Thief! Or, How the Net Stole my Time

It’s going to be a tearaway fast busy day at work. I look at the clock as I sit down before my computer, and log in to my mail to check for important messages. Must hurry, I’v got to get to work early. Oh, the first five messages are from Facebook! Nothing terribly important, of course, but it’ll only take a moment to see what they are about. Great, a friend request from a guy I haven’t met since college! That’s so wonderful. And an invitation to a friend’s book launch. Darn, I won’t be able to make it. I must let him know.

So I log in to Facebook. There’s a funny status message from a pal asking who among us would make the best private detective. Everyone is nominating himself or herself, so I nominate myself as well. A couple of other status messages also demand action. There’s one saying “zeitgeist: raat bhar, aapki tweet aati rahi”. Haha. Zeitgeist: All night, your tweets kept coming. Wonder who that could be. Shashi Tharoor?

Reminds me, I must log in to Twitter and see what Twitter Minister has updated now. His tweets are often interesting. Today it’s about him speaking his first words in Parliament. “Alas, they were formulaic: I beg to lay papers on the table of the House”, the writer-diplomat-minister laments. Would have been more fun if he’d started with a quote from… Michael Jackson. For that matter, the Budget speech would have been more fun if Pranab da had quoted Michael Jackson.

There’s a tweet from New Scientist magazine as well. Monkeys have a memory for grammar, it says, but like the rest of us, they occasionally misuse apostrophes.

I guess that proves Darwin was right, finally. Now enough of creationism.

I quickly scan the rest of the Facebook and Twitter updates to see who’s doing what. Lucky sod, she’s in Scotland. Oh, that bastard is gloating about the Bangalore climate. And what’s that nincompoop doing with a hot babe in Manali? Life is so unfair.

Ah, a bit of useful info, finally. A geek friend has put up a link to how you can remote control your PC using email, Twitter or SMS. Wow. It seems you can actually turn your computer off or on, or log out from pretty much anywhere in the world, with just a tweet or SMS! All it takes is one free app.

Would I want to remote control my PC? What if something goes wrong and someone else takes over my PC via remote control? Hm. Let me think. Actually, let me Google. And Digg.

Oh, here it is. Some guy who calls himself Johan Marcus Guy has written that he got the instructions wrong, and now his PC is controlling him via Twitter and SMS.

“Just moments ago, my Windows sent me an SMS request to attack my dog with a golf club. I think he'll be fine, but he did sustain traumatic injuries.

This is not the main problem however, the emails are.

In the past three hours I've been made to buy 25 shipments of Viagra, and to look for hot grannies in my neighborhood. This has hurt my self-esteem, but it seems that Windows is a cruel mistress with no calculations for caring or the basic principles of love,” he writes.

Maybe I should stay away from this free remote control download. I don’t want my PC controlling me. Heck, no.

Oh no! What time is it? Damn, I’m late!

Zen and the art of Charlie Wilson's war

I'm not much of a TV fan, but once in a while it is quite pleasant to watch. A few days ago, finding myself at home with nothing much to do, I switched on the TV and flipped channels past Rakhi's swayamvar and suchlikes, stopping finally at the film Charlie Wilson's War on, I think, HBO.

It's a terrific film, and claims to be based on facts. It shows how one US Congressman may have influenced the course of history.

Congressman Charlie Wilson happened to spot on TV that the Afghan mujahideen were getting smashed by the Soviet Union because the Soviets had far better weapons. The mujahideen were fighting using a few WW II rifles while the Soviets had tanks and aircraft. So Wilson decides to lobby for more money and weapons for the mujahideen.

The rest is known. The mujahideen get their Stingers and their AKs and RPGs and eventually bleed the Soviet Union pretty much to death.

When the Soviets leave, the Congressman has a huge party. He asks CIA's station chief in Afghanistan why he doesn't look overjoyed. The guy narrates a Zen story. It goes something like this:

An old farmer had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

"Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"We'll see," the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.

"How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"We'll see," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"We'll see," answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

"We'll see" said the farmer.

Armchair activists and the struggle in Iran

I feel sorry for all the good natured armchair activist types. They rarely know what fight they are really fighting. Take the recent protests in Iran, for example. A lot of armchair activists around the world joined in support. They wrote Twitter messages and Facebook status updates, and some even went so far as to send forwards! They probably had the best of intentions, mostly, but it is quite likely that they were actually supporting one bunch of radical Shia against another.

In a report released today, the US think tank Stratfor has analysed the causes of the present unrest in Iran. Their analysis is that it is primarily a fight between the class of clergy that came to power after the Iranian revolution of 1979 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wants his own appointees in the ruling clergy. George Friedman writes that the focus of the current power struggle was not Mir Mousavi, a founding member of the Islamic Republican Party who was prime minister of Iran during its disastrous war with Iraq, but Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Here is part of what Startfor wrote:

Rafsanjani represents the class of clergy that came to power in 1979. He served as president from 1989-1997, but Ahmadinejad defeated him in 2005. Rafsanjani carries enormous clout within the system as head of the regime’s two most powerful institutions — the Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council and parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, whose powers include oversight of the supreme leader. Forbes has called him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Rafsanjani, in other words, remains at the heart of the post-1979 Iranian establishment.

Ahmadinejad expressly ran his recent presidential campaign against Rafsanjani, using the latter’s family’s vast wealth to discredit Rafsanjani along with many of the senior clerics who dominate the Iranian political scene. It was not the regime as such that he opposed, but the individuals who currently dominate it. Ahmadinejad wants to retain the regime, but he wants to repopulate the leadership councils with clerics who share his populist values and want to revive the ascetic foundations of the regime. The Iranian president constantly contrasts his own modest lifestyle with the opulence of the current religious leadership.

Recognizing the threat Ahmadinejad represented to him personally and to the clerical class he belongs to, Rafsanjani fired back at Ahmadinejad, accusing him of having wrecked the economy. At his side were other powerful members of the regime, including Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who has made no secret of his antipathy toward Ahmadinejad and whose family links to the Shiite holy city of Qom give him substantial leverage. The underlying issue was about the kind of people who ought to be leading the clerical establishment. The battlefield was economic: Ahmadinejad’s charges of financial corruption versus charges of economic mismanagement leveled by Rafsanjani and others.

