Ayodhya ghost

The Congress-led UPA government has finally decided to table the Liberhan Commission report on the Babri Masjid demolition and the Action Taken Report in Parliament today, according to newspaper reports.
The commission, probing the sequence of events leading to the 1992 demolition of Babri masjid in Ayodhya, has been one of the country’s longest running inquiry commissions. It has cost the government Rs 7 crore. But it remains to be seen whether the report will be acted upon, or will it remain just another voluminous, expensive document for posterity. Remember of the fate of the Sri Krishna Commission report on the 1992-93 Bombay riots (officially, it was Bombay then). Or the Nanawati Commission report on the Sikh Riots of 1984.
The report would, no doubt, throw up a lot of dust and grime. There is already a story of its “selective” leaks that has reportedly enraged the BJP.
But what will the report reveal? Or, let us put in this way. What more is the report going to reveal? And, how is it going to affect the political climate of a country, already plagued by corruption scandals, acute parochialism, bizarre post-poll tie-ups, and turbulent caste and communal equations. P.Chidambaram, Union Home Minister will, however, love to add to this list, his pet disgust, the Maoist movement.
The commission report is going to embarrass the polity as a whole. But will it endanger the fate of the leaders involved in the crime? An idealist trudging in a fool’s paradise will believe in such a fairy tale ending. Let us face the harsh realities of the Indian political and judicial system. Sure, it will make leaders and parties uncomfortable. But they are used to such discomfort, and will even use it as a weapon to garner sympathy.The report might embarrass the Congress as it was in power during the demolition with the late P.V. Narasimha Rao as its Prime Minister.
The BJP, already a beleaguered party fighting for survival at the national and state levels, will be in for some ruse shocks. An Indian Express report has already indicated what the commission report is going to be like.
The report, one might think, will erase Kalyan Singh, who was the BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh when the crime took place, from the Indian polity. But will it? He quit the BJP and tried the caste card in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. Now that the party has kicked him out, he is sending loud messages to the BJP leadership to let him rejoin the party. Our political system is full of such Kalyan Singhs, who shamelessly marry, divorce and then remarry into the same party or alliances.
The civil society is embracing apathy in the context of the political process. And, why won’t they? Our leaders and parties are juggling statements according to situations, giving hollow promises. Already, the voter turnout is shrinking, thanks to this apathy. But the political parties continue to play with words. L. K. Advani, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has said he was proud of his association with the Ayodhya movement but distressed by the demolition of the mosque. What does he mean by that? He has said no one expected that the mosque would be pulled down and that the leadership from the BJP, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had tried to stop the demolition. Kudos to our leaders! They always come out with remarkable bytes.
Let us prepare ourselves for the rude reality. This commission, like many other commissions in the past, will create the usual storm in Parliament, will hog print space and prime time on television news channels, will become an issue, that too only for the approaching Jharkhand Assembly elections. The issue will eventually evaporate as our political parties will have nothing new to grind on the poll platform. Soon the report will be shelved for posterity and gather dust at government archives.

'Sach'in ka saamna

Now the beleaguered Bal Thackeray latest target is Sachin Tendulkar. The cricket icon had said that he was proud of his Maharashtrian roots, but he was an Indian and that Mumbai was for Indians. Damage done. Why did you do this to the Marathi manoos, Mr Tendulkar? You have hurt their pride. Well, the Sena tiger seems to feel that way. And, he has sharpened his claws for a fresh parochial game in the political field.
Bal Thackeray, licking his wounds from the Assembly election debacle, is desperately currying favour with the Marathi manoos who crept into the rival Thackeray camp. And, he is willing to raise his parochial pitch to level scores. This time he chose to strike at the prodigious batsman for his patriotic statement that, according to the Shiv Sena chief, lacked regional flavour.
The media is thanking Thackeray senior for writing an explosive editorial on Sachin’s “Mumbai for Indians” comment. It was a dull Monday evening, where nothing really volatile was cooking that could hog primetime. And then, Saamna’s harsh editorial against Sachin’s remarks had enthusiastic (read loud) television anchors screaming in support of our hero and getting valuable sound bytes from erstwhile Marathi cricket players to rally for Sachin. Why sound bytes only from former Marathi cricket players? Why not from cricket players, irrespective of their region?
It is a fact that every sport has been sucked into regional chauvinism. In 2006, when Sourav Ganguly was dropped from the Indian cricket team, the West Bengal chief minister had called a press conference to highlight how the royal Bengal tiger was “ill-treated”. He had said he was “unnecessarily insulted and humiliated”. He had even taken up the matter with the then former BCCI chief, Sharad Pawar. All because the Bengali pride was at stake.
Just do a simple trial: Talk ill about Sourav to a Bengali, and get ready to be mauled by the community.
A P.T. Usha is Kerala’s pride, while Kapil Dev is a Haryana hurricane. Chess wizard Viswanathan Anand is the Chennai boy even if he spends most of his time in his European villa? Regionalism is so ingrained in our system that we are forced to dilute the Indian identity of the achievers.
The Thackeray rivals are now playing the “I said it first” game between themselves. Raj Thackeray last week had warned the State Bank of India against filling up its seats in Maharashtra with non-Maharashtrians. The bank conducted its entrance test yesterday, thankfully without any disturbances, unlike last year. There is, however, no mention in the media of any assurance from the State Bank of India.
There have been a series of incidents that has bruised the image of the Maratha manoos on the national stage. So when Sachin made this comment, it was like a balm on the battered Marathi image. But Bal Thackeray, in his quest to prove he is a better Maratha champion, had to attempt a googly at Sachin. So far, Sachin has made no comment on this parochial madness. As former cricketer Sanjay Manjarekar has said the Sena’s statement does not deserve to be commented upon. Hope Sachin keeps his dignified silence, which could be loud slap on the senior Thackeray’s Maratha face.

Tongue ties

Thank You Raj Thackeray for the fresh blister on democracy and reopening old wounds.
There is a loud murmur in Tamil Nadu. M.K. Azhagiri, whose father M.K. Karunanidhi arm-twisted the government into making his Madurai veeran son the Union chemical and fertilizers minister, now wants to be allowed to communicate in Tamil in Parliament. However, this request comes in the wake of the fact that he is not particularly proficient in English and Hindi, used for conduct of business in Parliament. This is, by the way, a request, which the speaker, Meira Kumar, will try and sort out by this week.
But this is just a small, single column story in newspapers. The fine print is that the rival AIADMK boss, Jayalalitha, has been silently but steadily adding fuel through her generous bytes in support of this request. Now, this could transform the small, single column story to a headline-hogger. She has even cited the DMK’s oft-repeated statement: “Let Tamil live even if we were to fall,” indicating that the DMK must be ready to quit the UPA Cabinet if Tamil language was seen “falling” in Parliament. Why this sudden tongue tie?
Even the Shiv Sena has provided the linguistic aftershocks supporting the arch rival MNS’ tremor in Maharashtra Assembly on the issue of taking oath in Marathi. Affections are flying high for the Maratha champions now, with MNS even threatening to bash up anyone uttering a word against the original Maratha guardian, Balasaheb Thackeray, but now their rival.
Kudos to madam Jayalalitha for this masterstroke.
Stoking the language issue, that too in Tamil Nadu, which has immortalized the Dravidian movement and its Hindi agitation, is a master strategy. Her subtle sound bytes might be aimed at a bigger bite in the next Assembly poll share.
Hindi is a politically explosive device in Tamil Nadu. The DMK or the AIADMK have kept their tongue in check for a long time now after becoming major players in the national political arena.
To be fair to Azhagiri, language will be a constraint for him while conducting business in Parliament. He is not proficient in Hindi or English. Then the question arises, why Hindi? I know I am stirring the hornet’s nest by questioning our national language. But the north-south language barrier is stark. While Hindi is a cakewalk for north Indians, with just minor alterations in their tongue, it is cumbersome for those in the south. The languages are very different from Hindi, with no lexicon link. Those in the south of the Vindhyas have to learn an additional language which is in no way related to their own. So there is a certain deal of injustice in upholding Hindi as a national language. But what is the option in a multi-lingual set-up like ours. English. But that is a foreign language. Why should we let a foreign language that invaded our homes long back to stay on? The argument is, it is a new language that everybody has to learn across the nation. At least there is no inequality in asking one region to learn a completely alien language. Everyone will have to learn this. So we can all keep our regional pride intact, and uniformly twist our tongue for English.
Can we strike a deal, Raj Thackeray?

A plastic planet?

Municipal corporations across the country are trying to trim the use of plastic. Okay, that is the policy decision on paper. What about implementation? How are the governments planning to stem this swelling of plastic waste crowding our water resources and clogging drains and pipes. Small shop owners or big time malls, they all subtly and sometimes blatantly push plastic.
I recently bought a wall clock, and after paying the bill was just about to put the clock in my cloth bag that the shopowner produced a glossy and colourful plastic bag to hold the clock. When I refused, he insisted that I take it and “recycle” it. “Please do take it madam. It will be useful,” he said, pushing the plastic bag in my reluctant hand. The clock company’s name was artistically embossed on the bag. Saying a firm “no”, I put the clock in my bag, leaving the shopkeeper with a sheepish grin on his face.
Urban living springs a “shopping experience” in malls and supermarkets. And, most of these malls insist on packing goods in their plastic bags because of the free advertising they get once the customer flaunts the bags out on the streets. This, coupled with the round-the-year festival sales and exhibitions lead to more plastic-flaunting. Thanks to this culture, we have been continuously sheathing our precious planet with multiple layers of plastics.
But there are ways we can at least decelerate this dumping of plastic by carrying our bags. Again, these big stores make the use of plastic a convenient option.
The baggage counter in these malls are at the entrance, while the cash counters are all tucked deep inside, making the logistics of transferring the goods from the shopping cart to your own eco-friendly bag very tough. Only the very tough and eco-conscious shoppers will be able to resist the plastic largesse doled out by these malls. If the baggage counters are kept closer to the cash counters, it would add to the convenience of the eco-friendly shoppers.
Big Bazaar, a supermarket chain, sends across the most eco-unfriendly message. First, it has a baggage counter outside the store. Then it insists on weighing vegetables in its plastic pouches. After billing, the goods are all put in those unpleasant plastic bags and locked with a plastic seal, making it difficult to resort to any eco-friendly shopping experience. So I carry a huge cloth bag with a pair of scissors in it. I deposit the bag in the counter outside. After paying the bills, I cut open the locks tied around the plastic bags, transfer all the goods in my bag and request the security near the exit gate to hand them over to the counter. Passersby might have found me crazy going through this process. But at least I do not leave that place feeling guilty of choking the planet.
Is there a way to get out of this mindset of hogging more plastic bags? Can we resort to our good old paper bags. Earlier, when Kolkata was Calcutta, and probably everywhere else, shops packed food grains or groceries in newspaper covers, called tongas. And vegetable shoppers always carried cloth or jute bags. Can we please have the good old tongas back please?

