ON THE QUESTION OF TOLERANCE

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzdnGoNv7vAiRE1ScGNZMExBWTg/view?usp=sharing

A sad day for India, Lalu a convicted Politician wins

To me, the outcome of the Bihar Elections has been both discordant and grating. I am disheartened although not dismayed, as the outcome was a highly probable one. Nitish- Lalu combine had ensured vote portability. A large majority seeking development voted for Nitish, and the more parochial ones voted for Lalu. I would actually have been very pleasantly surprised if the MGB, the grand alliance, so skilfully coalesced by Nitish Kumar would have lost. That would have signalled perhaps a good departure from caste based politics to clean politics. Of course the question then would be, is BJP clean, and the answer is no.

The word communal has, due to protracted overuse by various political parties particularly the Congress, to brand the right brigade has acquired a pejorative connotation, but actually communalism is the back bone of democratic processes. A democracy is all about issues of the a community or commune, which does not mean a disperse religious group. 

Electorates world over are wise, because collective wisdom is better than individual. But it is distraughtly when collective wisdom glosses over anomalies and legitimises criminality making a travesty of a judicial system.

The latest example is Lalu Prasad Yadav leading the MGB to a landslide victory, despite the fact that he is convicted in the Fodder Scam case and was actually on bail while he was addressing rallies.

THE REAL REASON

At IIT Kanpur, I had a Prof of Sociology, whose father in Law had been the President of India. The latter having the reputation of scholarliness, I once asked my Prof if he was in awe of not the rank - as I knew he would never be - but the scholarliness of his Father in Law.  “Just a mediocre scholar” is how he referred to his father in law, purely in his objective assessment and not out of any prejudice or disregard for the person.

That is when I learnt the term ‘mediocre scholar’. I think, all academics returning their awards are merely mediocre scholars. How can you possibly return that you have already enjoyed for so long. Something that is just a belated recognition of your erudition or contribution to society as the case may be. If this was given by a King, you could perhaps return it, but given by a democratically elected government means, it is recognition given by the people. You could perhaps return the monetary prize which ironically most scholars are not returning. 

We mostly fail to identify the root cause of the problem. All this has been triggered by the Dadri incident. I don’t understand how this incident is different from a murder of a person on the suspicion that he has stolen the neighbours hen or buffalo. I know, in villages, stealing buffaloes is not uncommon, and often leads to murders. How is Dadri different from a murder or lynching of a person who has protested on his land being encroached by a local ganglord, or, in a more urbane setting, not served a drink after closing hours of the bar, or how is this different from killing for wrong parking of a car? How is Dadri more intolerant than killing of an RTI activist for demanding information that he is entitled to by law? What provokes such reaction from the literati today? Is it triggered by a notion of elitism……

Why were awards not returned by after Godhra or Taj Bombing or the mutilation of the bodies of soldiers by Pak forces.

Have such incidents after a communal flare up never happened in India? Have such incidents never happened in any other country? Is there some government that can guarantee that it can completely curb such betrayal of human values and prevent any such madness from happening during their regimes.

What are the two issues that need to be dealt at this point of time :

1.Why do such incidents happen?

2.What is the trigger for this hue and cry now and award returning wave?

Such incidents happen, because there is a general belief in the people that there is a weak rule of law in the country regardless of the government that is in power. One can get away with impunity, should one have numbers with him. The law will be slow if not subservient to them if they have some numbers, political power or pelf backing them. In a democracy, numbers always give legitimacy to the most irrational of demands.

The trigger for the hue and cry is not the sudden deterioration of the situation. It is the silence of a PM who is otherwise so verbose that he is always talking. Earlier there was a PM who was not only dumb but docile. Now we have one, who misses not one occasion to proclaim that he is a braveheart. But his silence too may also not be without reason and may be calibrated to play to a particular constituency. And I think all protests are for that silence.

India must create her own Silk Routes

A very large class of authors of all hues have hinted in their work that India is intellectually richer than China. And vast bodies of works which have examined the past for their historical  and allegorical importance have indicated the same. While on such issues, hard empirical data may never be available, the purpose of this blog piece of mine is not really that. While the edge India may have in that arena not-withstanding, there is clearly another where China eminently excels India today, as much it did in the past and that is Geo-Politics.

While in the blog that I penned just a few days ago, I did say, just like the Soviets, the Indian army must modernize and sweat while in peace, so that it can be galvanised into action when needed in no time, just like Russia did, to dash the American dream of hegemonising Syria. 

Having said that, I believe, more than a well oiled, fleet footed and modern fighting machine, what India needs is a make over of its egregiously week willed geopolitical strategy. In fact it needs a complete re-think and make over, something that took off well with Modi’s ascendancy, but lost steam and direction somewhere down the road.

