Now We Should Fight For Accountability

Just consider the following events:

1. Mark Papermaster, a 25 year veteran at IBM who had been the vice president of IBM's microprocessor technology development, was sacked from Apple as the Senior Vice President of Engineering for a design flaw in iPhone, the problem which Apple's CEO Steve Job referred to as Antennagate. He was just out for one design flaw that had some (??) impact on Apple's revenue.
2. Carol Bartz, the gorgeous CEO of Yahoo was sacked over phone because she failed to revive the fallen glory of the company.
3. Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, was sacked from his own company by the investors in 1985, because they didn't share Steve's vision.
4. And then there are the regular Employee Appraisal process, the Corrective Action Programs (CAP) and many other systems and processes at almost every professionally managed companies around the world where any who fails to perform properly is first warned and then kicked out.

The key to good performance of any organization is continuous tracking of the performance of every individual, whoever he or she may be, and get the under performers out of the system. It's survival for the fittest. It's veer bhogya vasundhara, the world is for the powerfuls, the intelligents. But when someone is asked to leave an organization it doesn't mean that he or she is useless. There may be other places where the same person can excel and thrive. But the key is kicking out people who fail to perform. This is applicable from the CEO to the lowest peon in an office. Everyone serves someone, my house maid serves me, I serve my company, my CEO serves the investors and the board of governors. Everyone is a servant, some private some public. And like I have the authority to ask my maid servant to not come from tomorrow if I'm not happy with her performance, I'm also vulnerable to be kicked out if I under perform.

But then why our public servants - the ministers, the corporators, all the government employees, etc are exempted of being kicked. They are our servants, very much like my maid servant. I pay them their salaries. And I should be the one assessing their performance, isn't it? But can I sack the engineer whose lack of planning has led to unprecedented delays in making a bridge. Can I sack the minister who has failed to do what he had promised before the election? At least the ministers have a five year window after which they can be dismissed by the people. But what about the equal thugs, the IPS, the IAS and the so many other servants in various departments? There's no debate on the topic that government employees enjoy some special immunity which make them lethargic and less efficient. They all know that they are not accountable to anyone and that their masters (I, you everyone) are impotent.

I feel the next biggest fight, after fighting against corruption, should be the fight for making the Public Servants accountable and 'kickable'. Their appraisals should be published publicly, because they are public servants, they too should be brought under the ambit of three sixty degree feedback where their masters, we, will be asked to assess their performances, and their hikes and promotions should be based on annual appraisals.

Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaye He

That's what I felt when Anna broke the fast. Yes, this is the victory for the power of the Mind of the people, power of the Jana Gana Mana. And yes, I do accept that the most supreme is the this power, this power of the people. The constitution, the parliament all come later. So when this people's power demand for something then there's no other way than to accept that, implement that. Very aptly Anna said today after breaking the fast that this victory is for the people of India. It's unjust to say that the parliament or anything else is the supreme. Tagore had pointed it out long time back that the victory is always to the Jana Gana Mana. We've been chanting this for so long but how did we forget this? How did our politicians forget this that nothing is above the people of India?

Thanks Anna to remind us all that the supreme power of the country is with the people. If people say something better listen to it.

Thank You Congress!!

This may sound ridiculous that at this point of time I'm thanking the very party that's at the center of all the storm, or in the words of Manish Tiwari, steeped in corruption from head to toe (he had used this for Anna though).

Well, that's the irony. There's a concept of Srishti-Sthiti-Laya in Hinduism. We believe that to create something you have to first destroy something else. That's what we've learnt in our basic physics too - conservation of energy. You can't create new energy, but only transform one to another form, kinetic energy gets converted to potential and vice versa. Congress has proved the natural law in a very interesting way. Lot of potential energy was stored within 1.2 billion people. But somehow that untapped energy was not getting converted into kinetic form to move things. India is a massive country of billion plus people and trillion plus bucks. It needs serious kinetic energy to move and lo, Congress has enabled this conversion of potential energy (in the form of angst, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness, depression, oppression, inflation bla bla bla) to a fission and fusion of kinetic energy that's now moving, rather shaking, the whole country!!

Thank you Congress and all the thugs (do you have anything else) in your party to arouse a country that had slept for thirty plus years saying 'chalta hai'. Thanks to you for making Anna a household name from Jaipur to Jhumritalaiya, from Calcutta and Cuttack to Cochin, from Guwahati to Gandhinagar, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari; thanks to you for making all of us realize that India is still ruled not by you but the Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka; thanks to you for making us realize that we're stronger than you; thanks to you for making us believe in ourselves; thanks to you for making us believe that no matter how bad you can be, we would be still good; thanks to you!!

BTW, last time too, it was you who had aroused us - in the 70s, under JP!! Great. Keep doing the good work and arouse our country every after 40 years!!

At last I'll see a different color

34 years.... I don't remember when exacly the RED color first draped the walls of Calcutta - I was just 4. At least now we can see a different color. Doesn't matter if it's again a shit. If it's always shit why not try a different shit - horse shit in place of cow dung?

I remember, in our hostel commi was a term used for the most hated person - someone who complains to the warden about ragging, someone who complains about blue films being seen in the hostel, someone who complains everytime someone gets a girl to the hostel, something like that. Though I never liked CPM, still coming from West Bengal, initially the term commi appeared a little derogatory. The extreme hatred that was associated with the term, the violent form of anger that was evoked every time the term was used, made the term one of the most dreadful ones in hostel. Being branded as a commi was like being seen as a terrorist, a rapist, an outlaw.

