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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Is it only me or are there other people also out there who think that there is something fishy about all these Bollywood movie awards? Times of India yesterday ran a full page story on this year’s Filmfare awards (Filmfare being a sister publication commanded natural space) and the list of awardees was well, how should I put it, a bit like reading a half well selected Indian team. It raises your eyebrows but only in a mild arc. Of course, you can always argue that all the awards doled out in India end up raising more than just arc – usually they raise a ruckus, mostly by those who have missed out and in the case of Milkha Singh a few years ago even by those who have received it. So why should yours truly raise his eyebrows only at poor Bollywood and at Filmfare? Perhaps because they came a week after the Oscars and howsoever illogical this may sound, I couldn’t help drawing a comparison. And perhaps because, Filmfare still claims to award India’s equivalent of the Oscars. It is rightly the oldest film awards function in Bollywood and can claim to command a certain degree of respect, perhaps by its sheer weight of history.

In the recent years of course, that respect, credibility and the comfort zone of Filmfare has been challenged by a slew of ‘me too’ clones. All you need these days of course is a publication that lends the media machine to your awards, a television channel that will ensure the sponsors and the entertainment factor and a lead sponsor to shell out all those mega bucks to the dancing stars. The trend was started by Screen (with Indian Express and Star), followed by Zee and now you have those hideous India International Film Awards that are a blatant way to rip off money from all those pravasi bhartiyas crazy about Hindi films (to the extent that they are held every year in an offshore destination; though I would like to see how many dollars the pravasis would shell out in this time of a downturn or perhaps it might well be yours and mine TV eyeballs that would bankroll the event). What all this does mean is that there is a competitive pressure amongst all these awards and since sponsors and revenues shall all be decided by the TV ratings, it becomes imperative to ensure that those don’t drop. And the safest way to guarantee TV ratings is to make sure that you get SRK to dance. But why should SRK dance at one function and not at another. So in this competition enters another element now. Give the star an award, give him a reason to attend and then make him dance. Everyone goes home happy – the star gets awarded, the commercial film gets lauded, sponsors make money and TV gets rating. And credibility? Ah pray what’s that again please??

Of course, the above is just a theory and conjecture (I want to qualify that, you never know when this blog might hurt the sensibilities of an idiot who might then drag me to court, as is happening with disturbing frequency recently) – but as I look down the list of the Filmfare awardees this year I can’t help but get that uncomfortable churn. Was Hrithik’s seriously a better performance than Nasser’s in ‘A Wednesday’? Was ‘Jodha Akbore (oops Akbar!) seriously a better film than say a ‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ or an ‘A Wednesday’, a ‘Dev D’ or even ‘Rock On’ in terms of its narrative, tightness of script and communication of message? To satisfy any such concern, all these awards have found a convenient circumnavigation tool called ‘Critics Awards’. It’s a bit like handing out a return gift to the kids at a birthday party, a mere tool to acknowledge a presence and to keep the noise level down. So this year, Mumbai Meri Jaan has taken most of the Critics Awards. Movies like Oye Lucky have also found luck in the technical categories like Dialogue, categories about which the TV viewing public and the sponsors don’t give a fig about. But when it comes to the big draws, the Best Actors, Directors and Movie, big budget cinema (I won’t use the word successful since there always seems to be a debate about whether a movie was ‘hit’ or ‘miss’) called the shots.

Whatever we might think about the snobbishness and early morning shenanigans of the Oscars, you have to give them credit on two counts. One, they manage to achieve the right amount of slick quotient required for high quality TV coverage and second, agree or not with the final list of rewards, you would hardly find any controversies about the nominations. Most of them would deserve their place. In fact the Academy quite often supplants the big studios and doles out Uncle Oscar to the small budget ones. Surprisingly they manage to affect this snub and still put forward an effective TV show. A movie like the ‘The Dark Knight’ managed two Oscars out of eight nominations with one of them being the certainty of Heath Ledger’s win. Had it been India, the movie would have swept the awards circuit by the sheer weight of its collections. Not taking away anything from Chris Nolan who as a critic remarked ‘created Shakespeare out of a comic book’, there were perhaps other and deeper performances that pipped the caped crusader. Of course, the Oscars are not without their share of murmurs and some newspapers claimed that Slumdog was nominated and won a bundle of awards simply to ensure that TV revenues from the sub-continent were high. It was a bit like that old argument about Indians winning Miss Universe and Miss World titles so that Fair and Lovely could sell more (when was the last time an Indian girl won a beauty pageant by the way?? And is Fair and Lovely still selling despite all those national setbacks at Miss Universe and Miss World contests?)