Post the cartographic mis-adventure that the British did with India, just before they decided to leave India to her destiny, carving out an amorphous Pakistan and Bangladesh from within her, one of the most brazen exercises of creation of nation states based not on ethnicity (which is usually the case) but based on religion, a robust geo-political strategy has become an imperative for the following reasons :

1.Creating a sphere of influence so that wars don’t take place, there is peace and prosperity

2.Ensuring that the 1.25 bn and growing Indians have more land and resources tied to land to live on than to constantly jostle with each other for the same piece 

Geopolitics today is a very subtle art of diplomacy and can help create a virtual sphere of influence and an ecosystem that attenuates the pressure on finite indigenous resources.

Vietnam, Lagos and Cambodia were under the Chinese sphere of influence once upon a time. Nepal and Tibet were under the Indian sphere of influence. While India has lost both, China has gained not only them, but Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mongolia, parts of south eastern Russia, Pakistan, PoK, several African countries and much more.

While the American sphere of influence once upon a time followed its US Dollar denominated aid, direct or indirect military intervention, the Chinese model is far more sustainable as it rode on foreign investments, trade and the Chinese diaspora, which is what I call the modern silk routes.

Despite India being the spiritual beacon for centuries to several countries of SE Asia including Japan and China, she could never create her own silk routes, and consequently failed to perpetuate her sphere of influence. Despite her people being personally more productive and innovative, the state failed them, right from the time of Nehru, when a protracted political mis-judgement inflicted a humiliating defeat on India in the 1962 Indo-China war. 

If we want to alleviate poverty and suffering from the country and if we seek to provide a basic standard of living to the poor, whose number is increasing every year, the modern silk routes that we create which help us exploit resources overseas and would be as important a factor as growing the domestic economy.

Russia fights for Hegemony

Russia under Putin is a country under a virulent warrior. While this is known that he drives her like his personal fiefdom, he also tries to lord over her neighbours, like even the mighty Czars would not have. 

The Syrian war theatre and the IS unified command, both have fuelled Russia’s immense need to one, make the brute military power that she was always known for felt again and two, even revive the hegemony that she had long lost in international matters. And this under the leadership of a man who seems to have reclaimed her for himself, as though she was always his a ominous development. 

While Putin is known to flaunt his rippling though ageing biceps, that he would do the same for his country was something that I had not imagined. Will this herald the revival of the cold war era is something that we have to wait and watch. I am certain, had it been Bush at the helm of American decision making, the Cold war would have by now been escalated to a Hot war, with the American forces standing face to face with Russians in Syria. 

What both countries - Russia and USA - have very intelligently managed is, their fight for hegemony has always been offshore - Vietnam first, then Afghanistan and now Syria. They have diligently managed to keep the war off their own grounds. Putin may well have been itching for an opportunity of this sort. He had strolled into Crimea and Ukraine and stays on unchallenged. But both these shameless incursions were localised affairs. Now he is taking USA head on under the ruse of helping the Bashar regime on invitation. 

With the annexation of Crimea, Putin added more than 2 mn Russians in one stroke to a country, demographically de-growing and reeling under a death rate of 14.7 double that of the United States. 

But there is a lesson to learn from this. When in peace, his army was sweating. And that is why he took just hours to mobilize jets into the Syrian sky, and Navy into the Caspian sea. India should also use her time of peace to rally its strength and conserve it to use later as a deterrent for border ingressions and skirmishes. I would not recommend Indian army marching into Tibet or annexing Pakistan, even though I personally believe them to be natural corollaries of acquired power, and the only way to ensure lasting peace. But the bloodshed and loss of lives that will bring this about is something that I will never be willing to swallow.

Negativity gets Front Page Prominence in Newspapers

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzdnGoNv7vAiTmM4VDJQNG5ycms/view?usp=sharing

My Interview with Thomson Reuters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUdQebcAaMU

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

Trusting the law and respecting the process of Law, is a very simple way of channelising your anger and curbing intolerance. 

While there is once again a raging debate on the “Agnes of God” in quick sequel of the beef eating controversy, my view in such issues is simple. If a community at large finds some content or conduct offensive, then it should not be done or displayed.  After all, that is what democracy is all about. But it is important to, with certainty ascertain, that the community is actually offended, and it is not some vociferous fringe elements, trying to catapult themselves to a position of leadership  for personal gains or seek political mileage by bandying the band wagon of intolerance to some form of expression.