Eventually, I realized that our seniors were just apt. The Left front government and the CPM folks are actually commis!! It's good that they are finally shown the door. I may dislike Mamata equally (till she starts delivering) but I liked what she said once: There are enough wild animals in the jungles and seas (referring to the tigers and crocodiles in Sundarban areas), we don't need any more (referring to the Leftists). Well, I too feel the same. At least for Bengal, they have been like the worst animals.

My dad is happiest. He started his career in 65, when the left had already started their carnage in Bengal (coming to power within 10 years), and retired in 2004, when left was there in full swing. His entire career, like many others of his generation, was just ruined by something called labour problem, the first gift from the Leftists and something that's beyond the threshold of imagination of anyone outside Bengal. The 34 years of left misrule is the biggest curse that happened in Bengal. The animals can be finally put in cage.

I don't support violence and killing them now. But at the end of the day I didn't feel bad when Osama was killed. If I hear - and that's people are already fearing about - the erstwhile left front heavy weights are getting killed mysteriously, I won't feel bad!! After they all deserve to die like Osama. If the world (at least me) was okay with that I'm okay with this too!!

A bunch of Retards

What's the difference between Dhirubhai Ambani's folks and Manmohan Singh's people? Well, the question is blasphemous because it's like asking to compare between the Prophet and Dawood Ibrahim. I'm not saying that Dhirubhai Ambani was a Prophet of any sort. It doesn't matter whether Dhirubhai Ambani or Jamshedji Tata or G D Birla were any incarnation of prophet or not. But I'm indeed equating Manmohan (I decline to put the venerable Dr. in front of him that I used to do way back in the nineties from within my heart) and his gang to the likes of Dawood. I didn't find any other name to equate them to. I'd like to apologize to Mr. Dawood (well, I don't mind putting the respectful Mr. in front of him now) for comparing people, more dangerous and dreadful than him, with him. Well, coming back to my original question - what's the difference between the Ambanis and the Manmohans. First let's point out the similarities:

• Both are Indians (very silly)
• Both are famous (is it a time for joke?)
• Both control business (well, now we're coming to point - The PM does control more business than the Ambanis)
• Both impact the lives of Indians (well, to some extent yes, had there not been the Ambanis there won't have been so many jobs)
• Both have the responsibility to deliver (are you joking? Yes, Ambanis have to deliver to theie shareholders, to their employees, to their vendors, to their partners - and what has the team of Manmohan to do? I disagree....) I think this is the point of divergence between the two. Well, let's proceed.
• Both have to tweak laws to make things happen (Yes, you make sense. You can't tun a business and be a Mahatma. You have to manipulate things at times. That's what any successful businessman would do. But what are you trying to implicate?)

The last point is the final one which really diverges the comparison between the two. Yes, it's true that the Ambanis flout laws. Dhirubhai Ambani couldn't have made Reliance without flouting laws. His floutings have become case studies for business schools and are now considered as legends in corporate world. That's what Chanakya has also said - you need to manipulate things to make things happen. But then there's a degree of flouting. People like Dawood also run their huge companies, but have you ever heard of anyone calling them legal? No. But the same people would give a clean chit to the Ambanis. The reason is very simple. There's a degree of violation that everyone accepts provided the outcome is positive to the country, to the people. A violation by Reliance will be ignored if thousand more people get jobs and four thousand more people can lead respectable lives. But then there's indeed a limit. And the main difference between Manmohan and Ambani is that the former has crossed the limits of violations beyond the most stretched threshold of tolerance and the later is still within the limits. Manmohan's case is like that of Mr Dawood's - both our outlaws, both have violated beyonds any toleration, both have done no good to the country, both are thugs and thieves and both should be prosecuted without any mercy.

I accept that to run a business you can't always hold the high moral ground of a Mahatma. It's not that I'm basically being unethical from the core of my heart. No. That's not the case. I want to be ethical always. But clinging to ethics may create some irreversible damage that will cause more harm to many other people who are connected to my business. Lies for for a greater cause is approved of in the Mahabharata too - Yudhisthira himself spoke one lie in his life to win the battle. But what Manmohan and his team has done can't be put in the same class as Yudhisthira's lie. That's the difference between violating laws by business men and ripping off our country by the government.

Sometime back I'd told that our ministers are senile. They are not even physically fit to have sex scandals like their counterparts in Europe and America. They are in fact a bunch of retards. They steal, get caught, try to defend like fools and are so senile that they can't even do something to shut the world off. Actually they can't do anything. They are the worst manipulators in the world. Had they been intelligent they would have performed so well that people would have ignored their wrongs - the same way I always give a clean shit to the Tatas and the Ambanis irrespective of whatever wrongs they do in their business because at the end of the day they do deliver!!

Salient Features of Jan Lokpal Bill

Drafted by Justice Santosh Hegde, Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal, this Bill has been refined on the basis of feedback received from public on website and after series of public consultations. It has also been vetted by and is supported by Shanti Bhushan, J M Lyngdoh, Kiran Bedi, Anna Hazare etc. It was sent to the PM and all CMs on 1st December.