Perhaps a way out could be to have an industry body conducting the awards. I remember seeing a Producers’ Guild Awards on NDTV last year and you could instantly see why such an idea will hit so many roadblocks in India. The audience present could not even fill a school auditorium and almost none of the major winners in the ‘popular’ categories of music and acting were present. Maybe in India we should stop fretting and simply accept that our awards are weighed towards commercial success and that it shall often be difficult to break that glass ceiling and bring an element of credibility. The only way out is to then treat them as those doling out these awards do – not recognition of cinematic excellence but simply as toffee handouts on the birthday party. The bigger fist shall get the lion’s share. The spectacled geeky boy shall be shoved around and then pitied and handed a token to assuage everyone’s conscience.

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Can the Election Commission please announce the election dates and spare us all the agony of looking at full page government advertisements and blaring declarations of achievement on radio by various state ‘sarkars’. I am amazed to see that after so many years of inactivity, every day India is seeing a flurry of inaugurations and foundation stones. Of course, in our country, foundation stones remain just that - stones. The only ones benefiting from all this wasteful expenditure of your and my money are media companies designing these ads, the singers and actors finding employment in them and the print media that gets almost five to six pages of sarkari income every day. Perhaps the government can put a charitable spin on it and say that this is a thinly veiled bailout package for the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. Who cares about public money as long as the monkeys can scratch each other’s backs?

 

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There is a strange kind of debate going on in the Indian media as Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire prepares to hit the screens this Friday. One of the disadvantages of round the clock media coverage, as we have all realized by now, is that a lot of inanity finds prime time viewership that is quite disproportionate to its significance to public debate. The arguments over whether Slumdog glorifies Indian poverty and thus consequently establishes that only Indian slums sell to the west is one such. The Hindi news channels, having by now long forsaken any pretense at news coverage and generating public opinion, have concentrated all their energies on blowing the trumpet for the movie and blaring its soundtrack even more diligently than MTV or the radio channels. Slumdog hardly needs any pre-release publicity; the mad frenzy that has gripped our news networks, who have by now done multiple interviews with anyone remotely associated with the movie, has ensured that enough people will be queuing up to buy tickets on day one even without posters, television campaigns or star appearances of its cast of actors. The English media, particularly the television one, has taken up the cudgels and run debates on whether the four Golden Globes amply prove that a romanticized picture of Indian poverty presented by an acceptable foreigner is enough to set the critics from New York, Hollywood and London running. Is Slumdog glorifying and selling Indian poverty?

Forgive me for being a bit thick, but there are far too many layers that I detect and am unable to unravel. At one level, there is the old fear. That of being identified still as the land of elephants and snake charmers and sadhus lying on bed of nails. This is the fear of the India of thirty years back – that realized too late that much of its spiritual charm for westerners lay in its image of being a place of hardship and renunciation. Placed alongside that, the snake charmers, the slums, the sewage and the grime seemed to complete an appropriate picture. India was a yogic land content in its dirt and at ease with its nakedness and flies. Of course, by the time India itself realized this image, a lot of time had passed and a lot of catching up to be done. This is an image that every Indian now seeks to suppress. Added to this is a new generation of monetarily empowered middle class Indians, the beneficiaries of the unlocking of gates achieved in 1991. And it is this semi-professional, confident and semi-nationalist Indian who now cringes at the mention of his country’s scars. For this Indian, the rise of an Infosys, economic growth, fancy office s and glitzy malls and rising consumer choice and consumption are enough to show that the tide has turned and the dirty, spiritual home of hippies is now a bright spanking Elevate. More than movie critics, it is this Indian who wonders why Jamal Malik’s and not his story makes the Western audiences sit up and award Golden Globes. This Indian begs the question as to why, when he has achieved skill based growth, must the world still look at Dharavi for inspiration. This Indian essentially contests the fact that Jamal Malik and not he is the true representative of his nation.

