No nano gesture..

Corporate India did it again. In one of the biggest contributions by an Indian business house to the cause of elite education, Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata has donated a whopping $50 million to Harvard Business School. The Ivy League, known for its academic excellence and selective admissions, will return the expensive gesture by getting Mr Tata’s surname embossed on an academic and residential building that is scheduled to be completed for the fall of 2013 and naming it Tata Hall.
Mr Tata’s words after bestowing the wealthiest gift to the business school’s 102-year history: “It is a privilege and pleasure to give back to Harvard a little bit of what it gave to me.”
“A little bit” is just so humble, sir. “This little bit” is aimed at “supporting the school’s educational mission to mould the next generation of global business leaders”.
That is indeed a “little bit” sir towards moulding the business leaders of tomorrow who will faithfully carry out the global corporate strategy of wringing dry the planet’s resources and pushing the agenda of corporate colonisation. Indeed a little bit, considering that they will be getting back very rich returns by impoverishing the planet, its land, water, and resources. So investing $50 million is indeed a lucrative business tactic.
Mr Tata’s “little” gift surpasses the $10 million donated by Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra to Harvard for its Humanities Centre made a few years ago.
I just wondered why these corporate super powers run to these exotic business schools and make such “humble” contributions. What if they could look inwards, turn towards our primary school education or any level of education of their choice and help build a foundation strong enough for nation building. After all, they made their fortunes using this land, labour, power and water.
The Indian education system is falling abysmally behind other nations. A plethora of government initiatives to provide accesses to primary education notwithstanding, there are glaring gaps in the system owing to lack of committed teachers, textbooks, teaching materials, and drop-out rates. Free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 is a constitutional commitment in India, with the Right to Education Act. But we still see children bringing us tea and wiping tables in dhabas.
If such corporate giants could come forward and extend even their little finger in this direction, we could probably achieve a lot more.
Mr Tata created a middle class dream car and named it Nano. Nano means something very small. It comes from a Greek word nanos which means dwarf. If Mr Tata had understood the meaning well enough and extended his nano gesture towards our country’s education, it would have been morally more valuable than his Rs 1 lakh car. Instead of pouring $50 million into the ocean, it would have been appreciated had Mr Tata sprinkled a few drops into the parched education system in India, especially in the rural reaches.

Need and want

The front page of today's Times of India (October 13, 2001) is dripping with ads for that festive fervour, gold raining at the Commonwealth , Sachin Tendulkar topping popularity chart in Don’s own land and Mukesh Ambani adding diamonds to this glittery India shining crown with his ready-to-move-in 27-storeyed mansion.
The festive zeal picked up as I turned to the inside pages, with colourful display of creative advertising, smartly infusing consumerism with religious sentiments. Even news stories were advertorials, goading consumers to shop for the best ghagra -cholis for the Devi pujan and pop dandia raas. Coming to Page 13, Narendra Modi’s picture showed him flashing the victory sign as his party swept all six municipal corporations in Gujarat. But just below Modi’s successful cocktail of communal polarisation and industrialisation with a generous sprinkling of urban shine was buried a story on food insecurity in India. It said that India had dropped two ranks to reach 67th among the 84 developing countries in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s annual Global Food Index for 2010. Even Sudan, North Korea and Pakistan ranked higher than India.
India is home to 42 per cent of the underweight children under the age of five in the world. The report said the food insecurity is so rampant in the country that India is clubbed with minor economies like Bangladesh and Yemen, recording the highest prevalence of underweight in children under five.
The Commonwealth muck has now been pushed under the debris of the broken foot bridge as was evident in the glitter of the opening ceremony. Now, the government is pulling out all stops to showcase the plush Indian drawing room at the international fora. Never mind the hungry children stashed away into the empty kitchens inside or the sick dying of dengue, malaria or malnutrition in dirty-dingy interiors. Even the media chooses to push hunger inside and yield to the salability of glamour and glitz.
Coming back to the man who made it to the Forbes’ billionaire list, Mr Ambani. He has devoted six levels of his multi-million-dollar castle to park his 160-plus cars. Back in Delhi, the government had “rinsed” the urban space and made it squeaky clean by driving out the homeless a day before the Commonwealth Games contingents began arriving. And in forests, far into the interiors of Chattisgarh or Orissa, native tribals go to sleep with the Damocles’ sword of displacement hanging over their heads.
This is a dangerous but inevitable cliché: Our drawing rooms are bright and shiny. But when are we going to generate light to the insides of our house?
My nine-year-old daughter, to whom we read and explain the papers every morning, asked us a question: Why does God give some people too much money and some nothing? Do people ‘need’ so many cars? Why can’t God give food to those who are hungry?
Poor creature! She still thinks God up there is responsible for feeding the hungry and clothing the poor. Having been brought up in the ‘need’ and ‘want’ theory diet, it might take a few more years for her to understand it is the ‘want’ , not ‘need’, that is driving our nation’s consumerist economy.

