I certainly get a feeling that we are living in dark times. India is under
assault from all directions, and from within and without. The Government of
India has stopped working for the country but only works for its own benefits,
the social fabric of this country is weakening, and every section of the society
in every corner of the country is living in economic insecurities. These are bad
and uncertain times, and I sincerely wish we can pull ourselves together. This
country is crying for good leadership right now, and that seems nowhere in
sight. I hope our society can wisen up and realize that we only get the
government that we deserve.
My wishes to the armed forces and the paramilitary of this great nation. My
respect and wishes to the police forces, who have the most thankless job in the
country. The politicians abuse them, they are not protected by strong
legislation, and are always prevented from doing the right thing.
Now that Pranab
Mukherjee has been made the President of India, after an awful mockery of that
office during the time of Pratibha Patil, a reshuffle in the cabinet of the
Government of India was expected.
P Chidambaram
was made the finance minister of India for the third time, and Sushil Kumar
Shinde was made the Home Minister. Sushil Kumar Shinde said that he was a dalit
and he should be considered for the post because he was a Dalit. When he was
made the Home Minister, thanked Sonia Gandhi and the puppet Prime Minister for
making him the Home Minister, and thanked
the Gandhi family for always caring for the Dalits and minorities.
“"I am in
politics for the last 40 years. People from the Dalit community do not
generally get the charge of the Home Ministry. But for the first time, Rajiv Gandhi had given a Dalit (Buta Singh) the charge
of Home Ministry, and now for the second time, it is under Sonia Gandhi's leadership, that Dr. Manmohan Singh has
given me this post," said Shinde.”
It disgusted me
to read this. These are the swines that this country manages to vote, and
relishes. This is the Government of India we are talking about, but given the
brazenness and utter lack of care with which it is being run, it feels like a
small family run business.
Like a true
politician who has achieved nothing for the country in their tenure as a
parasite, Mr. Shinde promises to deliver like
he always has. What he has delivered is something voters do not ask. In
fact, most voters do not ask generally what politicians have done.
"The Gandhi family has always taken care of the
welfare of backward castes. Dalits can also take bigger responsibility. The
home ministry is a critical ministry. I have performed in the past and I will
again prove through my work as the home minister," Shinde said.
There is a very
good cartoon in today’s Mumbai Mirror from Morparia demonstrating exactly what
has been going on in this country for the past many years. As I have mentioned,
the Government of India is currently a closed loop that is very tightly
controlled by the ever elusive and mysterious Sonia Gandhi and her eternal baby
Rahul Gandhi, who at 42 is still groomed for something big by his mother. (I
guess its okay, Prince Charles has remained a Prince for decades now).
This dearth
of talent is definitely not a compulsion as many believe, it is a very
deliberate way of running the government where a select few who are loyal and
obedient are given the power to do anything.
Both Shinde and Chidambaram come with a lot of
baggage, bogged down by allegations of involvement in scams that have grounded
UPA 2 for over a year. For Chidambaram, the finance ministry has been a coveted
assignment and he had been looking forward to coming home for the last three
and a half years. With the economy tanking, the Congress argues that this can
hardly be seen as a reward.
If Chidambaram has this 2G baggage, then Shinde
carries the burden of the high profile Adarsh Housing scam. This is a bigger
problem for the UPA since he is tipped to take over as the Leader of the House
in the Lok Sabha. The job, previously held by Mukherjee, needs a lot of
coordination with the Opposition parties to build consensus.
The Congress that has been stung by widespread
criticism that Shinde has been rewarded with home portfolio on the day when the
country suffered its worst power breakdown has retaliated by claiming that it
is no reward. “This is a responsibility and not a reward,” said party
spokesperson Renuka Chowdhury.
As pointed out
in a Hindu editorial, the fact that the Ministry of Power continues to function
without a permanent minister shows the mental and
physical lethargy (which again I believe is by design) they have
demonstrated in the last few years.
Moving onto
other esteemed personalities in this Sonia Circus, Mr. Raul Vinci/Raul
Maino/Rahul Gandhi says he is ready to play a bigger
part in the Government and in the Congress party!! You know, any other time
this would scare me and worry that the Queen Mother will do anything to
establish her son to power, but given that he had led the campaigns of the
CONgress party in two states, including Ulta Pradesh, and despite the fraud
Gandhi family campaigning as if their lives depended on it, came up short, and
way short. Of course, the CONgress minions and old faithful at once rubbished
any media comments that the defeats had anything to do with the Royal Prince. Despite
the lack of maturity and awareness among the voting masses, and disinterest
among the middle class, perhaps Sonia Gandhi will find it tough to establish
Rahul as the PM given that this is not a monarchy after all.
