Toppling Paper Boats: Modi At Sea

The red carpet walk where Narendra Modi pirouetted at the BJP’s national executive meeting was like a film star at Cannes endorsing a cosmetic company. It was not for a new film release.

If he was given the honour as the number one guy, it was just to keep the party’s face pretty. We will get to that in a bit.

His opponents are out of the woodwork. Two former chief ministers of Gujarat Keshubhai Patel and Suresh Mehta are helming what the newspapers call the banner of revolt.

Those in the party speaking against Modi are said to be close to Sanjay Joshi, an RSS leader who was a victim of Modi’s bullying tactics at the national executive. In their meeting, the dissidents spoke about an atmosphere of fear in the state. “A state of mini-Emergency in Gujarat is now being extended to the national level,” said Keshubhai, referring to Modi’s hustling Joshi out of the national meet…they felt BJP president Nitin Gadkari should not have succumbed to Modi’s blackmail or allowed him to hijack the party ahead of the Gujarat elections in December. Keshubhai, who yet again described Modi as a “dictator”, set the tone of the discussion, saying, “Crushing dissent is not the culture of the BJP or Sangh Parivar. We don’t want such despotic leadership.”

Why did they wait for the meeting to get over? Crushing dissent is very much a part of the Sangh Parivar culture; only, it is called party discipline. If it was all democratic, there would be a second rung leadership. Sanjay Joshi has become the rallying point because he isn’t big enough to be threatening. But don't forget he is a RSS man, and the RSS pulls the strings where the BJP is concerned where it matters.

They are talking about phone tapping. How is it then that Sanjiv Bhatt’s phone was not tapped when he says he has evidence of certain calls where Modi could be nailed?

It is surprising that they are complaining about it now when in 2008 Modi was all set to increase his spy network that would cost the state a staggering Rs 20 crore. Its main task was not to counter terrorism and foreign espionage. His spies were to watch every move of the state’s politicians, including the chief minister’s own men and rivals within the BJP, as well as prominent social workers and members of the business community.

Intensive spying by IB sleuths on local politicians at Modi’s behest have been doing the rounds since 2002, but six years later he increased it by almost 40 per cent. Around 400 government spies were active in the state and additional 93 spies were reportedly brought in from other departments or recruited afresh.

From Rs 17 crore spent every year on the spy network since 2003, the figure jumped to Rs 33 crore in 2008.

Politicians are an insecure bunch, and those like Modi use such blackmail tactics to stay in power and threaten people. It is entirely possible that all those who have been singing about economic development, including some Muslim businessmen, have been under such surveillance and just learned to keep their mouths shut.

Could Modi justify such expenditure? He is the one who rails against terrorism all the time, so why did he not deploy vigilante groups for more concrete efforts?

That is the point. I do not agree with this state of emergency in Gujarat extending to the national level. BJP president Nitin Gadkari knows that right now Narendra Modi is a good publicity stunt. The meeting was in Mumbai, and the message was not for the politicians of the party, but for the business groups in the city. Gujarat is the BJP’s piggy bank. Nitish Kumar may have streamlined infrastructure and made the backward Bihar liveable, and Modi has only added tinsel to gold, but the latter is, as I said in the beginning, a better photo-op.

Much is being made of L.K.Advani’s absence. Let us be pragmatic. Mr. Advani may not want a second term for Gadkari, but Modi is not his calling card. If anything, he has let a Modi flourish simply because the BJP needs a fishbowl. The senior leader is in complete command, as he was even during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s tenure as prime minister. He knows who to keep where. And Modi could push away a Sanjay Joshi, but not a Gadkari. This is the RSS at play, a game Advani knows only too well.

The more important point is that Modi has to return where he belongs. It is this sense of being rooted in one place that makes him both arrogant and insecure. His boasts are exaggerated and his fears result in paranoia about his own. Sometimes, I do feel a tinge of sadness for him. He has to live with so many ghosts and so many private moments grabbed from others. Does he have the luxury of a life of his own?

Cameron’s “culture of fear”

David Cameron has so canonised water cannons that they appear to be miracle-makers of the new morality drenching the fires of protest. “London is not Kensington,” an expat tells me. It is a discovery for the immigrant, too, and armed with this knowledge commentary is caged behind fabricated fences on two sides.

As an outsider, I have conveniently been relegated to the posh areas of mood-lit darkness with the occasionally permitted literary yearning for a Bradford-on-Avon. Cameron, one might conjecture, moved slowly precisely to prove a point that has significantly been marking territory and has become the torchbearer of the empire striking back – multiculturalism is dead. What better way to prove the efficacy of such a declamation than show how fissured society is?

