Strong women = strong societies

There was a historic decision taken in the Arab world yesterday. For the first time in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, women were free to stand up and vote in elections! The fine print is that this comes into effect only in 2015, still 4 years away. According to the King.....

“Because we refuse to marginalise women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we have decided, after deliberation with our senior ulama (clerics) and others... to involve women in the Shura Council as members, starting from the next term,” he said in a speech delivered to the advisory body.

Uh, yes, because the Arab society and the Saudi's in particular have been at the forefront of women's rights and freedom, they've taken this great epochial step towards granting them 'more' freedom. I'm wondering here what will the Saudi women do with all this freedom at their beck and call!

Of course, before I weer off into my rant against the Arab society, I thank the global media for providing me more details of this 'historic' decision by the King, taken in consultation with the topmost group of supreme Islamic scholars, and making sure that the tenets of Sharia are not at all harmed in allowing women political freedom. According to many, with the winds of change sweeping the Arab world, it was only a matter of time before the big daddy of the Arab world did something to fend off the criticism against its own society.

So before I start fretting at this unmitigated freedom that Saudi women have been given, I should remember that...

Women will also be able to join the Majlis ash-Shura, Saudi Arabia’s appointed consultative assembly, the king announced yesterday. However, they are still forbidden from driving; need written permission from a male guardian to travel, work or attend school; and will be excluded from elections due this week.

Though I often come down heavily on societies all over the world, and some societies in particular, but its true that change is the most difficult thing to come by, and I think by nature, most people resist change. Change means having to get out of one's comfort zone, change means having to do something new, or change is having to stop doing something, and I think as humans, most of us like being in a comfort zone where one is familiar with where everything is and how most things are done or which rules are to be followed.

When it comes to the Arab society, I think before the spring revolutions all across the Arab world, most of the change that was demanded in that society was not from within, but from the rest of the world, particularly the stalwarts of equality and human freedom and expression residing in North America and western Europe. Even then, the spring revolutions weren't really about social freedom, but more about economic conditions and political freedoms. This is evident from the fact that the first response in all the states was to raise salaries and announce hosts of public spending schemes to quell the discontent over unemployment, inflation and economic inequities, including in Saudi Arabia.

It should not be surprising that this latest announcement from this 'reformist' king will be taken with a barrel of salt by many Saudi watchers and particularly Saudi women. This is not the first time that the Saudi King has promised gender reforms, and they have always failed to pass through the super fundamentalist and by the book religious clerics that make all the rules in the kingdom. For example, Saudi Arabia goes for local municipal polls (only grassroots polls are allowed in monarchies for some reason, I suppose its too much work for the King to choose each and every civil servant) this week, and the common refrain is that the system is not prepared currently to allow for women and participate and stand. According to Nesrine Malik writing in the British paper Guardian,

In the last elections, in 2005, practical considerations and the difficulty of preparing for women to take part at short notice were the official reasons given for the postponement of the decision. Elections scheduled for 2009 did not go ahead.

Officials have had six years to get ready but when the advisory Shura council recommended to the king this month that the ban be lifted it was too late to do so this year. It would seem that separate polling stations for men and women remained a problem.

This is something often seen in the Kingdom with regards to women's rights: a promise and an expression of goodwill scuppered due to bureaucracy. There is no law prohibiting women from driving, for example, but an administrative vacuum makes it impossible to get a driving licence or register to drive. "We are not ready" is the refrain often heard from those in authority.

So its still 4 years away, to come back to the point at hand, and while the rest of the world seems to be obsessed with only the fact that Saudi women are not allowed to drive, its the least of worries for women in the Arab world. Its another discussion that is Islam really opposed to all the things that modern society prides itself on - equality of gender, freedom of speech and freedom of the individual? I don't know and I know that that is not true. Religion's always been convoluted to fit one's own ends, just like the evangelists in the United States and the Orthodox clergy in the Muslim world.