However, I
believe the CONgress faithful, and would love to see the Gandhi’s actually get
out of their secret compartments and if they want to rule this country, not
rule it in secret, and lead from the front. That may be asking too much, and more
importantly, they probably have other plans already.
I’m sitting down to write anything after
such a long time that I can feel a certain excitement and nervousness in my
thoughts. It’s surely been a while.
I was home the entire last week, and got to
see after a long time what are the popular television shows that occupy most of
the Hindi speaking households in the North. There are some very well produced
shows, while most are just run of the mill sensationalist and
hyper-melodramatic family serials.
Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate seems to be
doing very well, and while many are very quick to label him an opportunist and
that he is merely repeating the same problems that everybody knows that India
is facing, it is really refreshing to see such an eminent personality bring
them into the national limelight. If it takes Aamir’s superstardom to get the
average television viewing Indian to face the grim realities of our society, he
has all my support.
Indians love patting themselves on the
back, and our collective insecurities and touchiness are stuff of legend. When
an eminent non-Indian personality criticizes our country or our society or any
of our mannerisms, we become extremely offended and our English media goes to
town drumming up its sensationalism. At the other side, when a famous
non-Indian (preferably Caucasian) personality or celebrity praises India or
Indians, it becomes national headlines. Our love for a white man’s praise is
amazing, and so is our hurt when we aren’t liked.
The reason I state this is because when we
like patting ourselves on our backs, we tend to pretend most of our problems do
not exist. In fact, even when they do, they tend to become great media
sensationalist stories. For example, thousands of bore wells are dug across
India without permission and they greatly deplete that region’s underground
water reserves, but bore well stories only surface when a child gets stuck in
them, and after a while, is either rescued or dies.
Last week at home I realized that everybody
is hooked into television for good or for bad. Horoscopes are very popular on
vernacular television, and every Hindi ‘news’ channel has their in-house Pandit
ji or shastri ji or Guru ji with the day’s forecasts, and solutions to various
problems in life.
Looking at television, I have always
wondered how in the world does an average Indian have so much appetite for
politics and news. There are dozens of news channels in every language, and
while many of them have become infotainment channels, most are still content to
simply report every big and small political and human interest story as if it
is the most sensational event in humanity to have taken place at that moment.
The parlays for the election of the
President, the Vice President, and many other office bearers have been
successfully turned into political potboilers by all those involved. For the
media, nothing pleases them more than to see conspiracy theories and
politicians going at each other on each and every decision that needs to be
taken in the country.
The politician themselves, well, we know
love their limelight. It’s actually very sad to see how much Indian politics
has degenerated into something crude, unprofessional, and very unbecoming of a
country that doesn’t stop boasting about its largest democracy. I am beginning
to realize that when it comes to our democracy and political systems, I think
all our lives we are fed with superlatives, such as our human demographics, our
voting systems, our election structures, but I doubt if a vast majority of
Indians have ever looked objectively at our political system and ever tried to
understand it. Children have a subject called civics, clubbed with history for
the most part, that is supposed to teach them about our political structures,
our rights and responsibilities, our constitution, our national bird and animal
etc, but I do not think we have any understanding of our political system. For
example, India’s stance on foreign trade, GM foods, IPR, international relations
etc, are things that are best left to a select few in the Government, and most
Indians aren’t even aware of what they mean. In fact, for the most part, being
a part of democracy, many times what the politicians think the people want goes
completely against what the country needs.
Indian diplomacy is one area where I feel
there is a glaring and dangerous gap between what is right for the country
versus what the masses think is right. For one, the political class of India
has a deep seated belief that Indian Muslims sympathise with other Muslims even
if they are tyrants and enemies. I really believe this is not true, but there
are many instances where the Government of India puts the safety and security
of this country at grave risk only because it believes that it is appeasing the
sensibilities of Indian Muslims.
However, for the national media, I think
national security has become a game, and given the fireworks that the average
Indian gets to see on television, I really doubt they even fathom the gravity of
putting our national security at risk. We are used to being killed by
terrorists, but if the enemies or traitors of this country manage to wipe out
not hundreds but thousands in one go, then what’ll happen? The politicians will
begin operation blame game and operation clean up, and the media will pull each
other down like crabs in trying to grab the juiciest morsels while shouting
itself hoarse, and the common man will discuss it with family and friends and
express anger and then wish for God to step in.
