Zooming in on India's map

At least there is some initiative for India. Me thinks Map My India, the desi version of Mapquest has still long way to go but it’s good. I tried searching for my locality at my native place Bhopal (only a limited number of cities are covered as of now) and though it just managed to point at a broad outline, no street level data was given as with Google’s Keyhole, but then Keyhole would not ever concentrate in India, will it?

I can understand the limitations, you cannot expect the sarkari mapmakers to get into such nasty details, may be when the business prospects are understood and the moolah beckons the municipal corporations will wake up. As far as the business use of such products is concerned, unlike CNN news channels in India hardly ever use such micro-views with news capsules, we are still accustomed to looking at DD styled political maps of India and the ones send by our good old Insat. [Link through Animesh.]

Cal ho na ho

Are you aware of any date in history when nothing, absolutely nothing happened, literally? Well I was not aware of it and the answer unexpectedly came from Unix. On the Unix prompt if you do a 'cal 9 1752' you get the following calendar.

The missing days owe it to the Gregorian Reformation when the King of England decreed that the days from 3rd to 13th be knocked off the calendar month in order to adjust the days while switching from Julian to Gregorian calendar. A funnier explanation for the eliminated days is given here.

Debar whom?

These are election times in Maharashtra and a reader of TOI wrote in his letter to the editor that he supports a petitioner who demanded that the pavement encroachers be debarred from voting. This, they think, apart from saving the city would prevent politicians from cashing on their vote bank. There are lacs and lacs of encroachers in most of the major cities, especially in Metros who occupy pavements and public dwellings but debarring them from voting would be one of the stupidest way one can think of to tackle a problem of such magnitude.

Indian politics has had a long history of dependency on one kind of vote bank or other. The game remains the same as the theme changes every election. Supporting such petitions, whom do we debar from voting next then, the SC/STs, the Minorities, Women?

Encroachments are the illegitimate bye-products of unplanned development, lack of infrastructure and petty politics. First their goons would enact the encroachments, hand in gloves with the local civic administration. Then they provide them with ration cards, let them feel at home and provide then all kind of amenities they can expect, voila they have a vote-flow ready on their investments. We all know this, yet we allow these buggers to contest elections year after year. If we should debar anyone, they are these gangsters and frauds turned politicians, debar them from contesting any election, if they ever promise anything to such "banks" in their manifesto or speeches. Set some example and you would see the results. But who's going to bell the cat?