Swayam-na-vadhu

I have always hated and vehemently opposed "reality shows". Come on! The name is itself an oxymoron - "reality" is something that doesn't happen in a "show". But, somehow these shows manage to garner a lot of public attention. Whether it is for ruining kids' lives by subjecting them to unwarranted, extremely critical, rebuttals of performances aimed at increasing ratings; or trained judges opposing each other just for the heck of opposing, bringing their idiosyncrasies and idiotic theories to the fore, to give the audience a laugh, again at the expense of the contestant. Or the controversy arousing game show where no one knows whether there is a lie detector or the lie detector is nothing but a sensation maximising device, which makes me wonder how a sane person would choose to contest - to be ridiculed on the one hand, or humiliated on the other -- really, it is a lose-lose situation for the celebrity contestant, amply exemplified by Vinod Kambli.

To top them all is the Indian Britney - Rakhee Sawant! Here's a girl who is willing to do anything, "any" thing, to be in the spotlight. No one had thus far slapped her boyfriend when he came to her home with a bouquet of flowers apologizing for some crap -- perfect recipe for brouhaha, live on TV! And in no one's case was the whole episode "filmized" with background scores suiting the mood of the scene. No woman had been so outspoken about her personal life - everyone needs some personal space. But not Rakhee (or Salman, for everyone knows everything about him) ! I am so fed up with all the news about reality shows and Rakhee Sawant, that the sadist in me has awoken, and I conjured up the perfect end to her televised swayamwar -- the selected groom rejecting her, live on TV! (evil grin)

Pakistan Zindabad!

For a country being torn apart by the demonic forces of terrorism, religious fundamentalism, namesake democracy, misbehaving army, a secret service infested by terrorist sympathisers, clashing internal forces and foreign pressure, Cricket could prove to be a hope for better days ahead.

I maintain that one of the prime reasons for Pakistan's failure thus far has been the inherent, and often unwarranted, suspicion on India, the failure to recognise the pragmatic polity that helps its own people while looking out for foreign threats, the hardcore ideological standpoint compromising the lives of thousands fueling the prospect of anarchy trapping the country.

The situation is therefore that the people have forgotten what it is to lead "normal" lives, enjoying with their families, with work. The people seem to have forgotten how to be peaceful watching movies, aspiring to be like the heroes they love, to fantasise having the good-looking girls adorning their television screens as their girls, to be famous musicians composing their way to glory, to be the cricketers who their country proud, who bring fame to their cities and towns. They have forgotten the days when the young boys in Peshawar were inspired by Shahid Afridi and not by the misleading mullahs of the Madrasas. When Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan captured the attention of its youngsters through his talent, making them want to embrace music and paint an indelible sketch of their culture.

This sudden and least expected surge by Pakistan to the finals of a top tournament could be a blessing in disguise. People now have a chance to see the actual way they can show the world the talent and the promise of Pakistan. They have a chance to realise that their ideological war of bringing the infidels to justice through Jihad has failed, and failed miserably, leaving them hurt more than anyone else. They have a chance to see that the world would respect and love a Pakistan that keeps its wars within the confines of international acceptance - to bringing into action a revolution to establishing a modern democracy (If Iran can do it, why can't they?), to the race to beat other countries in progress and growth, to the war against forces that tear apart their own society, to the fight against obstacles to the welfare of their own people, to eliminate the hindrances to a peaceful agreement between civil modernity and native ethnicity, traditions and faith, to the pitch on a cricket field and to the hockey fields.

Will we see that Pakistan soon? Will the Pakistanis learn from their mistakes?

PS : The title is inspired by a very well made documentary by Pascale Lamche.

Is the west best?

I have always maintained that though the western world is considered largely successful, there are a lot of elements in it that are not sustainable. And developing countries should not blindly move towards the western world with respect to these specific issues.

I saw this programme on National Geographic on remodelling your home to be environment friendly. Watch it here (1 2 3 4 5 6) and tell me that you do not notice the gradual but deliberate move of the western societies towards traditional societies in countries like India

Of hypocrites and narcissists...

 I was arguing with a friend the other day about mandatory military service. My stance was that it was OK for a government to impose such a rule, even in a democracy like India. My friend did not stop with must opposing it, but went on to call me a hypocrite for not having served in the army when I had the chance to do so. He then proposed his "theory" of no national boundaries in the world. Needless to say, I was amazed by his naivete.