Ram and Robot

Ram was everywhere, in the media, on the streets, even in school buses. My daughter was eager to know what happened to Ayodhya because she was keen on knowing whether she will get a Friday off. But Ram had to make way for Rajnikant that Friday. Ram might fail, but Rajni ‘kant’. The prayers, aartis and milk abhishegam (offerings) went to the King of Kollywood, not the prince of Ayodhya that morning. Poor Ram, he had to make way for Rajni despite being proved in the court of law that he was indeed born on the disputed site. Rajni was in every news channel holding a million guns, and running sideways on the train. Damn gravity, Newton. Rewrite your theories.
But both Ram and Robot got the money spinning during the Gandhi Jayanti weekend. What Ram could do, Rajni could do better. Ram added wealth to the coffers of television channels and mobile service providers who shared the spoils of the revenue from patriotic and secular messages that rained throughout the week leading to the Ayodhya judgment. And, Rajni’s Robot raked in an obscene fortune on the first day of its release.
The previous day, the High Court verdict was out and the Mc Donald’s generation loved it, the champagne-clinkers in their drawing room discussions were happy with the “sensible” verdict on a sensitive subject. The media added to the spirited discussions with their “India has moved on” and India First campaigns. So everyone was happy, everyone had "moved on". Now, the nation has to focus on its economy. Yes, yes, all of this, and more.
Just thinking aloud: would the same majority be on a high if the verdict was different? The court has corroborated the faith of the people. Is our judicial system supposed to use faith to crush fact? The court has behaved like a benevolent despot, spelling out Birbal-like wisdom to aggrieved parties. The decision seemed to be aiming at soothing nerves, rather than settling a hard core legal dispute. Devotion, not documents, held the key to the Ram janmasthan. Title deeds made way for good or bad deeds, and our Ram’s vanar sena begged, borrowed and stole the contentious area to please their dear Ram. (Stole because they smuggled in the idols inside the Babri masjid in December 1949). The courts then validated the theft by cloaking it with the argument of faith. Isn’t that a dangerous legal trend? Shouldn’t the court take cognizance of evidence, rather than fall back on faith, even if millions of Hindu hearts are involved?
Does the court’s recognition of Ram’s birthplace despite the 1949 illegal break-in then inadvertently give credence to the saffron brigade that prepared the janmabhoomi pitch culminating in the insanity of 1992? Does it then mutely agree on its aftermath, when our much-abused secular fabric was torn asunder and stained with blood again?
Robot, too, fails on logic, if trailers are anything to go by. The spectacular special effects seem to have camouflaged reason, just like the spectacular efforts of our judicial, political and media players to bury reason and make people feel “all izz well”.
In contemporary India, reason certainly does not sell. Ram and Robot triumphed because of loyalty, not logic. Ram stays put right under the now-demolished Babri dome, and Rajni stays put among his frenzied fans.

Atithi Devo Bhago!