I am a strong proponent of the women's reservation bill in India as well, because as I have said before, it will only improve the system because I simply am not a fan at all of the crappy Indian society, and with money taking front seat everywhere, philosophical terms such as respect for the individual, respect for laws and respect for the land in general are all secondary. Its time our brute society had a mother's/daughter's/sister's/wife's touch, and I believe because of the inherent nature of women to care, I think our society would do well to get rid of some of its animalism that is prevalent in everything today.

I really wanted to pay a tribute to a great woman of Africa who died recently after battling cancer. Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya passed away in Nairobi at the age of 71. The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the lady promoted everything that I believe in - sustainable development, environment, womens rights and raising her voice against a bad government, which I believe should be a staple in any democracy. Here is an interview of her published by the National Geographic magazine in 2008.

Africa has few things to celebrate today, and she was one of them. May the world continue to be inspired by her work and the third world rise on the pillars of environmental conservation, justice and equality, sustainable development and a defiance towards all the predatory forces that roam the world today preying on third world money and resources. Consumption is not the answer.

“You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.”

Politics all over

While India's political scene is always bubbling with some scandal, accusation, fist fight or apparently epochial expose, these days there seem to be a huge inferno raging in this political cauldron, with so many stories going on at once, and the common man, as usual, just watching the show at the sidelines.

I mean I don't even know where to start from. Okay, lets start with the man everybody loves to hate - Narendra Modi.

Actually, before that, I want to remember the victims of the earthquake that was centered around Sikkim and has devastated major parts of the state. At last check, the toll had risen to over 50 in the state alone. A good friend of mine here is from Sikkim, and he told me even his home in Gangtok had cracks in it, though the major devastation was in the northern part of the state. My best wishes to the Armed Forces and the paramilitary and state forces to effectively reach out to all the affected regions, and my prayers with all the affected people and families to help them rebound and my condolances to all those bereaved. This world's been having way too many natural disasters in the past few years, at least a lot more than I can remember seeing in the past, and I wonder if the Earth is finally starting to revolt.

Coming back to Narendra Modi, It seems to me that the stage is being set for him to enter national politics. As a Prime Minister, Narendra Modi will prick the conscience of every pseudo-secular traitor hugging politician and social activist, and while the CONgress and the psuedo-seculars will never allow the country to move in from the Gujarat riots, I can definitely feel that they are genuinely afraid of Modi.

I do not know what goes on the corridors of power - who talks to who, about what, and about who. So the news that there was a recent American report which praised Modi really took me by surprise, because this same country denied visa to Narendra Modi because of his bad religious freedom credentials (!). So Mr. Modi was denied a visa for his bad record on religious freedom, but the same people praise him for his effective governance. Once again, American double standards come to the fore. The BJP certainly used the report to project Modi as the next big thing on the national stage and the CONgress releasing a quick rebuttal.

But overlooking the other issues, it cannot be denied that under Modi, Gujarat has come up as the new economic driver of this country, leaving behind traditional industry powerhouses such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu far behind. In a country that has been set back many steps in the past few years of the UPeeA government, Gujarat has been doing splendidly well economically and I suppose American or no American, any capitalist would drool at the market and the potential. The American report also praised Nitish Kumar, and on this front, I am really glad that Mr. Kumar does not seem to have lost a lot of steam, because its very easy for politicians to give up and see their efforts fizzle out after a short while in power.

In my opinion, the new poverty leaders in India will be West Bengal (who would have thought that a region and people that have given this country so much should come to this), and Uttar Pradesh. Mamata Bannerjee had asked the Centre for a bailout package of Rs. 47,000 crore a few months ago because the state has absolutely no money left! The economy of West Bengal was not a communist economy, it was a CPI(M) economy, and good luck to that state, and UP to get themselves out of the morass. I was just thinking about this a few days ago, that this is a democracy, and no matter how crazy or ridiculous this nation is today, at the end of the day, it is possible for people to come out and vote out the incumbants. So I believe that the people of West Bengal voted for CPI(M), at least till the time the Commie bastards started voting themselves in by hijacking the voting process, and the people of UP have voted Mayawati in with her agenda of self-aggrandization and caste divisions, so they should be content right now, no matter what armchair analysts like me write.

