of different religion who was found murdered. Although volumes of pious words will be written most people will think that these are prime examples of how girls bring shame on families and destroy honour. Is it better to be aborted, not to be born rather than face a life of hardship and misery? Wish I knew.

A item on the online BBC news site on Tuesday, 23 October, 2007 says that money collected for disaster relief has gone missing. Mr. Rehman, an employee of Coal India Ltd. says that all employees of that company had donated one day's wages for victims of Gujarat earthquake, Kargil war and the Asian tsunami but the money never reached the Prime Minister's Relief Fund. He found this out by persistently asking for information under the Right to Information Act. I doubt that any Indian will be surprised at this news. Few years back an American of Indian origin wanted to donate money to the college he had passed from but the then minister, Murli Manohar Joshi decreed that he could not donate directly to his college but had to go through the ministry. The fellow donated the money to an American college instead. Such is the mistrust and contempt for politicians and civil servants tht no self respecting Indian will have anything to do with them. Do these people feel insulted that they are seen as scum by their countrymen? Not at all. When they are able to commit any crime and live a life of luxury at tax payers expense they can afford to have skins thicker than that of a rhinoceros. Do mafiosi feel insulted by being called criminals? Some educated Indians say that a period of army rule would benefit the country by executing all politicians and civil servants but that would be even worse than what we have at present. There seems to be no solution.

So South Africa managed to beat England in the Rugby World Cup. What relief. I would probably have stopped watching the game had England managed to remain champions. Although they have the prescribed fifteen on the park, England have managed to make it a nine man game - eight big forwards and one goal kicker. Their game plan is simple, effective, extremely negative and boring. Kick long into the opponents half, disrupt their lineouts, prevent clean ball possession at rucks and hope that the referee will give a penalty for some silly reason such as coming in from the side. If the opponents knock on then use your weight advantage in the scrum and lay the ball back for a drop goal attempt. South Africa beat England at their own game. Their forwards disrupted English lineouts on at least three occasions, kicked long into English half whenever they had possession and defended with discipline to avoid giving away stupid penalties. Habana and Pietersen used their pace to tackle English backs forcing them to hold on and give away penalties. In Percy Montgomery they had a goal kicker as good as Johnny Wilkinson so they won by kicking five out of six penalties for fifteen points to Wilkinson's two penalties and one missed drop goal attempt. No tries and boring. If the authorities of Rugby Union want other countries to play and watch the game they must do something to encourage try scoring. For example they could have two types of panalties, three points for dangerous play such as high tackles or stamping in rucks and two points for silly reasons such as coming in from the side. This might discourage England from using their negative tactics and look to making it a fifteen man game.

So Nokia decided to recall forty million faulty batteries. Large advertisements in leading dailies promised that new batteries would come in the post if you promised to return the old ones in the envelopes provided. I registered online and filled in the correct name address and all details required. Another person in Delhi registered by text messaging and was promised that the new batteries would come by post in three weeks. Of course this being India that did not happen. After waiting for a month and a half I went to the Nokia service centre in Dehradun and was told that all batteries had finished and they did not know when new ones would come. So last week I went to a service centre in Delhi where I was told the same thing. Eventually after we became angry our batteries were changed. Would Nokia dare to treat customers in Europe or America with such contempt. There is no doubt that they saved a lot of money by not sending batteries by post. Whether they thought that all Indians are dishonest and would fail to return the old batteries I do not know. I also do not know if the company service centres had been instructed to say that they had run out of batteries but they definitely wasted a lot of our valuable time and caused great inconvenience. It is not uncommon for Indians to be treated with such contempt by foreigners who make a great deal of money in our country. Sadly there is nothing we can do and they know it. After all our politicians class themselves as VIPs which makes all other citizens unimportant.

The whole world is watching aghast as the despicable criminal junta in Burma kill and torture innocent people and defile monasteries. It is not the killing of a hundred, two hundred or even a thousand citizens that is most awful but the conversion of ordinary people into terrified monsters capable of shooting a Japanese photographer in cold blood at point blank range or inform on friends or brothers. Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao did the same thing to their people. The same phenomenon is taking place in India though in a much more subtle manner. People are being transformed into fearsome beasts capable of any crime however heinous it may be. Everyday newspapers carry stories of crimes whose brutality reach new nadirs beyond imagination. This morning's story is about the kidnap and murder of a ten year old for ransom. Yesterday it was about the murder of a 25 year old woman for dowry. Rape, incest, murder, paedophilia, served with your morning tea. Why not if the politicians do the same and get away with it. The police and other investigating agencies such as the CBI are toothless. Forensic experts corrupt evidence to secure release of the rich and powerful. Instead of improving the investigation and prosecution of criminals the govt tries to curtail free speech. First they tried to sneak in a Broadcasting Bill but stepped back because of enormous opposition. Now a parliamentary committee is recommending that Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be liable to criminal prosecution for third party content. Which means my ISP could face jail for this blog. Since it is not possible for anyone to monitor what millions of people are writing it means that ISPs will just have to shut down. Ergo no more blogs so no dissemination of information or criticism. Must admit our politicians learn quickly from the Chinese and the Burmese.

Last week in Bangalore a group of young men and a few women were out celebrating . One fellow had qualified as a lawyer from the prestigious National Law School and had just landed a job in Bombay. Around midnight they decided to go to a local lake. On the way their car developed a problem and they were waiting by the road side when a group of local louts came by. An argument developed and this young man was stabbed to death. When contacted the first question the police asked was why they were going to a secluded lake at that time of the night with young women. This was the first question that came to my mind when I read the news report. Had a bunch of young men gone to a dark lake there would probably be no danger but the presence of girls made it infinitely dangerous. It was an invitation to the thugs, probably high on alcohol, to show their machismo and try to teach 'educated fellows' a thing or two. It seems that girls today have no appreciation of appropriate behaviour. They seem to think that they can do what men can get away with. Had they gone to the lake it is possible that they would have been picked up by police and charged with indecent behaviour or even raped by the police themselves. This kind of thing happens regularly but girls do not seem to notice. Most women say that men are beasts and that they have a right to go anywhere at any time of the day or night. This is the stupidest thing to say. Theft is a crime and no one has a right to steal our property. Yet we have bars on our windows, elaborate locks on our doors and imported gear locks in our cars. Surely women should take care of their bodies as they take care of their possessions. Yet they would like to be more macho than men. Unfortunately men and women are completely different species and three billion years of evolution cannot be undone by ten years of globalisation.

There has been a spate of deaths in Delhi when people have been mowed down by buses run by private operators, the so called ' Blue Line buses ', so called because they are coloured a light shade of blue to distinguish them from the green ones of Delhi Transport, the sarkari fellows. Following headlines in newspapers politicians have come out with their usual lies and smokescreen. They talk about phasing out Blue Line buses which is utter nonsense because without private operators public transport will be crippled. Moreover the same fellows will paint the buses a different colour and start operating again. This has happened previously when Red Line buses were banned and the Blue Line ones started. The problem is that transport companies are owned by politicians who will never allow their profits to fall regardless of the number of people killed. Yet the problem is so easy to solve. A strict law that enforces proper maintenance of all public buses and heavy punishment for owners if vehicles are found to be faulty. Secondly all commercial licences should be centralised and the driving test stored on video to eliminate bribes. All licences in Delhi already demand prints of index fingers of both hands so it should be easy to compare prints of new applicants against the data bank to prevent applying for a new licence under a different identity. So easy yet impossible because the law concentrates on pollution control of cars with small engines every three months because this earns money and lets people be murdered by buses. Politicians need to enjoy.