Did you know the size of the BMC budget? It is ₹ 21,000 crores! That is larger than the combined budgets of Delhi, Calcutta and Madras. It is about three times the Delhi municipal budget!

Naturally all the politicians want a piece of the pie. This is an enormous pile of money that can be looted, spread around, and in general wasted. No wonder corporators are getting dramatically richer between polls. Indian Express reports a three-fold increase in corporators’ wealth since the last election. Feathering their nests indeed.

Value of the seat

With such value in each seat in the municipal corporation, it is no wonder that we get a report from DNA on vote buying ahead of the Thursday election. Apparently each vote is worth between ₹ 1,000 and 2,000, with the variation based on category of vote (1000 for common man, 1500 for senior citizen and 2000 for bogus voters). Sorry about the DNA link going to a small frame, I could not find the article on the main website.

AP reports (Feb 1) that the jury that considers and awards the Nobel Peace Prize is under investigation for not having adhered to the mandate in Alfred Nobel’s will. In the (rather unlikely I guess) event that it is found to have violated the rules, the last three years’ prizes can be rescinded. This would include the prize given to Barack Obama.

Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize’s original selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Barack Obama, as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday.
…
“Do you see Obama as a promoter of abolishing the military as a tool of international affairs?” Heffermehl asked rhetorically.
Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and inventor, gave only vague guidelines for the peace prize in his 1895 will, saying it should honor “work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

At the time, many people thought it was bizarre that Obama was given the prize. He was in office barely a few months. Nothing had been achieved except that he gave a lot of speeches. Many promises of the time (shutting of Guantánamo for example) have not materialized.

If the Nobel Prize can be given on the basis of hope and intention, large swathes of the human population would be eligible to win. What should be a distinguishing factor – execution – was ignored. Just imagine if the other prizes were given on the same basis. I hope to cure cancer, now give me the Nobel in medicine. My contact details are available elsewhere on the blog.

Once again, how do you not notice that you have the Mona Lisa hanging on your walls?

On a personal note, I am rather sad that this news breaks now rather than a couple of years ago. Two Januaries ago I was in Madrid and had an opportunity to spend a few minutes (only a few minutes sadly) at the Prado. I would definitely have tried to see this picture if I knew it was there. And the Prado is a very nice museum by the way. They have some wonderful works by Goya and Velasquez including the latter’s Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour). This alone is worth the trip to the museum. The collection is very large and it is worth the best part of a day. As I recall it, photography was not allowed inside.

The street with the Prado also contains two other major Madrid museums Thyssen-Bornemisza and Reina Sofia. From the latter comes this photograph of Picasso’s Guernica Composition Study. This was the only museum that allowed photography (must be because most of the stuff was ugly modern art). The only major work was not allowed to be photographed.

What is really interesting is how much forward this has gone today. Hoover may have balked at tapping of journalists’ phones, but today that seems like a small thing.

Of course thanks to the fact that Hoover’s secret files were never recovered, one assumes that a lot of the story is “filled in” for the sake of a story. But it is a movie, not a documentary. So the license is there for the taking. Watch the movie for DiCaprio’s portrayal of J Edgar.

So instead of bickering over whether Top Gear was sufficiently respectful of India in its show, I think it is much more relevant if we tried to do something about road safety in this country. As the presenters on the show pointed out, our roads are extremely dangerous with people choosing to drive on the wrong side of the road, repair work on roads without adequate marking & lighting, people parking on highways because they want to…

And all this without taking into account the worst offenders on the roads: state transport drivers. The recent incident in Pune may have brought this to note, but this is one of the worst aspects of highway driving in India. I myself have had a close call when a bus coming in the opposite direction drove into my car’s way when the driver decided to overtake another bus that itself was passing another vehicle. There were THREE abreast coming down a two lane highway. Thankfully I managed to drive off the road and escaped with only a smashed right hand side mirror.

Indeed, it is very easy to observe dangerous driving by these state transport bus drivers in Mumbai. Just take a trip down to the Dadar-Sion belt. I am only surprised that the streets are not littered with cars and bikes side-swiped by these monsters.

Photo taken at Worli Sea Face. Handheld.