Rishikesh

This week has been happy and sad for me. I have been happy because the President of India in her wisdom accepted the delimitation commission’s recommendations. It will change the way politicians think about voters and the other way round. I have also been sad because S Rangarajan or Sujatha, who developed the Electronic Voting Machine, is dead. This guy changed the way we vote. The country owes him a lot. An alumnus of IIT Madras, he was general manager, research and development, at the Bangalore based Bharat Electronics Limited. His team worked extra hard to ensure it was proved error free when some politicians alleged that it could be rigged. Another interesting aspect of the man was that he was a prolific writer. He is credited to have developed a taste for science fiction, in the younger generation. He wrote stories for many successful films of Rajanikanth and Kamal Hassan. Let us pray his death is offset by the birth of more such people.