Show empathy, not apathy

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoist violence was the outcome of poverty in “certain tribal regions of the country”, and added that poverty and lack of development had alienated tribals from the mainstream. Golden words from the top boss. Very mature and responsible bytes. But aren’t these words coming in late, very late.
Home minister, P. Chidambaram, too, made an offer for talks with the Maoists after a request from former Lok Sabha Speaker, Rabi Ray, and other members of the civil society, working under the banner of Citizens’ Initiative for Peace. The forum had requested the government to stop the offensive against Naxalites in some states. Till then, our home minister had been talking about additional forces to rein in the Naxalites. The fact is that each time the Naxals have struck, the official response has been to tackle the “menace with an iron hand”.
The Naxalite groups intensified their strikes. They have been striking at regular intervals, the most recent one being the “trainjacking”. Our government responses have become staid and sometimes so confusing that it leads one to doubt that there is any sound political will to understand and analyse the situation. The strategy seems to be seeing the Naxalite movement as a “threat” to law and order. Why is it that the state machinery deliberately ignores the harsh reality of the marginalized tribals facing severe economic and social backwardness?
There have been social activists trying to sensitise the media and the government to “listen” to those displaced and marginalized. Then an Arundhati Roy spoke. Many columnists, too, joined the issue, advocating a sympathetic handling of the problem. In fact, the media has so far not been too sympathetic to the plight of tribals. It has been focusing on violence and casualties, laced with a message that this “terror” had to be crushed.
Now this new wave of media sympathy towards the marginalized sections of society seems to have dilated the vision of the government, prompting the Prime Minister to acknowledge that development was not really reaching tribals, who remain the poorest of the poor and asking for handling the Maoist violence “holistically”.
It remains to be seen whether the state can follow up the Prime Minister’s message with a concerted action plan to address the issue. The government could first invite the Naxalite groups for talks. They could then fix a time-frame to implement development programmes in areas, overlooked till now.
Of course, this sounds very simplistic, and the push-pull dynamics of Naxal strongholds may frustrate sincere efforts. But there are three factors that will certainly slow down or even thwart such ambitious benevolence. First is Corruption, that dangerous virus corroding our political system, blocking the vision of our leaders and paralyzing their will to serve the nation. The second is Nexus, a charming word in the political lexicon that promises to bring in billions to personal coffers. And, the third is Police brutality on villagers in the guise of targeting Naxal sympathizers.
If at least a handful of our political leaders recognize the reason behind the violence unleashed by the Naxalites, the battle is almost won. Taking it from there will be easier. Otherwise our Prime Minister’s observation and solutions with remain just interesting sound bytes.

Maha'raj'shtra

The Marathi manoos have given a thumbs up to their “saviour”. At least the few who came to vote. Though the 2009 Assembly elections have been a Congress-NCP show, Raj Thackeray’s parochial rhetoric has managed to discolour the state’s saffron flag-bearers, the Shiv Sena and BJP. In fact, the Raj phenomena seems to be slowly edging out the Sena spell.
In India, parties fight political battles using the deadliest of communal, caste and class weapons. But Raj Thackeray’s overdose of native spices seems to have cast a spell on the Marathi manoos, instilling fear and alienating “migrants”, specially from North India (read Bihar and Uttar Pradesh).
The Thackeray raj is here to stay. First, it was Balasaheb Thackeray whose claim to fame was the campaign against non-Maharashtrians for “usurping” jobs and opportunities from natives. Then Balasaheb wore saffron on his sleeve and widened his hate-campaign to include Muslims, who he felt were mostly from Bangladesh. By this, his Mumbai progressively destroyed the spirit of Bombay. Simultaneously, his scorching hate-Muslim speeches wrested the excitement of his Marathi manoos campaign.
But his estranged nephew, Raj Thackeray, wasted no time in bringing the Marathi manoos back on track, derailing the aspirations and chances of the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. Raj is here. His Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s boisterous rise has tamed the Sena tigers.
Raj’s sena went about wielding hate weapons at the north Indian working class, generating fear psychosis. The targets have been daily wagers, labourers, taxi drivers and roadside vendors. And his focus is Mumbai. But Mumbai is also home to giant corporate houses and super-rich entrepreneurs, most of them non-Maharashtrians. And, of course, the multi-crore Hindi film industry, run by Chopras, Kapoors, Khans and "the" Bachchans (of course none of them Marathis!) But the new Thackeray is not really serious about “evicting” this cash-rich class. A simple sorry and replacing Bombay with Mumbai in a movie dialogue is enough to massage his ego.
He has, instead, instilled this fear into the minds of the less fortunate. Raj’s sena has been blatantly encashing this post-dated Marathi votebank cheque, undersigning it with threat and violence. Or worse, he uses his ATM (any time Marathi) rhetoric. Raj’s cousin, the “original Shiv” scion, Udhav Thackeray, after his post-poll introspection, has said his Sena will back the old faithful Hindutva horse. Now the warring Senas have left the Marathi manoos confused and in a severe identity crisis.
In any case, the Indian voter stands confused and, therefore, exhausted and cynical. The Indian politician, in this custom-made democratic puzzle, has divided people along caste, religion and language, multiplied their vested interests, added multiple dimensions to their votebank and subtracted issues.
But the two Senas have left their Marathi manoos even more baffled. Earlier, he voted as a Hindu or a Muslim or as a caste member. Now the linguistic dimension has magnified his dilemma.
Leaders are reaching heady heights with empty rhetoric and loud parochial chest-thumping, distracting voters with superficial grandiloquence. And our politically illiterate and poor voter is being taken for a ride either on a communal saddle or on a linguistic one. Some horsing around this is.

Mahayudh

Tomorrow is a big day in Maharashtra. It is not Ganapati, the other big day for the state. The voting machines will spell out the verdict of the battle at the hustings. It has been a bitter battle with blatant parochialism replacing real issues. Anyway, the media, both electronic and print, has been harping on this election being fought on a hollow plank. This, despite a severe power shortage, failed monsoons, Bt cotton and farmers’ suicide, the swelling urban slums, and a Gharchiroli emerging from the grossly under-developed belts in the cash-rich state.
The Election Commission and the state government did not want an abysmal turnout recorded in the Lok Sabha elections, and therefore, had declared October 13, the poll day, as a holiday. The day was a Tuesday, and just right for a tempting long-weekend with a casual leave on Monday.NGO campaigns, urging citizens to step out worked…they all stepped out of the cities. So toll plazas registered maximum vehicle entries on highways linking getaways. They all got away from this poll tamasha, flaunting the deadliest weapon to crush democracy: Apathy.
Those in cars never cared. So the definite target audience was those struggling to keep themselves from sinking further into the poverty line quagmire. In fact, a domestic help was ruing the fact that she was not home to collect the monetary “gift” from political parties. She lost Rs 800 that day (The break up was Rs 500 and Rs 300 from two different parties). That was a lot of money, especially during the Diwali week.
Lack of political will has made most citizens nonchalant, and they have repeatedly flashed their indolence by keeping away from the poll process. There is a reluctance on the part of the political class to focus on real issues as there is a temptation to fall back on hysteria generated so easily by regionalism and communism.
Maharashtra is getting painted in all hues. The surge of saffron fundamentalists is vying for attention with the red struggle in Ghadchiroli. To complete this communal and parochial warp and weft in the political fabric of Maharashtra is Raj Thackeray’s high-decibel call for the beleaguered Marathi manoos to snatch the jobs and respect earned by the non-Marathas in this land of Shivaji. Raj Thackeray’s campaign slogans has discoloured the original Maratha manoos sloganeers, the Shiv Sena. The Congress hopes to cash in on this split in native loyalties.
This battle might not spell out a clear winner, and suitcase politics might just take over. Alas! Democracy, the sacred river, is forced to flow into our country’s political sewer. And that stinks.

No 'Nobel' intentions

This year, an Indian American is part of the trio which has bagged the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The Indian is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who has shared the Prize with fellow American Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath for mapping ribosomes, the protein producing factories within cells at the atomic level.
I did not understand what this research is all about. But I do understand a message that comes loud and clear year after year. Indian researchers shine outside the country. Scientists, economists, litterateurs there are so many Indian-origin experts. But most of them have been seen shining from foreign soil. Why is it that the Indian brain functions better when it is in American laboratories? What is it in Indian laboratories that do not fuel that same brain to become Nobel achievers?
The answer clearly lies in the Indian government’s apathy towards indigenous research and development. In fact, last year, Kapil Sibal as Science and technology minister admitted in Parliament that the number of core researchers was 1.5 lakh as compared to 8-10 lakh in China. He said in Scandinavian countries, there were 7,000 researchers per million people, in the US, there were 4,700 researchers per million people, while in India, there were 156 researchers per million people. (Source: The Financial Express, 2008).
Many Indian brains leave the country to pursue higher studies abroad, especially to the US. We Indians keep complaining about this drain of brain. But we never seem to stop and think that these brains dump our country because of its underprivileged and undernourished universities, and, instead, choose to enrich the research laboratories of the West.
Take the case of the 2009 Nobel winner, Mr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. His place of birth is Chidambaram, a town in Tamil Nadu. His hall of fame: the US.
But we Indians excel in gushing about the Indian connections of these achievers, without contributing towards their success. In fact, the media has already started brazenly gloating about this “Indian” who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Soon, there will be sound bytes and print columns dedicated to this “Indian” who “battled all odds to bag this prestigious prize”. The government will probably honour him, and even host him for a Rashtrapati Bhavan dinner.
Drawing an analogy, this attitude is like a mother who has no time for the baby, and gets a nanny to do a proxy. Bu the mother conveniently walks away with the credit when the child becomes an achiever, without having contributed her time, effort and patience.
Will the Indian government ever wake up to recognize and tap local research talent stemming from local universities to produce an indigenous Nobel achiever? Can our mother take care of us? Or is India happy with one C.V. Raman, an indigenous Nobel laureate?

