Small Men



Though I have beeen actively following up domestic politics, I haven't found much to write about them in the blog. All seemed unabashedly corrupt and uniformly illiterate. However, the recent developments enraged me so much that I thought I will write about the current regime in Tamil Nadu.

This government is a minority in the assembly and is headed by Karunanithi, the famous septuagenarian. Ever since I was aware, I have been incredulously appalled at his short-sightedness, cunningness and silly, careless attitude to governance. The very term governance is an oxymoron here as very little is governed anyway.

He has been portrayed as the protector of the Tamil Language by the masses and also considered to be a master of Tamil Literature. With my average knowledge of Tamil, I figured his writings to be substandard and wrought with bloopers. His ideologies include rationalism and atheism. But it is quite limited to Hindu-bashing and he is the proud member of the relatively new club 'seculars'. This blatantly means minority-appeasing, which include attending Iftar parties by wearing the Muslim skullcap and at the same breath ridiculing Hindu rituals.

This apart, he has recently started sporting a yellow shawl. The rumour has it that it has been prescribed by an astrologer and ever since this 'allegation' broke out, he has been offering innumerable and each contradicting with the former, explanations for why he is wearing it. The trouble was he comes from the school of Periyar, the rationalist leader in Tamil Nadu, whose prescription is to wear only black shawls.

His family television house is called 'Sun TV', but he recently announced tax-rebate for movies that have Tamil titles. This, he declared, is to ensure that the Tamil movies have Tamil titles. This was an after-effect of a recent trend in Tamil to name movies in English. Hence, titles such as 'Gentleman', 'Boys', 'Something Something' and yes, even 'Godfather' doing the rounds. Many of these, at the verge of release, had to rechristen themselves in a hurry to avail the rebate, and since some amount of publicity has already been done for them, had to provide the original, English title underneath the new Tamil title to bring in the familiarity. This went into laughable proportions. A movie named 'Empton', after the famous German lieutenant of World War II, was denied rebate on the grounds that it is an 'English' name.

This is hypocritical considering the name of his family TV house. And his son, the CM prospect, is named Stalin, after the Soviet leader and his grandson 'Aditya', a visibly Sanskrit name.

What actually prompted me to write about him was his recent announcement. Audacious and shameless, he went onto reduce the ticket rates in the movie halls. From now on, apparently, the cinema halls will have to follow the ticket rates fixed by government. Apart from sounding death knell on the mushrooming multiplexes, I do not consider the purpose for which this has been done.

More importantly, I want to ask a few questions. What does he think is the job of his government? And how exactly does he define the term 'governance'? Is raising movie rates the most important problem plaguing Tamil Nadu? Is he under a time-warp where he thinks India is still under the License Raj where price controls were in vogue?

And how careless is that you don't worry about the state of the cinema owners and unilaterally announce such schemes as if they are your own business?

Whatever is the reason, I seriously wonder how such people could even be fit to consider as leaders, leave alone becoming Chief Ministers. If this is the behaviour of the head of one of the fastest growing states, I dread to think what the leaders of Bihar, Jharkand or Haryana are up to.

The irrigation water is becoming quite a concern, the farm produce are losing market, public transport is in critical condition, trade is dwindling, and the infrastructure even in the capital is creaking. And the Chief Minister thinks that people being unaffordable for movies is the heartbreaking problem to be addressed first.

Poet and a freedom fighter, Bharati remarked a century ago: 'When the ghosts govern the land, the scriptures eat the corpse'.

The question of who is a foreigner

Shibu Soren got convicted, Sanjay Dutt would go to jail, Ganguly returned to Indian side and oh yeah, henceforth, Shah Rukh Khan would be hosting KBC.

In the middle of sensational, crime and the clichéd 24x7 non-stop channel feeds, a very crucial news totally got diminished from the public attention. Especially because we had other juicy aspects in our lives to talk about and more importantly because the media could conveniently camouflage this news among Sorens, Dutts and Khans.

Enough of bantering, let me come to the point. On December 5th, Supreme Court quashed the Amendment to Assam Foreigners Act and said that such an amendment is unconstitutional.

Why am I saying this is important and what does this verdict mean? Here I go.

For quite some time, refugees from Bangladesh have been crossing over to Assam and various other North-East provinces and settling down comfortably. There have been noises made to identify and deport them. Some time this would be taken up seriously and also ignored conveniently. People moving in are Muslims and hence they are a convenient vote-bank for the pseudo-secular parties, the leading one being Congress. For Assamese, they posed potential threat to their sovereignty and also bring in terrorism. For an already militant-affected Assam, influx of Islamic Terrorism would just be the right concoction for disaster.

But for a vote-bank driven Congress, terrorism is absolutely a non-issue. Also, since BJP was gaining foot-hold in Assam, they had to foil BJP’s chances by wresting complete control of Muslim votes. And how do you do this? By declaring that all Muslims in Assam are Indians! Such an announcement would be obviously invalid so they decided to implement IMDT, Illegal Migrants (Decision by Tribunals). This posed the weight of proving someone a foreigner onto the tribunals and not the person. Last year, Supreme Court quashed this act by stating it illegal. Driven to the wall, Congress came back with another weapon, this time by amending the Foreigner’s Act.