An institution called LOKPAL at the centre and LOKAYUKTA in each state will be set up

1. Like Supreme Court and Election Commission, they will be completely independent of the governments. No minister or bureaucrat will be able to influence their investigations.
2. Cases against corrupt people will not linger on for years anymore: Investigations in any case will have to be completed in one year. Trial should be completed in next one year so that the corrupt politician, officer or judge is sent to jail within two years.
3. The loss that a corrupt person caused to the government will be recovered at the time of conviction.
4. How will it help a common citizen: If any work of any citizen is not done in prescribed time in any government office, Lokpal will impose financial penalty on guilty officers, which will be given as compensation to the complainant.
5. So, you could approach Lokpal if your ration card or passport or voter card is not being made or if police is not registering your case or any other work is not being done in prescribed time. Lokpal will have to get it done in a month’s time. You could also report any case of corruption to Lokpal like ration being siphoned off, poor quality roads been constructed or panchayat funds being siphoned off. Lokpal will have to complete its investigations in a year, trial will be over in next one year and the guilty will go to jail within two years.
6. But won’t the government appoint corrupt and weak people as Lokpal members? That won’t be possible because its members will be selected by judges, citizens and constitutional authorities and not by politicians, through a completely transparent and participatory process.
7. What if some officer in Lokpal becomes corrupt? The entire functioning of Lokpal/ Lokayukta will be completely transparent. Any complaint against any officer of Lokpal shall be investigated and the officer dismissed within two months.
8. What will happen to existing anti-corruption agencies? CVC, departmental vigilance and anti-corruption branch of CBI will be merged into Lokpal. Lokpal will have complete powers and machinery to independently investigate and prosecute any officer, judge or politician.

7 Scam Maaf

Who ever is the creator of this - thanks!!

Money Hai to Honey Hai

The fact that I'm a great fan of Govinda has nothing to do with this particular blog that I'm writing. I just plagiarized the title of his movie. Yes, it's true that for a country like India where close to 90% (that's 90 crore) of her population thrives on less than $2/day and close to 45% (45 crore) on less than $1/day, nothing else than money can be sweeter than honey.

Putting it in different words, nearly 180 million households live on an income of less than $10/day and 100 million on less than $5/day. Just for a bitter comparison, even a single Gold Class ticket at PVR is more than what 90% of Indian households don't have at their disposal on any day of the year. Well, 500 bucks is not a small amount when a wholesome vada pao costs less than 10 bucks in Bombay. But there's lot more than just the two meals in a day for an entire family to survive, specially when the head of the family has to pay for the education and healthcare of his/her family from his/her own pocket because our government spends peanuts for both of these necessities. So how do we go about it? Well, there are more intelligent people than me to come up with novel plans to solve these problems. A lesser mortal like me can see the gross things in lives and here is what I see.

It's nothing new that corruption at the highest level is so rampant in India that we've learnt to say chalta hai and ignore. But even the most complacent citizen has waken up from his slumber in the recent past with the spate of news that has snatched even the little spaces alloted to the Spice Girls and Pamela Andersons and Sarkozies. It's long since I've last heard of the latest dimensions of Pammi's breasts because my favorite Times of India doesn't have any space to write about it now-a-days - every micro inch of the paper now is filled with scams. So finally I thought enough is enough, let me find out what all these are about. And here is what I could figure out.

Let me explain it to you too - you may find it interesting in the absence of Pam's boobs!! These are perhaps the biggest scams in India. I've just put them together and presented the numbers in a standardized manner in terms of 2010 USD - this makes the figures comparable. Also I've added the GDP for each of the years of scam so that I get the perspective of how big or small a scam is. Of the top scams of all time two are private - Harsha Mehta's Stock Market scam and Satyam scam. Other than these all the other are done by the ruling governments - three are exclusively done by Congress and another three are group activities where Congress is one of the players. I'd have loved to include the names of other parties but Congress has left no stone unturned - like they have ripped me off my regular Pam-dose in Times of India. Well, along with the scams I've added two government expenditures - on health and education - which I feel are the foundations of India's growth. No doubt our politicians have improved a lot over the year. I really feel sorry for Rajiv and his company - they plundered just a paltry sum which amounts today to $75 million. Silly fellow. His successors have plundered $38 billion in just one of the scams this year. Bollywood is just awesome - they have come up with the jhatkas and matkas of Munni and Sheila when our another set of Mannu and Shiela are rocking somewhere else!!

Anyway, let's see the same figures in the form of a chart - this shows the value of the top scams as percentage of GDP in the year of the scam.

As you can see the enormity of 2G scam is same as the amount that our government has been spending on education - or rather should I rephrase that it's as small as the amount our government spends for educating our countrymen? The value of Telgi and CWG scams could have sponsored government's spending on healthcare for almost two years.

Let me put some more numbers. The 2G scam amounts to $38 billion. Now consider this. There are 180 million (18 crore) households who thrive on less than $10/day. I'm sure that they are not in a position to spend good amount of money for proper healthcare. With the dismal performance of the government health centers most of them have to go to private hospitals. Even it pinches me when I've to go to private hospitals - but I don't mind because I've medical insurance. I'm sure that with a 2K premium per year each of these families can be provided a decent medical insurance that will take care of most of their medical needs. If the government spends 2K per household for a complete term - that's five years - then also the amount (180 million * 2000 * 5 / 46) is less than $38 billion. So this means that if the 2G spectrum was alloted rightfully then the government would have had the money to provide free medical insurance to each of these 180 million households in India for five years.

Now consider this. Even if government spends Rs20L each on constructing a small school and hospital in all the 6.5L villages in India, then the total amount comes to about $56 billion - with $38 billion 70% of the villages could have been covered.

So you yourself can see how much honey our own folks are being deprived of because Munna and Shiela are just mum!!

I know that Dr. Manmohan Singh or Shiela Dikshit may not be directly involved in the 2G and CWG scams. But it's unbelievable that they didn't know a bit when their guys were plundering. No one praises Bhishma Pitamah because he was silent when Draupadi was stripped. No one cares for whether Bhishma supported it from his heart or not. We all know that he kept quiet like an impotent and we don't have the slightest sympathy for him when he lay on the bed of thorns. Here even that bed of thorns is also missing!!

