Another political assassination and another mystery. The story seems to differ depending on who you listen to or read. According to the CNN fellow, he was standing in front of Benazir Bhutto's car taking photographs. She got into the car and stood up through the sunroof which is borne out by video footage taken at the time. The car started moving forward slowly and then suddenly surged forward at which this fellow had to take evasive action. At this time three shots rang out and Bhutto slumped inside the car and the the shooter blew himself up. Another version in today's paper says that she opened a car window to speak to her supporters and was then hit by shrapnel. I think the previous version is correct because video pictures taken just moments before show her head and the upper half of her torso above the roof of the car. The first government version said that she was hit by shrapnel but this morning the Paki spokesman was saying that she was hurled against a 'lever', which operated the sunroof, by the force of the bomb blast. Seems strange that the government does not want Bhutto's death to be due to gunshot wounds. The shooter certainly was a marksman. To be able to hit half a target in a moving car and with thousands of people milling round would seem to suggest professional assassin. However professionals do not blow themselves up which would suggest that he in turn was set up. Either his motorbike had been rigged or a jehadi had been instructed to blow him up at the right time. There will be many conspiracy theories but of one thing we can be sure, we will never get the right answer. Only time will tell if this is the end of Pakistan. God help the world if there is civil war in that country.

The first cricket testmatch between India and Australia started this morning and is being broadcast on Star Sports. Since it is being transmitted from outside the country our very own Doordarshan is unable to steal it. Neo Sports, a private channel, bid for and secured the rights to broadcast all cricket matches played in India but the government passed a law which compels the company to share its feed with Doordarshan. This is done apparently in public interest because the aam aadmi is unable to afford cable or satelite connection. Fact is the aam aadmi is so busy keeping his skin on his bones by slaving all day that he has no time to watch cricket. Not having paid a paisa for the broadcasting rights Doordarshan shamelessly makes huge money from commercial often missing the last and first balls of succeeding overs. If this is not an example of grand larceny I do not know what is. Up until about fifteen years ago Doordarshan had broadcasting monopoly in India but chose to dish out so much garbage on its two channels that apart from Ramayan and Mahabharat there was nothing to watch all day. Once private channels came in it has expanded to over fifteen channels some broadcasting 24/7. Still its filthy habits have not gone. About ten years I went to pay my telephone bill in Delhi. It was half past ten in the morning and at least twenty people stood sweating in a queue but the counter was closed because the fellow had still not come. When he arrived he sat under a tree and had a cup of tea before deigning to take our money. Today with private telephone channels offering better customer care the sarkari fellows are scrambling to save their jobs. Filthy habits die hard. If you try to phone one of the sarkari numbers from a private line you will find it almost impossible to get connected possibly because they block it on purpose. Politicians and sarkari fellows, hard to imagine a more evil collection.

Just read that Tony Blair has converted to Catholicism. Presumably he has been a Church of England protestant till now. A year or so ago a mixed school was opened in Northern Ireland, the scene of killings for decades between catholics and protestants. A little girl was being interviewed on BBC and she was saying how excited she was to be learning about a different religion. We should be forgiven for not understanding how people who call themselves Christians can claim to be following different religions and justify killing in its name. After all there was only one Jesus who pardoned his enemies while on the cross. For that matter Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim to follow the same God while differing in the legitimacy of prophets who were human. They have been killing each other for millenia completely ignoring the commandment given directly by God ordering them not to kill. Scholars have spent lifetimes speculating on the whereabouts of the Arc of the Covenant and Indiana Jones went chasing all over the world looking for it but when it comes to its commands they are completely ignored. And they dare to call us Hindus names such as kafir, heathens or pagans. We have many Gods and Goddesses but we do not fight each other saying my God is bigger than yours. We do not go around claiming to be greater than others and killing to convert them to our faith. Yet stupid freeloading joournalists are always abusing Hindus while keeping totally silent on the butchery of others.

