Pay Commission is out: Not Pleasing for the Employees

The 7th Pay Commission is out and it has submitted its recommendations to the Finance Minister yesterday. That is the operative part, but the recommendations are pretty luke warm and the salaries recommended do not have the competitive edge vis a vis the corporate world.

The commission has recommended a pay hike of about 23%, and for retired personnel it is 24%. This is not on the present gross emoluments, but on the basic pay. In that respect the increase in real terms may just be about 10%. This is a small increase and the commission ( perhaps under pressure from the government) as watered down its recommendations.

The pay commission is in fact an anomaly and I wonder why it has to be there. It is a colossal waste of time and money. A better system would be to have a constitutional body that works automatically and adjusts the pay of the employees in real time. In any case a period of 10 years , when each pay commission is ordered is too long and in fact means a decade passes before revision. Hence there is a need to stop this charade of a pay commission and est up a rolling commission to revise salary every year. To say this is a administrative nightmare is a lot of bullshit as in the modern  age a revision can be done in minutes with the latest software available.

The Central government servants wont be happy and I wonder if at some stage a strike or go slow is not the result. For this the central government would be responsible.

Greek Mythology: A Necklace that gave youth and bad luck

The Evil Necklace of Harmonia From Greek Mythology

Aphrodite and Ares

The Necklace of Harmonia in Greek mythology is a uniquenecklace. Made of solid gold it had twoserpents in a clasp and was studded with diamonds. Thisnecklace had the unique property of keeping a woman young and beautiful for ever, but there was a rider. Any woman wearing thisnecklace was beset by evil luck that brought extreme suffering for her.

 The origin of the necklace is shrouded in jealousy and love. We are all aware that Aphrodite the Goddess of love was a woman of extreme beauty and loveliness. She was the wife of Hephaestus who was blacksmith to the Gods. Hephaestus loved his wife immensely, but he was also jealous of her amorous tendencies.
It so happened that Aphrodite fell in love with Ares the God of War. The union became known to Hephaestus who was consumed with jealousy and he resolved to punish any child which was borne of the union of Aphrodite and Ares. He accordingly crafted a necklace with evil powers.

The union of Aphrodite and Ares bore fruit and the result was a daughter named Harmonia. The girl was as beautiful as her mother and she was married to Cadmus a prince from Thebes. Hephaestus consumed by jealousy visited Harmonia on her wedding and presented her with the necklace crafted by him. Harmonia took it unsuspectingly, not aware of its evil power. From thence thisnecklace is known as the Necklace of Harmonia.
Harmonia became younger and beautiful, but the necklace had its effect and she and her husband became serpents. The necklacepassed from many hands and always it brought misfortune. Ultimately it came down on to the  Queen Jokosta and she became younger and more beautiful. This made her fall in love with her own son Oedipus. They married, but when they discovered that they weremother and son Jokasta killed herself and Oedipus blinded himself. The necklace was having its evil effect.

The necklace was later stolen from the temple at Thebes by the warrior Phayllus who presented  it to his love. The lady wore it only to see her son become mad and burn her palace in which she perished. That is the end of the Necklace of Harmonia and nothing has been heard from anybody after that

Modi and Foreign Jaunts: Poverty at Home * 62

Narendra Modi is on another foreign trip, this time he is away to England, the mother country. It was a nation that ruled India for 200 years. Modi has been given an unprecedented welcome , but that is neither here nor there. Speaking and getting adulation from a crowd of 60,000t at Wembley is a great elixir, but how does it help the Indian farmer and the men and women below the poverty line?

India has the highest number of people below poverty line in the world and the figures are awesome: it shows as per GOI estimates that nearly 600 million Indian are living below the poverty line and do not have enough to eat. many a child goes to sleep hungry. It is recorded that on an average about 3-4 thousand farmer commit suicide every year. Pray,  how does  a trip with a adulating foreign media and Indian diaspora  mean anything to such people.?

Modi has his priorities wrong and  that will prove his undoing. Solving the issue of poverty and looking after the agriculturist is the foremost task. When will Modi bend down to it and solve the problem. The clock is ticking away and it will not be long ere we have a French revolution like in France in 1789, only it will be 200 years later.

My Enfield and the Mountains* 74

I love Long Drives Through Mountains on my Enfield Bike

 The Royal Enfield “Bullet” is my favorite motor bike. I prefer the 500cc, 4 stroke model and I find it is the slickest bike available in India. The bike is now manufactured at Chennai as the English company has folded up and sold its logo and assets to an Indian company. The Royal Enfield is now an Indian bike and exported under the old brand name.

My bike is fairly old now, but its never given any trouble. It is part and parcel of my life and I love to go on it, riding the hill roads and lanes. The bike handles the mountain roads with aplomb and even hitting a pothole at 60 MPH has no effect on me or the bike.

The bike has been used by me in the Himalayas and I have traversed the mountain roads in the Easten Himalayas to Darjeeling and Gangtok. Many time I have driven the bike wearing my uniform and cross belt with my revolver. It gives a kick to drive so attired and people watching me on the road side are impressed.

