Guru Bhai's Sorry Ethics

There was a time when people avoided any film that enjoyed exemption from entertainment tax, the rule of thumb being that if the government deigned to overlook entertainment tax from a film, then for certain, that film was not worth spending money on as it going to be boring and preachy. But this much was certain, that though usually the films so exempted from tax were often dry and pedantic in their presentation, at its core they had a message and an ideal that they tried to convey.

They consciously avoided the song and dance and running around trees kind of scenes because they detracted from the gravitas that the director often wanted conveyed. At the end of the day, the films exempted from entertainment tax, even if they did not go on to win the national awards were fine films. Of hand, I can recall two, Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika and Manthan. I do no remember the story of Bhumika much except that it was based of the life of a Gujarati stage actress but Manthan was based on the origins of the milk cooperative movement and though not a pot boiler in any sense of the term, it was a good film with a lot of its lessons still relevant today.

But when films Mani Ratnam’s Guru get exemption (as happened in Uttar Pradesh), one has to probe hard to seek a reason. Of course one knows about the political angle between the lead actor’s family and the then government as well as the connection to the industrial patriarch whose biopic, the film is without saying so. But although the film has the flourish that one would expect from Mani Ratnam and an equally enchanting music from. A.R. Rehman, the ethics the film promotes could do with out the additional prop in the form of cheaper tickets. For it is tantamount to the state endorsing a kind of life that is any way flourishing in Uttar Pradesh, with or without state patronage.

Women have typically served to bring nothing more than a touch of glamour to a Bollywood film. In this film the protagonist, Guru Bhai crowns the commoditization of women by marrying his wife solely because her father was rich and he could use the dowry that he would get as a start up capital for his first business. In a day and age when dowry is illegal in the eyes of the law and there is a movement that is gathering momentum to challenge its social and cultural roots, the tax exempted film goes ahead and tells one and all, the practical uses to which dowry money could be put, the last thing a feudal state like Uttar Pradesh needs.

The principles of entrepreneurship that are brought out in the film are that the road to riches , success and power are paved with generous doses of bribes, muscle power and black mail marinated in a brew of deadly ruthlessness. Laws can be broken with impunity by invoking Gandhi and by buttressing the fact that Guru Bhai’s wealth is shared not just by him and his wife who are the promoters but by lakhs of two bit share holders who have hit pay dirt. Mean while to enhance shareholder value, fraud, manipulation, coercion, insider trading are all taking place without as much as a by your leave.

Typically Hindi movies end with a good versus evil sort of climax with good winning, so that people can go home happy. But in Guru, the definition of good itself has got distorted. The victory of good in the movie is that of Guru Bhai, felled by a stroke and now recovered addressing a stadium full of people about heady things like being big and bigger and daring and about how life has no means that matter, only ends that count. And the vulture like glitter that Guru bhai accumulates over the years tells only one tale – that money and the greed and grit to make more of it by fair means or foul, is the one thing that matters. Now , is this the ethic that we so value , that we want to nurture it by removing entertainment tax and making available cheap tickets, so that more people gravitate towards lucre and wealth….. in the manner that Guru Bhai amasses it? if that is consistent with our national ethos of Satyam Eva Jayate, then it is very disturbing indeed.

Organized Crime: The Looming Shadow in our lives

For several years, my mother and I had a joint bank account with her as the first account holder but with me doing the actual operating of the account. A few months ago, we shifted our rented accommodation and I went across to the bank to inform them of the changes. It was then that I discovered how the world is changing and how complicated even every day transactions are becoming.

The bank told me that as required by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, it was now was required to abide by Know Your Customer norms and have us a sheaf of forms and paper work to fill that would help the bank “know” us, though we had been its customers for years. While going through the forms, I discovered the knots and tangles. The bank required proof of identity and proof of address and my 77 old mothers had none. She wasn’t a tax payer, so no PAN Card. She didn’t drive so no drivers’ license. She doesn’t go abroad, so no passport. She doesn’t draw food grains from the Public Distribution System, so, no ration card.