Sources

1. http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/11/25/top-10-corruption-scams-scandals-india/
2. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/switzerland-ready-to-help-india-on-black-money-issue/589649/
3. http://www.iretireearly.com/1-4-trillion-indias-black-money-stashed-in-swiss-banks.html
4. http://www.iretireearly.com/2g-scam-the-biggest-in-indian-history.html

1. http://mospi.nic.in/GDP50_08_R_curr_9.9.09.pdf GDP data
2. http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/etc/USDpages.pdf - Historical USD conversion rates
3. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ - USD inflation rates over the years, used to standardize the scam values with 2010 USD

Our Politics Their Politics

POLISH POLITICIAN USES SEXY BIKINI SNAPS IN ELECTION CAMPAIGN AD
NEW YORK A Polish woman has decided to leave no stone unturned in grabbing a Warsaw council seat. Sara May, aka Katarzyna Szczolek, has used sexy photos of her in a bikini for the ad that she hopes will earn her a district council seat in her hometown of Warsaw. "I am honest, consistent, ambitious, hardworking and independent," The New York Daily News quoted May as saying on her Polish-language website, www.saramay.pl. "I want to change the world and help people solve problems," she added. ANI

Anti-atom activist offers sex-for-nuke veto

Berlin: A star German television presenter and anti-atom activist has offered to spend the night with President Christian Wulff if he blocks a controversial legislation to extend the life span of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors.
Thirty-two-year-old Charlotte Roche, who has won some of Germany's top journalism awards, said she is prepared to have sex with President Christian Wulff if he blocks the controversial legislation of the centre-right government.

These are the two news that attracted my attention today. It's long since I've written something on my blog - I've been busy with some personal stuff for quite some time and I haven't even got any time to read books. Anyway, coming to the news - the first thing that came to my mind is whether such news would have appeared in India.

Indian politics is flooded with corruptions. At present three of the biggest corruptions of all time, expectedly all in Congress governments - the CWG scam, the 2G spectrum scam and the Bombay Adarsh scam - are hogging the limelight in media and elsewhere. There have been major corruptions always with almost all parties. But strangely there hasn't been a single scandal like that of Bill Clinton's famous Monica-job or Sarkozy-Bruni's backyard sexed relations or Berlusconi's never ending sexcapades. Does that mean the Indian politics with an overdose of Gandhi's celibacy is actually more celibate, or Indian politicians are actually impotent?

Just imagine Barkha Dutt offering to go to bed with Manmohan Singh if he sacks all the corrupt ministers or some hot young girl (that's like an impossible idea in Indian politics) publishing her snaps in bikini as election propaganda. I don't want to debate whether these are right or wrong, but one point that came to my mind is that people who have the guts to go to bed with so many girls or get a blowjob from an office intern, no doubt, have something in them that can move things. Bill Clinton has been one of the best US presidents in the recent past and I don't know much about how good or bad the French and Italian hunks are, but at least I'd prefer them than our senile old Kalmadis. If not anything else, at least I get some spicy news everyday - my premier sleeping with every other girl in Delhi is much better than someone managing to put up a CWG under his noose. When Gandhi talks about celibacy no one questions because he is not corrupt - and he means what he says. But celibacy of Indian politicians? C'mon, as I've told, I'd prefer them having sex - then at least I know that they can do something constructive or something that needs vitality. If someone has sex scandals I know for sure that he has some energy which he/she can spend in something else - but seeing our scandal ridden senile politicians I have doubt if they are even capable of having sex.

Taj Mahal vs. Tejo Mahalay - My Views

I've heard this quite a few times. But the article that I've posted in my previous blog is by far the most informative and rationally written. In most cases people who try to refute some well accepted theory tends to become little irrational and prejudiced because they often don't have enough facts to back them. They even tend to be vindictive and write as if they are victimized. Yes, I do accept that writing against some well known misconception is like fighting for a cause, fighting for a truth that was wrongly suppressed. But that's doesn't mean that the crusaders fighting for a cause should themselves feel victimized. Crusaders are like emancipators. But such seldom happens. A very good example is the case of the Indian origin of Aryans. Most writers and researchers in this area lack the true spirit of a research - they spend more energy in finding faults in other writers who don't accept the Indian homeland theory instead of putting their own facts and figures correctly.

But contrary to all these, this particular article is quite well written with proper references, which I assume are correct. There are cases where historians fraudulently concoct references to their benefit - this again happens for people who tend to bring out some suppressed truth.

My take of this particular issue is that - it's very likely that the original structure for Taj Mahal might have existed as a Hindu Temple long before the time of Shahjahan and Mumtaj but that doesn't mean that the structure that draws the most visitors in India should be suddenly thrashed. Irrespective of its origin there's no doubt that it stands as a wonderful piece of art that has caught the fancy of so many visitors in India.

At the same time it's indeed important to find the real facts. If it's claimed that some rooms in Taj Mahal have been always locked since the time of Shahjahan then they should be opened - not to disregard the present Taj Mahal, but to find the facts correctly. If there are indeed broken idols of Shiva they should be restored with all respect to new temples. Going back to Bankim Chandra's simple words - if you're worse why can't I be better? There's no doubt that the Mughals broke many temples and reused them as palaces or tombs, but that doesn't man that we again do the same mistakes that they'd committed centuries back.