There is an England that is slowly trying to get rid of what it sees as flotsam. This is Europe-centric, but as the greatest colonisers the British have to deal with much more leftover baggage. From the Tottenham-Nottingham the fires spread to Birmingham and Southall, the open ghettos with sinewy lanes that hide desperation and despair even as the loud sounds and strong smells assault.

One summer day, I sat in a most unremarkable eatery in just such a lane. It was run by a Bangladeshi and we were served chicken that was in rigor mortis. I was mortified for more than that reason. Inedible as the food was, and rather late for lunch, a few people still trooped in. They all seemed to know one another. They talked in whispers. I did not look like I would seek out anything halal. My credentials were suspect. I could hear the expat spitting out, “London is not Kensington!” My small talk got more attention than it merited. Eye contact, when made, had confusion reflected in the irises.

Walk into stores and you will see it. Leaders choose not to. If you can see, then you must understand, and if you understand then you may need to empathise. Empathy, especially if you are a moralist, would expect some proactive reversal of fear. Where power fumes are exhaled from paranoia, this would not lessen the impact. However if the fear can be used, then the leader will rise to the occasion. Cameron got his moment of empathy when South Asian victims were affected. Three young men of Pakistani origin killed and Sikhs standing guard with sticks and swords outside the temple, with one of them saying, “We’ll take the law into our hands, bad luck.”

Here is how a phrase – taking the law into our hands – that might have played havoc, and which the ‘rioters’ are bludgeoned for, has come in handy and is up for praise. In the House of Commons session, Cameron said, “We saw it (the spirit) in the hundreds of people who stood guard outside a Southall temple, protecting it from vandalism”. He also paid tribute to the parent of one of the Pakistanis: “Everyone will be impressed by the brave words (urging calm) of Tariq Jahan, a father in Birmingham, whose son was so brutally and tragically run over and killed.”

Passive-aggressive is often the subcutaneous layer of such policing. Had the Sikhs or any other group taken the law in their hands for their own demands, they would be deemed criminals. Had the Pakistani father cried for justice and exacted action against the laidback cops, he would not be imbued with this halo. Pugnacity and calm act as the dichotomous daredevils to solve the moral dilemma that seeks to eat into the very innards of pluralism.

There is cunning calculation here, though. A few weeks ago, Britain had announced a new Tier-1Visa category for exceptionally talented immigrants from India and other non-EU countries. The first lot of the best in the fields of Science, Humanities, Engineering and the Arts will be baptised between August 9 and November 30. Britain wants to fatten itself on and flatter itself with outside excellence. These conciliatory noises following the violence are not really meant for the shopkeepers; they are to send out the right signals that the United Kingdom can be home if you are brilliant. The neo-geniuses are just trumped up store owners, who would sell patents and art, and occasionally rationalisation of establishment impunity, the “science of the soul”, if you will.

* * *

The nation of shopkeepers has lived with its corner stores that grew into lanes and streets and hemmed-in areas.

Mark Duggan, the young man who was shot dead by the police, did not spearhead the movement in the streets. No one knew him. And no one cares about him. He is not even a symbol. The people who came out, burned, and looted were dressed for it, in hoods and masks. When those masks were peeled out, we had faces that did not fit the stereotype of race. There was Laura Johnson, peach-pretty, with loads of money. What would she do by robbing laptops, plasma TV sets and high-street clothes?

This question itself exposes elitism. The riots in London and the outskirts have revealed that it is not economy in the doldrums that led to the protests. No, not protests, it is riots, say the mainstream media, as they shout down ‘other’ voices. The problem is not with how the economy is doing but what the economy makes people do. If it were disgruntled Black youth, then why would they rob their own neighbourhoods and kill people who were not the bratpack? What was the police’s pregnant pause about? To let this happen and send a message that crime in the ghettos is the driving force behind recession?

When Cameron finally woke up – revived, one might say, after his belated Tuscan café outings – he spoke about using water cannons against the “culture of fear”. An indelicate analogy may be drawn as to how people often react to fear with a full bladder. It is an instinctive bodily need. The Prime Minister is conducting the business of politics in just such an impulsive manner.

This deciduousness of culture is in fact due to propagated fear. We have seen and heard how Darcus Howe, West Indian writer and broadcaster, was verbally pummeled by the BBC anchor . He called this an insurgency. He wanted to recollect history; she wanted a human interest story: “So, you were saying about your grandson…”

The leader of the nation has all the sons and grandsons on his fingertips. He said, “In too many cases, the parents of these children – if they are still around – don’t care where their children are or who they are with, let alone what they are doing. The potential consequences of neglect and immorality on this scale have been clear for too long, without enough action being taken.”

