Oh yes he has!

After winning Nobel Peace Prize, US President Barack Obama has collected another shining medal to his award collection. He was awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Improbable Research in chemistry for inventing 'Placebo Piss', a new type of piss that flows not from the urinary tract, but from the mouth of the pisser. At the award ceremony held at Boston, Obama was awarded the honor for his remarkable ability to generate piss from his mouth and also for pissing off many millions around the world by winning Nobel Peace Prize without doing anything substantial in his initial months of presidency.

Also called as Pretense Piss, Pseudo Piss, Mouthful of Piss and Hot Piss, it is sometimes misspelled as 'Peace' which could have been one of the reasons, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee made the historical blunder and awarded him this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

What does Placebo Piss actually do? According to experts, placebo piss like placebo medicines is a sugary, inert piss which actually does absolutely nothing but when released from the mouth of a politician, preacher or a wannabe global messiah, mesmerizes thepatients audience causing them to believe the promises sprouting from his mouth. "Despite being just a placebo, its a very potent piss. Especially when emanated along with words like 'Yes we can change' or Change we can believe in', it makes the listener believe that the world is changing for the better." said Rafael Cladwell, chairman of the Ig Nobel committee.

Even when the world doesn't really change, the belief that the world is indeed become more peaceful does indeed have a therapeutic effort on the gullible listener who starts ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

"Obama's placebo piss has achieved tremendous success in just eight months of his presidency. Despite the fact that Iraq continues to burn, Guantanamo Bay stays operational, Taliban keeps on spreading its influence, Pakistan persists in avoiding termination and export of state-sponsored terrorism, Obama has succeeding in making a large section of international community believe that the world is becoming more peaceful." added Rafael Cladwell.

Unlike other politicians who are full of hot air, Barack Obama is a man of piss. Very early in the presidential campaign, he realized the diminishing value of hot air. "Politicians have been expelling hot air since time immemorial, but people are becoming immune to it due to their sharpening ability in detecting it. Obama being cleverer than most people has found a way to hoodwink them through a radically different way " said one of the admirers of Obama's pissful approach of solving world's problems.

Being a smart cookie, Obama knew he can't win the trust and vote of millions of Americans unless he learned to produce something new and different from the usual hot air. "Hot air emanating from the mouths of politicians releases a distinct rotten smell which alerts the audience in his vicinity. At the time of its release from the mouth, it tends to distort the facial features. The eyes generally become shifty indicating insincerity, the mouth widens more than normal indicating pressure to let out hot air along with rhetorical empty words and the nasal openings tend to contract in an attempt to block out the foul smell of the hot air being released from the mouth. Although people are not aware of the exact process which results in the distortion of the facial features of the person expelling hot air, many million observant voters through long decades of exposure to broken promises have become experts in identifying the precise set of facial distortions associated with release of hot air." said Steve Mayer, one of the members of the committee.

Obama responded to the challenge of his words sounding like hot air by learning to substitute it with placebo piss. "It is not really understood how Obama manages to convert hot air into placebo piss. Perhaps he withholds pissing for long periods of time and through a secret tantrik practise has learnt to move his piss upwards through the spinal cord from his bladder to his mouth where his piss loses its pungency and gets converted into sweet piss." added Mayer.

"But whatever the technique he may use, the effect of his procedure are there for all to see. We can see how the upward movement of piss through his spine makes his back arched perfectly and thrusts outs his chest. When the piss travels to the neck region of his body, it results in a slight upward glance which gives the effect of messiah-like man looking heavenwards for deliverance of his followers. Also notice the effects of his piss on his mouth region resulting in a sticky plastic smile that never ever wears off." Steve Mayer explained to his audience while announcing the prize.

"The pose that he manages to achieve during his sermonsspeeches is near-perfect. Unlike politicians shooting off hot air, his eyes never look shifty or deceitful. The sticky piss he generates makes his eyes look focused, his gaze steady, his tongue glib and his overall look that of a confident trickster who knows he has audience eating out of his hand." said Steve Mayer.

Babloo hates them too!

'I hate politicians! I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!'

Babloo Arora is just a 10-year old school-going kid living in Delhi, but he has already learned how to hate politicians like all the adults in his family. Son of affluent businessman, Ranjit Arora who exports jewelry to east European countries, he believes politicians are responsible for all his troubles and hopes that by the time he has grown-up, India would become free of politicians.

"Yesterday, I got beaten up by my classmate after I stole his tiffin-box and ate his lunch' said Babloo, 'Bloody politicians! Why can't they introduce strict laws that would prevent school-children from beating up their classmates? We need laws that would allow school authorities to immediately rusticate students who use violence against their fellow students"

"There should be a limit on amount of home-work given to children too. My parents don't allow me to watch TV unless and until I finish my homework. Every second day I miss out on my favorite cartoon show because the damned homework takes so much long to complete. If our politicians were not preoccupied with making money, they would have noticed the tremendous amount of suffering children have to undergo due to ever increasing homework."

"But why would our politicians care about children? After all we don't have the right to vote like adults. Children are not their vote-banks!" rued Babloo.

Babloo is also upset at the inability of our politicians to control runaway inflation. "Earlier I was able to buy pizzas, burgers and diet cokes thrice every week. My pocket-money of Rs. 2000 every month also allowed me to buy at least 5 video game titles and 10-12 movie DVD's. But nowadays I'm forced to cut corners. I've cut down my pizzas and burgers consumption from thrice a week to twice a week. Thanks to inefficient politicians, I'm left with no choice but to beg my dad to increase my monthly pocket money by 500 rupees, if I want to continue playing same number of new video games on my playstation as before."

