Idle Ruminations of an Incurable Freak

Ummmm. Moved again!

2006-10-01T02:31:00.000-07:00

Well LJ was better than blogger but wordpress seems like the best free blogging service for my requirements. So I've moved there for good.

http://asuph.wordpress.com

The rest -- the name, the tone, the shallow intellectualism -- all's the same. Please visit me there. Oh, yeah, the template's mucho bettero. And due to worpress's import facility, ALL my previous blogs (well almost) are there.

cheers,
asuph.

We're moving

2005-08-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

Almost.
Blogger is kinda painful, so experimenting with LJ for now.

Those who are still following this feed for they're lazy enough not to, you can track my latest posts at:

A Fine Imbalance

Thanks for being lazy :)

asuph.

Scattered Thoughts on International Women's Day

2005-03-16T00:35:00.000-08:00

Once you get used to your own cynicism, like I am, you tend to dismiss offhand things without really looking at their value. It's not for no reason that Oscar Wilde said Cynic is a person who knows price of everything and the value of nothing!. In the present times when everything from Sania Mirza (with all due respect to her temperament and talent) to Indian Idols (Ditto) is hyped, it's hard not to be cynical. In times when there is one or the other day always working overtime for the Hallmarks and the Archies, it's hard not to be cynical about the xyz day. And yet, the extreme cynic that I am, I think if world needs a day, it's a Women's Day. No, it's not a conversion of a cynic ;-).

In a TV-Debate on a Marathi channel centered on the International Women's Day, the only Male panelist who was fighting the lost cause of the patriarchal system, was arguing for Stree-Shakti (Women's Empowerment) as opposed to Stree-Mukti (Women's Liberation). His point was that women's liberation is unnecessary and indeed a wrong approach. He hinted at Vinoba Bhave's ideas of Women's Shakti, and yet, when asked how would someone who is not free realize the power, he was speechless.
I said fighting for patriarchal system is a lost cause, not because patriarchy is dead. Anything but the opposite (however my secondary point is lurking right here, to be addressed later). What's changed in the urban intellectual context, is that the patriarchy has gone underground. It knows there is no point to debate -- after all they hold the card yet. In public discourse, fighting for patriarchy is as prudent as fighting for Holocaust denial in America! But that doesn't mean that you need to change your houses -- after all what has intellectual stands have got to do with day to day living?

Ah, back to the question, why do I think the world needs Women's day? Quite simply because tokenism has its own value! The same TV-channels that make you wanna puke for the matter of fact portrayal of the great Indian patriarchy, even if for the sake of tokenism open up the debates on the man-woman equation. And those same couch potatoes who swallow the former get to hear the voices from the other side -- a much vilified, much sidelined, and much mis-represented class of women -- to the extent that it has become an oxymoron: the independent women.

Why I say patriarchy still holds all the cards, is that it leaves independent men to be pretty much alone. So it's okay if a man doesn't want to meet his inlaws for it bores him, being asocial, being whimsical, being arrogant. The patriarchy isn't really threatened by that species -- it's immune to it. But the same deviations in a women, and the hell lets loose, even in urban educated families who pride upon their modernity -- of clothes, of drinks and all the likes. It's always the independent minded woman who is blamed for breaking the house -- as if her husband is just a stooge. He even earns the sympathy of the system for the way the woman has cast a spell on him. It's always the independent thinking woman who is held responsible for the failures of her kid. It always the independent thinking woman who is held responsible for the rising divorces. The patriarchy goes on, never stopping for a moment to introspect.

And now, we have gone to the next stage -- already there is too much freedom, and all talk about feminism is irrelevant, a game invented by some lunatics who are misandros, if there is such a word! For our society has changed, is what I hear. Girls these days get the equal (and even more equal) treatment in the house. There are stories of husbands who cook and clean and share the burden told with oozing admiration for those men. They are the darlings of the patriarchy, for they prove their point -- of how fair the world is to women already! And yet, one routinely hears stories of weddings paid for by the bride, of working women getting up at 5 AM to prepare lunch/breakfast for the hubby, who doesn't believe making a cup of tea is really his cup of tea, of girls being paid less because they anyway don't need that money -- their husbands being paid well. There are countless stories in the same urban educated class, in our vicinities, we don't even have to go to the slums.

Yes we need the stories of the helping husbands too, but what about the stories of their wives who are taking the equal share? Are they suddenly out of fashion because they aren't empathisable material anymore? For it's these woman who are the silent crusaders of the band of feminism that's living what they preach -- they have fought with the patriarchy, taken the bad-mouthing like a man (to use an extremely un-appropriate phrase), asserted their rights, and above all shown a tenacity that would make anyone proud! Well almost anyone, for no one seems to be proud of them. If it takes a tokenism, an International Women's Day, for me to say it, so be it, but I'm proud of you girls. I am married to one such girl, and to whom I want to dedicate this blog! Saya, I'm proud of you!

And here is my one request to the womenfolk out there. The patriarchy is not about male domination -- it's about keeping the system rolling. For the MIL and SILs are as much a part of the patriarchy as are the FIL and BIL, albeit more so. So please take the International Women's Day seriously and if you care about Women's liberation or empowerment, start with your home. Make sure you are not part of the patriarchy. If all of you do that, the patriarchy will collapse like a piece of cards. Yes, some of us would help you out in that, but then how many of you can you really expect to help you? And the system wins because people given in a tad too easily. Don't!

Of Gifts and V-Day

2005-02-15T21:48:00.000-08:00

What do pseudo-intellectuals do on the Valentines Day? They muse. Or they think they muse. Whatever. So here is my V-Day muse or rambling.

V-Days are linked so closely to gifts, and I'm a bad gift person. I mean I'm really bad. No, I'm really really bad. My theory of gifting is derived from Jesus Christ -- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Problem is, when I think of the gifts that I'd like to receive from people, the list is short. Tiny almost. Well it can be written in two words - Books and Music. Not a very helpful rule, I'd say -- so what if it's golden? To be honest, there are more things that I'd like to receive as gifts from people -- like a state of the art laptop, a sedan class car, a Boss home theater, so on and so forth. But I don't add them to the list, just so that I'm not obliged to think of them as alternatives (still people are welcome to go ahead and gift them to me)! That brings us back to the gift problem.

Anyway, all that changed with the entry of Sayali. She is a gift person. I remember just before our first V-day, she handed me a polythene bag that I was to forward to some friend of hers in Pune. I hate forwarding stuff to people I don't know. But then, I was already feeling guilty that I couldn't spend V-Day with her (yeah, yeah, we all know it's commercial crap and all that, but try telling that as an excuse ;-)). So I mutely carried it back home, wondering which new friend this was that I had never heard about! On the V-Day, she tells me it's a gift for me. That was just the beginning though. It's after we got married that I realized that she just has amazing talent for gifts. So these days, I get a share of "oh! we were thinking of buying this for so long!", "oh, this is so cute", "oh! chooooooo chweeeeeeeeeeet", when we hand over gifts to people. I've completely outsourced the gifting department, disowning my gift-philosophy. Who needs theory when he can use the master's services for free? Well the last is not exactly true (for the master doesn't just tell what to gift, but also when -- half of which I'd have forgotten otherwise), but I'm not complaining.

India changes every minute

2005-02-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

One minute you're sitting in an air-conditioned office, in a plush building, or moving through the maze of cubicles smiling that professional smile at people you know little about. Impersonal, professional, India -- plush, efficient, and spotlessly clean.

Then you step out. There is a company meeting in a five star hotel, and company has arranged a bus for taking all of you there. You step on the bus, to the sounds of "Pardesi pardesi jana nahi", on a music system that's surely not made with the concept of fidelity on mind. The loud shrinking sounds, and the dust, and the heat and the pollution accompanies you to the destination. The driver and the cleaner speaking some dialect of Hindi, laughing that all too real laughter.

You're back into a epitome of the urban India -- the snobbish high places. Spotlessly clean, slow elevator music in the background, air fresheners the body sprays intermingling, the cool air wants you to pull a sweater on. An utterly impersonal world, where every attendant keeps calling you sir for no reason.

Another day, you're sitting in a tapari, with oily pakodas and hot ginger tea in almost dirty glasses. The weary indifference on the face of the chaiwallah breaks down when you tell him it was an excellent tea. He never expected to hear that from you. He's unabashedly happy as he returns you back the exact change. Another ghastly song is playing on the old radio, but somehow that doesn't bother you.

India changes every minute. What does it mean to love or hate India?

Out Of Range

2004-12-20T02:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm not alone! Robert J. Samuelson writes this piece: A Cell Phone? Never for Me, in which he says, Someday soon, I may be the last man in America without a cell phone. Next time someone asks me why I haven't bought a cell phone yet, I will thank you Mr. Samuelson, cos I want to be the last man in the world to own one! Maybe we'll compete on that.

I'm a dropout and aim to stay that way. I admit this will be increasingly difficult, because cell phones are now passing a historic milestone. As with other triumphs of the mass market, they've reached a point when people forget what it was like before they existed. No one remembers life before cars, TVs, air conditioners, jets, credit cards, microwave ovens and ATM cards. So, too, now with cell phones. Anyone without one will soon be classified as a crank or member of the (deep) underclass.

Back in India, I think we're already there. People look at you quizzically if you don't have a cell phone. And then there is a breed of zealous cell phone proselytizers who would chip in with, "See, if you had a cell phone today, this wouldn't have happened". Most of the times, they don't want to see, that I didn't particularly seem to have minded that this not happening! Myopia I tell you. Cellular Myopia. Grow up guys, there is a world beyond the range of any cell tower. As yet ... And I don't particularly mind that either.

Remember Me?

2004-12-07T02:18:00.000-08:00

That has to be the questions that I dread most: "Remember me?".

People, I've learned over the years, have amazing memories. Especially people from your hometowns! More so, if your hometown is same as mine. I come from ***, a once quite little town of Maharashtra. Now, I'm no genius. You know it, and I know it. I have a suspicion even guys back there know it too. I mean, it's not like I struck an evolutionary lottery -- and the whole of my school would know me because of my brilliant curricular and extra-curricular record (or just great looks :D). Nothing of that sort. I was never a topper, and more never an extra-curricular kinda guy, unless you count reading books -- but you don't get popular by reading books! How I wish one could, tho.

In fact, when it comes to remembering faces, I'm probably worse to none. And when it comes to remembering names, I'm sure I'm worse to none. So, even an elementary knowledge of probability (independent events and all that) would tell you, that remembering faces AND names together is squarely difficult for me. People, on the other hand -- yes those same ones from my hometown -- have no problems with it at all!

Like when I was still doing my post-grad in Mumbai, I was boarding on a local from Dadar, when a guy jumped in. "you're from ***, right?", "yes", I nod, trying to recollect who this could be. "from *** school, right?". Another nod, and more frantic attempts at remembering something about the guy, "you were in X division, right?". Another helpless nod and "yes", but still no sign of any recollection. In fact, I had given up completely by then.

"We beat you in Kabaddi game in eight's standard".

I swear I'm not making this up. At that point, I went "wow". I mean, yes Kabaddi is probably the only game in which India wins consistently and all that, but with all due respect to the native games and all, Kabaddi is the last thing that generates passion when you're back in school -- cricket? sure; football? maybe yes; but Kabaddi? The only reason why I was playing Kabaddi was that that's the only team I could possibly make into (that too -- the class team!), owing to the same lack of glamor of the game. And probably the fact that, that was the only field game where you could beat people stronger than you. With my tiny frame, guys would think that I'd not have a good grip and come closer, making my job that much more easy. In field games like football, you could never take chances with bigger guys (I have learnt it the hard way!). Kabaddi is different. Once you get hold of someone's leg, there is generally help around.

But then I digress. Not that I mind doing it. Holden Caulfield for one would be with me. At times, digression is good, he would say. Like when I do it, for instance. But at times it's good to get back to the point too. The point, then was Kabaddi. Or rather insignificant a Kabaddi match between Division X and Division Y (I incidentally never asked him which division he was in), in rather insignificant a school, in rather insignificant a town... Still, after ten or so years, this guy remembers this match, the result of the match. And I cannot even recall where the hell had I seen him before (or if I had seen him before at all). Wow!

"Remember me"? That's a million dollar question if there was one. Like the other day when I was walking with my wife when someone called my name.

"How are you?", he's all excited that he ran into me (yes, some people do get excited after running into me, too. Especially, if it's been years!)

"I'm fine, how are you", there is no way I'm going to remember his name in time.

"Oh, I'm fine. I though you won't recognize me"

"Come on! How can I forget you!" (who the hell is he?)

There is no way I'm going to introduce my wife to him. What do I tell her -- this is someone from my school or college probably? One of my friends is good at such one sided introductions. I avoid them altogether.

How do people remember my face? Do I look like a cartoon? Maybe I do. But so do some of these people. And I don't remember them. I don't remember even having seen them!

The next time someone asks that question, I swear I'm going to say "No, who are you?"! I don't care what I do to their self-esteem. It's time they learnt that the more forgettable you are, the better. And if possible, could you please forget me too in return? At least I would be spared the embarrassment!

The Minority Communalism?

2004-11-23T02:35:00.000-08:00

In Oh, That Other Hindu Riot Of Passage, Khushwant Singh recounts the horrors of the 1984 anti-sikh riots. Unfortunately, the bitterness has gotten the better of him, for he argues:

Four years later, Mrs Gandhi's assassins Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh paid the penalty for their crime by being hanged to death in Tihar jail.

Twenty years later, the killers of 10,000 Sikhs remain unpunished. The conclusion is clear: in secular India there is one law for the Hindu majority, another for Muslims, Christians and Sikhs who are in minority

There is one gross non-sequitur here. For he is comparing apples with oranges. Ordinary Hindu majority has to deal with the same system of justice and its inadequacies that ordinary sikhs or Muslims have to deal with, and Khushwant Singh is doing a great disservice to the cause of justice for ordinary citizens in this country by communalising this issue. Okay, the hurt explains part of it, but Khushwant Singh is much too bujurg to let it blind his perceptions.