Seems that the government in Delhi is thinking about applying tolls to 'two lane highways'. This a euphemism for tracks built in the distant past and repaired infreqently. The highway between Rourki in Uttarakhand and Delhi is a prime example. It is an extemely busy road which passes big cities such as Muzzafarnagar and Meerut in UP and leads to Dehradun and Mussoorie on the one hand and to Haridwar, Rishikesh on the other. It is, therefore, used by tourists going to the hills and by millions of pilgrims going to Haridwar and then on to Kedarnath and Badrinath, all extremely important sites for Hindu pilgrims. This highway is a single carriageway with frequent villages encroaching from both sides of the road, bullock carts, tractors, even chidren defaecating on the road. There are frequent indiscriminate speed breakers in the form of humps so high that cars scrape their undersides. After the monsoon rains massive potholes appear and in parts the entire surface disappears. To charge toll for such a filthy road is an act of monstrous banditry. With economic growth millions of Indians are buying cars, motorbikes and mopeds and paying trillions of rupees in road tax. The m0ney disappears into a black hole without any accounting of where it has gone. Since this government was formed with a coalition of some twenty ragtag parties new ministries were created to bribe poltical partners. These pseudo ministers demand government bungalows, armed guards and kleptocrats to loot the exchequer. There is an insatiable demand for more tax collection to pay for these parasites and so taxes keep going up. I will not be surprised if there is a secret committee whose sole work is to dream up new taxes or increase those in existence. We can easily get rid of 75% of the kleptocrats and pay triple salaries to the ones that remain which will increase efficiency and decrease bribery. To think that out freeloading journalists keep advertising that the Prime Minister is a noted economist.

There has been no water supply in the south of Delhi in areas such as Vasant Kunj for the last three days. As usual there was no warning, residents were not informed as to the cause of the failure or when normal supplies will resume. Also as usual all phones were taken off their hooks while Jal Board officials enjoyed three days of extra holidays. Whether they came to work at all is not known but no attempt was made to help residents. Water tankers made a killing selling 1000 litres of water for Rs. 500 when the normal rate is Rs. 100. How the booty was divided will never be known but we can assume the kleptocrats will not have missed such an opportunity. Fights broke out between residents desperate to survive. Filling your tank is also not the answer because your water will be stolen when you are out. Residents upstream have fitted what is known locally as 'online boosters' which are pumps attached to the mainline and pulls water at a greater rate. This means that those downstream receive less water because the pressure drops to a trickle. Downstream residents have disconnected their ball valves to increase the flow rate which means that when supply is adequate enormous quantities of water overflows into the drains. Delhi is normally a dry place and such waste water is a great loss. Very soon I foresee someone being killed over water. Then politicians will rush round like headless chickens and a commission of enquiry set up. A retired kleptocrat will earn a lot of taxpayers money by prolonging the enquiry to several years by which time it will be completely irrelevant and no one will read its report. I think next year is election time in Delhi. These same politicians will be round with folded hands asking to be reelected. No sharam, no izzat.

Couple of days back in Gurgaon, Haryana two fourteen year old boys had an argument with a classmate. One boy then pulled out a gun and shot his classmate four times in the back as he was climbing the school bus. He then passed the gun to his friend who fired a final shot into the already dying boy. A few days back a seventeen year old school boy received a new motorcycle from his father. That evening he was driving at great speed with a friend sitting at the back and crashed head on with another motorcycle carrying two other boys. All four died. It is a common site to see children, some as young as eleven years old driving cars and motorbikes often with passengers. What kind of monstrous parents would allow an underage child to drive or carry guns. Strangely you will never see police stopping and arresting underage drivers but they are busy catching legitimate car owners and fining them for not renewing thier pollution certificate every three months. Strange how everything comes down to politicians and the kleptocrats. These people and their friends have vast quantities of black money and do not know how to show their wealth. India has more property dealers per square mile than any other country in the world. Most of these are criminals engaged in land grabbing, illegal construction, selling the same property to many different people and crimes of similar nature. They generate the money which is used to finance their elections whereupon they become ' elected representatives of the people ' and immune from prosecution. No wonder ordinary people are also becoming increasingly violent. Reports of thieves or pickpockets being beaten to death is common. Traffic accidents are frequently followed by local people attacking the police. Such is the suspicion and hatred for all politicians that people will not allow companies like Posco and Tata to set up steel plants because they are afraid their land will be forcibly handed over by sarkari fellows. Hence Nandigram. Perhaps we will end up as a country of bandits.

