dismal reading :(

"The prospects of participatory growth in India and India's ability to make good use of the opportunities of integration with the world market are significantly compromised by the extraordinary backwardness of basic education in this country."
- Dr. Amartya Sen, "Radical Needs & Moderate Reforms"

Read the above line and think for a second of the lie we have been living in for so many years. Economic integration is a topic that we have heard thousands of politicians, policy-makers and other commentators talk about, and indeed, the scope and range of economic reform is one of the most widely debated topics in this country.

Before I begin to expand on this, I am very glad I am in this course called Social Development and Social policy, but at the same time, I am also very distraught, because it is telling me essentially what I have heard a thousand times and do not want to hear again - India seems to have gotten nowhere since 1947.

Often politicians and other people in power blame the markets for its tendency to benefit only a small fraction of the population, and for this reason, they believe, it is bad and must be restricted. Now read the line by Dr. Sen again and think - it is not as much the ability of a market driven economy to reach out to the population, but the inability of the population to grasp it for any tangible benefits. Now that this simple intuitional fact has dawned on me, the examples are so apparent. What good is a computer to a person who can't read or write. How will a newspaper benefit anybody who can only see black characters on a sheet of paper, unable to comprehend the weight, the context those words carry?

I have heard of this conspiracy theory many times - the decision makers of this country want the people to be poor and illiterate and poor so they can continue milking this country of its wealth and rob it of its opportunities. This sounds very far fetched and extremist no doubt, but what if it is true - the politicians of this country are now lambasting the free market for being exclusive to hide their own failure in making most of the citizens of this country capable of benefiting from it?

If UP were a country on its own, it would be at the bottom of the world's human development indexes. The state that spearheaded the first War of Independence, the state that had great institutions of learnings, the state that is at the center of Hinduism, one of this nation's most important food bowls is now a land that is stuck in time. UP has effectively stopped growing socially, it seems to me.

Muslim communities in the state refuse to give polio vaccine to their children because they believe it is a government conspiracy of population control, he great universities at the time of independence, such as Allahabad, Lucknow, AMU, BHU, etc have been overtaken by more technologically savvy universities while they remain imbued in student politics, and all across the state, there is a steady fall in the quality of life - be it in education, healthcare, law and order and nothing seems to be working.

Governments have come and gone, and this time when UP voted in Mayawati with absolute majority, as she rode to victory with a toned down Dalit rhetoric, I actually felt for a few seconds that maybe she might do good. She did good alright - but only for the artists who created the hundreds of statues of herself and her mentor all across the state, and defiling the once beautiful city of Lucknow with her likenesses in stone.

The reason I cry is because UP is India, and India is UP. It does not matter if people are divided, or being divided, into castes or into regional groups or into religions, the fact is that they are taking a step backward from a better life. The saddest part is that we all have forgotten what we started towards in 1947. Today nobody remembers the real ends of everything we do. The statistics that are presented today to show our education levels, our nutrition levels and hundreds of other indexes seem to have become an end in themselves. We rejoice when the stock markets reach many thousand points, or there is a percentage increase in a social index, but we forget what it actually means for our society and for our country.

I think our leadership has conveniently moved onto issues that do not affect this country tangibly because it is incapable of tacking the real issues of development - most importantly basic education, healthcare, housing and nutrition. But no matter how much our leadship may convince itself, and the rest of us, everything else was, and will remain secondary, and India will remain the poor country it is.

so much is over already

I havent posted in a very long time, and in between, here is what has happened - I spent two months in Hong Kong on my internship, the Con'gress led UPeeA came to power with such a force that I am sure even they were surprised, the Left got the worst beating of their lives in the national elections, and the BJP had their own shock and awe moment.

Right now I really have no thoughts on any of these, except I did get a chance to talk to a person who was involved in the BJP campaign, and he said that things were really bad in the camp. There is a lot of fighting going on, a lot of factions, and i would imagine a lot of blame game as well.

My one thought was this - the BJP still has a lot to learn in politics, especially handling power and most importantly, handling propaganda. The Con'gress are the masters of subtle advertising. In fact, if you do not know already, it is thanks to the UPA government's great policies that India won the T20 World Cup in 2007 and Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal last year. Yes, all thanks to their people friendly policies of equality and justice. Bastards.

democracy shamocracy

This being the election season and all, there is lots of juice on the air - basically pointless, scandalous, sensationalist juice, but in plenty. 

Following the coverage, I know for sure that the Indian media has no objectivity, and that Indian democracy is not democracy in the modern sense, but a great mix of feudalism and banana republicanism. First, Indian media, perhaps mirroring our own societal tendancies, believes in being personal and tabloidical. 

In all the hours I have spent watching television, not once have I come across a news channel or any individual even attempting to critique the performance of the current government. The entire focus is on which film star is going to compete from which constituency, and who said what and who was accused of what. 

This is where Varun Gandhi's apparently anti-Muslim speech comes into play. First, I don't even know what he said. The media has told me that it is bad, and that his cousins and aunt are in knots over a Gandhi saying all these bad things. And lo and behold, he is barred from contesting the elections. People spew all sorts of venom in this hypocritical nation, but some venom is more poisonous than the other. Some is simply overlooked, especially if there are no returns from rabidly protesting it, but if there is deep mileage to be had, in this case the Congress reiterating that it is the true well-wisher of Indian Muslims, there is plenty of action that can be taken.

The move against Varun Gandhi were swift - two cases, sent to jail, given pointers by his illustrious cousins, disqualified from electing, and now the media says his life is in danger. Its just sad to see this sort of paranoia from the Congress. Are they concerned that suddenly the 'other' Gandhi has risen? They should be. I am just shivering at the thought of this party coming to power again. They've managed to rape the future of our economy with their mismanaged sops and absolutely battered our internal security. This government's policies in education, economy and security will start showing sooner than we think, and I just hope that we are resilient enough to fight them, and intelligent enough to remember what caused it. 

Politics and sports

The Aero India 2009 is now a huge event on the world aviation calender, and ever since India has started showing its appetite for big ticket military items, all the big defense companies of the world are making a beeline to this bi-annual event.

It just got over recently, and since the US and India have been edging closer towards a supposed partnership of two great democracies, the American companies have been in India in full force trying to sell everything. So Lockheed Martin is trying India to buy the F-16, the venerable single-engine jet engine in the service of I dont know how many air forces in the world, and in production since decades and produced in thousands.

So there were two F-16s flown at Aero India at Bangalore. They belonged to the United Arab Emirates Air Force. Not there is any problem in that, except that they let Pak pilots use their planes, and in times of war, have helped the same country in cash and kind. And now we are supposed to be impressed by the same jet fighter. My personal opinion is that sure the US is a great partner, but the more we let source our national assets through them, the more we are scape goats to the classic American flipflop. Like somebody said, in this world, there are no friends, only national interests, and I am sorry to bring this up, but if the Congress and its piddly allies think that India's national interest is served by giving up on every sense of national security, then we are doomed. This is not just about the planes, but on a much wider scale.

Anyways, here is an act that actually reiterated my belief that nobody can be trusted, especially nations which have never had a history of being India's friends. There is a Tier I WTA tennis event called the Dubai Classic, with a prize money in millions, and the world's top ranking women tennis players make it a point to play in it. There is an Isreali tennis player, Shahar Peer, and she has been denied a visa to play in the event. So much for Dubai's pretense that it is a modern city and UAE is a progressive state.

I have said this for China, but the same holds for the Arab world as well - glossy buildings do not a nation modern make. When the mindset is the same, it eventually will come out in the open. The same is true for India, no doubt, considering what we did for Taslima Nasreen and how the fundamentalists of India raised a ruckus when we tried to prosecute the traitors among us, or some dumb idiots attacked girls at bars. But hopefully i will get to write about that later.

Coming back to the Shahar Peer episode, UAE probably hasn't realized that despite all the glitz and luxury it can buy with oil and gas, I am sure the people of the free'er world still hope for some basic human equality and dignity.

Unacceptable

That this blog has been inactive for so long. Two whole months, and a lot has changed since then. Somehow India seems to have remained the same, including our 'tough' response to terror following Mumbai. Some things never change. What did happen is that there was a lot more activism on the streets, and a lot more cities are getting NSG centers, so the next time terrorists attack, which i fear will happen given our political pusillanimity, the NSG will not have to wait for a plane to take them to the terror site far away from their own base.

Other than that, Intaglio 2008-2009 went well. It was from january 8-11, and I am one of the key people who will make it happen next year. Great opportunity, and a great chance for me to learn and manage things on a grander scale.

Drove past the new Nano site outside Ahmedabad a few weeks ago. I wish I could take back a souvenir to Kolkata, but perhaps earned the wrath of the hard-nosed commies in the process. Perhaps they would not like to be reminded how they could not get things done their way despite having a dictatorship in the state for so many years. Well, the market situation is such that everybody has forgotten about the whole controversy already.

Just another thought - The Commonwealth Games are coming up next year in New Delhi, and I am shit scared the politicians will make a hash of it. Things are behind schedule, Delhi's still mostly a stinky place with a very bad civic sense. I just hope we manage to put up a decent show. I do not expect a professional or grand job. Just simple elegence and a well-managed show will do.