A word of caution: I am in a vitriolic worst. Any offence to anyone living or dead is not intentional.
Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) CEO Mike Hooper is hopping mad, frustrated, irritated and annoyed with India for what has happened, or not happened. He said India had got seven years to prepare for the games, but its constant missing of deadlines had been a “frustrating” experience. Senior government officials’ flippant comparison of the Games to that of an Indian wedding, where everything “seems” wrong till the groom arrives, and then they work well till the end has not gone down well with the CWG officials.
It is a moment of shame for all of us in India. We are driving out our atithi (guests) before they arrive.
Just thinking aloud: When a non-Indian comes here and passes such uncomplimentary remarks, we feel insulted. But when non-resident Indians pass such comments, we feel double insulted. Why? Because we feel they have been part of this system at some point of time.
We, the resident Indians, fume when our non-resident family members from the West and Far East come here for their annual shot of India vaccine and vilify everything that is India: water, weather, health, hygiene, education. They say our airports are dirty, our stations dirtier and we have no systems in place. They name a superbug after our national capital. They blame our doctors for prescribing antibiotics without a flutter, making them responsible for the superbug in a Western body. They say we have no method of administering checks on prescription drugs as they are available over the counter. They say we Indians have no civic sense and spit red betel juices all over. They say we do not know how to follow traffic rules on the roads, and therefore do not deserve so many automobile manufacturing units. They say our banking mechanisms are bad. They say our education system is worse with children forced to cram before examinations. They say India stinks, it is dirty. Its people lack discipline. They have no sense of time…. In short, after that long one: A lot of India is bad.
But a little of India is good too: For shopping; for clothes; for mathris, murukkus and masalas; for festivities and the accompanied goodies (we never disappoint them on that); for chivda and chaats (better be “hygienic”); for the Karan Johar-Shah Rukh Khan brand of candy floss Hindi films and the accompanying red-hot pop-sufi music.
Today, our NRI annual guests will have another lovely weapon to badger the morale of the resident Indians: The shame and the sham of the Commonwealth Games.
We know many of this is true. But it hurts. When our children make mistakes, we chide them. But when someone else scolds them, we get upset.
Thank you, the Government of India. Thank you, Shiela Dikshit. Thank you, Suresh Kalmadi. Thank you, all the officials who have managed to keep our NRI tongues wagging for ever and ever and ever. They will never stop now. We, the poor resident Indians, have no choice but to lick our wounds.
Atithi, devo bhago!

Once upon a time in Madurai...

Once upon a time in Madurai, Kovalan, an aristocratic landowner, went to pawn his wife, Kannagi’s anklet, when they fell in bad times. The pawn broker, who had stolen the anklet of the Pandyan king’s wife, decided to make Kovalan the scapegoat as the anklet looked identical. The Pandyan king immediately sentenced Kovalan to death. Enraged, Kannagi stormed the palace gates and proved to the king that her anklet had diamonds by breaking open the other pair. Diamonds rolled all over the palace court, making the Pandyan king ashamed of his deed. His queen’s anklets had pearls in them.
Today, a few elements in our democratic India are bending backwards to shame us with their autocratic ideas of the judicial system. The Pune Bar Association exposed its hollowness by trying to dissuade an advocate, Mr Sushil Mancharkar, when he declared his intention to take up the case of Himayat Mirza Baig, prime accused in the German Bakery blast case. There have been more appeals, requests and even warnings from political parties to shun the case. Their argument: Mr Mancharkar should not fight the case of an anti-national who has “killed” 17 people by his gruesome act. They have already passed the sentence in their private court that Baig was indeed the one who planted the bomb that devastated the bakery and shook the calmness of Punekars.
The BJP, Shiv Sena and the like have held demonstrations outside Mr Mancharkar’s house and even threatening him of “serious trouble” if he took up Baig’s case.
In another development, Advocate A. Rehman, Baig’s lawyer, was made to resign from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). He was general secretary of the party’s minority wing. The NCP does not want to be left behind in this race for political mileage as it clipped the wings of its lawyer-member so that the party could be in league of the sentimental public in the aftermath of the blast.
But, does not our constitution guarantee us our a multiple-tier legal system to prove our innocence?
Baig is an accused, not yet proved guilty. By mounting political and muscle pressure on people willing to give Baig a chance to prove himself in the court of law is an assault on democratic ideals. Why do we have a legal system if the suspects are not given a chance to prove their innocence? We could easily have the autocratic/despotic system where a suspect is sentenced and sent to the guillotine without a trail.
Our politicians do not want to left behind in this mad race to guard their vote banks, but at what cost?
Our legal system too ensures that cases drag for years, decades. What justice are we talking about? When it is delayed, it certainly is denied. People are getting impatient over the lethargic legal machinery. They need results, they need decisions. Therefore, their speedy conclusion that Baig “is” indeed guilty the moment he is arrested is a psychological satisfaction for them. They are fed up with cases of Mumbai blasts dragging on. They are fed up with an Afzal Guru or a Kasab trial dragging on. Therefore, this knee-jerk response.
Is it possible to clear the blocks in the legal machinery and oil it well enough to win over the confidence of the citizens who ride them? This will ensure they stop making such reckless statements.

Hey Ram!