A greater pleasure is taking my girl friend for a spin in the mountains and then steal furitive kisses in the thick jungles.

Christians in India: Who are They ?* 67

During the Second World War a high class Brahmin woman was raped by some US soldiers in Madras. She committed suicide. I write this to highlight that the higher classes never countenanced a relationship with the white rulers and generally lived an insular life.

But there are many Christian converts in India, mostly Catholics. Though a minority, their numbers are increasing. In case the higher castes did not convert then who converted to Christianity in India and how?

Generally Christianity believes in spreading the Gospel and the message that Jesus was the son of God. This is of course is a myth and there is no historical basis or otherwise of this belief, but then faith is not based on historical facts. But this belief in spreading the Gospel led to Rome authorizing Christian missionaries to come to India to spread the Gospel and in the bargain try and convert as many people as possible to Christianity.

The Moslems converted the Hindus to Islam by the sword, but the Christian missionary used subtler methods of coercion. Firstly they targeted the weakness of Hindu society, the caste system. The Hindu at the lower end of the caste system was poor and denied a lot many rights. Thus they were easy fodder for these missionaries. They gave food and shelter to these lower castes and enticed them to convert to Christianity. Money and other allurements were definitely used and a lot many lower castes converted to Christianity. Thus most converts to Christianity in India are from the lower castes and that has not rubbed of them. Their lot has still not improved.

The second class of people targeted by the missionaries was the Tribal's. The Missionaries went among these forsaken people and did yeoman service by setting up schools and spread education. In the bargain they lured the simple tribal's to convert. Thus wholesale, the tribes in the North east and the Central India converted to Christianity. The missionaries did good work but their aim was basically conversion and they set about this task in earnest.

The missionaries exploited the moribund Hindu religion and examined the weak points which they targeted. Thus part of the blame for these conversions lies in the Hindus themselves and it is only now that a militant Hinduism has emerged and people resist this conversion to Christianity.

However despite the best efforts of the Missionaries the Christian number only about 3% of the population. But the fact remains that most Christians in India belong to lower castes or are tribal's.

Hindu man's Desire for a Muslim Girl * 66

India is a vast nation. It has a multitude of peoples with diverse religions, but the dominant religions are the Hindu and Muslim faiths. Both faiths have interacted with each other, but for long the Muslims were the rulers and the Hindus were the subjects.
This in a way created water tight compartments leading to a mystery of each others faiths. The Muslims as the rulers had a penchant for Hindu girls and invariably added them to their harems. This was a common practice and almost all girls were converted to Islam.
The Hindu men looked at Muslim women as something unattainable, and psychologists tell us that this leads to desire. This led to a desire of a Hindu man for a Muslim girl, both as wife or consort.  This is the genesis of the Hindu mans desire for  muslim girl.

Hindu men covet Muslim girls and many Muslim girls prefer Hindu men as husbands as they will remain monogamous.    So it is a two way traffic., with a slight catch. Most Hindu men convert to Islam to marry Muslim girls.

India -Pakistan Clash is inevitable * 67

Pakistan Army is bristling at their failures in all their wars with India. Starting with the 1947-48 war when the Tribal soldiers from the North of Kashmir aided by the Pakistan army failed to capture the valley to the 1998 Kargil war when again the Pakistan army failed to do anything significant to the 1971 war when the Pak army entered the record books as the only army in Asia to have lost half the nation, the Pakistan army has been thirsting for revenge.

This is the genesis of the Kashmir problem as a humiliated Pakistan army has been unable to match India. They have turned to terrorism with a plan to bleed India with a 100 cuts. Unfortunately for the Pakistan army this ploy also has failed and there is now a sense of desperation in the Pakistan army. Perhaps the generals don’t know what to do next. They have tried terrorist acts like the Mumbai attacks but these have led nowhere. The Generals who have never won a war are now thinking how they can redeem the successive defeats including the surrender of 100,000 Pakistan soldiers during the 1971 war.

There is a chance that Pakistan will provoke another round of hostilities. Pakistan is having nuclear weapons, but I don’t that they will play a significant role as Pakistan is 1/5th the size of India and in any nuclear conflagration, Pakistan will simply cease to exist. The Generals ruling in Rawalpindi are aware of this harsh fact. What next then?

The Pakistan army will certainly try for a last fling to win Kashmir. But again Kashmir is small point as the aim is to have parity with India and defeat India. This is not easy as India is the 8th largest economy in the world and much advanced than Pakistan. Secondly Pakistan is also facing an Islamic Wahhabi insurrection in its backyard. This is the real danger to Pakistan, yet the Pakistan generals have not recognized the threat blinded by hatred towards India. The entire North West of Pakistan is dominated by these Wahhabi groups who want the Sharia enforced and Pakistan state to be dismantled and made part of an Islamic caliphate. Despite the lurking danger, the pathological hatred of India may well propel another round of battle and that will perhaps lead to the complete breakup of Pakistan as Sind and Baluchistan may well break away like Bangladesh and the generals of the Pak army may just twiddle their thumbs.