Humility and arrogance

Source : Google photo of Jimmy Carter carrying his bag

Synopsis :  We are remembered positively or negatively or not at all depending on how we have behaved all our life. So what we leave behind does matter to the living who may stop and say a silent prayer over your tomb stone someday and say He was a good man who was so humble , so helpful to others and so kind hearted . 

In the deserts of Arabia when you meet a Bedouin, he will greet you with Salam alei kum  and offer you water or tea while sitting in the shade of a date palm tree where his camel also gets to drink water and rest. If you are young and need his protection because the desert can be a dangerous place for someone travelling alone, he cannot deny it. His faith prohibits it.
There is a congeniality among them that prevails against all odds and is observed. Their life is harsh because the desert is very unforgiving so they are required to be congenial toward the strangers they sometime meet who may need their help.

They can also be brutal toward their rivals so there exists inter-tribal animosity in some parts that may lead to bloodshed over water source which is not a trivial matter in the desert. You may have seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia and know about some of the desert rules and etiquettes.

I have seen the good nature of people in many parts of the world where the simple people are found to be the most hospitable people on earth who will give you shelter and food if you need and who will come to your help without any strings attached if you need it.

I have also seen this good nature in people in small towns of Algeria where they invited me in seeing that I was getting soaked in rain, dried my clothes and gave me hot coffee and shared their meal with me. I have seen this in very poor farmers there who knowing that I had not eaten the whole day while working with them in their fields put eggs and cheese in the hood of my Arab gown ( called djellaba).I was overwhelmed with their kindness and hospitality everywhere.

During the war in Vietnam when I was working there as a volunteer agronomist, I was often stopped on the road by farmers who would insist that I share their food and drinks with them and they protected me from harm by giving me warning of some impending peril that may have saved my life many times.

So I start to think why some people in some parts of the world are so gentle and nice to strangers while in other parts they are not. What makes  those poor Bedouins share their food and water in the desert where such things are so rare?  What made those poor Vietnamese farmers share their food and water with me when there was a terrible war going on and the life was so insecure?

If you go to Japan today, you will be overwhelmed by their courtesy and hospitality they will extend to you without even knowing you and a poor taxi driver in Hong Kong invited me to his dwelling in the slum of Sheung Shui to share a meal with me there.

I have seen the goodness of people in Sicily where they showered their hospitality on me and where the kids shed tears when I was leaving and I am still so impressed when a man came out of his house in a small town in California and invited me to share his Thanksgiving meal with his family. I have many such experiences all over the world but I also have some bad experiences in some parts that makes me write this blog today.

In some countries people are nice to strangers because of their faith that teaches them to be so but I think it is more than the faith that makes people congenial and hospitable. I think it is a part of their culture and it naturally varies from country to country.

In some countries people are naturally suspicious of strangers and will ask all sorts of questions before they can decide whether to be nice to you or not which may have something to do with their political system they live under. You will never be received by anyone in North Korea because people there are so afraid of meeting strangers and are required to report them to the authorities while in more open societies where people live under democracy may not behave that way.

But once in Bulgaria during their repressive communist rule, I was well received by the tourist agency late at night in Sophia when they arranged for me to stay with a family and a taxi driver broke all the rules to bring me back to the hotel in Varna where I had forgotten my overcoat and still managed to bring me back to the airport. He drove up to the plane that was ready to taxi out and convinced the pilot to take me on board even if I was so late. Such kindness and hospitality can warm anyone’s heart and make his faith in humanity grow.

Then I go to India where I give gasoline to a scooter driver who had run out of gas. He takes it and starts his scooter without even saying a simple Thank you and rides off. This was in Ranikhet.It has happened many times there. Yet India claims to be a country of courtesy and hospitality but perhaps with some strings attached.

So I started to think that the courtesy, congeniality and hospitality to strangers becomes a part of the culture in some countries where their religion plays a great role in it even if their political system is repressive.

In more open societies like in India, you find people who rarely say thank you for the help you give them unhesitatingly although I am sure there are many decent people there.
The good nature in people is always moderated by one sterling quality they all have that is called humility. When the Prime Minister of New Zealand sits next to you in a cramped economy seat in a flight, I call him humble. When the Pope washes the feet of a Muslim girl, I call him humble. When Jimmy Carter carries his own bag, I call him humble but they are very important people who give us all an example of great humility that we should practice but how many of us do?

The padres here in the Philippines make the appeal from their pulpits all the time to be humble, to be compassionate toward the needy and be gentle and be helpful to others but who listens? The avid church goers here are some of the meanest, toughest and nastiest people found anywhere but why is it so?

My wife always keeps bottles of water in the ref for anyone who comes to our gate to their great surprise because here no one gives them water or anything and won’t even open the gate for them unless they know them because people are so mean and paranoid about strangers.

A delivery boy came the other day from a great distance to bring us a package and kept on saying Thank you M’am , God bless you when my wife gave him cold water. He was so dehydrated riding his bike in the heat of the day but then my wife is a very kind woman who extends such courtesy to strangers all the time.