Alas, statistics, our urban landscape and daily realities of life are against him. For while he might have grown, a great of number of his countrymen are still slumdogs. More importantly, what he forgets is that the person sitting next to him on the high table of self achieved prosperity had some generation of his family that rose from those slums. He overlooks the wonderful stories of those who found inspiration to break out of those stinking drains and cramped houses and let their height grow to catch more the sun. He forgets that in India’s slums are born the dreams of desire. He forgets that he is the inspiration for those dreams. That those living cheek by jowls in India’s many Dharavis look to him and say to themselves – if he can, we can.

Essentially, this young Indian is insecure. Insecure of being pushed back to the land of renunciation and sadhu ashrams. Insecure that the world may fail to recognize him as it looks at India slums. He forgets that what he protests against is a story similar to his – a story of rising against adversity, of facing challenges and summoning grit to achieve a holy grail. Jamal Malik typifies India – yet to let go of it slums and scars, but not lacking in spirit to rise in this world and seeking a better life on his credentials alone. Slumdog is a tale of an India in transformation and howsoever much wealth the insecure Indian may amass, he cannot ignore the slums that dot his urban landscape. For in those slums lie the dreams of tomorrow and from there came the achievers of today.

I put this state of needless debate as my Facebook status and received some interesting responses. One friend was particularly galled by what he called Western hypocrisy in not showcasing their own poverty. That I believe is bit harsh. The West has been more self critical and inward looking that any other part of the current world. You only need to dive into the body of work of a Quentin Tarantino or a Martin Scorcese to explore the cinematic depiction of the underbelly of America. Another friend wondered whether all it takes to win a Booker these days is to get a degree from a foreign university, write about India and romanticize its poverty, corruption and caste system. He believes the west is excited about India’s plagues. I beg the question – Is India aware and excited about it plagues? The answer I leave for you to ponder. I could write another post defending Arvind Adiga’s book but I will mention only two points – read it and judge if you disagree with the picture of rural and urban life of India that he paints. And the second – all around me I see protagonists of Adiga’s book emerging. My grandparents’ young servant – son of a landless labourer from Bihar has taught himself to read English, owned and chucked a cell phone, bought a DVD player, likes to get his hair gelled and coloured, swears by the principle of ‘living within your monetary means’ and not taking debt and dreams one day to be an entrepreneur caretaking multiple residential dwellings. When I look at him, I realize that Adiga and Boyle do not speak to me in an alien language. These stories are resonating around India. These ambitions shall propel India. We must embrace them rather than shying away from accepting the place of their birth. We are, as a nation, surely self-confident enough to look at ourselves honestly in the mirror – to admire our beauty and understand our warts.

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In this season of terrorist strikes and bomb blasts, Satyam chief Ramalinga Raju has left potentially the most damaging piece of explosive amidst the set up of corporate India. If Raju’s suicide note/ confession/ conscience call/ whatever you may choose to label it based upon whatever levels of credulity are still left in you after today, does not shake the susceptible foundations of corporate conduct in India then believe me, nothing will. For ladies and gentlemen, this is not a government controlled sick PSU that has been eating away public money for ages and now has come into the limelight. This is a success story (or an ex success story, again based on your remaining levels of optimism about the company) of the new Indian economy and its sunshine sector. This is the sector and the industry that we sell to the world, this is the service our nation is now synonymous with instead of bullock carts, elephants and snakes. In one stroke of his pen (literally!), Mr.Raju has done tremendous damage to this nation’s reputation and effectively signed away the one asset that any business can possess and lose only once – credibility.

For years we have been making jokes about Enron, WorldCom and Arthur Andersen; now we have our very own corporate fraud to humour ourselves with. Yours truly has gone ahead done the same with the title of this post. But this is no laughing matter after all. This is a heady cocktail of corporate fraud, auditor negligence, regulatory oversight and boardroom corruption all mixed together. Raju is nothing but the tip of this iceberg that might well leave more than a few cracks in different corporate Balance Sheets that now seem nothing less than floating Titanics.