Also something keeps me wondering. After the Mughals the Marathas setup the biggest Hindu Empire after the Guptas. It was not from the Mughals, but the Marathas, that the British took bulk of India. The Mughals were just titular heads at least for fifty years till the beginning of nineteenth century and this map shows the extent of Maratha Empire in 1760. There's no doubt that the Marathas were one of the most fiercest Hindu people who created one of the greatest Hindu Empires in India. If the Shiva Temple was so important then why didn't the Maratha's restore it at the site of Taj Mahal? I won't have been happy at all if they had done that - because then the Marathas would have been equally criminal like the Mughals. Devastating or breaking something and then establishing something new on top of it is not a good culture.

So my take is that - yes, I'd like to know what it was in the past, but I don't want to politicize this. Taj looks great and earns revenue for us and we should be happy to have the structure in India. Irrespective of the past, it still remains a piece of art.

Welcome to the new Talibanistan - the erstwhile Hindustan!!

Welcome to our rechristened country - Talibanistan. We're carrying the baggage of the oldest religion and culture and hence we better abide by all the norms and regulations laid by our ancestors. Looks like our predecessors even decided whom to have sex with and whom to marry. So oldest form of pleasure known to mankind may not be a free stuff in India. At least there's some consolation that if you're not a Hindu then you have lesser restrictions and can choose from a bigger set of people to have sex with. Hindus have to find out if the girl (or guy - depending on your sex and orientation) is from the same Gotra or village!! Many more things may come up. Couples with many other commonalities (may be same state, or same district) may also be gradually disallowed to have sex legally!! And we've a US returned business grad, a scion of a big business house in India and a young politician justifying the need of a law for disallowing Hindus marrying someone you love even if he/she happens to be a 100th generation descendant of a common ancestor.

The people, in favor of passing a law against Hindus marrying within the same Gotra - the mythical lineage of people supposedly descending from the same ancient Aryan sage - point out vociferously to the genetic disorders resulting from inbreeding and marrying a cousin. My friend Vikas pointed me to the linked documents about inbreeding. That's correct. Inbreeding may lead to several disorders, but the probability of inbreeding reduces exponentially when the relation becomes distant. Even for 2nd cousin it's only 0.7%. So if separated by a few generations, the chance of inbreeding is almost zero. So the scientifically disallowing marriage within the same Gotra and same village stuff don't hold good.

And hey, we're talking about people descending from Kashyap, Bhrigu, Angiras, Kanva, Vashishtha etc, who themselves may not be historical characters or even if they are then they might have been alive at least 4000 years ago - going by the most latest dating of Rig Veda, putting it to 1500BC. People sometimes date Rig Veda to 3000BC or even more - so that makes these people alive some 5000 years back. C'mon, statistically the chance of inbreeding is ZERO among their descendants after so many years!!

Just some 100 years ago my and Trinita's great grand parents used to stay in the same village named Goila in what is now Bangladesh. My marriage would be now in rocks, not because I'm sleeping with some other girl, but because I have been sleeping with my 'sister' !! Shit - I'm incestuous.

Mukesh makes a few great points here:

The point is should people be allowed take law into their hands to punish what they perceive as incorrect ?

You can pass laws to administer it, e.g. in Karnataka cow slaughter is being banned. So now administration can legally enforce it (whether this is good or bad is a different issue. One man's meat is being made all men's poison !)

To prevent genetic defects we now have genetic coding/typing (Hope I got it right ! supposed to become big business in future !). Or will people be against it because it may bring out unpalatable truths ! (discovery that you have genes of some forefather, whose genes you should not be having !) In my community [Mukesh hails from Coorg], when some folks went for this, it created quite a furore. The reason being apprehension that the 'Islamic' part of genes in the community might pop up (Chengis Khan has the highest gene foot print in the world). After all our traditional dress does resemble the Omani traditional dress and Muthanna (My Kodava/Coorgi name) is a very popular name in Iraq ! Though my biggest concern is that the radicals in both the communities (Hindu and Muslim) may get together, arrive at a compromise and ban both beef and pork ! What no pandhi curry ? (The point is but than we eat pork !).

The sad part is that we lose the logic of the ritual and continue with the ritual even though it is no longer valid. E.g., some opinions I had heard was that Islam banned pork because pork is the meat which spoils quickest in desert conditions (The theory about pigs being un clean went out of the window with the mad cow disease and farmers using sewage water to grow "kothamari soppu"). Green is Islam's colour because in the desert there are hardly any plants/trees. So green is to be revered and preserved.

So while first cousin marriages (you can marry father's sisters' kids or mother's brothers' kids) and uncle niece (guys marrying their sister's daughter) are 'kosher' in certain communities in South India (any research here ?), you can get killed for being in the same village and getting married, up North!.

There is a big debate within my community about inter caste marriages (folks are married into all communities). While one opinion is that our population is dwindling because of this the contrary opinion is that the gene pool is getting stronger (unlike the Parsis, apparently). While folks are going ahead and doing what they want to do some of the fiercest opponents of inter caste marriages had to bite the dust and have turned around to become over night supporters of inter caste marriages when their kids married out of the community (including my uncle whose son married a Gujju behn !).

Yes. It is about politics, power and wealth and nothing else.

Actually why blame only the Jat Khaps who want to ban same-Gotra marriage among Hindus? Why not blame the TamBram guys? How many cases have you heard where an Aiyer is marrying an Ayenger? For that matter, have you checked the entries in the Indian matrimony sites? There are more fields for castes, Gotras, clan, lineage etc than education, hobbies etc. How many parents marry without checking horoscope?

I think the problem is there in all places in some form. Unless we put a check, we're no better than the Talibans.

3 Qs about India

Recently some of us had met informally at a place in Bangalore to just chit chat and share ideas on what we think about our own country and what we can do to make things better for India in our own capacity. During the course we'd asked ourselves three basic questions. Here are the questions and the answers that came up.

Q1 and Q2: what would you wish to change and why?