You will find very mean and arrogant people who are paranoid and very suspicious of anyone who greets them just to say hello so they never get to meet their neighbors. They also happen to be very lonely and isolated because  of their self-imposed wall that they can’t break down.

So I start to analyze this nature in people and draw some conclusions. I think people who come from poverty and get some education, get a good job and build a nice home, buy a car and live in a fancy gated community become a victim of their material success and become very arrogant. This happens in India and in many countries.

They are also very paranoid as if their hard earned success will slip away somehow through their fingers because believe it or not, it happens to many who lose their homes, cars and other material things because they borrow money to live a lifestyle they can’t afford so the banks take it all away when they fail to pay the mortgage.

A simple farmer does not have much to lose because he is so poor. He will readily offer you food and drinks to show his hospitality. But to say that poverty makes people more friendly, hospitable and congenial towards strangers is to say that the poor people are better than the middle class which may be stretching the truth somewhat. The poor people suffer more from crime and drug addiction, joblessness, low quality of life, poor food and living conditions than the middle class.

The high cost of living, the pressure to live a better life and the social cost of living the way they do makes them more prone to be more cynical, suspicious and afraid of strangers than the most and yet I find the poor people in Algeria and Vietnam were so  nice.

So what it comes down to is that inherently the poor people of this world are more humane as you find almost anywhere in Africa  who will readily trust you and offer you their hospitality but that changes where they struggle to survive in vast slums  that blight almost all the major cities of this world. Their priorities are then determined by the degree of their struggle.

The unfriendly middle class and their paranoia is a symptom of the fragility of their status especially if they live beyond their means and try hard to protect what they have gained. The arrogance and rudeness in them is just an added layer of body armor they put on to hide their low self-esteem and low self-respect.

The poor farmers do not go hungry because they are self-reliant and grow their own food but this is not true in the slum dwellers who have to struggle to earn their bread every day. This constant struggle for survival wears down the values they had when they were farmers.

I appreciate humility in a person that sets him apart from others. Such people are very approachable and are naturally friendly like Jimmy Carter. The power and his position did not go to his head like it does in some politicians these days.

But I do not appreciate the arrogance in anyone no matter who he is and least of all in a monk because by the nature of their vocation, they must always be humble yet we found a monk in Canberra who was so arrogant. We were surprised and disappointed in the monk.

We all are given a chance to leave behind our legacy in this world when we depart it but how many of us leave a positive legacy behind? How many of us stop to think for a minute what others think of us or do we care?  Apathy, intolerance, suspicion, arrogance, ignorance, bigotry, religious fanaticism, racism, hateful behavior, paranoia, mistrust of people  are all symptoms  of a  stress related life people live and act accordingly.

So I conclude that I would rather be a poor farmer buried under the shade of an oak tree where people may stop someday and think of me as a good person who gave food to others when he had so little and gave shelter to others in his hut. That is the legacy we should all aim for. Shouldn't you ?


Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.
Mis blogs en espagnol
Blogs von Anil in Deutsch
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My blogs at Wix site
tumblr posts    
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Medium.com
Anil’s biography in English.
Biographie d'Anil en français
La biografía de anil en español.
Anil's Biografie auf Deutsch
Anil’s biography in Japanese
Биография Анила по-русски

Unnecessary incarceration

Source : Google photo of a very crowded jail in the Philippines

Synopsis : We often see simple ordinary people thrown in jail for minor infractions in many countries so they suffer needlessly and come out with trauma that bedevils them the rest of their life . The punishment  given to anyone should be proportional to the offense so a reform in the penal system is needed to help those who have served their term to re assimilate into their society to live a productive life.


There was a time in the United Kingdom of Great Britain where a child of 10 years of age was tried and convicted of a crime for stealing a loaf of bread because he was hungry and was ordered to be transported. Did you know what that word meant in England in those days? It meant that a convict was sent to Australia on a rickety slave ship that took over a month to reach Australia in the company of other convicts charged with dubious crimes surviving often on just a loaf of bread and water .

Now you can imagine how the bread can turn into a moldy lump during such a long sea voyage with some added vermins thrown in for taste but the convicts had no choice but to survive their horrendous ordeal not knowing what awaited them at their destination. It was better for them not to know because the penal colony of Australia in those days was barren with absolutely no facilities to house and feed anyone let alone undesirables from England so the convicts were put to work to cut stones and make bricks to build shelters first.

It was worse than slave labor for even the children because no one was spared from working. No one could run away because where could they go? It was a vast continent where only the native Australians managed to survive based on their survival skills honed over centuries but they were not eager to help the new arrivals and watched them with suspicion.
So from the Botany bay where they landed, the colony spread toward other coastal areas giving rise to towns and cities later but it took them hundreds of years to do so while the convict ships kept arriving with more people including women and children. Never in the history of mankind a colony was established with the sweat and tears of white people so far from their homeland but that is how Australia was established.