Satyam’s fraud has taken the sheen off the Indian IT sector and smashed all concepts of corporate governance and Clause 49 to bits. You wonder what chance corporate governance can have in a country like ours where you can buy your way into anything and where CFOs, Managing Directors, Independent Directors and Auditors can sign off on Financial Statements misstated by crores. And the saddest truth is that all of this would have conveniently been undetected had the dominos not started falling post that abortive attempt to acquire family held companies by the Satyam chief. You and I would have gladly believed Satyam to be a blue chip stock on account of its high revenues, operating margins and huge cash reserves. We would have bought the stock at the markets and hoped it to stay steady as the market rides a recession. None of us would have ever known that revenues are overstated, margins are scanty (3%!!), cash reserves simply don’t exist and that the tone at the top is one set by crooks. In a sense Satyam has belied our faith in the accuracy of corporate announcements, results and financials – there seems little ‘satya’ in all the jargon spouted by the companies and the analysts. You and I will now look at every success story in India with a degree of scepticism; every corporate profit surge will now have to pass the ‘Satyam test’ and this loss of faith is one reason sufficient enough for Mr.Raju to be prosecuted criminally. If you can make fat bonuses and salaries by running your company and make gains through insider training, then you might as well face the flak when the chickens come home to roost.

The question everyone will (or atleast should) ask is, how can Rs 5000crs of cash and bank balances be overstated? As someone who belongs to the profession and has audited cash and bank balances numerous times, I can safely state that such a fraud is simply not possible without connivance of either the auditors or the banks. Audit firms at end of every period compare bank balances in company books with bank statements and balance confirmations obtained on bank letterheads and signed and stamped by the banks. Clients, if they are really innovative, can circumvent this check by printing/ obtaining forged bank stationery and stamps to fool the auditors. This amounts to a scam of Telgi proportions! Auditors can guard against this risk by confirming bank balances independently of client intervention by writing directly to banks – this exercise is adopted at each year end for both debtor and bank balances. During my days as an auditor such letters sent directly to the banks were even posted by us by our very own hands and near our houses so that the client could not lay a hand on them! Now, do you realise why we should all be so interested in finding out the answers that the auditors have to offer? Satyam’s failure is a serious blot on Indian financial reporting and must be treated as such. It calls to question the emphasis that audit firms now place on dressing up audit evidence rather than on actual procedures (all Big 4 practitioners will have some tales to recall in this regard). It also questions the golf course and meeting room kind of corporate deals that occur between large investors, merchant bankers (Merill Lynch by selling shares a day before Raju’s confession might have some questions to answer on its own), CEOs and auditors whereby all financial problems of the company miraculously vanish.

As this story unfolds you would have people appearing on television screens stating how this is a one off case and will not have a long term impact. Well if you want to turn this nation into a banana republic where money can buy anything, then yes Satyam will not have an impact. But make no mistake, this is not an isolated case. Open more books and you will have more dirt tumbling out. We live in a world of Russian roulette – the one that gets caught is a thief, the rest are all saints…till another knife gets thrown and another target is struck. Sadly, I fear nothing much will turn out of our mad flapping. We need an accounting, financial reporting and corporate governance overhaul. We need to make financial frauds and fraudulent reporting into criminal rather than civil offences. We need an accounting regulator that realises that regulation is not about conducting exams and getting the government to issue notifications that guarantee bread earning certification for their vote bank of CAs and most importantly we need a SEBI with sharper teeth that possess a vicious bite. From what I have heard on television all this evening, I doubt any of this will happen. Business channels are worried whether Satyam’s fall will stop the short term rally in the markets. Can you believe it? The world is falling on the Indian IT sector and all that CNBC is concerned about is where the stock market will go! In fact, if anything is to be learnt from this episode, it is that market price of a share simply cannot be used as a barometer of company performance. Today no one cares for Cash reserves, profits accumulated or sound business models – all we care for are quick bucks on intra day trading and short selling. In a sense, the Satyam fall serves all of us desktop/ laptop stock market players right. We invest blindly and the Ramalinga Rajus of this world deservedly rob us of our money. Perhaps we can do better by realising that the BSE levels are not the end all and be all of corporate India’s performance. Perhaps its time to get back some qualitative aspects into businesses. Perhaps its time to get back some virtues that we teach to our kids day in and day out. I suggest we begin with the much abused virtue of honesty.

