aditya kumar's weblog

One of the things that I fail to understand, and I have asked myself this a few times, is that why is Goa shown in a light so different than what it really is, by the Bombay Film Industry? Before you jump to conclusions, let me say that I did not mean that the movies show Goa in a bad light, I said that they show what is not true at all, most of the times.

It seems people from Goa have been a victim of stereotyping, something that Bollywood does often. Goans are not the only ones which are generalised. The film industry time and again has given in to the temptations of generalisation. A Goan Catholic will be a drunkard, a sardar would eat chicken with a patiala peg everyday and would be ready to break into a bhangara jig at the slightest of excuse, a muslim man would speak impeccable urdu which would be so much different than Hindustani, which we commonly speak in India (sprinkled generously with English of course) and a Tamil Brahman (if you find one in a Hindi movie), would end every line with a “jee” and exclaim “aiyo!” after every couple of sentences.

So if the latest bollywood film claims that Women are cheaper than liquor in Goa, I would say that this is nothing much but an extension of Bollywood’s convenient stereotyping. Bollywood’s relation with Goa goes beyond stereotyping the typical Goan Roman Catholic to a drunkard. Hindi movies give Goa it’s rightful place as a holiday destination. But not all people go to a holiday to get drunk. Not all people go to Goa and get drunk. There are teetotallers in Goa (I am one, though I am not a Goan but hey I have home there). Bollywood takes it’s actors to Mauritius, shows bikini clad women and clear water on the shore, the lead actors get cosy in a song and that’s all packaged in a 15 minute sequence and sold as Goa. Whats more, the audience is naive enough to believe that Goan women are easy, roam around in bikinis while their men booze all day.

I honestly don’t see much in Basu’s dialogue. As I said, it is basically something they have tried to build up on an already existing platform that has been made by generalising Goa over the years. When they have repeatedly marked cheap liquor and drug peddling as Goan brands, could prostitution be too far behind? For them, it’s a complete package. The pity is, there is a section of naive audience out there, who’d believe it.

Bollywood’s breaking free of this convenient stereotyping would help, though.

Now that we know for sure how much A.Raja, our erstwhile not-so-honourable Union Cabinet Minister for Communications and Information Technology, got to take home as bribe off the 2G spectrum allocation, it is time for some number crunching. OK, well, so it alleged that Raja took home approx Rs.3000 Crore and this is only an approximation. With numbers of these magnitude, does it really matter?

During my teens, once me and my friend in Malaysia, we discussed prices of stuff in each other’s country. It got confusing, so we used the cost of a bottle of coke as a currency. You know, like, an hour of Internet would cost me 3 bottles of coke here. It was a horrible way of understanding economics but it gave me a good enough idea of things. It can be overwhelming, with all those numbers that give identity to scandals. To get an idea of the magnitude, we need already set benchmarks. It makes more sense to us when we see things relative to one another.

So here is something I worked on with my morning tea. It could be the most unimaginative post ever, coming from me, but I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves:

1. If I do not pay my tax, I take home a salary that would be 0.0001333% of what Raja got as bribe.

2. India’s Gross Domestic Product, as per 2010, was Rs. 64350000000000. Raja got 0.04662% of that as a bribe. Of course, my take home salary, I will reinstate, was 0.0001333% of Raja’s 0.04662%. I did not even bother compare my salary to India’s GDP.

3. Raja’s bribe is approximately 46.875% of the cost of Bangalore Metro Phase I. Going by proportion, assuming only half of Banaglore’s Metro Phase I is up and running, would Raja piggy-back us to where we want, to make up for the other half?

4. Raja’s bribe is almost 41.40% of what a single unit of a Su-30 MKI costs. In the time of War, can we depend on Raja to cause the amount of destruction 2.5 (OK, 2) Sukhoi 30s can cause to the enemy?

5. OK, I should not venture into the Tata connection to all this, but I can’t resist, so here goes: According to Forbes, Ratan Tata’s salary for 2010 was Rs.13,059,000.00. Impressed? It all looks minuscule, when you will hear that Ratan Tata would have to work 2297 years and 2 months (approx) to earn what Raja got as bribe (allegedly, approximately, blah, blah, do-we-care), going by his current salary.

6. You might (or not) know about Admiral Gorshkov. No, not the man (Sergey Gorshkov) but the Soviet Aircraft Carrier India is buying from Russia. They will rename it to Vikramaditya and soon it will be the pride of Indian Navy. Because our Raja is a rich man now, we can compare him to this deal too. Raja’s bribe is 28.98% of what we are paying for the ship.

7. Here’s one more and this might interest Mamta Didi: Indian Railways, one of the world’s largest employers, reported a net income of Rs. 951 crore for 2009-10. That was 31.7% of what Raja earned, allegedly of course, in the same time.