Coming back to Narendra Modi, he had recently fasted for three days, named the event as Sadbhavna mission, which means compassion/harmony/understanding among religions (in this case). The three day fast was a media circus, because I think it was, at least in my eyes, the first time that Narendra Modi was doing something so brazenly and openly and which was being followed by the national media, and the Government of India chiming in with their ridiculous jibes and dismissals. On a sidenote, Mahatma Gandhi's real great grandson Tushar Gandhi, who had dismissed Anna Hazare's fast has dismissed Modi's fast as well, calling it self-publicity. While the fraud decendents of Gandhi rape the country, the real descendent is now only busy with one thing - others associate themselves with Gandhi, he disassociates them.

So a lot of people came to meet and greet Narendra Modi as he sat on his three day Sadbhavna mission, and they all presented him with turbans, shawls and all sorts of stuff. A Muslim cleric presented Modi a skull cap and a shawl, and Modi politely refused to wear the skull cap. NDTV and the Tabloid of India, faithful dogs of the CONgress party and the rest of the media, went to town highlighting how un-secular Modi still was. The cleric was on the television too, hurt had how Modi had hurt all Muslims by not wearing the skull cap. Such is the level of propaganda machinery that the CONgress rules over, and it just surprises me sometimes how people can't recognize such blatant propaganda machinery that the CONgress indulges in. Throughout this post, I haven't even mentioned that their local politician Shankar Singh Vaghela went on a counterstrike to ridicule Modi's strike!

When I talk to people of leadership, everybody bemoans the current government, and then tells me we have no choices. I tell them I am surprised that they think this country of over a billion people can't throw up a few credible people to form a government. Sure the CONgress and the fraud Gandhi's are blatantly ruling the roost and quite possibly setting up the stage for Rahul Gandhi to stand up as the next PM, but surely the people of India have now reached a stage when they say enough is enough. Modi is a man everybody loves to hate, and no matter what he does, how effective he may be or how active he gets on the national stage, Godhra will forever be brought up when the elections come. He was elected as the CM of the state again even after 2002, and I believe that while his detractors are most vocal, there seems to be a big silent mass of voters who will easily vote for him because of what they see happening in Gujarat now.

In the end, this country needs a leader with some spine and some scruples, because current leadership hasn't an iota of either. If Modi, despite all his flaws and right wing leanings and whatever, represents the leader to display those, then there will be huge chunk that will bring him in. Whether that happens, we shall see, but to me, that represents the most credible answer to the current onslaught against the country by the CONgress. The CONgress is certainly sitting up and taking note.  

Indian economic musings

1. I've made this point many times before that India has effectively wasted the past 5-6 years in terms of economic and social reforms, and most importantly, infrastructure. The United Progressive Alliance has been one of the worst governments ever to rule this country, and every passing day provides more examples of that.

First of all, the social agenda that this government tomtomed is a myth and an eyewash. I just want to make that clear because that is the selling point that brought these bad people, but excellent self-serving politicians to power at the center. In words that are very true, a fellow forumer at one of the forums I frequent wrote that the UPeeA's jihad agains the Indian economy continues unabated, after posting yet another failure on the policy front by the government.

Very recently, I had posted a news on how there has been no development in the ports sector in the country in the past one year with the ministry failing to award a single project! The report says that some of these projects are carryovers from the past, thus showcasing that with all the issues such as the Jan Lokpal Bill and this irritating bug called national security, the government has been just trying to play safe almost everywhere where they need to take a stand and actually behave like a government.

Recently, the Prime Minister said there's an international conspiracy to destabilise India's economic growth. What he failed to add was that 'his' incompetent and self-serving government was doing everything in their power to help the conspirers.

I've been in firm favour of the opinion that India needs at least a short term shock to wake itself out of this delusion that this country's economy is going gung-ho. People need to see the truth about how India is a land of bottlenecks and inequalities and inequities, and they need to see how the Government is only too quick to hide behind India's relatively good macroeconomic numbers, creating an impression that everything is fine.