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I have the latest issue of the ‘Outlook’ magazine lying next to my bed and it asks a pertinent question on its year end cover – Was 2008 India’s ‘annus horibilis’? It’s a question that occurred to yours truly sometime around Diwali, when in a moment of somber reflection, memories of the previous ten months came flitting by. A year that even till then, had been a blood soaked one. A year that had seen multiple bomb blasts (worryingly most of them caused by home grown terrorists), had seen reverse terrorism by a section of the Hindu right, had witnessed brazen vandalization of churches and attacks on its faithful across Orissa and Karnataka, had given enough perceived reasons for the majority to doubt the minority, had seen politics plumb to newer depths with wads of notes being placed on Parliament’s table and had brought with it the final nail in the coffin of the once glorious and golden national sport of hockey.

At that moment of reflection, I quickly dismissed the thought. We had seen worse and we had overcome it. During my own cognitive lifetime, 1992, the spring of 2002 and the summer of 2000 had been much more depressing times on account of different reasons. But as Mumbai singed, struggled and wept my heart sank with it. Those four helpless days of end November, while not shaking my faith in the structures bestowed upon us by the founding fathers, made me question to a great extent our honesty and sincerity in preserving and improving them. We might be a nation of young people, with a fast growing economy and skilled population, with a mostly tolerant and cordial multi-cultural society but, and this is a significant but, if we are not honest towards our nation and our ideals we will be like a beautifully dressed ship standing in the middle of the ocean with no fuel to propel us towards safer shores; sitting still and vulnerable to plunder of every passing pirate.

So was 2008 India’s year of horror and will 2009 with its promise of continuing economic downturn, a divided polity, unending terror, troublesome and failed neighbors be year of horror raised to the power two?

No, says the ever erudite and balanced Ramachandra Guha in the middle of the ‘Outlook’ issue. No, if you lived through 1948 (the year of Gandhi’s death, Kashmir war and continuing displacement of partition in a new, uncertain nation) or through 1984 (the real annus horibilis if you ask me – Sikh terror, Operation Bluestar, Punjab under martial law, Indira Gandhi’ death, massive riots in Delhi and the Bhopal gas tragedy – a black year of death). With not much to be optimistic about as we turn gingerly into 2009, here’s to the one hope we can all carry – maybe 2009 will not be a 1984, maybe it will not even be a 2008; perhaps this nation will once again summon reserves of resolve that it did after the gloomy winters of 1984 and 1992. Despite the pessimism that surrounds us, yours truly is glad to be coming to you at the end of 2008 and not 1984.

There is no point to a year end post if I don’t subject you to a year end list, and you are perfectly excused if you want to put on your parachute and jump out of this web page now. Still I shall continue with my list, biased towards a natural Indian perspective, but still containing some global names and achievements. If you are still reading, then you may agree or disagree – either way you are perfectly entitled to add/ delete to or modify this list.

Event and person of the year: On a slightly cold early winter morning, change came to America. As Barack Obama accepted his victory in front of a packed Chicago park, the world watched, many with hope, some with uncertainty and some with disillusionment. No one backed him when in January he pitted himself against the might of the Clinton machine. Obama’s achievement was not that he won or for that matter that he won as a black man, but in the fact that he won by remaining honest to his beliefs and ideology. It is a fact which you realize after reading his brilliant book ‘The Audacity of Hope’. Throughout his campaign, Obama never shied away from confronting the tricky, thorny issues that define the fault lines of America today. When faced with embarrassing comments made by his black pastor about 9/11, Obama gave perhaps the best speech of his entire campaign. In an honest appraisal of America’s doubts he talked of how blacks still faced subtle economic and political resistance, of how the nation had still not pulled them out of their ghettos; but was balanced enough to point out that if his elderly grandmother felt uncomfortable when walking across two young black men on the street, then there had to be something wrong with the way they conducted themselves. He did not back down from questioning the commitment of young black fathers who abandon their kids and called for more responsibility to be taken by the community (you almost wish someone would cajole the Indian Muslim community the same way). Often accused of talking down to the blacks, Obama won neither because or despite his racial color. He won because he represented a fresh, honest and balanced face to America. There is much he stands to lose. Cynicism can quickly replace hope; events can quickly overwhelm individuals and Obama faces a Mt.Everest of problems on hand. The world watches as Obama sizes up the peak – the price of disillusionment will be high.