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani.

This may not be the whole truth either, but since Startfor (www.stratfor.com) is not known as the ‘shadow CIA’ for nothing, presumably they know a little more than the rest of us.

So next time before you jump on to a bandwagon, look before you leap.

Let's move the capital of India!

Mothers smeared their children with mud, and men swathed themselves in wet towels. Tar oozed in the streets…In India last week not even mad dogs or Englishmen went out in the midday sun.”

This could have been written last week. In fact, it was a report on the Indian summer in Time magazine in the first week of July, 1958.

The monsoon is late. Everyone from the prime minister to the marginal farmer is waiting anxiously for news of rain that hasn’t come. So far, the weatherman has only this to say: that it’s not going to be a good monsoon, and that temperatures are even higher than they always are at this time of the year.

It didn’t take thermometers or experts to tell. We’ve felt it in Delhi. It has been about five degrees above the normal, hitting 44 degrees Celsius on Wednesday. With rain clouds nowhere on the city’s horizon yet, both water and power supplies are beginning to falter.

To be stuck in this searing heat without electricity or water is rather uncomfortable. Add a fire and it could be a version of life in hell. There is no shortage of devils here; that deficiency won’t be felt.

This is when a Raj-era practice begins to make sense. From 1864, every summer, the British began moving the administration to a summer capital up in the Himachal hills in Shimla. It was quite an effort — the national capital then was in Calcutta, 1,700 km away.

This very civilised practice was discontinued after Independence.

Perhaps India should think of  reviving it. If the British empire at its zenith could rule its Asian territories from Shimla long before there was telephone or Internet or air travel, surely it is not impossible to do so now.

Another alternative might be to take the capital to a city with a more salubrious climate, like Bangalore. There, the summer maximum temperature rarely rises above 33 degrees Celsius, or the winter minimum falls below 15 degrees.

Making it the capital would do Bangalore — and India — a world of good. The city’s identity crisis would be resolved for good. It would stop being conflicted between its laid back small town self and its identity as a global city. Its infrastructure problems would be addressed seriously, like Delhi’s have been.

The sense that south India is like a whole other country would also evaporate. At present, the general impression among most people in other parts of India is that all of south India is one homogeneous mass, where everyone speaks either Tamil or Malayalam, and eats dosas and idlis. Nothing like transplanting an army of these ignoramuses to the southern heartland and exposing them to Andhra, Chettinad and Mangalorean meat and fish dishes.

There would be other benefits as well. The capital would be 2,000 km further away from the borders with Pakistan and China, for one.

Of course Bangalore and Shimla are not the only options. Capital cities can and have been built from green field up — Brazil did that with Brasilia. It deliberately located the new capital in an underdeveloped region to take development to that part of the country.

So, on third thoughts, maybe India can build a new capital in the hills of Northeast India somewhere near Shillong. Moving the centre is really the best way to make the periphery feel it belongs.

There is reincarnation, at least for bureaucracies

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses!

Now, the twist to the story

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.
The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.


And you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!

NOTE: This is a forward I got, and I don't know who wrote it. I loved it so here it is.

A win beyond their dreams

Even Priyanka Gandhi thought it was going to be 'touch and go', but in the end, it's turned out to be the biggest victory for the Congress since 1991. Who would have thought, 24 hours ago, that this was coming? Not the Congress itself, because its leaders were still in touch with potential allies of all shades and shapes. Not the President, who was consulting constitutional experts on her options in the event of a hung parliament. Not the pollsters who again got it wrong - every single one of them. They predicted that UPA would be ahead, but were off target by about 50 seats on averge. And yes, not the media, or even the wise bloggers, who all thought it was going to be a close call.
In the end, it was a wave no one saw coming. And yet, it's with relief that one notes that everyone was wrong. The nightmare scenarios didn't come to pass. There will be no loonies ruling us in the next few years. Instead, we can hope for a government with some ministers of some capability and talent.
Much punditry is on already about why the Congress won the victory it did. It's all speculation, none of it based on fact.
But here's what we do know: the Congress fought this election on the slogan, "Aam aadmi ke badhtey kadam, har kadam par Bharat buland". Translated, that means, "The advancing footsteps of the common man, a stronger India at every step". In other words, the Congress targeted the common man in these elections, and did so suggesting this would lead to a stronger India. Its campaign song, set to the tune of "Jai ho" from Slumdog Millionaire, was similarly an aspirational tune addressed to the common man. Even its advertising was about empowering the masses, empowering rural India and empowering youth.
The party has evidently won support from all these sections. To some extent, it would have done so because of the work the government did, especially through generous acts like the NREGA and the Rs 65,000 crore dole to farmers. That has paid off.
Rahul Gandhi's campaigning has also doubtless played a part, especially the image of him in contrast to the octogenarian Advani. The poor old man lifting weights to try and prove a youth he no longer had will remain among the sad images of these elections.
A lot of the credit for the Congress win in Uttar Pradesh must also be given to its regional rivals in the state. They have so thoroughly discredited themselves that the only party left for anyone to vote was Congress. Something similar happened in Telengana in Andhra Pradesh, where TRS was decimated, and even in Bengal, where the Left had become the party of hubris.
The internal divides in its opponents helped the Congress in states like Rajasthan. The same factor hindered it in Karnataka.
The takeaway message from this win for ALL political parties in India should be that the common man is no fool and cannot be taken for granted. Good work and a measure of honesty are becoming important for winning elections. That's why Nitish Kumar won in Bihar, and Lalu and Paswan lost. That's why Naveen Patnaik won in Orissa. And even Modi in Gujarat.
Politicians must now earn their votes. They can't merely buy them.

The next Indian government

Looks like it's going to be a well hung Parliament, so here's what our next Cabinet may look like:

Mayawati: PM. Will put up statues of herself at India Gate , Gateway of India, and Taj Mahal. May sell CBI to a detective agency owned by herself.
Jayalalitha: Home. Will put up giant cutouts of herself at India Gate and Gateway of India, and launch an attack on Sri Lanka using state police forces and CRPF
Prakash Karat: Finance. Will shut down the stock exchange and nationalise airlines and banks
Sitaram Yechury: External Affairs. Will walk out of Indo US nuke deal and sign friendship treaties with Venezuela, North Korea and Iran
Deve Gowda: Defence. Will wake up to sign huge deals that will help all humble farmers become as rich as Bellary barons
Chandrababu: Agriculture. Will introduce IT into the farming sector. Do micrchips grow into mother board trees?
Shibu Soren: HRD. Will sell IIMs to Arindam Chaudhuri and IITs to a coaching class in Kota.