2. Not a lot of people would follow this news but India and Iran were having issues in payments of Iranian oil, with US sanctions on Iran and it armtwisting Germany to stop Indian payments to Iran through a German Bank. The US armtwisted the Reserve Bank of India the same way to ban a regional clearing mechanism for the oil payments. There were a lot of issues involved, with Iran actually allowing India to buy oil on credit for a couple of billion dollars.

In fact, one big conspiracy theory, which I feel definitely has a lot of truth in it, is that one reason the US wants to clamp down on Iran is because that nation wants to sell oil bybassing the US Dollar as the global exchange currency. New York and London are two centers of global oil trade, and any effort by anybody to change this status quo has always been met with stiff resistance. Countries like Japan already trade in their currencies, but the Yen has always been used as an alternative currency and reserve currency by many nations. Now for the first time, the Rupee will be used in international trade, bypassing the US Dollar. For a developing country, and the fact that India is slowly turning to a major American stooge thanks to our Government, this is a big step that will undermine the USD's grip on the global oil trade.

According to a report in India’s The Telegraph newspaper, "Through this method, the path for India's national currency to enter the international currency market will be paved. India's Ministry of Finance has considered a method to resolve the tension over currency with Iran.

According to this proposal, oil buyers are allowed to open Letters of Credit in rupees and this Letter of Credit can be used by Iran to buy Indian products."

Under terms of the arrangement, Iran can buy Indian commodities including tea, rice, machinery, and engineering and technical services instead of using dollars, while Iran under terms of the arrangement can convert its surplus currency revenues from selling of oil to India into euros. Should Tehran endorse the arrangement it will mark the first time that the rupee will be utilized as an international currency beyond the dollar/euro zone.

This is good to see actually, because to the naked eye, either India did it out of sheer desperation and lack of any other option, or that it thought that it doesn't need to be cowed down by the US when it comes to such a thing as India's oil imports, which keep our economy running. I think its the first one - sheer lack of alternatives.

3. Lest I forget, a forumer posted an article by Branko Milanovic titled "Inequality and its discontents", obviously playing on the work by Joseph Stiglitz on globalization. Mr. Milanovic himself is a very accomplished economist and one of the leading voices on global poverty and inequality trends. Always good to read what he has to write on these issues which are the hallmark of today's unequal capitalist world.

A lot of us in India comment on the fact that the rich seem to be getting richer while the poor seem to remain poor. The truth is that it is a fact, and its a fact the world over.

From Tunisia to Egypt, from the United States to Great Britain, inequality is cited as a chief cause of revolution, economic disintegration, and unrest.

This feeling that the incomes of the rich and the poor have diverged in part reflects reality: between the 1980s and mid-2000s, income inequality rose significantly in countries as diverse as China, India, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. The Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality that runs from zero (everyone has the same income) to 100 (one person has the entire income of a country), has risen from around 35 to the low 40s in the United States, from 32 to 35 in India, from 30 to 37 in the United Kingdom, from less than 30 to 45 in both Russia and China, and from 22 to 29 in famously egalitarian Sweden. According to the OECD, during the same time frame, the Gini coefficient increased in 16 out of 20 rich countries. The situation was no different in the emerging market economies: in addition to in India and China, it rose in Indonesia, South Africa, and all the post-Communist countries.

The economist does mention how India's rich do not report a part of their income and thus their share in the pie does not reflect their actual share, while the poor's even marginal growth tends to get magnified.

India has become something of a cause célèbre of this problem. Since the country’s economic reform in the early 1990s, its GDP per capita has risen by an average of almost five percent per year. But per capita consumption, as calculated from household surveys, grew only slightly, at one percent per year. Some of the discrepancy is due to the declining share of personal consumption in India’s GDP, but some is thought to have been caused by the low “capture” of the incomes of the rich. In other words, the mean income rose because the rich got richer but did not report it, while the poor and the middle class earned only moderately more income, which was well reported in the surveys, and did not consume significantly more.

Feelings of injustice are driven by domestic factors. When combined with corruption and persistently high unemployment, inequality is transmuted into inequity in people’s minds.

