Of Widows and Puppets

Long time ago there was a widow, with a very famous black and white centre parting, a widow who was once called a witch and a mother of a country, a mother who was probably controlled by her son, and a son who didn't want other men to have their sons. The widow installed a Cambridge educated puppet on the nation’s highest post.

The widow, who was mother of a country, with the help of the puppet, gave birth to a child. The child saved her seat and gave her lot of power over her other child, the country.

Today there’s another widow, a widow who was once called a goddess and a freedom fighter, a widow who before becoming a widow was married to a widow’s son and a widow,who unlike her mother widow,once gave her seat to get power. The widow today, is in process of creating and repeating history. She is installing another puppet on the country's highest post.

But this widow, also Cambridge educated, with a black and almost white centre parting, is cleverer. She doesn’t have a seat but she has strings and puppets, so although she has gained everything, she’ll never lose anything.

Perhaps a lot of the older widow has leaked into the present widow and a lot of Salman Rushdie's midnight's children has leaked into me.

Wary Neighbours

China,Pakistan,Myamnar,Srilanka and till most recently Nepal.Whats common to them?There are our neighbouring countries but at the same can be major sources of worry for us in future.No it isnt the Yossarian effect a but reality.Any country with an abysmal state of internal affairs or totalarian regimes is an obivious threat to its neighbours.

Military rule in pakistan can't lost forever,General Musharaf cannot live as long as Fidel Castro and after his death the its State affairs are bound run amok.

It's been more than a decade since LTTE has been fighting with the lankan government future I dont think is any peaceful.

China most interesting of them all will sooner later break down,this claim would surel need a post though.

Burma also has military regime , the government is also known as military junta.

Read this wonderful speech by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and this article about current state of affairs in Burma.Here are some parts of the speech I relished..

"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."

Glass splinters, the smallest with its sharp, glinting power to defend itself against hands that try to crush, could be seen as a vivid symbol of the spark of courage that is an essential attribute of those who would free themselves from the grip of oppression.

Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as 'grace under pressure' - grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.

Violence

I am a firmly believe in the ideology that "Violence always begets violence". Anybody who has gone through the history of middle east clubed with jewish history will agree.


Here is an interesting article related current scenario of Israel -Lebanon conflict.

Gandhi

This post is a copy of one my posts on an orkut community.

Here are some interesting articles I came across

This article is Nathu Ram Godse's defence speech in court. I know its almost blasphemous to discuss this here but as democracy demands let us lend an ear to all.

This article will also show you how fanaticism using communication can seem so convincing.Bending words to justify irrationality. After all hitler also had supporters.



Below are two articles part of a special series of "What If" carried by Outlook.These are articles are essays basically exploring past the if gandhi had lived on.The articles require online registration which is free.

1
2


I hope you find them interesting.

More on this later.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Mr. M Karunanidhi!.Please I want a Television too, for my hostel room,its great fun to watch history channel these days. Sadly I was born some 20 years ago else a nice gold ring would have been a wonderful birthday present.Not to forget the Rs. 2/kg rice, wow such revelry all we need is some wine now.

It seems Tamilnadu is headed back to the age of kings,the 83 year old magnanimous monarch is distributing presents in his kingdom. Please do tell me if there would be some belly dancing too!.Such Fun

Some days back Mr Omprakash Chautala,tainted CM of Madhya Pradesh was in news for having undisclosed property assets worth 1400 crore. Rich Kings with poor citizens.

Congenital Indian Inefficiency

Indian governments have a congenital inefficiency; they are extremely inefficient when it comes to implementing laws. I say congenital because this has been going for more than 50 years. We are often besmirched with calumnious statements like we are laggards when it comes to taking decisions. We are like cows that we worship, capable but slow. Indian government to Indian judiciary anything that is state owned suffers from this malaise.

Reservations is one those policies which has had a mildewed effect for if Mr. B.R. Ambedkar was to be believed we should have done with our reservation policies before 1960's. Increase in quotas now only caveats the fact they have not had been successful.

In Times debate today, taking a counter view, Mr. Amrith Lal says

Quotas aren't anti-merit. Merit is a category that is influenced by social and economic hierarchies.

I think he still clings to old shibboleths of education and societal status, today the people who benefit the most from reservations are the ones who least need it, people who albeit being SC/ST/OBC are economically sufficient. Most of these families have a generation which has already reaped on the quota benefits. I think the reservation benefits should be limited to only one generation. But again we are known to make most perfect laws and implement them with resplendent imperfections; hence the repercussions are always unknown.

Although a 125% increase in reservations is exorbitant I think it was inevitable, the fact that this bill was passed 379-2 in the Lok Sabha speaks profoundly of decadent attitude and ethos of our leaders.

Often such cases are followed by page-3 aspirants sallying into action,calling for protests or giving 'I-know-english' type of comments to the local reporter.Last couple of years since my college has gained quite a bit of media importance I have been able understand media quite a bit by being close to such page-3 aspirants.I think I will post about it someday.

At same time protests like Hunger-strike,and other revolutionary measures are not only futile but also a blantant display of temerity.

The best way to deal with situations like these is first to create awareness and then garner some resources , file a PIL and fight it in the court of law. The strong alumni of the ivy -league institutions and the student community can financially support the court proceedings

On a more personal note the increase in reservations filled me with consternation initially but my tenacious optimism as always rescued me and I could laugh it out with this...