 Here I try to justify my stance. And I write it as I would explain it to my friend - 

 In no way am I claiming that I am perfect. In fact, the hypothesis of this argument is my imperfectness -- a gap between what should be and what is. Therefore, instead of being accusatory, as in "You are doing this...", the tone here is actually remorseful, as in "We are doing this... Sadly!"

 I will now try to explain my ideology. I should forewarn you that most of this is a process of rudimentary thought in this direction, and you cannot hold me answerable to every minute detail. The crux however, I hope, will remain the same for a long time to come. I will start with a few things my theory is predicated on.

 First that all humans are equal. Irrespective of race, religion, caste, skin colour, hair colour, intelligence, smartness, smugness, snobbishness etc etc etc everyone is ideologically equal. It follows that if I believe me doing something is acceptable, I should be OK with anyone else doing it, for I am in no way special, and by extension I should be OK even if everyone does it. Therefore, whatever I do must be something that would not impede the functioning of the world if everyone else were also to do it. To clarify, in this framework, not following traffic rules is OK because if everyone were to do it, the system would be crippled.

 Secondly, I will work with majorities. That is to say that if I believe something holds for a majority, I will simply say it holds. In other words, I stick to the norm, and do not speak of deviations to either (or any of the) extremes. For example, I say "people are not suicidal" etc.

 It is well accepted that man is a social being. We have understood this from very early times,  dating back to the time when we first appeared on earth. Though there is no written proof, man is believed to have lived in communities right from the beginning. From the way civilizations have flourished and societies have evolved, it is clear that man, irrespective of where he lived, realised the importance of rules to be laid to help with peaceful co-existence within the society. The result was the complex systems in various societies, an example of which is the government. So while man was a social being, he was also not directly compatible for living in a society. "Artificial" rules were necessary to be enforced and followed. This is what is civilization in my opinion -- the acceptance to abide by rules not imposed by nature to allow you to live in communities without affecting the overall functioning of the community. That is to say that a system of government is one of the most important necessities for a civilized society. Wikipedia says that the earliest government was formed around 5000 years ago with the appearance of 'city states', which followed "relatively non-hierarchical" communities. Every civilization had a general hierarchy in the society, especially when it came to the governance of the people.

 From this history and common experience, I conclude that a hierarchical system is inevitable. In other words, a single system with no boundaries that includes everyone in the world will not work. The historical evidence I have cited earlier. Now I will try to illustrate this with some common examples. If the Indian government had no lower hierarchies, it would be responsible to clear the garbage on the road where you live. Can you imagine such a centralized system with no local subsystems actually accomplishing this task effectively and regularly? On a lower scale, can you imagine the CTO of a company handling every project without other people under him with smaller tasks on hand who report to him regularly? On a much smaller scale, can you imagine a single head for a family taking care of every need of every member of the family without anyone else's help? It is clear that a hierarchical system with division of responsibilities is inevitable.

 Given this, the establishment of countries with local responsibilities is a very acceptable system. I would also say that I am unimaginative to an extent that I cannot think of another viable alternative to this system. Note that every level in the hierarchy has local responsibilities. The corporator for your locality is responsible for clearing the garbages on all roads in your locality, the mayor of your city is responsible for various things in the city including ensuring proper working of the corporators of different localities, the chief minister and his cabinet responsible for proper functioning of your state and peaceful coexistence with other neighbouring states, the prime minister and the parliament responsible for the progress and prosperity of the nation along with maintaining amicable relationship with other countries etc, the countries of the world themselves agreeing to respect each other's sovereignty, tackling common problems of climate control, terrorism etc. I think of this as the mother taking care of food requirements of the family and the father ensuring that the mother has whatever she needs to fulfill her obligations and meeting his responsibilities himself. Note that a higher authority imposes constraints on the levels under it. A mayor's work depends (to some extent at least) on the chief minister's budget. A mother's cookery depends on the father's liking and salary. Also note that sometimes a lower system is entirely answerable for a certain responsibility. Once the father provides the money for the food, the mother is entirely responsible for the nutritious content and the taste of the food -- the father takes no blame if these are questionable. Similarly, the world community is not responsible for economic growth in some country -- this is left for the local national government to solve.