I'm not denying Hindu rioting -- quite the opposite. Neither do I want to justify it. Let us be clear about that, because it's easy to pick up things out of context and shoot the messenger. But the point is, in India, victims of any riots do not get justice. It's as much true about the Muslims in Gujarat, as it is true about Brahmins in Maharashthra (post Gandhi assassination), ... And not only riots, Kashmiri pandits got a raw a deal in the independent India; so have dalits and tribals (mostly Hindu) in many parts of the country, and the denotified (as if that's not an insult enough) tribes (again Hindu) in the supposedly modern India... Ask a common man about justice in India and he will ask you back what the hell do you mean? Where does one buy it?

If Khushwant Singh has problems with the justice system that we have in place, I'm with him. But excuse me, sir, if you want to paint the issue with a blatently communal brush. For instance, a large part of victims of the terrorism in Punjab were sikhs too. Have they got justice in the sikh land? India has lots of follies, we don't need to invent more. How about building some bridges for god's sake?

Who's Indian?

2004-10-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Madhu Menon (aka Madman)'s blog, The meaning of being an Indian, raises an interesting point:

And what if you don't find too much in common with many people in your country? I ask because for many years, I have felt a "cultural mismatch" between me and the country I live in. I could not identify with many things that form our "culture"

But isn't it true about any culture? What use is a culture without misfits? If everybody fits in, we have a giant monolith -- something that even the self-declared guardians of culture wouldn't have bargained for.

To a large extent, I share Madhu's sense of being a misfit myself, and I'm sure many do. However, Madhu goes ahead and asks :

How, then, can I strongly identify with this country? Is there any "Indian" left in me?

That got me thinking. For all my disconnect with the mass culture of India, it never occurred to me to ask this question of myself. That's not same as being able to answer the question at all. What identity do misfits have anyway -- with respect to a culture? I think the answer lies in the way one looks at the very idea of culture.

What, then, is a culture? Is it just a sum of static beliefs and practices that a community (country is just a geo-political community) shares? If culture were just that, then ironically, there would be no culture! For every belief, every ritual that we identify with culture today was a break-away phenomenon yesterday. In Lila, Robert Pirsig talks about static and dynamic patterns of values. What Madhu seems to be concentrating on, as culture, is the static patterns of values -- something which is pretty integral to a culture, as that is how it sustains itself. But more vital, are the dynamic patterns of values, that at the point of their arrival would always be contrary to the static patterns, and yet in a generations or two would be subsumed into the collection of static patterns -- something we identify with as culture.

Besides, with culture as diverse as Indian (or for that matter European) culture, the mainstream or mass culture is just one (even if significant by definition) stream. The custodians of the mainstream culture might want to (and indeed do) insist that that is the Indian culture, but it doesn't at all change the reality of the complex interplay of streams. So, Atheism is one such stream that has both a long history and a strong presence in the Indian culture. Likewise, many great saints of this land have been individualistic in a certain sense. Many reformists have either rejected or reinvented rituals. And so on.

Of course, I'm avoiding the question -- who then is an Indian? Well, my answer, however circular it might sound, is anyone who identifies with Indian culture. Mainstream or fringe don't really matter. For those are very temporal tags. And there are just innumerable choices to pick from for identifying with -- the pop-culture of Bollywood or the Ekta Kapoors, or the eternal spirituality or the plethora of rituals, or the thousand ideas of India. Besides, it's not even mandatory to be exclusively Indian.

Four Cheers For The Colonialized

2004-10-21T02:18:00.000-07:00

In Two Cheers For Colonialism, Dinesh D'souza, the American author (I shudder to say, of Indian origin) argues the case for colonialism, dismissing post-colonial studies, and aquitting colonialism (as unintentional gift by the colonial masters), all in on breath. I must say, I admire his courage, his passion, and his sheer (selective) honesty -- however misplaced they all might be.

Why did he choose to defend the colonial case, is anybody's guess -- probably he was hurt that his cherished western civilization is under attack from the rest of the wretched third-world -- which in the absence of any real bargaining power is maligning the west. For someone who was raised (I presume) on the romances of Western civilization, it's understandable that his blood boils by the accusations that all those post-colonial and subaltern scholars are hurling at the greatest example of the western civilization. We, from the wretched thirld world, must understand this behaviour of those lucky ones who never had an umelical chord connecting them with these wretched (even though much improved now, post the colonial rules -- the longer, the better) regions of earth. So, my third-~~rate~~worldly friends, you must be sympathetic to him. And please don't call him those old-fashioned names like a traitor or gaddar. You see, he's being more than loyal to his country and his culture. So let's not be emotional, and let's try to adhere to the modernity -- let's be logical.

For instance, he says:

The assault against colonialism and its legacy has many dimensions, but at its core it is a theory of oppression that relies on three premises: First, colonialism and imperialism are distinctively Western evils that were inflicted on the non-Western world. Second, as a consequence of colonialism, the West became rich and the colonies became impoverished; in short, the West succeeded at the expense of the colonies. Third, the descendants of colonialism are worse off than they would be had colonialism never occurred.

Of course, you and me won't use the world assault for the post-colonial reactions! But that's being emotional. From a perspective of global citizen, it's an assualt, mind you. Also, no one is seriously arguing that colonialism is essentially a western concept, but that's okay again. If you apply a little bit of deconstructionism (a western, and global, technique), you'd see that the fact that DD picks up as an important premise shows that in his worldview, West has to be at the center of the things. It's very very natural, I tell you. So if no one is seriously saying that colonialism is a distinctly western evil, you gotta assume that that's what they are doing. After all, how could anyone think that west is not at the center of something? So we'll let that pass.

By suggesting that the West became dominant because it is oppressive, they provide an explanation for Western global dominance without encouraging white racial arrogance. They relieve the third world of blame for its wretchedness.

Well, as a representatives of those wrethed third-worlds, sir, I accept that the blame is totally ours. We let others rule us, we fought among ourselves, and generally never realized that you gotta learn from your history. Hell, most of us don't realized even today that they gotta learn from their history! So on that point, I'm with you, sir.

I was raised to believe in such things (the three premises, I presume -- e.d), and among most third-world intellectuals they are articles of faith. The only problem is that they are not true.

And here, the smart ones can go home. For the dummies, there are explanations coming.

Colonialism has gotten a bad name in recent decades

LOL! I'm deeply sorry sir. Colonialism shouldn't have got a bad name. My wretched brothers don't understand.

Anticolonialism was one of the dominant political currents of the 20th century, as dozens of European colonies in Asia and Africa became free. Today we are still living with the aftermath of colonialism. Apologists for terrorism, including Osama bin Laden, argue that terrorist acts are an understandable attempt on the part of subjugated non-Western peoples to lash out against their longtime Western oppressors. Activists at last year's World Conference on Racism, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have called on the West to pay reparations for slavery and colonialism to minorities and natives of the third world.

Again sir, I genuinely regret the misunderstanding of my fellow third-~~raters~~worlders. If I were at that conference, sir, I'd have ulta (a third-world-word for reverse) asked the third-worlders to give some of their GDP to the west for all the unintended gifts that they gave us, in their stay here. I mean, gift is a gift is a gift! Intention notwithstanding. I've just one complaint, sir, did you have to bring in OBL in this? I mean, your own western theories would postulate that this might amount to guilt-by-association, a very unhealthy thing to do, by civilized people. But then I forget, you have the wretched blood running in your veins! Damn, how I wish you could have got rid of that, and become an exemplary modern citizen. But I'll let that pass too.

These justifications of violence, and calls for monetary compensation, rely on a large body of scholarship that has been produced in the Western academy.

Sir, again, me thinks, you're doing that same guilt-by-association thingy. I advise you to act more civilized/westernized sir. You're showing your origins by behaving like that!

The West did not become rich and powerful through colonial oppression. Moreover, the West could not have reached its current stage of wealth and influence by stealing from other cultures, for the simple reason that there wasn't very much to take.

Right! Like, India's 20% share of the world trade -- that must be based on selling the philosophy of maya. I mean, what else was there in India pre-british? Again, friends you should not be overly critical of Mr. DD. He was never taught the history of the wretched third-world and the colonies. Hell, most of us were never taught it either, living in the same wretched thirld-world.

"Oh yes there was," the retort often comes. "The Europeans stole the raw material to build their civilization. They took rubber from Malaya, cocoa from West Africa, and tea from India." But as the economic historian P.T. Bauer points out, before British rule, there were no rubber trees in Malaya, no cocoa trees in West Africa, no tea in India.

Like, I said, pure maya. After all, (more later) people who never knew how to distinguish between science and cow, cannot possibly have much wealth! That talk about strong textile industry, and all must be a pure bull! (What else do you expect from cow-worshippers?)

The reason the West became so affluent and dominant in the modern era is that it invented three institutions: science, democracy, and capitalism. All those institutions are based on universal impulses and aspirations, but those aspirations were given a unique expression in Western civilization.

Like the trade-protectionism, like high-taxes on manufactured goods from colonies, like trasfer of wealth (the land-tax), like breakdown of traditional schooling system, like out-licenecing the native enterpreuners.... You see, in it's initial stages, democray and capitalism for a few has to come at the expense of foreign rule and import barriers for outsiders. It's a tricky thing, democracy. You want buffers, you know! What if it fails? The west was responsible for the experiment! And you need civilized people for democracy. So naturally, the thirld-world had to be excluded. Capitalism also is sooo fragile, that it needs import protection. I mean, you don't just let outsiders, and inferior, wretched ones at that, to do free trade inside your country! Not to mention the very civilized divide and rule tactics. Very very civilized look away for a while while famines are happening (because of your policies). You see, there is a science of ruling! And who else could have invented that?

Now we can understand better why the West was able, between the 16th and 19th centuries, to subdue the rest of the world and bend it to its will. Indian elephants and Zulu spears were no match for British rifles and cannonballs.

Righto! Now we know! Dummies, even you can go home now. Only metally challenged should stay.

Colonialism and imperialism are not the cause of the West's success; they are the result of that success.

I'm staying sir, I'm quite stupid. But can I just ask one question, I mean such a civilized bunch this, those who invented institutions like Democracy and all (never heard of before anywhere in the world!), why couldn't they ummmm control their urges? You know, not of that kind...

Colonial possessions added to the prestige, and to a much lesser degree the wealth, of Europe.

Right. If you say so, sir!

The descendants of colonialism are better off than they would be if colonialism had never happened: I would like to illustrate this point through a personal example. While I was a young boy, growing up in India, I noticed that my grandfather, who had lived under British colonialism, was instinctively and habitually antiwhite... I realized that I did not share his antiwhite animus. That puzzled me: Why did he and I feel so differently? ... Only years later, after a great deal of reflection and a fair amount of study, did the answer finally hit me. The reason for our difference of perception was that colonialism had been pretty bad for him, but pretty good for me. Another way to put it was that colonialism had injured those who lived under it, but paradoxically it proved beneficial to their descendants.

But why was it bad for him? After all, wasn't India wretched even before Brits came? I mean, why wasn't he greatful to the Brits for all those railways and buildings and all? I see, sir, your grandfather didn't have your balanced perspective. Possibly because he never got good western (I know it's redundancy, but my fellow-countrymen wouldn't know, you know) education sir? And why are you suddenly saying it injured people who lived under it? Didn't they get the benefits too? Those ungreatful swines? I mean, here they were living in absolute pathetic state, there comes the white man and gives them trains, and what not, and education (unheard of before that, I'm sure). And still they crib! It must be in their blood...

Much as it chagrins me to admit it -- and much as it will outrage many third-world intellectuals for me to say it -- my life would have been much worse had the British never ruled India.

Ignore them sir. As it is, third-world intellectuals is an oxymoron. You're talking about non-existing people. The third-world idiots like me accept your insigt. Of course, your life is better off. One stupid stupid question -- is that why you're defending colonialism?

I am a writer, and I write in English. My ability to do this, and to reach a broad market, is entirely thanks to the British.

You mean, the British taught you to write, wow! They've done a great job!

My understanding of technology, which allows me, like so many Indians, to function successfully in the modern world, was largely the product of a Western education that came to India as a result of the British. So also my beliefs in freedom of expression, in self-government, in equality of rights under the law, and in the universal principle of human dignity -- they are all the products of Western civilization.

Again, a stupid stupid question sir. How much money do you get for this?

I am not suggesting that it was the intention of the colonialists to give all those wonderful gifts to the Indians.

Not too much, I see.

Then they realized that they needed courts of law to adjudicate disputes that went beyond local systems of dispensing justice. And so the British legal system was introduced, with all its procedural novelties, like "innocent until proven guilty." The British also had to educate the Indians, in order to communicate with them and to train them to be civil servants in the empire. Thus Indian children were exposed to Shakespeare, Dickens, Hobbes, and Locke. In that way the Indians began to encounter words and ideas that were unmentioned in their ancestral culture: "liberty," "sovereignty," "rights," and so on.

One more stupid stupid question sir -- why did civil servents need to know Shakespeare?

But my broader point is that the champions of Indian independence acquired the principles, the language, and even the strategies of liberation from the civilization of their oppressors.

Like Ahimsa? Sir? I always had a doubt! I mean, why else would a freedom fighter say don't kill the opressors?

It is doubtful that non-Western countries would have acquired those good things by themselves. It was the British who, applying a universal notion of human rights, in the early 19th century abolished the ancient Indian institution of suttee -- the custom of tossing widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. There is no reason to believe that the Indians, who had practiced suttee for centuries, would have reached such a conclusion on their own.

Of course not sir! Only civilized people like the Brits could on their own outlaw practices like witch-burning. And who else could have branded those wretched tribes as criminal tribes? I mean, you need absolute faith in oneself to brand tribes of people as criminal.

None of this is to say that colonialism by itself was a good thing, only that bad institutions sometimes produce good results. Colonialism, I freely acknowledge, was a harsh regime for those who lived under it. My grandfather would have a hard time giving even one cheer for colonialism. As for me, I cannot manage three, but I am quite willing to grant two. So here they are: two cheers for colonialism!