There is a family name called Everingham that has multiplied and spread all over Australia now but once in a while they all gather somewhere to greet each other and remember the first Everingham who had arrived there as a convict for some frivolous misdemeanor centuries ago.

The United Kingdom at that time found it convenient to transport all their undesirables to Australia because their jails were already full and building new jails cost a lot money so it was a cheaper solution and gain a foothold in a new continent called Australia. It was a wild gamble but it paid off handsomely when they discovered gold and precious gems there later by accident. So they sent men , women and children to fend for themselves and the prostitutes who were so poorly equipped to do so in a far away and strange country.

The governor general of the penal colony was the judge ,jury and executioner rolled into one so many convicts were flogged or even hanged for some infractions because he was supposed to uphold the law and order and somehow make the colony profitable for England so he was relentless in pushing the convicts to work harder and start planting crops for food. 

This was really hard for them because back in England they were not farmers and did not have the skills to grow their own food. What did children and prostitutes know about farming or doing hard labor to cut stones and make bricks?

This bit of history is the background over which I want to paint the story of crime and punishment now and see where we have arrived since those days and where we are going in the future .

There are millions of common people all over the world who are incarcerated for simple crimes like jaywalking or stealing a loaf of bread or selling cigarette somewhere without a permit so nothing has changed since the Everinghams arrived in Australia.  The penal system and the facilities to jail the convicts varies from country to country but the size of the incarcerated people all over the world keeps on growing .

In the United States alone , it is estimated that over two million people are behind bars and more are being jailed daily where more jails are being built to accommodate them so the government relies on private contractors to build the jails for them and maintain them . It has become a very big business for the private contractors to build jails all over the country because they make huge amount of money and are happy to turn the whole country into jails if that is what makes them rich.

In other countries like here in the Philippines, the government has little or no money to build new jails so they keep pushing new arrivals into cells that are already overcrowded with no room to spare for the new inmates. It is like over crowded rats in a small room leading to frequent fights for survival so the jails have their gangs that rule over the inmates. They are brutal and violent who can kill someone with impunity because they are there for life so who can punish them more?

The gang lords  can carry on illegal drug smuggling, trade in contraband and run the prison anyway they want so the new inmates either submit to their will or be forced to do so by threats, beatings and sexual assaults so by and large the inmates accept the rules just to survive there. The old crooks just laugh when they hear someone say that he was framed and is innocent. The warden and the guards do the same. Why are you here if you are innocent? Their belief in their justice system is unshakable.

There is a story about a fellow who was a very educated person and was jailed for some bank fraud so the warden hired him to do his book keeping because the man was a talented accountant who kept a very good record of all the bribes the warden was taking and stashing it away in some banks. This ledger was kept by the warden in a safe after each entry but one day the convict was released after his term ended.

When the warden opened the safe, he found a blank ledger because the accountant had departed with the real ledger in his hand that he used to find all the money of the warden in banks, withdrew all of them using fake ID and real passwords etc. that he managed to get while in prison and then handed over the ledger to the police. When the police came to arrest the warden, he shot himself. This is perhaps just a story for the movies but such cases do happen in prisons.

In some countries where racism is widespread, the people of dark skin bear the brunt of the penal system and suffer the most. If they are released after sometime then they bear the scar of their prison life the rest of their life and try to survive as best as they can.  Some are so traumatized by their brutal experience that they fail to overcome and adjust to the society again.

So now I come to the analysis part of this blog and ask why is it that people are still incarcerated for minor misdemeanor like jay walking or stealing a loaf of bread when he is hungry? Why women are separated from their children and their home for a simple breach of law that perhaps they did not know anything about?

Did you know that there are thousands of obsolete laws that the police in many countries still use to jail people because there has never been a serious attempt to reform the penal system? The common people may not know all the laws they must obey all the time so they can get into trouble very easily so they are arrested over minor traffic violations or some such things , booked at the police station and finger printed where they take the mug shots and create a dossier on that person.  This dossier is constantly updated each time the person is arrested on some frivolous charges that may not even be real.

The police dossier on a person is like a stain on his or her reputation so it may prevent him to get a college education or a job later because the employer may want a police clearance. This stain no matter how unfair is like indelible ink that can't be washed away.
In some countries , there are some courageous people who have tried to make jails better for the inmates but they are so rare that I must tell this story just to show you what is possible if there is a will. This story should inspire all the jail wardens to reform their system.

There is a very infamous jail in Delhi called Tihar where many convicts  were kept in abominable conditions. Prison riots were common due to the poor quality food and living conditions where hard core criminals are kept with others jailed for simple crimes. This changed when a female jail warden took the job and went about improving the jail and its living conditions almost immediately. She sorted out those people who could learn a trade like carpentry, baking or cooking etc. and provided them with training.

The convicts then started to bake bread, cakes and various other things  that were sold outside and the profit was distributed among the convicts. Others made bags, wallets etc. that were also sold and the profits shared . The warden dramatically improved the quality of food for all the inmates , made sure that they all had some physical activity through sports and made Tihar jail as the model for all the jails anywhere . The released  inmates who had acquired some skills in baking and other things got some loans later to set up their own business and prosper.