 From belonging to a certain subgroup of people comes a sense of 'ownership', so to say. It is "My family", "My locality", "My school", "My city" and "My country". A result of this relationship is the obligation to it. Responsibility for your family, a sense of belonging to your locality / city / country / society -- patriotism, a kind of pride about your alma mater etc. And as a result of this obligation, it is considered ethical to have an allegiance to each of these. To each of these to various extents, I agree, but there is no denial of the allegiance. This does not mean you cannot help other communities, but it definitely means that if you do not help when your "belongings" need help, then you'd be indulging in unethical behaviour. Note that like a mere sending of money to your parents is not all of your obligation to your family, a mere payment of tax is not all of your obligation to your country.

 With all this build up, I arrive at our specific topic of discussion -- as to whether one should be OK with a mandatory service at the army / police etc. In the wake of the Bombay events, everyone is worried about the security system in India. We accuse the government of not providing good enough security, of not having a well informed intelligence, of not doing enough to show that it is actually a government of the people for the people, but, let us take a moment to think about what we owe to the country before talking of what the country owes us. We have all heard news reports about the shortage of personnel in the armed forces and the police force in India, right? A Google search for "shortage police india" or "shortage army india" gives me all these news articles on this -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 . Note that link # 5 is a Pakistani website. Now even the terrorists know where our problem lies. Also note that ALL of these articles appeared before 26/11. Given this problem, if you were the government, what solution would you propose? I personally find the solution of mandatory army service for fixed duration (2 years, say) perfectly acceptable. While this would definitely put our lives on threat for a while, there is no other way out. You want to live peacefully without the fear of dying in a train, a hotel, a temple? Then serve in the army for 2 years, and you are assured of a better security for the rest of your life. Isn't that a good deal? I think it is.

 Now coming to your argument, rather name-calling. That I am a hypocrite because I am OK with mandatory army service whereas when I had a chance to serve in the army I shunned it. From my argument, you can see the rationale behind my opinion. A mandatory service puts my life in threat, sure. But, it is a system that works. I am sure that if I see the end of my service, I can rest assured that the security system is at least in good shape. Whereas on the other hand, when I have the option of choosing to go to the army, I would think twice before going because not only am I putting myself at threat, but also not contributing in any way to a change that will result in a working system. I obviously don't want to risk my life without gaining anything!

 Now you tell me, am I a hypocrite for my opinion? Or are you a narcissist who does not want any obligations himself, but wants someone else to bear the brunt?

Perspective

We are all so inherently biased. When you look at your reflection in a mirror, you are laterally inverted. But, yet you are upright. What then is being upright? Or inverted? Put in another way, being upright goes hand in hand with being inverted, laterally. Throw away the bias for direction, and the previous sentence implies that any image in any mirror is upright and inverted at the same time...

Wild Wild West

It is sad to see that most things being borrowed from the west today are unwanted or "bad" things. Glamourizing the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, upholding them as worthy of being emulated, encouraging carefree shopping, wasting resources for a reason no better than you being able to pay for them - things that India can very well do without.

The western pop-culture has led to the treatment of celebrities like gods, and this is outrageous. Why is Salman Khan still a hero after the Black buck and DUI cases? Why does Sanjay Dutt still have a fan following - after he has pleaded guilty of possessing illegal weapons and knowing personally those who bombed the commercial capital of the country in 1993? Do we need to be one of the unfortunate many who lost loved ones in those serial blasts to understand that helping a terrorist activity in the narrowest of ways makes you a terrorist, a betrayer, a traitor? The sad thing is that these incidents have given us the impression that when you become a big actor in Bollywood, ties with the underworld are inevitable, and having such ties does not mean you are a traitor yourself. Really, is this the "reality of life" we are teaching our children?

Page 3 is a sad story. But, there are other negative fallouts of economic globalization. What's the new craze for the iPhone? It is just another phone, one with good ergonomics. Haven't we always had leaders like Apple if you take every appliance we use? Wasn't Sumeet mixer-grinder supposed to be better than the other mixies people had? Wasn't a BPL Colour TV a priced possession? Wasn't a Premier Padmini truly "premier"? Everyone knew these things. But there was never a craze for buying all of these as soon as people could. This was because we used to be guided by our needs, and not our wants. We wanted a Premier Padmini, but we didn't need it, and so it could wait. We wanted the new wet-grinder, but we could use our mixie and the grinding stone, and so it could wait. This way of life has started to fade away. I completely agree that moving towards being a developed country gives you such liberties, but India is not there yet. So why this urge to buy more than one cellphone per person? Why the urge to get newer and newer versions of iPods? To get bigger and thinner TV's? Encouraging such mindless shopping will only increase the gap between the rich and the poor. We should not buy for the reason that we can afford something. What happened to our economic values? Wasn't the Indian middle class hailed as among the most economically progressive people, with a habit of saving and a practice of spending with prudence? Has the sight of money that our parents could not have dreamed of left us blinded? This reminds me of the saying by a great man from my hometown, which was aptly printed behind the passbook of the State Bank of Mysore - the place where I opened my first bank account - and it read "If you buy what you do not need, you will need what you cannot buy" - a quote credited to Sir M Vishveshwariah by the SBM. I will not get into the implications of the quote. But, looking at people today, I find it hard to believe that we were once the people guided by such principles.

"Dude, let's drive around, we still have a quarter tank to empty before we return the car" - an example of something that would piss me off. Being able to afford something, or having paid for something do not qualify as valid reasons to waste that thing, especially if it is a consumable. You do not have to empty the gas tank before you return the car just because you have paid for it. Not when you have no real use of the car. You do not have to use the AC in the hotel room when it is not required only because you got a room with AC. The west has pampered its people with such luxuries, what I would call unwanted luxuries. And thanks to Hollywood and TV, Indians are being influenced.

There are many things to learn from the west. But it is up to us to choose the good parts and leave out the bad. Sadly, we seem to be doing the exact opposite.

Manic Media

While everyone is out appreciating the role of media in the recent "Cash for votes" scandal and the ISI findings, I think the media is also responsible for some damaging measures.

There is no dispute that decorum is the last thing seen in the Parliament today. In times like this, it is up to the media to highlight the sporadic gentlemanly gestures of the Parliamentarians and uphold them as the right way to proceed. Unfortunately, the media, at least in my opinion, is not only doing nothing like this, but also doing the opposite. For instance, when Rahul Gandhi spoke after the Nuclear deal votes, he complimented ex-prime minister Vajpayee's vision and execution of the Nuclear tests. He continued to suggest that prime minister Manmohan Singh also shared this vision and lauded his efforts to get the Nuclear deal through, which, in his opinion, would go a long way in alleviating the power shortage prevalent throughout India. This, for anyone, would be a nice gesture - a person from the ruling party praising another from the opposition, acknowledging his colleague's work. Without getting into the way the politicians should conduct themselves, I will move on to why the media was irresponsible. The news article about this was titled "Rahul 'charms' everyone after votes". What is the point of such a title? What is the point of such an article? Do they want to sarcastically remark that Rahul Gandhi was being sycophantic? This is an instance where I thought the media was cynical and went astray, shunning its responsibility. The reason why media has to police itself is that Indian politics is in a very bad shape, and everyone knows that. It is also known that media is one of the most effective ways to influence a lot of people. Given these, the media should applaud Rahul's nicety, irrespective of what his intentions were, and hold such instances as worth emulating by politicians to be, if not for the present politicians. Being cynical helps no one. And for the media, being cynical is a cardinal sin! And for the record, I am not a supporter of Rahul Gandhi.

Another article was titled - "Inflation hits 12%, but Indians OK with Income tax". I was stunned to see this as a headline. What would anyone think after seeing this headline? Are they suggesting that inflation hitting 12% is a pretext on which Indians can try to evade taxes? Outraged, I went on to read the article to see that they were actually talking about this years earnings for the government through income tax, and comparing it to the previous years, discussing the reason for the difference, the steps the government should be taking to catch people who evade income tax and reduce the tax on the middle class etc. The article as such was a good one. But the headline nevertheless was outrageous. And the headline is like the first impression. And sadly, "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is hardly followed in today's world. So, the headline really matters, and this one in particular, was a fairly irresponsible one.

Next comes Page 3. I think it is the shallowest, the most materialistic, the least ethical section, for it brings the party-sleep-shop-eat-party lifestyle of morally handicapped, rich and famous people to your home and thereby encourages you to have a similar lifestyle. Having said that, it is necessary to balance the more serious things making news. I understand. But what I don't understand is why what Darsheel Safary thinks about "girls, Kareena and six-pack abs" would be interesting to people! He might be a bunny toothed sympathy evoking kid, and he might have acted pretty well in his debut movie, but what can people get out of this?

And then there are glaring mistakes like wrong dates, like this one from a channel that won the best news channel award (In fact, this was aired on August 21st, 2008)! But this, I guess, is not as bad as the others I have highlighted.

Though the media has made it's mark with it's sting operations, citizen journalists sections, environment watch catalogues, it has to still be careful not to be carried away and publish articles or air reports with any sign of cynicism, with misguiding headlines.