Ok, joking. Sorry if I scared anyone :)
Even if a Third Front government comes to power, it will be with Congress support, and they'll have to pay much heed to the Congress. Plus, the BJD is not accounted for.
But if the Parliament is well hung, it wouldn't be too surprising if the country ends up getting thoroughly screwed.

The attack on Lanka's team

The question is: Que bono. Who benefits?
Not India, who gain nothing from strengthening hardliners opposed to it in Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Nor the Pakistan or Lanka governments.
Sometimes the most likely suspects are really the ones whodunit. In this case, that would be Lashkar+Taliban. If intelligence agencies can cooperate, so can terrorists and insurgents.

After Mumbai

As suspected, it has turned out to be LeT terrorists with backing from the ISI and al Qaeda who carried out the Mumbai Nov 26 attacks. As expected, Pakistan's military has prevented all attempts at cooperation in bringing to justice the perpetrators of these attacks.
The arrests of these terrorists and their detention in Pakistan can be expected to yield no benefits for India. This is just a sham, and meaningless. Criminals run operations from their jail cells even here, without state patronage. Surely they can do so from jail there, with a little help from their friends.
The US and UK will not help India any more than they are. Like true romantics, they are unable to give up hoping against hope that the Pakistan ISI will somehow have a change of heart, someday, and really start fighting against terrorists instead of training and arming them.
India must therefore learn once again to help itself.
A first step in this regard would be the launch of a trade contest versus Pakistan. The products they mainly export - garments, textiles, yarn, petroleum products - are items India also does business in. The areas they export to are also our markets.
We must therefore suspend trade with Pakistan immediately and attempt to replace their goods with ours everywhere.
Pakistan government officials have already admitted that the attackers were Pakistani and said they had camps inside Pakistan. International economic sanctions against the key individuals and organisations named for involvement in the attack must be pushed through.
If UN sanctions could be imposed against Col Gadaffi's Libya (over handing over of two terror suspects), why can't they be imposed against at least the individuals and organisations in Pakistan who are known supporters of terror?
All this eventually is also in the world's, and Pakistan's, interest. A Talibanised Pakistan wouldn't be very good to Sherry Rehman, for example - or to anyone who prefers the 21st Century to the 16th.

Why they attacked Mumbai...

The attack on Mumbai is having its political fallout at this moment. It will continue till at least the general elections around March 2009. Perhaps I should worry about that, but frankly, both the BJP and the Congress have proved to be bunches of dickheads when it comes to matters of national security. There's little to choose between the two. The only difference is in the noises they make.
So my concern is more about who launched this attack and why. Several observers are saying it was Lashkar-e-Toiba with al Qaeda strategising. A few are saying ISI and Pak army - their SSG commandos. On Thursday and Friday, I was telling folks in office it's the former, but today, in light of more information, I'm more inclined to think it's the latter or an amalgamation of both. This was most likely strategised by elements in the Pakistan establishment. Training was excellent, Pak army. Execution - we'll know soon, for sure.
My initial hunch was this was done to ease pressure from the al Qaeda on the Pak-Afghan border, besides hurting India, and other countries hated by Pak extremists, like USA, UK, Israel. However there are other strategic factors that also may have played into this.
The Pakistan military is worried about the possible balkanisation of the country, and those fears have grown since the appearance of maps put out by US agencies showing exactly this. The US's recent National Intelligence Committee report questioning whether Pakistan would hold together until 2025, and talking of the erasure of the Durand Line, can't have done much to ease the worries of those chaps. In early November, maps also appeared on billboards in NWFP that showed a free Pashtunistan. Wonder who put those up - the moderate, nationalist Pashtuns or friends of the Taliban?
The Taliban is looking for a homeland, but in whose interest is it to give it to them? Is Mumbai the first point on a trajectory that will lead to a war which will see either the creation of a new country between Afghanistan and Pakistan or the fall of Kabul?
I have no access to information to be able to analyse this properly, and no time after my day job to give it a proper go. However, those who do may perhaps ponder deeper into the matter. And do let me know what your thoughts on this are.

Watch out for more trouble

It doesn't take a genius to point out that this country, like much of the world, is living once again through troubled times. Perhaps we do need to take proper stock, however, of the size and number of problems facing the country at present.

There's the so-called 'meltdown'. It is apparently quite bad, the Sensex is down to less than half its highest-ever peak of a year ago. It is making some people - about 3-4 per cent of the population, at most - less rich.

There's the Marathi vs 'North Indian' in Mumbai. This is more serious and has greater long-term consequences. It affects more people directly; it also spreads and hardens sentiments of regionalism and parochialism around the country. The Bihari who is beaten up in Mumbai goes back and attacks trains in Bihar. Marathis there are no longer safe. The virus can easily spread further afield, as chauvinists everywhere learn by example and apply the same methods in their own areas of influence. So Bangalore and Chennai and even Ahmedabad could see similar movements. Similar things have of course happened in Assam and across Northeast India in the past, and it will be no surprise if they recur. In fact the Gorkhaland movement in Bengal owes a lot to the anti-outsider movement in Meghalaya. Nepali-speakers who were displaced from Shillong went to Darjeeling and helped fuel the fires for a homeland there.

There's home-grown Muslim terrorism, and now, home-grown Hindu terrorism. This is cause for major concern, because it has the potential to do serious harm to the country and the region. The hard Right among Hindus is growing in strength again, across the country. It's riots in Orissa and Karnataka and bomb blasts in Gujarat and Maharashtra, but it's bad news all around. Since every extremism always strengthens its opposite pole, it is natural to expect the Muslim and Christian Right to gain in influence too. One can argue about who started it, but the end is likely to be bloody. By sheer force of numbers the majority would expect to survive. However the inability of military means to subdue large groups is by now evident around the globe. India itself has failed in Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland and Sri Lanka. The only success - in Punjab - came because of Sikh officers leading a Sikh force. It stands to reason that the rise of the Right needs to be defeated if the country is to be saved.