Not only is this messed up psychoanalysis, but insensitive. There is no reason to condone those who have killed and destroyed parts of the city but he has claimed that the police did not use stringent methods because, “Looting had wrongly been treated as a public order issue, not as simple criminality” until it gathered momentum. Whose sons are the cops? Moreover, how can he insinuate that the parents of these young people may not be around? Is he implying they are later immigrants who have come without knowledge of the United Kingdom and have the temerity to disunite it? Or, is he suggesting that a certain class of people have removed themselves from the mainstream specifically to resurrect a counter-culture against the genteel British one? Perhaps, he might like to consider a walk through the most corseted times of English history, of an era where the morality he loves to flash dictated societal norms, and see for himself the sort of crimes committed then.

His smarmy statement, “These people were all volunteers. They didn’t have to do what they did”, conveys his trick-or-treat attitude. Having packed off the parents to the moral dungeon, he offers the children the luxury of choice. They ‘volunteered’ to commit such crimes. He does not specify whom they were volunteering for. This is part of the fear psychosis. To haunt is better than to hunt. He sent a message from the pulpit: “We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done.”

It has taken him a while to find that out. Or was he biding time for the opportune moment where disparate sides could be played against one another and he could bask in the glory of gumption?

* * *

Who will they shut up? The reasonable middle-class as represented by the media talks about those who took to the streets for “justice”, not justice. It is their version as opposed to the proper one. It is pertinent to point out that the few who were not poor belonged to the creamy layer. This works wonderfully to posit evil against evil. The millionaires’ club versus the murky cubby hole. It serves the establishment to partake of the a la carte tokenism of Laura’s theme.

Let us recall the Ernest debate. Discussions about Hemingway’s paranoia were renewed and it was all out again – his depression and his suicide. No one believed his slurred ramblings, including his friend and biographer, A.E. Hotchner who wrote in the New York Times about it. The writer would say, “Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”

As they drove one day, Hemingway peered into a bank; two men were working inside. He said, “Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account. Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.”

Hotchner was to realise the truth of it: “Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all. In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide.”

We are discovering the plausibility of how the system seeks to subvert thought with WikiLeaks and now how the Murdoch empire used the purveyors of news to create and destroy news. The United Kingdom will need to figure out that the “culture of fear” is not in those stolen in H&M jeans.

Who is the paranoid one here? Is not xenophobia a paranoid reaction by a nation?

© Farzana Versey 

Reservations, Minorityism and the UID Threat

Do not expect the UID (Unique Identity) scheme to track absconders and the corrupt. It will see to it that the backward remain where they are with a mid-day meal and an occasional trip to the local Disneyland ensured.

Reservations, Minorityism and the UID Threat
by Farzana Versey
Countercurrents, March 17

Who is really exploiting the reservation policy? If this is the constant fear, then there is more going on than we know. If politicians back certain groups for electoral ends, then those groups are not to be blamed. It was indeed shocking to read the Times of India editorial pick on the Gujjar and Jat communities that have demanded reservations and pass a blanket verdict:

“Today, reservation has ended up creating ‘creamy layers’ in targeted sections. The Supreme Court’s 50% ceiling on quota has been breached as well, as in Tamil Nadu. Quotas were meant to facilitate upward mobility in terms of jobs, livelihoods or status.”

What about sectors where the real 50 per cent are not considered? This has not happened because of more reservations, but due to the nature of nepotism and promoting one’s own, and it starts at the lowest level of bureaucracy to the highest power centres. On what grounds can it be stated that quotas are about upward mobility when public visibility ensures that they are recognised as the downtrodden? How many top positions have been filled with this reservation policy? How many candidates standing for elections are given this opportunity, unless it is to woo the constituency, and this is done by all sections – the Brahmins, the Rajputs, the Muslims, the Christians in their respective majority areas?

The editorial goes on to say that “six decades ago, it was thought that ostracised and marginalised groups needed reservation only as a time-bound instrument of socio-economic levelling. India has come a long way since then”. If that were the case then there would be no need for other groups to downplay their status, not in a country where recognised as heirs and designated with labels is so very important. There was much media attention paid to an over-the-top wedding of the children of two Gujjar politicians in Haryana. It does not reveal prosperity of the community as a whole, although it does make the upper castes uncomfortable to see their ostentation mimicked. It therefore acts as a convenient stick to beat the issue with:

“Clearly, if we’re to have reservation, it must be based on the economic criterion. More important, quota-based positive discrimination must make way for affirmative action in the form of efficient services delivery to the poor across the social board.”

