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.

Seems that a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court ( CJI ) helped his sons while on the bench. His sons were working for a company constructing shopping malls. The CJI ordered sealing of shops and businesses operating in residential areas and the razing of buildings considered to be built illegally. This resulted in panic and huge rises in the prices of shopping malls as businesses frantically looked to relocate. These orders have now been suspended. Three journalists of a tabloid, Mid Day, have been punished by the Delhi High Court for contempt of court. Apparently by publishing this story they sought to cast the entire judiciary into disrepute. The Court made no attempt to verify the truth behind the story so the judgement means that whatever the crime committed by a judge no one is allowed to talk about it. The Minister of Information and Broadcasting tried to introduce a bill which has united all journalists in opposition. They say that the bill is aimed at reducing the right to free speech. Meanwhile in Burma army thugs are beating up monks and nuns for expressing dissatisfaction with the criminal junta. Last year the Chinese had to release a blind activist, who had been jailed for protesting against corruption, because of the international outcry. No one would dare to criticise Ahmadinejad in his own country Iran but he had to sit and listen to the bad mannered rantings of the boorish Dean of Columbia University. Third world leaders have to understand that unless they respect their own people they will be insulted abroad.

Yesterday I was mugged inside Reliance Webworld where I go every Sunday to check my mail and update this site. The weapon used is called ' validity ' which wiped off Rs. 400 from my account because I was a day late in renewing it. The small internet cafes are safe. They charge Rs. 10 per half hour after you finish. This weapon is used by the big boys - Reliance, Satyam and so on. They will not let you do anything unless you open an account. Then you have to buy time for example 100 minutes for Rs. 100 or whatever is on offer. You think that since you have bought and already paid for those minutes you may use them whenever you like but therein lies the catch. There is a period of validity upon expiry of which your money disappears into a black hole never to return. To keep your account valid you must renew within the stipulated period whether you have used any time or not. This is like saying that the new car you are buying will be valid for, say, two years following which, if you do not pay some more, the engine will seize up. I had renewed on the 23rd of last month and was going to renew yesterday which was also 23rd. But sadly my validity expired on the 22nd and my balance of Rs. 400 was wiped out. If this is not larceny I do not know what is. Yet it must be costing little to maintain customer accounts indefinitely. After all Hotmail is free for billions of people and this site is provided free by Google, both enormously profitable. It is just greed on the part of Reliance and a contempt for its customers. In India the customer is a sucker to be sucked dry.

Hallelujah, India is the most perfect economy in the world. A substandard flat built by the Delhi Development Authority cost just over Rs. 3 million five years back but is now a cool Rs. 17 million. The Sensex has risen from around 3000 about two years ago to over 16000 two days back, after the FED rate cut and the talk is of 19000 soon. Vegetable prices have more than doubled in the last year and prices of commodities such as cement and steel are up about 50%. Basmati rice, which sold for Rs. 35 a kilo last year, cost Rs. 48 a few days ago. Potatoes were Rs. 10 last year but are Rs. 24 today. the list goes on. Miraculously and fortunately the government's inflation figure remains at around 5% year on year. Thank God for that. Had the inflation been any higher the beloved aam aadmi would have suffered terribly. Even at 5% India's inflation is twice that of the US. Unlike China, which has huge fiscal surplus, India runs a current account deficit due to increased import of capital goods and increasing oil prices. With all these figures you would expect the rupee to fall in value against the dollar but, in fact, the opposite is happening. The rupee has strengthened from 48 to 40 against the dollar and fell below 40 in yesterday's trading. The wise govt. is bailing out the exporters who are used to a continually depreciating rupee and are bleating in distress. All this is down to the wise policies of our genius politicians. I owe a sincere apology to Goldilocks. I did not think she existed.

Two large headlines in today's newspaper. One said that the government is going to increase taxes on new cars and on petrol. New cars will cost 8% more and a cess of Re.1 will be added to petrol. These new taxes will raise Rs. 50 billion which will be used to improve public transport in large cities in India. Alongside this piece of cheering news is another headline which says that Rs. 315 billion have been stolen from the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the last two years. The other name for PDS is Rationing and this was started in the 1960s when there was famine in India and we had to be rescued by the US (PL480). At that time everyone had a ration card and gradually this functioned as an identity card and proof of address and was required for obtaining a passport, car registration and in other interaction with govt. agencies. From the beginning it was ridden with corruption. The quality of rice and wheat was so poor that we found them inedible and ration shop owners used to mix gravel with rice resulting in many a broken tooth. As the green revolution succeeded anyone who could afford it started buying rice and wheat from the open market. A few years ago the govt. decided that rations would be only for the genuine poor. As we can see they have been stealing from the poor and one of the worst states is West Bengal where the commies are always going on about the poor. In the last three years the Central Govt. has been Congress supported by the Communists and they have been adding taxes frantically while the plunder goes on. No sharam, no izzat.