The lady warden was acclaimed as the best warden for improving the jail and the conditions for the inmates and was given many awards but it did not sit well with others in the penal system who were green with envy and blocked her further promotion to the extent that she was prevented to go to the White House where President Obama had invited her because he had heard what she had achieved.

She had shown that the jails do not have to be hellish where the people suffer needlessly. She had shown a way to train them and get some skills that allowed them to set up their own business when they were let out so that they could support themselves and their family.
This story could be emulated everywhere because the vast majority of people in jail are released after serving their term but find it hard to live a normal life somewhere with a good job and raise a family.

There was a time when a person charged with a simple felony or misdemeanor was given a fine and a warning and let go. The serious offenders were given stricter punishments after a brief verification of facts so Emperor Akbar ordered their execution. He kept a monstrous elephant in Fateh Pur Sikri that was trained to step on the chest of a convict to crush him. During the monarchy, the crime rate was low so people lived in peace.

Then came the notorious justice system and zillions of laws for the common people to obey so they started building massive jails using tax payer's money . The courts now have a back log of cases pending due to the massive corruptions in their system that the lawyers take full advantage of to keep a guilty person out of jail. This is their bread and butter so they want the cases to languish in courts for years. This brings enormous grief to the litigants in terms of time and money spent who only want a quick justice but the system does not allow it.

Once a court sends a man to prison, his ordeal really starts where he is abused by other inmates.Women are not spared either in jails where the hard core female inmates do the same as their male counterparts. The Ashley Judd movie the Double jeopardy is worth watching where the story of a female convict wrongly put in prison who gets her revenge when she gets out is graphically shown with superb acting.

                                                 https://youtu.be/uDr8qT3BlHM

I think the jails serve a purpose to keep really bad people there who have committed serious crimes but the ordinary people should not be treated this way and should be allowed to go after paying a small fine or a warning so that they can continue to live their life. This means that the penal system has to undergo a very serious reform to reduce the number of people incarcerated and reduce the tax payers burden.

The reform must start in the judicial system where a speedy justice should become normal and where the greedy lawyers must be told to speed up the process and not delay. There is nothing more depressing than the courts where you see hundreds of black gowned lawyers milling around like vultures looking for their next kill.

Most people are simple folks who are law abiding so they should not be punished this way for simple mistakes. We all make mistakes and hopefully learn from it. The justice system should after all be fair and should focus on those people who are by nature bad and do bad things.

I hope that someday all jail wardens will follow the example of that lady warden in Tihar who so impressed President Obama.


Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.
Mis blogs en espagnol
Blogs von Anil in Deutsch
Blogs in Japanese
My blogs at Wix site
tumblr posts    
Blogger.com
Medium.com
Anil’s biography in English.
Biographie d'Anil en français
La biografía de anil en español.
Anil's Biografie auf Deutsch
Anil’s biography in Japanese
Биография Анила по-русски

Etienne Dinet

Source : Google photo of a self portrait of Etienne Dinet

One of the most wonderful artists of his period, Etienne Dinet loved to paint the common people of North Africa especially in Algeria where he spent most of his life.
Nasreddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet on 28 March 1861 – 24 December 1929, Paris) was a French orientalistpainter and was one of the founders of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes [Society for French Orientalist Painters]. He became so enchanted with North Africa and its culture that he converted to Islam, and was proficient in Arabic. In addition to his paintings, he translated Arabic literature into French. ( Wikipedia )

Born in Paris, Alphonse-Étienne Dinet, was the son of a prominent French judge, Philippe Léon Binet and Marie Odile Boucher.  In 1865 his sister Jeanne, who would be his biographer, was born.

His art was so radically different from his contemporaries in Europe that they at first failed to appreciate his style of painting real life people without posing for him and discouraged the art galleries to display his paintings. The European artists at that time had a posed and unnatural style they could not get away from and thought it was the best way of painting their subject.

Etienne Dinet converted to Islam and took the name of Nasreddine Dinet , became a well known artist and a great scholar of Arabic that he spoke fluently and translated into Arabic many scholarly treaties, books and literature found in Europe and vice versa.

His nude models were real life women in rural Algeria who voluntarily posed for him and appreciated his beautiful portrayal of Arab and Berber women in all their glory. They were not veiled and nudity in women was not unusual in the countryside where Etienne painted most of his subjects. His paintings have a vibrancy that shows the real emotions in his subjects , piety of Moslems, daily life of children, women bathing or playing, rural scenes, landscapes, desert bedouines, camel caravans and numerous other aspects of Moslem culture. He used the colors to depict the natural colors of his subjects.



Source : Google photo of  Femme de Bou Saada , Algeria painted by Dinet
Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat.^[1] At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat and l’Oued M’Sila après l’orage.