· Education

o Make children strong

o Education empowers people; access to knowledge; ability to question

o Makes people informed citizens

o Larger percentage of educated class tends to vote correctly

o Education is indication of future

• Healthcare (incl. maternal health, child mortality)

• Corruption / Legal system / Justice Delivery

o Book 20 people for corruption in NREGA and Mid-day meal scheme and send them to jail; will get 5X improvement in execution of these schemes

o Legal system is the foundation for everything

• Infrastructure

o Create Public Works projects

o Make people remember the Golden Quadrilateral and its impact

• Remove taxes on petrol and diesel

o 60% of price is tax which goes to government and the people in govt

o Removal of these taxes will make goods cheaper

• Make India strong – economically and from a security point of view

o Make people fear and respect the constitution; today, there isn’t respect for police even

• Other Ideas

o Universal Conscription / Military Training / Social Service

o Sustainable Development and environment focus

o Women Empowerment

o Remove Articles 25-30 from India’s Constitution (dealing with Secularism)

o Electoral Reform (who can vote, and who can contest elections)

Q3: What is India’s greatest asset?

• Young People / demographics

o New generation of people

o Young / Middle India; 30-45 age group

o Hope in Middle Class

o Parents sacrificing for Children’s future (hardly seen anywhere else in the world)

o Middle Class value system

o Population Numbers

o Family system

o Middle Class (we) – who have responsibility to our Children to create a better future for them; our generation is the first that has seen no shortages; we owe it to the next generation to build a better tomorrow

• Pluralism (open to ideas / lifestyle)

• Indians can work with limited resources

o Survival Strength

o Innovation – just need opportunities to create own unique solutions; Resourcefulness

• Cultural Inheritance (one phrase which captures everything); Dharma

o Confident, Unshackled Mind, combined with our Culture

What are the top issues that we'd like our government to work on?

It's again a new year and it's time to make resolutions which we'll seldom keep. Actually new year resolutions have become a farce. The news papers publish silly resolutions - like 'I want to reduce 10 kilo of weight this year' - made by celebrities. No one actually cares for whether some bimbette reduces her weight or adds up some flesh in her breasts, but still the tabloids will have long stories about that. It's not that I dislike reading those stuff. At the end of the day if Mallika Sherawat's breasts become bigger in coming years I really have no reason to feel bad about.

Anyway, coming to the point. This year I thought instead of we making resolutions (that we anyway will not keep), let me find out what our government should resolve to achieve in this year and also in this decade. In any case I don't expect them to keep up to their promises, but at least I feel good that it's not only me, but my government also doesn't keep new year resolutions!!

What are the biggest issues that will present the most challenges and opportunities for India?

• Control over Food prices
• Better Infrastructure
• Better Legal System - Middle class people really want good justice and our legal system really needs serious reforms.
• Check on corruption

Which ideas/issues would resonate most with the youth in this decade -- those issues which will fire them up to actively work towards their own and India's development?

• Drive for education and 100% literacy
• Drive for making governments corruption free
• Drive for better infrastructure every where
• Drive for rural employment and reduction in BPL people

Which matters should we focus on in the next 10 years? These should b achievable and must be important for India's development.

• All the above 4 points in the previous bullet

Where is my State

Just sometime back Pankaj-paaji and myself were discussing that we should fight for a statehood of Rainbow Drive, the place I stay!! Afterall all it takes to get a state is a threat of fasting by any asshole.... I do qualify for that asshole and I don't mind going for a mock fast. In fact I had an operation sometime back and didn't (rather couldn't) take food for 3 days. Pankaj was suggesting I should have launched the RBD statehood agitation at that time!!

BTW there are many other proposals that may crop up now:

1. State for Bengali speaking people in Karnataka (I, being an asshole, can volunteer for fasting)
2. State for sardar-gang (a group of close friends who share the a tremendous sense of humor and a penchant for wit - a group of friends and colleagues working in a company called Synopsys in Bangalore in mid ninetees) ..... this will look like what pakistan was in 1947, two parts one in Punjab and the other around Bangalore
3. Some historical statehoods (after all Telengana is the erstwhile Telegu speaking Nizam's territory): like Vijaynagar, Chola, Chera, Pandya, Kakatiya, Mysore etc in South, one state for each of the erstwhile princely states in rajastan, then Awadh in the north and so on!!
4. Some overlapping statehoods: The problem will arise if Indians start claiming states based on the kingdoms (or rather empires) of Aurangzeb or Shivaji or Ashoka!! That would really be an interesting thing - more than 80% of present India would be one state. But then if all three states have to exist simultaneously then it would be a case like Chandigarh where almost 100% of the areas of the three states would be common!!

Well, that's for now!! So volunteers needed to go on for fast.
Job description is something like this:

• Should be an asshole (MUST)

That's all... no other requirement!!

Nationality is the only Identity: Part III

By Dileep Padgaonkar, 21 November 2009: Reproduced from Times of India

For three decades Bal Thackeray has ranted about one issue or the other with dollops of coarse humour to the delight of his flock and the wrath

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of his detractors. Early in his political journey he realized that to achieve success he needed to exploit the insecurities of the urban, middle and lower middle class Maharashtrians. They had been left far behind by the enterprising Jains, Gujaratis, Sindhis, Punjabis, south Indians and north Indians. The feverish rhetoric of regional identity, he reckoned, would mobilise the Marathi manoos more effectively than the tall talk of progress, secularism and national pride.