It is also queer, questioning the existence of God per se is not blasphemous. Even if it is in some cultures, at least the believers, but for the fanatic muslims or Islamites, have learnt to live with that scepticism. What intrigues me most is, if people can live with scepticism on the very idea of God, why does an allegedly aberrant depiction pique communal sensitivities

  

Jurisprudence : Besides, both groups, those who question, in toto, or in the name of art, and those who want to decisively quell that questioning, don't have faith in the law, and the law does not act sou moto, but keeps waiting for the situation to get ugly, before it gets galvanised into action.

If only would people trust the system and have faith in the law taking its course to punish the people who flout it, such incidents of mob fury and justice will get automatically weeded out. The fact of the matter is, mob fury, or community justice is meted out only when the perception of systemic dys-functionality has become deeply set in the minds of the people.

Those you suspected that beef was stored and consumed in a families house, could have lodged an FIR with the concerned police station. And the police should have taken action as per law. But they did not. Because, to gain cheap popularity, the chief patron of the state, the father of the CM of the state would invariably have instructed the police to not entertain such complaints against the muslims, whose messiah he wants to portray himself as. And similarly, the champions of the sentiments of the majority faith, who have always questioned the politics of appeasement, also went overboard taking the law in their hands, once again as they suspected that law will not act.

When I was a class 12 student, a friend of my father in the police services told him that Mulayam Singh had clearly instructed them to not file any FIR against any Kanpur Muslim family for theft of electricity. Similar special status was conferred on the Yadavs also, the community that Mulayam himself hails from. And favouritism is not shrouded. It happens openly, for if it is shrouded, then the electoral benefit that can be reaped from such political brazenness will be far less. 

What a shattered self-concept we have?

Today the front page of ET, the leading Indian financial newspaper screamed, Maggi safe in the UK but not in India, as though it was taunting Indian FDA.

Something, which the westerners, the Canadians and the British can eat, of course it is too good for the Indians to eat. And how dare they fault it? And mind you, this is not what the west is saying, this statement fraught with surprise, and as much animation as intrigue is emanating from the Indian media. Instead of lauding the Indian FDA for scrupulously testing a product as per Indian regulations, they now choose to be disdainful about it, in view of the acceptance of the product in some western markets. Is this not exactly what Nestle India wants at this point of time?

When the US FDA bans and Indian pharmaceutical company even though the British FDA and other FDAs continue to buy from it, we don’t ridicule the US FDA, on the contrary we laud their exacting standards, feel enchanted by their rigor and feel obliged to commend their grandstanding.

Another example :

A couple of days ago, I was at the pre-admission acceptance talk of a British University organized by the Chopras – an agency of great repute in academic facilitation. The speaker, a young man from the international placement cell of the university was addressing a small crowd of Indian students seeking or aspiring to obtain admission in this UK University. Just for comfort and first hand inputs they had invited an Indian origin alumnus also for the interaction. While the British spoke with flawlessly structured chain of thoughts, confirming the hours that he must have toiled before he spoke, the Indian was tentative and even somewhat disdainful about his own roots and origins.

I asked a very simple question on what the type and standard of the accommodation would be. This Indian said “by Indian standards, it is 5 star accommodation.” To be candid, regardless of the general condition in India, the Indian 5 star hotels are far superior to the European hotels as they are built as pockets of excellence. But assuming, this Indian alumnus spoke metaphorically, he was still pejorative about India and his uncalled for comment reflected a weak self-concept.

I agree it is not easy to change this. Such feelings are not only deeply ingrained into us, they get reinforced umpteen times a day by all that goes around us. But that is where personal strength of character comes into play.

Thai Airlines off load a Rude Traveller

Today, Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Delhi, which was already on the run way for take off, taxied back to position to off-load a rowdy passenger.

This upstart of Delhi’s belly, allegedly, asked some cabin crew, who was struggling to reason with his wife, that their infant child was too big for the basinet, to “shut up”. It turned out, as per the Thai people ‘shut up” is not only impolite, but also an act of hostility.

Since the flight was still taxiing, the “shut-up” impropriety was reported by crew to the captain and by the captain to the ATC, and the latter determined that the flight could return to off-load the passenger.

A couple of co-passengers intervened, but the TG staff was adamant, despite an apology, albeit a delayed one, the family was off-loaded. When I argued to not off-load, the chief flight purser with hands folded kneeled by my seat, and explained the peril of flying off with a hostile passenger on board. Interestingly, he went on to explain, such problems were experienced more on the Delhi and Calcutta flights and not so much on the Hyderabad and Bangalore bound flights.

In India, both the organized and un-organized private sector un-excepted, people are becoming increasingly more aggressive. Democracy, civil rights movements, and public school education, all together are seemingly failing to inculcate a sense of sobriety, somberness and decency in the people. While cinema halls are increasingly getting replaced by multiplexes, yet the conduct of the audience is becoming increasingly pedestrian than elite.