While economically-backward people from all communities must benefit in terms of opportunity, how will such action be carried out? In the unorganised sector where daily wage is the mode of earning, there is no talk of reservation. Those are among the poorest people irrespective of their caste. Where has this great economic leap reached them? The definition of welfare does not have to be relegated only to paper.


It is pathetic to see the media playing the role of government spokespersons. The UPA gets a pat on the back for its food, health and “need” based schemes:

“Whereas quotas create social friction by building coddled niches, welfare-for-all has unifying potential, and hence can help bridge caste divides. The midday meal scheme in schools – encouraging community eating at a young age – is a case in point.”

Why is there always a problem regarding coddled niches where the SC/ST groups are concerned and not when the fat cats are? How does school children sitting and eating together result in a feeling of community? How many schools do not discriminate in matters of admission and, more importantly, attitude? What mid-day meal schemes are there in the rural areas?

These are camouflages that only serve those in power and probably let the middle-men make some money on the food-packets. Also, eating in a Dalit house does not unify anyone when we know who is eating where.

The worst part of the debate is regarding “fasttracked” development. This will work at the level of lining the roads with potted plants when a foreign dignitary visits. There is a rather vile motive and that is to promote the government’s UID scheme.

“The underprivileged have a sense of powerlessness and low self-esteem precisely because they’ve been treated as a faceless collective to be swayed by political populism, rather than as individual citizens with distinct identities and entitlements. Here’s where UID and financial inclusion come in. By giving the poor identity, financial agency and provable claim to social benefits, such projects can do more good than quotas ever could.”

Okay, so now that they have a face and a card, instead of a broom trailing behind them to clear the path for the others, will they get equal benefits? Or will their identity, stamped and marked, exclude them from certain areas while keeping up the pretence of welfare in others? Won’t their recognised identities help even small politicians trace them and use them for populist reasons, all at the click of a button? Is it not possible that were the younger lot to progress on their own and seek positions they will be tracked and prevented because those wonderful opportunities have been reserved for years for the privileged? Will not such a government-sanctioned identity, where everything from their source of food to their birth control methods are on record, not in fact work as a process of elimination quietly in the background?

Do not expect the UID (Unique Identity) scheme to track absconders and the corrupt. It will see to it that the backward remain where they are with a mid-day meal and an occasional trip to the local Disneyland ensured. India’s economic policy is a showcase, not an internal buffering system. It is about Forbes not welfare.


In this fairytale version of progress, one of the sops that has been thrown in is to give a well-settled institution like the Jamia Millia Islamia minority status. One might well ask where all the talk of welfare is now. In an article Najeeb Jung, the vice-chancellor, mentions that when it became a central university in 1988 with all the relevant faculties working, it had about 50 per cent Muslim students. In 2011, it has the same number. Unfortunately, he sees the positive aspects in what is clearly negative demarcation.

“First, over the last 90 years Muslims have had a sense of ownership and a fierce attachment with Jamia. They believe it is an institution of higher learning set up by their forefathers, to further in essence the cause of Muslim education, and declaring it a minority institution makes them secure in this feeling. Two, with the introduction of reservations for OBCs, the level of reservations in the university would go beyond 50% and therefore over time Muslim numbers will decline.”

Jamia is seen as a secular institution and promoting it as a minority one defeats the purpose. Citing the example of Christian-run colleges does not quite work because most of them have a missionary background and yet a ‘convent’ education is considered prized. The Christian community did not feel any ownership and having studied in such institutes one can say that except for the occasional superficial religious dimension, it was the elite students who felt more of a sense of belonging irrespective of their caste or religion. What the government has done is to make Jamia work as a double OBC unit, in a way.

On the subject of women’s education, Jung writes:

“Today, one of the glorious achievements of the university is that within its campus one frequently sees groups where girls in hijab mix easily with all others.” 

He is playing into a stereotype. Delhi has Muslim students in other universities who go without the hijab. Why does he assume that Muslims do not mix otherwise? The criticism that this could well be a ghetto, as much as is the UID scheme, is valid. And it is proved when he declares:

“While this is a huge affirmative action on the part of the government that the Muslim community must accept with grace and gratitude, I believe the government has put an onus on the Muslims to prove that they can look beyond common perceptions of ghettoisation, fundamentalism and so on and understand that imbedded in this initiative is the challenge to be tested at the altar of competence, professionalism and, above all, commitment to fierce nationalism and secularism that has been the bedrock of Jamia for the past 90 years.”

Technically, the Jamia is anyway entitled to 50 per cent quota for Muslims, so giving it the minority tag is a trap and it is easy to fall into it. Why should there be an onus on one community to prove not only its capability to be professionally qualified but committed to fierce nationalism, which incidentally is at the core of contemporary disparities and communalism?

