Some Suggestions for the Draft Vision (eCourts Project)

....submitted to MyGov portal few months back...(the link to the Citizen Participation in Nation Building (in MyGov website) is in the 'useful links' section..😊)

Few Suggestions for the Draft Vision Document (eCourts Project (Ph III))

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        P.R.Vignesh

Given below are my humble suggestions: 

1. Inclusion of Final year LL.B (Law students) into the eCourt services, without them necessarily having to be a litigant in any case. 

 Petitioners having enough money and a well-informed mind can fight their cases in courts without much friction. But those who would find it difficult will be the illiterate and people falling in the poor strata of the society.

 An idea to mitigate this issue is to include our students.

 Final year law students inspired by the concept of “Antyodaya” given by our Hon. PM Narendra Modi (i.e., to serve the last section of the society) can aid in helping the most vulnerable sections of the society like abandoned senior citizens in old age homes.

What they can do? 

- Set up laptops for one-to-one interaction of the petitioner/plaintiff with the judge

- Fill up the required information in initial stages of filing a case,

- Upload the necessary documents. - Keep track of the hearing, etc.

 Other added benefits: 

- Feedback given by students at every step in the process can help in allaying the flaws encountered, 

- Gives the students a hands-on-experience into the new digital era of Indian Judiciary.

 2. In civil/consumer cases, when a petitioner files a complaint in the ePortal, he/she may

- get a list of all similar legal precedents from the national repository (without disclosing the names and information of the parties involved), 

-recorded court proceedings (if possible),

- transcript of the judgement, number of days taken, etc. 

- Armed with this knowledge, an honest seeker of justice can decide on his/her future course in fighting the case.

Review - Poem - La Belle Dame Sans Merci

La Belle Dame sans Merci 

                                                    --- John Keats

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing!

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt

    On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

My Critical Analysis:

Introduction:

Captivating!

This is how I'd best describe this sacred piece of work. 

 It's aura being strange yet mesmerizing, its theme in partnership with Gothic literature revealing the strife between temptation and duty, love and love failure, ecstacy and its aftermath, are echoed in the poets' own feverish condition.

Keats, who has written this paean; borrows a question and response form to structure the poem's narrative.

This account of mine scrutinizes the ballad and tries to surface it's microscopic intricacies in the form of poetic spotlights, while intending to shove its literal meaning aside for the purpose of expounding the metaphorical rhetoric contained it.

The Crux:

Do you believe in love at first sight ? If not, perhaps death at first betrayal?! 

Whatever side your psyche flanks to, there is this universal abstraction called love that inundates us all.

If not in your life, then by listening to offers experiences. it does so.

In the poem, an unknown person, whose anonymity is guarded till the end of the poem, asks a series of questions to a "Knight -at arms".

The purpose of these queries falls behind the knight's disposition. The Knight does not behave as a man should - in triumph and glory, but is gloomy. This is further cemented by the use of suggested vocabulary. 

What is 'ail'{ing} him forms the crux of the stranger's question.

The Knight is loitering by himself at the edge of the lake and he is pale. 

Apparently the knight doesn’t answer immediately so he has to repeat the question.

This time we get two more adjectives to describe the night - 

he is 'haggard' and 'woe-begone'. 

The speaker continues to address this depressed being. 

He makes use of  floral imagery to carry on. He asks about the 'lily' on the Knights brow. 

The scene is set:

Even nature cooperates. '...No birds sing' suggest that this is autumn or even early winter.

The Knights response makes up the rest of the poem.

The knight says he met a beautiful 'fairy' lady in the field. 

He starts hanging around with her making flower garlands for her, letting her ride his horse and the like.

She invites him to her Grotto. There, she 'lulls' him asleep.

So far the landscape cooperated but that too suddenly changes from idyllic to horrific, has the fairy tale romp turns into imprisonment on a cold hill.

The knight has a nightmare about all the heroic men that the woman had previously seduced.

They were experiencing death-in-life. He then wakes up to find himself lonely on a cold hillside.

The lady's abandonment of the knight is emphasized as an important theme, through repetition of the word 'alone '

When you are in love, everything seems to go in your way-

  

the Birds sing for you guys,

the sun rises up for you, and 

the whole of nature seems to be there for you.

But when things go awful, you feel lonely. 

You only hear squeaks when the birds sing.

Critical Analysis:

Keats' poetry possess a vibrant senselessness, passionate thinking, sweet and mellifluous music, and an artistic finish.

The word charms are warm and the ballad has a sort of an auto-biographical tone.

The more we consider the night story, the more we uncover parallels with Keats life.

A mind trained to think out of the box might offer a whole new perspective to the ballad.

Consider this :

What is the fairy is not an evil but a misunderstood one? 

Maybe in the fairy world promiscuity is practiced and the feminine gender has to leave her male lover, or perhaps the lady of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' could be simply read as a mortal woman who broke the heart of the knight.

His retelling of the story however casts her as a supernatural in order to excuse his own weakness

Could the knight himself be a figment of the speakers imagination? 

---- this would completely change the reading of the poem!!

The purpose of education is to train the mind to think. 