There's the growth of the Maoist Left. This is a group that commands support in rural pockets from the Nepal border down to the Arabian Sea coast of Karnataka. It is bound to gain support given the kind of unfair and unequal development the world, and our country, has witnessed. The 'middle class' here is much glorified, but largely mythical. It is defined as people whose earnings are between two and four times the poverty line, which is $1.25 a day in purchasing power parity terms. That's about Rs 15-20 in real terms. Does Rs 1,200 a month buy a 'middle class' living? I'd think not. So I expect further violence and bloodshed as the deprived poor struggle for their place in the Indian sun.
Wait for it, and watch out.

Enemy of the state

Will the nuclear deal, whatever it is, go through? We'll know soon, though whether it will make a heck of a difference to anyone in the forseeable future is another matter.
Will the Singur land deal go through? We'll know soon too, and that WILL make a heck of a difference to a lot of people in Bengal, immediately. This was the first real chance for Bengal to regain its place as a centre of industry, and Mamata di and her lumpen party have managed to ruin this. They are blocking jobs for thousands of educated youth now, and of tens of thousands in years to come, not just in Tata and its ancillary industries, but in all those that would have followed if this experiment was successful.
Every parent now wants his or her children to be educated. This includes most people in rural areas as well. There is widespread realisation that education can lead to improvement in quality of life and living standards, since it leads to better jobs and greater ability to work a trade or a business - except, of course, that in Bengal there are not many employment opportunities. This could have changed, but Mamata di will not allow it. She is an enemy to the Bengali's welfare and growth, and an enemy of the state of West Bengal.

No denying responsibility for terror

I've always liked all the Pakistanis I've met, but clearly the people I've met are not the people launching terrorist attacks.
Yesterday, The New York Times ran a story saying:
"American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials."
The story went on to quote a US State Department official as saying there was finally 'direct proof' of ISI involvement in aiding a terrorist attack, specifically the one on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
The ISI is supposedly this 'state within a state' that goes off on its own and helps the Taliban, Al Qaeda, pretty much every terrorist group operating in Kashmir, Dawood Ibrahim, and anyone else in this part of the world who wants to start their own terror franchise.
The Pakistani state denies knowledge of all this.
It works just fine for the Pakistani state, but it's not so hunky dory for the people who come in at the receiving end of the terror.
Since the Pakistani state has proved incapable of locking up its loonies, shouldn't someone else go in and do it for them - maybe someone who's bearing the brunt of their incapacity? The Pakistan government can't really talk about sovereignty if it's not in sovereign control of its own spy agency. I wonder if the Pakistan government would believe it if an Indian missile were to land in downtown Karachi, and Mr Singh were to adjust his spectacles and say, "Er, sorry, I don't know who did it."
That wouldn't make everything all right, would it?

India could be left hanging

The UPA has won the confidence vote in Parliament today, and staved off elections for a while - perhaps till February-March 2009. However, the churning of the political pot that this trust vote has caused will only pick up force in the interim. We now have a preliminary view of the shape of things to come. For one, Mayawati has emerged as a prime ministerial contender at least one election before anyone expected. The channels yesterday and today were full of talk about how she has stolen the thunder of being the main opposition from Advani.
This is correct; she did indeed make an impression.
Q: What next?
Well, I'd say, yes, a new Third Front. But not one that's likely to win a majority in Parliament.
In 2004, the BJP won 138 seats, the Congress won 145, CPI and CPM together won 53, BSP won 19, TDP 5. Constituents of the NDA and UPA including parties like the NCP, RJD and DMK won significant numbers of seats in the home states of their leaders.
The alliances have been tested and apparently firmed up by this trial of trust. In other words, the 'Third Front', if there is to be one, will stand without any Lok Sabha seat-winners anywhere outside UP, Kerala, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. Deve Gowda in Karnataka has 3 MPs, and lost one to the Congress today. He cannot hope to better his tally, and is likely to remain politically insignificant at the Centre. Other constituents would be similarly insignificant.
In UP, Mayawati and her new allies led by Ajit Singh will come up against an SP-Congress alliance, which is a force to reckon with. The BJP is also a contender in 10 seats out of 80. In Kerala, the Left Front will come up against the pressures of incumbency and a charged Congress. In Andhra, Chandrababu will have a new threat from filmstar Chiranjeevi, who is launching a political party. His tally of 5 is unlikely to improve much. That leaves Bengal, where the Left appears comfortable - but a Trinamool-Congress alliance would significantly dent Left prospects. Mamata abstained today, so that option remains open.
In other words, the Third Front will do well to cross 110 seats.
Assuming the BJP gains a few, and Congress loses a few, as trends would appear to indicate they will, we're looking at a Parliament where no group has a majority.
Wonder how the bribes to MPs issue will play out.

Here comes Election Baba

Now that the election results are in, allow me to wipe the egg off my face, and smile. Like every astrologer, psephologist, 'expert commentator' and exit poll survey, I was wrong. My prediction, based on the exit polls, was that the JD(S) would be left with 35-40 seats - in which case they would probably have had a key role in government formation. As it turns out, they have ended up with 28 seats. This is the crucial difference.
My hunch that the exit polls might be wrong, and the BJP might get enough seats to come to power on its own, has however proved correct. Perhaps I should stop looking at exit polls, turn to election astrology full-time, and become 'Election Baba'.
While I'm waiting for future prime ministers to come with offerings and sit at my feet, I shall keep you entertained with the occassional prediction.
First one: Yedyurappa is going to become CM of Karnataka. Soon. What, you already heard?
Second: Yeddy wants Advani as PM. What, you heard this too?
Third: He may well get his wish, because the way things are going, a refurbished NDA could come back to power in 2009. The BJP can't pull it off by itself. It's alliance time.