The devious double dhamaka of minority certified as minority is to push a group into the corner. It is not surprising that an established institution has been chosen for this ‘honour’. It will be used as an example to throw more crumbs at lesser people, be they minorities or the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, all in the name of welfare and unification. The fact is their every footprint is being marked to make certain that they can only walk thus far and no further.

(c) Farzana Versey

Wake Up Singh: An Open Letter To A Sleepy Statesman

It takes more than two to tango?

Dear Mr. Prime Minister:

If you are not as big a culprit as you are made out to be, then would you enlighten us as to how small you are? What exactly was the reason that prompted you to meet with this huddled group of television channel editors to clear the air when some of the scams have to do with the media’s tacit involvement?

You need to address the nation and for that you could have chosen a proper location, held a public meeting and then let the newspapers and TV channels cover it and we would have the right to choose where we get our news. This was a PR exercise, not a genuine attempt to help Indian citizens know the truth. I understand that it was all fixed; the questions were stage-managed. As the head of government you are not answerable to the media and by doing so both you and our news sources have lost further credibility.


Now let us discuss one of the most important points you made and that was regarding coalition politics – you blamed it for the compromises your government has made: “You have to put up with a lot if you are running a coalition. Otherwise, you will have to hold elections every six months, which will not be a very happy situation either.”

This is a pathetic comment coming from the prime minister. A coalition gets together not because all the parties agree on every issue, but because there is a need to add up the figures and reach the holy grail of running the government. There is a barter system and portfolios are handed out according to demand and expediency. You know a party’s strong points, its important contenders and accordingly they are given the ministries. There is compromise inbuilt in this sort of horse-trading. But, there is no choice because the days of one-party rule are over. Seeing this as some kind of political dynamism, the leadership ought to use the strengths of the parties rather than hold them responsible for the crimes that are committed.


You are the head of this coalition and are supposed to know who is doing what, at least at the top level. This chickening out is a terrible letdown and reeks of opportunism on your part, something no one will ever accuse you of because you are a master of the cloak-and-dagger game.

How conveniently you blame the finance ministry and the departments of telecom and space for the spectrum/S-Band deals. You don’t even need to work it out because it appears self-evident. Then, what exactly is your role? It is only when the issues have gone beyond what is considered normal public memory have you come out in the open. How open is it really? The mammoth nature of corruption is just a “mistake” on your part? All these scams involve people in major positions, they involve bureaucrats, they involve industrial houses, and they involve what might also be security forces at some level. And what solution do you have? You said that after the Budget session you will reshuffle the cabinet.

The Budget session will involve the finance ministry that you have just blamed for impropriety. So, who will manage that? The same culprits? What will the reshuffle entail? This is the sneakiest thing governments do when they want to hush up the matter – just make those culpable invisible, let them cool their heels somewhere or go underground, bring in ‘fresh blood’, or a few from the old order that are ostensibly untainted, and make sure the carpet is thick enough not to let any dust escape.


However, what will you do about the constraints of coalition politics? Surely, you cannot dump some prime players because they prop up the Congress. How will you perform the balancing act? If they are forced to quit, then the coalition becomes weak, instead of weak-kneed as it now is. It is convenient to blame your partners on the choice of ministers, but how can you even suggest that you did not imagine a “serious wrong had been done”?

May we know what according to you a serious wrong is? Weren’t the Commonwealth Games a Congress show? Why was no action taken against the apathy and avarice? Regarding Devas, how can you say that letters were exchanged but there were no assurances given? Why were letters exchanged without a thorough examination? Can any such correspondence infiltrate the major ministries without any motive?

It does not make anyone in the country proud that the prime minister has to defend such deeds. If the coalition is to blame, then why did you not invite those under the radar to join you in this meeting? As we say in Hindi, “Doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani ho jaata” (We’d be able to tell milk from water and the level of adulteration). Now you are using the way out with the acceptance of ‘responsibility’. This will make you seem like a statesman, even a martyr. Let us cut it out. You are not accepting responsibility for the acts committed but for not knowing about these “aberrations”. It is this bad.


I hope you know that most of India is in India and not for foreign consumption and our global image you are so concerned about. You want to sell some hollow dreams of how we can be seen as an economic power; interestingly, all the major scams have to do with such visible sectors. You say, “We have not lost the will for reform. Reforms will be visible in the Budget. We will also bring more legislation.”

What is more legislation? What about social reform and answerability? You are only giving more teeth to the ones who bite, not the ones who are bitten.

