I was going through Time’s The World’s Most Influential people of 2008 and among The Dalai Lama, Miley Cyrus, Vladimir Putin and Aung San Suu Kyi I noticed our very own Soniaji ebulliently smiling at number 16. Incidentally, Aung San Suu Kyi appears at number 37. Mercifully, The Dalai Lama appears at the first spot.
I was wondering what our own madam ji was doing in the list and what feat she has achieved but then I thought of Paris Hilton and said, "Well, why not?!" If she can become a celebrity without doing anything, why can’t Sonia Gandhi appear in the list of top hundred influential people of the world? After all she wields lots of influence among the army of sycophants she has gathered around her. By the way I don’t loath Paris Hilton so much that I’d compare her to Sonia Gandhi.
Due to work I don’t get to watch TV these days, not even news channels, but Alka was telling me that NDTV was hosting a debate on whether LK Advani has the ability to become the prime minister of the country. These "secular" (tedious sarcasm, I know) channels never hold debates on the capabilities of Sonia ji and Rahul baba and the inabilities of Man(?)mohan Singh. Even our lazy maid will do a better job than him.
More than 50% of the wheat that we consume is imported. According to the 2006-7 data the share of agriculture in our GDP is 18.5% and 52% of the country’s workforce is engaged in agriculture. So I wonder how a loan cushion of Rs. 60,000 crores, declared in yesterday’s budget for the year, is going to help the farmers in particular and the country’s agriculture in general. The problem is, most of the farming population is extremely poor and has no means to approach banks and other lending institutions. They mostly depend upon local moneylenders. So this waiver, what a business standard article terms as “the mother of all loan waivers” is only going to make the rich farmers richer. There is nothing theoretically or ideologically wrong in making the rich farmers richer but when the exchequer has to pay for them in the name of helping the poor farmers it becomes a bit of a nag.
There are estimated to be 40 million farmers in the country and with Rs. 60,000 crores every farmer should ideally get Rs. 15,000. Is it really going to help? Even a child who has no basic knowledge of economics (I’m not trying to underestimate a child’s intelligence, it is just a hypothesis) would tell you that it would have really benefited the farmers if this amount of money could be used to build better infrastructure for the farmers, to make better, environment-friendly farming technologies available, and help them pay back the loans whether they had taken them from institutions or local moneylenders. Remember that Chinese proverb that give a fish to a man and you have fed him for a day and teach him how to fish and you have fed him for life?
Instead of loan waivers the farmers need better roads, telecommunications, enough water to irrigate their fields, uninterrupted power supply, and health and education for their loved ones. A one-time waiver doesn’t really solve the problem; it just creates a psychological mirage.
Anyway, this is a political move and no party in its right mind is going to oppose it. In fact the BJP is terming this gargantuan waiver as “too little too late”.
Some people are definitely going to be happy along with the farmers. Excise duty and customs have been reduced to curb the inflation. The tax limit too has been increased; people earning Rs. 500,000 per year will be able to save Rs. 50,000 per year now and that means some extra cash to buy things and this may spur the sluggish industrial growth.
What would I do were I given Rs. 7,50,884 crores to spend on the country? There are three areas of major concern: defense, infrastructure and human resources. The expenditure on defense and defense-related R&D cannot be underestimated. With Pakistan ready to create mischief perpetually and China comes knocking at our doors at the drop of a hat; defense is something we cannot ignore. So I would spend around 20% and not 14%. You can see for yourself how serious the government is for the safety of the country that it is waiving Rs. 60,000 (around $15 billion) crores and is allocating Rs 1,05,600 ($26.4 billion) to defense.
Then I would allocate 25% to education and health. Our country needs proper education both in terms of human resources as well as infrastructure, and we need healthy people. People in India are extremely weak and that is the major reason why as the country we don’t perform the way we should. There is some problem with our dieting habits because even economically well-off people in India don’t seem fit and healthy. Elementary health services would be totally free and foods that give us nourishment would be dirt cheap.