And so it is that he directed his ire first at the 'Madrasis', then, high on the heady brew of Hindutva, at the Muslims and finally against the 'Bhaiyyas' of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Time and again the arms he deployed against these communities proved to be lethal: intimidation, threats, harassment and, with growing intensity, raw violence. These were the times when one statement at a Shivaji Park rally, one editorial in the party organ Samnaa, one order issued from Matoshri, his Bandra residence, could shut down Mumbai and send his opponents cowering for cover.

Thackeray had the means, and the gall, to "teach a lesson" to anyone who crossed his path: a defector, builder, film star, businessman, underworld don or journalist who failed to pay obeisance to the Supremo. In such instances, he showed a sovereign disregard for the rule of law and constitutional niceties. He placed himself on a pedestal higher than the highest court in the land.

That is why he could gloat over his 'achievements' that included the felling of the Babri masjid and the wave of violence he unleashed against Muslims in Mumbai. None of this would have been possible had his declared adversaries, the Congress and especially the NCP, not played footsie with him. But that Faustian deal was Thackeray's insurance against arrest and prosecution.

The idyll was too good to last. The deaths of a son and of his wife shattered him. He became more vulnerable when close associates began to abandon the ship. Age, too, had started to take its toll. But what crippled him was the crisis that gripped the family. In the bitter fight between his son, Uddhav, and his nephew, Raj, to take control of the party, Thackeray cast his lot with the son. But the son could simply not match his cousin's charisma, organisational abilities, determination or his rapacious ambition.

The result was obvious in the recent assembly polls when the MNS outsmarted the Shiv Sena reducing it to a sideshow. This should have encouraged Bal Thackeray to introspect. He did nothing of the sort. Instead, he chose to revile the Marathi manoos for stabbing him in the back. Later he sought to make some amends. His statement, he argued, was made not in a fit of anger but merely to express a benign patriarch's feelings of hurt over the conduct of his errant progeny. It triggered a fusillade of ridicule.

Hardly had the dust raised by the display of 'hurt feelings' begun to settle down than Thackeray fired another diatribe. This time the target was none other than a national icon: Sachin Tendulkar. The nation, and the world at large, applauded him as a cricketer beyond compare. But India discovered another, immensely attractive side of him when he declared that he placed his Indian identity above his Maharashtrian identity. He took great pride in both but his priorities were clear. Add to this his assertion that Mumbai belonged to all Indians.

Bal Thackeray, ever eager to seize the initiative from nephew Raj, gave Sachin an 'affectionate' earful. The ploy misfired. Sachin has emerged from this episode as an enlightened citizen of the republic, one who bears not the slightest taint of any sort of parochialism and, by that token, represents the face of a modern, self-confident and pluralistic India. In the process, he has exposed Bal Thackeray the troubadour of communal strife and regional chauvinism and the destroyer of Bombay's much cherished cosmopolitan character for what he has become today: a caricature of his former self with nothing but bile flowing in his veins. He cannot, or will not, read the writing on the wall. It says: your time is up.

Nationality is the only Identity: Part II

by Chetan Bhagat: Reproduced from Times of India

Raj Thackeray and the MNS have hogged headlines for some months now. Many of the enlightened articles that have appeared in newsprint paint him

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as an evil villain who runs a party of goons. Quite frankly, this reductionist approach is not too different from that of his supporters who view him as a crusader for the ignored Marathi cause. The trading of such direct personality attacks makes it difficult to understand the real issues at hand. We should remember that the MNS is not alone. Millions of people now vote for it. In a mere three years of existence, it has attained a significant vote share as seen in the results of the recent assembly polls in Maharashtra. Compared to the Congress's vote share, the MNS still lags behind. However, for every four people who voted Congress in the state, one person voted MNS. This is significant.

To understand how the MNS gained so many supporters so fast, we must examine the issues taken up by the MNS that seem to resonate with the people of the state. One, while most of India's billionaires have Maharashtra addresses, the state also houses large numbers of poor people in the country. A majority of the state's population is dependent on agriculture, and this sector has suffered with falling crop yields and a poor irrigation infrastructure. The result is a dependence on rainfall, and high fluctuations in output. The state has the highest numbers of farmer suicides in the country. Why? If we want India to progress, shouldn't our farmers progress too?

Two, the so-called secular or nationalist parties don't seem to be doing much presently. There are little signs of visible progress. While agriculture is suffering, the situation in urban areas is no better with crumbling basic infrastructure. Compared to someone inept and invisible, at least the MNS comes across as action-oriented.

Third, the media's elitist obsession plays a role. Most publications and channels are only interested in covering high-class issues rather than the stories of the people of Mumbai, thus relegating a perfectly fine Marathi culture to a lower-class status. Ours is probably the only country where local cultures are looked down upon. Anything too Indian, or liked by too many Indians, is considered down-market. This, despite Marathi culture being one of the richest, original cultures in India, followed by a majority of Maharashtrians. In such a scenario, any party offering visibility to an ignored but loved culture is bound to get support. For the record, the MNS has organised Marathi poetry recitations and literature exhibitions.

However, despite the above valid causes and potentially good intentions, MNS may not be the best bet for Marathis. MNS has gained maximum publicity when it does something dramatic and violent. While such acts attract attention, it is a slippery slope. To get noticed next time, you have to keep increasing the intensity and do something with higher shock value. Members of the MNS have reached the point of slapping an elected representative in the state assembly. But even that story died soon. Soon they'll increase the heat further, hurt innocent people, and cross the limits of civilised behaviour. Is that Marathi culture?

