Inefficient Politicians or Unintelligent Voters!!!!

After the recent terror attacks in Mumbai people of India have started showing anger and grievances against politicians. Citizens of the world’s largest democracy feel that our politicians are inefficient in their work and they are incapable of giving social security to people. The interesting fact is Indian police force is extensively used for providing security to ministers, MLAs and MPs. So, only a significantly small part is there to protect the common man. Taking this fact into consideration people have started to blame the politicians for endangering the Indian society. Even a question has been raised against the number of security staff appointed for the Gandhi family.

Now people are in a mood to throw the corrupt, inefficient and incapable politicians out of power and privilege. But it is a matter of surprise when these people vote for a gangster, an illiterate or a snob and select as representative from their constituency.

We are living in India, the world’s largest democracy. But surprisingly people do not understand that ““Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”. By exercising the right to vote people can easily select the eligible, efficient and competent person by rejecting the corrupt, inefficient and incapable politicians. But this is something that does not happen in most of the places of our country.

Recently in one morning when I read the news of an illiterate woman got selected as MLA in Rajasthan I got shocked but instantly I realized that this is the funny side of democracy or rather about India.

A democratic country can have a great bureaucratic system if people can realize its power in true sense. We all know that ballots speak louder than bullets, but we do not take the stand to make our nation better by utilizing the power a citizen of a democracy has.

-Arnab Mandal

Delhi

Socialism in Software Form

A few days back I was reading some articles from the Leftist literature and suddenly I got the enthusiasm to think deeply about the impact of socialism in our society. Leftist Literatures made me realize the importance of socialism in today's world. Now the entire world is witnessing blood bath at the Wall Street due to global financial meltdown. All the big economies of world are facing the heat of recession. Even the United States, the biggest economy of world, is researching what is wrong with capitalism.

For last few months news of economic crisis has been on media. There was news about surge in sale of books written by Karl Marx across the world. Actually people are trying to find alternative to the capitalist theory.

All these stuff made me explore the areas where socialism has impact. Suddenly I realized that in fact the much talked about open source software is a weapon of socialist movement. As far as open source softwares are concerned the first thing comes to our mind is that these are available free of cost. Anyone with required knowledge about the product can modify the source code. So it saves money and provides better flexibility. Now a question may arise what all these facts have to do with socialism. If you logically relate these facts with the principle of socialism the answer will automatically come. In the system of socialism nobody remains deprived of needs or benefits for want of money. Here when we are talking about open source softwares we are indeed in an attempt to move towards socialism in software form.

Microsoft has made huge money out of software business and the way they made business is formed on the basis of capitalism. The success of Microsoft made other American giants think about something that ruins Microsoft's market. Richard Stallman and Free Software Foundation are doing a great job to spread open source softwares across the world. IBM is now deeply indulged in open source.

Ultimately these initiatives have a great significance from the perspective of a Leftist. Knowingly or unknowingly people are moving towards socialism. Perhaps open source software movement is the most crucial step in favour of socialism taken in the hub of capitalism- the United States of America.

- Arnab Mandal

  Delhi

My Journey of College Life