Our current education system might be producing better scientists and computer programmers but it is definitely not producing better and healthier citizens; something drastically lacks. This allocation would include world-class facilities to both students and teachers. We need more schools and higher pays for teachers so that just like management and technology teaching too becomes a financially satisfying career. Most of the people become teachers because either they are too lazy to do anything else or they don’t get a job anywhere else. I would also like the adult population to get educated or at least literate so I would provide financial incentives to the grown-ups for joining evening classes.
What are we left with now? 55%. 30% would go into developing countrywide infrastructure. This should include roads and railways, and other structures that make life easy as well as productive. This will not only improve quality of life in general it will also provide long-term employment to millions of people. I would invest more on technologies and methodologies that don’t screw up with environment and flora and fauna. Power and electricity and telecommunications are the backbone of any growing economy so they deserve more focus and investment.
5% would go towards improving internal security and 10% would go towards improving the law and order. In my economy people won’t need loan waivers and subsidies, not even as incentives.
The remaining 10% could go towards things that got left above. Seems like a silly list. Well, I’m not an economist.
Technorati Tags: budget 2008, indian budget
Mob justice in Bihar
Watching a crowd of people practically killing a prisoner was shocking. They had smashed the guy’s face and the news channel had to blur that part of the body. Barbarindian says that the secular news channels over-hype every kind of big and small mob violence occurring in the non-Congress states and very conveniently overlook whatever happens in the Congress-ruled states. Although this is true it does not mitigate the gravity of the situation. I won’t jump to a conclusion and brand the people of a particular region barbaric and subhuman; this is all an indication of utter lawlessness in the country. Such incidents of mob justice happen because people
- don’t have faith in the law of the land
- don’t have fear of the law of the land
This is not a Bihar-specific problem; mobs are running amok all over the country. See what is happening in Maharashtra where people are being threatened by goons and the police is claiming totally contradictory facts. Even in Delhi people openly flaunt laws and then brag about their deeds to their friends and family.
Such acts also manifest a deep sense of frustration and anger against the state of affairs. Very rarely things are right for the common man. Even affording food is becoming uphill by the day. This is all due to corruption. I read in the newspaper that although India is an agriculture-based economy, most of the food we eat is being imported. Our very own production rots in the go-downs. When there is no electricity, no food, no shelter, no health, no education, no clean drinking water, no justice and opportunity, and no means to live a decent life it comes out as mad anger, bordering savagery.
Raj Thackeray
The problem of Raj Thackeray is not social it is political. As Alok mentioned in the comment section of a previous post that it is all being done to break the Shiv Sena and the greatest beneficiary of this anti-north Indian wave is going to be Sharad Pawar because his is the only party who has little stake currently. If the Shiv Sena keeps mum Raj Thackeray will become the hero of the Marathi population. If it joins cause with him it will have to antagonize the BJP because the BJP understandably has national aspirations. If the Congress supports Raj Thackeray it will help to bear the consequences all over India and if it tries to lock horns with him it antagonizes the Marathi votes. Actually it has become a political comedy (with due respect and sympathy to the people who are the targets).
Had the government been really serious about finding a solution it would have quietly dispatched this socio-political villain to some undisclosed location and would have kept him there for a few months until things had cooled down. But then who wants that?
Whatever is happening in Mumbai is sad as well as shocking. If you can be attacked and bullied like this in your own country where are you safe then? The recent violence against north Indians in Mumbai is nothing unique; it mostly happens against communities and now it is happening against people belonging to a different region. This whole mess was started by Bala Saheb Thakarey a few decades ago and this political minion called Raj Thackery is trying to re-ignite the old hatred against non-Maharashtrians. This happens when unjust, misguided political issues are not suppressed with brute legal force.
Many years ago immediately after the independence Sardar Vallabhai Patel consolidated various wayward states and helped build a unified India. Ever since then every Indian is free to go anywhere for the purpose of living and occupation and it is one of the fundamental rights given by our constitution. If a few Maharashtrians don’t like people from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh or for that matter Punjab coming to Mumbai and settling down there, well too bad; nothing can stop them as long as Mumbai doesn’t become a part of some other country.