'Vulgar' tokenism

The government has now trained its austerity gun on the chief executive officers. First, it got ministers to travel “cattle class”. When the ministers were asked to travel by budget airlines, at first glance, it seemed a welcome decision. But it was soon reduced to another political tokenism, frustrating the entire exercise. The area surrounding these heavily cashed cows travelling this cattle class was cordoned off, milking the exchequer even more than what the executive class would have done. When Rahul Gandhi decided to travel by Shatabdi, it was splashed all over the media, electronic and print. However, few read the fine print: Three coaches accompanying this political scion were “booked” for security reasons.
Now minister of state for corporate affairs Salman Khursheed has requested corporates to refrain from paying “vulgar” salaries to CEOs. This move has been blindly borrowed from the West, which has been taking steps to trim CEO pay packets to counter the economic downturn. Of course, Khursheed has added a dash of desi byte to spice up his austerity funda by saying: “I don’t think anyone in India today, in politics or outside politics... has reached the level of liberalism where vulgarity is also a fundamental right,” he has said. “We are moving away from control to regulation. But it does not mean that you are going to be completely free.”
The minister also feels the time is to discourage conspicuous consumption. He has supplemented his comment with figures: the annual pay of at least one CEO works out to over Rs 50 crore — more than 12,500 times the per capita income in the country.
Pearls of wisdom, and very well put. Thank you, minister.
I agree, the enriched corporate world has not really been socially responsible. But, can the government please stop playing this politics of tokenism time and again?
Let me start with the assets of politicians. Maharashtra is going to polls next week. Every day, the newspapers focus on a constituency, listing those who are in the fray and their assets. These “declared” assets run into several thousand crores for most aspirants. Agreed, Maharashtra (housing the infamous suicide belt) is the nation’s cash cow. Let us not be naïve about the multiple benami land holdings, luxury farmhouses and other assets these ministerial aspirants possess. Where is austerity?
In a country like India, festivals and wedding dry up most of the household resources. With this festive season, news space on every newspaper has shrunk, giving way to advertisements from clothes and jewellery, to exotic sweets and even designer diyas. And, whatever the social strata, Indians will spend a chunk of their income on these. Where is austerity?
Indian weddings are just getting fatter. In 2007, it was Rs 1.25 trillion. It is expected to jump by 25 per cent this year. The size of Indian weddings of course is directly proportional to the income group. So the haves will obviously say: have it, will spend it. But even the poorest families will beg, borrow or steal (to use a cliché) to buy the groom a gold chain and cycle, or even a motorcycle. And, the middle class, caught between the top and bottom, is always struggling to keep pace with the haves. Where is austerity?
The government’s austerity drive is hollow. It is like an antibiotic, trying to suppress the pain, and always ignoring the long-term agony. Will we ever get serious on serious issues and not get stuck with this political tokenism? Let us, instead, talk about reaching education, healthcare and sanitation to the every nook. Shall we stop talking about austerity and concentrate on the austere needs of this country?

No kidding!

Channel-surfing, admittedly a colossal waste of time, got me too see Rakhi Sawant trying to silence a wailing infant for a reality show, Pati, Patni aur Woh. Did I see a baby she was trying to manage? My doubt was cleared after two days when I read a news story that a child rights group has petitioned the information and broadcasting minister to stop telecast of Pati, Patni aur Woh, citing health hazards to newborns and toddlers who feature in it.
So baby it was. But what was the baby doing on the show? The show, I read, was about parenting, tracing the journey of five celebrity couples from the eighth month of pregnancy to taking care of an infant, toddler and a teenager.
This Indian version of the BBC show, Baby Borrowers, has, thankfully hit the roadblock. How else can one explain this blatant exploitation of infants? The channel producers are, of course, claiming that the real parents of these infants will be monitoring the babies on a closed-circuit television. But what of the infants, who are throw into unknown arms and have no idea where their parents are and for how long they are to endure this surrogate parenting?
This is reality television show at its worst. Reality shows have become the biggest money spinners for channels. First, it started with singing competitions. Then it went on to dance performances. Now every language channel has these talent shows, with fat prize money and big sponsors. These shows were initially confined to adults or teen-adults. But once the kid versions began, aspiring parents, desperate to see their children on television and, win prizes, are in a tizzy. This spurt in reality talent shows on television has got parents to dream big. Once on television, these children are exposed to very stiff and insensitive judges, which could be detrimental to their psyche. Comparisons and competition, which fan negativity among children, are what get these shows their TRPs.
Even residential gated communities, organizing small-scale festival programmes, have special prizes for best dressed male child and female child! Why? Most parents dress up the child with an eye on the prize, however uncomfortable the clothes are for their children. Another example is the fancy dress competitions organized by schools. Children are made to wear the most complicated outfits to look as weird and fancy as possible to catch the judges’ attention.
Indian parenting has become a high-pressure area. Showcase pressure on parents, and performance pressure on children. There is pressure on parents to showcase their children’s talent. Parents push their aspirations onto children, and goad them into becoming toppers. This pressure has robbed the children off their innocence, making them puppets on parents’ hands. So, after school, they are pushed into tuitions for the top grades in school. Then into various hobby classes, where they are expected to perform well.
It is certainly necessary for children to pursue a few hobbies, be it music or dance or a sport. Parents, in fact, must expose kids into various activities. But then the children have the right to decide what they want to pursue.
So what is the next reality in store for children? Is it Fear Factor/Khatron ke Khiladi for kids between 5-15 years? You never know!

Im'print'ing bias

The Times of India carried a story on the front page with the headline: On Dashami, Muslim housewife kills Laskhar terrorist with an axe.
Muslim housewife? Dashami? What is the link? When you read the story, it talks about Ram vanquishing Raavan and Durga slaying the demon, and therefore, on Dashami, a Muslim housewife slays the modern rakshas, a Lashkar terrorist. We tend to get carried away by the Dusshera mood , but carrying a news story with this hackneyed comparison is taking it too far.
The print media is now getting desperate. In trying to compete with the electronic media, it is trying out all possible gimmickry in headlines and handling of news stories to steal the eyeballs from the LED generation, which prefers the visual deafening screams of our news anchors to the quiet written words. In the process, news stories have ceased to be neutral.
The event was certainly newsworthy, but its presentation was problematic. Why should the media ascribe religious identity to the housewife, who has displayed raw courage in killing a dreaded terrorist? What would the news headline and news writing style be if the woman was a Hindu?
According to the report, the terrorist tried to misbehave with the woman, and was, therefore, axed to death. This is a story of a woman defending herself from a groping man, who happened to be a terrorist. Is courage or self-defence bound by religion? Gender, yes. Religion?
The presentation reveals the ugly truth that along with politicians, the media, too, has become a pawn in the communal game.
Journalists are meant to be passive observers and active listeners, with attention to detail. Their observation and attention must be translated into impartial reportage. What we read instead are views of reporters in the guise of reporting. Another example: the day the law minister Veerappa Moily announced measures to speed up the justice system in the country, a newspaper report said: In a country where courts take decades to deliver verdicts, this is sure to sound audacious. Law minister Veerappa Moily is attempting the unthinkable -- reducing the life of litigation from an average 15 years at present to one year, and that too in just three years from now.
What the law minister says might actually sound audacious. But a newsperson is not supposed to lace his/her report with opinionated phrases like “this is sure to sound audacious” and “Moily is attempting the unthinkable”.
Moily might really be attempting the unthinkable. But who is the reporter to debate that in a news report and, in the process, bias the reader? In the same line, the report says, “…and that too in just three years from now”. The use of the four-letter word “just” just changes the report from being objective to subjective.
We all have strong opinions, and the media has space for analysis and opinions. It is tempting to pass judgements on events. But it is in sensible reporting/anchoring to resist such temptation.

Behavioural 'hom'ily

• Our Home Minister wants Delhiites to behave. This sudden discipline alert comes in the wake of the Commonwealth games that the capital city will host next year. He has said that in the past many years, he had not noticed any change in the behaviour of Delhiites.
  Why single out Delhiites? Is it because it is the national capital, the drawing room of our home, which we like to showcase for our guests for that first impression? Mr home minister, dusting and cleaning up the drawing room is not enough. Why don’t you suggest a revamp of the whole house, which is untidy and in a mess?
  We Indians like to “show” that we are disciplined and clean. So while the drawing rooms in our house are kept well, the insides tell a different story. And, we pass this thinking to our children too, who feel it is okay to live in a messed up environment. And we carry the same method in disciplining our children. How many of us police them on their talking/behaving at home? But we expect them to “behave” when guests are around, or when we take them out.
  Ditto is our home ministry’s mentality. The commonwealth games are approaching and the errant Indian need to clean up his/her act. So the minister says stop jumping signals, stop flouting traffic rules, stop jaywalking, stop spitting on roads, stop breaking civic rules etc etc. But why do we have to wait for an occasion to “start behaving” ourselves. Why cannot we Indians just start inculcating the values of good civic life and set an example for the younger generation, with or without high-profile guests gracing our nation?
  Mr Chidambaram has also said, “Those coming to Delhi from other places in the country must accept the discipline of living in a big city. We are not living in countryside. We are living in a city. Therefore, we must behave as citizens of a big city.” So does he mean we can get ruthlessly unruly in countryside without a damn for discipline? This irresponsible “cattle class” statement reeks of a wannabe.
  A thought on our cities, big and small: we have signals, flyovers, zebra crossings, stop lines, overhead bridges and underground subways for pedestrians, and traffic police to monitor these. But vehicles, not just the "ordinary" 800 ccs, but also the super luxury BMWs, Mercs and Skodas, jump signals, cross the stop line and hog the zebra space when the red light is on, with pedestrians given no choice but to cross the road past the zebra crossing. In fact, I have even seen these so-called luxury car travellers, lowering the tinted glass windows and throwing waste paper/plastic out on the road. Oops! That is the education our children are getting on road and civic sense. Let us not blame the next generation. They just follow what they have seen at home and on the road.
  But just observe the same lot when they step out of our country. They are extra careful about keeping the foreign country and its countryside clean. And, the same set come to India and complain of bad roads, bad traffic, litter and a host of “wrong behavior” that seem to irritate them! Never mind our Indian "guests".
• This message is for the Indians who chose to stay, or did not have any choice to move out. There is filth, traffic, chaos and indiscipline. But let us not just wait for a Commonwealth games or an Olympics to clean up our dirty roads and filthy manners. Chidambaram’s message is too narrow-minded. He must at least take this opportunity to encompass the entire nation for the clean-up message. It is time the police, civic authorities and the people begin to get sensitive about keeping the house and its inmates in order for ourselves, rather than to show the outsiders what we are.
  

