But in the long run, it seems that a strict governance with sufficient leeway to human rights and competitive enterprise makes more sense than total freedom as in the democratic form where everyone has their own ways of interpreting freedom and thus taking the whole system for a ride.

On these lines, I found the shut-down-Beijing approach for the Olympics a very interesting policy. In the first place, the thought of shutting down industries for a few days itself is an interesting and very bold move from any country's perspective.

On the same lines, it is also a very collaborative move, which will definitely need a strict implementation from the governing body, but equal contribution from the participating public.

I believe, this is VERY possible in China.

I would like to really see this happen in India. In fact, there needs to be very strict policies in India going forward to start implementing some alternative ways of work.

It has been mentioned off and on in the media esp. about Bombay that industries in particular areas should change their office timings to staggering slots to reduce the impact on sudden gush of traffic.

This idea is very much do-able but as in case of China, has to be collaborative and strictly implemented.

But the problem with Indian polity is - there is nothing called strict implementation. A disciplined approach to things is something that we Indians have never learnt and probably will not do so until -

a. we are under another long period of extremely disciplinarian ruling where the whole objective is the good of the whole than of parts. Putting the nation before self will have to be the goal of this strict governance.

b. we are self driven, self disciplined, self governed and self regulated so strongly that instead of finding faults in others, we get together to help people in a VERY MATURE manner, where emotional maturity and intelligence takes the lead and finds out solutions to problems than identifying and highlighting other problems.

Both these solutions are very difficult to visualize but the former is a possibility if there is an extreme situation of civil war, when the military will have to take a stand on governance. (But that in itself, is a very complicated issue)

For long, we as a nation and it's citizens have become irresponsible of ourselves and critical of our governance - the stats of which is in Our control - only if we care to exercise our control the right way.

Never have we, as individuals first and citizens second, educated or not, become 'response-able' for everything that is happening to us and around us in this country.

This is the reason -

- why we first launch into finger-pointing than looking into our own conduct. (This attitude is, believe you me, very common in the educated class of the society).

- that those who like to play with the law and order are able to get away with whatever they feel and do (The daring gun-culture in Delhi for instance).

So coming to the point of Beijing again, implementing a shut down is a humungous task, given that their citizens are already living in extremely polluted environment, but it shows that there is still hope for improvement - games or otherwise - to bring some control by enforcing a well planned and strict schedule for reducing vehicular emission. Not sure if they are going to plant more trees also in this period but that should probably have been happening already.

If this policy succeeds even a wee percent, it sure can be a lesson for India - only if India could learn to learn from lessons and failures - of the self and others. Esp. learning from China's lessons where pollution levels and population levels are alarmingly at critical levels the learning from controls implementation can be very useful for India - only if India can get out of it's power hungry hyena mentality.

Hope the Indian political circus of power hungry monkeys (or hyenas, whichever you feel right for the moment), for once, reaches a mature level (maybe in another 100 years if the world is still living then) when this nation can see the real India that was broken down to pieces to utter levels of poverty and sham by the 200 yr. British rule - a rule that left India so prematurely born that we all are still struggling with that birth defect.