8. Here’s more and this should really make sense if the last 7 haven’t. The average salary of an IPL player (for a year) is Rs.172800000. With Rs.30000000000 in his wallet, our Raja can do wonders at IPL. He can have 173.6 IPL players on his payroll for a year! He could float what, 11 teams with 15 players each. We can’t call them Raja XI because they aren’t XI. According to Romans, we need to call them Raja’s CLXXIII. Or rather, if Raja has any business sense, he could float a parallel league – He could call it, well, RPL (No prizes for guessing what the initials stand for).

(thanks D, for the idea!)

I hope things are more clear. Meanwhile, keep in mind that these figures, Raja’s bribe to say the least of it, are approximate figures.

I sometimes wonder what makes the leadership of our country adopt double standards.

Because when we are dealing with China, we always blow the trumpet of democracy. When our leaders stand at the world podium, we call ourselves the slow but stable democratic republic that will reach “there”. We even (rightly) send our ambassador to the Noble prize ceremony applauding Liu Xiaobo while China threatened us of consequences.

On the other hand, we have this man been given the red carpet in New Delhi. It is stale news but that is not the point. If you did not bother to click on the link I gave you a couple of sentences ago, you should know that, that link points to a list of the world’s worst dictators. He is called Than Shwe and he is the man responsible for everything wrong that has happened in Burma. A few months ago, he visited the Taj Mahal and got a picture clicked (Interested? here, that’s another world’s worst dictators countdown list, by the way).

The same man was also responsible for house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. She, until recently, was in house arrest, for 24 years.

24 years.

The lady won the Nobel Peace prize, just like Liu Xiaobo, for her pro-democracy movement in Burma. In fact, she also won the Jawahar Lal Nehru Award back in 1992, an year after she won the Nobel. Then, ideologically, the Government of India should snap ties with any country that treats pro-democracy leaders like this, let alone spread the red carpet.

Exactly the opposite happened. Why?

Gas, most probably.

India is eyeing the vast Gas reserves Burma has and thus this stand. But hasn’t a country that once stood for principles and what was right has deviated because of interests of world power and economy? The same is happening with the Tibet policy (I am not even sure if one exists). Ultimately, issues like these have become ace cards and bargaining chips. It is this attitude that made President Obama make the startling statement of “India has shied away from Human rights abuses in Myanmar”.

These are no signs of a matured democracy. In fact, far from it.

I am tempted to quote Shashi Tharoor here. The man who was ridiculed for his short stay in the Indian Cabinet has a keen eye as far as India’s foreign policy is concerned. While criticizing India’s stand on Myanmar and The Lady, he said: India opted for national interests over democracy. It was a policy of the head ruling over the heart but it also lost its soul.

It’s a very strong statement from a man who understands the nature of Democracy too well. And it is a sad state of affairs as far as India’s foreign policy is concerned.

PS: Suggested reading-

1. From Sri Lanka, this article: here
2. The Shashi Tharoor article here.

I, and with me this blog, have been experiencing a blogging slowdown of sorts. Lots of things going on, so many things to write about (including justified anger directed to my employer and an impending Java exam) but all that will have to wait because I have been invariably spending a good part of the day in BMTC volvos coming and going to office.

You should read this piece at tehelka, a perspective on the now infamous Nira Radia tapes. Another article on the same website, some comprehensive research and we have the life and times of Nira Radia, the lady herself, here. I doubt if I have ever heard of any other woman who has (had?) “so much fire in her belly”, as the author put it. If I had known the lady, I would have given her only one advice — slow down, baby.

Oh well, I am experiencing that first hand right now.

Enough stuff to ponder upon, so read up those links and you would be left thinking, just like me.

Months ago, I came across an article written by Col Athale(retd) at rediff.com. I have read Athale’s writings earlier and I have always found myself disagreeing with most of what he has to say. This article too, had a conclusion in the title itself — Peace with Pakistan: Chasing a mirage. But it did raise a very important point which made a very lasting impression about what the future could hold with regard to our western neighbor.

Colonel Anil Athale, in his article, indirectly points out that it was under Zia-ul-haq that Pakistan took a stance of radical Islam as a state policy. As a part of Zia’s adoption of Wahhabism, a very conservative and almost radical form of Islam, textbooks were changed in schools to accommodate religion as the basis of the state’s existence. In effect, what Zia’s textbooks of social studies, speculated to be still in effect, are seeking is “to create practicing Muslims rather than democratic citizens” (2), to put it mildly.

The author of the article should also be credited to taking this up with Prof. Abdul Hameed Nayyar, a prominent Pakistani physicist who is probably more famous as Pakistan’s man of peace. Professor Nayyar was, at that time in 1998, working on what was being preached out of Pakistani schoolbooks. In 2003, Nayyar went on to author a paper that created ripples in the country. “The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan” (1) clearly stated that what Pakistan was offering to its school going children was a very flawed version of history, among other things and facts, which were conveniently changed to nurture hatred for any non-Muslim, specially Hindus.

