Laws and their abuse

read a couple of disturbing news pieces in the recent times: one was about a pattern developing in some areas of india where the children are dishing out threats to their own parents and in-laws to hand-over the entire property to them, and then shift to the old age homes. the weapon? the Dowry laws.

the dowry problem in india has been so rampant and so grave, that strict laws were formulated some years ago, to atleast put some powers in the hands of the hapless daughters-in-law, whose dowry-related death cases were on a constant rise. no one could have hardly imagined at that time, that the same laws which were created to protect their own well-being, would be so conviniently (ab)used to gain monetary/material benefits.

the second story belongs to the pakistan higher command, who have a rather simple way of governing the people: see what they show you and listen to what they have to say to you. after banning the indian tv channels, the indian films and a host of other websites, it was the turn of blogspot and wikipedia. that just doesn't make any sense at all. just because the government doesn't want to expose their citizens to a few objectionable items, it can't put a blanket ban on the entire gamut of information!! there is a wealth of information on the blogspot blogs, 90% of the content should be unobjectionable by any standards, so what was the logic behind banning this entire domain? can the pakistani youth afford to be cut down in this fashion from the rest of the world? wikipedia was unblocked after a period of several hours, but no reason was specified why it was blocked for that short period of time. the blogspot domain continues to remain banned however. some people have raised their voice, many others continue to join them in their fight.