I wish you had read Ramayana, a third-~~rate~~world epic. In that, there is this crooked character called Valya KoLi -- he used to loot and kill people. Not very good thing, I know. But it produced good results for his family! If it weren't for him, his family would never have afforded the kind of living they could. Will you join me when I grant two cheers to Valya? I'd have said three but he later abondoned this route and made his family suffer, while he sat and wrote the stupid epic called Ramayana, which kept Indians backword for the next thousands of years!. Thank god, your grandmother never told you that story, Sir.

Art and Disruptive Genius

2004-10-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

In Deadly Genius and the Back-To-Zero Problem, ESR (Eric S. Raymond -- the Open Source Guru, for the non-techies) puts forward an interesting hypothesis about demise of some art forms. Now, one can argue wether some of the art forms that he uses for illlustrating his point are actually dead. But that doesn't take away anything from his theory.

According to ESR, one of the important factors in the demise of/destruction of art form is deadly genius, as he calls it.

A deadly genius is a talent so impressive that he can break and remake all the rules of the form, and seduce others into trying to emulate his disruptive brilliance — even when those followers lack the raw ability or grounding to make art in the new idiom the the genius has defined.

This, essentially kills the art form, as the hoards that go after the genius (obviously) don't have his/her genius, but imitate anyway -- with disasterous results. In other words, they end up being - na ghar ka na ghat ka, contributing in the demise of the art form as well.

Art, is more or less dependent on a degree of continuity, as the bulk of population (which supports art in one way or another) is rather conservative with respect to appreciating art. This is more than evident in the history. ESR stresses on this point:

Artistic tradition can be limiting sometimes, but it has one thing going for it — it is the result of selection for pleasing an audience. Thus, artists of moderate talent can imitate it and produce something that the eye, ear, heart and mind will experience with pleasure. Most artists are at best of moderate talent; thus, this kind of imitation is how art forms survive and keep an audience.

ESR observes that in the early twentieth centuary, the deadly genius phenomenon became really prominent. Why, he asks, and again postulates that it might have to do with the end of traditional patronage system for art, which was one of the major factors that worked for art establishment.

Wealthy aristocratic patrons, had, in general, little use for disruptive brilliance — what they wanted from artists was impressive display objects, status symbols that had to be comprehensible to the patron's peers. Thus, artists learned to stay more or less within traditional forms or starve. Evolution happened, but it was relatively gradual and unsconscious. Geniuses were not permitted to become deadly.... [But in] the new environment, artistic tradition lost much of its normative force. "Back to zero!" was the slogan; forget everything so you can invent anything. And when the next wave of deadly geniuses hit, there was nothing to moderate them any more.

However, there is one interesting problem with this theory: the more deadly the genius is, the more pattern-breaking his/her art is likely to be. So in the absence of patronage, there should be more pressure on the artist to conform. For once you break normative matrix, you're essentially an outsider -- and this is not just true for art, although it is more obvious in artistic realms. Naturally it takes years before revolutionary art is appreciated. So

What prompts the deadly genius to throw away the rules -- and what stopped them from doing that in the patronage system?
What prompts the less-endowed to follow the struggling geniuses?

The questions (and I myself see an answer to the first one: that old Patronage system was more limiting than a societal patronage -- as the latter is more decentralized) become more relevant in the wake of ESR's prediction that:

It is unlikely that anything quite like the Modernist disruption will ever happen again, if only because we've been there and done that now.

I'm no art expert, but I think this is a little-to-early to predict anything like that, however sound the hypothesis may look. Mainly because, a deadly-genius does what it does inspite of the surroundings, not because of them. So certain social catalysts can accelerate or slow down the process but it's presumptuous to say that only one set of social conditions could bring around such a revolution/disruption (whatever way you look at it). One thing however cannot be contested:

But as we try to heal all the fractures it produced, this one lesson is worth bearing in mind. Genius can be deadly when it goes where mere talent cannot follow.

And it takes a deadly genius himself to come up with that!

The Republic and the Reconstructed Guru

2004-10-14T01:12:00.000-07:00

If anyone ever had any doubts about Jug Suraiya's worth, his recent article in Time of India should really settle the doubts. Writing about Jacques Derrida, the father of Deconstructionsist movement, Jug once again exhibits his mastery over language, and above all his unique ability to effortlessly play with the subject in hand. If there is one reason why I still can't part with TOI, it's got to be Jug.

Undoubtedly, deconstructionism has strong critics, and its relevance/validity as a universally applicable theory has been questioned -- more recently by Rajiv Malhotra and others. The point of the article, however , is not deconstructionism per se, neither is it Deridda's life. For instance,

Unburdened of individual responsibility, moral conduct -- or its undifferentiated opposite -- becomes a collective rite, a hoisting of flags and a mouthing of mantras. The isolate covenant of conscience turns into a charade of public ceremony, an unveiling of statues ...

The irony of an esteemed TOI columnist talking about individual responsibility kind of spoils it -- for people will ask, today or tomorrow, what then is the responsibility of a syndicated columnist? And doesn't the very fact of writing about individual responsibility then become nothing more that a symbolic flag-hoisting and mouthing of mantras? But that apart, it's a succinct portrayal of our socio-political scene.

Each moral inaction has an equal and opposite reaction and it is not surprising that deification -- often of the most implausible or reluctant of idols -- should go hand in hand with that other great national pastime, that of growing cynicism and the vilification of public figures.

And

Kierkegaard said that to the extent he seized upon a mentor's truth and made it his own, he diminished the importance of the other. In India, we do it the other way round: by magnifying the mentor we absolve ourselves of the responsibility of living up to his teachings.

It's probably a universal pastime, in a sense. But in India, it's more prominent -- for it's more than a pastime, and that in a country which can hardly afford pastimes. For every time we wait for another Gandhi/Shivaji/Vivekanand, we waste precious time. And every time we get one, we waste more precious time. In Jug Suraiya's words,

The less we appropriate into our own safekeeping what really it is that those whom we burden with the role of being our gurus would have us do, the deeper we genuflect towards him as transcendent messiahs we can safely worship without any anxiety that we should even try and emulate them.

All in all, a very readable piece (although a reprint of an old one).

Touch of Divinity

2004-10-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

Well known Marathi Poet B.B. Borkar probably knew exactly what he had in mind when he wrote the starting couplet of a poem:

tethe kar maze juLati
divyatvAci jeTha praciti

Loosely translated, it means -- wherever there is a mark of divinity, I salute humbly. Borkar, of course, had something else on his mind (from what I want to talk about) -- probably those divine souls who spend their lives in oblivion, and yet contribute profoundly to the human cause, with all the inherent ambiguity of that phrase. But the scope of those lines extends far beyond such noble souls.

For there is something about divinity (not just the religious conception of divinity), which most human being have an innate capacity to experience. The experience itself might well be subjective (isn't experience by it's very definition subjective?) -- but the fact remains, that we have some conception of divinity.

Robert M. Pirsig, in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance talks about quality -- and in fact goes ahead and weaves a whole metaphysics around it (which he further espouses in his subsequent book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals). Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ) turns over its head the conventional metaphysics of subject/object duality, by putting Quality before subjects/objects. According to MoQ, quality is neither subjective nor objective, but the very genesis of subjects and objects. Not a very intuitive metaphysics, I know.

On a very orthogonal(?) note, the local myth, and indeed literature, (at least in Marathi speaking regions, however I'm not certain about the scope at all, not being a scholar) talks about a special substance -- called paris in marathi -- which can convert stones into gold, just by touching them. There is also a phrase in marathi, paris sparsha (sparsha is touch, for those who don't know Hindi), that stands for an inside-out change for good, like the stone getting converted to gold due to paris.

How is all this remotely relevant to divinity? When one is touched by divinity, in whatever way, in whatever degree, one changes -- even if briefly. We've all experienced that, even if momentary, profundity -- when mind is in a state of quasi-equanimity. To use Pirsig's MoQ, mind is in a state very near to quality, and in such state, mind can only produce quality. One can easily substitute quality by divinity. There are few, who are touched by divinity so deeply that they change inside out -- reconstructing the mythical paris. In other words, their minds are always near quality. Borkar probably is talking about such people. Most of us are far far away from there. And yet, we all know those moments when we were brushed (if not touched) by divinity. The question is, do we really cherish it? And if we do why do we let ourselves drift?

Who's Birthday Is It Anyway?

2004-10-08T01:37:00.000-07:00

And so we've another latest fad. In last couple of weeks, I've got at least thirty-seven requests to add my Birthday to other people's Birthday Calanders. Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little. Okay, a LOT. But suddenly everyone seems to be creating B'day Calanders on BirthdayAlarm.com. Now, I have nothing against this sort of thing -- people want to maintain B'day calanders, good for them! I find it highly commendable. There is a little problem, however. These people want me to enter my birthday there.

Not that I think it's worth keeping a secret (unless, say, your internet banking password consists of that information. In that case, you're anyway doomed sooner rather than later). However, what kind of pain is it to make entry of your birthday in someone else's B'day Calender, so that s/he doesn't have to take pains of remembering it! I mean, what kind of benevolent universe premise (peace be upon Ayn Rand) do someone who comes up with such an idea rely on? You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours? (aka Symbiotic Benevolence -- something most foolish theories are based on -- like socialism, romantic love, pyramid schemes etc. But then that means, to extract any benefit out of this scheme (unless of course you consider ecards from almost strangers as some kind of benefit) you need to actually create your own B'day Calender somewhere. But then again, what's the real benefit there? You get to send ecards! Fabulous.

So guys, if you ever feel like creating something like that, please give a second thought to something called human-nature -- which, if you actually sit down to study and understand (and this is especially true about male-nature), is nothing but laziness. Since you were lazy enough to remember/write-down b'days of people who matter to you, the last thing you should expect is that they'll go and actually fill up that information for you. But then, lots of people fall for socialism, romantic love and pyramid schemes. So maybe, you'll be lucky too.

Demystifying Pune (Literally)

2004-10-07T03:51:00.000-07:00

SSM and other guys here got me started on this! There seems to be a nostalgic image of Pune still lurking in the air (not the Pune air, of course, there is no scope for nostalgia there.. all other possible algia's have taken up whatever place is left by pollutants). It's time to bring in some reality...

They say once a Punekar, always a Punekar. Probably that explains why Punekars still love this city (?). Celebrated Marathi writer, P.L.Deshpande (known fondly as Pu La), has done a great job of characterizing this city (along with Mumbai and Nagpur), in his masterpiece "Mumbaikar, Punekar kee Naagpurkar". Most Marathi people are familiar with that piece of writing, and it's so good, that it would take either someone of his caliber or a complete idiot to write an addendum to it that's more recent in scope. Since it's hard to find anyone of the former variety, it's obvious that only idiots will take up the honorable job. So here I am.

There are two kinds of Pune -- one is the Pune of legends, Pune the "sanskritic kendra" (cultural capital) of Maharashtra, Pune the Pensioner's Paradise, Pune with it's cool atmosphere, idyllic life, the oxford of the east, the blah blah blah...
This Pune is buried deep in the starry eyed memories of those who live outside Pune, or those who have always lived here, and believe what those living outside tell them about Pune. There once was such a Pune, presumably. I am ready to give away that concession to this city(?).
But there is another kind of Pune, that people who live here (and especially those who have also lived elsewhere at different point of time) have to live with. I am one such part-time Punekar, without any of the "jAjwalya abhimAn" (errr. how does one translate that? strong pride?) about the city(?), who can look at some of it's $hit and say it is indeed $hit, and not "just smells like it". So what does it mean to be a part-time Punekar? How does one find this city(?), as a part-timer?

This is three part series on Pune.

Part One: Pune's Traffic

You think you've seen it all, bad roads, lack of traffic sense in the bikers, rash driving, etc... You think your city is the absolute nadir (or epitome -- if you think this is something to be proud of -- and I've seen that attitude with genuine Punekars. They'll tell you horrible stories of Pune's traffic, almost with a pride) with respect to traffic, you haven't driven in Pune. This city already boasts of the highest number of automobiles after Delhi, according to some report I read recently (which might be wrong, but that's irrelevant). But for all these astronomical numbers, the traffic sense of average Punekar can be summed as look ahead, try not to bump into anyone in the front. Everything else is chalta hai. So you have PMT (Pune Municipal Transport -- yes there is such a thing) buses stopping right at the center of the road (if you're lucky -- otherwise in the rightmost lane), the auto-wallahs (the ubiquitous auto-rickshaw drivers) taking a u-turn out of nowhere (that even Rajiv Malhortra would be proud of), cyclists moving in rows, you ask for a violation, and it's there. For US returned citizens though, it's easier to adjust. Overtaking is by consensus to be done from left, and in general, if you use the right side of the road for driving, no one seems particularly offended. For those wanting to drive in Pune, here are a few tips:

1) Buy a cellphone if you don't have one, and always use it while driving, it's considered a sign of novice driver, to stop to take a call. If you have to stop, don't bother taking your vehicle to the side of the road. Stop right where you are, or better keep on driving at a sluggish place. People will respect you more.

2) Stopping at signals is passe. The in thing is to hang around for couple of seconds, pay homage to the red-light (which probably signifies all the blood that our freedom fighters have shed for us) and move along. It's very dangerous to stop at a red-light, especially if there is a PMT or some heavy motor vehicle behind you (the red-light will then signify your blood). If you need to stop at the signals, raise your arm half from a kilometer back.

3) If anyone honks, and is expecting that you give him the side, DON'T move. In general, you're not supposed to think about anyone behind you. Especially true if s/he's honking. That only means s/he is deciding which side is more comfortable for overtaking. You're supposed to hold your line (and not bump into anyone in the front, remember?)