Not only that, the report mentioned that in the post-Independence days of Pakistan, the textbooks offered a much “real” version of history and even had admiration for Hindus. Chapters on MK Gandhi were a part of the curriculum while teachings of Ramayana and Mahabharata were also mentioned. This was contrasting because this text existed after the bloody experience of partition that both the countries went through and two gory wars.

What happened after Zia took over was a very systematic conversion of Pakistan from a democratic state to a country that based everything on religion. There have been many papers published since Nayyar’s, authored by Pakistani nationals and others, who have confirmed and validated the claims made by Prof. Nayyar. The textbooks have time and again mentioned the western powers and India specifically as sworn enemies of the state while endorsing the involvement of military forces in day to day governance of the state.

In his paper titled: “Islam, Democracy and Citizenship Education: An Examination of the Social Studies Curriculum in Pakistan”, professor Iftekhar Ahmad of Long Island University raises another important point that could very well be another branch of the concerns raised by Colonel Anil Athale: Could it be that it is this model of civic and citizenship education that is now hurting Pakistan the most?

Athale continues to say that If the texts of these books were changed for the better, it would still take a good two decades before we see any change coming out. There is no doubt in my mind about the validity of his statement.

Just a day ago, the Indian diplomat, SM Krishna, on his visit to Islamabad raised the issue of anti-India speeches made by LeT chief there in Pakistan. There is no doubt that the hate rhetoric coming out on the streets when Hafiz Saeed gives his speech should be objectionable to people in the Indian Government. What worries me is that the Textbooks of Pakistan, with their unending tirade against India, do not appear to be bothering much to the Indian administration.

References:
1. Islamisation of Curricula – A. H. Nayyar, link here.
2. Islam, Democracy and Citizenship Education – An Examination of the Social Studies Curriculum in Pakistan – Iftikhar Ahmad, link here.
3. Peace with Pakistan: Chasing a Mirage – Anil K Athale, link here.

At timesofindia.com, a report that is carried by many other Indian news sources, about Pakistan troops opening fire in Pooch, a sector along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir — Violation of cease fire by firing mortar bombs and rockets. Also mentioned is a jawan on the Indian side who was critically injured.

Dawn, Pakistan’s premier newspaper reports a very similar story at its website dawn.com — There was fire yes, but “due to unprovoked firing by Indians”. In fact, a Pakistani soldier “embraced martyrdom” in all this.

Both highly respected publications in their own part of the world, reporting the same incident with two entirely different versions.

Who were these soldiers, one who “embraced martyrdom” on the other side of the fence and the Indian jawan who was “critically injured”? What is the truth? When will this stop? We will never know.

There is this very unhealthy trend (and I know this is a part of the “mall culture” we find ourselves in) gaining ground in India. Go to any mall for grocery shopping and see how the helper at the billing section arranges every little thing that you have bought in crisp, bright polythene bags. I could buy 3 soaps, 1 bag of flour and 1 diet coke and they would be packed in 3 plastic bags at the counter.

Often, I have tried to counter this by a couple of ways. I ask the guy at the counter to put it all in “one” bag. The idea is to minimize the usage of the plastic bags. The result, always invariably, is that the guy would continue packing the way he wants it, each “class” of item bought in its own separate bag and then, here’s the thing – pack all of these bags into one big bag. So, I end up using more bags than I would have if I had kept mum.

What is so hard to understand in this whole arrangement that I wished, I do not understand.

Another way I have tried (and failed) is to use a cloth bag. A mall, in Madivala, Bangalore has a set of cloth bags at the billing counter. The proudly encourage you to buy it because they say it helps the environment to shop in cloth bags. I could buy it but when I come back to the mall the next time with the cloth bag to use for shopping, they ask me to leave it at the entrance, which is at the 1st floor, because I could be such a shoplifter, for all we know, you see. And then, I have to get my items billed at the 3rd floor, make the guy at the counter understand that I do NOT want to use plastic bags and carry all my stuff way back to the 1st floor where I have kept my cloth bag, at the baggage counter. And after all this, well, I am just trying to be planet friendly — would you believe it?

And in case, I decide to use the plastic bags (just like all the lesser mortals out there), I could still help save the environment. Because the mall uses this special polythene bag that is good for the environment and can be recycled! I just need to pay Re.1 for it at the counter!

I mean, who do you think you are bullshitting, is my question. Is it too hard to understand that you don’t care a damn about the environment and you are using this “green-polythene-green-planet” or whatever-it-is propaganda eventually to cut your own costs so that you can make some money by charging a Rupee for a polythene bag that a customer cannot help but buy because you don’t even let him carry his own bag — plastic or cloth, within your shopping place?

But maybe I know now where this all came from. I have been in the US for a week now and have had to visit a few super stores to setup home and I see the same liberal use of polythene here, in the exact same way as it is now happening back home in Bangalore.

Begs the question — why do we blindly follow the west, doesn’t it?