Ban bans

In the last two days, 171 people in Karnataka and neighbouring districts in Tamil Nadu have died after drinking poisonous locally-brewed alcohol. The 'hooch' is suspected to have been methyl alcohol rather than the drinkable ethyl variety.
Karnataka banned arrack last year. Clearly the ban has not worked. Liquor bans never do.
In Gujarat, alcohol is banned and has been for donkeys years. This means everyone has his or her own bootlegger, who will home-deliver the boooze you want, for a price. Everything is available; there's a whole economy that works to make it available. Typically, the local policemen, political neta, and goondas are part of the racket. Any individual who gets in the way of this very lucrative business is shunted out of the way, or intimidated into silence.
I figure things are no different here. The arrack ban probably benefits the very people who are supposed to enforce it. They look away, for a price.
That price is now 171 human lives.
It would be better if there was no ban, but quality standards instead.

What we don't say

A friend from the US who's thinking of moving to India recently popped up on my gmail chat. Lot of disasters happening around India, he said. Oh nowhere near, I answered, because that's how it feels, though both Myanmar and China do have long borders with India. Oh but what about the floods in eastern India, he asked. Oh those! They happen every year, I said. And aren't there a lot of farmers committing suicide? Er...yeah, that happens too, it's easing up, I said.
It was his next question that finally shook me out of my cocoon of blase 'ya-that-happens' cynicism. "I didn't see any of this in the Indian media", he said. "Is it true the Indian media only reflects the concerns of the rich and the middle classes?"
Suddenly, here was a question about something not in the next country, or next state, or next village: this was about my life, about something I do every day. I edit a newspaper, and I have to admit that though ours is one of very few dailies in the country that hasn't sold its soul, even we cannot emerge completely clean from that charge. We are not impervious to competition, and we do get influenced by it.
So, yes, the Indian media does largely reflect only the concerns of the upper and middle classes. After all, they are the 'customers', the people who buy papers and magazines, and the goods advertised in them and on TV. No one's really digging for the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid yet.
That's why papers tend to push away drought and flood and farmer suicide stories to the inside pages, where they are reduced to briefs, space permitting. TV usually doesn't bother at all - there's IPL now, and other masala. Besides, it costs more to run a TV channel. You need more advertisement revenues. No advertiser really wants to pay top rupee for space on a channel about bhookha-nanga (hungry-naked) people. It's just not cool enough.
This is only the half of it, and it should be of concern to us all. However, what's never spoken about is the more insidious omissions that advertising money forces upon the media.
For example, yesterday, the papers in Bangalore carried reports about a lift accident at a building site where two labourers were crushed to death. Seven others were injured. The reports gave all the details except the most obvious ones: they didn't mention the building site, or the name of the construction company.
That's how it goes. The construction company is a big one. It has big money, it is a big advertiser. Our paper carried their name, but I am unpopular with the marketing people; I don't bend enough before their concerns about advertisers. So I have lawsuits from builders stories of whose sins we dared publish.
Otherwise, we editors are supposed to heed phone calls from the marketing department whenever a client is responsible for people dying or some such thing, and quietly bury the report, or at least delete the 'good name' of the moneybags in question. Apparently, everyone does it.
I am lucky to work in a newspaper whose owner still stands by his editors and on the side of editorial freedom. However, this is an extremely rare breed.
The norm now is for the marketing department to sit in on edit meetings and pass judgement on what can be printed and what can't. Readers seem to not care - even those of them, and there are many - who know that this is how the big papers work, continue to contribute to their success by subscribing to them.
The cost of production of a day's newspaper is never less than 6 rupees for any of the major papers in any major city in India. The papers are sold for half that price or less. The accumulated losses have to be compensated somewhere, and a profit generated. The more the copies sold, the more the losses to be recovered.
That money comes from advertisements. So dear reader, when you pay a pittance for your paper, please know that you are pushing news media to economise on the truth.
And next time you read a newspaper or watch TV, spare a thought to the news that's left out. We editors are told it's because you - customer, buyer - want it so.

What pollsters call anti-incumbency

So everyone's been looking southwards for a bit now, to see which way the polls in Karnataka will go. The general expectation is that this will be a portent of things to come: a foreshadowing of trends going into the general elections.
If this is true, we're headed for interesting times. Different exit polls suggest different things, but this much is clear: the Gowdas aren't going to be as wiped out as a lot of people were hoping. In fact, they may even be left with enough seats to be able to play the role in government formation they have been salivating for.
The smart money was on the Congress going into Phase 1 of elections. However, it appears now from the exit polls that the party has not done as well as expected. The New Indian Express-CFore-Suvarna TV survey suggests it will get 39-42 of the 89 seats. NDTV says the swing is in favour of the BJP, and against the Congress, and predicts the former will garner 31 seats.
Either way, the JD(S) seems set to end up with 35-40 seats . In the house of 224, that could be crucial if the BJP fails to get absolute majority - which it now seems capable of doing.
If that happens, it would be the first BJP government in South India. And the parliamentary elections would become a whole lot more interesting.

Advani might make it to the PM's chair yet.

Endings

This time last year, I was moving to Mumbai from Delhi, a city that after six years had finally begun to feel like home. And yet it wasn't, but perhaps Mumbai would be...
Now, I'm moving again, to Bangalore...perhaps this city will be home.

Endings

Things do not explode,
they fail, they fade

as sunlight fades from the flesh,
as the foam drains quick in the sand,

even love's lightning flash
has no thunderous end,

it dies with the sound
of flowers fading like the flesh

from sweating pumice stone,
everything shapes this

till we are left
with the silence that surrounds Beethoven's head.

by Derek Walcott

A hand to Providence

Just before the release of his last film, Chak de India, in which he acted as a hockey coach, Shah Rukh Khan gave an interview to Gulf News. He was asked if he had looked to any real-life coach for inspiration.

Shah Rukh told them: “When I was studying at St Columba’s, I had a teacher, Brother Eric D'Souza, who used to teach us soccer, hockey, cricket and various subjects apart from sport. He would be more an ideal teacher than a coach and has been instrumental in turning me into the person that I am.”

This teacher now lives and teaches in Shillong, Meghalaya. He spends much of his time trying to turn children too poor to afford an education into productive members of society. To this end, he has started a school named ‘Providence’. Children who gain admission here are given a free education, and the books and stationery they need for their studies. Only children whose parents have a monthly income of less than Rs 800 a month are allowed.