I read on the Internet that the entire Mumbai film industry was wallowing in financial doldrums and it was only Amitabh Bachchan who gave hits after hits and secured the jobs of so many technicians and other workers belonging to Maharastra. What has Raj Thackeray done for Maharastra except for instigating people to commit violence and destruction? His political career in Shiv Sena took a nosedive when he allegedly got involved in a political murder. So what has he done for the betterment of Maharashtra in general and Mumbai in particular? Whatever Mumbai is today it owes everything to people from all the states.
Actually, migration happens everywhere. People move from city to city, state to state, and even country to country to seek better prospects. He says that the states from where the migrants are coming should develop enough so that the migration is reduced. Whereas it is true that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar must develop, migration to other cities and states is a natural phenomena. There are certain commercial activities that only happen in Mumbai. For instance, if a person wants to work in movies, he or she will have to go to Mumbai because the film industry is there. All major companies have set up their offices in Mumbai and when they hire people from other states those people have to come to Mumbai. So it has got nothing to do with just development; there are many other factors involved. It’s like, there are many Maharashtrians who go to the USA and other countries.
How should Raj Thackeray be treated, we were discussing this at home and Alka rightly said that he shouldn’t be arrested because then he will needlessly become a “martyr” and this will give him political advantage. Rather he should be allowed to become obscure. Violence, of course should be controlled but it should be tackled as a law and order problem and not a political problem. Calling it a political problem will needlessly make the issue important.
Personally I would suggest that the people being targeted should get together and put up a joint front. Running and cowering will get them nowhere and it will only embolden the goons. Instead they should fight back. This will not result in more violence; the threat of retaliation often maintains peace. Communities are only targeted when they seem vulnerable. You won’t find Raj Thackeray coming to Delhi or Lucknow and giving inflammatory speeches against north Indians because he knows that there people will beat the shit out of him.
Apparently the people in Uttar Pradesh are retaliating in a very novel way; they check all the trains coming from Maharastra and when they find Maharashtrian passengers in the trains they garland them, hug them and offer them sweets.
Technorati Tags: mumbai violence, raj thakeray
A few months ago I had written how Airtel was trying to fleece money out of me. Now my sister has been having umpteen problems with TATA Indicom whose Internet service she uses. I’m sure the management at the top level of these companies doesn’t intend to pursue such spurious measures (or maybe they do) and it all happens at the level of their incompetent staff but if this trend continues they’re going to leave lots of ripe ground for new, more efficient and sincere companies. Interestingly, more information can be found at the India Broadband Forum and it seems people even share their problems there with other users. This complaints board is a good option too.
Technorati Tags: tata indicom broadband problem
I generally don’t use such expressions on my blog but this is a clear case of mutual ass-licking. First NDTV declares Manmohan Singh the leader of the year and then sycophant journalists like Rajdeep Sardesia, Barkha Dutt and Vinod Dua are conferred Padma Sri, one of the highest civilian awards in India. It is anybody’s guess why these three journalists got the award.
At home we were discussing if such biased people keep on getting such awards then what credibility do such awards carry? Actually these kinds of awards fetch many privileges to the awardees, for instance getting their books published, obtaining lucrative government contracts, getting highly sought-after assignments abroad, and of course, in this twisted case, lots of publicity to the news channels they belong to.
Last year I read Arun Shourie’s “Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud” in which very laboriously he has explained, taking examples from various texts and other sources, how these “respected” journalists, historians and scholars keep promoting each other’s works and causes and keep getting rewarded in shady manners and then keep getting cushy jobs and assignments and this cycle goes on and on and on. The only difference now is that common people can articulate their thoughts using blogs and other communication means. So at least there is a certain section that can see the truth and talk about it and I think this is an extremely positive development, and this is a reason why conventional journalists dislike new-age media, especially the kind of media that empowers practically everybody to communicate and exchange ideas.