4) If you yourself want to overtake there is a complicated algorithm, that I'll try to simplify: basically the strategy depends on the vehicle you're trying to overtake
PMT/Water-tankers: (this latter is a menacing vehicle that's driven by people who generally can't even differentiate between the forward and reverse gears) forget it.
Auto: Move marginally to the right (don't need to look in the rear view mirrors, they'll manage your sudden lane transition) and honk.. the auto-wallah will move towards the right.. then you move back to left, and if you don't mind overtaking from the left go ahead. If you have to overtake from the right (a habit, you should unlearn fast, if you want to stay here) honk again, the auto-wallah will move to the left too.. now shoot past him from right.
Cycle: May go bless you. Try not to hurt him/her as you overtake.
Biker (and this includes every moped): If under 30, s/he'll start a race with you. Watch the Terminator bike chase, and get some ideas. Otherwise, swiftly overtake from the left.

5) Right of the way: The earlier you forget that there is such a thing, the better for your metal well-being. Basically, dil chahta hai is the equivalent of this concept. You want to turn? Turn. You want to cross? cross. You think you've the right of the way, you have it. And so has everyone else. Afterall, it's not for no reason that they ask you "sadak kya tere baap ki hai kya?".

6) Disable the low beam on you vehicle. People here can't spot low beams well. They might not be able to see you approaching.

For more tips, you'll have to buy my upcoming book.

Part 2: The People (Coming Soon -- Very Soon, as a true Punekar will say it)

Of Cynics, Love and Birthdays

2004-10-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

"So what are your plans for today?", good@heart friends ask me.

Like I say, people are darn curious. And darn too full of ideas -- for others.

"Nothing so far", I start safely, knowing damn well it doesn't work like that. If anything, it buys you a little bit of time.

"What do you mean nothing? oh, so it's a secret kya?"

That's the problem with truth. People are not used to it. You tell them any lie, and they'll not just swallow it, they'll munch on it. But you gotta live with that, (sigh etc.)

"No seriously, we haven't planned anything."

"Take her out to dinner!", People don't take hints, do they? Never! Why does it always happen to me? Do I ever go and tell someone what they should do on their wife's B'day? Don't they manage without my inputs, anyways? So why do they think I can't? One more of life's whys, that one's gotta ask periodically.

It's like my wife's belief that unless she tells me to take a shower, I wouldn't! Like I'd sit there with the morning paper for the whole of the morning, and leave for my office in my nightsuite. (sigh etc.)

"Well, we don't like to eat out. It's so unhealthy, eating out, you know. These days, you gotta watch you diet", if you don't budge, neither would I, you good@heart friend.

"Come on! One day won't kill you!"

"How about I cook something for her?"

"Like what?", I don't get this. I mean, I can cook maggie for all you care. How does it affect anybody -- except for my wife, of course.

"Potato chips", I chip in, remembering the incident day before, with one of the new joinees in our company. When asked who all could cook, this guy raises his hand. When asked what does he cook, that's the answer he gave: and I'm not making this up!

"Don't tell me if you don't have to"

"Okay", yuppiiiieee-yuhooooo..

"You're impossible! Anyways, what did you gift her?"

"Nothing", knowing full well, I'm just making it worse. Why can't I lie, like everyone around me? Even the great Dhramraj Yudhishthir did that.

"Now don't tell me she doesn't like gifts"

"She doesn't like gifts on her B'day. She thinks it's waste of money, and unnecessary, and predictable."

"How about a bunch of roses? That doesn't cost much does it?"

"It's so goddamn predictable! It's like declaring that you're out of ideas"

"You are pathetic! Excuses is all you've got"

Maybe so, friend. But then aren't B'days and anniversaries themselves excuses -- for when you love someone (and I mean all forms of love), occasion is the last thing that you need to tell them that. Isn't any day goodenuff for that?

Of Unknown Poets and Life Fundaes

2004-09-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, I finished re-reading a Marathi book : Tu Bhramat Ahasi Waya (loosely translated -- You're wandering unnecessarily, a line from Dnyaneshwari if I'm not wrong), by Vasant Kale (known as Va. Pu. Kale or just Vapu). He was one of the distinguishing writers in Marathi, appreciated both by masses and classes. This book is like the pinnacle of his writing, synthesizing thoughts from Kabir to Dnyaneshwar seamlessly. If there is one complaint I have against this book, it's that some of the quotations are without any source. For instance, here is an excerpt of a hindi poem that one of the characters in the book recites:

jeevan me madhu ka pyala tha
tumne tanman de dala tha
wah tut gaya to tut gaya
madiralay ka aangan dekho
kitne pyale hil jate hain
gir mitti-me mil jate hain
par bolo tute pyalon par
kab madiralay pachtata hain?

mridu mitti ke hain bane hue
madhughat futa hi karte hain
phri bhi madiralay ke andar
madhughat hain, madhu-pyale hain
jo madkta ke mare hain
woh madhu luta hi karte hain

jiski mamta ghat-pyalon par
woh kaccha peene wala hai
joh sacche madhu se jala hua
kab rota hai chillata hai?

Does anyone know who is the poet? For some time I believed that it's Hariwanshrai Bachchan, but then I searched in few of his anthologies, and couldn't find this. Anyways, if anyone knows source of these excerpts, I'll be indebted if you could share that with me...

Question of Trust

2004-09-30T04:19:00.000-07:00

With some reservations, I'm blogging on this subject. TOI, Sep 23, had this news item: Army gets women recruits examined by male docs, which I found quite a non-campaign.

Normally it's up to a woman whether she wishes to go to a female or a male gynecologist. In fact, most prefer female practitioners. But it seems the Indian Army doesn't give women the choice..

For one, this is like questioning professionalism of Army (or any male) gynecologist. Secondly, to expect Army to provide for preferences (sic) of recruits is, frankly, ridiculous! What next? An upper caste doctor for upper caste males who prefer not being touched by the so-called untouchables? Where will this stop. Somewhere, one has to accept professionals as professionals! On a lighter note (I couldn't resists this!) what if the female gynecologist that Army manages to hire turns out to be a closet lesbian?

Thankfully, some Priya Mansingh calls spade a spade in letters to editor: Miss Misfit:

This is with reference to the news item 'Army gets women recruits examined by male docs' (Sep 23). It is amazing that a young girl about to join the armed forces should have such outdated views. As an army officer's wife, I would like to allay Ms Moudgil's fears and remind her that the army prides itself of gentlemanly behaviour.

The army recruitment ads say 'DO YOU HAVE IT IN YOU?' It seems Ms Moudgil does not have it in her to rough it. It would be better if she joins some other profession. With her mediaeval mindset she is likely to raise many a storm when posted to difficult and isolated army stations with male colleagues.

Okay, so what if that bit about Gentlemanly behaviour is a bit exaggerated...

Are Indians Insanely Optimistic?

2004-08-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

Time and again, Indians show a sense of optimism that borders on unreasonable. Especially so in sporting domains. For instance, the latest Redif survey (in the wake of a crackpot study by PWC [who at least get paid for their crackpot studies in general], which predicted a similar result for India) when asked will India win 10 medals at the Athens Olympics, a whooping 81% (currently) are saying yes! Now I know surveys are a crackpot device themselves, but still, I mean, even for fun how can someone click a yes ;-). And this isn't a one-off case either. The last World Cup final, similar numbers were sure India will win (including your truly ;-)).

Neither is this optimism a constant. There is a huge fluctuation in the face of first bad result -- like our hockey team losing to some sub-standard team. Then suddenly the polls go ulta. Optimism and pessimism are the two sides of the same coin, eh? so if not insane, are we at least a maniac-depressive society?

Paradise Lost (and Found)

2004-08-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

Somehow Time Asia is the last place where I'd have expected to find anything sublime, but they proved me wrong. The July 26-Aug 2 Issue of Time Asia is an eminently readable one, for it captures diverse images of Asia. In one of the articles,All Is Not Lost, Jonathan Spence tells the story of Zhang Dai, a Seventeenth century Chinese historian/scholar, who lost almost everything in the Manchu invasion of 1644, and tried to reconstruct his lost paradise:

The initial impulse to recapture the past, Zhang Dai tells us, sprang from a trip he made to the celebrated West Lake in Hangzhou in the early 1650s, when the fighting had ended in Manchu victory and he traveled back to the city to see what had survived. He found the villas laid waste, the people scattered, the charm vanished. His first reaction was simple despair, followed by a grinding sense of loss. But those emotions were superseded by the realization that he had known in detail what had now vanished, and thus the images he could conjure up might serve to replace the loss and the waste. The reality that he retained was the reality that would survive, and thus the loss was lessened.

Howard Roark, the superhuman (or unreal, as most critics would say) hero in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead says: We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. Zhang Dai's story is an illustration of that precept. Incidentally, the theme of the Time Asia's said issue is search for paradise, and the inherent subjectivity of the very idea. So for a women in Laos (belonging to the Hmong tribe) the image of the Australian author's wife, relaxing on a rock alongside a beach is the mortal image of a paradise. For every paradise lost then, there is an opportunity for finding one, or even recreating one.

The Empire Strikes Back

2004-08-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

When I wrote in a blog recently, that:

But then, for all we know, in a few years, the mainstream media might have adapted itself to the blogging world! We should just keep our fingers crossed.

I was not aware that the mainstream media - the gigantic empire that is supposed to make or brake fortunes of politicians and artists alike, is already taking a note, and gearing up into defense. Well, it's happening already, and somehow I've a feeling, this isn't a one-off phenomenon. We would see a lot of this in coming days and months. What am I talking about? Here is a NYT article (needs registration) about the bloggers being invited to cover the recent Democratic National Convention in the US.

Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps

As usual, NYT packs it's punch in the very subject line itself by clubbing all bloggers -- including freelance journalists -- into a condescending tag of web diarists. Well, etymologically blog is just a web journal or a diary, but surely there is more to life than etymology ;). What it does however is reduce the importance of the blogging phenomenon in the eyes of the yet neutral readers.

In Demeaning bloggers: the NYTimes is running scared (which probably repeats the NYT's folly of biasing the subjectline for effect) Danah Boyd observes correctly that:

The entire spin of the article focuses on how bloggers are like children in a candy store - naive, inexperienced and overwhelmed by what is now available to them. The article focuses on the minutia of blogging, emphasizing that bloggers won’t really cover the real issues, but provide the “low-brow” gossip.

Going back to the NYT article, the big-media game of crying objectivity-foul, and take a moral high-ground on the basis of definition:

"I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack," said Thomas McPhail, professor of media studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who argues that journalists should be professionally credentialed. "They have no pretense to objectivity. They don't cover both sides."

Observe that the very notion of objectivity of the mainstream media (and the lack of it in bloggers) is introduced as a subjective opinion of a Professor (lending it an air of authority). However, I agree with the basic assumption that conventional journalism keeps objectivity as a noble aim (which is violated every other second, but we'll let that pass for now) whereas bloggers don't even pretend to be objective. Afterall, they are voicing their opinion. But the holy-cow of objectivity in reporting is just that -- a product of media's collective virtual reality kit. The coverage that India has got in the omniscient western press is enough to drive the point home.

Danah Boyd in her Salon.com article The new blogocracy offers defense for blogging:

Blogging is a relatively young phenomenon, and its growing pains and identity search are ever transparent. The tendency of bloggers to talk about blogging is often criticized, yet this practice of self-reflection is precisely what makes blogging a valuable contribution to public discourse. Bloggers are highly critical, questioning creatures. Whatever their subject, they document their observations and examine them inquisitively.

The article also talks about the objectivity/subjectivity issue that's very much at the centre of this war:

As a practice, journalism espouses an air of objectivity, purporting to cover all sides of a debate, equally and with emotional distance. While few believe that journalists are unbiased, it is considered a respectable aim of the profession and readers expect them to be as objective as possible. Bloggers, on the other hand, have no such cultural code and their readers rarely hold them accountable for objectivity. In fact, what makes blogging confusing for many is that the practices encompassed by that term are quite diverse.

In Lila: An Enquiry Into Morals, Robert M. Pirsig talks about the objectivity wall that's protecting the whole field of cultural anthropology. But objective cultural anthropology is like objective journalism -- good only in theory. You only see what you want to see! So NYT is really walking on a thin ice of objectivity. The Salon piece goes deeper into the issue:

There appear to be four primary conceptual paradigms that frame blogging: 1) journalism; 2) diarying or journaling; 3) note passing; 4) fieldbook note taking. Everyone is trying to make sense of blogging by stuffing it into one of these paradigms, but in fact, it is a new practice that transcends all four while drawing on aspects from all of them

Rajiv Malhotra, Sankran Sanu and others on Sulekha have argued precisely that the Western (and hence Indian) academics have always tried to fit in the Indic culture in western paradigms -- and with disastrous results. Instead of using such opportunities to enlarge or even replace paradigms, the power centers have this tendency of stuffing the data into paradigms, discarding alleged dichotomies, contradictions. This is because, when a model changes, power centers change, and who would let that happen? Certainly not those who are at the center.

Thankfully, the Salon article chooses to elaborate on the nuances of this interesting debate on the role of bloggers in the media order. A very insightful paragraph (emphasis mine)

Blogging will not replace traditional journalism, but it presents a threat to the normative press culture and an opportunity for radical reporting. Bloggers do place the issue of professionalism under attack, not by being unprofessional, but by exposing the ways in which the media operates. As blogging reaches the masses, people are introduced to information that was not reported because it did not suit the party line. Bloggers will happily document the power games that they witness in the press room and will expose future Jayson Blairs. Bloggers also capture information that the mainstream press does not yet realize is valuable ...

I feel that bloggers should not try and replace the mainstream journalism. Afterall, they are the new phenomenon. Let the mainstream media adapt. The alternative media should stick to their niche. The future is too complex to predict anyway. What is certain is that we're at interesting crossroads.

Quote of the Week

2004-08-03T05:56:00.000-07:00

You never read your own books. I don't know how anybody can. When you write a book it's a way of getting rid of something that you don't particularly want back. Like dain' a shite.

Irvine Welsh, interviewed in the weekend’s Observer (Thanks to the Maud Blog)

The GenNext: Will Bloggers Define Tomorrow's Journalism?