The government has just passed a bill which will punish people who neglect thier elderly parents. Is it possible to make people more caring by threatening them with three months in jail and a fine of Rs 5000. Would it be possible to make politicians honest by passing a bill threatening them with jail? I think not. One old man, about eighty five years old, lived around here. He had prostate cancer and had to take frequent injections for relief of pain. He lived with his old wife and one son who was a drinker. Another son lives in Delhi while a third lives in the US. The drinker son developed cirrhosis of the liver and huge ascites which is water in the abdomen. He was gradually going downhill and last month was admitted to hospital in a moribund condition. The old man was so upset at the prospect of losing a son that he had a heart attack and died on Diwali day. The son died a few days after him leaving behind a wife a a four year old child. Now the two surviving sons came over from Delhi and the US. The first thing they did was to put their mother, who had just lost her husband and a son, in and ashram in about 200 km away and then started abusing their sister in law to make her leave the house so that they could sell the house and divide the money. I find it hard to understand how anyone can be so cruel and devoid of any sympathy even for his mother. The other question that comes to mind is why all three sons were such monsters. Is it because the old man and his wife treated their own parents badly and the boys grew up thinking that this was the correct thing to do. We are moved by the plight of the old and the infirm but have no way of knowing if they had been good parents in their younger days. If children grow up to hate their parents no amount of laws can make them care. Animals instinctively care for their young but most humans make lousy parents.

A new law has come into effect whereby anyone using an internet cafe has to provide full name, address, phone number and number of a photo identification card. It is now illegal to open an email account under a pseudonym. This is complete destruction of privacy and will no doubt will be used to hunt down anyone the sarkari fellows do not like as has already happened in China. No doubt they will claim that this is being done for our protection and to track down terrorists and criminals. Nearly all terrorists operating in India are under control of Pakistani intelligence and surely can open any number of email accounts abroad. Anyway they usually have large numbers of false papers and can change identity at will. They can easily obtain passports in India by bribing the same sarkari fellows. In the Bombay blasts case a police officer was convicted of allowing a truck full of explosives to pass for a relatively small amount of money. Clearly this is a way of surreptitously obtaining data on innocent and respectable citizens. To be fair India is not the only country which is spying on its citizens. The US has been doing it for years and is also snooping on telephone an internet traffic of the citizens of its allies. The UK is proposing to have a DNA record of all its citizens. All the more frightening because the British have lost personal details of 25 million people which was contained on two disks and now opens the way for identity fraud. No wonder people all over the world trust politicians the least.

Indians have always valued poverty because renunciation of material wealth is at the heart of our spiritual teaching. Our movies have shown how the hero, who is brought up by a widowed mother struggling to survive, is totally honest, patriotic and incorruptible. The truth unfortunately is not so romantic. Most poor people in India have a sense of hurt because the government ( govt ) is not doing enough for them. They are convinced that poverty is an entitlement and that they should be helped to a higher living standard without any responsibility. They do not see any value in education and are reluctant to put in the hard work to get a degree. Thus they will vote for anyone that promises them reservation in govt jobs without necessary qualification. We are told by the bleeding hearts that they have so many children because they want some insurance for old age because there is no social security in India. The truth is that they are well aware that their life expectancy being less than fifty years they are unlikely to want geriatric care. They have so many children so that they can send them out to work by the time they are ten years old and live on their earnings. Most violent crimes are committed by the poor often against their own kind. It is true that rich people cheat on taxes and commit other financial crimes but these do not directly threaten our person or property. Poor people vote for short term gain and have no sense of morality. Thus they will vote for a convicted murderer if he distributes free saris and bottles of booze. This is why we have so much scum calling themselves VIPs. Unfortunately it is in the interest of the same scum to keep the poor people illiterate and poor so that they can be exploited for generations. Is their anyway to force people to become less poor and more educated?