You want to stay the course despite ethical and governance deficit. You will camouflage this as a means of retaining stability. The UPA is unstable not because it is a coalition but despite it. You, Gulliver, are roaming free by reassuring the Lilliputians. It’s been a while since you were washed ashore unconscious. Isn’t it time to wake up?

(c) Farzana Versey

Published in Countercurrents

Modi’s Red Revolution

Will Narendra Modi transfer bootleggers? Will his cops have an ‘encounter’ with them? Not likely. For, the great leap forward that is Gujarat would take a backseat then. Every state has a thriving alcohol industry, but poor Modi is stuck with the legacy of prohibition and a not-too-complimentary red revolution. Illicit trade has of course continued. Now comes news that tomatoes are being used to ‘carry’ booze and they come at a pricey Rs. 250 per kg:

The bootleggers of Sardarnagar came up with the novel idea when they realised that most tipplers prefer tomatoes and onions with their daily shot of hooch. First, the tomato is softened and some of its juice is extracted with a syringe. Then, the liquor concoction is injected into it before freezing it. The tomatoes are then sold along with other vegetables by roadside vendors.

The bootleggers mix sleeping tablets in the concoction to make it more potent. But the arrangement has worked well for both the consumers as well as the sellers.

I am not sure many of those imbibing it are aware of the sleeping tablets. There is the whole business of spurious fruit, grains and vegetables going on anyway, but the consumers are buying these as necessities and not with the purpose of getting a high.

While some say they can eat these tomatoes in public without being caught, I wonder about the alertness of the police. If it is openly available, has no regular buyer noticed the difference in price and complained to the consumer forum? Don’t the police buy vegetables?

This is all part of the hypocrisy prevalent in our society. No, no, we cannot have alcohol in Gandhi’s Gujarat, they say, as though Gandhi owned Gujarat or ever chided his friends Nehru and Jinnah for drinking. Modi feels no affinity towards Gandhi and am quite certain he does not have a great dislike for ‘hard drinks’, although he might be a teetotaller. He is stuck with this moral business, though.

'Piya' tu, ab tau aaja:
Narendra Modi could chill with the drinkers

In this hour of need, I think he should simply hark back to our ancient civilisation – yes, the other bugbear he is stuck with – and quote from the scriptures about the potency and purity of somras, the elixir of the gods. He will then be free to lift prohibition, legalise the booze trade, invite Vijay Mallya to set up a brewery that uses only ingredients with a local flavour and market it as Gujarat’s asmita (self-esteem).

Right now, no one quite knows what sort of liquor is being sold; it does not appear to be very fine or one that will appeal to the discriminating palate. A proper scheme will add pride when there will be different wines, ‘Surti Scotch’, liqueurs with flavours of jeera (cumin seeds) and chhoondo (raw mango pulp mixed with sugar and other stuff) and, of course, vodka. Prafulbhai can ask his ‘Mrs’ Latikaben to get some farsan (snacks) ready as he pours his vaasi batatanu daaru (rotten potato tipple).

Narendra Modi will only consolidate his position as the economic messiah with the new halo of being Kingfisher’s kingmaker.

- - -

Images: TOI and Narendra Modi.com

WEF (What Economic Forum)

There was to be a discussion on organised crime, 'Criminals without Borders' at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Why a separate discussion? Isn't the WEF already about this? Or does it need some more muscle-flexing self-introspection?

- - -

Heard about the Red Berets. Any symbolic moments? Just wondering...

A Deobandi as Modi's Brand Ambassador

Before you raise your eyebrows, do see things beyond the obvious. The new Darul Uloom vice-chancellor, Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi, has given his stamp of approval to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Shocked? Don’t be. They both essentially perpetuate the same schema of religion as the subterranean text. Both have worked wonderfully at brainwashing people – one with the carrot of ‘Gujarati pride’, the other with the stick of fatwas that make faith into some watertight compartment.

Maulana Vastanvi is from Surat and an educated man. It has been reported that he introduced modern subjects like medicine and engineering in the local Darul-run institutions. One does not quite understand how these subjects become modern when even madrassas use technology these days. This is the superficial aspect that draws attention, quite forgetting how several religions steeped in rituals and superstitions do not permit true scientific inquiry and even resist certain medical intrusion. This includes the Darul Uloom.


Let us not forget its disgusting record of fatwas in the Imrana case or objecting to women working or the clothes people wear. The latest in the list is a fatwa issued this month that prohibits the practice of prophecy by Muslims. It cites the Shariah and warns that if a follower of the faith indulges in soothsaying, his prayers for 40 days become unacceptable.