Yes, God, that was the other big debate
that went on in my head constantly as I saw more and more depressing stories of
human trauma and injustice. I’ll leave that for another post.
I'm sitting on the coast of Gujarat, surrounded by two of the largest oil refineries in India. Working with fellow environment lovers is always a pleasure because I get to discuss so many things that I love to talk about, and rant about, and hear other people rant about and agree with them. Sitting with my colleagues, we discussed the great growth that Gujarat has witnessed, and of course, any talk about Gujarat today is incomplete without Narendra Modi.
Before I move onto other things, I think a lot of my conversations on politics with a lot of people involve some very similar undercurrents, or so I feel. Nobody is denying that under Modi, the state of Gujarat has emerged as a poster child of a successful (which itself is relative) third world capitalist state. Yes everybody mentioned Godhra and says that that will forever haunt his legacy and always stand in his way at the national stage. So I am beginning to realize that a lot of people perhaps feel guilty in acknowledging the fact that a leader that functions and behaves like Narendra Modi could be the very task master that this country needs at the helm. So if everybody can see Gujarat run so successfully under Modi, what is stopping other Chief Ministers to adapt some of Modi's concepts? I suppose adapting good governance practices is just not a national habit, so I will leave it at that.
Coming back to talking environment, I once again, as much as I try not to, rant against the global trade imbalances and the economic bullying that the third world has had to face from the developed west, and now increasingly China. In the end, I realized, that no matter how much the world seems unfair and how much we seem to be at a disadvantage or no matter how much we have lost or not done well, it has always been in our hands. I personally feel it is more so in the past one decade. Till 2008, the world grew at an amazing pace. The banks were doing well, industries were doing well, and the belief was that the world was becoming more affluent. India of course was part of the growth story and everybody was gung ho about the great way the RBI ran the economy, how the UPeeA government was run by such learned and experienced economists and technocrats and how the government was determined to take the Indian growth story to the real Bharat.
Unfortunately, now the consensus is forming that India grew because the world was growing, and we are beginning to finally open our eyes to the fact that our policies are way way behind and very outdated. The politicians in power at the center have used up the India growth story to completely squander the advantage in trying to establish Rahul Gandhi as the next Prime Minister. For a poor country, we are a very generous democracy. We tax a tiny minority to subsidize a vast majority, and we try to make up for our lack of balls in expanding direct taxes by increasing our indirect taxes. Why don't the media and economists and sensible people raise this issue? Why don't they show how unfair indirect taxes are? A poor man pays the same amount of tax as the richest person on the same commodity that he or she buys from the market.
Have we hit the bottom of the barrel yet? I asked my friends. Both were of the consensus that we haven't. Its good in many ways, in my opinion. I told them that I am really keen that the ambitious, and supposedly over 300 million strong, middle class of India get out of that hubris that the money train is running full speed and that they too are very, very affected by the bad economic and social policies of an ever-conniving government.
Perhaps slow growth is the new normal. Infrastructure bottlenecks, red tape, an unresponsive political system, caste and regional divisions, these have been around since we gained independence, and show no signs of abating. In fact, they have only grown worse because now they are mixed with expectations, ambitions, and unnecessary hubris. A foreign business leader or a western politician praises us and we smile from ear to ear with our chest sticking out like a robin. I am really hoping some of this hubris is crushed and we are really forced to re look at the way things are done in this country.
Looking at the big picture, this world is becoming an increasingly difficult place to survive and succeed. In my opinion, the inability of most of the world to govern itself, manage its resources and tame its consumption is leading to a planet which will simply just stop responding. In a way we will bring ourselves to a state where there might simply be nothing left to exploit. I do like to think on something like, how long can say, the global steel industry consume thousands of tonnes of iron ore and produce thousands of tonne of steel into producing cars and bridges and cities and what not. If we are consuming our forests at a rate faster than we can regrow them, surely a time will come when it will catch up, right? Oil for example. Just how much is there? Just how much can we continue refining and consuming?
I don't know, and I really don't want to think either. We live in very interesting times. It will be very interesting to see where the world is heading now. Modern civilization has demonstrated that we cannot see eye to eye on absolutely any issue, and as we realize that the world is increasingly becoming an unresponsive place, both literally and figuratively, both in body and spirit. For somebody like me, a weeping philosopher, it's going to get even tougher being a modern citizen of the world, and of India, I can tell you that!
