Sunil Mohan Adapa’s Blog

Like many others, I’ve noticed a lot of things over the past few months of Google doing that are definitely evil. Here is the latest one:

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web (The New York Times)

Saying that the deals are not exclusive is not an excuse to what they are trying to do. They will take the works for millions of people for free and use it for their commercial advantage and not allow everyone to freely have it. For God’s sake, those are public domain books. I see two ways now

1. Say No Thank You to Google and a few years (even if it is 10 or 20) years down the line projects like Gutenberg will eventually do the task with volunteer support. We waited more than 80 years for them, I am sure we can wait more.
2. Hand over those books forever to the commerical advantage of a single (or a few) company in exchange for immediate access to digital content.

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications. By posting a banner on your website or blog, you can help support the case against illegal spying.”

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/banners/

I had a very unique experience about a couple of weeks back. In the hot sun, I pedelled a bicycle for about 12 kms and later rode on motorcycle for the rest of the 8 hour session. I lived that day to tell the tale.

There were others with me and we went from one village to another. We told people that they have right to be treated equal and that there are laws against untouchability that could punish an offender for 9 to 18 years.

Yes! the problem is real. Untouchability exists!! Not just that, it is also very wide spread. Only one out of the 9 villages I visited that day said they didn’t have any problems based on caste (actually they got them solved last year). When asked, people told us about a lot of problems they have. The people belonging to lower castes are not allowed near public water sources and temples. Hotels have a seperate set of utensils (usually very less hygenic ones) for them. They don’t get their pensions properly. Their areas don’t get proper water supply. Some didn’t get paid for their jobs for years, some got police cases against themselves and so on.

It was a 14 day cycle rally by a group called KVPS (Kula vivaskha Vyatireka Porata Sangam) for which I have attended just one of the last days. I got to know about this from a friend and decided to volunteer. The rally started where the problem was much more severe and came closer to Hyderabad village by village. I was assured that what I saw on that day was ‘nothing’ since we were very close to Hyderabad and that the real problem is much worse.

What we did in every village is to tell the people that they have the law on their side. The practice of untouchability is a crime and people practising are punishable anywhere from 9 to 18 years. It is the offenders who are guilty and themselves. That they should organise themselves into a group and stand against injustice. Where ever people reported that entry was barred from temples, our group has lead the people into temples. It was difficult to take the people inside the temple because of their fear of repurcussions. KVPS has offices in Hyderabad and gave phone numbers to people so they can contact them if all else fails. We also discussed things with the hotel owner about not having seperate utensils for lower castes.

After I came back, I had a chat with some of my friends and they could not believe that untouchability is a problem. We live in cities and fail to see the extent of the problem and many times question the measures taken to solve these problems (like reservation). It is a whole different world out there. With villages and agriculture being the major part of our country, it is the ‘Real World’. We also had a discussion on whether these people should have reservations. I was told that more than 80% of the seats given by reservation are never used by these people. Everyone in the discussion agreed in the end that these people were at a great disadvantage and deserve the reserverations. Whether this reservation should continue to be based on caste and not some form of economic measurement is questionable though.