Mood:  happy

To quote an example of uncontrolled and intemperate speech, Bollywood screenplay writer Vijay Tendulkar twice said during press conferences in December 2004 that if he had a gun he would shoot Narendra Modi. It was reported by almost all television channels on prime time news, just as newspapers had given it front-page coverage. But no one had ever suggested that Mr Tendulkar should be arrested or charged under NSA.

____________________________________________________

Just as sub-brokers in Mumbai are known to have their ear to the ground for insider trading, the bookies almost got it right this time round in general election, as far as government formation is concerned. The election results predicted by most news channels incidentally were so off the mark that it gives legitimacy and vindication to the Election Commission’s hardball tactics of banning such surveys during elections. Many have even suggested a total ban on exit polls even after the election results are declared as the television channels have exceedingly shown the propensity to get it wrong, which subsequently has led to imputing charges of advertisement-led opinion polls. After all on many television channels, in these days of economic downturn, advertisement department calls the shots on editorial coverage.

Also, the media has the naïve and unseemly immature way of deriving conclusions on the success and failure of political parties in elections. The BJP candidate from north-west Mumbai constituency Mahesh Jethmalani explained to many people in the television studio post-election debates that it is childish to come to the conclusion that every decision of Congress party had contributed to its success or conversely, every decision taken by BJP had led to its failure to garner majority support for its candidates. It could even have been that some decisions of Congress went against it and hence it could not get a majority and yet some others of BJP could have helped BJP candidates get more votes.

The most striking example is that of Varun Gandhi’s speech in Pilibhit where he made quite some indiscreet statements. The reality is that in the real world people are used to saying much worse things in public discourse that no one gets too shaken by these utterances. The media unnecessarily sanitise a straight talk if it comes from any Hindu camp. And most often it is quite selective in such censorship. To quote an example of uncontrolled and intemperate speech, Bollywood screenplay writer Vijay Tendulkar twice said during press conferences in December 2004 that if he had a gun he would shoot Narendra Modi. It was reported by almost all television channels on prime time news, just as newspapers had given it front-page coverage. But no one had ever suggested that Mr Tendulkar should be arrested or charged under NSA. It didn’t become a major point of debate in favour of Narendra Modi on television news channels as seen in Varun Gandhi’s case where he is being vilified.

On the other hand, Mumbai’s indifference to the elections with voter turnout of less than 41 per cent was widely reported as a shocking display of ennui and apathy. But as this blogsite reported earlier following terrorists attacks on 26/11, people are not stirred by the corporate advertisements on how they should play a proactive role in choosing leaders to change the situation. The fact remains that when Mumbai was attacked six times in the last 15 years corporates never showed any sympathy. Then, offices worked regularly even on election days. That a few CEO-types died at Hotel Taj and Trident should not be taken as a wake-up call. The wake-up call first came to Mumbaikars in 1993 when the present Samajwadi party general secretary Sanjay Dutt and his cohorts in the D-gang were involved in the serial blasts in Mumbai which killed over 480 people in a couple of hours. What the man on the street feels so outraged about is that when bombs go off in crowded trains killing scores of poor people corporates don’t show the same alacrity and sense of purpose in spending money on ads to awaken the society against the menace of terrorism. The corporates raved and ranted only when some among themselves got a hole in the head.

In Mumbai in particular, the Congress has gained this dubious credit for having successfully tamed the threat from Shiv Sena by indirectly giving Raj Thackeray a free rein in his racist propaganda against Biharis. The state government courted overtly and covertly the breakaway faction of Shiv Sena, never intending to take action for all the violence that Raj Thackeray unleashed on the streets and drove a wedge between Shiv Sena party workers and supporters to split the votes between the two. Congress may have romped home in the latest elections in Mumbai, but there is a good lesson in it for the BJP and Shiv Sena. The BJP can go it alone if the votes are getting divided so effectively between the two Senas. Alternatively, Shiv Sena could be persuaded to reach out to the cosmopolitan population of the city for it to embrace wider communities and voter base. If the BJP chooses to do the latter, the combined efforts of both the BJP and the Shiv Sena in wooing the city population which is bred on economic development dream that Mumbai is known for, would be a walkover against the Congress. Raj Thackeray, just as Shiv Sena did, will realise in good time that Marathi manoos philosophy has a short shelf-life. Sooner than later Raj Thackeray will be back to getting a wider support base than just from a parochial population of the city. Growth is the only way for political parties to survive in a democracy, and if Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) wishes to rule the state it will have to concede to larger demands and population demography. It has happened earlier with Mayawati and Jayalalithaa, and it would happen to MNS too.