Raoucha 1901, 46x45cm, collection Musée des Beaux Arts d’Alger

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.^[3]


In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.^[1] Dinet became so enchanted with North Africa and its culture, that he eventually converted to Islam. ^[4] He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet.^[5][6] In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca.^[5] 

In July 1896, he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and participated in the international exhibition of the Centenary of Lithography (Paris).^[7] The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda.^[5] There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollet   ( wikipedia)




Source : Google photo of the grave of Nasreddine Dinet in Bou Saada, Algeria next to his friend .

Now a magnificent museum in Bou Saada in Algeria has been built to preserve his most renowned artworks .

Here I present a power point of his most well known paintings for your enjoyment. You will not fail to notice the extraordinary quality of his paintings , the details and the play of light and shadows on his subjects that has set him apart from the rest as the master artist of his time. This powerpoint is for your enhancement of knowledge so please feel free to share it with anyone you like in any social media.

Link to the power point on Etienne Dinet


https://1drv.ms/p/s!AmoX9W4gHulzk0tsOIU6sQW5cySg


Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.
Mis blogs en espagnol
Blogs von Anil in Deutsch
Blogs in Japanese
My blogs at Wix site
tumblr posts    
Blogger.com
Medium.com
Anil’s biography in English.
Biographie d'Anil en français
La biografía de anil en español.
Anil's Biografie auf Deutsch
Anil’s biography in Japanese
Биография Анила по-русски

Democracy is a beautiful word

Source : Young voters in India will transform the country

Synopsis: India is holding the election to choose its national government to govern the world's largest democracy where over 900 million voters will decide who will govern them. The scale of this massive election boggles the mind in its scope and the implications for the 1.3 billion people, many of them the first time voters. It is the largest voting exercise in the world and is considered generally a free and fair process.


I know that the democratic process of electing a new government varies from country to country. Even the most repressive country like North Korea is known as the Democratic Republic of Korea where people are not given their right to choose their leader because only one person appears as the choice with no opposition.

In other countries they follow their own system where the popular vote does not count and only the Electoral College chooses their leader who may have gotten less votes than his opponent but still becomes the president like in the United States.

He then goes on to appoint some people as his ministers ( called secretaries ) who then run various departments that are called ministries elsewhere so each country has its own system and methods of election that may or may not take people’s wishes into consideration in forming a government.

In a truly democratic system like in India, people do not elect their leader directly but choose the members of the parliament so the political party that wins the majority of the parliamentary seats then gets the right to form the government. The leader of that party then becomes the prime minister of the country with solid majority parliament member’s support.

Please read my blog What is democracy in this context.

It is interesting to note that in such a democracy that is found in India, every minister who becomes the part of the new government becomes so only when he wins the election in a nationwide vote so he comes to the government with people’s mandate and is accountable to them while in other countries where they are appointed by a chosen leader are only accountable to their president like in the United States and not to the voting public. Such ministers or the secretaries do not have to be elected by the people so different countries have different system that may have their own reasons for them.

India is therefore called the true democracy where the people decide who will become their leader and who will become their ministers at the state as well as the national level. While electing their national government, people also choose the state governments. Because of the very large number of voters ( over 900 million ) , India conducts the election over a month long period in seven steps so it is staggered that allows the Election Commission to prepare the voting booths, security and mobilize all the resources at their disposal to make the whole operation smooth and peaceful.

Now watch this video to see how India elects its government

Watch this video to see how India elects its leader

https://youtu.be/oXI1T5N6L4Y
Source : U tube video on how India chooses its Prime Minister

It means transporting thousands of electronic voting machines to thousands of polling stations nationwide; prepare the voter’s list for each station where the voter presents his voting ID to get his or her right to vote, votes and gets an indelible ink stain on his finger.
It prevents flying voters or repeat voting by some voters at the behest of some political parties who may resort to dirty tactics to gain votes when they feel that they are about to lose. The paperless voting system in India also prevents ballot stuffing thus reducing fraud and illegal practices found in other countries.

The recorded votes in the electronic voting machines are then electronically uploaded to the master computer somewhere where the super computers count the votes nationwide and tabulate in blistering speed and announce the winners and losers in a matter of a few days after the completion of the last step.



Source : Google photo of the electronic voting system in India

The election commission ( EC ) is a very powerful tool that keeps the election honest, free of fraud and ballot tampering that some politicians may practice. The EC also has the power to remove or transfer erring policemen or voting officers who are found to be dishonest or fail to perform their mandated duties and can even disqualify a candidate who violates the EC rules of total ban on all forms of electioneering, advertising and posting in any media any campaign material during a certain period.

Recently the EC stopped the release of a movie made on the Prime Minister Modi because of this ban. Once EC asked Indira Gandhi why she had used a government helicopter for her campaign before the election although I see now almost all the candidates use helicopters or planes for faster travel, India being a very big country. The EC makes sure that no one uses public money for his campaign so the candidates have to use their own money that their party accumulates for it from donations.

I have lived in many countries where I have noticed corrupt practices of the politicians and their supporters to influence the vote in their favor that may even include killing their opponents or intimidation by their goons. I have seen the flying voters, repeat voters and ballot stuffing using paper ballots or even fake ballots. I have seen how some politicians openly buy their votes from the illiterate and poor voters by giving them money or food or tee shirts and other gifts and I have seen tremendous political violence before the election or during the campaign period in some countries.