Clipping the wings

Sharad Pawar finally decided to fly the “crammed” economy class with a commercial airline. After a lot of fuss and furor, ministers are slowly weaning themselves away from the luxurious lap of business class comfort.
The monsoons have failed and the clouds of drought are looming over the nation. The UPA government, in an austerity mood swing, requested ministers to go slow on their lavish lifestyles to show solidarity with the less fortunate farming community.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s repeated requests to ministers to trim costs were, however, not without friction. Unhappy ministers were trying to justify their five-star accommodations and fancy travel arrangements. The suave Shashi Tharoor, chose to enter public service, but wanted to keep his privacy intact. He preferred a five-star stay to Kerala House because it had “no gym or privacy”, to quote him. S.M. Krishna was also censured for staying in five-star comfort, though he claimed he was on a Spartan diet of the made-in-Taj sambhar, rice and rasam. Both claimed to have sponsored their stay.
Sharad Pawar felt flying economy class would curb his privacy, and would leave him without time for seeing files. How many files will Mr Pawar clear on-board, that he does not while sitting in his office. A flight to anywhere in India could take two to two-and-a-half hours. Of this, some time would be spent on on-board snacking. Or does he refuse his snack? At least, his frame belies that.
There were other issues of the travails of travelling by economy class like seats being inhospitable to the “tall order”. The repeated austerity announcements shocked and shook our khadi-clad politicians. They ultimately sobered down, especially after the media splashed ugly stories and edits on the wailing, fussy politicians. Despite loving their “privacy”, their image took a beating in public, and that is where their vote count is.
The austerity drive by the government is, no doubt, a good decision. But it is rather difficult to snatch this opulence from ministers suddenly after letting them savour expensive tastes. The country’s leaders must learn to disembark from this orbit of luxury cushioned by public money at all times. The obscene amount of money being spent on them could be channelised and spent for deprived sectors like public health, housing and education. The ministers could spare a thought towards the 41.6 per cent of population (approximately 445 million) that is living below the poverty line. (Source: http://www.ijcm.org.)%0d/
The reason for quoting this report is to juxtapose this scenario, coupled with the threat of drought, with the heavy ministerial balance sheet, showing inflated travel and telephone bills. The government talks austerity only when there is crisis. Why must there be a crisis to trigger this reaction?
Our politicians treat their ministerial berths like a five-year recurring deposit scheme, helping themselves to luxury benefits and suitcase politicking, squeezing the coffers dry. Is there no hope?

Infertile imagination

Rajdeep Sardesai signed off a news capsule saying, “What Bengal thinks today, the country has thought yesterday”. This CNN-IBN news channel boss, referring to the West Bengal government cancelling the IT project, obviously needs a lesson or two on objective news presentation.
Anyway, the point here is not really on our loud and opinionated television anchors. The issue here is the way the media, both electronic and print, have been projecting the scrapping of the IT park project near Kolkata as a day of mourning for West Bengal. Infosys and Wipro were to set up an IT park on the delightfully fertile land. The media reacted as if the decision has denied the IT giants of nourishing Bengal, starving after the Nano pullout.
This question rattles me on and off: Is development only about industrialisation? Or can we really get on to a fast track with giant agricultural strides?
Why are the states, and even the media, not showing maturity in understanding development. It is a myth that only industrialization will grant high returns and generate employment opportunities. This myopia has to be corrected. We can, if we look in that direction, tap the rich agricultural opportunities, and convert them into a highly advanced industry. This will, in turn, generate unbelievably good work prospects.
Every state has different geographical identities. While few states have highly productive and fertile land, the others have to work harder for increasing soil efficiency. The states having greater capacity for agriculture can be tapped for just that, rather than trying desperately to woo industries.
West Bengal is a case in point. It is nestled in the most fertile part of the Gangetic plain, where the Ganges deposits rich alluvial soil as it meanders in its final course before ending up in the Bay of Bengal. This delta is nature’s bounty to the country. No wonder then that the state occupies around three per cent of India’s productive land, with more than eight per cent of the country’s food being generated by the state’s agricultural sector, cultivating 68 per cent of the total area (source: http://business.mapsofindia.com/state-agriculture/west-bengal-agriculture.html).
Naturally, agriculture becomes the major means of livelihood in Bengal, especially after the effective land reforms. In fact, until 1980s, West Bengal recorded a slow agricultural growth.
According to data available for the period from 1980-81 to 1998-99, while the average annual growth of foodgrain production for all major states was 2.5 per cent, the corresponding rate of growth for west Bengal was highest at 4.2 per cent (source: www.rdiland.org/PDF/PDF_reports/RDI_112.pdf). And, increase in yields per acre has also been impressive, with 3.5 per cent in relation to 2.8 per cent in other states.
These changes were possible by private investments in groundwater irrigation. The agrarian reforms had created a favourable climate for such private investment in agriculture.
The state has also registered remarkable growth in vegetable production in recent years. But more important than agricultural growth is the uplift of West Bengal’s rural population, including its poorest sections. West Bengal’s poverty line dipped from 60 per cent in 1977 to 25.1 per cent in 1997 (35 percentage points) as compared to 29.1 percentage points in the all-India level (source: planning commission data). The state scores in cash crop production too, with tea and jute as its major revenue spinners.
However, the agricultural growth in West Bengal declined significantly in the mid-1990s from an impressive growth rate of the 1980s. There has been a sharp fall in yield growth during the 1990s. But with changing the dynamics of crop diversification, the state can exploit the advantages of globalization to achieve a higher growth rate.
So can we spare a thought on how we can leverage the wealth of agricultural land and pour in investments to magnify employment prospects in that sector? Let us not assume that agriculture will not fetch high returns.
In a federal set-up, states are meant to co-exist, constantly exchanging ideas and technology. We can easily earmark agriculturally productive states and get them take the lead in providing food for the nation, while the relatively barren states can take care of hosting industrial zones. After all, India is one big nation. Every state can have its own area of expertise. Why should there be a race for brutally killing the fields to attract industrial investments to become a me-too industrialised state? Why should there be a tournament for bagging the most industrial contracts?
But more than that, why should the media bias towards industrialization shape public opinion or policy decisions? In spite of negative inflation, food bills are pinching hard. Bengal is unwittingly keeping the right path. So Mr Sardesai, what Bengal is thinking today, the nation will think only tomorrow.

Democratic dynasties

Mauryas, Guptas, Rashtrakutas, Satvahanas, Cheras, Cholas, Pandyas, Khaljis, Tughlaqs, Mughals…in ancient and medieval India.
Gandhi, Karunanidhi, Pawar, Abdullah, Scindia, Prasada, Patnaik, Pilot, Thackeray, and now Reddy in post –Independent India.
In our history lessons on ancient and medieval India, there would be maps indicating various dynasties holding sway over India: the Mauryas and Guptas based in Patliputra, the Kushans in north-east India, the Gaudas of Bengal, the Pallavas, Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras of south India, the Bahamani and Vijayanagara kingdoms of the Deccan (mostly Andhra Pradesh), and of course the Mughal’s pan-Indian reach.
Will tomorrow’s history lessons be similar? Will the pages have accounts of the Karunanidhis of Tamil Nadu, the Pawars of Maharashtra, the Patnaiks of Orissa, the Abdullahs of Kashmir, the Scindias of Gwalior…and the Congress’ Nehru-Gandhi-Vadhra(?) with its countrywide reach?
Why is it that one of the largest democratic institutions nurtures the growth of dynastic regimes? Probably Mahatma Gandhi got wind of this Indian tendency to resume the dynastic system even in a democracy. He had asked for dismantling of the Congress party post-Independence. Obviously, Jawaharlal Nehru felt otherwise. His political ambitions for his daughter reaffirmed his feeling of “ownership” of the Congress. He groomed his daughter Indira, who nurtured son, Sanjay, and after his sudden death, Rajiv. Then post-Rajiv Gandhi, the sycophants took over to “force” a “reluctant” Sonia Gandhi to control the reigns of Congress ownership...sorry leadership. The foreign origin issue came between Sonia and the prime ministerial chair. So her son, Rahul, emerged in the political space. Her daughter, Priyanka, is still a key player, though she is yet to reveal her political wings.
Karunanidhi had already set the stage for his son, M.K. Stalin, to lead the DMK in Tamil Nadu. His estranged son, Azhagiri, was confined to being a Madurai muscleman. In this age of coalition politics, where Dravidian ideals splintered and found representation in several political groups, he rebuilt the burnt bridge with Azhagiri and ensured his place in the Manmohan ministry. His daughter and cultural heir, Kanimozhi, has also been given a “fair” deal in the Tamil political space. Karunanidhi has managed to distribute his political property among his children. His is one big happy family now.
The Abdullahs, Scindias, Pilots, Patnaiks and Pawars have all added to the great Indian dynastic bouquet.
Wonder why the Indian polity fails to look beyond the closed circuit of family members to accommodate the sincere party workers out to make a difference in the system?
Now, yet another state in democratic India is violently succumbing to dynastic tendencies. Violently, because there have been demonstrations, protests and violence by a Congress camp rooting for Jagan Mohan Reddy, the 38-year-old son of Y.S.R. Reddy, who was killed in the helicopter crash last week, as chief minister. Even before Reddy senior’s funeral, the sycophants had begun pushing for the case of Reddy junior. The hysterical spate of resignation threats and dissidence to prop Jagan Mohan Reddy has only fueled the political greenhorn‘s chief ministerial ambition. He is currently basking in this hero worship.
Will India ever be able to get out of this dynastic noose? Shall we get out of the medieval mindset to evolve as a mature democratic institution?