But many Tamil Brahmin residents this reporter talked to in Matunga have raised suspicion over the death of LTTE leader V Prabhakaran in Sri Lanka just after the elections came to an end in India. The way LTTE started to pack up and leave without even giving the Sri Lankan army a befitting response it was known for and the way the propaganda machinery of the terrorist organisation was fledgling through the days of intense fighting when it was most required—all point to the possibility of how the death of the terror leader in Sri Lanka could have been manipulated by Congress to win the elections. “By all means, Prabhakaran might have been killed weeks ago but the news was never released to the media for that would have created a huge problem for the Congress to win seats in the south”, said a resident from Hindu colony in Dadar. But the death of the LTTE leader is certainly a good news, and India should be indebted to Sri Lanka to have brought Prabhakaran to justice for his role in killing Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Posted by Anil Nair at 6:53 PM

Updated: Saturday, 30 May 2009 1:06 PM

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  spacey

Is formal education really important to succeed in today’s world? You can be ambivalent on this issue trying to be different saying education is nothing more than getting through exams by any means without learning the art of survival. That is only partly true. It goes without saying that you need to learn the art of living irrespective of who you are -- a slumdog at Dharavi or Sushmita Sen’s neighbour at Colaba. Several of us might have this irresistible temptation to describe living as an art which is all about what god won’t ask you in Jannat when He is ready to serve you with 72 virgins. Being contended, many would say is about living life king size. Some would even say it’s just about being happy, probably through pranayam. Fiddle sticks!

The recent spate of news reports on how A.R. Rahman did not complete his school education just as Bill Gates was a school drop-out emphasize on the redundancy of formal education and insistence on street-smartness. There are tens of thousands of entrepreneurs in this country whose only talent has been to manage the government inspectors, while they raked in the moolah. For most of them Sita’s Kitchen would mean culinary delights. That does not mean that every illiterate entrepreneur can, as some top engineers from IIT Mumbai who have set up successful enterprises on brand design to making eco-friendly buckets to draw water from a stream say, make it in this wild, wild, wild, wild marketplace caught in middle of a biting recession.

There are tens of thousands from Gen X who are caught between their ambition looking at the way software engineers (at least till recently) earn their first salary in six figures and their own qualifications which leave much to be desired. Young boys hailing from Orissa, Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, Bengal and Kerala have swarmed Bangalore cityscape. But in the recent six months almost all of them have left for their hometown never to come back to Bangalore again. Their stay in Bangalore has made them adept at IT-related fringe jobs like data entry, Tally operations and chatting with girls abroad. Their language skills have developed to the extent of making Americans doubtful if their bank has outsourced the call centre jobs at all.

Every weekend trains from Bangalore City Junction take home a bunch of young boys and girls who have everything in them except for the educational qualifications that can catapult them to the next orbit. The inability to do so hugely takes a toll on their disposition as well as their morale. When young school drop-outs go on to take up odd jobs like guarding IT tech-parks later in life, and when they see their peers from metro cities driving their swanky cars with girl-friends in tow every morning, it snaps.

They blame everyone from parents, the lack of educational infrastructure and even their own regional language medium which by some strange logic is taught at the cost of English language proficiency. It is so heart-rending to see young boys talk ill of their parents for not having brought them up to the mark, of the loss of opportunities for leading a yuppie, pub-going lifestyle, the grind back home where nothing seems to have changed since they were born, and most of all, a system which smacks of parochialism when it comes to teaching English. Most youth in Bangalore who found themselves at the wrong end of the cleft stick were the first to leave the city when the depression set in. Even as they consumed cheap liquor which is so abundantly available in the city, they cannot help but point out the disparity to anyone who is willing to listen. To make matters worse, the age for making amends has far surpassed them which allows them to only wallow in self-pity.  

Once when then chief minister of Maharashtra Vasantdada Patil was asked to provide more budgetary allocation for education in the state, he told a thickly packed press conference at Mantralaya, “I have come up to this stage in public life without having any formal education. You get a status in life that is in your fate. Why is this insistence to spending so much on education when our farmers are in dire need of funds?!” For almost a minute the mediamen stood with jaws fallen, collecting their wits after the bureaucrats went on a damage-control immediately saying, education comes second only to agriculture.

Many would remember how concerned was Mukesh Ambani about his daughter taking the IAS exams. He actually kept away from his office for a few days to be with his daughter during the exams, and at the end of it he said he had become enough knowledgeable to pass the exams and choose his posting too. No one can question Mukesh's will power. That is the right kind of parent for the 21st Century.

A few Rahmans or Bill Gates might make a great Sunday newsfeature for the reading pleasure of the city-bred middle class which loves feel-good films like Slumdog Millionaire. But they are also the ones to jettison any attempts to reserve seats in IIT or IIM, as that would reduce the chances of their own children making it to the top rung in corporate hierarchy. But the problem is with the semi-urban and rural settings where people are still caught in the warp of time, who still refuse to see light of day and deprive their children of the prospects of a good life.