Worst call of the year: Political analysts might debate if John McCain’s presidency bid would have turned out differently had he not picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. One thing though, seems sure, McCain would have commanded a lot more respect and maybe even votes had the bimbo from Alaksa stayed as far away from his campaign as Anchorage is from New York. As the pitbull turned hockey mom slipped from one embarrassment to another, America found a reason to laugh amidst the economic gloom. The much proclaimed ‘Palin Effect’ did come, but in a direction reverse than that in which it was supposed to go. Now she wants to run for President in 2012. I can’t wait for the jokes to begin. Palin confirmed that age old adism – style without substance never sells.

Political coup of the year: No, this isn’t a military coup – it’s a coup that Manmohan Singh managed to pull off (with some help from another Singh) despite all the odds against him. When it seemed that the nuclear deal’s death was a ‘done deal’, Singh cocked a snook at the outdated Marxists, gave Prakash Karat a convenient goodbye and showed remarkable political acumen to bail his government out with considerable ease. Akshay Kumar acted in the movie but this year clearly there was another Singh who was King.

Gaffe of the year: I am spoilt for choice for this category. Not to be biased towards anyone’s propensity towards idiocity, it is fair that it should be shared by all the deserving. Simi Garewal for making us realize that our slums are mini-Pakistan, Narendra Modi for standing outside the battlefield of Oberoi Trident in Mumbai and showering his state’s crores on slain policemen, Sarah Palin (again!) for all her utterances, Oscar Fernandes for justifying the lynching of a corporate CEO and Mukhtar Naqvi of the BJP for making us look at the powdered and lipstick bearing faces of the women protesting against terror on our streets.

Worst business decision of the year: Granted that we are in difficult economic times, yet Jet Airways’ decision to sack around 1500 employees in one go secretly and without any notice period was nothing but an invitation to trouble. That the sacked employees, large enough in numbers to get organized and be noticed, went straight to the North Indian hating Raj Thackeray did not make matters any easy for Jet chairman Naresh Goyal. Overnight, he had a change of heart, realizing that the employees were like ‘family’ and he had responsibility towards them. This father won’t be shedding any extra kilos in the near future.

Villain of the year: But for Mumbai on 26/11, this award would have gone hands down to Raj Thackeray. The North Indian hater ‘marathi manoos’ caused much agony to his home city of Mumbai, made his goons bash up poor taxi drivers and railway exam students, tore away Mumbai’s remaining claims of cosmopolitanism and even managed to get the Marathi middle class to theoretically back his arguments. He was upstaged by his own city. Mumbai’s date with terror made Raj cower in fear in his home (his Sena all withdrew into their rat holes) and brought a new villain to our front pages – Ajmal Kasab might be a young gun toting brainwashed terrorist but he is symptomatic of our western neighbor that has no clue as to where it is going. Like Kasab, Pakistan is flailing its tentacles in all directions, firing mindlessly, hoping to catch anyone who comes in the line of fire. Yours truly has been calling it a failed state since the turn of the century. 2008 was the year when the world discovered this truth. As world opinion turned against it, Pakistan began the year with uncertainty (in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination), elected a civilian government, saw the exit of a discredited dictator and installation of a discredited politician as President, endured bomb blasts caused by its own monsters and ended the year short of being officially classified as a rogue state. Pakistan though lives in denial – it still believes that it can use its home grown militants to achieve ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and bleed India with thousand cuts. The army remains unrepentant and unwilling to acknowledge its lack of control, the ISI is still a state within a state and Pakistan has now turned in to a whore state – throw some billions at them and you can make them agree to do what you want. Like a prostitute, Pakistan can give you fake pleasure but not sincerity of purpose.

