more spine please.

Over the past few years, i've been coming to realize that our's is a society of ants. You can stamp out a few, but the colony lives on. If you put block a trail of ants, they will simply start looking for ways to go around, and be well on their way. It seems we are exactly the same species. If somebody stamps out a few of us, we will simply keep going on with our business.

I have not been afraid to make a very sweeping statement lately - India's societies are very, very tolerant towards injustice. Right from our social lives - where girls will be chided for wearing revealing clothes and attracting the attention of male monkeys, while we will simply not comprehend, or will not want to comprehend, that its the male monkey who should be punished, and punished severely. Its the same with our attitude towards crimes against women and children. We simply stop, pause, and move on.

At a more geopolitical level, I am quite sure no country is in any doubt that we're a very soft state. Our Prime Minister seems to be trying to go out of his way to mend ties with Pakistan, who well, will probably never see any reason in peace with India because if there is no India to hate, the glue that binds that country together will start weakening. Hating India is what keeps the Army in control, it's what keeps the rabid Mullahs going, and any peace with India, or even acknowledgement of the fact that we (the Pakistani society), are not going anywhere but down because of this, will never come because it will hurt that fragile econo-system created there. 

But this is not about Pakistan. This is about the resolve of my politicians who rule this country. More often than not, and despite my hopes that "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy", I just don't see most of these politicians to be really that good at thinking at a strategic and geo-political level.

Time and time again, our nation is bombed, our people are killed, and yet somehow I fail to see that seething anger for change, to avenge, or at least seek justice. That's when I remember my own belief, that our society has become too tolerant towards injustice. That's why we have such patronizing lines from the supercop such as Committed to bring 26/11 perpetrators to justice: US. With all due respect to whatever their intentions are, how can the US be committed to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice when India itself is not committed to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice!

Nothing could make me happier than to believe that there is something deeper at play in the Government of India's dealings with the rest of the world, and even at times when I feel our politicians are bending over backwards to please somebody else, or simply bending over at being bullied, I always want to believe that there is some deeper game at play. The MMRCA decision for example. The government said that the down-select was entirely a technical decision based on the best understanding of the IAF. Now even the fact that it was entirely a technical decision was actually a political decision to let it be an entirely technical decision! Surely quality and technical evaluation is not the only factor at play at such a juncture where the President of the US is lobbying for his country's corporation's hardware!

However, as many pointed out, if India and the US have to have a strategic relation based on trust, then sale of some hardware, though a big number in its own right but definitely a small number in the long run, should only be a blip. I do hope everybody gets that. How India's foreign relations with the US and the rest of the world pan out in future, well, that remains to be seen.

Before I went on my internship at an investment bank, I used to think that investment banks and consultancies are all-knowing, and they know so many more things that the common populace does not know. During my internship, i realized that even banks and consultancies work on public information, but the way they glean the maximum available information, and the various ways in which they employ them, is what keeps the business alive. Sometimes I use the same analogy for international relations.

Surely our politicians in seats of power know a lot more than us, and surely the Government of India's cabinet ministers have access to information that can probably shake the foundations of the way we think about our country and others, but at the same time, sometimes I feel we give them too much credit, about knowing what they are doing. The same with India, Russia, US, China, Mexico, whoever. Sometimes maybe a spade is just a spade. Some people believe that governments are all knowing, but it could be argued that it works out in the governments' interest for people to believe they know a lot more than they do!

In the attacks on Mumbai in November of 2008, citizens from many nations were killed. Since we all know how some lives are more important than the others, there's a trial on in the American city of Chicago against 4 Pakistanis charged with plotting towards the terrorist attack. My point is that the US is doing it because some Americans were killed in the attack too, but what will the government of India do to bring justice to the many others who died that day? Or to the families of those who die almost every day in all parts of the nation?

I want to see things happen on the ground. I want to see some justice being meted out in my country against terrorists, against shameless sellout politicians, this whole unscrupulous nexus of politicians, journalists, businessmen that makes a mockery of morals, rules, regulations, the norms that modern society is built on. I want our society to grow some spine, to raise a voice against injustice. Till we remain weak and hollow inside, everybody's going to take us for granted.