With the economy improving foreigners are arriving in increasing numbers to India. Imagine an Englishman arriving at IGI Airport, Delhi to be welcomed by a typical Delhiite. I imagine the conversation would go something like this - ' Good evening sirjee, myself Manish. Your good name John Makepiss? Welcome sirjee. You want bathroom? You want to do toilet or latrine? Don't know? Must be gas. My neighbourer had pijja and lady finger for lanch and was having terrible gas. Doctor said he has inphection of the cowlon. He died. Sad no? Now I am having his car. I buy it form his misses for 50000 bucks. It has no stepney and its self and shockers are slightly broken. My cobrother get me a driving licence for Rs. 500. Good to pay and get licence otherwise the RTO fellows send you up to the wall. No problem, all part of the game. My cobrother likes sports so I buy him two nikkers so he can play with his friends. Here is my car, sirjee. You sit in the front and I will put your suitcase in the backside. Don't worry sirjee, my dicky is very big.'
It is a fact that trade with the UK is not growing as the government would like.

Hundreds of millions of Indians are stupidly passionate about cricket. Repeated failures do not seem to reduce their enthusiasm. They have already forgotten the ignominy of the World Cup. In the recent Nat West series against England India were 3-1 down but recovered to 3-3, much to the delight of the broadcaster and the cricket boards, only to capitulate pathetically in the final at Lords. Because of these stupid millions sports channels keep showing cricket all day long. They show old matches from their archives, which cost them nothing, and rake in the profits. Genuine sports lovers are deprived of live sports. For instance only one sports channel is broadcasting selected matches of the ongoing Rugby World Cup even though regular matches are played in Calcutta and Bombay. Teams such as Calcutta Police, Armenians, LMOB, CFC, Bombay Gymkhana and teams from Sri Lanka play against each other but the sports channels ignore the sport thinking all Indians are stupid. A sizable chunk of these idiots bet illegaly ( called satta ) on the result of the matches and on such statistics as to whether Tendulkar will score a century. Instead of making betting legal and collecting a tax on it our criminal politicians have made it illegal. Result is that satta is controlled by criminal gangs, mainly that of Dawood Ibrahim. Dawood, in turn, is controlled by the Inter Services Intelligence ( ISI ) of Pakistan. Thus the vast amounts of money generated by satta is being used to finance terrorist activities in India. Pakistan does not have to spend any of its own money to kill Indians because idiots are hooked on cricket. There seems to be no solution.

Indians are understandably proud of our achievements in telecom. From the time when you had to wait at least 4 years to get a connection and, very often, only after dishing out heavy bribes to now when even a labourer whips out a mobile casually is indeed a great improvement. A call from Delhi to Chandigarh, a distance of 250 km, was a trunkcall at Rs. 100 per minute and you had to go through an operator, invariably a disgusting woman who barked at you while now you can call the US for about Rs 6 per minute. Unfortunately fellows at the other end have remained the same and therein lies the problem. You see thick fog out of your window and phone Delhi Airport to find out if flights are still landing and a fellow tells you that every flight is on time. When you reach the airport after a fingernail chewing, heart thumping drive you see on all the monitors that all flights have been delayed. You phone the helpline of the bank and cancel your credit card because you are going abroad and you are assured that you will not be getting any more bills. When you return you find that you have been sent a new card and then the bank starts a process of harassment and threats to make you pay Rs. 700 which is the yearly subscription. Since no one is recording the phone conversation you have no proof of cancellation. Happened with a foreign and a public sector bank. Foreign banks would not dream of treating customers in their home countries the way they treat us but they follow government controlled public sector banks in bullying us and giving substandard service. Celebrating sixty years of independence

Junior doctors at All India Institute for Medical Sciences ( AIIMS ) in Delhi have been on strike because they have not received their degree certificates for two years. This is a most crucial time for these young people because their careers and lives are at stake. The Health Minister is refusing to sign the certificates for reasons that have not appeared in newspapers. The High Court in Delhi instructed the Minister to sign the documents immediately but we will have to wait and see if he will do so secure in the knowledge that he can do anything he likes including destroying the valuable lives of so many young people. So what has His Majesty, the Health Minister done during his time in office. He has banned smoking in Indian films and he has been trying his level best to destroy AIIMS, the only premier medical institution in the country. He is trying to increase reservation for undeserving candidates and thus lower standards and he has been needling the Director, trying to get him to resign so that he can get his own man in. Has he done anything to improve the standard of medical care or reduce unethical marketing by drug firms? Where is the time for anything constructive?