In another diabolical development our Prime Minister declared that the families of jihadis who are killed by the Indian armed forces will receive compensation from the government. Read this satire recently published in The Pioneer. This is like telling them: kill our army men and if they kill you back we will compensate your families. In another right-thinking society such a Prime Minister would have been arrested for abetting terrorism and his or her party would have never been able to form another government. But alas! This is India, the land of million tragedies. And then they wonder why the Indian Army is short of 12,000 officers. Who would like to fight for the government that compensates people who are out to kill them? This is so bizarre.
Andher nagri by the way means a completely chaotic state of affairs where nothing logical happens.
Technorati Tags: barkha dutt, rajdeep sardesai, vinod dua, padam sri
Today the people of the housing society where we live celebrated the Republic Day by hoisting the national flag and organizing a small lawn party. We didn’t go but then we normally don’t attend events organized by the society because we find most of the people snobbish (and I’m sure they must find us snobbish). But anyway, this is the first time I’ve seen residents coming together and celebrating events like the Republic Day and the Independence Day. Maybe because it is a teachers’ housing society.
There was a time when the Republic Day used to be a special event at our house too. We were quite young then: 12-15 years. Actually it was our mother who was a great fan of the Republic Day parade that they used to telecast over the state-run TV channel, Doordarshan. Even the anchors that used to give the running commentary were celebrities in themselves. I remember two names: Sukhdev Singh and Komal GB Singh, and of course, Kamleshwar.
Our mother used to make us get up early in the morning, have baths, get ready and then have a comprehensive breakfast while watching the parade. She used to prepare a special breakfast on that day, many often consisting of puris, chhole, aaloo, halwa, kheer, etc. in various combinations.
The program used to start with the customary arrival of the President in his (we had never had a woman president by that time) horse driven bogey accompanied by six or seven or maybe nine bodyguards on horses. That was some British Raj tradition I guess. With the advent of terrorism and I think the assassination of some top leaders like Indira Gandhi, the bogey was replaced by a bullet-proof Mercedes car.
The Presidents, with their bulging bellies (especially Giani Zail Singh) and awry postures, alternately used to stand and sit while the marchers and bands from all the three armed forces, singing or playing kadam kadam badhaija (keep marching forward) etc., would march from Raj Path to India Gate and from there, I guess, to Janpath. They were (I’m always using the past tense because I’m talking about the thing that we used to see on TV — the parade, in its mutated form still takes place) accompanied by the latest tanks, missiles, guns, helicopters and other warheads that the country had required or indigenously developed that year.
After the military parade came the jhankis (right now, although I know it, I cannot recall the English equivalent of the word). They were like miniature models, placed upon moving vehicles, of the ways people lived, earned their living, and celebrated various festivals in different states. Some just had figurines and mannequins depicting various activities and traditions and some had human artists performing various acts of living and enjoying. They were always a treat to watch and the best one even won a prize. The Delhi jhanki always used to be made of flowers; once upon a time Delhi used to be the green capital of India, now it is merely an ugly, concrete jungle. Oh yes, the Commonwealth Games.
The jhankis were followed by performances from various Delhi schools and if I remember correctly some representations came also from other adjoining states. The performances mainly consisted of dance items intermingled with visual effects synthesized with the help of cardboard, plants, masks, clothes, rings, etc. Here too the best school performance used to earn a prize.
In the end there used to be a fly-past of a few fighter planes and military helicopters. I remember children used to run out to see the fighter planes because they used to fly over our houses. As a precaution people living in the city were advised not to eat in the open so that not to attract birds. The military helicopters used to throw rose petals at the spectators and hundreds of balloons filled with helium and carrying the colors of the flag were released. And then with the same ceremony, the President, accompanied by the state guest (the way Sarkozy has come this time, with his model girlfriend), used to leave.
Normally after that they used to show patriotic songs from Bollywood movies. This was the most interesting thing for me because most of the old patriotic songs are excellent compositions sung by the greatest singers India has been blessed with so far.