Killing the fields

Farmers in Maharashtra’s four villages, Wagholi, Kesnand, Bakori and Lonikhand, have succeeded in getting the proposed Videocon Special Economic Zone (SEZ) scraped after a two-year struggle. The Maharashtra government's decision has, no doubt, been made with a hawk eye on the October Assembly elections. But if this decision helps salvage the agricultural landscape, election sop operas are pleasant music.
This is a triumph for the farmers who have been precariously facing the prospect of being deprived of their irrigational land to make way for a corporate entity. The politicians (read state chief ministers) have been flashing this SEZ card by doubling up as land sharks, sincerely usurping lush, agriculturally productive land to curry favour with big investors. In this race to “attract” investments, they have been constantly throttling farming as a means of livelihood.
Unfortunately for the landowners, the government has always been in a position to “wrest” land for development, as per the archaic land acquisition laws. The colonial power seized land in the name of development using the Bengal Regulation Act, 1824, whereby it could acquire land for constructing roads, canals and other public works, after paying compensation. In 1850, the ambit of this law was expanded to include acquisition for railways. Post-Independence, the Nehruvian era saw construction of dams, fondly called modern temples by our first Prime Minister, and other heavy engineering units, displacing farmers. This divorce of agriculture and industrialization has made India tread the lopsided development path. The number of people displaced by these projects between 1951 and 1995 is estimated at 50 million people (source: http://www.indiatogether.org/).
The Indian government’s latest muscle for land acquisition, the SEZ Act of 1995, allows the state machinery to broker a land deal between land owners (mostly farmers) and industrialists for setting up special economic zones. The act also enables the government to shower benevolence on the capitalist machinery with tax cuts and other obscene fiscal benefits.
This is at best a draconian measure. Why should the government twist the arms of the unwilling farmers? The states are queuing up with best land prices to lure investors in their respective states. So in what is a battle of money and muscle, a Narendra Modi effortlessly upstages a Buddhadev Bhattacharjee or a Naveen Patnaik at the SEZ auction ring.
Large tracts of cultivable land are being doled out for industrialisation. The real estate developers are completing the ugly circle. I am not against industrialisation. But there could be a workable ratio between cultivable and non-cultivable land, with the former strictly not being used for non-agricultural purposes. Otherwise, what will happen to our nation's food security? The monsoons have failed this year, ushering in a possible drought. The agriculture ministry has just stopped short of ringing the alarm bells. It claims last year’s surplus food grains will be tapped to fulfill this year’s crisis.
Shall we spare a thought for planning a sustained food production enterprise? Food is getting scarce because land used for that purpose is shrinking. It is high time the government machinery wakes up to the abuse of agricultural land. Already, we are leaving behind a planet in ruins for the next generation. By killing the rice and wheat fields using the "development" weapon, are we leaving behind an empty granary for our children?

Nau se baraah...

Chalti hai kya nau se barah…….
Salman Khan now wants to be part of the constellation of the IPL galaxy. Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgan, too, want a slice of the heavily cherried IPL pie. .. Already, we have The Khan, the pretty Zinta, and the Ms ‘Goody two shoes’ Shilpa in the IPL orbit, which has bastardised one of the most stylish sports ever.
Welcome to the greatest Indian tamasha. Indian entertainment has gone up several notches above the “average” big-budget 70-mm multi-crore, multi-star extravaganzas. The silver screen makes way for the green turf for heroes in designer jerseys with the fattest pay-cheques after having auctioned themselves to flashy, over-sized sunglassed filmstars. The show goes on…but the venue has shifted. The line between the movie theatre’s box-office and the stadium counter is blur. Both these arenas are entertainment centres. Both have big money, stars, music and scripted performances.
I am no cricket expert. But I do understand the nuances of the game to the extent that I realize this version of popcorn cricket cannot hold a candle to the classical melody of the gentleman’s game. Cricket writer Omar Kureishi had once said, “Test match was like ballet dancing, and one-day international belly dancing.” Then what of Twenty-20… Rakhi Sawant’s item number?
I am not a purist or a snob to pooh-pooh the game’s synoptic version. It could probably be the only way to attract the young, whose attention span can take in only the game’s dwarfed version. How many have the time or patience for the five-day affair? But, it could have remained just a dwarfed version. But what we now have is a foray into the world of brazen greed. The auction system has corporatised these players with fancy price tags. And, if this was not enough, the endorsements take care of the gaps in their bank passbooks.
Thank you, Lalit Modi, for making cricket a great business option for millionaires to multiply their millions. Thank you for pulling a fast one on these gullible spectators, who are taken for a ride for three hours without their knowledge. At least, the movies do not feign sincerity. The movies are here to con us, and they try to do it well. But the people pay to watch the IPL tamasha, wearing their city allegiance on their sleeves. And, the players go laughing and rolling all the way to bank, hoodwinking the naïve sport-lovers. They could watch the unpretentious Karan Johar/Yash Chopra film instead, which anyway has a high celeb quotient. Why opt for the IPL? Is it because of the hot cabaret numbers, oops... dances by cheer leaders for every big hit or miss? Is it because of the loudspeakers blaring songs of the star, whose team takes to the field?
Whatever it is….Chalti hai kya nau se baraah?

Knot comfortable

A handful of Mumbai schools have made a very student-friendly decision: they have thrown out the painfully uncomfortable tie and thick shirts/pinafores from students’ cupboards, opting for T-shirts/loose cotton shirts and soft denims. At last, the authorities have woken up to the fact that India is a tropical country and it makes no sense to carry on with the temperate-conditioned British style of getting children starched and tied up. Going to school must begin with a comfortable feeling, as that will translate into an enthusiasm to soak in the already punishing curriculum.
This long overdue action is a great lesson for other schools in the country to emulate. Imagine LKG children, who have to grapple with starched shirts buttoned up till the neck to hold the readymade, knotted tie that is clipped at the back. This only adds to their discomfort as they are already crying, being thrown into this ocean of strange women who are not their mothers, and children who are not their siblings or playmates.
This takes me on a flashback to my play-schooled daughter’s first step in a “regular” school: She was drowned in her thick dark blue skirt, a white shirt buttoned till the neck, and a tie. All these in Chennai’s June. She hated wearing the tie, and threw a fit. I then sent her without the tie for almost a week. But the school minders would ask me to make her wear the tie. She hated her school and so did I. Then I stitched her tie to her shirt so that it was not “tied” to her neck. Still, it was such a pathetic sight to see her and other children howling, more due to discomfort. Why couldn’t these schools shake off this colonial fossil?
Thankfully, my daughter got into another school after her brief stint there. The school, of course, was good in all respects. But when my daughter wore the uniform of her new school, the first thing she said was: “I like this school. This has no tie”.
I do subscribe to uniforms in school. It is the greatest leveler. But schools have to budge from their starched attitude, and make way for brighter and easier clothes for children. In fact, these same schools indoctrinate children in their geography lessons on the types of clothes people choose to wear in different parts of the world according to their climatic conditions. Then why make these children sit through these classes in weather-unfriendly clothes.
It is mandatory for girls in conservative schools to wear salwar-kameez. At least they make no bones about their conservatism. But even a number of mainstream schools are making the girls wear salwar-kameez-dupatta from class seven. These schools argue that “grown up” girls need to cover themselves up, specially because they are studying with boys. How much skin would a knee-length skirt show? Or is a dupatta pinned to the shoulders enough to conceal the girl’s frame. Would a loose shirt or T-shirt not suffice? By bringing in this dupatta culture, the school authorities are only instilling gender consciousness, which is not healthy in a co-educational set-up. This will only make the girls more aware of their femininity and the boys more curious about their unnecesarily covered-up classmates.

Jas chilled

Jaswant Singh bites the dust. The BJP silently assassinated his political career because he sang paeans of the man who made Pakistan happen: Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
The BJP, already bruised by in-house wrangling, justified its abrupt action, saying Jaswant Singh’s comments in his book, Jinnah: India-partition-Independence, went against the party’s ideological position. The struggling party’s emerging muscle man, Narendra Modi, banned the book in his Gujarat, citing that Jaswant has not been too generous with Sardar Vallabhai Patel. And, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka may follow suit.
Modi reportedly raised this issue at the party’s chintan baithak, saying comments on Patel could affect the BJP’s prospect in Gujarat. So what if Patel was a staunch Congressman, who as Home Minister had banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) after the Mahatma’s assassination!
The unceremonious move against Jaswant Singh, without allowing him to offer any explanation, is at best a desperate attempt by the party to gain mileage after its electoral debacle and the rebellion brewing in Rajasthan over the marching orders to the former chief minister, Vijayaraje Scindia.
Political parties, specially the Congress, have lost no time in giving quick bytes against Jaswant Singh’s munificence to Jinnah. Now they are all obviously playing the nationalist card and the best way to do that is to deride whatever is Pakistan. But in all this, it is rather depressing to find intolerance creeping into every aspect of creativity.
It is a known historical fact that Jinnah was indeed an advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity during the struggle for independence. He sought the knifing of Hindustan only after Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleague Sardar Patel refused to agree to an equitable power-sharing agreement between Hindus and Muslims in independent India. A research work by Pakistani historian, Ayesha Jalal, published more than 15 years ago, clearly points to Nehru’s obsession of centralized control used by the British in India, and hence Jinnah’s raising his pitch for Pakistan. No wonder then, that Jaswant Singh’s depiction of Nehru has ruffled the Congress feathers, too.
Hindustan was anyway a creation of British imperialism as small independent states and kingdoms were amalgamated for the purpose of administration. Again, the animosity between the Hindus and Muslims was a creation of the empire’s divide and rule strategy. Later, the idea of partition in the already troubled run-up to the Transfer of Power was sown to foster the political ambitions of young Indian leaders, who were destined to shape the sub-continent’s polity. Now who sowed those bitter seeds will remain a matter of debate. Was it Jinnah, Nehru, Patel? Or was it the ultimate imperialist design?
Whatever is documented in the pages of history, or will emerge following further research, the fact is no political entity has come out against the Indian polity’s intolerance and its throttling of the freedom of expression. These same parties had hogged multiple news columns against acts of intolerance of fundamentalist outfits: whether it was for Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses or Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja, or even M.F. Husain’s depiction of Saraswati.
Before the book is banned in other parts of the country by the saffronites or the white-capped dynastic followers, I’d better grab a copy for myself.