Movie of the year: Without a second thought it has to be ‘The Dark Knight’. A movie that turned the concept of superhero comic flicks on its head. The beginnings of shades of reality began with the new Toby Maguire Spiderman movies, was carried on by Chris Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’ and finally came full circle with ‘The Dark Knight’. It was bleak, pessimistic, deep, and subtle with many layers of meaning and with surely one of the finest performances in a negative role in Hollywood history. How much did Heath Ledger’s premature death contribute to the movie’s success is a matter of speculation but Ledger is well on his way to a posthumous Oscar. The Knight acquires deeper significance in the environment of violence that we live in. In one of my favorite scenes from the movie, Batman’s butler Alfred narrates the tale of a Burmese thief of jewels who would hide in the jungles and steal valuables for pleasure. Alfred’s point being that some people are not after anything – they are in it for the sheer pleasure of anarchy they cause. When Batman asks as to how the Burmese thief was caught, Alfred nonchalantly replies that he wasn’t; the forest had to be burnt down. It illustrated the dilemmas that the protagonist of the movie and the world today face – whether the rules of civilization can be preserved in the fight against evil. The Joker calls upon people to spread anarchy, chaos, expect the unexpected and leave everything to random chance- see any resemblance with the mindless anarchy spread on our streets by gun wielding terrorists who want no money and no hostages? Like the Joker, they delight in seeing our disorder. The Dark Knight is perhaps then, a lot more relevant that what we might have thought it initially to be.

Failure of the year: The Australian cricket team. Ricky Ponting promised us new age cricket when he landed in India but instead oversaw the rise of a new age that promises to usher in an element of vulnerability in Australian cricket. After the disgrace of Sydney, Australia lost the off the field battle with the BCCI over the racism row and Ponting lost it on the field against a young gangly fast bowler from Delhi. Two consecutive lost tests at Perth, loss of their home one day series and a drubbing by an inspired Indian team – is it any wonder that Kevin Pietersen and England cant wait for the summer of 2009 to arrive and the Ashes to begin. The golden age of Aussie domination seems well and truly ‘over’.

Sporting moment of the year: In a year in which Indian cricket had much to cheer about and Indian hockey much to cry over, it is perhaps fitting that the list should recognize that one man who literally shot his nation to glory. Abhinav Bindra finally fulfilled his potential, shot a perfect round and in the terribly competitive world of shooting brought India its first individual Olympic gold. Whether this feat inspires more to emulate Bindra will depend upon whether Indian sports is governed by those who harbor love and affection for it. Indian sport can do with scheming Pawars and Dalmiyas but not with arrogant KPS Gills. Individually, MS Dhoni, Vishy Anand and Jeev Milkha Singh shined; Vijay Mallaya bought a sub standard team that gave a sub standard performance, both in F1 and IPL, Sachin Tendulkar exorcised ghosts of fourth innings failures, Virendra Sehwag found redemption, Saina Nehwal gained in stature and boxing promised current and future glory. But for the sheer weight of his achievement, Bindra upstaged them all. His victory was truly well its weight in gold.

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One of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons is the one in which a daydreaming Calvin is suddenly woken up in his Geography class by his teacher Miss Wormwood. Oblivious to her question, Calvin gets a shock when Wormwood screams at him, “Calvin! Pay Attention! Now what state do you live in?!” A puzzled Calvin immediately responds with glee “Denial”, much to the exasperation of the hapless Miss Wormwood. Viewing and hearing the events and happenings of the last few days, you would think everyone around is living in a state of denial. Everyone, except the man on the road. For long, it was the average Joe traveling on a local bus or a suburban train who bore the brunt of our violent urban upheavals. Then came the turn of the middle class salaried professional and employees, shaken out of their assured world of housing EMIs, car loans and daily grind of work emails. Now it’s the elite; the swish set who even take a coffee break in a five star hotel; people you would find making a beeline in their expensive luxury cars to grab a table at the latest gourmet sensation at the swankiest of five star hotels. Across the spectrum, all the three sets of people are angry. Angry at those all around them who live in a state of denial.