2004-08-03T01:09:00.000-07:00

In The Next Generation of Journalists Will Start as Bloggers, Ernest Miller writes (thanks to this Smart Mobs blog) :

Why don't we take a look at the future of journalism and blogging a few years down the road? Where will the next generation of journalists be learning their craft and filing their first stories? I think an awful lot of them will learn through the process of blogging. Often, the people who become journalists do so because they like to learn about new things, they like to find stories, and they like to write and pass those stories on. If journalism is in their blood at a young age, they're going to start blogging long before they set foot in a J-School. School newspapers are passé, school blogs are cool.

Indeed! The best thing about blogging is that you are your own boss. If you can convince yourself that something needs to be said, that's all it takes for a blog to come into existence (and of course, the writing part!). Thing is, the kind of instant feedback that you might get in blogs is much valuable, especially so in the formative years. However, too much of feedback might destroy (or significantly hamper) the natural growth of the writer -- the development of his/her unique style. So how soon is okay?

Besides, blogging is very different from journalism in the sense that journalism is this objective discipline (in theory at least!) where as blogs are inherently subjective. That is NOT bad per se, in fact that is the USP of blogs. But once one is used to that kind of editorial freedom how does one really adapt to the mainstream media? But then, for all we know, in a few years, the mainstream media might have adapted itself to the blogging world! We should just keep our fingers crossed.

Being Great

2004-07-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

Got in touch with an ex-colleague after a long time and when I asked her how she is, the answer was "I'm great!", and suddenly I felt, why can't I say that anymore? If asked, I'd probably say, "I'm fine" or "I'm good" or somethng like that. Why? Why do we let the petty things in life put us down in hundreds of ways? Surely I knew how to feel great! Or was that just the lack of the unbearable emptiness of knowing?.

-EOM-

Quote of the week

2004-07-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

Came across this great quota early in the morning today, thought it's worth sharing...

"I mean you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you will plant olives -
and not so they'll be left for your children either,
but because even though you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier."
(from 'On Living' -- Nazim Hikmet)

Has media finally lost interest in Ishrat?

2004-07-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

The darling of the ELM has suddenly been relegated from front page headlines in bold letters, to few bites in the News Digest! I saw the news online Lashkar owns up Ishrat, and was wondering why I didn't spot it in the paper edition of TOI, when I read it in the morning. I scanned the whole paper, and finally, found it on the front page, with a difference ;-). Small, rather tiny news item, is the last place where you would expect such an important person's news to be reported... Alas, TOI has been so unfair to her! What a fall from grace for poor Ishrat!

Thoughts by Kumar Gandharva

2004-07-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

While reading a Marathi book of biographies of some famous (Indian) artists, I found some interesting thoughts on artists in a chapter on Kumar Gandharva. These are Kumarji's own thoughts, and I've tried to translate them, although this is more like a free translation -- more of trying to capture essence of what he said.

Despondency (1) is a very important phase in an artist's life. Any artist must experience it. However, at those crossroads (of despondency) there are different alternatives. A true artist overcomes this despondency and gets back into creative phase. When does an artist get into stagnation? (It happens) when he has fame, he has money. But a (real) artist is never satisfied by just that. He has this craving to discover new ways, to keep creating something new. When an artist is happy and content with himself, he is finished. Self-satisfaction should be considered artist's greatest curse. There is a strange quality to the stagnation of a true artist. Call it vanity (2) if you want. This vanity disables the artist. He keeps on repeating the same stuff. He doesn't move forward (in his ultimate journey). Even the fans like the same (and predictable) stuff from him. After this stagnation and the despondency, some try to come out of it. But not everyone is successful. Then they become impotent as artists.

I myself went through such a phase of despondency in 1946. I used to get a lot of program invitations. Used to travel a lot, earn a lot of money, make a lot of good friends. Connoisseurs would appreciate my music. But what was my role as an artist? Should one be satisfied by one's fame? I couldn't make any sense out of it. One day, I cried in the middle of a crowded street. I was engulfed by an artist's despondency. But I overcame it and kept on moving ahead. I tried to bring something new to my singing. An artists has to have this craving for creation, like an eternal flame.

1. The word used by Kumarji is nirasha -- literally a lack of hope. But somehow, the word hopelessness does not convey the complexity of the emotional phase that I believe Kumarji is talking about. It's some of those cases where a concept is much more than words. The closets word in English that I could think of is despondency. But even that is not quite right. It's the despondency that comes after a stagnation -- rather through stagnation.

2. Again, Kumarji uses the word masti (in Marathi), that can be loosely translated in English as a carefree/conceited attitude that comes when you're living on the high of success.

Sorry Prof. Parthasarthy, you got it all wrong!

2004-06-30T03:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. Parthasarathy, a sociology professor in IITB (the link again due to sudeepks on Sulekha, and I don't vouch for the authenticity) posted a write-up on reservations in IITB's discussion forum, it seems. Disappointing then, as being alumnus of that institute, I have high respects for the quality of its teachers. Well, when one become a bleeding liberal, though the first thing that happens is you start losing focus... It doesn't matter if you're an IITian prof.

The first thing to be aware of is that de facto and de jure reservation is accepted is and practiced by all societies in many different ways, most of which are not opposed at all, since they benefit especially the rich and middle classes.

Starting on a wrong foot! One -- two wrongs don't make a right. Two -- as we'll see, they're opposed -- some of them at least.

One example is inheritance rights. Going by the logic of anti-reservationists that merit alone and not accident of birth should be the criteria for seats or positions, one can ask why a son (or rarely a daughter) should get the property of a parent when the parent dies. Should not the merit of candidates be assessed before passing on the property?

Well, spoken like a typical statist. Individual property is not state's to dispose of. Someone earned it, and wanted to decide what's to be done with it (through will, generally). If there is no will, there have to be arbitrage -- that's when inheritance comes into picture. Jobs are not not individual property.

Some of the great thinkers of the last couple of centuries including Mahatma Gandhi have opposed inheritance rights on the ground that it rewards those who are not necessarily the most deserving. How many of those opposing reservations speak out against inheritance rights?

Inheritance rights are the only protection a person has got (the original property accumulator) that mobs won't kill him for property. There is no right to life without right to property. In any case, the property rights have been a subject of intense debate themselves, and have been questioned, reverted, re-established time and again. So the claim that they're not contested is a false on to say the least.

Even if one accepts right to inheritance, why should property be reserved only for sons and not daughters as happens in reality in most families in India. Is it that sons have no merit and cannot fend for themselves and therefore need the property, but daughters don't since they have more merit?

Bleeding heart! The civil law already holds sons and daughters as equal entities for inheritance. Yes, the patriarchal society has tried to sustain itself through injustice toward the women, but that's what it is. Injustice! And it is also questioned time and again.

How many of those opposing reservations speak out against business and management inheritance?

This is like asking, why does a mother give meals only to her children and not do a merit analysis? A business empire is not created out of thin air. Someone's vision creates it, sustains it. That person has a right to close it, sell it or hand-it-over to whom-so-ever he sees fit. It's the socialistic invasion of intellectual realms that has created these so-called contradictions. Yes, it is not in the best interest of the society to hand-over a successful business to incompetent successor, but such common-good is short term. It's the desire to leave for one's progeny one's wealth, making their life easier, that propels people to engage in commerce. Otherwise, socialism would have been a runaway success.

How is it that fairly young family members are pushed to the top whereas those who have worked for a company and proved their talents over a long time never get the top positions? Mr.Bajaj asked for a level playing field when it comes to competition from MNCs, but doesn't believe in a level playing field when it comes to the underprivileged! Mr.Bajaj should justify to his shareholders why the CEO position is reserved for his son, before he retires and starts a movement against reservations, which he has reportedly stated.

Talking of justification, it's the government that needs to justify what right they have to fiddle in the private sector's functioning to start with?

Many companies including some top ones are biased in their recruitment. Mr.Dhoot of Videocon publicly stated that his company does not take women at the executive level. (This is against the Indian constitution by the way). How can you speak out against reservations when you exclude some groups and reserve positions for others.

Well, I abhor Mr. Dhoot's policies, and would rather not buy videocon products. But he at least puts his money where his mouth is. On the other hand, the government wants to put their mouth where other's money is! In any case, no one is opposing a level playing field... This whole strawman argument just wants to take the focus away from the central point of conflict: will reservations provide level-playing-fields? No one, will oppose a PIL against Videocon for it's recruitment policy! No one is defending that as good. But one extreme example doesn't prove a wide-spread bias in private-sector recruitment... (refer to my thorough analysis of this point in Caste-o-cracy.)

If you do an informal survey, it is easy to find out how many big companies have senior staff belonging to members of the company owner or major shareholder or founder's caste, community, gender, region, linguistic group. The Birlas do not permit women family members to work in group companies. One could go on and on with examples. Contrast all this with companies, government agencies, and universities in the US who in their advertisements put in a special line: "Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply".

Why informal? Do a formal survey! And we're all for removal of biases. We're against institutionalization of further biases as a anti-dote to those biases. As it is, people of all castes are victims of these biases. This reverse-discrimination would double victimize them.

Bias enters in other ways too. Many software companies recruit new employees by asking existing employees to recommend new ones. So they contact people in their networks. Two ongoing studies by sociologists show that this leads to concentration of people from similar background in terms of gender, caste, and community within companies.

This is utter rubbish argument. Companies turn to personal recommendation (even give bonuses for it) because they cannot get them through other sources, or the cost of other recruitment drives are too much. Any ad in paper fetches thousands of resumes, just scanning them is a Herculean task. Referrals, on the other hand, have a good hit ratio, as the employee knows he cannot refer absolutely incompetent people. Many referral candidates are routinely rejected. This is business sense that we're talking about not biases!

I have heard from many management graduates from premium institutes in India that large corporates and MNCs in India prefer candidates who may not be very good but who come from influential families, so that they can get their jobs done using their contacts and networks. What happens to the candidates with merit? And yet these very corporates oppose reservations in the name of merit!

Again, the straw-man! Yes, we're not living in a perfect world! Yes, there are shady practices going on. How does this justify reservations? What happens to those non-influential (and so called upper-caste) meritorious persons in this new scheme? More of the pie is now inaccessible to them! Is this social justice?

A fourth example is in the field of education where there is reservation on the basis of ability to pay, which no one opposes. There are hundreds of private professional colleges where you may have very good marks but can't get in because you can't afford to pay. My own brother many years ago had to settle for a branch he did not want in a government run engineering college rather than a preferred branch in private college, because we couldn't afford the capitation fees. How many of the anti-reservationists oppose this?

Ditto?

The issue therefore is that there are already schemes of reservation operating in society, which favor those who are more privileged.

Yes! And we don't need more of those schemes!

There would be little or no need for reservations in the public or private sector if these other schemes were non-existent, which is how it is in many economically developed countries.

Gross non-sequitur. Plus, developed countries do not have problems of scare resources, huge populations. In any case, caste-based-reservations do not solve any of these problems. They'll, I'll repeat, double harm the people who are of certain castes.

If positions or seats went to those who had the best ability or skill, then there would be more equity in society. But that is not the way things happen.

Not entirely true. And if partly true, does it mean we should worsen it? How much equitable society has turned in last fifty years of educational and public sector quotas? The legacy is complacency, incompetence and a complete degeneration of politics.

This is not what happens in western countries. Why is it that even factory workers, construction workers, or s municipal cleaners can afford to educate their children and even own a car in these countries? Because these societies realize the importance of dignity of labor, that minimum wages are to be given to every worker for society to progress; whereas in our case, a vast majority do not even get enough for self-subsistence, and we justify it by arbitrarily imposing different values on different skills.

More gross non-sequitur... Western countries do not have the problems of huge populations, colonial history of loot, legacy of a faulty educational system created for babus, and hazaar such problems. Yes, they are problems for India, and they need to be tackled. Caste-based-reservations won't change any of those. They'll worsen them, by creating more inequalities, and will buy governments more time to ignore the basic problems facing the Indian society. The medicine, is worse than the disease!

PS: The author accept in the end that The policy is essentially a sop, doesn't change things much, but keeps certain groups happy but is comes too late, and too lame. It's like a lip service to the opposite camp. Consider this also, My objective in writing all this is not so much to provoke a debate, as to help you make an informed statement next time you support or oppose reservations. After pages after pages of data that tries to justify reservations, and virtually nothing that questions it, how does one make an informed statement? Afterall, where is the other side? The refusal to debate makes it worse. It's like, hey, I'm a sociologist, you're kids, I told you the facts, now go away and make your informed decisions. More is expected from professors from elite (couldn't resist that one!) schools.

The Logic (?) Behind Reservations

2004-06-30T01:22:00.000-07:00

I am amazed at the total abandon of logic, reason and consistency with the pro-reservation arguments. Over the last few days, despite my resolve not to come back to the subject again, I kept coming across gratuitous arguments made in support of the (private sector) reservations.

On Sulekha blogs, sudeepks posted a blog A case for reservation in private sector recently. He didn't add anything of his own, but quoted from R. Jagannathan's guest column on Rediff : Why there should be job reservation

So let's look at the points raised therein:

"For the corporate recruiter, merit should merely mean competence -- the ability to do a job well. It is not ultimately about marks and academic brilliance..."

First, it's for companies to decide what competency means for them.

It is easy to say that affirmative action should begin with education, but the problem is that our education system is seriously flawed -- even for the upper classes.

It should not take 17-19 years of school and college to learn the basic competencies needed for most jobs, but unfortunately that is what the Indian school system is all about. It is an elaborate scheme to keep the better-off sections away from the job market as long as possible. Dalits can't afford this merry-go-round.

Splendid! So now the failure of government's long stint in education is somehow to be used as an excuse to allow them to force private sectors to bring in the so called affirmative action. If Dalits can't afford this merry-go-round, how come most other lower-middle class upper-castes can afford it? And why are they out of this affirmative action?

If the economics of education is so adverse even for people who can afford it, why suggest the same for those who can't? Dalits simply don't have the money or the time to waste on this kind of 'education.'