North of the Vindhyas particularly, there is too much of un-necessary aggression, something that this part of the country can certainly do without. In shopping malls, cinema halls, eating places, fetes et all, even the hoi-polloi struts around with a very un-called for swagger, something that really threatens women, works to the discomfiture of the old and challenged, triggers parental anxiety, and necessitates worthless men to act as worthy chaperons.

We also tend to confuse, aggressiveness with assertiveness. We believe, if we are not aggressive, intimidating or pompous, we cannot be assertive and would not be taken seriously.

This mentality clearly does not augur well for a civilized society. In fact it has an ominous butterfly effect. I have often seen my lady colleagues become un-necessarily angry in traffic and parking lots or at crowded entry points, as they believe, womanly dignity will not take them anywhere in a society that understands only aggression. While I know, that notion is not completely correct, yet it is not wrong either. If you wait for your turn with dignity, your turn continues to elude you. If, you nudge, poke, scorn and elbow, you at least get your turn.

There is plethora of empirical evidence that heightened aggression leads to conflict. And that aggression is not at all genetic but acquired. While lot of people seems to retract just before the conflict becomes irreconcilable, nevertheless the whole process is very consuming.

The Thais are very polite people. Sometimes, we may confuse their politeness with submissiveness, and their mannerisms with obsequiousness, but that would be a blunder.

I have lots of Bihari friends. They are very polite and decorous. But they are not push-overs. And push coming to shove, they may even not fight shy of pulling the trigger, but would not deign to be un-decorous. I have several Punjabi friends, great people if you know them, but in anonymity they take an aggressive posture at the drop of the hat, but chicken out, when their posturing gives rise to debilitating conflict.

I am no way trying to advocate the much touted theory of genetic pre-disposition when it comes to aggression. Aggression is an acquired behavioral trait. It is a by-product of societal conditioning.

Having travelled to about 110 countries, ironically, as a society I think, I find India to be very aggressive. When on the road, we honk with a viciousness that can unsettle the most stubborn. While entering a train, we jostle to board first, inconsiderate to even ladies and children, when there is no prize for being first.

It is understood, it is an eco-system issue, and not nationality specific, perhaps, a British subjected to the environment of denial and rejection that an Indian grows up in, would exhibit similar behavior. But that is no excuse for not improving or making the much-needed change.

I have a friend who is a cop. A very good cop! And a very very good father! He has a pet theory with which he has been experimenting, and I am not only writhing in curiosity but also extremely eager to see the outcome of his real life experiment. He believes, aggression of society can be curtailed to a baseline if not out-rightly weeded out, if parents and schools can channelize that in sports in the formative years of the child. He also believes, criminal predilection can be curbed significantly, if sports are rewarded, recognized and re-emphasized both in schools and society.

  

   

The American Gun Culture and Charleston Shootings

There is a culture of shooting in America. One could call it the gun cult. When immigrants from Europe landed on American soil in the early 1600s, they encountered a highly evolved moralistic tribal civilization of the native Indians, who fought fiercely to preserve their independence and culture. While this civilization did not have too many rules or laws, they certainly did have an exalted sense of the right and wrong and they detested white interference in their native affairs.

From killing to spreading disease, the white settlers tried all means to weaken the native civilization. The primary objective was to be able to exploit the land and forests in territory on which they held sway.

President Jefferson was instrumental in moving the Indians west of the Mississippi. Perhaps the idea was to settle some tribes in the Indian state of Oklahoma (meaning red people)

While this could in some measure be the provenance of the gun culture, the 1791 Second Amendment granted the constitutional right to own weapons, which further gave this tendency a legitimacy that even today a civilized United States of America finds too hydra-headed to combat. The background checks that a vendor of assault weapons is supposed to perform on the buyers of the weapons are given a go by, thereby putting weapons in the hands of the rash and irresponsible, and even those with a criminal record and propensity.  

During the pre-civil war era, the whites would often be shooting the Reds and the Reds would often be shooting the whites, till the issues of the blacks(traded slaves) also rolled in the whole picture. In the late 1700s, there are reports of reds shooting white children returning from school.

The rate of carrying arms is the highest in the United States, counting as high as 9 guns on 10 Americans, is double of the second highest – an anarchical Yemen - a failed Sunni state facing Shia separatist insurgency. The second highest absolute number of arms today are owned by us – Indians - but given the large population base the per capita ownership is still not an astounding number.

The latest Charlston Church shootings are an aggravated manifestation of background that I have just painted. The American Press calls it Hate Crime. I would call it Mad Terror or Black Horror.