Because she did vote, she had a Voter’s ID which was a proof of identity but then since we had just moved house, the address had changed. There was no hope of changing the address ever, as the other options offered by the bank as proof of address such as a phone bill or an electricity bill or a lease deed didn’t work for my mother. In spite of the bank staff knowing all this, they could not do much as they were limited by Reserve Bank of India mandated regulations and till date the address remains unchanged. It is then that as a common citizen that I sat down and cursed the Harshad Mehtas and Ketan Parekhs of the world whose actions have brought such misery into our lives.

Then the other day, my wife’s pre paid mobile connection blinked out. She could not make any calls but only receive them. A call to the customer care centre revealed that the telecom company had introduced KYC norms under a directive from the Home Ministry and once again the familiar bunch of papers had to be dug out and presented. Once again there was nothing to do but clench our teeth and curse the terrorists who use SIM cards to detonate bombs and use disposable mobiles to communicate among themselves and in the process make life so difficult for every one else. And you run into KYC in all kinds of unexpected situations. The other day I purchased a lap top and paid for it by credit card. Before processing it, the shop wanted to see proof of identity and address. The back ground – rising numbers of credit card frauds.

There was a time when all you needed to do to open a bank account was to walk into the bank and ask. The bank would typically ask for an introduction from an existing account holder and some times not even that. These days, you need to produce all these papers as proof and in a bewildering maze; they are all connected to each other. A telephone bill serves as a proof of address but to apply for a phone, you need some other proof of address, possibly a lease deed for the house you live in. Now it used to be that if you wanted to rent a house in Delhi, you contacted the neighborhood property dealer or scanned the newspaper classifieds. You met the house owner and both of you liked each other and the rent was acceptable, you moved in. But now the police recommend prior verification of tenants and their antecedents. Since often if some thing untoward happens and the tenants scoot, the police go after the house owners go after them, many do not wish to take chances.

Most of us grew up thinking and still think that the world of dons and Bhais and organized crime is some kind of a distant phenomena and the closest encounter we have with them is on the Bollywood screen and the television screen. That is unfortunately not the case! Every time we enter into some kind of a transaction – buy a car or a house or some other high value item or even some thing as simple as a gas or phone connection, we need to produce proof of who we are and where we live , making the simplest things of life cumbersome and complicated. And that is where we the common man has been felled by the dons of organized crime whom we never see but whose tentacles have pervaded the smallest details of our every day life.

India's Schoolgirls: Our unlamented children

The ISC/ICSE examination results have been just announced and the results show that girls have done much better than the boys. In a month or so, the CBSE results will be declared and the likelihood is that the same trends will be observed there too. At least, such has been the case for the last many years that I have been tracking them.

This is an interesting social phenomenon for every one in India knows that boys are in general the privileged class and gender. Girls are unlikely to be getting special opportunities in terms of coaching, tuitions and personalized attention at the cost of their male siblings. On the contrary , in most homes , grown up girls of the age that appear in class X and XII examinations are typically expected to help out with domestic chores in the home and studies are some thing they would need to make time for after fulfilling these duties.

Data from several studies show that 7 out of 10 Indian women are anemic; their priority in the household budget for food, clothing, health care and practically every thing is rock bottom. Besides this, the generally unsafe social environment in our towns ad villages also ensure that girls have far less mobility – be it to attend school, attend tuitions or simply study together with friends. In spite of battling limitations on innumerable fronts, how girls can mange to do better in these board examinations year after year is a mystery to me. Is it that girls are more aware of the privilege and opportunity for an education that has come their way and make the best of it?

In contrast, boys are a favored lot. Their examinations are the progress they make in their preparation for it are tracked at home by parents as meticulously as the BSE Sensex. Their food, sleep, play and recreation all get monitored and regulated. Tutors – one or many as the need may be are appointed. No money is spared for boys to enroll in coaching classes for IIT or medicine or whatever. Boys have a lot more opportunity to study, as they are not usually expected to help out in house hold work and they are not house bound the way the girls are often forced to be which means that they have a lot more flexibility with what they do with their time.