A dressing down

Lubna Hussein, a Sudan journalist, faces up to 40 lashes if found guilty of dressing indecently that is wearing jeans.
But let us not dismiss this off as an incident in far away Sudan. Closer home, we have enough and more moral policemen trying to “protect” our society. Whether it is a diktat by a militant organization in Kashmir on college-going girls to wear burkas; or a Hindu fundamentalist organization clenching their fists on noodle-straps; or even university authorities coming down heavily on girls wearing jeans and T-shirts; moral policing is here to stay.
In most cases, parents are the first moral policemen. So when the girl starts “growing up”, wearing tight T-shirts are not really encouraged. I am not referring to that minuscule section of society which does not disallow girl children from wearing what they want. I am referring to that bigger chunk of society's conscience-keepers who believe their girls wearing such clothes post-puberty could invite eagle-eyed eve teasers.
Honestly, how many Indian families allow their girls to wear “what they want”? But this is the section that relies on public transport. Naturally, wearing such clothes could invite unkind glances and lewd comments, thanks to Bollywood and its eve-teaser hero who finally gets his eve. Again, I remember, films where the heroine gets chided by her paramour for wearing clothes not befitting a “girl from good family”! The girl promptly gets a wardrobe overhaul done and covers herself adequately; of course after her share of skin show in the first half of the film for the audience’s paisa vasool!
Today, jeans is a dirty word for girls in colleges and universities. They are banned in campus. It has to be only salwar kameez or saris. In fact, there is a dress code for even women teachers in some schools and colleges.
There is a dress code to enter certain temples. In fact, in a Kerala temple, girls cannot wear salwar-kameez, but only sarees. So what if their blouses have a plunging neckline! In fact, the explanation for the temple dress code is that the art of stitching was introduced to Indian by Muslims. Hence, the reluctance to allow stitched clothes like salwar-kameez.
Then we encounter a group of hooligans which calls itself Ram Sene and targets "loose women" in a Mangalore pub. They were loose not only because they wore noodle-strap blouses, but also because they indulged in intoxication, again the exclusive preserve of the male fraternity.
There is, of course, a parallel feminist debate on the purpose of wearing bold clothes exclusively to invite the male gaze, which goes against the feminist grain. Again, women are their target. So in their annual protests against the beauty pageant business, it is the women who are held guilty for skin show for commercial purposes.
No conclusion here. Just an observation and a cry of helplessness...

Bloody swine

Pune is living in fear, being the epicentre of the deadly swine flu attack. Alarmed by the reach of its ugly tentacles, we in Pune are slowly turning into hypochondriacs. A sneeze or a cough is becoming reason enough for us to press the panic button.
But the panic is not really because of fear of being attacked by the virus, but the logistics of its treatment. There is chaos in the two hospitals, assigned to test and treat swine flu victims. Naturally, people are rushing there even if they have a common cold. Not really their fault because the symptoms of swine flu and common influenza are identical. The burden also fell heavily on the testing centre. Only yesterday, the Maharashtra government assigned five private hospitals to treat H1N1 cases.
But the Maharashtra government did a classic Nero-like act last week when it met to discuss the swine flu situation. It decided to grant permission to realtors for building high-rises of 100 metres! That is the level of commitment of our political leaders!
Mercifully, the government is now slowly waking up to the menacing virus. Pune has become a ghost town. Schools and colleges have been closed for a week. Emulating the Mexico model, the government has asked movie theatres and malls to shut shop and advised people to stay indoors unless absolutely essential. All these measures could have been taken last week when there were warning signs, and one fatality. It is frightening that more cities are now coming under the threat.
But there are questions which need to be answered. Is the media playing a responsible role, or it is ‘the’ reason for the deafening alarm bells? In its hunger for bytes and updates, has it sensationalised the epidemic (pandemic could be a better word considering its geographical reach)?
There is also a constant comparison with the West, where despite Swine flu having affected more people, there does not seem to be trepidation. Then did the Western media deliberately downplay the spread of the disease?
Whatever the media coverage, there is a bigger question mark on the abysmal Indian health care system and the allocation of budget for this sector. It remains low year after year. The health care sector has been silently subsidising the government’s tax-break largesse for industrial and IT sectors to facilitate its double-digit growth projection.
Hygiene and sanitation remain a distant dream in public health care. Corruption has added to the muck in the system. Amid an emerging national health emergency, it is high time our country develops a sound political will to improve public health care to handle such epidemics with maturity.

Statue'tory' gesture

Statues of politicians, patriots, poets, saints, film stars, and now even party symbols have been a source of public expenditure and discord in India. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has reportedly spent Rs 2,000 crores for erecting statues of her mentor Kanshi Ram, herself and even the party symbol, elephant, as her state is reeling under a drought-like situation.
The Kannagi statue, among those innumerable ones dotting the Marina in Chennai, was removed when the AIADMK’s Jayalalitha came to power. She stated vastu as a reason for removing it. The removal of this “symbol of Tamil womanhood” ruffled the DMK feathers. So when it resumed power four years ago, the first decision it took was to restore the statue at its place. Major decision-making this was for a government, plagued by an agrarian crisis, caste battles and water shortage!
Now, the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments are into “statue diplomacy”. In what appears to be a puerile attempt at assuaging the sentiments of Tamils in Karnataka and Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu, both the governments have readied statues of Thiruvalluvar, the Tamil poet who penned Thirukkural, in Bangalore, and that of Sarvagna, Kannada poet-philosopher, in Chennai. While Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi unveiled the statue of Thiruvalluvar in Bangalore “amid tight security and threats of violence”, his Karnataka counterpart, B.S. Yeddyurappa, is slated to come to Chennai on August 13 to fulfill his side of the deal. The riot police are on call in both the states to confront any possible unrest between Tamil and Kannada chauvinists following this effort. But will this political gesture embalm the heartburn generated by linguistic jingoism?
Obviously, the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments have not been sincere enough to calm parochial tempers. In fact, it is to their advantage to play the provincial card. Both the state governments seem to have sunk their will to resolve the Cauvery water dispute. So during the harvest each year, the river whips up the parochial wave, engulfing people’s regional sentiments. The dispute over the Hogenakkal power plant has been another cause for concern.
Yeddyurappa has said during the unveiling of Thiruvalluvar’s statue, "We are Indians first, and Kannadigas and Tamils next.” Let us sincerely hope this is not reduced to just a fancy soundbite.
Instead of this statue diplomacy, there could be a sincere attempt at invoking the words and wisdom of these and other great poets of these states to stem parochial sentiments.
However, if the statue diplomacy really helps, political leaders in Maharashtra could probably borrow a leaf of this political tokenism. Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi, has redefined locals as those who have Marathi-speaking parents! The original Shiv Sena version of locals was those who had lived in Maharashtra for 15 years. This blatant plagiarism of Raj Thackeray’s Marathi manoos campaign is a good enough reason for us to track the Assembly elections in Maharashtra scheduled for later this year. But those not really championing the cause of original Marathis can begin googling for poets and saints from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other north Indian states!

Bonding or binding

August 2 was friendship day. And, this yet-another American contribution to our society has caught the imagination of young, urban Indian children.
My daughter, all of 7, asked me on August 1 if I could buy her “friendship bands”. I knew I had to face this someday. She had made a neat list, dividing her friends into “apartment list” and “school list”. So I took her out and started checking out this ultimate form of consumerist culture. The first one that caught her eye (and mine too) was a colourful beaded band. The busy shopkeeper, who was already handling four other buyers of such bands , quickly came out with a “thirty rupees” madam. “what?” I asked, not sure that I heard him say Thirty rupees. He repeated, with some irritation, that it was thirty. I was flabbergasted. Thirty for a band. And my daughter’s list showed 17 friends, and two extra bands! This meant I would be shelling out Rs 570 for those bands which would probably be redundant after that friendly exchange of bonding and binding bands!
I started looking around for a cheaper variety. Though my daughter loved those beaded ones, I had to distract her to some colourful ones, which were cheaper. But they, too, were in the Rs 15-20 bracket. I was not willing to spend so much for these strands of colourful threads, even if they were tied to my daughter's emotions. Then, my searching eyes met a narrow red ribbon roll with best friends written throughout. So my job would have been to just cut the roll into 17 plus two bands. I found that exciting because the entire roll was Rs 25, which meant I could make roughly 25 bands with that! My daughter, of course, looked disappointed, but was not really protesting. Then we both settled for a Rs 5-band.
The actually tamasha began in the evening of August 2, when the children gathered near their play area, each tying the bands on one another’s wrist with a “happy friendship day” wish.
This prompted me to think how peer pressure is fueling this level of consumerism among this generation. Birthday parties are no longer “at home” with cakes, potato chips and samosas. They are at Mac Donald’s or Pizza Hut. And the return gift is no longer an éclair, or a small bar of chocolate. There is a scramble for the right return gift to be “with it”. The kids are found discussing what they got as return gifts at different parties.
Welcome to new-age parenting. Whether we inculcate good value-systems and discipline or not, it is becoming imperative to throw the best birthday parties. The peer dynamics is making its presence felt even more severely kids growing up in gated communities. Parents, too, are not shying away from pandering to their kids’ consumerist desires as they do not mind spending for their children. So if parents can pay a rent of 20-30K, it is obvious that their kids will have playmates whose parents also earn in the same slab. So affordability is bound to be in a specific bracket. But at the same time, demands among children escalate (with one wanting to emulate the other), and this leave the parents helpless.
When we were kids, our friends cut across class. So we were as comfortable in a friend’s plush apartment or even independent house, as we were in another friend’s rented one-room house. And, the peer pressure was not so ruthless because there was a system of checks and balances among the friends.