But the perception of today's world by its people is summed up by the fact that we, as individuals in this society driven by consumption and shows of wealth, are driven by the exact same things, and want to know what the rich are doing, not what the poor are doing. The ability of the media to reach anywhere and everywhere just magnifies the glitter of the lifestyle of the rich and famous, thus driving many of those who do not have those things into lives of crime, prostitution and plain old thieving.

Today’s economic ethos is magnified by a media that focuses only on lifestyles at the top -- those of the richest, the most beautiful, the most successful. Of course, the media does not choose its stories arbitrarily; it is driven by public preferences as much as it shapes them. And people want to know about the top. 

And the politicians hearts cry out again....

after another blast rips through the Delhi High Court, killing almost a dozen, injuring many others, and the politicians get into the crocodile tears act, with visits to the hospital and statements about condemning terrorism and how they will not bow down to terrorists.

The fact is that the people of this country should have started calling out the incompetence and unaccountability of this putrid government many years ago, but then there are very few things that actually seem to stir our numb society into any sort of action. That's why I praised Anna Hazare because keeping everything else aside, he stirred a lot of people into opening their eyes and realizing their government's absolutely the worst ever this country probably ever voted in.

Yes, the Delhi blasts have failed to register in the national psyche once again, nobody around me has even mentioned it, talked about it, or expressed any anger or any other emotion regarding it. Sometimes I wonder why terrorists even bother trying to blast our society, just like an ant farm, you crush a few and the rest continue doing their job. So if there's any sort of shock that terrorists hope to create, perhaps our society is too numb to feel it? But then again, if the terrorists happen to be, or be supported by, pathological India haters that the Pakistanis are, then I suppose they're just living their lives i.e. hating India and trying to hurt it because that country's society has nothing else to fill its national psyche.

The Pakistani regime must feel a change is in the air though, definitely. In the past, it has been very easy for Indian politicians to simply hint at foreign forces or Pakistani hand in terror blasts and attacks in the country and the rest of the country would take it for what its worth and get on, but now apparently the people seem to have started calling out the Politician's bluff because while it is true that some people will always try to hurt India no matter what, it is upto us to protect ourselves, and this country's leadership has been very, very incompetent in that regard. Our body, no matter how strong it may be or has the potential of becoming, will be upto nothing if the head is incapable.

There was a lot of direct anger and sarcasm on facebook over the comments and visits of the bloody netas of the ruling government, including how Rahul Gandhi got booed at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Its very good that the people are catching up to the perfidy of the CONgress elite. Over the past few weeks, there was another joke that the ruling government played on its people - all the ministers declared their wealth. Apparently Kamal Nath is the richest politician with Rs. 300 crore worth of assets, leaving behind by a mile the other honest politicians of the Queen's cabinet, including the Maratha son of the soil Sharad Pawar, who has 12 crore in assets. I am surprised an honest man such as he even has 12 crores! Considering all his wealth is stashed away in Switzerland and tax havens and in the name of his family, its very honest of him to declare such a large amount as 12 crore. Hats off to this honest politician.

Anyways, the latest news is that the Queen is back to rule over her subjects, and they can definitely use her leadership to guide the propaganda machinery back in their favour. A lot of conspiracy theories are reporting, or I feel wishing, that she was abroad also to take care of their massive wealth, as there might be signs that there was a showdown looming where all this wealth would become public knowledge. I too wish that that were the case, but politicians have a tentacle like grip on every system in the country, and its very unlikely that there ever will be a day which will see all this stolen wealth ever returned. I think its all sunk.

I am not quite sure whether I should consider that the issue of shameless corruption and blatant inaction on national security are related, but somehow my gut feeling tells me that they are related, I really don't know why. The point is that in the past few years, I have seen our country become more and more accepting of terrorism and deaths of our citizens, and that is a very dangerous sign. Like I said, the bomb blasts in Delhi hardly created a ripple in Mumbai and anywhere in the country, and thats a very very sad state of affairs. When this society is unable to stand together to fight a common enemy, I suppose the government will not have the pressure to do anything, and the enemy will obviously have a field day killing.