Will the Deoband then ban all the caretakers at various shrines who after the prayers have been said, offering made and money deposited in the donation box swoosh a peacock feather over the devotee’s head and prophesise that all wishes will be fulfilled? What about the various pirs who advertise their powers to predict the future and the past? What about Islamic scholars that give their interpretations of Islam and further divide the community? What about the Deoband itself that issues these edicts? It may now say that it is only advice based on queries raised, but that is precisely what soothsayers do.

If they genuinely believe that the Quran is the last word, then they should refer the questioner to the Holy Book. Why is the Deoband permitting itself to act as a go-between?

This brings us to the modernisation by Maulana Vastanvi. It is relegated to the well-off. According to him there is “no discrimination against the minorities in the state as far as development is concerned…Development has taken place in Gujarat and we hope it will continue. I ask Muslims to study well. The government is ready to offer jobs (to them), but for that, they need good education.”

While education is always a desirable goal, why are there only government jobs on offer? Is this some autocratic system where the state decides even what employment opportunities are available to the minorities in the private sector? What is the educated population of Hindus, Christians, Sikhs? Who will fill up the Class IV government quota? I am not in any way suggesting that menial jobs should be an aspiration, but these too qualify as work. There are professions that require unskilled workers – what about those? The sword of education is made to hang on the necks of people precisely to demolish their self-esteem. Literacy does not guarantee the ability to fight for your rights. The system will not permit it.


Narendra Modi has streamlined the system so well that it is made to seem like the final destination, when education is a journey. How educated were the rioters of 2002? What degrees did the cops who went on a rampage hold? Were all the victims uneducated? In fact, some were educated rather well and had to pay the price for the possibility that they would not keep silent.

The Maulana does not see this. He is speaking the language of the elite, and an institution like the Darul Uloom is elitist, in that it lives within its cocoon and every once in a while comes out to pronounce edicts in a rather feudal manner. One does not want the Deoband or any group to take over the task of bringing a politician or a political establishment to book, but when a person takes over such an organisation he has to be responsible. Maulana Vastanvi says, instead, “The issue is almost eight years old now and we should move forward. Rioting anywhere – in Gujarat or in any other part of the world – is bad for humanity and should never happen. The Gujarat riots were a blemish for India and all culprits should be punished.”


The riots were not a blemish for India but for its bigoted politician who is the hero of this same modern India that the cleric is endorsing. He has gone to the extent of saying, “There are not as many problems in Gujarat as has been projected…As far as relief work for the riots is concerned, it has been carried out very well by the government and people of Gujarat.”

He seems oblivious to the cries of people still seeking justice…justice based on evidence. So, who is the uneducated one here?

Maulana Vastanvi and Narendra Modi may want Muslims to move on, and a few have because they could afford to. There are many who cannot. Some do not wish to because if they let their voices be muffled, then together with those few hundred bodies their souls too will get buried. One can be reasonably certain that a mall mausoleum will be built over it. Modi will flash it as one more victory for economic progress and the Maulana will flaunt a shadow puppet modern Muslim. He might like to check out what the Deoband has to say about malls, though.

- - -

Published in Countercurrents, January 19

News meeows

True lies:

In times when exposes have become grandiose, Mumbai Mirror (Jan 11 issue) sent out its reporter to apply for membership to various political parties. He said he was a freelance web writer. This was enough to make him seem educated and he is young, too, which is what
everyone is looking for.

It is appalling to discover that one can become a member of any political party without anyone bothering to check on not only credentials but basic details. He even lied about his address.

The NCP was the quickest, followed by Shiv Sena, BJP and the MNS, whose office was also the most crowded. Within 48 hours he had laminated ID cards for all these parties. The Congress is the only one that asked for proof of address and PAN card number and the form he
has filled will take a week to process. I assume there will be some standard used for that.

What does this reveal? Party members can participate in several activities and have access to programmes organised by them. Should the person wish to take advantage, he can easily do so and there will not be any evidence. A fake name, a fake address, a fake profession - think about these the next time someone sells a political leader and party to you.

Are the political parties desperate or do they want such 'invisible'
people who can hide their shame?

- - -

True idiocy:

"It's true that the price of milk and vegetables are high. Some of this is a reflection of economic prosperity and purchasing power."

- Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, Planning Commission

Someone tell him that we are not talking about limited edition solitaires. A country's economic prosperity is judged by how it manages to improve its main sector - agriculture here.

The high cost of essentials, in fact, is a yardstick of poor policies. I heard someone say on a TV discussion on Doordarshan, I think, that if the price rise is being attributed to bad crop, then why are egg prices high? "Murgi ne tau andey dene band nahin kiye! (the hens have not stopped laying eggs)"

If our purchasing power is so high then even the fairly pricey restaurants would not be replacing onions with cabbages. But who's to tell these kings of fancy economic policies?