As the Old donkey says in Animal Farm

"Donkeys live a long time,none of you has ever seen a dead donkey"
well so do humans and dogs.

Sorry a bit of PJ(personal Joke) but i found the above quote very apt to the situation.

The Independence Hangover

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”

"The world was not sleeping; it was for example 2.30 in USA"

- Hazaron Khwaishyein Aisi.

Yes, the world was not sleeping galloping rather. I somehow had come to believe that Nehru, his commanding heights theory and his “temples of modern India” were all to blame for India’s poor economic growth post independence. Also, I hail from a faction that has always believed that Sardar Patel would have been a better prime minister and Nehru with his ostentatious lifestyle and his deep rooted socialist believes was a mistake. Although I always believed that Nehru was a wonderful leader and a heartthrob of millions, I always doubted his capabilities as an administrator and a decision maker. A lot reading recently has changed my views slightly, though I still reckon he was not the best decision maker around.

One of the many things that we normally level against Nehru is that we had a shunted economic growth courtesy the PSU’s and his central planning concepts that finally bogged down to license raj and hindered the economic growth, in all his socialist views.

As MJ Akbar very profoundly puts it

“I think that's very very unfair. Every 'ism' is basically a reflection of the moment. There's no permanent ism. The only permanent ism can be faith -- like Hinduism or Islamism.”

Very true, Nehru did almost what most of his contemporaries did, at that time to lay out a proper an infrastructure the only way out was state intervention. As Manmohan Singh once said in an interview,

“Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialize a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, [then central planning is important].”

But as somebody once remarked, “Business of the state is to stay out business”, I think after laying initial infrastructure government should have backed out. As Judith brown puts it,

“…the problems lay in the late 1960s and 1970s when the groundwork had been laid for development and the State could have stood back.”
“..Yes, I think he should have given up some time in the late 1950s.”

Actually most of the problems due to socialism that we attribute to him came during Indira Gandhi’s reign. As MJ Akbar says,

“Much of the Socialism that we attribute to him actually came during Indira Gandhi's time, when under the advice of certain people whose names are best forgotten, she went to the point of once even proposing that the wheat trade in the country should be taken over by the government. This is all post '69-70, when politics took over economics.”

Yes, that is when the draconian FERA and MRTP came, when we build walls around us. We prevented ourselves from the Coca-Colaism and Pepsism, although that execrable feat is normally attributed to George Fernandes, the foundations were actually laid with FERA. This was the same time, when Deng Xiao-ping, revered as the greatest Asian administrator, opened the floodgates for FDI in China.

Lets consider socialism as an experiment that failed, but an experiment that was perforce at the initial stage of developement after independence.

As Upamanyu Chatterjee puts it in his usual acerbic candor,

“Has socialism been good for anybody but the socialists?”

On a lighter note I just realized, while typing the above paragraph in MS Word that Deng Xiao-ping is actually a word in its dictionary and Indira Gandhi is not. Looks like Bill Gates, has same feelings for Mrs. Gandhi as Henry Kissinger.

Coming back, another issue surrounding Nehru’s leadership is that he committed an epochal blunder by referring the Kashmir issue to the UN. I am more inclined to believe that Pandit Nehru was culpable in this regard. Claude Arpi gives very strong arguements to this in his article,along with an anecdote redolent of Nehru' s incapabilty of taking decisions in imperious situations ,by Sam Manekshaw.

On the final front of Indo-China war, which finally became his Nadir, one of Nehru's personal weakness was to blame.According to Judith Brown,

[..]problem lay in the fact that he a. was his own foreign minister and b. there was no powerful counterweight of an external affairs establishment or minister to challenge his views.

[..]His inability to delegate -- gathering so much power to his own person as prime minister that he stifled opposition and failed to nurture those who might have challenged him

So, who do you think was a better choice, Nehru or Patel. Nehru was surely more suitable for the international arena albeit it is difficult to explain his grievous foreign policy blunders.

Supporters of Patel say that if he would have been PM , he certainly would have driven the tribesmen right out of India by never agreeing to ceasefire and there would'nt have been an entity like POK.


Alam Srinivas once wrote in the outlook, arguing that such a step would have created an international furore and embroiled Indian realtions with UN.

Although I find it hard to swallow this arguement after all that has happened in Kashmir,I must say that even if we employ inumerable casuistries in our essays we will remain as much vunerable in predicting the past in differnt frame of events as we are in predicting in future.

Long Live Popcorn Patriotism

A thought that popped into my mind after I saw Rangde Basanti. A nice movie, does enamor a bit, good solid screenplay and amazing performances by Aamir khan, Atul Kulkarni and Soha Ali Khan. By the way the site rocks too, do check it out.

Anyways I didn't notice this one on the graffiti wall during the film completely, but found it on the site.Here it goes...

" Go slow, someone is wetting for you"

Nice, I would say,hope you get the pun.

With republic day just past i wanted to write two conflicting posts, spurting from two conflicting theories in my mind. Inspiration for the first one came from the book i am reading by Alvin Tofler called the Third wave and second about Popcorn patriotism and reviewing Rangde combined with lack of freedom in china and something more that i recently learned about China.

Unfortunately as the case i find myself invariably short of time, may be I will write something in future.

Till then go and watch Rangde if you get a chance.