Though girls are consistently doing better academically, society has not taken much note of it. The prospects available to them to match their academic feats are not proportionate. Decades ago, girls were educated only to increase their worth in the marriage market. We may have moved on from there today as a country but not too many doors have opened and we have still not arrived any where yet in utilizing for the nation’s good, all these bright girls that the examination system is telling us exist. This is indeed a pity. Every one knows the situation in which most girls pursue their education in India, with out frills and trappings. If in spite of all this, the results are so tilted in favor of the girls, then by not providing those with the right environment for them to nurture their gifts; we as a nation are losing out.

On the contrary, we are taking retrogressive steps. For instance, look at the Karnataka government’s decision to ban night shifts for women (since withdrawn under pressure). In a really perverse act, instead of trying to clean up the security situation in the state, they say that that women should be back home by so and so time, much like a college hostel warden. Or the recent report published in the CNN-IBN web site, which says that the Army after an internal study has suggested to the Defense Ministry that the policy to offer short service commissions or extended short service commissions to women should be revisited as women do not fit into the overall masculine culture of the army and that their role should remain restricted to those of doctors and nurses. Clearly the picture on the wall is clear. India might produce a Kalpana Chawla or a Indira Nooyi here and there once in a while but for the rest of the time , India’s bright girls will remain dry statistic in the CBSE filing cabinets and computers. And that is a pity and a gross injustice

A Visa for Dr. Amte

Some time back, to apply for the Schengen visa to enter Europe, I was told that the German Embassy wanted a copy of my income tax returns for the last three years, bank statements for the last 6 months, evidence of a credit card apart of course from an invitation letter from my sponsors and the other usual documentation. The experience made me feel naked. Its embarrassing to show all that you have or don’t have in your bank ,when all you want to do is attend a few meetings for a couple of days, or weeks may be, and be back.

I am no noble human reformer but when the papers reported that Dr. Prakash Amte, the fairly well known son of the legendary Baba Amte who works with his wife in the tribal communities of rural Gadricholi continuing the work of Baba Amte had been denied a visa to go to the USA, I felt deeply saddened for in that gesture, I felt that the entire charity sector of which I am a part was shamed. (After media outrage and coverage he has since been granted one). The message conveyed in that decision was that living and working for money is the only valid reason and way to live. Yet barring the recently emerged blue chip international NGO(largely American or possibly European), typically the charity sector marches to a different drum

The reason for denying a visa to Dr. Amte was that he belonged to the “socially weak” segment of society meaning that he was poor and the United States government suspected that both Dr Amte and his wife were going to the USA to butter their bread and stay on in the USA if they were allowed to land. Dr Amte draws a stipend of Rs.3,000 a month, although his living expenses must also be taken care of by the Maharogi Kalyan Samiti, the leprosy charity which his father started and where the Amtes work.

When Dr Amte informed the consulate in Mumbai that he had applied for and received a visa in 2003 when his financial situation was no different, he was informed that the rules had changed since then. In unpacking that bureaucratese lies the clue that the journey that the United States government has made in the last three years which is basically the admission that the opportunity to chasing money is the only thing that the USA has to offer and hence decisions need to be made solely on the basis of money in the bank and the salary slip.

Now to be fair, there is a lot of human trafficking going on and everyone who reads the papers knows about it. But if you track that story further, you will realize very quickly that the people who are part of that circuit are usually not poor. It costs a tidy sum of money to buy off the several people involved in that chain and a man earning Rs.3, 000 will never have that capacity. A large mass of people who are part of this game are simply rich people wanting to be richer.

But to me the bigger sorrow is the lack of discernment on the part of the consulate staff and their total inability to understand the concept of calling, of why people do what they do and that it is not money all the time. Dr Amte and his wife, all these decades did not even move to Nagpur, the closest city to Gadricholi, let alone Mumbai or some other financially lucrative place and make the most of the opportunities that even a country like India offered. They stayed put in what is arguably one of the most backward parts of Maharashtra and served. And yet the Americans in what can only be called an attitude of arrogance decided that that a week long conference in the USA was just the chance that Dr. Amte was looking for to jump the coop!

