Retired Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju is the new chairman of the Press Council of India. He appeared on Devil’s Advocate with Karan Thapar this weekend and delivered a superlative critique of the media. He intends to bring the electronic media under the PCI and call it the Media Council of India.

His ideas aren’t Orwellian either: he wants powers to reactively fine media for irresponsible behaviour. For a country like India where really only a handful of journalists such as P. Sainath speak for more than half the population, we could do with some overseeing of the media without curbing their freedom of speech.

On principle, I’m for absolute free speech and free press. In this case, I’m okay with taking one step back. (Not that anyone cares what I think.)

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He is also quite the character. An advocate of the Supreme Court of India wrote this on the day Justice Katju retired:

From Katju would fall the occasional Mirza Ghalib couplets, snippets of Urdu and Persian poetry, apart from Sanskrit aphorisms and Hindi kahavat (popular sayings) on life and the law. Many of these can be found quoted in Katju’s judgments as well, and these, to use an oft used line of his “have been set out in the impugned judgment[s] and hence we are not repeating the same here except wherever necessary.”

For a judge who paid obeisance to the Constitution on an hourly basis, Katju paid little heed to the Constitutional declaration that English be the language of the Supreme Court. He always found it fit to slip into Hindi or Urdu, or if he was in a particularly good mood and a counsel from the South of the river Cauvery appeared, cringe-inducing Tamil that left native speakers of the language asking for forgiveness from Thiruvalluvar’s spirit.

You might recognize Kumar Vishwas as the guy who was often on stage with Anna Hazare at Ramlila Maidan. I now find that he is a famous Hindi poet. Here he is speaking at Agra recently. Even if you disagree with his ideas, you’ve got to agree he has such smooth flow of words and such kick-ass eloquence:

An excerpt from Stephen Fry’s post Don’t Mind Your Language where he speaks about enjoying language:

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If you prefer, here is the entire post and here is the podcast.

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I once asked a linguist if she enjoys language. She said she does. I then didn’t get how one derives pleasure from language. I still don’t. Much like others don’t get why I would put myself through extreme physical stress to summit a peak. To me language is a tool, like a car. To someone else language and cars can be things that embody beauty.

When I take up an activity or a hobby, my aim is be so good at it that I find beauty in it. Being good at something and seeing the beauty in something are mutually exclusive — but when combined is a wonderful experience. I have tried to reach that level (and mostly succeeded) with every activity I’ve taken up in the past. I am now working on paragliding.

Language isn’t on my list yet. Perhaps someday.

I still derive pleasure from reading: a beautiful sentence is no different than a beautiful tune. Both take my breath away. I’ve noticed that I find prose beautiful when it doesn’t try to be beautiful — when it doesn’t make me aware of how flowery it is. An analogy would be a girl who looks pretty without ornaments or cosmetics.

And speaking of Zeb ..

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I hear you! I’ll tone it down.

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Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad feels that an average Indian family should have a minimum of two children. Contrary to China’s one-child norm, or what Kerala is proposing like restricting couples from having more than two children, Azad on Saturday told TOI that the nation’s population problem isn’t that bad and couples can have “at least two children”.

On October 31, India will witness the birth of the world’s seventh billionth baby in Uttar Pradesh. Though the event is being celebrated, Azad said, “It’s not a matter of joy but a great worry. We shouldn’t be celebrating the birth of the seventh billionth child. India has 2.4% of the global landmass and around 18% of the global population. For us, a matter of joy will be when our population stabilizes.”

The population stabilizes when each couple has exactly two (and perhaps three for a handful of couples to offset the dead children) children and not “at least two children”.

Is that difficult math?

Meanwhile, in the U.S. of A. cops seriously injured a war veteran Scott Olsen at the Oakland Occupy Wall Street protests. When other protestors came to his help … watch for yourself:

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This is just today’s police brutality video. There’s one story every day. Worse, it is unlikely the cop will ever be identified or punished. Atleast in India, we have a process in place to suspend and/or transfer cops.

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I am beginning to wonder if those who don’t follow politics tend to be happier. I follow India and U.S. and both countries have some fundamental fuck-ups. Just knowing that is bad enough, but knowing that the political class has no incentive to fix things is worse. Things are not going to get better, not anytime soon. Finding solutions is the easiest part — for every problem there is atleast one obvious, simple, non-crazy solution. There is just no incentive though, and it is telling that I’m using incentive as opposed to will.

Don’t dismiss this as pessimism — it is the conclusion everyone will reach based on facts.

Perhaps I’d be more optimistic if I knew lesser. Then again, Republican candidates don’t seem happy.

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Cases of sexual exploitation of minor girls jumped from 237 in 2009 to 679 in 2010, a 186.5% increase. West Bengal reported 200 cases, followed by Bihar (152).

Not a good year for women .. or for Delhi:

Delhi retained its tag of the country’s rape capital, topping the list of 35 major cities in the country reporting the highest number of rape cases (414) in 2010. Mumbai was next with 194 cases, followed by Pune (91), Jabalpur, Bhopal and Jaipur.

I think Delhi was asking for it with those high testosterone guys roaming in the streets.

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Note: Delhi’s rape capital status could just be more cases being reported.

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Congress leader Digvijaya Singh now targetted Spiritual Guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and alleged that the RSS was using Team Anna. The spiritual guru though refused to be drawn into an exchange with the Congress.

Digvijaya Singh and his RSS-tourette was outrageous at one point, then it turned funny, then sad. Now I just want to put him down in pity.

Check out the latest episode of The Dewarists. It is immensely satisfying. Zeb & Haniya, Swanand Kirkire and Shantanu Moitra are featured in this one titled Kya Khayaal Hai. Only a handful of (esp. Indian) singers have a good Urdu diction to use words like Khayaal. Zeb & Swanand are perfect.

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Now Zeb is pretty and some might even say she is the cutest thing in the universe. I’ve been reading about astrophysics and this is ignorant and wrong: It should be observable universe.

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This episode made me yearn so hard for peaceful Indo-Pak relations. Thanks to a few folks in public office who cannot see into the future and many more outside who can only see the past, I’m not holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon. In an ideal world the border would be open, hikers and travellers would explore and travel freely, music would flow across freely like the rivers (it still does to some extent), and those smitten by female Pakistani artists who’re the prettier half of a girl band would be able to see said celebrity in person.

None of these wishes are for myself, just for the greater good.

Daniel Kahneman writes about something called the illusion of validity. Pasting an excerpt won’t do justice to the piece. Here’s something from the piece that might entice you into reading it: There is evidence that financial advisers don’t quite know what the hell they’re doing.

Not that we’ll be time-travelling in our lifetimes but if you are, print this out: The most important human discoveries and inventions in one page.