There is another memory that is attached to this day. The sunny day. I used to dislike, no, hate winters because I am hypothermic. I don’t know why I remember it was always on this day, after having watched the parade on TV, when we used to go out in the small backyard of our house, to sit in the sun, I used to notice that the sun had come up (come up not in the morning way but had risen in altitude as it does as summer approaches) and there used to be more sunshine in the backyard and it stayed there for a longer period. I used to measure this by the size of the backyard portion with unobstructed sunshine. There was another row of two-storey flats behind our row and unless the sun was high enough we wouldn’t receive ample sunshine in the backyard. So the more the shadow of the other houses receded, the greater was the indication of the approaching summer. It was only on the Republic Day that I used to check whether the shadow had crossed the threshold. That used to be the best thing for me on the Republic Day.
Note: a jhanki is a tableau.
Technorati Tags: republic day, india
In “The Last Mughal” William Dalrymple has very beautifully described the anguish Bahadurshah Zafar goes through when he is sent to exile. Although I’m not a landless soul my ambitions keep me away from getting too attached to the soil I dwell upon. I constantly tell myself that the place is not important, what you do, how you do, is. But still, the old smells, the bygone textures and the eddies of chimerical memories still come a visiting and make me want to dive into the valleys of yore. These are momentary reveries and I generally am more interested in things that are happening or about to happen, not that have happened. So my place is where I and my family reside for the moment.
Mai sent me Taslima Nasreen’s story (it’s published in Outlook but to read it there you need to log in first — so I’ve linked to another page with the entire story), and it really breaks your heart to know how attached she is to Bengal, and how betrayed she feels. The entire feeling is summed up here:
This is my beloved India , where I have been living
and writing on secular humanism, human rights and
emancipation of women. This is also the land where I
have had to suffer and pay the price for my most
deeply held and fundamental convictions, where not a
single political party of any persuasion has spoken
out in my favor, where no non-governmental
organization, women’s rights or human rights group has
stood by me or condemned the vicious attacks launched
upon me. This is an India I have never before known.
A person cannot live where she wants to live simply because she writes and expresses herself, and some people cannot digest what she expresses. As a state we have totally failed, as a mass ideology we have totally failed because what the foreign rulers did to us we are doing it to others. I personally don’t know how it feels to be uprooted because I have never felt rooted. First of all she never wanted to leave Bangladesh — her land — and finally when she found the same smell and texture of her ancestral soil in West Bengal she was again packed off to an alien environment. For what? Disagreeing? It’s really embarrassing for a country that such a treatment is meted out to a writer due to political and extremist reactions.
Technorati Tags: taslima nasreen
It was shocking to read today in the newspaper that a man in Assam needlessly spent 54 years in jail simply because nobody paid attention to his release papers. And when he was released at the age of 78, he died after two years. This sounds like a tragic Russian novel.
Lalung (a tribal) was arrested when he was 23 but somehow was never produced before the magistrate. His family kept on thinking that he had been taken by evil spirits. For 54 years he remained locked up without any hearing. The tragic part is that weeks after his arrest he was sent to a mental hospital and from there the doctors kept on sending letters to the police authorities stating that nothing was wrong with him but nobody responded. He was finally released, as the link above mentions, at the behest of the newspaper, in 2005. A public interest litigation fetched him a compensation of Rs. 300,000 and a monthly pension of Rs.1000.
This is an injustice at its grossest self. I am not saying that it is a rare case, for, many a life has languished in the dark dungeons of prejudice and favoritism since time immemorial and fates have been worse than this. But why should such things happen just because a few people don’t care about some person who holds no position in the society? It could have been anybody: you, I, our grandparents. Just imagine spending entire lifetime in jail because of misunderstanding and because nobody cares what happens to you? Does a prick in the conscience, compensation, a documentary and a place in the newspapers bring this man’s life back? What happens to those people who sat upon his papers and did nothing? Shouldn’t an example be set? Shouldn’t people be taught that every life counts, that every life is precious?
I think in a case like this the true justice can only prevail if people who could have done something but did nothing are punished or in some way made to pay. Of course, nothing can pay, but still it can act as a lesson for future assholes like those policemen. There must be hundreds of thousands of people bearing the consequence of such callous attitude. There are many injustices in our society and there are many injustices that can be eliminated by taking some sincere, timely action. They don’t even require much effort. Even if you provide information to people who don’t have it can prove to be of great help.