"Politicians have ruined my life!" added Babloo sobbingly, 'I would not be suffering the way I'm had it not been for complete and total abrogation of duty by politicians and their complete indifference to the plight of young children"

Asked to elaborate, Babloo said "My parents are very ambitious and want to see me on TV. They have huge expectations from me and wish to see me become a big television star. They have pressurized me into joining singing and dancing classes so that I can become trained enough to participate in reality shows. Now, I really love singing and dancing, but at the same time I'm scared to death of my parent's reaction if I fail to qualify for any TV show! Its high time our government bans reality shows on television featuring little children. But sadly, our politicians just don't care about the plight of children"

"When will our politicians wake up from their collective apathy and try to solve the complex problems that kids today are facing? How many kids will have to be lose their childhood to class-room violence, excessive homework, increasing inflation and song-n-dance television shows before our politicians wake up from their slumber and take decisive action to provide children with safety and security they deserve?"

Sigh. Another life, another story.

How this bill doesn't fit the bill

In what is being termed as India’s equivalent of the Suffrage Movement and the Maputo Protocol, the UPA Government has now promised reservation for women at each level of legislative decision-making, starting with the Lok Sabha, down to state and local legislatures in its 100-day action plan. The measure is a throwback to erstwhile Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's move in 1992 to earmark 33% of all seats for women in panchayats.

If the Bill is passed, one-third of the total available seats would be reserved for women in national, state, or local governments. In continuation of the existing provisions already mandating reservations for scheduled caste and scheduled tribes, one-third of such SC and ST candidates must be women.

The proposed legislation to reserve 33.3 percent seats in Parliament and state legislatures for women was drafted first by the H D Deve Gowda-led United Front government, introduced in the Lok Sabha on September 12, 1996. Though it has been introduced in Parliament several times since then, the Bill could not be passed because of lack of political consensus.

It looks like it is incumbent on political parties to score political brownie points by using the much talked about instrument of reservations. The issue of reservations has been a thorn in the side of every government since Independence. Why? Because, it a principle that is fundamentally wrong. And in order to implement a fundamentally wrong principle, one has to devise numerous irrational laws and devices to cloak the ugly core of the principle. A lie has to be covered with other lies. That's why reservation is a thorn.

What does one do when a thorn is stuck in one's foot? He plucks it out. And when are we plucking out the thorn of reservations? At present, it only looks like the policy-makers of the nation are only bent upon driving the thorn further into the foot.

The idea of reservations originated first in attempts to correct historical wrongs. That it doesn't accomplish that in any way, only aggravates differences between different 'groups' of people is a totally different issue. The concept of reservations is now being expanded to include current perceptions of injustice to certain sections of society, more precisely that section which is made of people of a particular sex, women.

Studies have proved that competitive pressures such as trade and deregulation reduce discrimination against women in the job market. That private companies, not cosseted by the Government, tend to choose the best talent without any prejudice is also a testimony to the fact that merit begets respect and opportunity.

This Bill takes away the democratic right of 33% of the electorate (22 crore people) to elect their representatives and restricts the choice of both men and women in those constituencies. The state has no right to limit the pool of representatives available to the public to choose from. It violates the right to equality guaranteed in the constitution. This is against all democratic principles of free choice. It will lead to significant upheavals and instability in Indian polity, with MPs being forced to shuffle constituencies in almost every election. An inability to nurture their constituency and further reduce accountability is thus, what we get.
The Bill sacrifices merit and experience of seasoned law makers and will further divide the country on gender lines. It suggests a rotation system which would be determined by draw of lots, in such a manner that a seat would be reserved only once in a block of three general elections. This is a serious flaw, insofar as it mechanically provides for entry of women members to fill one-third of vacancies in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas. This subverts the democratic process which is all about free choice vis-à-vis a mechanical action/ process.
The concept of reservation is an insult to women and their capability and perpetuates gender discrimination. Moreover, there are no measures to make sure that the benefits are received by the socially backward and underprivileged women, who really need them. It is hard to imagine how a normal woman who is brilliant, patriotic and honest and has the will to bring about change would be able to benefit from this move. Going through the labyrinthine and tedious, if not only useless, procedure of party politics is not the best way of ensuring that we get motivated leaders. And how individual candidates just serve to make up the numbers is there for all to see. There are no objective criteria to prevent the elite class or “creamy layer” of women from taking undue and unfair advantage of this legislation.

India is a vast country that is multi-cultural, multi-ethic, multi-lingual and with several groups, castes, sub-castes etc. Apart from beating the drum for reservations in general, the implementation of this bill would lead to more demands from various groups and sections of society for similar representation and it would be an open invitation for politicization of the representative form of Indian democracy. It will be a death blow to representation through constituencies.

In India, a man is presumed to be superior to a woman, not because of considerations of merit of thought, but by anatomical considerations. And the enforcement of such belief-systems upon women is carried out by persuasion, blackmail, threat of physical violence and sometimes direct bodily or psychological injury. So fighting such stupid beliefs should form the core of those want to uplift conditions of women. Education and removal of old 'anti-women' concepts and strict law enforcement can make a woman walk confidently on the streets. And achieve what she wants without help or interference from any external sources. If such conditions ensue, why will women ask for reservations?

Yet the proponents of the Womens' Reservation Bill propose to fight injustice with injustice. They are feeding the prejudices of the patriarchal sections of society by supporting such a bill. They want to plant puppets like Rabri Devi in 182 seats in Parliament and gloat over their victory in their struggle for 'equal opportunities' with men.

This bill is short-sighted, unconstitutional, undemocratic and discriminatory.

Do give it fair thought before branding me a misogynist.

(And no, I’m not exactly Lalu Prasad Yadav’s fan!)