In strict Islamic countries like Iran, a voter cannot cast his or her vote in secret so the government candidates know who has voted for or against them so people are afraid to vote freely according to their own will but Iran still claims it to be democratic.

In North Korea everybody is required to vote for the sole candidate so people are afraid to vote against him for the fear of retribution. In China it is the same yet they call their system democratic.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo that was ruled by a tyrant and despotic leader for quite some time, there was nothing democratic about the way he was chosen. He is dead now but the country still has many problems.

So I think that democracy is still a work in progress in many countries where the voters still face many challenges, where their right to vote in secret is not observed, where voter intimidation takes place, where the opposition is threatened or intimidated, where the pre-election violence is done by the candidates, where polling frauds are common and where the polling is neither fair nor free.

But I also think that a free and fair election process that is practiced in some advanced democratic countries such as India also depends upon the maturity of voters, their awareness of the national and regional issues , the manifestos of the candidates and their present or past track records.

It is very difficult to fool the voters there who demand the proof  from the candidates of their past achievements and how and how much they have helped their constituencies. Simple promises made by the politicians just to get the votes does not work anymore because the voters are more educated than the previous generation who are not afraid to ask direct questions the politicians may find hard to answer.

The massive proliferation of TV channels that field thousands of microphone toting and fast talking reporters all over the country even in remote areas now give people a voice that are heard and transmitted over to their studios instantly via satellite technology. It makes people more aware of the issues instantly all over the country so they can watch on TV the analysis of the voting trend, the views of the common people and their demands, their needs and their aspirations that put pressure of the candidates to deliver on those promises that they make so easily during their campaign.

In other countries where the voters are mostly illiterate or with minimal education are easily swayed by the glib politicians who even dance and sing in front of their voters if they demand because such voters are not aware of the issues on which the election is fought or they do not consider them important enough to have live debate.

So the democratic process develops if the voters become mature and more educated who can then discuss the issues in town hall meetings directly with the candidates and demand straight answers from them instead of asking them to sing or dance for them.
I see a trend in many countries that have suffered under a one man dictatorship for a long time or under a tyrant who does not wish to leave power toward a more open and free democracy where people can freely exercise their will to form a government of their choice.
They make consistent demands through protests, sit ins, civil disobedience and other means to put pressure on the dictators to make their country more democratic and often end up paying a heavy price.

Remember the brave Chinese in Tian An Men Square who only wanted freedom and democracy and were killed in large numbers by the soldiers? Remember how the opposition leader in Zimbabwe was beaten senseless by the police when he had challenged the autocratic president there?

The Arab Spring that spread through many Muslim countries after the Tunisia revolution uprooted many long time dictators that paved the way for a freer society and more personal liberty. 

Source : Google photo of Algerians protesting for free and fair election

I had not thought the Algerians will also ask for such freedom but recently they have forced a long time president to step down and have called for fresh election there. They are still protesting on the streets there every day to bring about changes that will bring true democracy to them. It should be noted here that the present generation of Algerians are more educated and aware of their national issues than the previous ones so millions of young voters vote for change in their government.



Source : Sudanese protesting in Khartoum against the dictator's rule

Just last week the Sudanese people have forced the longtime dictator of that country to step down and are now asking for the election of a new democratic government.
So I see a trend toward a more democratic and freer society in many countries that are now increasingly demanding a voice in the governance of their countries. That is the true meaning of democracy where people and only people decide who will be their leader and how their chosen government will meet their aspirations.

With the introduction of paperless voting machines and electronic transmissions of results to the central computer somewhere, the election in India has definitely made progress toward a free and fair election nationwide although some incidence of poll violence still occurs in some places.

What I also see now is the curse of the technology in the hands of common people. Almost everyone has a cell phone and can see the latest updates on election or any other news so the internet is inundated by fake news by some people who make mischief. They upload fake news that the Prime minister of Pakistan has just been killed or a prominent Indian political candidate has been assassinated. The social media like facebook or whatsapp etc have been deleting fake news but the bad people spreading fake news make more and confuse people.

They publish compromising photos of politicians by doctoring the photos using photoshop but often get caught by anyone who looks keenly and finds out the photo shopped photos done very unprofessionally. These fake news and photoshopped photos can be deleted but they do some damage before they are deleted.

Now anyone with bad intent can upload fake videos in U tube to mislead people so one has to be aware of such mischief and delete them or ignore them. They should definitely not share them with anyone.

What is happening in India and other countries where they have a working democracy is that people are increasingly demanding accountability from their politicians and are holding them to the promises they had made to the people to get elected.

So the Indian government has filed many corruption charges against the politicians who are now seeking fresh mandate so many are facing long court battles. Some of them may end up in jails and their monies and properties confiscated by the judiciary.