The typical illogic that reservationists would imply... Who are these people who can afford (by author's own calculation) 4-5 lakh per child on Student's education? How do they afford it, if not by extremely focused priority -- of educating their kids, at whatever hardships. Do they have that kind of money to waste on education? Really? Which country is the author talking about?

Against this backdrop, the question businessmen must ask themselves in not 'whether' they should be doing affirmative action, but 'how.'

How convenient! Let me summarize -- government's education policy is a failure, dalit's cannot waste their money on such education, so dispense off with education, and give them jobs instead. QED!

But before that it is necessary to dispel some myths about 'merit.' The word means different things to different people.

For the person who's just entering the job market, merit means academic excellence. For Dalits and others who can't wave a high-90s mark-sheet in a recruiter's face, merit is an entry barrier erected by society to deny them a decent job.

Let's substitute merit with some other words, say honesty.. now let me rephrase it: For the person who's just entering the job market, hardworking means ready-to-toil. For lazy people who cannot prove their readiness to toil, a recruiter's face, hardwork is an entry barrier erected by society to deny them a decent job. Intelligence? Is it a barrier to deny dumb people a decent job? So yes, merit is a fuzzy concept is a point well taken, but to ask companies to discard academic excellence as a metric of it is in simple words stupid! And BTW, companies look at a lot more than academic excellence.

For the corporate recruiter, merit should merely mean competence -- the ability to do a job well. It is not ultimately about marks and academic brilliance.

And is it written on the face? How does a corporate recruiter gauge it?

Going by the corporate recruiter's definition, affirmative action immediately becomes a possibility. The truth is you don't need 17-19 years of education to do most corporate jobs competently.

Any adult, with just two or three years of targeted learning and exposure to elementary language and arithmetic skills, can do most non-specialized jobs in any office. He may not become a heart surgeon or civil engineer, but most other jobs will fall within his area of competence with just some additional training.

What about: mechanical engineers, marine engineers, lawyers, doctors, chemical engineers, architects, financial advisors, CAs, Teachers ...? What about those who are out there trying to make themselves competent for the industry in one form or another? They should be abandoned in favor of those who despite quotas haven't raised themselves to the level -- which according to the author should not take more than 2-3 years!

On the other hand, competence and job success depend not so much on the initial fund of knowledge one acquires in school but on the willingness to learn and determination to succeed.

And Monsieur, is it stamped on the faces?

Today, most companies prefer to employ women in many areas not because they bring great new skills (though there is some of that as well), but because they bring in better attitudes and a will to succeed.

Well these better attitudes are over and above the minimum competency criteria. Prey tell me, do they employ incompetent (academic excellence and other selection criteria) women these days!

As a general rule, the disadvantaged always bring a greater determination to succeed than the rest. Applying the same logic to Dalits and minorities, I believe they will bring a greater motivation to succeed against the odds.

To tell you the truth, yes, disadvantaged always bring in a greater determination to succeed. Like those poor-to-middle-class upper-caste kids who are guaranteed no quotas, and have to miss their tryst with dreams because of couple of marks. It's they that the reservationists betray. And for what? A caste based social-justice?

The corporate sector should, therefore, work on a new agenda for affirmative action. The first thing to do is an internal audit -- two of them, in fact. One should check how many members of the poorer sections they are actually employing, and at what levels.

The other audit will involve assessing jobs where the skills/knowledge needed can be easily imparted to anyone

So far so good.

Two, based on the above audits, companies need to earmark an HR budget for making investments in identifying and training people from the target groups of Dalits and other backward castes.

See the silent dropping of poor (which was there in the first audit -- of any caste! So much for consistency...

Affirmative action is not about charity. It is about building workplace diversity and competitive advantage by using the innate motivations of the disadvantaged to succeed in life.

Well, those who insist merit means different things to different people, however think that disadvantaged somehow means the same thing -- the dalits and the backward castes... Well, there are hundreds of metrics one could apply for this disadvantage... caste, religion, intelligence at birth, quality of parental care, place of birth (rural vs. urban), gender, aptitude and what not! Why are the reservationists obsessed with only one of them -- caste?

A Step Towards A Civil Code?

2004-06-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

There is a liberal school of thought that believes that the so called uniform civil code should come into existence more through consensus rather through legislation. That viewpoint has its skeptics (I was one of them), but The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) seems set to renounce its covert (and overt?) support to a regressive and anti-women practice of triple talaq.

Muslims to divorce talaq norms

This is a major development in the recent times, and is a sign that there is non-trivial will to reforms from within the Indian Muslim community. Yes, it stops short of the goal of uniform civil code, but it's nonetheless much more civil than the earlier (outdated) religious law.

The new talaqnama, carefully drafted by the Board clerics after carrying out deliberations for three years, disapproves of the age-old three-talaaq system and replaces it with the Shariat-approved 'phased-talaaq'.

Under the new talaqnama, the separating couples would be given a minimum of three months to reconcile, instead of shauhar (husband) just firing talaaqs to separate without giving any chance to his begum.

Muslim women, who virtually had no separation rights till now, have also been given equal rights to approach the Qazi for separation against their erring husbands.

The Board is also recommending increase in 'Mehr', which is fixed at the time of marriage. Parents would be advised to fix a staggering amount to protect matrimony of their daughters.

I think those who are really concerned about the plight of Muslim women (and for that reason demand UCC), should at least partly welcome these developments.

Patronising Secularism?

2004-06-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

The Leader Article in today's TOI (Patronising Secularism: Watching Dev Through Muslim Eyes by Farah Naqvi) got me thinking. On the onset, let me say that the author makes some interesting points. But at the same time there is much in the article that needs to be addressed. Let me also stress, that I've not watched the film, so I cannot speak for/against it; that's not the point of this post at all.

The basic approach taken in the article is wrong -- in that she first insists that Dev is about Gujarat, the Mumbai specific references notwithstanding, and then insists that to those events [i.e in Gujarat] Nihalani has done a grave injustice. This is strange to say the least. First you insist that it's not a donkey but a bull, and then question why it doesn't have horns! But that's a minor point.

Far worse, Nihalani reinforces the action-reaction justification for the carnage. (The burning of the Sabarmati coach at Godhra and the killing of the kar sevaks is here substituted by a motorcycle bomb which kills devotees at a Ganesh temple.)

Again, as I've not seen the film I don't know if it really justifies such a carnage. But then can a filmmaker start in a vacuum? Any communal riot starts with some event. That not same as saying the event justifies the riot, but just that the event still is the nominal cause.

While the true facts of Godhra remain a mystery (which we hope our new and esteemed railway minister will soon unravel), Nihalani does not engage with such bothersome detail. In his version, an evil Muslim don is responsible for the bomb blast which begins the cycle of revenge-massacre of Muslims.

Again this strange obsession with reading something wrongly, and then accusing the film-maker for ones irrational conclusions. It's the author who's insisting that the film is about Gujarat, not Nihlani. But the main point as far as I'm concerned comes much later.

At another level, Dev is a narrative about an Indian nation whose salvation lies in soft, patronising secularism. The upright police officer mouths platitudes about the samvidhan or Constitution. He will not violate the samvidhan at the behest of the wicked CM, he declares time and again, with portraits of Gandhi-Nehru prominent in the backdrop. It would be fine if things stopped here. But his secularism is made greater, its generosity even more generous, because he has ample reason not to worry too much about the samvidhan . Dev lost his young son to a terrorist's bullets. (The religious affiliation of the terrorist is never specified. Nihalani leaves it to our imagination.) In this, Dev is India, a nation wounded by Muslim terrorists. Yet, Dev is magnanimous enough to embrace all religions in his secular person.

And what is wrong with that? The fact is, for those who have not lost their near and dear ones to terrorists supported by ISI money, it's easier to be secular! As a film-maker, Nihalani through his protagonist, seems to be asking even those who have lost their keen to such religious fanaticism to not to forget the secular ideal, and not to lose the thought of what is right. Whatever else mica be wrong with the movie, I don't believe this is wrong! Afterall, where else does India's salvation lie? I'll come back to it later.

Naqvi's problem, however, is expressed in a nut-shell in this next few sentences:

Secularism, the narrative seems to suggest, is not a matter of right but of patronage by a large-hearted and forgiving nation-state. Indeed, so great and inclusive is this secularism, that Dev even begins to see Farhan as his dead son, wooing him away from the influence of Muslim don Latif...Finally, Farhan sees the truth. Only in accepting the moral leadership of Dev, the high secular Hindu, can the Muslim community get justice and salvation. Farhan (read as legitimate Muslim anger) is neutralised. Long live secularism.

The problem then is with (as the title suggests), watching Dev through Muslim eyes. (Why can Naqvi watch Dev through secular eyes?). There are so many contradictions here, that they deserve a full length article. But let me be brief in addressing them.

First, what is this legitimate Muslim anger? The author abhors the very possibility of Godhara being used as justification of Gujarat (so much so that she starts reading those things in a film). But by calling the Muslim anger (that misguides a youth to pick up a gun and join hands with underworld) legitimate, isn't she justifying almost everything from terrorism in Kashmir to serial bomb-blasts, to latest Mumbai blasts? How can you have it and eat it too? Why is Farhan's anger justified, whereas the anger of those hindus in Gujarat is not? This is a contradiction that the educated Muslims need to address very soon! Because India's stability practically hangs by these issues. Any anger, that leads to killing innocents in revenge, is illegitimate. No amount of rhetoric can justify either Godhra or Gujarat or Akshardham or ...

The other point about secularism being projected as not a right but a patronage or a favor is another point that the liberal Muslims need to introspect on. How do they want it? As a right? But then any rights in India (or any nation-state for that matter) are fragile -- considering that it's human beings who run nation-states. Laws can assure you rights (as they are already assured -- to the level of appeasement), but not that those rights would be upheld. In a day to day word, it boils down to goodwill of the enforcing agents (who will be by statistical laws, more likely be from the majority community). Then again goodwill isn't really a right. It has to be earned. And herein lies the paradox. That goodwill cannot come without magnanimity from the majority community, in the present scenario. To attack a film that urges the majority to be magnanimous and at the same time rooting for on paper rights is really suicidal for Indian Muslims, IMO. It's these magnanimous ethos of the indic culture (call it Hinduism, or call it composite culture) that has sustained the fragile secularism in whatever form it has managed to survive. And the minorities need this secularism more!

Enuf is Enuff!

2004-06-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

The Ishrat Tamasha and the Modi Tamasha (which are linked for sure, only the extent is unclear) exposes how shallow Indian political scene is, for the umteenth time. We have a chief minister with serious allegations of state-complicity (at best) and state-involvement (at worst) in the genocide (yeah, the shades of orange are going to dislike the word, but who cares!) of Muslims, getting a landslide majority. This happened with the same party in power at the centre. Well, apart from a few poetic musings, there was not a word of condemnation from the party chiefs at that time. Suddenly Atalji realizes that it was Modi that cost them the recent elections! Well, suddenly the ELM sniffs a chance of Modi Hatao. More hungama, more U-turns. Opportunistic state level leaders suddenly on the attack. And then, what the kids call fuska-baar (when a fire-cracker instead of bursting just gives out smoke)!

Enter LeT. The Lashkar-e-Toiba hand allegedly tries to reach Modi, in another assassination attempt! (Guys, don't create a Mahatma Modi now, please!). It's chopped off, and very efficiently at that. Knowing how the Gujarat machinery runs, questions will be raised about the authenticity of the encounter. In fact such questions are a testimony to a vibrant democracy, where state is also under the gaze.

Enter the Maharashtra government, and other usual suspects, however, and the ugly face of the farce is evident. Even bleeding heart liberals would be left wondering if they bleed enough! This time NCP-Congress combine has beaten them in the race.

Cong calls Ishrat's encounter fabricated

They didn't stop there! One NCP MLA, Vasant Davkhare gave an aid of Rs. 1 lakh to the family! No need to wait for a CBI probe? No need to even wait for preliminary reports of routine police enquiry, eh? I mean, we're not talking about Dube case here (how much did Davkhare sent Dube's family, BTW? Any idea?). We're talking about alleged LeT connections. Surely, one would want to wait till some information is out! But hey! Assembly elections are out on the corner. And Muslim votes cannot be ignored. So what if later you had to chew your own toes. That's what they teach you first thing in politics, don't they!

Of course, the liberals can't be left behind! TOI was quick to roll its sleeves. Do one thing, go to TOI site and search on Ishrat. There are a whooping thirty odd (relevant) links! And look at the language:

The most disturbing question, however, concerns Ishrat. An 18-year-old girl, who had just entered the second year of a graduate course in Mumbai's Khalsa College.

Everyone college mates, neighbours, family insists she was a girl who stuck to her studies and household chores, besides giving tuition lessons. Many flatly refused to believe she could be a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist who'd gone to Ahmedabad to help assassinate Modi.

Couldn't it be that she was living two lives? Why does it not occur to (allegedly) intelligent reports to ask question like, what was a girl from Thane who stuck to her studies and household chores doing with three men in Ahamedabad? Was her family that liberal that it would let a lone girl roam around in other town with male friends? But then I forget, when heart bleeds, logic deserts you. We must forgive them these lapses.

Well they don't stop raising questions either! Look at the timing of this special report:
Rise And Fall Of The Killer Cops

And then, the sole protector of human rights in the fascist India, the NHRC turns its eagle eye.. whatever that means!

Can it get any more ridiculous than this! Those who believe in secularism, please don't remain silent while these jokers are abusing it, twisting it beyond recognition, and destroying it slowly. Speak up, through blogs, through comments sections on the main-stream-media, letters-to-editors (which won't be printed, but then put them back on blogs). Because, if secularism is murdered like this, India has nothing to look forward to. There comes a time when one must say, Enuf is Enuff!

Code Coolies or Code Daddies?

2004-06-08T03:32:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting question on slashdot:

Parenting and a Career in Coding?

Thinking back on all the software development groups I've been in, it seems most of the coders were not parents, and the coders that were parents seemed to have trouble with things like dealing with unplanned death marches and not being there for their family. So my question to the programmers with kids out there: How does a programming career jive with family life?