If a government with supposedly Christian leanings and led by a professing Christian president has lost the ability to understand charity and service , the marks of the Christians since Christ walked the earth, and interprets it only in terms of money , wealth and prosperity , then surely it too has sold its soul somewhere in the market…

Punjab: The Fury of the Fanatics

One can only hope that the violent agitation ripping through Punjab will subside. There are uneasy precedents though. One of the earliest episodes in the Punjab insurgency was the 1978 clash between the Nirankari sect and the Akalis. The Akalis represented mainstream orthodox Sikhism and the Nirankaris represented a liberal (heretical in the eyes of the Akalis) face of the faith. The friction between the two led to the killing of Lala Jagat Narain of the Punjab Kesari group of newspapers and the subsequent polarization between the Hindus and the Sikhs. Besides this, there was politicization of religion with the Hindus siding with the Nirankaris and the Congress propping Sant Bhindaranwale who subsequently turned into a Frankensteinian monster.

This time, the Nirankaris seem to have been replaced with Dera Sacha Sauda, another quasi Sikh sect with liberal teachings and views a la the Nirankaris. Again this set, with its headquarters in Sirsa in Haryana is closer to traditional Hindu practice than orthodox Sikh concepts and ideology. Again there is political interference and it was well circulated in the media that the outgoing Congress government had struck a deal with the Dera Sacha Sauda hierarchy that in exchange for withdrawal of police cases against the Dera, they would issue an edict asking their followers, which is considerable in the Malwa area of Punjab to vote for Congress candidates. By all accounts, the Dera delivered and in a significant reverse, the traditional Akali stronghold returned the bulk of the Congress candidates who made it to the State Assembly. But now that it is the Akalis who are in power, it seems to be pay back time for the Dera for having supported the wrong party.

How far the Akalis would be interested in giving a fair deal to the Dera Sacha Sauda is a good question. The Akali movement was born, not so much as a corollary of the Nationalist movement to free the country, but to free the Gurudwaras from the clutches of the hereditary Udasin Mahants who were generally considered corrupt and feudal in their outlook. The capture of power in the gurudwaras has been historically the main objective of the Akalis, and to exercise that power, the Akalis have at different times flirted with the idea of a separate Sikh state. In fact, although it is the Khalistan movement that people remember, it is a known fact that in British India too, there was a proposal for a time to grant a separate Sikh state as much as a Muslim State.

Sikh extremism has always been a genie trapped in a bottle, tamed by its compromises and adjustments with its Hindu neighbours, but only just about. The Sikh identity is a strong yet fragile one. The history of Sikhism is trapped in the historical reality of the Mughal rulers trying to stamp it out completely, the British trying to marginalize them politically, and the Hindus trying to dilute their identity socially and culturally – sometimes blatantly so by floating forums like The Rashtriya Sikh Sangat group, which is a branch of the main Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and also known as RSS was formed in Punjab in 1986 claiming to promote Sikh-Hindu relations. Its main aim however is to attack and swallow the Sikh religion.

No one knows why the head of the Dera Sacha Sauda, Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh living in the socio cultural mileau that he does, chose to pose wearing an attire that is associated with Guru Gobind Singh and deliberately provoke, unless he has been struck by megalomania. His newspaper Sacch Kahoonhas carried an elaborate code of conduct listed out for followers one of which is to treat elders as one would treat one’s own parents. Clearly this is an occasion when the head of the sect forgot to follow his own dictum.

Pushing Along, Pulling Along

The other day a bizarre event happened on a railway track in Bihar. An electric train was passing through the station of Buxar , when as is characteristic of the place some of the passengers who wanted to get down pulled the chain. So the passenger train slammed its brakes after plodding along for a while, it came to a stop. Now the point where it came to a stop was a point on the track where there was no live overhead electricity wires to which the train’s electric engine could connect for power. Now while such short stretches of non energized tracks are common on the network, usually the train’s inherent momentum allows it to coast over these short stretches till it comes to the next energized section. In those odd cases , where the train does stop mid way , short haul diesel engines are summoned to haul the train back to the energized segment of the track.

But remember this is no other place, this is Bihar. So when the train suddenly stops in its tracks and people realize it wont start because it cannot connect to an electricity source, hundreds of passengers get off the train and push it along the tracks for a few meters till the engine’s antennae are again able to draw on electricity from the overhead wires, at which point the passengers get back to their seats and resume their journey.