Seems that in 1961 the Americans wanted India to develop a nuclear weapon before China so that China would not become too powerful. Unfortunately Nehru was against nuclear weapons and vetoed the idea. China repaid that by attacking us and is still occupying about 50000 squre miles of Indian territory. They annexed Tibet and India recognised their claim that Tibet used to be a part of China without any benefit in return. Now China is planning to divert the Brahmaputra river towards its own land with the threat of catastrophic changes in the North East. By facilitating the immigration of Han Chinese to Tibet in huge numbers it is marginalising the local population. The refugee Tibetans in India will probably never see their native land will will become permanent residents of India. Even now we see monks and nuns trekking for weeks through extremely hostile territory to reach India. Some of the stories are horrific tales of being shot at, beatings, rape, hiding in caves and trekking through dangerous snow bound paths for days while surviving on snow. Not just the people, even the wildlife of India is paying the price of Nehru's folly. Like cockroaches Chinese eat virtually every living creature and insist on the right to make 'medicines' from animal parts. Inidan tigers, bears, snakes and rhinos are being slaughtered to extinction by poachers to provide for their stupid medicine inspite of irrefutable proof that they are inactive. The same Congress party is now trying gain popularity for a nuclear pact with the US. Sadly for us it is 46 years too late.

One NFL quarterback has pleaded guilty to dog fighting charges and killing dogs cruelly. He will probably go to jail and pay a fine but there seems to be an outcry to ban him from the NFL for life. It is disgusting to cause pain to any living creature and rightly he is being punished but I fail to understand why he should not be allowed to play foorball again. Hunting deer and wild boar is allowed in the US as is shooting birds. An animal shot and wounded may suffer from untold agony while trying to escape from the hunter. Shotguns are used for shooting birds which spray pellets over a wide area. Wounded birds fall to the ground and flop around desperately trying to fly while in pain and panic. Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shot his friend while out shooting birds and is now a butt of jokes. However, no one is asking him to resign for cruelty to birds. Cattle and sheep are stunned and then butchered to reduce suffering but fish are hauled out of water and allowed to slowly suffocate to death. Lobsters scream when they are thrown live into boiling water before being dressed and served in posh restaurants. Is there any evidence that dogs suffer more pain than birds, fish or lobsters? I am not advocating that everyone should turn vegetarian but it is one thing to kill a living organism for food and quite another to kill for sport. Deep sea fishing is only for rich people. Hire a boat on a summer's day, take food and beer, hook a marlin and play it for a couple of hours before hauling it out of water to suffocate to death. Great fun to let the fish run a little before jerking it back time and again. Unbelievable cruelty and great enjoyment, worth spending thousands of dollars for. What is nauseating is the hypocrisy and selective blindness. No wonder the gun lobby is unbeatable. Killing innocent students by a crazy fellow brings a shrug of shoulders but killing dogs causes a national outcry. Nuts.

There is a lot of silly talk coming out of Washington about American withdrawal from Iraq. The south of Iraq constitutes 60% of the population and is Shia. This area also has most of the Iraqi oil. The south of Iraq shares its borders with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan thus Iran will be sitting on the borders of these countries through its proxy militias. Kuwait, Saudi and Jordan are Arabs and thus ancient enemies of Persian Iran. More pertinent they are Sunnis and bitterly hate the Shias of Iran. These three countries must be terrified of any American withdrawal because they will be at the complete mercy of Iran which has a huge and very committed army. More importantly Iran will be able to control most of the Gulf oil if it should so choose to do. That is surely intolerable for the US and its friends in Europe and Asia. The only credible way the Americans can leave Iraq without creating a gigantic geopolitical mess is to take out Iran and hope to bring about regime change by engineering some revolt after destroying its defence capabilities by massive bombing. We hear that millions of dollars of arms have gone missing in Iraq and no one knows how. Surely it would not be easy to move tons of arms through American checkpoints without anyone noticing. Can we assume that these have gone to Iranian dissidents for future use? After all the Americans are supplying arms to Sunnis who were their previous enemies. Is it possible that Arabs will join the US in bombing Iran with Israel grinning in the background. ? Delicious thought. Go for it George.

Gentleman I know in London had a urine infection about two months back. He is about 65 years old and would be a candidate for prostate problems. He was given a course of antibiotics by his GP but had another infection after two weeks at which time the GP referred him to a hospital consultant for further investigations. Urinary infections are uncommon in men and two episodes within a short time demands further investigations. He was seen by a consultant who advised a urine exam and a PSA, presumably to see if cancer was a possiblity. However they have not carried out an ultrasound examination which is non invasive, completely safe and could give a load of information such as size of prostate, degree of obstruction, if any, and if anything like a stone is responsible for the symptoms. Seems that there are huge waiting lists for ultrasounds and this can only be done if absolutely necessary. In India an ultrasound costs about $12, CT scan of the brain about $35 and an MRI about $120. Medicines are about one tenth what they would cost in other countries. Unfortunately healthcare is still poor in India. The wretched poor cannot afford even these paltry amounts and the middle classes, especially here in the northwest, are reluctant to spend money on health. They seem to believe that health is God given and should be free. Also the people in this part of India are compusive liars and do not believe doctors. Thus blood pressure and diabetes remain uncontrolled because they do not cause pain. Sadly health will remain less important than the latest gizmo wherever we go.