The Income tax department makes frequent raids when they get the information that some corrupt politicians are hiding black money in their house to finance their campaigns. Recently they have uncovered millions of Rupees of undeclared money in many houses in many parts of India and frozen their assets.

The democracy is still a work in progress but I see now a trend toward a more open and transparent society in many parts of the world where people are becoming more aware of their democratic rights and are demanding the accountability from their politicians.
India is a good example where people are chasing out corrupt people from their offices through their ballots and are electing honest people who are then putting dishonest people in jail and recovering the stolen money of the people.

This work will not be complete until governments are chosen by the people, for the people and of the people everywhere to make the democracy a beautiful word in a true sense.



Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.
Mis blogs en espagnol
Blogs von Anil in Deutsch
Blogs in Japanese
My blogs at Wix site
tumblr posts    
Blogger.com
Medium.com
Anil’s biography in English.
Biographie d'Anil en français
La biografía de anil en español.
Anil's Biografie auf Deutsch
Anil’s biography in Japanese
Биография Анила по-русски

Adulteration

Source : Google photo of sweets in India

Adulteration is very common today and the most commonly adulterated food product is milk. Adulteration lowers the quality of food and sometimes, toxic chemicals are also added which can be hazardous to health. The products are marketed in a tricky manner, which is usually cheating the customers.

Synopsis : We are assailed by the cheaters everyday in our life somewhere so it is important that we are all aware of such people and take some preventive measures that can go a long way to protect us from them. I suggest a few such measures here.

A friend of mine gave me a packet of sweets in Kolkata before we were leaving for the airport so we brought it to the Philippines but only after a day found out that the sweets were mixed with flour that hardened the sweets like stones so we had to throw them away. It was supposed to be made of pure milk. I did not have the courage to tell our friend that he was cheated to spare him hurt feelings.

When a milkman was seen delivering fresh milk door to door in England, he was asked by an Indian why he was not making profit by adding some water to the fresh milk. The milkman was very surprised at this sinister suggestion and retorted that Sir, in this country we do not do such things so you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting that we adulterate our milk that our children drink. Would you give your children anything less than pure?

My mother used to send me to the creamery to buy fresh cream that she boiled to make ghee every month. This is the pure milk cream that she made wonderful ghee of. But at the creamery I used to see all the milk vendors with their large milk containers waiting in line to sell the cream to the creamery and later sell the cream less milk to the unsuspecting buyers. This way they made double profit.

We now a days face a tsunami of fake products and adulterated food and even medicine. Once I was attending a government run workshop on some agricultural products they were promoting and bought some coffee but was very surprised to find that they had mixed burned saw dust in it.

They mix molasses with honey and sell it as pure here in the Philippines. They pour red dye into the gills of fish to make it look fresh when it has gone off. They ripen fruits and vegetables using carbide that leaves a bitter taste in fruits and may have carcinogenic consequences. They spray  toxic chemicals on strawberries and sell them in the market without any warning.

But selling the meat of an animal that has died of natural causes is perhaps the worst offence people can make. You never know what you are buying because there is no guarantee anymore of purity of products.

I have seen how they inject a banned chemical into cows and buffaloes in India that prevents the animal to withhold the milk but this substance is banned by the government because it is carried in the milk and causes cancer. There are many laws to protect the rights of consumers but who implements these laws ? I have seen myself how these laws are ignored by the milk vendors because there are no health inspectors.

The word cheating is associated with the unscrupulous businessmen because it seems that they will cheat you whenever there is a possibility to do so. It starts with the rigged balances that give you less weight than what you pay for and short measuring meters that give you less length of clothes but charge you more.

The tampered weights used in measuring is also common in some countries while the business people constantly come up with new schemes of cheating you, robbing you and give you less than what you pay for. Here in the Philippines the most common way of cheating is to shortchange you when you are in a hurry and do not count your change.

My wife has caught them cheating several times because she always counts her change and demands correct change. So they say that they are poor in math and often miscalculate the correct change but how come they  never overpay you?  The supermarket grocery girls often punch twice the item when they should punch only once, the bus or jeepney drivers often say that they do not have small change so the passenger is shortchanged and the maids sent to buy grocery steal part of the money.

When dishonesty becomes a part of the culture then you start feeling besieged by the cheaters everyday no matter where you go and what you buy. How can anyone be alert all the time ? This constant worry of being cheated starts to affect the average person who simply wants to get what he pays for and nothing less.

It is as if you are under constant surveillance and have to look over your shoulder all the time to see who is following you. Its psychological impact on a person can be devastating who loses his peace of mind.

In some countries like India where cheating is rampant, the government now orders all packaged products to have printed retail price on it be it even a matchbox and punishes those who overcharge but the business people find ways to beat the system and mix water in the milk and do many other things to cheat. The most common way of cheating is to mix poor quality rice with good quality rice and charge you more.