Coming back to Lalung I am wondering how he spent those 54 years? What went through his mind? Did he ever know why he was arrested and why he couldn’t be released and why he was sent to a mental hospital? How did he see the world around him and how did he perceive the mankind? These days I am reading (trying to read actually) The Count of Monte Cristo in which the protagonist has to spend 23 years in jail because of no fault of his. The waves of hope, despair and revenge keep him from dying. What kept Lalung alive? Of course these days the jails are not as dismal as they were in the 17th century Europe but still jail is jail. I wonder how a tribal thinks. It will be a very challenging story to write even though it will culminate into a tragedy, a slow, progressing tragedy.
Philosophy says that everything happens for a reason. When we read small snippets of stories in the newspapers we often don’t know the entire thing. Maybe he spent a life totally contrary to the impression that we get from what we know presently.
A few days ago I had written that the BJP should dump Narendra Modi for greater national interests. Even at that time I knew that if anybody could win elections for BJP in Gujarat it would be Modi, knowing the communal passions that move the social machinery in the state. Narendra Modi is again going to be Gujarat’s CM. It’s surely a triumph for the BJP but it is a sad commentary on the state of democracy. Sad because considering the kind of political situation we have in the country Modi is the best choice and sad because Modi gets to be the best choice.
In Gujarat you can clearly see the anti-blind-secular wave that has hit the country due to lopsided reporting done by channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN and news portals like Tehelka and all those rubbish newspapers. In fact some are claiming — correctly to a great extent — that Narendra Modi won this time because of the Tehelka exposé on Gujarat riots and Sonia Gandhi recently calling him “the merchant of death” and the so-called “secular” channels endorsing such views with copious coverage. This was so predictable. In fact these morons don’t know that their skewed attitude encourages fundamentalism even among the moderate communities. This election outcome should act as a lesson that unless you portray all the communities fairly you cannot subdue the extreme elements in the society. The verdict perhaps is less in favor of Modi and more against the divisive media propaganda.
I know there are many people — rightly — who detest Modi for his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots. But then, in India, there have been practically anti-every-community riots: for instance the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Every community, every religion has borne the brunt of communalism and racialism. 1000s of Hindus have been killed by Islamic terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. 100s of Hindus were butchered by the Sikh terrorists in Punjab. Similarly, big or small, there have been numerous anti-Hindu riots in various Mulsim-majority areas in India. Then why leave other politicians and religious heads and demonize just Modi?
An anti-riots panel should be constituted and it should have members from all communities, religions and castes, and they should investigate the roles of various parties, politicians and religious heads and pursue the matters through law and politics. For instance politicians like HKL Bhagat and Tytles — both belonging to the Congress party — have been implicated but have never stood a complete trial (Bhagat is dead). Similarly, there are many Muslims, many Sikhs, even Christians, who have instigated riots and perpetrated mass killings; they should all be brought to book, and when they are all brought to book only then people like Modi can be stopped and curtailed. Until that happens, it would be highly hypocritical to go on accusing Modi perpetually.
Some people prefer to compare Narendra Modi with Adolf Hitler and our prime minister recently said that it was the Holocaust that happened in Gujarat in 2002 but I think these people have no sense of history. The blogger in the above-mentioned link says that the demonization of Muslims has been happening for a long time now. If this is happening, it is unfortunate and to a great extent Muslims are to be blamed for that because wherever they are and wherever they are not ruling they have a problem, whether in Asia, in Europe, or elsewhere. They always have one gripe or another, and they always have one reason or another to condone violence, bigotry and backwardness. Modi could be a modern-day Aurangzeb but he is a circumstantial Aurangzeb. Just as the Americans support Bush in his war against terrorism the people of Gujarat have supported Modi for his war against fundamentalism. Both the instances are fraught with ill bodings but people are left with no other choice.
Technorati Tags: narendra modi, modi, Gujarat elections
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