India's Daughter..

It has been a while since it was all the rage about India’s Daughter in the media. Although it incited the interest in me to watch it, I only got around to viewing it today.  It was an eye-opener. No doubt the statements from the convicted affected me but the defence lawyers were inhumane. The circumstances and surroundings of the culprits’ childhood explains their ignorance and unapologetic behaviour towards women whereas the lawyers who are supposed to be the defences of our legal system and constitution going berserk and sounding like morons appalls me. Their professional ethic is understandable that they are bound to defend the accused and give them a chance at fair trial by pleading on humanitarian grounds (one might argue against that due to their beastly behaviour on December 16) but accusing the victim and proclaiming it to be the right of men to take women for granted is intolerable. 

For one, the loss of a soul instigated the activist within every modern Indian and brought the hitherto undiscussed topics of sexual abuse and violence into the dining table conversations of every household. The documentary helped me understand the genesis of such acts by men. Not everyone is fortunate to avail education, global exposure and understand gender equality when the majority is exposed to gender inequality from childhood within the family. It is time people started looking within their laundry before airing others in the public. I do not claim such acts are defendable but raising slogans and going on marches won’t stop people from committing such crimes in the future. It is just a first step in the right direction. Charity begins at home, so does Change. The day when every man & woman treat their son and daughter equally, the thought of male dominance over women is eradicated from the society, this journey would end at its destination. Otherwise, we will keep taking the wrong turns from the right course.

Net Neutrality

Of late the newsfeed in facebook is full of petitions and posts supporting net neutrality. It was less than a fortnight back that I saw an episode on net neutrality by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight show in HBO. I was just amazed by the way he connects such serious issues with humour while he also successfully creates an empathy amongst his viewers for the issues he brings to limelight. For those of you who missed the show or have been lazy till now to read and grasp what exactly 'net neutrality' means, let me give a synopsis.

Till now, we have been using the internet by paying for the amount used, say 1gb, 2gb, etc at flat rates. That is the net rates are neutral to all domains. If it were to be abolished as many data carriers like airtel and vodafone seek, your data pack will change the same way your erstwhile TV cable connections gave way for DTH services.

Remember the days when you used to pay a minimum of 100 bucks or so and you could watch the boring soap-opera channels as well as the world cup finals? Slowly, the DTH operators entered the fray, started by offering good quality streaming at competitive prices and lured the market their way. Just the predatory pricing strategies are adopted by e-commerce players to acquire customers, the DTH acquired customers and eliminated the small cable operators from the game. Once they got rid of them, they started milking the cash by increasing the prices. That was just the tip of the iceberg until someone came up with the idea of DTH channel packs. You pay a minimum of 200 odd bucks to get a handful of channels and then subscribe to additional packs by shelling out more coins.

If the data carriers had their way, you would pay base price for one gb data and pay extra to use different domains. For instance, 120 for 1gb + 50 for facebook + 30 for watsapp + free for hike. Before you rejoice over the free service for 'hike' it might not be applicable to you if you are an unfortunate vodafone customer since hike has its links with airtel only.

The case that these carriers set forth is that if you pay extra,you will be able to use these websites at ultra-high speeds whereas without these also you can use them at the existing speeds. Sorry airtel, we are not stupid enough buy this bullshit!

For all of you who were over the moon when supreme court repealed section 66, anti-net neutrality is a fix at this by those in power. The next time you post something against the autocrats, the website will not be accessible at normal speeds, thanks to the back channel links between the government that ends net neutrality and the corporates that reap the billions.

Although you might be happy to not to come across my writing if net neutrality ends, let me also tell you that you probably won't be able to access any website at your private time either. If you know what I mean, you better sign the petition.

https://www.change.org/p/trai-take-an-action-to-preserve-net-neutrality-in-india

It might not be all that the fight needs, but am sure as hell that it is not nothing.!