A close race?

It seems that ours is not the only babu nation. Our neighbours, Pakistan, seem to be vying for the top spot and might just have beaten us to the czechered flag. Cheque out Amit Varma's blog where he points out how no one czeched when some Pakistani babu put up a Cheque flag instead of a Check one.

Immensely typical of a subcontinental government. I can quite imagine a mid-level mandarin telling his flunky, “Check jhanda laga do yaar.” And the flunky nods, pleased at being given a task that is so easy to carry out.

Hahaha. We, babus in India, would never screw up this bad.

For every so-called goof up, there is a perfectly rational explanation. Like this one pointed out by the TOI, where the Indian Government Census in 1991 put the number of children in the 0-4 age range as 102.3 million and the expected number of children in the age group 10-14 in 2001, as 123 million. Next,they factored in infant mortality and then asked the question, where did the extra 30 million come from. Well apparently, TOI have underestimated migration and erroneously concluded that the Census was wrong. Not true! Thanks to our open doors policy to migrants from neighbouring countries as well as NRIs returning to India with their 4+ year old children, 30 million sounds right. Afterall, India Shining and what not!

Or this false warning about another tsunami put out by the Union Home Ministry on December 30, 2005. People may argue that this is very callous but I ask you, what better way to commemorate the first anniversary of the 2004 tsunami than by testing everyone's preparedness in the face of another one. Plus, it provides political grist to the politicians, thus keeping them busy, while we babus ruin this nation.