Positively nerdy question, I know, but the discussion that follows it is amazing. Even nerds, then, are empathizing with the dilemma of family vs. work life.

On a relevant note, married software professionals (at least in India), seem to face another problem. The field is ruled by bachelors, who live away from their families. Workplace is their home, gym, internet cafe, TT room and canteen combined. These guys come at obscene hours and leave at still obscene hours. It's almost embarrassing to walk out at 7 pm for married guys/girls. And since even bosses come in late many a times, all they see is you being one of the first ones to leave. Or am I the only one imagining that?

Tidbits, of paper variety

2004-05-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

Or should I call it, Good Morning India?

Count your Guests before you marry!
Marriages under Essential Commodities Act! If you ever believed that legislation could change social problems, surely you'd think twice now!

Marriage ceremonies will never be the same again in Jammu and Kashmir. The state government has brought nuptials of all religious hues under the Essential Commodities Act to prevent wastage of food at wedding feasts. [...] The order stipulates that not more than 45 kg each of rice and meat must be consumed at a wedding. The bride's side must not invite more than 75 guests, including 25 baratees. The groom can invite 50 guests, Mohiuddin said.

No Intelligence, No Bureau
Laloo trains for 007 marathon.

RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav said when he becomes prime minister, which is a certainty, he would dismantle the Intelligence Bureau, as journalists were doing a better job of exposing corruption. [...] Projecting himself as Mr Clean-up, Yadav said he would attack corruption, the railway mafia, officers responsible for accidents, and poor hygiene within trains, on tracks and platforms.

I already feel so safe!

Biwi Ho To Aisi!

David Beckham's wife has said in a magazine interview that her husband had never been unfaithful to her, despite the claims of two women who said they had affairs with him. [...] "I really do believe deep down that I have the most faithful husband I could hope for," the former Spice Girl has been quoted as saying in the interview. (From I have the most faithful husband)

People talk about how Sonia has lived upto the Vedantic or whatever ideal. Maybe it's time to give Posh a honorary Indian citizenship for her pativratagiri. On the other hand, maybe she knows exactly what to hope for! ;-)

Why Not Have Your Cake And Eat It Too?
Cong wants 'human killing' case against Modi. What for? So that he can be part of the cabinet later, like Jagdish Tytler?. Well the Akali's are anything but amused!

Incorrect, yes! But not just Politically

2004-05-25T02:31:00.000-07:00

One of these days someone is going to ask me just exactly what do I believe in?

Colonel Anil Athale's Guest Column on Rediff, Some politically incorrect questions is more than politically incorrect.

The recent election campaign saw constant reiteration of the Ahmedabad riots, with documentaries being screened in Bengal to revive memories of the horror. Secular activists went on an all India tour staging street corner plays on the Best Bakery episode to drive home their point.

If in retaliation the opponents also showed footage of Godhra, Akshardham, Ghatkopar and the Gateway of India bomb blasts, would it have been acceptable?

This is getting repetitive, but there is a difference between state complacency, sabotaging of judiciary process etc. and plain acts of terrorism. NDA government is being accused of the former, and that's why they are a valid campaign points. Are the then opposition parties being charged for those random acts of terrorism listed here by the Colonel?

(In any case, all those happened with the same NDA government in power. So if they want to show it as the evidence of their incompetency to deal with terrorism, it would perfectly acceptable ;-)).

Now that a secular government is in place in Delhi, would some of the anti-national and pro-Pakistani members of the Muslim community (mark the caveat: not all, but some Muslims) stop aiding and supporting agents and terrorists?

This is like asking, now that India is a liberal democracy, would terrorism subside? Muslim Terrorism (happy colonel?) is as much anti-liberalism as it is anti-hindu (whatever the hell that this means). So why would it seize overnight because of a secular government? Hell, it didn't reduce one bit with the strong nationalistic government and POTAs.

Will we ever get people to testify against the arrested terrorists? Or did the bomb blasts in Mumbai, the attack on Akshardham and Parliament never happen?

Would there be good monsoon for five years? Would there be no floods? Would there be no earthquakes? What is the point of these questions?

The Left and DMK have demanded scrapping of POTA. Has the terrorist threat to India ended so we do not need a stringent law like POTA? Is that the assessment of the intelligence agencies?

Isn't a more relevant question: has POTA delivered? Has POTA been used or abused? Was POTA such a good idea in the first place?

The Left is also demanding an end to the special relationship with Israel... (blah blah)...Does the new government want to help the infiltrators?

Did the previous government want to help Israel to kill the Palestinians? No, I'm not defending the Left (I don't want to fall to that level), but this is plain irrational writing! Even Bush will be proud of it.

Is the Congress aware of the Marxists' past and their loyalties to China?

Wasn't the BJP aware of track record of each and every of its ally? Does the Colonel really not understand the compulsions of coalition politics? Are all those who voted for left anti-India or pro-China?

Do the secularists believe that tolerance and pluralism in India began on August 15, 1947?

How many explicit statements from the so called secularists would convince the Colonel that they don't?

There is a law in some states where using casteist abuse against Dalits is a criminal offence, but similar abuse against the so-called forward castes is not. Repeated rhetoric against the so-called forward castes is permitted by the law and extolled as 'progressive.' Is this not absurd?

No, it is not. Not till the point that there is a social resolution to the problems of caste. In USA, for instance, if you call a black a nigger, you'd face penal charges, but a black can use castiest language and get away with it. This is because, the former is an instance of racial/caste superiority, while the latter is mostly retaliatory.

Spreading hatred or disaffection on the basis of religion is wrong and is also punishable. But the Marxists continue to spread hatred on the basis of economic class. Is this progressive? How is one hatred less damaging than another?

Again, I'd rather not speak for Marxism. And I agree that spreading hate on the basic of economic class (rich people are bad, say) is equally bad.

These are some questions that come to mind in the light of recent events. Will the India/Hindu (not RSS) bashing 'intellectuals' respond?

This, I submit is a master-stroke. As if anyone responds, to start with, s/he is a India/Hindu basher! You create a class of enemies, brand them, and then ask that brand to come forward and respond! Bravo. So a disclaimer, Colonel. No, I'm not India/Hindu bashor. But I find your questions quetionable. So I've responded. I'll leave it to the India/Hindu bashers to speak for themselves. Regards.

Visions of Tomorrow or Nightmares of Yesterday?

2004-05-20T23:17:00.000-07:00

Guardian's special report: on India if true, is very very interesting (not in the good sense of the word).

The Naidu Legend

Naidu realised that to sustain power he must surrender it. He knew that as long as he gave the global powers what they wanted, he would get the money and stature that count for so much in Indian politics. So instead of devising his own programme, he handed the job to the US consultancy McKinsey.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for privatization, disinvestment, labor reforms. But trusting a multinational firm with developments plans for state/country is worse than having a naturalized Italian prime-minister, me thinks. Especially corporations that belong to powers that have known colonial/neo-colonial tendencies.

Vision 2020 contains 11 glowing references to Chile's experiment in the 1980s. General Pinochet handed the economic management of his country to a group of neo-liberal economists known as the Chicago Boys. They privatised social provision, tore up laws protecting workers and the environment, and left the economy to multinational companies. The result was a bonanza for big business, and a staggering growth in debt, unemployment, homelessness and malnutrition. The plan was funded by the US in the hope that it could be rolled out around the world.

Assuming that this is the same media outfit that gives leftists like Roy large space, everything needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Leftists can put any spin on any delivery, and never will there actions be under scrutiny ;-). Still, one needs to look at the claims before we throw the baby with the bathwater. For instance, UK Funds Scheme to Throw 20 Million Indian Farmers Off Their Land, kind of makes similar claims. Is all of this just leftist anti-development cry?

The Guardian report goes on:

In July 2001 Clare Short, then secretary of state for international development, finally admitted to parliament that, despite numerous official denials, Britain was funding Vision 2020. Blair's government has financed the state's economic reform programme, its privatisation of the power sector and its "centre for good governance" (which means as little governance as possible). Our taxes also fund the "implementation secretariat" for its privatisation programme. The secretariat is run, at Britain's insistence, by the Adam Smith Institute, a far-right business lobby group. The money for all this comes out of Britain's foreign aid budget.

Wouldn't you get suspicious, even at this point? If not, don't worry, there are more entry points ahead...

The return of the East India Company?

As Stephen Byers revealed when secretary of state for trade and industry, "the UK government has designated India as one of the UK's 15 campaign markets". The campaign is to expand opportunities for British capital. The people of Andhra Pradesh know what this means: they call it "the return of the East India Company".

Why should the UK Government take this undue interest in India's development all of a sudden? If they're feeling guilty, they could just return all that loot. We don't mind at all. But then it has to be returned with no strings attached, right?

This isn't the only aspect of British history being repeated in Andhra Pradesh. There's something uncanny about the way in which the scandals that surrounded Blair during his first term in office are recurring there. Bernie Ecclestone, the formula one boss who gave Labour £1m and whose sport later received an exemption from the ban on tobacco advertising, was negotiating with Naidu to bring his sport to Hyderabad. I have been shown the leaked minutes of a state cabinet meeting on January 10. McKinsey, they reveal, instructed the cabinet that Hyderabad should be a "world-class futuristic city with formula one as a core component". To make it viable, however, there would be a "state support requirement of Rs400-600 crs" (4bn-6bn rupees). This means a state subsidy for formula one of £50m-£75m a year.

Being a believer in right-of-center politics, I see subsidies as a bad things for a state to engage in. But then if they have to be given, you'd expect them to go to those who would die without them. But subsidies to Formula One? Whatever happened to the concept of sat'-patri daan (charity to the deserving)? Hang on..

Then the minutes become even more interesting. Ecclestone's formula one, they noted, should be exempted from the Indian ban on tobacco advertising. Naidu had already "addressed the PM as well as the health minister in this regard", and was hoping to enact "legislation creating an exemption to the act".

There is no such thing as free lunch, eh? But then who's gonna pay for this lunch?

The Hinduja brothers [...]have also been sniffing round Vision 2020...in 1999 their representatives held a secret meeting in London with the Indian attorney general and the British export credit guarantee department, to help them get the backing required to build a power station under Naidu's privatisation programme. When the attorney general began lobbying the Indian government on their behalf, this caused another Hinduja scandal.

Another conspiracy theory? You be the judge. But with UK, US and Hinduja's around, conspiracies may just turn to be pale shadows of grim reality.

Indeed, if true, the uneducated Indians, the very same people whom some of the educated elites want disenfranchised because of the election 2004 results, might have shown a great collective sense, even if in pure self-defence.

The stock market and the democracy (A Response)

2004-05-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

Jivha's blog The stock market and the democracy raised some points, which I couldn't just let go unchallenged. So here is my reponse to it, that I posted on the blog as comment too.

Now ask yourself, slowly, exactly why is a government which seeks to retain profitable state-owned companies and continue to provide employment to its citizens such a perverted thought that 3,00,000 crores of market capitalization needed to be wiped out?

To ask such a question in a isolated manner is to ignore the prevalent market realities. But since you want us to ask it to ourselves, I did. And here are my2cents.

The basic question is should state own companies at all. If it does, should it create coercive monopolies either through permit raj/legislation or through subsidies and bailouts, thus harming the market in the long run? That, should government give pentions and other benefit from public coffers to a choosen few, from taxes that it collects from others who're denied these benefits?

If a company wants to do something bold by disregarding established stock-market norms then we laud it for being “bold”. But when a government wants to reverse an earlier government’s policy of selling off profitable state-owned companies, the same becomes “backward” and “anachronistic” because the “market” doesn’t like it? WTF?!?

Well, this is so because when a company screws up, it pays from the wealth it created. When Government screws up, it pays from the others' money, that it neither created nor has a moral right to hold. So when a company challenges markets, it's indeed bold, when government does that, it's rarely bold, just arrogant. (and in this case the arrogance comes from a economic position that is inherited from policies that they're trying to reverse).

The government in power is a Congress-led one, not a BSE/NSE-led one in case you forgot.

Right. But that doesn't mean that those whose money is wiped out due to their stupid statements (and hints at stupid policies) cannot question those statement/policies?

enuff said..

New Headlines in the Western Media?

2004-05-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

If the Western media were consistent, these would have been headlines on recent Indian politics:

Indian markets crash with the news of Roman-Catholic+Communist alliance in the centre

Christian Sonia couldn't stop Sensex from sliding on another day

Naxalite sympathizers have no problem with a reluctant Italian being the PM of India

Congress to prove numbers with the help of Seperatist Left, anti-hindi DMK, casteist SP, Muslim friendly BSP, corrupt RJD.

Anti-privatization Left pulls the Sensex crashing down

Dynasty to continue from where it left

Fear in the Dalal street, with the genocidal, anti-national Left lending outside support to Italian Roman-Catholic led congress

The Media Spin Doctors

2004-05-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

Some friends ask me why don't I stop reading the TOI when I have so many problems with their content (or lack of it). The short answer is, TINA (There Is No Alternative) ... Not in this part of the world. Not early in the morning... Or rather TITA (There Is Terrible Alternative). But that's not all. TOI is a perfect antidote to that dreaded writer's block. Who else would give you early morning material like this Sensex needs to understand nature of mandate?

The hysteria on the markets is akin to a pampered child throwing a tantrum. The markets need to understand the electoral verdict, instead of nosediving in the hope of exerting some kind of policy pressure on the newly elected Congress-led formation.

I don't know if to laugh or cry over this! This is written as if markets are a thinking entity. Forget thinking, that market is some homogeneous (what's their favorite word for it, yes monolithic) entity that sits there and in a cool and composed manner decides or understands things. And it is the market, that needs to understand the stupid statements or silence of the government, whereas the government is free to do whatever it wants. This, I submit, is the epitome of unconventional wisdom, to say it in a politically correct way. To be honest, this is plain bull.

The mandate questions precisely this euphoria and instead calls for reforms with a human face. The inability of the markets to accept the altered political situation underlines their disconnect with the ground realities of this country, where the poor and unemployed are no longer reconciled to being left out of the growth and development process.

So the market now apart from being cool and intelligent also has to have empathy, you see. What next? Should the markets also develop an ability to have a collective orgasm over the intelligent gems of the left such as these?

They should have seen the writing on the wall when the Andhra Pradesh assembly results were declared. It was clear then that those who had focused on the emblems of ‘India Shining’ such as IT, while overlooking the concerns of the masses, would pay the price.

And others will make the exchequer pay for the rice that they'll distribute freely?

Therefore, the prospect of a Congress-Left government at the Centre should not have come as a shock.

Ha! If that is the case, how come the all intelligent media failed to even hint at that possibility? With exit/opinion polls at their disposal?

The frenzied response of the markets to Left presence at the Centre not only suggests a lack of respect for the mandate, but also a feeble understanding of the political economy of reforms.

So, in short, left can ignore any understanding of the market -- which is nothing but diverse individuals, who are putting their money where their mouth is (unlike the Left, which is putting other's money where their mouth is) -- but these diverse individuals -- in another context I'm sure the left would have used the word microcosm here -- instead need to learn/respect/understand the political economy of reforms (sic!).

It is about time investors realized that the Left is opposed to the sequencing of reforms, not to reforms per se. Whatever the rhetoric, the Left, in practice, welcomes foreign investment, selective privatisation and service sector growth.

In other words, the Left is big hypocrite! In practice, they'll use the market economy when their asses are on fire, all the time shouting rhetoric that undermines the market sentiment. They want to have their cake and eat it too. And worse, the markets should help them to pretend that can have their cake, and eat it too.

In the popular perception, profit-making PSUs were being sold at a throwaway price to big industrialists. The presence of the Left would ensure a course correction in the form of employment-oriented industrial development and a package for farmers.

LOL! What is this popular perception? The farmers? Do they give a shit about selling of the PSUs? Or the small investors? Who are hit in the worst way in the yesterday's crash? What has fifty years of farmer friendly packages done for either farmers or the small urban investors?

If this agenda is dubbed market-unfriendly, then the markets run the risk of being seen as people-unfriendly.

As if markets care! Well, may be now markets even need to learn to care about the popular perception... If they get time from the collective orgasms over Left's intellectual gems, that is.

Murmurs from the Congress Camp

2004-05-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

Congress had convened an emergency meeting to discuss the fallouts (sic) of the 2004 elections trends and results. There was a complete confusion. First ten minutes were spent with everyone pinching themselves, just to confirm that it's not a dream. The sequence was broken when someone accidentally pinched Rahul Gandhi, who screamed out loud, "Mommmmyyyyyy"... Mommy was busy pinching herself, as she wasn't at all convinced even after multiple pinches that she wasn't dreaming. Prinyanka, ever alert to the situation rushed to Rahul and scolded him for his childish conduct. "What would your Grandma think, down in the hell.. i mean up there in the heaven?... You could be the next PM, Rahul, if the other parties don't like Mommy's foreign origins! Gather yourself!"...

"You mean Prime Minister? Me?. Mommmmmmmyyyy"...

Finally Soniaji was convinced she's awake. "Kaun hai woh jo mere bete ko rula raha hai?", she screamed out word-by-word, only to find Priyanka next to her son. "Priyanka.. why do u trouble him?"

"But I was only telling him that he could be the next PM, mom.."

"Muze Mom mat kaho.. ab se hum sab hindi me hi baat karenge.. maa kaho.. ab main hindustaan ki maa hun.."

"Mom, we still don't have the majority.. and your origin issue.."

"Shut up.. Mera matlab hai, chup raho.. main kuch nahi sunana chaahati.", turning to Rahul.. "Rahul, beta why are you so tense"..

"She says I could be the next PM!"

"So you should be happy"

"But mom you only said that I don't need to worry about being a PM till 2009! Now I don't even know what a PM does! They don't teach that in business school"

"But that's okay.. Even I don't know it.. Even your dear father -- who lost his life in selfless service to this country, just like his mother (may peace be upon her) -- didn't know it either. You'll learn"

"I want to be the PM", screams Sharad Pawar, and then realizes that he is not fit.. asks for a glass of water and sits in the corner.

"What if they oppose Soniaji?", asks someone..

"Who would oppose her"?, thunders Priyanka.. Anyway, we'll have Left support, and Left doesn't believe in trivial issues such as nationalism"..(in a low voice) "aur rahi baat pawarji ki, unko raksha-mantripad de denge phir-se"..

"Nahi... Main Soniaji ko PM nahi banane dunga", pawar having taken his rest break, manages to speak out.

"Then we'll have to go in for Mulayam", Priyanka adds, "he wouldn't mind even Imran Khan being our PM. And as it is you just have nine seats.."

"Well, I've changed my mind!", Pawar chips in.. "Afterall, Italy and India both start with an I, and have five characters each."

"It's settled then, let's go to that Kalam fellow", Sonia says.

"Mom, we still haven't talked to the left", reminds Priyanka..

"oh.. yes.. silly me.. I just can't wait to be the PM.. the meeting is adjourned"

"Sonia ji ki jai.. " (chorus)

Time for some Pizza...

Post Script

2004-05-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

After posting my last blog (What Do People Vote For?), I looked at NDTV site, and there was this poll (under the heading "Straight Talk", ironically):

BJP falters: What went wrong ?
Incumbency factor
Cong 'promises'
Can't say

Just proves my point about simplistic media spins. How about Bad Alliances, Overconfidence, Misjudging the extent of caste-politics. You get the drift. It's the very choices that they've given irritates me. Of course there is a "can't say", but the simplistic choices reveal the media mentality to say the least, as if it's either BJP's performance or Cong's promises. Utterly hopeless...

What Do People Vote For?

2004-05-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

Bachi Karkaria's article (Rise of Citizen Cane, TOI - May 12) is a classic illustration of the mainstream media's utter failure to catch the voter's nerve. Not surprisingly, no one could predict the Congrees and allies surpassing BJP -- if the early trends as of now are to be believed. Media is caught up in the variations of roti-kapada-makan paradigms to explain the voting trends, but are they reflective of the Indian political scene?

Mum-bais or Chennites, Dilliwale or Chandigarhwallis, they all had only one question of the candidate who came calling: ‘‘What will you do about sewers, streetlights and the security of our young women and old parents?” You’d think it was a municipal election.

Are they, really? Okay, so Dixit factor turned Delhi around, but what about Govinda taking Ram Naik to the wire? What about TDP's complete rout in TN? What about BJP taking a beating in Gujarat? Can all this be explained by :

It’s a disturbing blow to our metropolitan arrogance: bijali-sadak-paani is as compelling a metaphor of urban discontent as it is of rural anger.

Of course, not! Indian political scene is a kichadi of caste, religion and region. Bijali/sadak/paani is actually the main casualty, to the extent that voter has now accepted that no political party is every going to make that their priority -- and that's why they vote along different lines of caste and creed.

Why is BJP suffering badly even after a decent (if not great) performance on economic and indeed infrastructure front? Of course, Bachi accepts that region/neighborhood is a main factor. But why is media hell-bent on fixing the data into its ideological curves? Roti-kapada-makan, paani-bijali-sadak. If it's that simple, why are all political parties missing the message. Every time Rajdeep Sardesai shrieks, that people want good governance -- pointing to anti-incumbency, why are the BSP and SPs the king-makers? What is their record of governance? What is Congress' record of governance -- the party cannot even boast of a national level leader?

These results are indeed retrograde. They have proved that "communal politics" is what pays -- BJP's Assembly triumph in Gujarat, BSP's rise in the UP (caste-based politics is a form of "communal politics"), Laloo's Yadavi politics winning in Bihar, whereas moderate and development centric politics (NDA's National level performance, to a large extent) doesn't pay. Hardliners in the BJP will gain strength because of these results, again. And that's unfortunate, because if ever BJP deserved a mandate, it was this time. The rise of BJP as a moderate national party will suffer a setback with this election, and it won't be surprising if the Mandir and other agendas become louder again. And that would be a pity.

The performance of Congress in these election is nothing but shrewd tie-ups. They have no agenda, no leader, no program's.. Still they seem to be set for a claim to the power. The message is clear. Indian political wisdom is more of an art. Each region has it's idiosyncratic voting patterns, that are subject to change on random factors. That any theories of roti-kapada-makan and it's variations are simply too naive to explain Indian politics. I just hope that Indian media learns it this time around.

Exit Polls and the Media

2004-05-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

NDTV's panel debate, the Big Fight, was chewing on the issue of exit polls. For once, the BJP and Congress panelists were on the same side: ban 'em polls. That's the beauty of Indian politics. Politicians do agree on issues -- okay, so what if those are the ones that involve their own fate?

Let's take, one by one, the arguments against exist polls that we've heard recently

Polls Influence the Voters
It's argued that the exit polls of previous rounds may discourage the voters from voting at all, or influence them (herd mentality). Any conclusive evidence for this claim? No. Assuming that there is, what's the problem? In this country where voters are influenced by cast, religion, regional issues, money, violence, film-stars, cricketer, sympathy waves, family legacy and what not, what's wrong with exit polls influencing the voters?

Polls are Inaccurate/Unreliable
Of course, I won't dispute that. The point is, compared to what? Every news paper, magazine keeps on talking about possible outcomes of the election. Such reporting is: extremely prone to biases and pressures, uses much more unsound methods, etc. So do we stop the news-papers? And in any case, isn't that what the media keeps telling you all the while -- that they are unreliable. Why deny voter a closer to reality estimate about the current standings, while giving them all sorts of (more unreliable) info like trends, speculations, etc?

Don't work in Indian conditions
This is a claim made by Abhishek Singhvi, the congress spokesman. My point is, okay, so what? Let's assume that exit polls were perfect. Would then it be okay to declare the poll results in the interim? Exit polls are just another barometer of moods, say. They will get better over the time, once the specific Indian realities that cause them to fail are accounted for in some way. It may or may not happen. But still, voters have the right to that information, however inaccurate it is. Why? Because, anyways voters rely on various other inaccurate information to make his "reasoned choice" (or emotional choice). For example, say there is party A, B and C. A voter would have voted for C, ideologically but s/he sees that if s/he does that B will benefit, and as it is C has no way of coming to power (this is the trend/assumption s/he is relying on). So s/he votes for A instead. Now that's the voter's choice! And if exit-polls assist that choice, they are good for the voter.

Power to Media
In fact, that seems to be the biggest cause of concern for the political parties, that the information channel is not really controllable. With normal reporting, one can afford to be diagonally wrong, but the credibility of the media is not under threat. With polls, there are specific claims made, and the credibility is very much an issue. That is why it is unlikely that media will manipulate the polls, they're themselves to lose. There are ten other guys publishing the polls...

However, a more important point is, how many people watch the polls? And who are these people? There is a curious paradox here.. The very people who watch the polls -- the educated middle and upper-middle class, are the most apathetic of the voters! So pray tell me, how is this class going to change the outcome of an election? And if it's not, then what is all this brouhaha about?

Of One Book Wonders

2004-05-06T21:36:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting article : One-book writers by Pradeep Sebastian, in The Hindu (thanks to my wife). It's actually a review of Stone Reader, a documentary about one such one book wonder, Dow Mossman, or rather a documentary about one man's (Mark Moskovitz) quest for Mossman. Excellent review, that one. Gotta get my hands on that documentary now.

The Indian blind-spot - Marxist Fundamentalism

2004-05-05T03:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in Mumbai. While traveling in a local train, I noticed this strange (to say the least) pamphlet -- or rather a leaflet, the kind you see posted on a local train -- which said, in essence -- "Shun the elections, Join the revolution". The undersigned were: Communist Party of India (Marxist - Leninist).

Of course, they're not the only party advocating people to shun the elections -- they're in a good company, the great Hurriyat Conference! But that's a digression. This is a basic rejection of the Indian constitution. Not that it is surprising coming from communists -- they have had a history of negating the very idea of India, of strong affinity to external legacy, etc. But the matter of fact rejection of elections -- and mind you these aren't elections that are run on a gun-point, or rigged by the party in power, or anything like that -- is eerie.

Ironically, these very people take moral highroad in any political debate -- when they're against the founding principals of Indian constitution. Of course, it's their utter frustration because of a prolonged and multi-point failure which gives rise to such excesses.

dismal record in governance, economy, human rights
lack of penetration in most states of the India
the global failure of Marxism/communism on all counts
loosening of the grip on the intellectual scenario, which is going to get worse, with the ubiquity of Internet

It's hard to keep on taking blows on after another, and keep one's sanity, as an individual or as an organization or as a pseudo-political party. But I suspect these slogans are essentially what Marxist/Communist rhetoric is all about, right from the start. It's just that Indians, cannot seriously believe that someone in their sane mind can say a thing like that. (Hurriyat, of course, was never taken seriously anyways ;-)).

Problem isn't with CPI-ML. The problem is with India, where some party which does not believe in the fundamental device of democracy is allowed to contest elections! It's the ultimate Indian fallacy -- of being so inclusive that even the exclusivists are warmly embraced. If anything needs to be shunned, it's the exclusivists.

Unnecessary Explanation

2004-05-05T03:09:00.000-07:00

After spending some time at Sulekha Weblogs I thought it's time to start a more independent blog. Sulekha is getting cluttered, the interface is shady, and the audience more or less monolithic (gotta mention, tho, that it boasted of best of the Indian -- or of Indian origin -- crowd, not so long ago).

Why blog at all? Well, it's probably the best medium to get things out of you, without pressures of article submission -- all that excessive stylistic $hit, or any need for judging your audience, nothing! Just plain, stream-of-consciousness (isn't that what they call it?) writing. It's the best known anti-dote to the writer's block (well, known to me that is ;-)).

Still, why blog? Do I have something interesting to say, or do I want to say something hoping that it might interest others? Frankly, who cares. That's the best thing about blogs. No one has to care. Not even me!

Now that's what I call ramblings...