'Flat' refusal

A Bollywood star recently alleged that he has been denied access to buy an apartment in a Mumbai housing society because he is a Muslim. The media was assured of its column space and the television its bytes, thanks to his celebrity status.
There are a number of housing societies in Indian cities where you cannot buy an apartment, forget renting it, because you are a Sidiqqui, a Halem or an Ismail.
I do not want to rankle readers with my secular sermons. But it is plain disgusting to see that people never stop identifying religion in names (I am not even mentioning caste. That is a different debate altogether).
But the urban, Hindu middle class, that has found its expression of Hindutva, seems happy to “get back at Islamic fundamentalists”. Being in a position of owning property, the middle class is able to take its revenge. This denial can be carried out subtly, because the seller is in a position to decide whom to sell his/her property to. This ethnic discrimination will never be made public because the reasons are never spelt out. And, that is dangerous.
This is the middle class that secretly applauded when Babri masjid was demolished by Hindu hooligans. This is the middle class which found the BJP as its “saviour of Hinduism”. This is the middle class which, through its silence, approved of events which turned Gandhi’s Gujarat to Modi’s Gujarat. Many even spoke a saffron language in drawing room discussions, saying the riots were an answer to Godhra.
I understand, the issue cannot be simplified. And, the Islamic terror attacks in major cities have been responsible for making the middle class see saffron. But denying Muslims to buy apartments is not the right way to express anger.
So if it is Islamic terror that has created this suspicion, there are Hindu terror groups as well. Remember Jalagaon? And, Gandhiji’s assassination was masterminded by a Hindu organisation.
And, on the question of renting out apartments, I have seen people refusing to entertain prospective Muslim tenants. In the time of recession, they would rather let the apartment be locked than rent it out to a Muslim.
In a housing society in Chennai, there was a flat which was sold to a Muslim buyer for a handsome amount. But there was a lot of subdued irritation among other inmates of the complex. And, most of the ire was directed against the seller because he sold to a dirty, Muslim family. Appalling!

An easy ‘prey’

I came across an interview of Innaiah Narisetti, a humanist and writer, with views that were explosive, but very introspective. He has written a thesis that children’s rights should include complete freedom from religious beliefs or parental conditioning.
He has said: “There is a global unwillingness to acknowledge that all religions use their educational institutions and programmes, be they Sunday Christian schools, Madrassas, Jewish or Hindu temples to indoctrinate children. Sometimes, this is in the guise of conveying good moral values, but, while it may be much more rigid and overt in, say, a madrassa, it is no less influential on young minds in a Christian Sunday school.”
I found the ideas in Mr Narisetti’s paper bold, but also strange. He says since we deny children voting rights and stand up against child marriage, there is a need to debate the participation of children in religious institutions.
But it is a fact that religion accompanies us from birth to death. It begins with baptism and ends with funeral, and we confine all of these into the respective religious parameters. Is it then practical to separate religion from individuals? How can we use guidelines to stop parents from “influencing” their wards on religious beliefs.
When we are young, we would accompany our parents to temples/churches . Could we have avoided that? It is also part of a child’s psychology to imitate parents. Which means, praying at home or following a religion is subconsciously passed on to children. Or is the writer trying to say that parents should give up going to places of worship, or stop praying at home. Then, isn’t it denying parents (read individuals) their fundamental right to religion?
Of course, we can choose to be atheists or humanists as adults following indoctrination from ideological theories. But asking parents or families to stop what Narisetti calls “religious abuse” of children seems impractical.
We learn the first lessons of humanity from our parents. Compassion, sympathy, honesty are lessons imparted to us by our parents, who have probably been “brainwashed” by religious texts.
I agree that there is a serious distortion of texts and their interpretation by religious leaders that has corrupted our beliefs. Superstitions have creeped in and some gory practices have mutilated all the religions.
But what is of concern now is this dangerous game of religious one-upmanship being played. Taking India’s case, there is a threat from the young minds being programmed “to protect” religion, be it Hinduism or Islam. And, of course there is this blatant conversion drive by the church. And, all these are happening in the underprivileged India.
At the end, who is the prey? Is it the children? I feel it is the underprivileged children who are vulnerable to such indoctrination. A hungry stomach is always an easy target: whether it is protect “Islam”, or to raise the saffron flag to fortify the essence of Hindutva, or to initiate an entire generation into Christianity.
Then why blame the parents for making religion hereditary?

Food for thought

There is a race among the rich nations of the world to outsource food production. In what has been one of the most thought-provoking articles on food security and outsourcing food production, Devinder Sharma, a food and trade policy analyst, enumerates the role of international private agribusiness entities in procuring farmlands across the globe. Moreover, these corporates are bringing in their own farm workers, production technology and equipment. This is leading to natives being displaced from their land. And the private operators are being solidly backed in this dangerous campaign by the World bank.
This new form of colonialism, where nations buy land overseas for farm produce, is being backed by amendment of national laws. China is becoming a major player in this land grab. After having been India’s role model for setting up Special Economic Zones, China is rapidly “inspiring” India on farm outsourcing. Indian players are now buying land in South America and Burma.
The fallout of this is dangerous. Displacement will lead to social unrest that will rattle the rural populace. Already the usurping of the so-called mono-crop areas for industries is unnerving the complex labyrinth of the Indian countryside. The loss of livelihood is driving the rural folk to cities, where they find themselves with very poor alternatives.
The Naxal upsurge in tribal and rural areas is a direct consequence of the assault on livelihood. Then there is this issue of national food security.
The Food and Agricultural Organisations of the United Nations defines Food Security as a situation when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
A newspaper report, quoted environmental activist Vandana Shiva as advocating decentralisation of food production to boost food security. “The food sovereignty of the people and the country should be respected,” she has said.
But we need land to produce food grains. We are doling out large tracts of cultivable land at subsidised rates to rich corporates to produce computer chips. What about food grains? Should we exchange hunger for growth.
And, the media sympathy lies with the Nano brand of industrialisation. How else can one explain its uncharitable words for Mamata Banerjee, whose Singur stand shattered the middle class Nano dream. I was startled at the media singing paeans for Gujarat’s Narendra Modi, into whose outstretched arms the “Singur-battered” Tatas found refuge. So what if Modi was in a tearing hurry to paint Gujarat with a new brush of prosperity to hide the stains of 1992.
I am not against industrialisation. But agricultural land is shrinking, and with that, our food production is shrinking too. Is there any way we can balance food production with industrial development, without upsetting both the applecarts.

Aborting rights

There was a recent Supreme Court ruling “allowing” a 20-year mentally challenged rape victim to keep her pregnancy. The girl’s mental age is 7-8 years. How on earth is she expected to take pre-natal and post-natal care? The National Trust for Mentally Retarded has reportedly pledged to take care of the mother and child for the rest of their lives.
This is the case of a mentally challenged girl, who needed a court to decide the fate of her heath and her reproductive right.
This case made me think about reproductive rights of Indian women in general. Are women in any position to decide on their reproductive rights? There are very few women who are in a position to assert their rights on motherhood or choose to go childless. Of course, society sanctions a Sushmita Sen, who has enough financial cushioning and celebrity status, to adopt a baby girl. When I was reluctant to get married in my twenties, I had told my mother, I need not get married to have a family and that I would adopt a child to fulfill my maternal instincts. It obviously sounded bizarre to her.
A newspaper report, quoting Radhika Chandiramani, director of Talking About Reproductive And Sexual Health Issues (TARSHI), a non-profit organisation, said, “It's not just a right, it's a woman's 'damn' duty to reproduce." Nothing could be starker.
Indian women cannot choose to have a baby or not. Who is asking them? Even those, coming from so-called progressive families are forced to toe their husband’s (or in-laws’) line.
In rural India, when a woman gets married, pestering for a child begins nine months to a year after marriage. In urban India, where the society is more “refined”, the probe begins after a decent wait for two years. Things are apparently changing among the young, upwardly mobile crowd. But what is the percentage they represent? How many are they?
Women are made to feel guilty for not being able to bear a child, even if the flaw lies with the man. And, how many men want their system checked to verify who is at fault?
Again it is the family that decides to terminate unwanted pregnancy of an unwed mother, fearing societal outrage. To use an appropriate quote in another newspaper report: Flavia Agnes, a women's rights lawyer, said, “A woman's body and sexuality belong to men in this country."
Let us face it: a progressive, intelligent woman, armed with good education, great career, growing bank balance, notwithstanding, it is mostly the men who decide when and whether to have a baby.

The profession of news

There was a news report about a woman being stripped in public in Patna. There is going to be a “speedy investigation” into the incident, and “necessary action” by the Bihar government. How much more predictable can these reactions get?
The Indian electronic media, of course, dramatised this whole event. The television anchors replaced their high-decibel pitch with a subdued performance. All, after a short break, of course!
One channel took the cake, when its anchor said, “We do not have the footage of the incident, but some photographs of those responsible for the act”. Excuse me. Did I hear that right? Did I hear him say, “We do not have the footage of the incident”? Well, do you think this is a movie depicting a gruesome rape sequence? If the television crew did rush “just in time”, would it film the incident, or do something to stop it? What becomes more important? Showing the incident to the public to expose the lawlessness in the state or step in to stop such atrocities?
Well, a copybook journalist is supposed to unleash information to people, under any circumstances. A journalist is supposed to react to events and report, not act.
There was an incident two years back when television channels showed the footage of a small-time thief being brutally beaten up after he was caught pilfering. The channels carefully filmed that incident, using the best pan-shots and angles possible. A few more years back, television cameras caught an Afro-American being beaten up in America.
Well, it does open a debate on impartiality and objectivity, those core values for a journalist. When covering incidents, a journalist is not supposed to get involved in it. He/she is supposed to shun emotions, and show the truth.
While Googling, I once read a war correspondent Edward Behr recounting recounting the story of a reporter during the Congo crisis who walked into a crowd of Belgian evacuees and shouted, "Anyone here been raped and speaks English?" Okay, that is journalistic insensitivity at its best.
But when does one transcend journalistic confines and become an activist? Is it wrong to thwart any untoward incident such as a woman being stripped in public, or is the journalist not being professional enough. The job of a journalist is to report news, and not try to cleanse society. But I feel there is a need to put human code of conduct before professional propriety. I would, as a journalist, and a woman at that, let my sensitivity overthrow my professional compulsions