According to the Foreigner’s Act, 1964, if someone is accused as non-Indian, the person concerned should prove that he or she is indeed the citizen of this country. Last February, the central government amended this act by exempting Assam from this act. The result is, if you point out someone as foreigner in Assam, it is your responsibility to prove it and not the accused. This would have led to absolute nullification of the Foreigner’s Act in Assam, which means that it became a free state for any immigrant. People from Bangladesh especially, started moving lock stock and terrorists with their double-barrels. BJP’s and AGP’s claim that this is a serious threat to our security fell into deaf ears since the whole of media was busy chanting the Saint Sonia and Manmohan mantra.

Thankfully, the courts weren’t deaf and especially the Supreme Court has time and again, come the rescue of the concerned citizens. Responding to a petition, a Bench in the Apex court ruled that the onus of proving the nationality lies on the accused and a serious initiative should be taken in Assam to identify and deport foreigners. The Apex Court also, lamented that they have sensed a lack of will on the part of the central government. Also, it said that ‘though we would normally desist from commenting, when the security of the nation is the issue as highlighted in the petition, we have to say that the bona fides of the action leave something to be desired’.

The media surprisingly chose to ignore such strong words coming from the courts. It is not the first time that this government has received rap from the courts. I have practically lost count on the occasions the centre government has time and again violated some law or amendment or the other and received from mild-condemnation to serious yelling from the courts.

I’m no BJP fan while I’m criticising the Congress so much. Both these parties have repeatedly shown lack of respect for our constitution and tried to twist it for their vote-bank politics. However, the trouble arises when Congress wants to go to any extent in the name of appeasing minorities and camouflages this under the guise of secularism. This touches the bizarre border of even subtly supporting terrorism. Assam Foreigner’s Act is one such reckless behaviour.

I’m sure even the genuine Indian Muslims would be opposed to refugees and terrorists carelessly crossing the Assam-Bangalesh borders. Besides being plainly illegal, this leads to regional imbalance, economic stagnation, and resource crisis. And of course above all else promotes terrorism.

Because Indira Gandhi’s vote-bank politics, we paid the price in Punjab and still paying in Kashmir.

It appears that it’s the daughter-in-law’s turn to wreck havoc.

India Unbound



I've just completed the book "India Unbound" by Gurcharan Das. Gurcharan Das studied at Harvard, started his career at Richardson Vicks and went onto head P&G. Retired recently, he is now a consultant to many companies and also to government.

India Unbound is about the economic history of India since 1947. To make certain aspects clear, Das goes a bit behind independence to describe the economic activities but his focus is completely post-independence. I have read a few books on Indian economics. From micro-economics driven Bimal Jalan to superficial browbeating Thomas Friedman. But Das is different. Das shows neither the painful details of Jalan nor the infectious but jingoistic optimism of Friedman. He is meticulous in details yet simple enough for a common reader.

To begin with, Das believes strongly in reforms. Every chapter begins with his description how a certain aspect was during socialist India's time and how different it is now. He squarely blames Nehruvian policies on our economic backwardness in the last fifty years but he is not very critical of Nehru's intentions. Nehru was a well-intended man but with confused economic outlook. On the other hand, Indira Gandhi twisted the socialist policies to her favour and even went forward to tighten her grips on the industry. This caused huge damage and practically killed any entrepreneurial sprits left in the land. Das demonstrates this with multiple examples for every ordinance, every law and with every business failure that happened during her time. And these details are explained at the prowess of an economist and the skill of a paperback writer. Das was merely talking about MRTP act or production licenses or FERA violation but I was surprised to find the book unputdownable.

The way Das weaves his arguments over the so-called 'nationalists' and the 'left' is uncanny and with his supreme ability in placing the facts and data, I really wonder what will Prakash Karath think if he were to read this book. I strongly recommend that he reads it. Talking about the nationalist's claim about preventing multi-nationals, Das says this:

It is easy for the top-20 percent in society to decry the evils of modernization from the comfort of their upper- and middle- class lives. But ask the people. They will any day put up with Coca-Cola and KFC if it means two square meals, a decent home, and a job. Given a chance to exchange a Japanese standard of living with their own, they will always vote to give up their traditional life in the village for a better standard of living.

He also goes on to say:

'We need $200 billion to to build up our infrastructure. No one in India has that kind of money. We have to depend on global capital. It was British capital, which financed America's infrastructure in the 19th century and launched its industrial revolution. America did not lose its sovereignty in the process. Even the BJP concedes that it needs foreign capital for infrastructure. But if it is willing to turn over strategic assets like power plants, roads, ports, and bridges to foreigners, it should not worry about potato chips and aerated water.'

The real stories on how Birla, Ambanis and others built their forture are highly fascinating and the comparison to old money and new money is very convincing. His eulogy to Internet boom is infectious though with hindsight benefit, you want to question his IT forecasts.

Towards the end of the book, he confesses that he has put enormous weight of our failure on Nehru alone and tries to balance it out. I would rather put that enormous weight on Indira Gandhi. Regardless of that, Das' record of post-reforms activities is quite promising. He authoritatively demonstrates how each aspect of our reforms would help lift poverty and how it is doing so now.

After a very strong and breathless argument in favour of liberalizing and open and free economies, he aptly ends it by quoting Tagore:

'Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.'

With the exception of the cover design, India Unbound is the finest book I have read in a long time.