The Ayodhya verdict is creating more waves in the media than in the Indian political ocean. Political parties and religious groups are maintaining an uneasy silence a few days before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court delivers the judgment in the Ayodhya dispute on September 24. The parties are nervous on the outcome of one of post-colonial India’s most explosive issues. The Sangh Parivar and Muslim groups are edgy, but are not showing any signs of getting flustered over the verdict. Both sides have given generous bytes on the possibility of knocking the doors of the Supreme Court.
The Centre has urged the leaders and the people to exercise restraint. A lot of responsibility lies on Mayawati ‘s shoulders to keep the epicentre of the emotional quake intact. She had requisitioned for additional troops, but the Centre has parted with three-fourth of the number she asked for.
The bitter memories of December 6, 1992, and the aftermath of the darkest deed in post-Independent history have remained just that, a bitter memory. It is almost two decades now. The youth of today, those who were born after 1992, have not been through the trauma of the unending dark curfew nights and terror-stricken winter mornings. The enormous time the case has dragged in the courts has left us anesthetised. Saffron leaders, who remote-controlled people’s religious sentiments for their political gains, seem to have themselves pressed the mute button. L.K. Advani, who took out the rath yatra, as purely an election strategy to whip emotions in 1990, appears weary. Sadhvi Rithambara with her hollering of “ek dhakka aur” that energised the kar sevaks to bring down the Babri Masjid to dust, is nowhere in any frame. Uma Bharti, the other key saffron anti-Babri player, is languishing in Madhya Pradesh politicking.
Let us hope people do not take seriously the few stray bytes of the Parivar. RSS strongman Mohan Bhagwat has said his team will await the court verdict, but laced his controlled demeanour with the statement, “Of course, the aspirations of the Hindu society is that there should be a temple at Ram Janmabhoomi.” Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray has also meowed about the right to mandir in Ayodhya.
The court decision, whatever it may be, will be nothing more than an ego issue between the leaders of the two religious communities. It has ceased to be an election plank anyway. Those born post-1992, the post-liberalisation youth, who will never feel the hurt of the 1992-93 communal bruises, have other issues to grapple with. Environment, health, education, employment and inflation are more pressing than Ram.
Even if an elaborate Ram temple does come up, how many will be willing to take Ram’s blessings in that premises, having stepped on the rubble of an erstwhile mosque and trampled over countless victims of communal hate? Do we need a temple at that cost?
Ram might prefer to be in our hearts, and not in a temple, built on death and destruction.

Yes, Prime Minister

Our Prime Minister has ruled out free lunch for people below the poverty line. Fair enough. He has taken on the Supreme Court for “straying into the executive’s domain by ordering distribution of free food grains for the poor”. But isn’t the Supreme Court the conscience-keeper of the executive and legislature? After all, in our democracy, we are at the mercy of the executive and legislature, apart from the fourth estate. Mercy, yes, we are at their mercy.
The Supreme Court had banned bandhs to help the ubiquitous common man, the aam admi, to commute, to earn his daily wage. But our political parties continue calling for such bandhs. The latest one was today to protest price rise that is seemingly hitting the common man the most. Thank you very much. They have managed to throttle the day’s earning for their aam admi. The government, against which such reckless shows are performed, has even stopped thinking about the bandh as a major pressure move aimed at coercing any reversal of decisions. And, at the end of the day, it is the daily wager who is denied of that day’s earning.
Mr Manmohan Singh has given a wonderful solution to narrow down the income imbalances in our country. He has suggested shifting to industrialisation from agriculture, citing low returns in food production. But, Mr Prime Minister, is there an alternative solution to our nation’s food security? Who will grow our food? Or are we planning to import rice and wheat in exchange for other favours we will have to dole out to the lenders.
Mr Manmohan Singh has also been very vocal about rearranging priorities. He feels the country’s poverty could not be solved by leaving the nation’s rich mineral resources, which happen to be in tribal areas, untapped. Yes, Mr Prime Minister, the country’s poverty levels will not drop. Rather, if these mineral resources are untapped, the billions in the conglomerates’ bank accounts will drop. That will be sad. India will not be able to showcase the growing number of billionaires in Forbes. So what if the country’s poverty line keeps getting altered according to statistical juggling?
But Mr Prime Minister, your party’s dashing poster boy, Rahul Gandhi, has told the tribals that he is their sipahi in Delhi, who will fight for their rights. The aam aadmi would like to know who is the party’s ‘right’ face?