Two people were traveling for a plum job interview from Mumbai to Delhi. One took the overnight Rajdhani Express while the other guy took a morning flight. The beauty of the story was that the job went to the man who traveled to Delhi by train. The man taking the flight took off late from Mumbai because of congestion at the airport, and then as it moved to land in Delhi, there was congestion there too and after hovering over the skies for a while, finding its fuel getting exhausted, the plane went and landed in Jaipur. By the time, the airline put its hapless passengers back in Delhi; it was all over for the job seeker as the interviews were over.

These two stories tell very well, the journey of India’s tryst with technology and its lopping sided development. And so we have railway jazzy coaches and electric tracks but no assured power supply and with most of the states chronically short of power, the railways are thinking of captive power plants. We have heaps of airlines which have certainly mad flying more affordable and added more flights and destinations, but flying is no longer a pleasurable exercise that it once was

Similar is the story of highways – world class cars and great models when once we had only the Ambassador, but no corresponding roads, we now have glitzy shopping malls with world class products inside but huge traffic snarls outside as there is little in terms of parking space to speak of. Then now there is a great push towards manufacturing, e governance, telephone penetration and greater internet connectivity, but a staggering shortage of electricity that does not look will go away any time soon.

It is great to see India develop and consumers and people have options and choices that were not available or if available, then were unaffordable, perhaps even a decade ago. But just as China resolved to put its infra structural back bone in place first and then open units economy to explosive growth, perhaps India should do the same if we have to avoid these bizarre stories from above. Clearly without adequate bijli, pani and sadak, the story of muscle power hauling railway trains down the track as happened in Buxar will recur … albeit in different locations and with different themes.

Blogging -Will money shape the script?

I was pleasantly surprised when a blogging site where I blog sent me a voucher for Rs.10, 000 for my activities. Another overseas site regularly sends me a small sum in dollars into my Pay Pal account every month. The amounts perhaps aren’t a great deal though for an activity which you haven’t ventured into to get paid, the amount is still welcome. I mean, there are still lots of things you can buy for 10,000.

Although Google’ s Ad Sense model is perhaps the most well known, there are several sites on the net which do not generate their own content like say the CNN or BBC or NDTV but rather depend on a host of people who visit these sites to put up material. Since the advertisement and hits on the site are fully dependant on the quality and quantity of the matter put out by those who have registered to write for it, it probably make sense to distribute the advertisement slice with the registered subscribers. Some sites like Ibibo of course have been aggressively marketing the prize money they give out and it seems to be jacking up the numbers who blog there – at least in the short haul.

Blogging has come a long away from its evolutionary origins as merely an online diary. Projects like Global Voices have tried to capture all that is being said and recorded in blogs from around the world and have begun giving it the credibility that mainstream media channels get. Blogs and podcasts and video casts have become an effective way of expressing dissent, especially in those countries where the freedom of expression through mainstream channels is muzzled. Citizen journalism is emerging as an alternative source of content, especially that kind of content that is often not highlighted in the regular media.

But now this medium is slowly getting commercialized. Of course it can be nobody’s case that that bloggers should not be paid. It is an activity that takes effort, time and although it is unlikely that too many will make enough money to entirely live it; there are a few who do. But in a nascent medium, it is important to try and ensure that the flow of money does not render the medium trite or beholden to interests of this or that point of view. When a web site advertises that people should blog on their site and the top 100 or 200 bloggers would be awarded , it could be promoting not quality expression of creativity but commonplace traffic with writers competing with each other to be most “visited”, not necessarily the most read or discussed.

Unlike mainstream media which is self regulated through various regulatory bodies, the world of alternate media is still largely unregulated. This allows a virtual free for all in the virtual world and when governments in India and elsewhere make ham handed efforts to regulate or gag them, they are rightly opposed. However in the jungle that the blog world is today , without self regulation of some kind and money being paid out – some times injudiciously ,if one may say, there is the danger that the blog writer ‘s pen will pipe out themes that are guided not by the need to express but by rampant and unregulated commercialism and if that day comes, it will be to every one’s regret. Hopefully the day when the lure of money alone shapes’ the blogger’s script will not dawn.