MNS may have brought forward the Marathi cause but by going against almost everyone non-Marathi, it has demonstrated how little it understands the state's dependence on the central government. Maharashtra needs central support to complete critical irrigation projects, which will cost thousands of crores of rupees. Our best shot at progress as a nation is if all states work together with a common agenda, instead of pulling in different directions. Also, by indulging in violent fights with other political parties, the MNS displays an unwillingness to get along with other interest groups. Such an attitude is impractical in a country like India. If MNS members can't listen to people, who will listen to them?

By claiming Mumbai for Marathis and calling everyone else an outsider, MNS is only harming Marathis in the long term. In today's world, progress depends on inter-dependence. If global agricultural companies are incentivised and welcomed to base themselves in Maharashtra, it can dramatically alter the standard of living for Marathi farmers. Kicking everyone else out won't. A lack of understanding of the modern world also casts doubt over MNS's ability to actually deliver on the issues it has raised.

Most Marathis still do not vote MNS. It is these people who can help most by talking more about the choices available to their community and the pros and cons of each option. Increasing the decibel levels of the moderate Marathi voice is needed now. In that respect, the recent comments by Sachin Tendulkar are commendable. Non-Marathis have to stop painting individual personalities as villains and spend more time thinking about what is truly driving the support base of a divisive person. If you dig deep, you will find that just like you, all that the MNS supporters are looking for is a better life. And that common desire alone is enough reason for us to be one.

Nationality is the only identity

I always like to pronounce the name Bal Thackeray because of the Bengali intonation of the word 'Bal'!! I used to like him a lot because he has guts and is not pretentious. He doesn't like Pakistan and he makes it very clear in all possible ways. He did do some good development in Maharashtra when he was in power. Well, that's good, but there's one basic problem in the functioning of people like him - they seem to think that a regional identity is more important than the national.

He suffers from the same cancerous disease that was perhaps introduced for the first time in India by the Tamil leader Anna. I may be wrong, but I don't recall any other leader before him who had put forward a regional identity above everything else. Irrespective of multiple empires rising in India, throughout the history the entire landmass of Indian subcontinent used to be always referred to as a single civilization by the external world. The name India or Indika or Hindustan never denoted any particular empire or group of people. From Chandragupta Maurya to Shivaji every emperor was always an Indian emperor. Though truly regional powers, still the Vijaynagar or the Chola kingdoms were always referred to as Indian kingdoms. Even now irrespective of the religion or language apart from being Indian there's no other identity that an Indian has when he or she is abroad. How many people outside know of so many languages of India. Does it make any sense to stand at the emigration counter in Iceland and say that I'm a Bengali or Tamil?

This doesn't mean that the regional identity is insignificant.

I've been recently reading "Identity and Violence" by Amartya Sen and he has dealt with this very topic in a very elaborate manner. Every individual has multiple identities and all of these identities may be equally important to him or her. Suppressing one particular identity and highlighting another is not a good idea. Different identities have significance at different forums. A person can be a Hindu, but a non-vegetarian, a lover of Qawali music, a gay, an economist, a speaker of Bengali, Hindi and English languages, born to parents who stay in West Bengal, a native of Bangalore for the past thirty years and so on. Each identity has a significance. When the person wants to enter into the Jagannath Temple in Puri his Hindu identity is important otherwise he won't be allowed to enter. When he books a flight ticket he has to inform that he needs a non-vegetarian meal in flight. When there's a function by Rehat Fateh Ali Khan in Bangalore then he buys a ticket because he loves Qawali. When he buys an agricultural land in Bangalore his domicile identity as a resident of Karnataka for the past thirty years is important. Each identity is thus dependent on a particular event or activity.

It's really foolish to flaunt the irrelevant identity at the wrong place. It's foolish to flaunt the Karnataka domicile identity for buying a flight ticket. The only thing relevant here is whether he takes vegetarian or non vegetarian food. Like wise for his employment as the professor of Economics at a university in Timbuktu the only identity that is relevant is his being an economist. It's immaterial if he is a Hindu or a gay or a vegetarian.

Like wise it's totally immaterial whether I'm a Maharashtrian or a Tamilian if I want to reside in Bombay. As long as I'm an Indian or a foreigner with a valid Visa, I can stay in Bombay like anyone else. Sachin very correctly pointed out that he is proud of being a Maharashtrian, but he is also an Indian. He also iterated that Bombay belongs to the whole of India. I wish some one told the same thing to Anna that Madras or Tamil Nadu belongs to India not to someone who speaks Tamil or who have stayed in Tamil Nadu for hundred years!!

If we go back a little, in the pre-independence era, Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues in Congress had opted for a strong centralized government with lesser power to the states. Jinnah had opted exactly the opposite - a weak federal government with autonomy for states - something like USA. Fast forward 60 years and we know which is a better model. There's still not much of difference of culture between the people of Pakistan and India. Still Pakistan is on the verge of disintegration and India is still better off, though we do have our own internal problems. The only reason is that Pakistan never had a strong federal government which is very important for such a multi cultural and diverse country. Historically also only those empires became large and successful in India who had very strong federal governments with limited powers to states. Starting from Chandragupta Maurya-Ashoka to Akbar-Shivaji, every where it's the same story. If today we allow the regions to grow stronger than the center then we're also going the same way as Pakistan.

You may argue then why is USA so successful. Haven't you heard of different strokes for different folks? Culturally we're different and much diverse than USA. Europe never became a strong nation, rather remained a cluster of small regional powers for ever because of the same reason. They are also culturally as diverse as India but they very rarely had strong and powerful federal governments like that of Ashoka's or the Mughals or the Government of India in the past 60 years!!

So that's it.... let's really put an end to these silly regional politics. No regional identity should be allowed to rise beyond the national identity. There's no place for a Raj or a Bal or an Anna!! As the Bengalis say, these are all 'BAL'!!