There are 200 such children in the school now. They range in age from four to 15. Br D’Souza says in most cases their parents bring them to him after hearing about the school from someone they know. The school itself runs in a few previously unused rooms on the campus of the relatively posh St Edmunds School. Everything in Providence is an unsolicited donation from someone. The whole of Providence runs on help from providence.

When it started in 2000, Providence was a route to get kids into age-appropriate classes in other schools, says Br D’Souza. Only, that didn’t work. “What’s the point of getting them into age-appropriate classes elsewhere? So they go there and drop out because they can’t pay their fees?” he says. Then the idea of training the children so they could get a certificate from the National Institute of Open Schooling emerged. Along with this, Br D’Souza also decided to impart trade skills to the children. It would give them a better chance in life, he says.

There’s a vegetable patch just outside the classrooms that the children tend to. They learn how to grow food, and cook it. They make paper, candles and confectionaries by hand, for sale. Some of them do a beautician’s course at the school itself. Others tinker around in a garage that Br D’Souza is still trying to set up.

“We are finally going to evaluate whether the Class 10 exam is necessary for them,” he says. “We are not sure if society requires a Class 10 academic certificate.” So what, instead of a certificate, does he want to give the children?

“We want them to have literacy, numeracy, financial literacy, and communication and media skills. For example, I want the student from the confectionary to be able to make the confections, keep the accounts, communicate with potential customers in the local languages and English, and carry on the trade. I want them to be able to have the good time that many people in India are now having.”

Br D’Souza’s inspiration for this radical departure from the regular academic path comes from an unlikely source: the Brazilian Left-wing writer Paulo Freire. “Have you read ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’? he asks me. “I don’t want to train the oppressed so they can rise ten levels and become the oppressors.” That is why he is placing a greater emphasis on self-employment, he says.

He has an even greater criticism of the formal school system. Students of the formal school system are losing their connection with life, he says. “I believe there is a universal language of nature which we have fallen out of touch with.”

The school draws heavily upon volunteer efforts. Many young people give their time to teach there. Br D’Souza says this is important too. “It gives the goodness of youth a chance.” Jodie, a 20-something girl from Ireland, has been teaching there for two years – without pay.

So what is your wish list for the school, I ask. “That the kids get the start in life we worked for,” he says. “That they never oppress anybody.” And there is a third: “That other schools elsewhere provide similar opportunities to those in need.”

For long, Brother D’Souza spurned media interviews. He was my class teacher in school, but he wouldn’t let me do a story on his work, or take a photograph of him. This time, he agreed, because he’s had his fifth heart attack.

He wants the work to go on, with or without him. And oh, he also wishes one of his best students – a certain Shah Rukh Khan – would start to help the poor and downtrodden. “I don’t hear of him doing that,” he says.

The secrets we keep from ourselves

There are many things we bury in the recesses of our minds and hearts, things we need to keep secret because they matter ... our own secrets, other people's secrets, professional secrets, perhaps, if you are an important bloke, even national secrets. Yet of all that we hide, the secrets that matter most are the ones we bury deepest.
They are the secrets we keep even from ourselves.

A little light music

From the Rubaiyat-i-Omar Khayyam:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.

From Before You Came by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated by Agha Shahid Ali:

Before you came,
Things were as they should be:
The sky was the dead-end of sight,
The road was just a road, wine merely wine.

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot:

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

That old dilemma

India's Northeast is one of the last 'unglobalised' spaces in the world. That is due to change soon, and I've found myself unable to decide whether it is a good thing or not. The face of change we see now is not pretty. Development looks like felled trees and hills blasted to bits. It looks like naked brick and tin slum houses replacing the old 'Assam type' wood and bamboo ones. It is traffic snarls, and crowds, and plastic waste clogging mountain brooks.
But it is also other things, and I got a sense of this during a recent trip to the West Khasi Hills. We started from Shillong before seven in the morning. By 3.30 in the evening, we had still not reached the village, barely 120 kilometres away, that we meant to go to. There was no road to get there. The four-wheel jeep struggled along over a track cut in the hillside at about five kilometres an hour. We drove over one stream, and a few mini landslides, until we came to a place where the track had caved in completely. Nothing on wheels was going to get past that. We trekked a little further, until we came to another stream. Then we had to return because we couldn't have driven back on that road after dark. In those hills, in autumn, 6 pm is dark.
I spoke to a villager we met on the way there, at the last village we crossed.
"What do you do?"
"A little farming...and some charcoal business."
The trees around had all been felled, to be burnt to charcoal and sold for a few meager rupees.
"What happens if someone falls ill?"
"We carry the person on someone's back and walk to Wahkhaji. It takes one day. Then we stay the night there, and drive to Shillong the next day...if we can find a vehicle. Mostly the person dies on the way."
The man was happy a road is now being built. It's not much of a road, but it means a lot to him.
The people who want to open up this region will bring roads, electricity, telephone and mobile phone services, airports, rail lines, and all the other infrastructure they need to exploit the region's abundant natural resources. They will profit from it, certainly, but the thing is, so will the local people. It may start with outsiders and foreigners cornering all the plum deals, making all the money, while the poor local only gets the road and electricity. However, even that is better than what they have now. Moreover, the outsiders will slowly be displaced by locals over a period of time. That happened during colonialism, and even if we view this as no better, we must concede that we did gain much from being colonised.
The British are long gone but the infrastructure they built has stood us in good stead. The roads, railways, telegraph, telephone and radio were their contributions. So too were the ports. The administrative structure - ICS turned IAS - came to us from them. And much else too.
A lot of what they did was wrong, but barring Partition, I don't think any of those wrongs has had as much lasting impact as the 'rights' they did.

Who can buy a cup of coffee?

I've often wondered, while having a forty or fifty rupee cup of coffee at a Barista or Coffee Day, about what percent of the Indian population can afford this little indulgence. I think I've finally found a credible answer: four percent, at most. That's the percentage of the population with a daily average per capita consumption of Rs 93. The remaining 96 per cent of the one point something billion people in India are living on less than that a day, according to a report by Arjun Sengupta, Chairman of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector.
The middle class, according to Sengupta, is 19.3 percent of the population and has a daily per capita consumption of around Rs 37. The remaining 76 percent plus are living on less than this every day. They are the average Indians.
So next time you go and piss a few thousand rupees down the pub drain on one usually less-than-happy night out, remember that old joke about all the starving children. You're pissing away an amount of money that would buy a decent meal for a hungry kid somewhere.
I'm not trying to inflict guilt upon all party animals. As long as there's a bit of a social conscience somewhere - some attempt to give back to society - it's all good. A fellow who parties but finds it in his heart to give to charity or help the poor is all right in my book.
It's the utterly and haughtily self absorbed, for whom the poor are just eyesores that need to be thrown out of the city, who I find annoying. These fools do not realise what a tiny minority they are. If all those hundreds of millions of poor, hungry people were to start walking into the cities tomorrow - just walking in peacefully - they could take over the cities, and no government in India would have the capacity to stop them.
For the sake of the self absorbed rich, I hope they will not face what the French nobility faced during the revolution there.
Although that would only be fair.

A disclaimer: This does not mean I am a Leftist. The Indian Left is a bunch of hypocrites and anti-nationals who have never in their history been on the right side of anything. They did nothing for Independence, they were sympathetic to China during the 1962 war, they opposed the 1991 economic liberalisation without which we would still be standing in queues for telephone connections and chugging along at the 'Hindu rate of growth'. They are active supporters of the caste system - they do nothing to dismantle it. And as several observers have pointed out, their entire Politburo put together wouldn't win a municipal election without support from their more progressive comrades in Bengal and Kerala. They have, essentially, been part of the problem in every problem this country has ever faced.

The real clash

This is a piece I'd written for the Hindustan Times last October. News of a taxi service with only women drivers in Mumbai reminded me of it. Oh, and remember the recent Taslima incident in Hyderabad? And the new thing about women not being allowed to become bartenders in Delhi?:

There is a project called the Blank Noise Project being run by a few people in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. It seeks to establish that eve teasing is a sexual crime, and is unacceptable. I recently sat in on a meeting of this project’s volunteers in a café in Delhi.

It was a very small gathering. There were three people. The two women, who were part of the project, began by trying to decide on their course of action for the day. They had planned an ‘intervention’ in Connaught Place that would consist of them pasting posters against street sexual harassment in small shops in the area, and stenciling similar messages on the pavement. However, the thin turnout deterred them, so they ended up talking about what could be done to sensitise Delhi’s men to the fact that leching, groping and passing remarks is not the best way to win girlfriends and influence people.

One of them said she could not understand why men behaved in this manner. What joy does it give them, she asked? What pleasure is there in making a lewd remark or grinding an elbow into someone’s breast?

I told her I do not know why men behave in this manner, but I am certain this behavior is driven by the gonads rather than the brains, because it makes no sense. I can recall boys in college getting in groups to stare at girls and pass remarks. They did seem to feel good doing it. Almost none of them ever tried it when they were alone, or when there were possibilities of repercussions like a date with the police.

The fellows that do these things do them because they get away with it. They know very well that what they are doing is not right. No culture or society promotes such behaviour.

So what can be done to prevent such incidents? That is a difficult question. In fact, it is possibly the most important question in the world today.

The Blank Noise Project seeks, in my understanding, to alter men’s thinking so that none of them reacts with whistles and comments to women wearing skirts or low-waist jeans. Its stated aims include reclaiming public spaces for women, so that men do not react with excitement to the sight of a woman walking alone in a park at night.

These aims are based on the principle of equality of men and women. Its adherents ask why men can do these perfectly innocuous things – like wearing the clothes they want, and then going for an evening walk – whereas women do not have the liberty to do so unmolested. The entire liberal, Westernised world would be on the side of the Blank Noise Project women on this.

There is, however, the other camp. This lot would say that women should learn to behave in a manner that does not excite the unwanted attention of men. They should walk with eyes lowered, and refrain from wearing revealing clothes or going out alone in public places. They should not try and do all the things men do, because they are not men.

Most of the Islamic world, and conservative Hindus and Sikhs, among others, are on this side.

It is a difference of opinion that divides the world.

In its March-April 2003 issue, Foreign Policy magazine had published an article by US professors Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris. The article was called “The True Clash of Civilisations”. It was based on the cumulative results of the World Values Survey (WVS), conducted in 1995–96 and 2000–2002. The authors wrote that, “Based on questionnaires that explore values and beliefs in more than 70 countries, the WVS is an investigation of socio-cultural and political change that encompasses over 80 percent of the world’s population.”

This is what they found:

“A comparison of the data yielded by these surveys in Muslim and non-Muslim societies around the globe confirms the first claim in (Samuel) Huntington’s thesis. Culture does matter—indeed, it matters a lot. Historical religious traditions have left an enduring imprint on contemporary values. However, Huntington is mistaken in assuming that the core clash between the West and Islam is over political values. At this point in history, societies throughout the world (Muslim and Judeo-Christian alike) see democracy as the best form of government. Instead, the real fault line between the West and Islam, which Huntington’s theory completely overlooks, concerns gender equality and sexual liberalization. In other words, the values separating the two cultures have much more to do with eros than demos. As younger generations in the West have gradually become more liberal on these issues, Muslim nations have remained the most traditional societies in the world.”

The current controversy over the use of the veil in Britain, and the earlier one concerning headscarves in France, highlight this clash. The Blank Noise Project in India is also, in my opinion, a small example of the same phenomenon. Professors Inglehart and Norris would probably find that Hindu, Muslim and Sikh India are all ‘traditional societies’ that largely favour democracy and economic growth, which means the market, but, to different extents, mostly oppose sexual liberalization.

It would be easy and tempting to conclude that these traditional societies are in urgent need of modernization, and therefore, that liberal ideas and views must be taught to the people who hold that men and women are not equal.

However, to do so would be to forget the conclusions set out by John Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty. Mill wrote that:

“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”

The opinion that men and women are not equal is derived from the view that gender follows naturally from sex. In other words, a man is masculine by birth and a woman is feminine. There are obvious flaws in this logic – as the growing numbers of gay men and lesbian women show – but it is likely that this opinion does contain “a portion of the truth”. Even if our genes do not determine sexual orientation, as some scientists claim, the fact is that for the vast majority of the world’s population, feminine and masculine traits do match their sexes.

There is certainly need for greater gender equality and sexual liberalization in certain societies. For example, every person should have equal rights to education, regardless of whether they are male or female, or for that matter, rich or poor, Dalit or Brahmin. Similarly, every person should have equal freedom to pursue a career or hold a job, and that includes driving taxis, selling paan and fighting wars.

You might agree with this, but the question is, would you want a ‘clash of civilisations’ to universalize this worldview?

The rock star minister and his mission

I think I am in real danger of becoming a real blogger. Not only did I begin to think it has been too long since my last post, I even began to imagine that people might be interested in my personal account of things I have to say - and observe, I'm writing this entirely in the first person. It's all I-me-myself. Yay! I'm a blogger now!
It's been a month away from Mumbai, and the internet. This post comes to you from a cybercafe in Shillong, Meghalaya. After a few days spent working on my own writing at home, I began eventually to go out and meet people.
This morning I met arguably the coolest politician in the country, and the one I admire most. His name is RG Lyngdoh. He's known around here as Bob. Bob, a distant senior from my school, used to be songwriter and percussionist for Shillong's most famous band, the Great Society. He then became founder member of a blues band called Mojo - and it was a damn good band, too. Somewhere along the line he decided to get himself an MBA and off he went to XLRI. I don't know how he got into politics but suddenly he was Home Minister. He's the guy who ended the militancy in this place. He's also the only minister I know who has a tattoo.
The dude has written a book, fiction. It's called 'Who the cap fits'. If you find it, read it. There are few more readable accounts of militancy in the Northeast - it's racy. It is also well informed. Few people have more of an insight into the matter than Bob.
He's now working on a festival called the Roots Festival to bring the peoples of the Northeast together. He hopes to be able to project the more positive facets of the region to the outside world. Which is why I'm writing this post - to remind you guys and gals that this place may have its faults, but it has some great qualities, too.

To the far blue hills

This picture is of the Naga Hills. I don't have a scanned photo of the Khasi or Jaintia Hills, but trust me, there's a lot of places out there that would give Mr Tolkien's Shire a run for its hobbit money.

Not that human money will allow the Northeastern hills to stay beautiful. Its transforming power is everywhere in evidence: ugly buildings, dynamited hills, aspirational drinking holes and smokestacks.

Development zindabad.

Rajnikanth for president

For the past few weeks, the papers have been full of news about candidates for India's next president, and none of it has been good. First there was talk of Home Minister Shivraj Patil being the UPA candidate. His claim was based on the same talent that got him the home minister's job: the ability to suck up to The Family. Then things came unstuck because allies didn't want Patil in Rashtrapatri Bhavan, at which some genius promtly replaced one Patil with another. Pratibha Patil's claim to the job appears to be based on the fact that she is a Congress party member, a woman, and a Shekhawat by marriage. It helps that she is also from Maharashtra, since it confuses the Shiv Sena. Diplomatic skills and political acumen are probably not her forte: her first widely reported pronouncement was about the Muslims imposing purdah in India. Since then, she has said nothing, and cartoonists have had a field day with images of her with a gag around her mouth.
She will probably win the presidential elections over Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, now that President Kalam has decided not to run. This will mean more control over the country's institutions for The Family and a new version of a 'goongi gudiya' in Rashtrapati Bhavan.
That does not bode well for democracy. It is unfortunate enough that the greatest and most important political party in India is one that cannot function without a Nehru-Gandhi at the helm. To have all the institutions of government in the service of The Family is to return once again to the age of empires.
In this situation, one can only hope that good sense will prevail, and a strong contender will emerge to take on The Family's protege.
Let's have Rajnikanth for president :)

Mayawati and the caste system

Behen Mayawati has declared her intention to aim for the Prime Ministership of India in the next general elections. It will be wonderful if she does indeed manage to build the kind of 'rainbow alliance' she will need to take her there. After all, she seems to be the only politician in the country with the gumption - and the political position - to do anything constructive in the matter of caste.
For far too long, the vote-bank politics of reservation has been propagated by politicians as the cure to social and economic backwardness. The political classes - including the communists, with a few individual exceptions - became so greedy in their pursuit of Dalit, ST and OBC votes that they even refused to follow the Supreme Court's order asking for the benefits of reservation to be taken away from the rich among the backward classes. In other words, they wanted sons and daughters of ministers and IAS officers from these classes to corner the benefits intended for the backward.
Behen Mayawati has declared her intent to introduce an economic consideration into reservations. I am unaware of her position on the creamy layer. However, it is a positive start: even the so called communists in this country have refused to introduce economic backwardness as a criterion in determining the beneficiaries of affirmative action. They have justified this plainly daft position by much hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo. If Mayawati can at least remove caste as the sole criterion for determining backwardness, she will perhaps have done more to remove casteism than anyone since Babasaheb Ambedkar.

The new slaves

I know a lot of people who work very hard. Most of them are in their 20s or early 30s. They slog non-stop from morning to night, and often take work home after all that. There are times when they spend whole nights in office, working.
Their personal lives are usually pathetic or non-existent because they barely have time to catch a movie, let alone maintain a healthy relationship. They earn whatever it is that they do, and have no time or energy to spend it. The only release they get from all that working is the drinking binge, usually with colleagues, at some pub or bar somewhere. This is seen as highly a highly cool and rewarding exercise by many of the people who live this life.
To me, it looks like they have sold themselves into slavery. The definition of a slave is "one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence". The dominating influence in these lives is the job, which is done not for the love of it, but for money. None of these people - bar a few exceptionally stupid ones - really want to be living the kind of lives they are. They know they are not saving the planet or achieving self-actualisation by being corporate lawyers or ad filmmakers or glorified soap-sellers. Those idealistic goals often engender silly, fanatical behaviour. The people who spend all their youth slogging their butts off on money-making jobs - and then pissing the money they do it for down the pub drain - are different. They are lost souls, not fanatics. They are people who lost their way on the highway of life because they were misled by the fake 'glamour' of the 'hep' life. How else does one explain an existence whose weekly high point is a night out in a loud place with strangers, getting drunk? Or purchasing a certain brand of clothes? There is not much joy to be had in these activities - it is by telling people about the 'cool' place they went to, or showing off the 'happening' brand, that these people validate their entire lives.
If that is not a meaningless existence, what is?