Our political establishment is the obvious target and this time they have taken it in the full, smack in the middle of the face. And of course, they haven’t done themselves any favors by completely refusing to recognize the magnitude of the events that has struck the nation. Perhaps it is a different world that they inhabit, insulated from the grime, dust and above all insecurities of life outside of security cordon. You only had to hear Narendra Modi, RR Patil, the Kerala CM and Mukhtar Naqvi to realize how trivial our concerns are for them and how condescending they think they are being when hear what we have to say. What Naqvi and the Kerala CM expressed was nothing short of ridicule against those demanding some answers from them. Of course, theirs is a state of denial which refuses to believe that not every family in India wants a political spectacle made out of the martyrdom of its son and that in a democracy people, irrespective of the cost of their lipstick brand, have a right to peaceful protests that raise questions.
Modi and Patil along with Vilasrao Deshmukh live in a world where the concept of ‘sensibility’ does not exist. For Modi, it is essential to prove that he is the martial answer for the effete Hindu religion against a marauding Islam that threatens to swamp India. Hence, there he was, with absolutely no business to be standing at an encounter site in another state, holding forth on how the treasury of his prosperous Gujarat will be opened for an officer whom he believed to be anti-national and anti-Hindu a few days ago. My suggestion at that point of time was that Modi should have been made some use of and ushered into the Oberoi Trident by the NSG. His self proclaimed ‘chhappan ki chaathi’ (chest with a size of 56) could have been utilized as a safety shield by the battling commandos and we would all have found out how martially gifted our latest prime ministerial aspirant actually is. Patil and Deshmukh have of course done an admirable job of shepherding Mumbai from one disaster to another – each time they have been Neros watching the spectacle of a burning Rome; be it the floods (an annual occurrence now), train blasts, Raj Thackeray’s violence or the latest terror strike. Not once, has either one of them made an effort to connect with those they govern and offered either an understanding of emotional upheaval or showed grace in their response to the situation in hand. Instead, we have witnessed statements dismissing the attack as any other and the conducting of guided tourist tours for the CM’s friends. Taking your actor son along to a terror site may not be improper, but in a city singing with anger and despair, it smacks of a complete inability to comprehend the nature of the event and its impact on those affected by it.

The Indian state lives in its own world of denials – a world whether words can substitute action, where loyalty commands a greater price in the market than competence, where it is believed by those running the reins of the establishment that setting up committees rather than acting on implementation of their recommendations is enough to take care of a charged public opinion. The State it seems in complete denial about any need for reform, blind to the deficiencies and inadequacies of its intelligence apparatus. Faced with an angered electorate, the State is extending a long rope for itself – it needs to act and let me repeat again ‘it needs to ACT’ before that rope turns into a noose around its neck.

Like India, Pakistan too has put on the blinds. We may deny our need to reform but our neighbor denies the dilemmas of its existence. And now its military ‘establishment’ refuses to accept the presence of the monsters crawling under its bed, monsters that may lash out at a passer by with their extended claws but which would not hesitate a moment to turn inward and search for prey. Pakistan is a nation that faces a deep internal catharsis, it has a frontier that it cannot govern, it has a government that cannot take any hard decisions and it has an army that is adamant on the fact that it can sleep with the tiger at home and let it hunt abroad. Simply put, the army refuses to acknowledge the extent of the threat, stressing that it still has control, that it can talk and temper its terror machine. It’s an army that is yet to lose faith in its Frankenstein. By the time it does, there may not be a nation left for the soldiers to defend. And the price will be paid by the larger neighborhood where the brimming cup of instability will overflow.

But while nations on our eastern and western frontiers sink into a quagmire we must not fail on two counts. The country is disturbed and impatient and demanding action. And the state, to ensure its legitimacy must give them the same. While it’s essential to handle both Pakistan and Bangladesh with deft diplomacy, we must urgently raise the heights of our walls even if our options are limited with respect to use of force beyond them. Internal security has been crying for reform for decades and we have paid a heavy price for our bureaucratic ignorance. We must not, any longer. This author does not need to draft a ‘to do’ list for the incumbents in power. Numerous committees, appointed by different governments, have submitted relevant recommendations. Those measures deserve a better place than a babu’s dust filled closet. They must, literally, see the light of the day.

Let this be a warning to the Indian state. The citizens may not want a military invasion of Pakistan, but they do crave for a sense of security, and even more than that for a sense of action and a certain degree of sensitivity towards their losses. Any State that fails to meet these expectations stands to lose its citizens’ loyalty and faith – the first step in turning a man into an anarchist is to make him believe that he has no stake in the system and that the system does not exist for him. We must not allow such a path to appear.

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