Once we were cheated by a shopkeeper in Delhi who eagerly gave us fresh cashews to taste that was good and sold us packets of cashews that they had extracted the oil from. They sell the oil of cashews, pistachios and other nuts that fetches a high price and sell the tasteless nuts to unsuspecting buyers like us. If you are visiting South India, do not buy cashews they sell in sealed non transparent plastic bags because they stuff them with rotten cashews. In the railway stations they will try to sell you basket full of oranges with good oranges at the top and rotten oranges at the bottom thus cheating the train passengers.

Did you know that the business people are usually not admitted to anyone's home in India? It is because people do not trust them. My mother used to buy fish from an itinerant vendor who only had some stones as weights so we never knew if the stones had correct weight. It reminds me of the movie Karate kid when Mr. Miyagi found out that the weights used by the vendors in Okinawa market that were supplied by a criminal who controlled the market were made of paris plaster and painted black. It was just a movie and may not be true but the weight tampering goes on everywhere.

Then there is a  tsunami of fake products sold as Gucci and Prada etc. made in some cheap back alley workshop employing  slave labor by dishonest businessmen who then sell them openly. If you go to Shenzhen malls in China, you will be shown fake Rolex watches for twenty dollars that look real. The women there are so aggressive that they will not let you pass by and insist that you bargain the price with them.

The Italians who sell fake Rayban and numerous other things just out side Termini in Rome and in various other locations  are not so aggressive like those Chinese women but they are selling fake products openly that some people buy. They are very quick to gather their goods they spread on a sheet whenever a policeman is seen coming their way and often drop a few things in a hurry to run away. But they are like sparrows in a wheat field that fly away at the slightest danger but always come back when the coast is clear.

Once I was cashing some money at a bank in Paris when a Frenchman said to me that the black market rate for dollar was much higher than the bank rate so I was foolish to go to the bank but I ignored him. The black market money changers will hound you and follow you like a pest if they know that you are a foreigner and want to change some money on the street. They will entice you with a much higher rate and shortchange you by quickly counting the local money , take your dollars and run away before you can count twenty. Others will wait and watch someone who is changing money at a legal pawnshop and then follow the person to rob him in a dark alley somewhere.

The adulteration, cheating, shortchanging and deceitful behavior is often attributed to the dark nature of human beings who are not shy of doing such things because their conscience does not bother them. It is also easier to cheat a stranger than a person who is known to them.

One way to avoid cheating  is to patronize the same store or vendor to develop the mutual trust over a long period of time but this works only in your local neighborhood.

The fake medicines are the worst of all products that threaten the lives of people. Because the real medicines are so expensive, poor people buy the fake medicines not knowing that they are harmful and may cause them serious illness later. These fake medicines are sold openly in many countries where the regulations are lax and the vendors do a brisk business. Who makes these medicines, where and how they enter the local market is a big question that requires answers. Often criminal gangs are involved in the import and sale of such dubious products.

I have seen the snake oil peddlers in India who will try to convince you of their product that they label as cure all ailments oil that some stupid people buy but by and large they are a dying breed. The new educated young generation does not believe them so eventually they will disappear or seek other ways to defraud people with other fake things.

We face numerous challenges everyday breathing polluted air, eating adulterated food, drinking fruit juice laced with carcinogenic preservatives, buying fruits that are sprayed with toxic chemicals, inhaling secondhand smoke in public places where people keep on smoking like chimneys, using unclean public toilets in malls and picking up germs so the list is long and no one is spared.

But not all is lost to those who take precautions.  My wife rarely buys canned products that use additives and preservatives that are harmful to your health. We never buy and use MSG ( mono sodium glutamate ) that people use in their food  but one day we caught our maid of secretly using MSG in our food and promptly fired her. She said that the food is tasteless without MSG but did not believe our reason. We were happy to get rid of her.

You should only buy fish that is alive , meat that has the stamp of the health inspector, wash all fruits and vegetable , look at the expiry date on the packaging before buying anything, buy only fresh roasted coffee beans and have it ground before you in the shop , buy only sealed bottles of imported honey if you like honey, buy only fresh milk from Australia or New Zealand that are guaranteed to be pure. There are numerous things one can do to protect oneself from the unscrupulous business people.

Some religions encourage their followers to observe strict code of conduct all the time so cheaters are punished by caning or even cutting their hands off to discourage such behaviors so by and large the Muslim countries suffer less of  dishonesty than in other countries where the laws are not so strict in the implementation.

It is a fact that there are always people who want to cheat you in any way they can so all you can do is to guard yourself and be alert. I have brought some cheaters to the authorities in Saigon and in Mali to get justice so please do not tolerate injustice and report cheatings to someone who may do something about them. There are good people who will listen to you and do something to redress the situation only if you complain to them like I did in Saigon and in Mali.

It is impossible to control the cheaters everywhere in any country even if their governments have good intentions so it is our duty to be always on guard.


Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.
Mis blogs en espagnol
Blogs von Anil in Deutschby
Blogs in Japanese
My blogs at Wix site
tumblr posts    
Blogger.com
Medium.com
Anil’s biography in English.
Biographie d'Anil en français
La biografía de anil en español.
Anil's Biografie auf Deutsch
Anil’s biography in Japanese
Биография Анила по-русски