Even if our villages have started to become better in terms of per capita income and returns from investments in assets, the youth have no qualms in telling the truth. Gandhi’s philosophy of a self-contended village was given a decent burial by his own followers in Indian polity. To believe that children should be given only the bare minimum of education for their basic survival kills the spirit of modernity and undermines a country’s potential to overcome poverty and deprivation. No politician can be blamed for that, the common people amongst you and me should take it as a mission to establish the undeniable fact that the survival for our children does not have to do with learning to cook, identifying trees and how to clean up during periods, but with the ability to talk in American accent or punch two keys zero and one, or even better still as they do these days get to learn Java to attract enough jobs to withstand the worst recession of all time. In all probability, you belong to either one of them. So three cheers to formal education, though it is a wee bit late for us in India to praise the lord and await the Jannat.

Posted by Anil Nair at 9:16 PM

Updated: Saturday, 7 March 2009 8:15 PM

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  incredulous

Slumdog Millionaire winning eight Academy awards has to be seen in a different light than just plain and simple quality of movie-making. The US has always had a way of winning markets through other means than the obvious. Beyond the glitter and the glamour of winning the Oscar there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of the US to reach out to India. And it is not just India that is suddenly on US radar, and also it is not just because of the on-going conflict in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The changing equations in the newest world order were reflected in Hillary Clinton’s first trip abroad as Secretary of State which created history of sorts. Her comments on choosing to travel to Asia was telling: "I have come to Asia on my first trip as secretary of state to convey that America's relationships across the Pacific are indispensable to addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the 21st century”.

If North Korea was up to its usual bellicose self threatening the world with even more nuclear tests, the situation in Afghan-Pakistan border is precarious with a bought-out peace deal with the Taliban. To add to all these woes is the looming economic crisis in the US which only gets worse with ever passing day. The Indian economy, by far has shown resilience with a 5%+ growth, even as industrial production showed signs of recovery last week. “The deficit in infrastructure in India makes any fear of depression look unwarranted. For example, in the first 50 years after Independence we have built only 11 kilometers of highway every year. The NDA government emphatically rode the infrastructure story and now it is unstoppable. The GDP growth can be perked up to comfortable levels just by developing infrastructure and allied activities”, said a participant at the recently-held Essar Steel infrastructure conclave in Mumbai.

Interestingly, speaker after speaker at the conclave spoke of the success mantra of Narendra Modi government in Gujarat. It was not just about politics of business which has made Modi popular; the quality power situation, tendering processes, single window clearances, friendly bureaucrats and department officials, co-ordination between various ministries, all-inclusive growth pattern and the overall conducive nature of governance in the state came for industry appreciation. The best examples of good governance were reflected in the facilitation of mega projects like ports and SEZs. It wasn't that the industry representatives were trying to curry favour with the Gujarat government by such effusive accolades. The appreciation for Modi was genuine as there was no government representative other than Kirit Parekh, member of Planning Commission on the dais.

But for the US, more than conflicts and flash points around the world the government is consumed by the economic slowdown and its effects on domestic jobs. If Japan has a zero per cent interest rate regime and still witness growth sluggishness, India with 8 per cent PLR has yet to show any major slump in economic activity. It is not that the situation is comfortable in India, it is simply that Indian growth story is quarantined from the world’s financial market mess. Software industry and sectors dependent on it like real estate have taken a body blow in the global meltdown. The decision of the government this week to build one million homes for the poor is yet another of those measures aimed at stalling fall in growth rate, but how much will finally see the light of day is anybody's guess. Unlike China, whose dependence on the world markets has made most of its export units languish in ruins even while tens of thousands of factory workers have been laid off, the recent spate of stimulus packages announced by the Indian government in response to the demands made by industry bear testimony to the fact that if growth story is intact, the next government at the Centre will have some leeway in introducing measures to help the small and medium enterprises sector. The small and medium sector is the one which is hardest hit by the recessionary trend. The government is yet to come up with a bail-out package that can assuage the fears of the sector, especially when liquidity has been sucked out. The small industry is still looking expectedly at a interest rate correction by the central bank. One factory manager in Thane-Belapur belt told this reporter that in the US “the stimulus package was delayed by four days and that somehow was considered a blemish in President Obama’s management skills. Here in India the government takes months for crucial decisions and Indian industry bears it all with a grin”.

The attraction of Indian markets is not lost on US investors and industry. Young, prospective property buyers recently swarmed an affordable housing exhibition in Mumbai that took the organizers by surprise, which only brings out the pent up demand to the fore. If the Academy Award goes to Slumdog Millionaire, the US is just sending the right message to India about its keenness to engage this billion plus market. To take it as a front for Hollywood-Bollywood alliances alone will be a mistake. More than film makers, it is the large number of film watchers in this country that the US is trying to befriend. Also, as it happened with Russia, Iran and Venezuela the US knows that India is a perfectly decent country to engage with. The economic might does not raise the hubris of this country.

 *************

Posted by Anil Nair at 11:20 PM

Updated: Monday, 2 March 2009 4:44 PM

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink