A couple of decades later, well after he might have hung his boots, Raju Hirani’s filmography could well be defined by cinema historians in a single phrase – Movies with a heart. His two Munnabhai ventures and the latest ‘idiotic’ expression (you could very easily call it Munnabhai 3 for that matter) are less about love, friendship and relationships and more about listening and following that instinctive beat on the left side of your ribcage. I must admit I was a bit of a skeptic when I saw the first Munnabhai movie. I sensed that Hirani hit the right issues but showed too mushy and melodramatic a way out. I guess it was just a bit of my realistic cynicism that initially rejected the ‘jadoo ki jhappi’. I saw Munnabhai MBBS thrice before turning around partially. By the time I saw Raju Hirani’s take on Gandhigiri (going to the movie alone with the parents away on a break from me) I was a convert. Through the movie, I was amazed at the refreshing take that Hirani brought on Gandhi, an individual I greatly admired but cynically (again) believed had moved too far away in history for India to reclaim him on anything other than currency notes. With his third flick, Hirani touches upon a topic that has been covered briefly before – Bollywood’s angst ridden unemployed hero of the 80s finding no use for his graduation degree, Munnabhai himself deriding medical education that treated real patients as lab guinea pigs and Aamir Khan’s own recent directorial debut that focused on the mad desire of the parents of school going kids to see them topping their classes.

3 Idiots goes a bit further and takes on the foundations on which our higher education and dare I say much of our endeavors post that rest. Before I make another critical comment on the same a disclaimer may be in order. I am very much myself a part of that system. I have been through my share of Board exam criticality talks, my mother taking a break from work during the exams themselves to ensure my three meals a day and remaining nutrition wasn’t affected during the lead up to the papers, my father silently enquiring about my preparations and then my evaluation of the performance during both the Boards and my CA exams. I have run around coaching institutes during my CA days, borrowed and copied notes, learned a lot of mumbo-jumbo by rote (forgotten almost all of it by now) and primed myself by pasting a planner with exam days and key preparation milestones on my room wall next to the study table. I might not agree with what our manner of learning produces but I must be fair enough to attribute my current position (whether good or bad) to it.

I was reminded of the same during a conversation with a couple of colleagues and my boss on a wet summer night in New Jersey about five months ago. On a dinner table populated by Engineers + MBAs and a lone B.Com + CA, I was the only one arguing against the rat race that our kids enter into high school onwards and how engineering colleges and professional degrees often are seen symbols of societal validation to be attained rather than merely as routes of academic knowledge occurring on a journey aroused by interest and liking. I wouldn’t want my kid to go through an engineering college if I could help it, I remember saying that night. Obviously it didn’t go down too well with the engineers present. It was then that my boss reminded me that it was no use if you thumbed the rat race but still remained a turtle in life. You may not like it Aftab Khanna he told me, but you are here sitting here in America because you worked hard and came out the same competitive professional system that you now very happily curse.

Yes, America…the ultimate symbol of your having arrived in your career. Remember our mothers telling us during those high school and college days about so and so’s son going to the US, sponsored by his ‘kampany’. I must confess I was lost for an answer on that dinner table at the end of the argument, wondering if I was failing to see the greys in the jigsaw and making the same mistake of thinking in a linear fashion, albeit in the opposite direction, as I shunned everything about our higher education. It was only later that night that my tubelight hit a fuse in the brain and I thought – Heck, I could have done anything other than CA, excelled at it and perhaps still landed in the US by the time I was 26. So much for an American visa!

Which is what Hirani tries to communicate with his Idiots. Its presented quite simply through the contrast between the rote learning, spectacled bookworm and easy going protagonist who can find simple solutions to everyday problems by being able to ‘apply’ his knowledge beyond the books. Its a movie without many layers and in a straightforward way it critiques the mad rush of the educated young of the Indian middle class towards societal validation masquerading as ‘success’; a message captured in a single line that a father says to his son when presented with an alternative career decision, ‘Guptaji kya kahenge?’. Hirani makes a call to listen to the heart and go after ‘excellence’ (a fluid, hard to define word) rather than marks and easy acceptable choices. It is a movie as much about self-discovery as about summoning the will to stand for your choices.

But it is the movie’s critique about the assembly line of GPA, marks, ranks and job chasing professionals that shall arouse the most questions, especially if, like me, you are very much a product of that system. Is success measured by the size of that pay cheque, the suburban apartment or house and that big luxury car outside that house? In an India increasingly experience an upward mobility of a huge mass of its people, it’s a question worth putting forward. In a debate where, over the last two decades, we had chosen Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘bangla, gaadi and bank balance’ over Shashi Kapoor’s just ‘Maa’, Hirani and Shimit Amin’s Rocket Singh that came out a couple of weeks ago, make a pitch for a middle ground for morally driven achievement driven by passion rather than naked hunger of wealth and ‘success’.

I remember my school principle, a lady whom I deeply respect and admire for the simplicity and clarity of her thoughts remarking repeatedly that the there was only slot at the top and it was tougher to stay there than getting there – a remark I heard every time she saw the ‘Ist’ rank on my report card. I was a bit apprehensive to be open about it then, but I silently disagreed with her. Over the years I have seen enough people make good in life who had been written off in school examinations. A close friend who flunked a class X subject and then gave ‘compartment’ exams a few months later with borrowed notes is a young confident lawyer receiving global offers. A cousin written off by many in the family as hopeless was just waiting to be thrown into the big bad world on his own away from us cynics to chart a course that has literally taken him places. The best Chartered Accountant I worked with during my three years with a global accounting firm was someone who missed figuring in our Institute’s merit list by half a dozen marks and who at an age of 28 can easily teach a thing or two to many senior partners of the firm. There might not be certificates to prove examinational excellence for these people, but in their own right they have found a measure of success, all because somewhere they perhaps found a calling. Yes, it’s tough being at the top and you can’t survive in a competitive world by just standing and not moving your hands. But surely, our children can be allowed to chose their battles, be given the freedom to explore fields to compete. That I guess is Raju Hirani’s message for many of us wondering where we have landed up and where we are headed (a mid life crisis possibly?). Perhaps its not worth chasing what we are running after. Perhaps the chase lies on a road we locked years ago in a corner of the study table.

Almost a decade ago, inspired by the many armymen in the family and flush with seeing images of the Kargil war I had developed a slight interest in the Services as a career option. In a pre-internet age, I remember responding to an Army newspaper advertisement that carried a small chit that you could mail back to Army HQ for a detailed brochure. My mother saw me sending the mail, was not too enthused but didn’t say anything openly. My father, who had been used to hearing his son announcing that he wanted to be CA (or a journo) for a few years now, didn’t respond initially. A few days later, on a car ride, he softly brought up the subject of my letter. I don’t mind your joining the forces, I remember him telling me, but make sure that you do it with a full heart. I want you to excel in what you eventually do, he told me,…I want you to aim for being the best amongst those around you and you would easily reach the top. He would have liked Raju Hirani’s 3 Idiots I think. Much like Raju’s heroes, he was a man with a big heart.

P.S. – Quite liked Kareena Kapoor for once btw. Cute like someone I know... ;)

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I was in Amritsar over the weekend and let me tell you that all the things people said about the wonderful food you can get in that city are true. I am neither a foodie nor a food expert (I am assuming you can be one with being the other) but even my limited senses of taste and tongue were left with a craving of partial satisfaction. I wanted one more dinner or one more lunch. Thanks to a friend, whose brother’s wedding I was attending, I sampled quite a bit of the local stuff. The theme for one of the lunches at the wedding house was itself ‘Amritsari food’ and in there I sampled Sugarcane juice (after ages!), kulcha and chhole; thin, crisp pooris with aloo ka subzi, some amazing carrot pickle, sweet but sublime phirni and an amazing gur ka halwa that I now regret at having just taken a single serving of. On both the nights of the wedding functions (sagan and the baraat night), the variety of non-vegetarian food on offer was tempting and hard to ignore. I had some succulent lamb kebabs and amazing rogan josh (a Kashmiri and not Amritsari dish though). The chopped up mutton served dry and fresh from the kadhai needed three servings to satisfy the buds and the meal was capped off with gajar ka halwa for dessert. Now I am a bit of prick for gajar ka halwa since I have been used to having some every winter at home made by my mother. Gajar ka halwa as a wedding dessert has rarely appealed to me. There is too much khoya to compensate for sweetness and the carrots are always a pale red in color. On this occasion though, the sweetness was just right, the carrots juicy red and the dry fruits were spread liberally to create a brilliant dessert. I found myself recommending the same to practically everyone I talked to later that night.

If you are in Amritsar then you have to do two things for sure – visit the Golden Temple and the Wagah border (apart from the eating that I mentioned above). My friend, who was co-ordinating transport for almost 50-60 out of town guests, bemoaned the fact that most of his baraatis wanted to rush straight to the temple from the railway station. The poor fellow struggled in vain to persuade them to offload their luggage at the hotel first and have a meal at the wedding home. Now I am not sure how it works, and perhaps I do not even care enough, but there was this strange sentiment amongst those headed to the temple to not take liquor or non-vegetarian food prior to visit. I saw the poor mutton being abandoned and the bar being deserted by men who couldn’t separate themselves from either the night before (And post the visit they were back to mutton and whiskey at night).

Wagah though makes no pious demands from you. All it requires are strong vocal chords and a little bit of enthusiasm. We went there on a Saturday expecting huge crowds and sure, the seats were filled. Someone in the group arranged for VIP access (that typical and shameful Indian privilege) and we got quite decent seats to watch the action from. Both the BSF and the Pakistan Rangers men turned up dressed in their regal uniforms, though the BSF guys had some trouble maintaining their elaborate head gear that kept slipping on them occasionally. The announcers from both sides worked their audiences and cries of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ and ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ went up the air. It was pop patriotism at its best. The audience was egged on to out-shout their Pakistani counterparts and many in the crowd took it open themselves to lead the slogan shouting. The entire martial spectacle obviously rouses emotions which quickly get dispelled the moment it is all over. Everyone rushes in a stampede like fashion to get a glimpse of the border gates, get photographs clicked with the BSF guards and then it’s back to usual grind of littering garbage at the bus stand, leering at women and being the model Indian citizen. Two things about Wagah that day though – First, while the Indian stands were packed to the seams, the Pakistani stands were half empty. Now I imagine it might have been because it was the day of Bakr Eid but I wonder if there are larger signs to be read into the same. The second – Indians of all faiths and colors and foreign tourists alike, no one had a problem shouting ‘Vande Mataram’ that evening.

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It is election season once again (no I am not talking about the Jharkhand polls. Ha! Caught you didn’t I? You barely knew there were polls going on in poor Maoist infested Jharkhand). It is election season for the ‘vibrant’ and ‘esteemed’ community of Chartered Accountants (this is not an attempt at self-aggrandizement but simply words that I have picked up from one of the myriad campaign mails that have flooded my inbox over the last two days). Being a professional community, the campaigning is also professional. SMSes, emails and telephone calls are passé. They are the lowest common denominator. Candidates resort to innovative vote catching methods. One of them is alumni meets. A candidate tries to align himself with some entity or a CA coaching institution and an invitation is sent for an alumni party calling all to attend and of course in return for a free night of socializing, light ego massage, food and drinks (depending upon average age profile of alumni and the social sophistication of the candidate) the attendees are expected to vote for the implicit host. Some of the candidates with more elaborate social connections organize musical nights to promote their agenda for the development of the profession. I was told that during the last election one candidate had girls standing outside the polling booth and handing over flowers to everyone coming out of the booth who had voted for him. How the girls managed to figure out who the voter had cast his preference for in the secret ballot is something that was not explained!

This takes me back to the last CA elections held in the winter of 2006. The firm I was employed with then had one of its senior partners standing as a candidate for the Central Council. The council is the supreme governing body of the profession and has equal representation from all the five zones of North, South, West, East and Central. Our region was North and six candidates had to be chosen out of a field of maybe ten to twelve. A large number of the resources of the firm were sent to polling booths on the voting day and I found myself with a senior colleague in a small town in North India overseeing a small election stall in the local town school. Only one observer was allowed in the actual polling room, the principal’s office, and my colleague was stationed there along with representatives of five of the other candidates. Being a small town, the number of eligible voters was limited; around 50 odd if I remember correctly. There was much bantering going on in the voting room with tea and snacks being served for the local representatives camped there. My colleague, slightly uncomfortable with the celebratory mood would keep coming out often. Voters came in at a trickle – 4 or 5 every hour. By late afternoon, I had wrapped up my stall and was all ready to scoot back to Delhi the moment voting got over at 6 in the evening. However, it was then that all the drama really began. With half an hour to go for the voting to end, my colleague and I were strolling in the school lawn when two of the local agents of the candidates came to us with a proposition. Only around half of the eligible votes had been cast. There was no point in ‘wasting’ the ‘precious’ remaining votes. Let us all oblige each other and split the remaining votes equally between the six candidates whose representatives were present. Signatures on the voter sheet could be forged and the school principal who was the returning officer for the town could be convinced. Quite obviously, we were taken aback. Our first and natural instinct was to refuse. ‘Nahin aaya koi to nahin sahi’, I remember my colleague remarking to the others. Ten minutes later, after a huddled conference between the other representatives, pat came another offer. We could take majority of the remaining votes for the Central Council (as many as we wanted!) but the North India Council votes had to go to their preferred candidate (a voter votes both for the Central as well as the Regional Council). We were cajoled to talk to our ‘seniors in Dilli’ and discuss with them. Voting had finished by now and the ballot box was yet to be sealed. My colleague and I, slightly disturbed, decided to call Delhi and inform the election managers of this offer and our intended response of refusal. Incredulously, the senior manager we spoke to responded by asking us, ‘What do you think? Should we accept this?’ Upon hearing this, my colleague insisted on speaking to the partner in charge of the campaigning, who promptly asked us to refuse any such deal making and leave the place immediately after sealing of the ballot box. Our response disappointed the local agents. They were guarded and muted in their remarks. I could sniggers of ‘Yeh Dilliwale kya jaane’ and exhortations of how ‘aadmi aadmi ke kaam aata hai’. Ballot boxes sealed, we rushed straight into our car and headed back home.

It is easy to understand the attachment small town CAs have for the elections. Infact, this holds true for most CAs outside the corporate or the Big 4 set up. As someone running his own practice, it is of immense benefit for you to have friends in the right places in the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). They ensure that your firm’s name comes up for empanelment for bank audits, that any disciplinary proceedings against you are ‘taken care’ of and that you constantly keep getting invitations for technical forums and seminars and other ‘social’ events. For many self employed CAs such an association carries the prospect of visibility, professional networking and improved social standing. How such deal making and shenanigans help the profession is something that I am yet to find out. All the campaign mails received by me thus far have been individual focused. So and so has been serving the profession for X years (usually above 15), has been on various committees of the Institute for X years and has done such and such while on such committees. In a year when the profession took its severest hit ever in the form of Satyam and its missing cash balance of Rs 5000cr, no one talks of the reform both the system of studies of CA (the new course requires students to choose between graduation or CA; if you want to pursue it post grad, be prepared to spend a minimum of 5 years) or the conduct of the members of the profession need. No one talks of how frauds like Satyam can be avoided and where the auditors are going wrong. No one talks of regulation and the Institute’s role. All you hear of are personal bio-datas, social gatherings and mud-slinging at others. Given all this, is it any surprise that Satyam happened and that the man who signed that Balance Sheet for many years and has been in jail since January, was a member of the Central Council and that had Satyam not broken out he would perhaps have become the President of the ICAI a month later?

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So Barack Obama’s love affair (or rock star story, as cousin of mine in the US put it) with the globe continues. What began with a rapturous reception in Berlin in the summer of 2008, when he was still a candidate running for the Democratic nomination has now reached the hallowed halls of Oslo and culminated in a Nobel Prize. The Nobel Committee has cited the President’s effort at multilateral diplomacy and reconciliatory foreign policy as reasons for the prize. They have also stated that the award is not prospective (for what the current US President may achieve) but retrospective (for his diplomatic efforts over the last year). Based purely on cold logic and his presidential and senatorial resume thus far, Obama’s claim seems quite thin. But the Nobel has a patchy track record when it comes to peace awards. Many past winners have been awarded after decades of work – Jimmy Carter in 2002 after his two decades of trying to (and partially succeeding in 1978) promote peace between Israel and its neighbors; Nelson Mandela at the very fag end of apartheid in South Africa. But equally many other winners have been greenhorns - German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1971 was awarded just after entering office like Obama, but his policy of engagement with Eastern Europe is said to have contributed, along with Mikhael Gorbhachev’s perestroika efforts (another Nobel Winner in 1990) to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the eventual end of the Cold War. Many awards have gone to those who haven’t really been the symbols of peace (a belligerent Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, for example) and many true worthies like Gandhi have been ignored.

So did Barack Obama, the individual – Harvard graduate, lawyer, community worker and first time Senator from Illinois, deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? No. But ponder this a moment – Did Barack Obama, the elected President of United States, deserve a nomination, if not the actual award for what he has stood for over the last two year since he threw his hat into the ring of the Democratic primaries? Perhaps yes. Here’s why –

Obama’s Nobel is as much his as it is of the Office he occupies and equally as much of those who voted to put him in that office. He is effectively, at the moment, a symbol of reconciliation of both the United States as a society and United States as the pre-eminent political power in the world. For a nation, that till four decades ago, was battling riots in the streets of its Southern states over whether blacks should be allowed to enter the same universities as whites, it is a reflection of America’s evolution as heterogeneous society and its final acceptance of ability over identity that Obama, an African American representing 13% of a segment of the population that till a few generations ago was officially existing as slaves, is now occupying the highest executive office in his land. Of course, you can turn around say that simply belonging to a disadvantaged community is no criterion for a Nobel prize. If tomorrow, Mayawati was to move into Race Course Road, we wouldn’t be petitioning the Nobel Committee for rewarding her in Oslo – we would perhaps all be applying for Norwegian or any other visa ourselves! 

But Obama’s significance, as I had mentioned in a post just after his victory in November last year, lies not in the fact that he won because he was black but in the fact that he won without putting himself forward as the ‘Great Black Hope’; he pitched himself as the Great American Hope and when the issue of race did present itself in the form of some embarrassing comments by his pastor in Chicago, the Democratic candidate went ahead and made a remarkably delicate but prescient speech outlining why race as an issue was a problem of not just whites but also of the blacks. On most domestic issues that tend to divide America down the middle, Obama has adopted a non-partisan approach, shying away from the arrogance that control over both houses of Congress can breed into presidents. On abortion, the president gave a brilliant address at Notre Dame University during summer outlining why despite being pro-abortion, he was willing to acknowledge that the other side has relevant arguments of consideration. On healthcare, he has been critiqued by left wing Democrats of trying too hard to get Republican backing for his legislation and thus opening the gate for irresponsible fear mongering being spread by the conservatives.

This approach has replicated itself into foreign policy where multilateralism is back into the dictionary of US foreign policy. Obama has held to his promise of reaching out to both Europe and more importantly to the Muslim world as well as to Iran. Has it borne fruits? Where are the results during the first ten months of the President’s term? On the ground, Obama’s ‘change’ has been limited. Washington remains partisan domestically in the Congress, North Korea still thumbs its nose at the US and Afghanistan is still a quagmire. So where is the peace and the world without nuclear weapons? Of course, it’s a bit unreasonable to expect Obama to solve all our problems.

The difference is in ‘perception’ and ‘recognition’ – intangibles which the George.W.Bush years in the White House have proved can swing global opinion and create nuisance for tasks undertaken, to give Bush (but not Dick Cheney) the benefit of doubt, with good intentions. Obama has attempted to change the global perception of United States both towards its allies and towards the conflicts it faces in Muslim nations. He has re-emphasized the importance of engagement over belligerence that rides rough shod over any opposition. More importantly, he has lent an ear to a world that had started to believe that America had put cotton in its ears as it undertook a cowboy march through Iraq and Afghanistan. We may not agree with Obama’s policies but we certainly can’t ignore that he himself acknowledges that he and his administration do not have all the answers and that he is willing to listen.

That approach is refreshing breath of honesty coming out of a White House that claimed to know all for the first eight years of this decade. In that sense, Obama has shifted the moral compass of the United States and its outlook towards the world from the vision of Alexander Hamilton to that of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, perhaps the most erudite man ever to occupy the White House, believed that the United States would be a beacon of leadership in the globe not because of its commercial and military strength but on the basis of the moral strength of the vision of its founding documents – the most significant of which (The Declaration of Independence) was authored by Jefferson himself. Jefferson, while being inward looking on occasions, favored engagement over belligerence and had a constructive global vision of his nation. Obama’s popularity to an extent is because of his recognition of the limits of Hamiltonian diplomacy and the requirement on part of the United States to urgently correct that perception.

As he faces three more certain, and four more potential years in the White House, Obama would do well to use the Nobel as means of momentum to a vision he has articulated. He would do well to remember the weight of expectations that he now faces as the honeymoon starts to get stale by the pressure of passing time. He would do well to treat the Nobel as a call to action. The prize is an endorsement of what he stands for but Barack Obama faces a challenge to leave a justification for posterity. For that, he would do well to read the words of another great US president – in the summer of 1864 as the American Civil War neared a battle of attrition and the Union started to gain a sustained advantage over the Confederacy, Abraham Lincoln admitted honestly in a letter that “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me”, - in a justification of how he had married his personal vision of abolition of slavery with his higher responsibility of preserving American unity as the President; an accomplishment which historians often cite, came about only by the President’s sustained and deep commitment to the vision of a united America even in the deepest times of despair when the conflict seemed never ending and unity a lost cause. If Barack Obama sustains his marriage to his professed vision, he would do well to live up to a premature global honor that on this occasion has rewarded ideals and vision over factual accomplishments.

 

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It is believed that the first forced migration from the African continent to the New World took place around the 1530s with the Spanish hunting for labor to tend to their plantations in the Caribbean and American territories of modern day Texas, Florida and South Carolina. Four and a quarter centuries later, the black color from Africa and its consequences tend to dominate the political events of this nation. African Americans constitute roughly 12% of the US population and yet their impact on the national conscience is much more disproportionate. The fact that race continues to be an uncomfortable issue in the United States has been borne out by two recent incidents.

The first was the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Gates by the local police. Trying to force the jammed front door of his house, Professor Gates appeared to a neighbor as someone trying to break into the house. She did what any normal American would do – call 911. By the time the police arrived, Prof Gates was in his house. This is where the story gets fuzzy. The police claim that the academic started a confrontation and hurled racist invective and abuse against the Police sergeant who came to the house. The professor claimed that despite proving his identity he was harassed and ultimately arrested. Adding color to the situation (pardon the pun) is the fact that Prof Gates is black, Sgt. Cowley of the Cambridge police is white, as was the concerned neighbor who dialed 911. The Massachusetts Governor (also black), criticized the police, saying that such discrimination was a fact of daily routine for blacks. What really gave fan to the fire was President Obama’s reaction to the situation. Speaking at the White House press conference on Health care, Obama was asked to comment on the situation and instead of side stepping the question in a way any normal politician would have done, he took it on and called the conduct of the police as ‘stupid’. Republicans, Police Unions and right wing commentators jumped on him. Accused of commenting without knowing the full facts, he was called irresponsible and asked by the Police Unions for an apology.

I guess there are natural fallouts of speaking your mind openly as a politician. Obama is discovering that slowly. He is a front on talker, someone who likes to engage issues rather than side step them. A few weeks back he spoke at the convocation ceremony of the Notre Dame University in Indiana. A university run by the Catholic Church, Notre Dame is anti-abortion while Obama is pro. Students protested against the invite to the President and he was heckled during his speech by a tiny section of the crowd. Obama trod on, talked of listening to voices of disagreement, talked of how sensitive abortion as an issue was to the Americans and how reconciliation would only be achieved by listening to the other side and finding a middle ground. In the incident of Prof Gates, he was quick to realize that he had overstepped the line of tactful distance that a Chief Executive must often maintain. To his credit, instead of hiding in the White House, he came out in the open, confessed that his comment was inappropriate and has now tried to reach out and attempt reconciliation by inviting both the academic and the policeman in question to the White House for a round of drinks.

The second incident is related to Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s pick for a Supreme Court seat that goes vacant soon. Since Supreme Court judges in US hold office for life, very rarely does a President get an opportunity to appoint one (The most famous Judge in US history, John Marshall presided as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for 34 years and swore in more Presidents than any other). The appointment of any Justice has to be confirmed by the Congress and each candidate is summoned by the Judiciary committee to a hard round of grilling. Old verdicts, opinions and stray comments are dug up and questioning is challenging (depending upon which party is in opposition). Sotomayor, a Hispanic, has been questioned for some of her own comments from a few years back (she had remarked once that a wise Latina woman can deliver a better judgment that a White man) but almost in parallel, one of her most influential judgments was reversed by the Supreme Court this summer in a narrow 5-4 verdict. The ruling related to the Fire Department of New Haven city that had cancelled the results of a promotion test after the black candidates were found to have scored too low a score to merit promotion. The city feared a lawsuit by the minority candidates due to its impact on the minority (there have been such lawsuits in the US before where courts have struck down such tests). The city’s concern lay in the principle of ‘disparate impact’ enshrined in the US employment law that prevents employers from adopting practices that are neutral on the face but discriminatory in application or effect on a protected community. It includes within its purview, a substantially different rate of selection for promotion or hiring that works to the disadvantage of any sex, race or other group.

17 White and 1 Hispanic firefighter, who were denied promotion, protested through a suit against the city Mayor alleging reverse discrimination. The district court upheld the cancellation of the test and so did the appeals court where Sotomayor was Chief Justice. The US Supreme Court though struck the ruling down stating that city had no ‘strong basis in evidence’ to show that it would have attracted lawsuits had the results been certified. The Court walked a fine thin line in the judgment and acknowledged that discrimination prevention can also lead to discrimination.

Sotomayor of course would go on to be confirmed. Obama enjoys a comfortable majority of Democrats in the Congress. But the fact that America still faces questions of race and how to overcome its historical and potential future impacts is a sign of how despite the economic advancements, social borders remain fuzzy. While attitudes may have warmed and black and white walls of discrimination may have been tore down, at its edges, along the greys America still finds the question of race standing at the corner, and mostly finds it terribly uncomfortable to reach out and address it.

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This is a bit late in the day but I wanted to draw attention to the Delhi High Court’s landmark judgment on Sec 377 of IPC. For all the abuse that modern India throws at Jawaharlal Nehru it is worthwhile to ponder that the court invoked Nehru and the Objectives Resolution that he moved in the Constituent Assembly in 1946, as India’s wisest men sat to frame a Constitution for the country. Quoting Nehru, that ‘words are magic things; often enough, even the magic of words sometimes cannot convey magic of human spirit and of a nation's passion’, it turned the wheel back to  clause 5 of the resolution that stated the following as the foundation stone of this country –

“WHEREIN shall be guaranteed and secured to all the people of India justice, social economic and political : equality of status, of opportunity, and before the law; freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action, subject to law and public morality;”

These words would go on to transform into the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. While in India, we may not remember him enough, it took a Pakistani blogger across the border to put the issue in perspective by claiming that ‘Nehru’s glorious legacy had brought another freedom to India’. In the India of 1950s, Nehru was called as the country’s friend, philosopher and guide. To this day, his words and actions stand as guardian angels of the democratic spirit he wanted his country to so dearly possess and embrace.

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Summer was waited for eagerly here in Jersey. Sunday was June 21, the solstice day when summer is officially supposed to begin. Of course when you are from India you really don’t need a day in the calendar to tell you that summer has arrived. The first drop of sweat that falls from the forehead in mid to late March is enough. However, here, in cold and damp Jersey (it rained all of the last week with a thunderstorm thrown in between), they can be allowed to be romantic about the sun. Temperatures in the summer barely cross 30 degrees Celsius. For the American it’s warm, for an Indian its heaven. The one difference here though is the sharpness of the sunlight, particularly the post rain sun. I have been advised repeatedly to use a sun screen. Considering it too feminine, I desisted; was advised again and finally bought one from a Wal-Mart. Since then, only once did the weather and my work schedule given me the opportunity to apply it on the weekend.

Americans might end up screwing up wars and their foreign policy but the one thing they get right with deadly accuracy every day is their weather predictions. So much so that there is a dedicated weather channel, called ‘The Weather Channel’ (TWC). Newspapers carry detailed forecasts every day and TWC and its affiliate websites carry hourly forecasts as well. Most people are simply interested in knowing whether their weekends would be sunny. The weather guys may not be able to give sunny weekends but they do give the right forecasts. During all of my stay here, not once have they got it wrong. The weather channel in itself is an interesting concept. I caught a live telecast the other evening from Nebraska where a tornado/ twister was rummaging its way through an open field. The weather channel correspondent had found a convenient spot far away at the edge of the road and was shouting excitedly in the mike. Indian reporters get this excited only when the government has fallen or if they have seen Shah Rukh Khan. I wonder if anyone has thought of a weather channel in India. Give the multiplicity of floods and cyclones we have every year, there will be plenty to cover. The tragedy of the weather disasters may get lost on them but our channels would surely provide us with much comic relief.

If you thought that right wing fundamentalism and violence is an exclusive Indian phenomenon, then think again. Over the last month or so violent attacks by individuals attached to or proclaiming right wing conservative ideologies have seen a sharp rise. Last week a pro-Nazi, holocaust denying 88 year old barged into the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. and killed a security guard before being overpowered himself. A week before that a prominent doctor who ran an abortion clinic and provided late term abortions was shot outside a church in Wichita, Kansas. Abortion providing doctors in urban centers like Chicago have also complained of their clinics being picketed and their staff threatened with dire consequences (Abortion perhaps is to the American right wing what Conversion is to the Indian right wing). The Wichita murder drew applause from far right groups who are anti-abortion. Some of the leaders of such groups claimed that the murderer had served god by eliminating a ‘child killer’. These incidents had the saner television channels (excluding Fox of course that is more right wing than the right wingers themselves) debating whether America was tolerating too much of ‘Domestic Terrorism’. Part of the reason for the growing activism of the fringe groups is the current predicament of the mainstream political right wing conservative formation – the Grand Old Republican party (GOP). After its drubbing in the last elections in November, the GOP has stumbled from one embarrassment to another. It is groping for a leader and an issue to take on Obama. John McCain, perhaps the most balanced figure in their ranks, is now moving towards the sunset of his political career. The party has faced one embarrassment after another – today the Governor of South Carolina, someone who was close to clinching the Vice-Presidential nomination last year and was thought to be a potential Presidential candidate for 2012, came out after a week of absence. His staff had been explaining to the press that the Governor was out hiking on the east coast while the man in question was in Buenos Aires to carry out a clandestine affair. He is the second Republican office holder to come out in the open in the last couple of months admitting an extra-marital affair. The extent of the chaos in the GOP can be realized from the fact that their most public face these days is Sarah Palin. She has been seen at fundraisers, commemorative functions for Ronald Reagan (where she spoke a speech plagiarized from a text written by another Republic leader) and has been picking a fight with the late night host David Letterman for cracking jokes at his daughter. In many ways, the GOP is facing the same predicament that the BJP faces in India. There is the burden of an electoral defeat, lack of clear leadership and absence of direction.

America is a country of extra large sizes. The smallest size is large. At lunch I have to implore the servers to give me a ‘small’ serving. Half of the small glass of coffee or tea that I take goes waste because it is, well too large. Some of the sizes of the soft drink glasses at fast food outlets are obnoxious. I am not sure the Americans see it but outsiders do. My sister in law, a Canadian, was quick to point out the consequences of such huge servings, ‘That’s why so many people in this country are obese’. One place where the Americans understand the meaning of small are the hair salons. I only had to say three words to the barber, ‘Short, really short’ and I was out in 15 minutess with a very satisfying haircut. Only if they appreciated small elsewhere. 

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On an early summer day in the year 1526 a light, swift fighting force backed by about 15-20 pieces of field artillery faced a monolith of an army in the dusty fields of a tiny hamlet in North India. Underestimated, unknown but highly mobile with a well trained cavalry, Zahir al-din Muhammad Babar’s Mughal army routed the forces of Ibrahim Lodi, whose chief weapon on the battlefield was the elephant. Scared by blasts from the Babur’s artillery, the tuskers ran amok all over trampling the men of their own army and paving the way for the fall of the Delhi Sultanate. It would be the last time when the elephant would be used as a major fighting weapon in any action on the Indian sub-continent.

1526 is how far back you would have to go in Indian history to see when the ‘elephant’ suffered its last defeat in the field of battle. 2009 is when the elephant has suffered its first defeat in electoral politics. It would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall in Behenji Mayawati’s mind right now; to listen to the thoughts churning there, to behold the surprise. The BSP has been used to winning thus far, albeit at a very gradual pace. The grand majority in UP two years back heralded a new sunrise of the party. It was expected to move beyond its core constituency of Dalits and solidify a rainbow vote combination that also included the Muslim minority and the Upper castes – a combination that could propel Mayawati not just in UP but also in other states where such low hanging fruits existed. That she wanted to assert herself nationally was visible through the number of public meetings she addressed in different parts of the country. Mayawati was in Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh – all states with significant Dalit populations. She was the dark horse, the unannounced leader of the third front, the kingmaker of the new Lok Sabha, the woman who would decide India’s destiny, a woman whom the even the Economist found worthy of mention. (This author himself, thought she would at least get 30 seats in UP alone). Prominent political commentators predicted her hold over the proceedings to follow post elections.

Well now Mayawati and her elephants have been tripped by an electorate that hates nothing more than being taken for granted. Behenji lost her mandate for exactly the same reasons for which she had first won it. You cannot enrich yourself at the cost of your voters and simply assume they would follow you on empty promises of identity and protection. The Congress lost its vote bank in north India because for years it simply assumed that it would be followed blindly; that it possessed a hereditary right over the votes of the marginalized. Behenji too simply assumed that Dalits and Muslims of UP would stay solidly behind her and that by calling out the Dalit identity in other states she would cast her die for the dream national role. In the end, all those fancy statues and stone parks in Lucknow have come back to haunt her. She may cry all she wants about a conspiracy hatched by her rival parties but the reality is that she has been dumped for non-performance. As the editor of a prominent national daily said on counting day, India wants to vote for aspiration and not for settling scores. You would have a difficult time winning over people’s aspirations if your entire energy is spent in satiating your megalomania. Mayawati won 21 Lok Sabha seats, 2 more than last time and clocked a national vote share of 6.17% - to use a colloquial Hindi term, with these numbers, for Mayawati ‘abhi dilli bahut door hai’.  

Behenji’s vote share though is third behind the Congress which received 28% of the total votes and the BJP which tallied a disappointing 18%. Why a party that was a strong, natural alternative to the Congress a decade ago is now a full 10 percentage points and 85 seats behind the leader is a matter that both the bigwigs at Delhi and Nagpur must address through their frequent ‘chintan baithaks’. A strong right of the centre national alternative is needed for a Congress but a right wing fundamentalist alternative will get whipped election after election. While his rhetoric may have worked in the case of Varun Gandhi, the party itself managed only 10 seats in the state of UP – the same number that it had in 2004. In the riot torn Kandhamal constituency of Orissa, which was ‘perfectly baked’ as per the BJP’s model of winning elections on the back of polarized electorates, the party’s candidate lost by over a lakh of votes. He too will get much time to do ‘chintan’ in his jail cell where he currently sits.

Has the BJP learnt nothing from 2004? It had a host of issues and a lot of time to play its cards right six months back. Then it allowed two men to completely derail its campaign – Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi. From standing outside the Oberoi when the encounter was still going on to using the ‘gudiya-budhiya’ rhetoric, Modi did much to divert the agenda away from development. The school bully image was at complete contrast to the quiet manner in which Rahul Gandhi went about his campaign – both Mayawati, who ridiculed him for sleeping in a Dalit’s home and Modi, who never stops taking potshots at the Gandhis, have been proved ineffectual. In Gujarat, which the saffron party was supposed to ‘sweep’, 8 candidates personally chosen by the Chief Minister lost. His gain from 2004 in the state is just one seat. The only state where the BJP did better than 2004 was Bihar – and even though he hugged Modi in far away Punjab, Nitish Kumar didn’t allow Modi to enter the state before all the votes were cast. Nitish has won as decisive a mandate as Modi ever has; then why the Modi model of rioting and development and not the Nitish Kumar, Shiela Dixit and Shivraj Chauhan model of good inclusive development should be the answer to India’s problems, is something that any supporter of this ‘Hitler with a beard’ is yet to explain to me.

 If anyone in the BJP is interested in paying attention, in the lack of that explanation lies their route back to power in Delhi.

Indian elections can often turn out to be an exercise in humility for its participants. The Left, which held a stronger veto over the previous government for four years, than even the one that Soviet Union held at the UN for forty years, now stands with its back to the wall and facing the unthinkable possibility of losing the next assembly election in Bengal. The many aspirant ‘Prime Ministers in waiting’ will now do just that – wait. Their despondency was summed up by Sharad Pawar who, first took his hat out of the ring, a day before the elections, and then was the first one on the day of results to concede that the Congress had the right to decide who would be the Prime Minister.

As far as the victor of this election is concerned, the Congress will do well to consider the hubris that led to the downfall of its rivals in the last two elections. It will face anti-incumbency and vote fatigue in different states after 5 years, the only insurance against which shall be performance. Its gamble to stand on its own feet in UP paid off and underscored the point that often in elections, winnability is simply about providing a fresh alternative to the voter.

As far as projections go, no one saw this ‘landsweep’ in favour of the Congress. Yours truly had stuck his neck out in March and predicted a tally of 148 seats for the party with Andhra, Rajasthan and Maharashtra being the bellwether states. He had also predicted of a long political summer of negotiations and side changes and deal striking with the most probable scenario being the return of the UPA with a little help from the Fourth Front and splinter groups of the Third Front.

Proved wrong. Period.

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We get such days only 10-15 times in a year, said my cousin as we negotiated our way through a choc a block Boston Central Park which was teeming with men, women and kids indulging in all kinds of activities ranging from simple sun bathing to baseball catching, dancing or just walking. Its a sunny sunny day on the North American east coast with the day temparatures hitting the late 20s and early 30s degree celsius. As an Indian i wonder what the fuss is all about, in fact the high temparatures disappoint me. I was hoping for slightly cooler climes. I am sweating in Boston in a simple tee and my jeans. Its a bit like spring temparatures back in India. Boston and North East America arent grudging their sunshine though. A cousin sister gently rebukes me not to 'lagao nazar' to this heralding of early summer.

Boston is one of North America's oldest cities. The city was founded by colonists from England way back in 1630. Part of the reason for its early growth was access to the sea and a thriving harbour, which still exists today. The harbour was also the site of the famous 'Boston Tea Party' in 1773 when American protestors dumped British tea into the water as a protest against 'taxation without representation' (why a protest was called a party was a matter of much curiousity and amusement amongst my high school pals during our class ix history class). The city was also at the forefront of the revolution - the first major battle took place just outside of the city at Bunker Hill with the British suffering heavy casualties in a phyrric victory. Boston produced several  principal figures of the revolution as well - John Adams, the cantankerous lawyer who led the push in the Continental Congress towards Declaration of Independence and went on to become America's second president;  his cousin Samuel Adams who was one of the first opposers of British rule in Boston and was also a signer to the Independence declaration; John Hancock, a principal businessman of those times who was also a close friend of George Washington; and of course Paul Revere, the man who rode at midnight sounding the warning 'the British are coming'. Boston has done well to preserve its historical heritage - there is a 'Freedom Trail' - a path outlined on the sidewalks that snakes around the old part of the town and leads visitors to important monuments, including the graves of Revere and Sam Adams.

My cousin lives in South End, which is to Boston what East Delhi is to India's capital - till now a run down place not looked too nicely upon but now enjoying a period of resurgence. South End has pockets inhabited by higher income groups which are surrounded by lower income government subsidized housing. The locality recently experienced settling in by homosexual couples (in 2004 Massachussets became the first US state to legalise same sex marriages). So the logic is that since gay/ lesbians couple cannot have children, most of their income is disposable and they like to spend it on good clothing and eating. This has seen the sprouting of many new eating joints and other commercial establishments which has improved the profile of the area - so much so that now my cousin and his wife are out hunting for a house to buy and finally settle in there. 

On the same topic, same sex marriages continue to divide America - Supreme Courts of states on the liberal North East coast have passed judgements approving these unions. Politicians have tried to veto it. In Vermont, the state legislature over ruled the Governor's veto and allowed the unions to be legalised. Some states like New Jersey offer 'union' but not marriage recognition - a convenient way to skirt the argument that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. California, the state of Harvey Milk and an early pioneer of gay rights recently had a referendum where the public rejected the legislation to legalise gay marriage. 

The influence of the strong Christian right and conservative groups can be seen in this ideological fight in the US. Its northern neighbour Canada passed a national law two years back legalising such marriages. European nations such as Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden too recognise such marriages. Even the much derided South Africa, considering its grave HIV problems legalised these unions three years back.

The riches of any town in the US is based on the value of its land, I am told. The more valuable your land, the higher taxes those inhabiting them pay and the more revenue the city council generates. Poor neighbourhoods mean poorer values and poorer cities. I am visiting the almost four hundred years old Harvard University campus. Being one of the oldest institutions of America, the university enjoys a lot of clout and a non-profit entity status - which means that it is exempt from paying taxes on the huge real estate it occupies. That has resulted in lower revenues for the council of Cambridge, the town that Harvard is officialy located in. So the neighbourhoods around Cambridge are not as affluent as the University that sits there. I am told its a great place to see and walk around only as long as you confine yourself to the campus. I have heard that line being said to young women for a few spots around my city of Delhi.

Train delays are all too common in India. We are used to our trains stopping in the middle of the countryside with passengers having no clue as to where they are and why they have stopped. On my way back to Boston, the Amtrak train looks all set to take more than its scheduled time of 4 hours. Just before New York, one of the overhead lines have tripped and the electricity has failed. We are informed over the PA system of the train that there might be an 'unspecified' delay since a diesel engine may have to be called to tow the train in case the power isnt restored. I am laughing and giggling in my seat everytime this announcement is made - Go get Laloo and learn a thing or two! A bullock cart towing an electricity train....now wudnt that be exciting.

Eventually they do fix the electricity and we move. I miss my first connecting train to New Jersey and spend another three quarters of the hour waiting for the next one. Its almost half past eleven when i reach the my suburban station. With no shuttles or cabs available i have no option but to work a sweat and walk the 2 kms to my hotel. The roads are deserted, the houses are dark and quiet and all through my walk i see only a handful of cars passing by but not a single soul on the road. I am not sure i would be lining up for more of such bravado walks. 

P.S. I am not missing the IPL too much here in the States. You dont get live streaming or TV telecast, but I did miss out on the fakeipl player blog. Read a bit of it yesterday and it is simply hilarious! Poor KKR - wat a season they are having. And SRK as Dildo?!! rotfl! They are wondering who is writing it - some speculate it is Harsha Bhogle, some say Aakash Chopra. Both are too nice and civil gentlemen to indulge in this. Given all the SRK and KKR bashing going on there my guess is its Aamir - Dildo...Bhookha Naan, BubLee, Little John, Lordie....  :D :D 

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Deep down perhaps every Indian middle class young boy harbors a dream of visiting America. It is shaped in many cases by a desire to replicate relatives in the family who have been to the land or in most others by the exposure to soft culture of Archies, Hollywood and Mcdonalds. If you are a graduate techie being turned out of those myriad engineering colleges of India, then the US of A is your ultimate onsite destination.

Unlike the previous occasion, this time my journey to the airport from my house is smooth. That’s because my flight is before the mad rush hour at midnight and beyond and also because the day is dry and there aint any rain to clog Delhi roads. Check in is slow and it takes me 15 mins for reach the counter from the end of the line. It takes another 10 for the check in counter official to weigh my baggage and get my boarding pass out between his chuckles and jokes with a colleague.  There are somethings even a swanky modern airport cannot change.

The immigration officer is interested to know what Accenture (my employer) does. By now I am tired of giving this explanation – despite the huge sums that we spend on television advertising, people still do not know us. Or well at least the average common man doesn’t. Even the urbane ones who might be watching English news channels where our advertisements are a regular feature are clueless when the name is mentioned. Neither have past full page ads in newspapers been of any help. I am also tired of referring to the firm as the one with Tiger Woods ads. No one seems to have a clue about Woods. So now, I just let it be – I politely inform the immigration officer of our scope of services. He asks whether we are still recruiting. I sense this as an inquiry of an interested father for his kid than that of a customs official. He says the outlook is improving and that things shall change in the next few months. As evidence he points to the upward movement in the ‘market’. I want to believe him, I am flying to the States – someone must be needing my services.

Emirates has an in-flight entertainment system that simply captivates me. There is a good variety to choose from amongst movies, TV shows and songs (the 13 hour flight from Dubai to JFK had about 20 new movies on the menu along with countless older ones, including Hindi classics such as ‘Golmaal’ and ‘Chupke Chupke’). There is an informative section that tells you about the movement of the flight and metrics such as altitude, speed, time at the destination and the distance travelled. What takes the cake are the two cameras installed on the exterior of the plane whose live feed can be seen on the screen by passengers – the first camera is on the nose and the second on the underbelly. It’s a treat to switch either of those on during take off and landing. I didn’t miss my window seat on both the flights courtesy the cameras.

New York is cloudy and damp when I land. The last few minutes of the flight witness my attention being captured by an engaging conversation on the seats to my right between a US national of Somali descent and an white American lady from Florida. The Somali is bemoaning the state of his nation, his inability to meet with his Syrian wife and kids and the plight of his family back home. Conversation turns then to the scourge of piracy affecting the seas of the coast of Somalia and the lack of action by the international community to correct the state of affairs in the nation. It is difficult to escape the passion of the Somali as he stresses the failures of his nation and more so of those who could have prevented them from occurring.

‘Khanna as in Vinod Khanna?’ asks the woman at the prepaid taxi service counter at JFK upon seeing my passport. She is of Thai origin and finally helps me with a reservation after two of her colleagues tell me that their cabs don’t travel to the town where I am staying (Parsipanny in Jersey, an hours’ drive from NY). She informs me that she met Shatrughan SIngha at the JFK once and is aware how actively both the above mentioned actors are involved in politics.

There is a debate going on in America after President Obama subtly switched his stand on torture investigation and stated that Justice Department officials who approved of torture techniques may be investigated. It’s the first indication that the Bush administrationmay be hauled for its brave efforts to ‘change the world’. The Republicans of course are up in indignation and Dick Cheney has issued a war cry. On my cab drive, we are listening to a radio station which is blatantly Republican. The radio jockey after interviewing a dumb bimbette who claims she made her two daughters to run up and down a mile long road on a cliff so as to stop them from fighting each other, then proceeds to take calls. A caller says that torture is not what is done to Al-Qeda but what was done to victims of 9/11, that watching people jump from burning high rises is torture. This jockey then in a grave somber tone that sounds straight out of a campaign race proceeds to tell ‘American people’ that they are not safer than they were pre 9/11, that the current President has no stomach to fight enemies of the nation and that torture is done with the aim to achieve the ultimate good of ‘extracting information’. Next morning at breakfast I watch a Fox news telecast that is debating the same – it has three panelists on the show, two of whom are blatant republicans while one tries to strike a middle ground. The anchor again reminds us that torture yields information that is essential to save the country. The President is castigated by the Republican leaning panelists of succumbing to left wing liberals while deciding to investigate tortures. Listening to this debate, you wouldn’t be surprised that Americans are so reviled in the countries which are the worst sufferers of Islamic extremism. You would also not be surprised that despite 8 years of ‘war on terror’, the US still has no clue about the root causes of the threats faced by it.

 

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Posted by Aftab Khanna, who on the gentle goading of Tony Sebastian, has finally decided to try and foresee things before they have happened

“The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win” – Leonid Brezhnev

Comrade Brezhnev might well have spoken for all us sitting at our homes in front of television screens and twiddling our thumbs as the great Indian tamasha gets underway once again. Opinion polls have been banned this time around – thus sparing the politicians many an anxiety and depriving our pollsters of their moments under the arc lights. The election process, one cant help but feeling, is poorer for the same. It was fun seeing spokespersons of major political parties denying all the poll findings if they were against them and then crucifying the pollsters on counting day when results went in their favor. Conversely the party projected to win would end up being cheated by the pollsters and suffer a reverse at the hustings. The spokespersons would go on to deride the very same polls that they were trumpeting a few weeks back.
India is a strange democracy and stranger still are its elections. It’s a country where the Intelligence Bureau instead of gathering evidence of upcoming terror strikes (I am sorry for making them sound like a music concert, but that’s the regularity and seriousness they acquired under the UPA) actually goes out and collects intelligence against the political rivals of the incumbent. The IB is the oldest pollster in the country and perhaps has a higher accuracy rate than even the likes of Prannoy Roy and Yogendra Yadav. You would have heard the old cliché – Indian elections are notoriously difficult to predict. It got a shot in the arm in 2004 when all the opinion polls (and surprisingly even the exit polls) got their results completely wrong. The electorate is so fragmented and so diverse that to reach the correct prediction is to play a game of snakes and ladders on a thousand square field. Yet there are some who carry the burden of psephology (would you believe it, MS Word 2007 does not even have this word in its dictionary; pollsters rival only investment bankers these days when it comes to earning discredits) and enlighten us as to the fate that awaits us ahead.

Yours truly is not a bearer of this burden – simply a patient of swivel chair (that’s the one I sit on) analysis. Hence, as Sir Tony would agree, in an extraordinarily courageous display of pre-emption, he now goes ahead and puts his neck on the line and attempts to gaze into a very hazy crystal ball.

The Congress: The grand old party of India is losing allies as its vehicle chugs along the bumpy electoral road. Lalu Yadav may have been temporarily estranged (both him and Mulayam would come back to the UPA to demand their pound of flesh in a post poll scenario) but it is the loss of the PMK in Tamil Nadu that would perhaps hurt the party the most. It would struggle to retain its tally of 10 seats in the state and its alliance partner DMK seems to have already thrown in the towel. The party seems set to gain in Punjab and Kerala and would lose in Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and Tamil Nadu. Key to the Congress’ fortune would lie in the states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh (with the last two being bellwether states in my estimate). The party would need to rout the BJP in Rajasthan, retain more or less the same seats in Maharashtra and minimize its losses in Andhra to even entertain hopes of government formation. Anything under 140 seats and the Congress would be at the mercy of Mamta, Mulayam and, in scenario nothing short of a nightmare for them, perhaps Jayalalitha and the Left.
Projection – 135 to 148 seats

The BJP: The Bhartiya Jalopy Party would be hoping for a repeat of the fortunes of 2004, not of their own but of the Congress! The Congress went into the polls then with no one giving it a fig leaf’s chance and trumped all the analysts and pollsters. Unlike the Congress in 2004 however, the BJP has failed to stitch together coherent alliances and seems set to pay the penalty. Its loss of Naveen Patnaik would cost it in Orissa (though like Lalu, the BJD too would come back to its erstwhile ally if push comes to shove) and the party would suffer reverses in Rajasthan. It seems set to more or less even out gains in J&K, HP, Gujarat and Jharkhand with marginal losses in MP, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra. Key to its fortunes would be to achieve damage limitation in Rajasthan and hope that Nitish Kumar swings Bihar their way with at least 20+ seats. But it’s still a tough shot for the BJP to emerge at the same levels as 1999. It would need to surprise us all a bit – sweep Gujurat, Karnataka and MP massively, raise its tally in Maharashtra and most of all, grab at least 20 seats in UP. That seems asking for a bit too much from Mr.Advani. The party’s only route to power is thus to cobble up around 140 seats on its own, hope that Jaya sweeps Tamil Nadu, the TDP alliance sweeps Andhra, Naveen Patnaik takes Orissa handsomely and all of them return to the NDA fold – if Mr.Advani and Mr.Jaitley pull that off, then I for one at least wont grudge them their 5 years of power.
Projection – 120 to 135 seats

Third Front: Can the reincarnated ‘Teesra Morcha’ grab power from under the noses of the UPA and NDA? Despite all their media blitz and ‘shor’ this cabal of regional players (accept it, the Left is a regional player) faces some quite steep hurdles. The Left is all set to slide from the high of 59 to around mid 30s in the new Lok Sabha. Naveen Patnaik, if he chooses to go with the Third Front, may not deliver the same seats as last time (11 of 20), since he fights alone and faces anti-incumbency both at state and parliamentary level. Third Front’s door to power rests on several shaky hinges – Mayawati has to outperform in UP and come close to a tally of 50, TDP must win around 30 and agree to stay with the Front and Jayalalitha should also reach a tally of 30. With these numbers and around 35 seats of the Left, the Front would hit 140+; that’s a range at which both Lalu and Mulayam (sure to underperform and return with lower numbers) may decide to grab a bite at power and change camps. If Naveen Patnaik too takes the third turn, then with numbers in excess of 150, the Third Front dream can hope to face the dawn of realization. The Congress may then be called upon to support the front from a position of weakness and we can all happily return back to the days of 1996.
But will it happen?? Will Mulayam join a front with Maya? More importantly will Mayawati reach near that figure of 50 in UP? Will both the TDP and Jaya outperform? And will the Congress agree to bide time and prepare for 2014 and extend outside support?
Projection – 110 to 125 seats

So what are we looking at after the polls? Make no mistake, India might well face a long summer with political parties slugging it out in the lack of a clear mandate. Deals would be struck, sides will be changed and there will be plenty of entertainment on offer. One won’t be surprised if there is a complete deadlock for a few days and the new Prime Minister gets sworn in only around late June. Here’s how the scenarios may pan out –

Probable– Congress reaches around 140; Lalu and Mulayam, both emerge weaker but rejoin the UPA and a Third Front constituent joins in while a couple of existing and dispensable allies are ditched. The alliance scrapes through to 272.

Somewhat Likely – Congress on its own is around 125 - 130 but the Third Front, let down by Mayawati’s inability to effect a decisive sweep, is also not strong enough to stake an independent claim. In a grand reconciliation the Left decides to bury its differences and carries along a couple of its Third Front partners to the UPA, once again supporting from outside. In such a case, Manmohan Singh might have to end up paying for his anti-Left tirade of the last 12 months.

Slightly less likely – Mayawati trumps everyone, sweeps UP and establishes presence through wins in Punjab and MP. She commands the Third Front along with Jayalalitha who also decimates the DMK in Tamil Nadu. The Congress, stranded at around 120 is left with no option but to cede momentum to the ladies.

Less likely – The NDA sweeps Gujarat, MP, Bihar; improves marginally in UP and Maharashtra and minimizes losses in Rajasthan and Orissa. It reaches a tally close to 200; the Third Front breaks up, the AIADMK and TDP with around 30 seats each finally propel Mr.Advani to Race Course Road.

Of course, I could be massively wrong. The least likely scenario may well turn out to be the most likely after the votes are counted. Predictions in Indian polls, more than astrology, can go horribly off the mark. Hence, you are advised to add a pinch of salt to your popcorn, as you read the same. And in case you feel badly let down by this author when the results finally come out, you are welcome to return to this post and smash some eggs on its face.

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If you ever needed evidence that the institution of ragging needed strict regulation, then ladies and gents you have it right here before you. A young boy, a year out of school, with dreams and aspirations in his eyes, yet to come of age and discover the cynicisms of this world has paid the price with his life for upholding the grand legacy of this so called annual tradition in our colleges. This sadly is what ragging has come down to in our ‘professional’ institutions; what kind of members such institutions shall contribute to their professions is a question to ponder over. Doctors/ Engineers/ Lawyers who would not think twice before banging someone’s head mercilessly into a concrete wall. People who see nothing wrong in subjecting those junior to them (in age, perhaps not in mind) to the worst of psychological humiliations and physical abuse. People who are able to conjure up strange notions of power within their fiefdoms of college hostels and exercise that power brutally. People who get away every year with the tacit approval and lack of action by the institutions they supposedly claim to study in. Welcome to the grand tradition of college ragging, under the guise of which we have been passing off abuse and harassment – and now murder.

The Supreme Court came out with its anti-ragging guidelines in 2001 – the very year that I entered college. At that time I remember it sparked of a debate in the college circuits. Delhi University students were bristling with self righteousness and proclaiming how ragging was an ice breaking institution that was high on the fun quotient and necessary to initiate their ‘fucchas’ and foster camaraderie between the freshmen and varsity. Of course, they had a point. On the very first day of college that year, Hindustan Times photographed five varsity students of Hindu College making three freshmen to go on haunches, put their hands to their ears and become what our schoolteachers used to say in an age long gone by, ‘murgaas’. That photograph, of five laughing seniors and three bended juniors made the front page of the newspaper the next day and all around my class there was one sentiment – how idiotic! Couldn’t those fools see that they were being photographed? (The seniors in the snap were temporarily suspended)

Every year our colleges put up notices ‘advising’ students against ragging. Every year stories come out. There are the first set of stories – the polite ones, the tellers of which will come up and claim what a wonderful tradition ragging is. Stories of vulgar songs being asked to be sung, stories of sexually driven young boys who have had limited interactions with the other sex asking their juniors to ‘go and propose to that girl’. These are stories whose veil you would never care to lift. You would smile, pass them on as signs of coming of age, ignore the signals and turn a blind eye.

And then there is the other set. The one that flows out of our medical and engineering colleges. Ask any student who has passed out of such an institution and you would know where I am coming from. I have heard tales of people being asked to strip, humiliated because they belonged to a particular caste, being told in the middle of the night to fetch liquor from outside for their seniors, people being slapped, caned, pulled by their hair and beaten up and girls being asked to dance nude. Now I know I sound a bit of an idealist on this blog at times, but please pray tell me in what civilized world does all the above count as steps of ‘initiation and building of espirit de corps’? And if indeed such acts are vital to break down walls of inhibitions that juniors possess when they enter college, then why don’t the same rules apply when our kids enter kindergarten or high school, when recruits enter the army or when we join a job after getting out of our colleges? My question is quite simple - would you accept your workplace tolerating your boss slapping and stripping you and pulling your hair? Would you laugh off lightly if tomorrow your kid’s head is smashed into the school wall when he enters kindergarten?

I can see where the strength and reasoning for ragging is derived. Colleges are places without codified rules of behavior. There are no codes of conduct, no uniforms and no class teacher to make you behave. It is a place for losing your innocence, for venturing into the big bad world after coming out of the protecting environs of your home. Young kids, specially in hostels, come across a diversity that they perhaps have not seen before in their lives. There is a sense of community and belongingness, driven by the feeling of everyone being far away from home. The hostel is your home. Your mates your brothers. A sense of authority prevails over those who enter the premises under you. A culture of patronage and protection – all under the garb of fostering ties and interaction. There is a sense of power hitherto unknown. Combine that power with regional and caste biases, a thrill at the ‘adventure’ on offer, a closeted sexuality demanding exploration and a knowledge that you are ‘one in a mob’, that ‘everyone does it, so why shouldn’t you?’ What do you get? Lifelong friendships – maybe. Camaraderie – maybe. Murder? Ah well, that’s just an unfortunate byproduct. So what if some people are abused and their heads smashed? We must have our dose of the cocktail of power.

The only explanation of ragging that anyone could offer me was – ‘Because I also got ragged’. Every batch claims it was more progressive than its seniors and that they ‘didn’t rag as much as they had suffered’.

The colleges, of course, can only shrug their shoulders every time an incident happens. In the recent case, the principal accused was a repeat offender – yet hadn’t been reprimanded even once. Institutions won’t act due to influence, fear of negative publicity and police scrutiny. The students won’t complain because they have to spend their academic life with those who harass them. They will simply bear the pain and insults and smile on gamely. And this ‘grand tradition’ of crass display of power derived from coercion will continue to roll along unabated.

Well, I am afraid but as the recent incident demonstrates this is a matter where we have exhausted all limits of self regulation. Unfortunately, Indian courts, police and the executive will now be called to enter into our colleges – not to frame educational policies and reform the functioning, not to demand an increase in budgetary allocations, not to call for improvement of infrastructure, but to police the students. And that, if you have passed out of a college in this country, along with the death of Aman Kachru, is a matter of utter collective shame.

 

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