- - -

True grit:

This news has made me really happy.

Polio cases in India are down by 94 per cent from 741 in 2009 to 42 last year.

It seems like such a small thing but in our land of bad health care, superstition and lack of initiative, this shows we can do it if we genuinely want to.

Just two drops can save so many people of a debilitating disease and also closed minds.

Obama's hawk policy in India

The most telling aspect of President Barack Obama's trip to India in early November is his planned visit to all the sites targeted in the Mumbai attacks of November 28, 2008. He will also stay at the Taj Hotel. Commentators have been quick to gloat that this move will corroborate American support to India's battle against terror.

This is the vile game the US is so adept at. Its one major encounter with terrorism has been transformed into a metaphor for world militancy. It is a myopic and inadequate example if we take note of the different kinds of terrorism being unleashed in various parts of the world, including by the American establishment under the garb of ‘support for democracy’. This has often translated in ruining thriving societies or pushing them into ‘backward’ mode as a reaction to the US standard McDonald idea of franchising its version of liberty.


-->More here at the Op-ed, Khaleej Times...

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=/data/opinion/2010/October/opinion_October146.xml&section=opinion

USA to teach Indian MPs?

You would not catch them attending a leadership programme at one of our universities or management institutes.

But twelve of our ministers will be off to Yale University to attend the fourth annual Programme for India’s Parliamentarians that was launched in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and India-US Forum of Parliamentarians.

From the fairly seasoned Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi to the young Union ministers of state Ajay Maken and Agatha Sangma, from the ruling party to the regional and religion-oriented ones it is a diverse mix.

What do these people hope to learn? What is the India-US Forum of Parliamentarians about? Is it a lobbying group? Or will it help brainwash our MPs to understand the American system better?

Besides undergoing a seven-day leadership programme at the Yale University campus beginning June 9, the MPs would travel to New York and Washington for meetings, discussions and interactions with US politicians, policy analysts and senior government officials. “The India-Yale Parliamentary Leadership Programme is pioneering in the amazing diversity of topics explored; in the outstanding, cutting edge quality of the world-renowned lecturers; in the truly bipartisan nature of the multiparty delegation,” said Singhvi.

This is not about individuals going abroad for education or even professionals attending seminars or conferences. These are our elected representatives who will shamelessly sit and listen to some American on how to be leaders in India, a country that is vastly different in every way. Mr. Singhvi is the spokesperson of the ruling party and has been holding forth on policy decisions. What are we to make of the things he has been saying? That he needs an education?

Will any of these ministers be asked to speak and address US parliamentarians?

Since FICCI is involved, there is obviously the economic angle. The angle of how to pass files for industrial houses and possibly multinationals. Who is paying for their trip?

Forget all this leadership baloney. They are being had and, worse, loving it.

Where is our self-respect?

Caveman, Cavewoman

Where are the bats? The darkness? Why are these two cave-dwelling examples more about urban chic than an honest attempt at starkness?

Daniel Suelo has been described as a “48-year-old hermit from Utah”. Eight years ago he decided to stop using money. For the past three years he has been living in a cave. His eureka moment came when he went on a trip to Alaska. His friend and he “speared fish, ate mushrooms and berries and lived very well. Then we hit the road, hitchhiking, and realised how generous people were”.

Now this is being glorified. How many people do you know of who have given up materialism, live away from ‘civilisation’, and yet manage to reach out? Mr. Suelo has succeeded in portraying himself as one who lives without government handouts. Yet, he goes to a public library to record moments of his “punishing lifestyle”. He is a hero during times of recession because he has got no money, so he cannot lose it. Ho-hum.

This charade reeks of disdain in a world where qualified people are laid off. Where skilled labour in some societies has to subsist on minimum wages. Where people do not have water, forget fish to find in it.

There was a report a year ago about a foreign tourist who lived in a cave in the mountain regions of Kullu a tourist town in Himachal Pradesh. After losing her passport 8 years ago, Dimitri subsisted by soliciting money, food, and other essentials.

No one quite knew where she was from, though the cops said, “She has been living here for last many years.”

And how has that been possible? She did serve a seven month term for being without documents, but why was she still there with the knowledge of the cops? If her police records showed she was from Italy, then on what grounds did that country refuse to accept her?

What I find even more intriguing is that she declined to interact with Indians and begged only from foreigners. Ah, and they say beggars can’t be choosers.

Is there a need to romanticise such stories? There are millions of people who are homeless and do not have the choice of who they beg from and how they file their routines for internet posterity. This cave identity just does not convey a fraction of the squalid conditions of people who live in the open or in pipes.

I’ll any day take bats over manipulative batty.