While reading the poem it is obvious that every person who does it has a different viewpoint. 

This is the beauty of English literature!

Interpretations and 'wild' perceptions have the ability to change the whole discourse of the poem and the curious leader finds warmth correspondingly.

Justification the Title:

The French language has been generous in lending words to the English.

Here, Keats borrows five French words :

- 'La' --> the French definite article means 'the'

-'Belle'--> the adjective means 'beautiful' (Fe)

 'Dame' --> {as we say(ma)dame -->  means (my)lady. 

- sans Merci' -->is literally 'without mercy'

The use of a French title for an English poem highlights the fact that French is the language of love(and love failure!). They are the themes that constitute the heart of the poem.

'I love thee(true) -- perhaps the tree most powerful words in any language; has universality attached to it. 

Told only at special moments, these words have great evocative powers. 

It can make anyone go crazy!

Given the intensity of raw intimacy, betrayal at such points can really be heart-breaking.

In the movies and literature, women are stereotyped like this.

Feminist critics, have; in this case, criticized the title.

The knight's ornamentation of the lady's 'fragrant zone' suggests that he is celebrating her feminity.

A combination of these two factors, thus; justifies the title.

Life in the Digitalized Era.....

 

At the dawn of the millennium came the news that the whole world is now more a global village with the advent of the WWW. It was once in a lifetime revolution that spurred the digital era into its golden age. This fetish of staying connected… in a web ironically, is supplemented by the smart phone and associated gizmos.

Nowadays, it doesn’t matter if you are awake or asleep- but, if you are online or offline. 

I can sense that the greatest debate among the youth of today is the choice between Android, iOS or Windows.

I also wish to trace to roots of rural India where

A farmer can nowadays strike a deal with a multinational company with the press of a button,

A weaver in Pathamadai can sell his products on e-commerce platforms. and

A Fisherman in Toothukodi can assure a better catch with several weather inputs.

All of these are the gifts of a digitalized society.

Today in a world where Twitter has made everyone into a reporter, I can know what is happening on the other side of the world also…

India has decided to go electronic with its courts. I welcome this humongous initiative. Finally, the millions of cases will get heard and verdict delivered in short time cutting the now avoidable transport charges, printing charges and the carbon footprints associated in the whole process.

I can book a meal right from the comfort of my phone which prioritizes my gustatory delights based on my previous orders. I get it now, why is was named a ‘smart’phone.

Education through the Internet is really a boon for many students. E-books.. though they take away several joys of reading; are great as one may store as many as thousands of such books in a small phone. Earlier, people used to travel millions of km to far away universities to learn science and arts. But nowadays the professors of those universities are available with the click of a subscription!

Imagine how astonished Columbus would feel if I say that he can today navigate to literally anywhere on earth without getting lost! How would our dear Ramanujan today feel… as his theorems are getting proven by super computers within a fraction of a second…

…..or how would  CA aspirants would feel if I say that  all the calculative scrutiny of accounts that they need to do can be done with the help of a robotic assistant. And that too for free !          

                          Quite an amazing world we live in….!

While I’m all praises for this Digitalized lifestyle, let me on the offset remind you of how it has re-shaped our mode of living.

I sense that most of us are de-evloving !  …Right now many are with hunched backs like our great apes!

Not to forget how we forgot meeting our friends face to face this pandemic.

Let me also bring in here a proposition that a large proportion of us are getting ‘virtually blind’. I see many people crossing roads with their heads facing their phones in hands.

I fear someday that those precious prayers to God might be sent to Him with the click of a button!

Or what if electronic agarbattis fill our rooms? Not to forget how youngsters are pleasuring themselves in digital media, while they must be out there exploring the world, anchored in adventure.

When was the last time you penned a letter? Ages ago?? I say with a slight profound insight, that we have lost the thrill of ‘waiting’ for a letter.

In a world where people already wear societal masks, I observe a rapid flux of emojis. So,

we merely ‘exist’ in a digital world. We don’t ‘live’.

Let us for once, feel the warmth of the sun rather than the heat of our phones.

If given a chance, I would support natural stupidity over artificial intelligence. I say this because I am of the opinion that in today’s world, Brains are becoming bigger, but hearts are becoming smaller.

Friends, I recall reading this somewhere..

“In case of fire, please leave the building before posting it on social media !” 

I get the joke now, with this being a necessary placard in many buildings across the world!

The digital economy which aims to be cashless, I feel, is good substitute for large transactions. But the idea of a fully digitalized economy is far from reach even to the so-called highly developed nations. I support an economy, where paper usage is largely reduced and recycled.

I understand the glorification of this digitalized era, but I am more concerned of its cons rather than its pros, because, the former, leaves a more profound impact in our minds and emotions, and if I may say, our bodies also.

I wish the computers don’t invade us in every sphere of life, as it cuts us from the union with other life, as one gets stuck in the world wide WEB. Let us start to think again and limit the computers from doing all the thinking for us.

To sum up..I see digital media as a fire. We can use it to light a lamp or to burn the house we live in. We must use it just as a tool for effortless living, not living in itself.

….Let me……. sign out…….. for now.