Eclipse of reason

Today’s celestial spectacle, the solar eclipse, once again threw up the battle between rationality and superstition. In India, this clash between the believers and non-believers has been part of every eclipse (solar and lunar): whether it is the question of eating during the eclipse or the necessity of a “purifying” bath after one.
The battleground is also my mind. But here, it is not the question of: “to believe or not to believe”. Because my answer clearly is “no” to such beliefs. Nevertheless, the dilemma.
Appa (my father) was partial to superstitious beliefs, and followed with conviction all that was associated with this purely scientific phenomenon. So it was no food, a bath before and after the eclipse, and “likhita japa” (repeatedly writing Om Sri Sai Ram during the eclipse). He would also insist on leaving strands of “darbai” (the ultimate Brahminical sacred grass) in cooked/stored food and water. Absolutely no questions were asked.……till I stirred my reasoning that was lying dormant amid the muscle-power of patriarchy.
As a kid, he would tell me that eclipse occurred because a snake was devouring the Sun! I would be quite flummoxed. How could a snake go so far and eat up the Sun! But he was so convincing that I would just accept it. I believed this explanation till I learnt about solar and lunar eclipses in Class V. All hell broke loose. Hey, was appa just making up something? When I asked him for clarification, he drew the sun, moon and earth and gave me a scientific explanation. But he also added that according to Hindu mythology, every time rahu as a snake (or was it his malefic mate, the ketu?) eats up the Sun or moon (as the case may be), eclipses occur. I then realised he was trying to simplify nature’s marvel when I was a kid. But what about the irrationality associated with that?
As I grew older, I was convinced that I would not follow this superstitious drivel. The rebel in me would play hide-and-seek with appa. Why, because I did not want his sugar and blood pressure play truant. So I would secretly pop in munchies during eclipse, to prove a point to myself. But I could not escape from the purifying bath because what might have followed would have made Kurukshetra look like a street fight. But if the eclipse happened during my working hours, I would merrily eat, in fact more than I normally would and feel elated about breaking convention. I still stand by what I did. I would, if given a chance, never follow these beliefs.
But when I was pregnant, there was a lunar eclipse. And, I was told to stay indoors. I came home from work early, and stayed indoors then. But it was not out of compulsion. There was no one to monitor me then. I was alone. But I was not ready to take a chance. Now, is that a rationalist’s thought?
I guess I was not willing to expose my unborn baby to any possible peril. Probably, I felt I had no right to rebel on behalf of my baby. How could I take any chance with a foetus, which depended on me for its survival? But does that mean, I am selective about my beliefs. Not really. But I don’t think as a mother, I was willing to take any risk. Risk? But is there a risk? Perhaps. Perhaps not. A clear rational explanation relating to pregnancy and eclipse might have just helped. But only just, I guess. I still would have stayed indoors. That was when the mother in me eclipsed the rationalist in me!

Rape of ethics

Rita Bahuguna Joshi hogged the television primetime news with the repeated clip of her Mayawati slur. Obviously! Being a state Congress leader, she said if Mayawati was raped, she would throw Rs 1 crore on her face. Raped? Isn’t loosely using rape as a barb to poke the Uttar Pradesh chief minister beyond the ethics of democracy. On a public platform, Joshi has indulged in the ultimate form of voyeurism. It is almost akin to a woman engaging in the sadistic pleasure of watching another one being raped, and basking amid the agonising screams of the wounded. But there is no trace of remorse on her face. At best, that too, in the fear of losing her membership, she has apologised.
I am not a Mayawati supporter, a megalomaniac that she is. But my sensibility is troubled by the careless use of the term. Rape is probably more gruesome a crime than murder. Physical assault of the body apart, it is an emotional assassination of a woman. But this is the vocabulary of our politicians.
Of course, every channel indulged in its version of voyeurism, repeatedly showing Joshi’s statement and the exact sequence of that’s day’s events. Channel surfers were treated to this "Rs 1 crore byte" throughout the evening as channels went about their "breaking news" exercise!
But why blame the electronic media. The print media has its own way of exposing its gender bias. A newspaper carried the story of Tessy Thomas being appointed project director of India’s most ambitious missile, Agni-V. It said: “Women and nuclear-capable missiles do not go together”. And this was followed by the mother of all patronising cliches: systematically breaking all glass ceilings in the avowedly male bastion of `strategic weapons'. Huh!
And then, another newspaper carried a graphic that depicted West Bengal’s top five administrators in saris, accompanied by a report about the state of inertia in the administration. So inaction makes the administration womenlike, and therefore, the office-bearers were being shown draped in a saree.
Such regressive and patriarchal attitude of the media is, of course, magnified by the extensive use of photographs of insufficiently covered models and actors. Of course, this is for those salivating men. Now there is the modern woman debate here, which I shall deal with in my later blog.

Naka Muka

Cannes has found Naka Muka catchy. Smitten by the ultimate dabba kuttu pattu, the ad jury has awarded TOI for its Chennai campaign, especially for using the song. Now, that makes me proud. So what if Naka Muka is loud, it is catchy; it is crude and crass, but crazy. You can hate it, but cannot ignore it. Probably, the Besant Nagar crowd will abhor it. That is fine.. we still have Chintradipet and Saidapet to love it.
In what category do I fall? Well, whenever, I am listening to radio, and the song is played on a channel, I do not, repeat, do not change it! Listening to it while travelling by bus (PTC buses have FM radios now!), rubbing shoulders with namma Chennai crowd is a great experience.
But this excitement of being a proud Tamilian listening to Tamil film songs is actually a resurgence of my regional pride. It is only after I came to Chennai a decade back that I started listening to Illayaraja. I rediscovered my Tamilness only after I left Kolkata.
That was because in my early years in Calcutta (not Kolkata), it was unglamorous to be called a Tamilian. Tamilians were seen hiding their identity to pass off as locals! Disgusting! I have frequently come across a group of Tamilians conversing in Bengali in public. Shameful!!
My appa used to get livid seeing this. Once he gave in to his evil temptation: he interrupted a Bengali conversation between three Tamilian friends in a Lake Road-Howrah mini bus by asking them something in Tamil. Pat came the reply in chaste Tamil! And, then the sudden sheepish look on their faces. Appa was basking in his sadistic glory.
I have also been called an idli-dosa girl. And, I would hate that. But I did not have the temerity to challenge that. Being a Tamilian was not so fab before, especially when you are brought up in the north. Call it ignorance, or arrogance. The northies would call anyone below the Vindhyas Madrasi. And thanks, to Padosan, the quintessential Madrasi sported a dhoti, oiled his hair, wore vibhuti and spoke “indi” (not Hindi). Aaaahh! I am seething. Seething because I too have laughed watching Mehmood’s Tamil dhoti falling when he is running behind the very North India Saira Banu in Padosan.
Today, the Tamilian brain is giving the Big Apple an inferiority complex. The Tamil temperament is correcting that myopic vision of those above the vindhyas! Ahaa.. Tamil rocks!
Just continuing in that tone.. I read the review of Kambhakht Ishq. Kambhakht plagiarism peeche hi nahi chodta!! Pammal K. Sambandam, Kamal Hassan’s refined laugh-riot, is the source. Wonder, why no one even thought about that? Reading the review, I realised, the big-budget Hindi version was one crass act. I do not know whether there was any acknowledgement to the original. If there isn’t, I am not surprised by the attitude of those above the Vindhyas!

MJ syndrome

The newspapers, the television channels, the internet: today MJ is all over. There is shock, grief, and a standing ovation for the king of pop's swan song. Newspapers have written sympathetic paeans on the rise and rise of the moonwalker, who then got sucked into a quagmire of controversies.
However, one newspaper has not mentioned MJ's death on the front page. I was surprised, but also shocked that it did not mention the pop icon, who revolutionised the concept of music videos; the man who made the common man in India stand up and say, “I listen to western music”.
Kolkata's Telegraph is the paper I am referring to. Instead of the news of MJ’s death, it carried a story on how the Kolkata western music lovers hated to be associated with MJ's genre of music.
But my shock/surprise turned into a feeling of admiration, and then introspection for its content. Admiration because it captured the mood of the elite “rock bands” of the times. Also because the paper risked its readership, risked not covering MJ’s death the way other newspapers have.
Introspection, because it clearly reflected the duality, snobbery or even hypocrisy in me as a teenager or youth.
There was this English-speaking, Yes Prime Minister-watching, party-going youth living in Kolkata’s posh addresses (read Southern Avenue/Ballygunge), listening to Bach and Beethoven for their classical cravings, and turning to Beatles, Elvis, Bread, America and Floyd to whet their rock appetite.
And, then there was this Hum Log-Buniyaad-watching "other group, who got smitten by the “pop” bug when Doordarshan brought Beat It to their drawing rooms when it first telecast the Grammy awards ceremony live. This was the "Western Music" for them, having been fed with Bappi Lahiri and Lakshmikant-Pyerlal genre of Hindi music. And, they lapped it up.
Western music as a concept had been restricted to the LP records adorning the shelves of the elite, the self-styled music connoisseurs, for whom MJ was an anathema. They were the beautiful people, who wore branded jeans (attracting eyeballs), danced and drank in parties, made more friends, and got invited to more parties, and generally lead an “enviable, fun-filled” life.
That was how I, representing a middle-of-the-road group, felt. The group which never belonged to either sides!
I was unable to get away from the easy availability of Hindi film songs, being fed with that genre of music at the formative years of my life. So there were no Beatles, Bach, rock, folk or country, till I "discovered" Cliff Richards and his Summer Holidays. The western music bug bit me too. Suddenly, I had to belong. I had to be seen listening to English songs, like the elite party goers, like those who shunned Hindi film songs. So I started listening to the weekly programme on radio, Musical Band Box, for my initiation. I realised I had half-arrived. The other half, only when I was to be invited to parties. And, that never happened during my school-college days!!!
Then Beatles, Floyd, America, Bread flocked my shelves, vying for attention with hits of Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and even Mithun Chakraborty.
But I was in the middle. I was not really into the English music circuit. I was still secretly (honestly that is the word) listening to latest Hindi film songs. After all, how can I get out of that diet that I had been fed with? I too shunned MJ, and his genre of music. Like Wham, or Boy George and Culture Club. I felt I shouldn’t be discussing MJ, who had stormed into the psyche of the masses. The hoi polloi had rejected MJ as too down-market. And, sadly, I became a ``me-too”.
On hindsight, I feel I had been so immature, so hypocritical. Like a worm that tried to be butterfly, a duckling desperate to be seen as a swan.
A few peacock feathers cannot make a peacock out of a crow. That was what I was trying to be.
On hindsight, I feel I lost my youth in this constant search for being noticed, to belong. What a waste of youth. Now I am trying to see things honestly. Like being proud to say “I love Sholay and Amitabh Bachchan”. Saying this then would have made me a stronger, but most important, an honest youth.