Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Who is an Indian

Who is an Indian? Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on identity, nationalism.


Suddenly, the NRI who rushed for the American green card, the Australian citizenship or the British passport insists on Indianness. On his/ her Indian cultural heritage. Tracing back the generations and lineage in eager longing to establish the link.

Is this a rush to identify with looming success. As they say, success has many fathers.

Being Indian has a rapidly emerging (and I argue, still largely undeserved) cache. Of intelligence. Street smart - Jugadoo. Starting to be successful (sic). Innovative even, to an extent. Of the future. Of Bollywood. Of IT. Of Yoga and mysticism in sync with software and the Nano. Vital, flowing, India.

I do not wish to judge. But if the same person once and earlier always insisted on being called Trinidadian, Kenyan, British etc. rather than Indian s/he is being convenient. Here was a person distancing him/herself from India ashamed (justifiably) to be tagged Indian. Now eager to hitch his/ her wagon to the star. To achieve by association rather than achievement.

A rising tide lifts all boats. And the NRI wants to move up too. Even if by tenuous heritage. Best of luck. Which way the wind blows, the straw bends.

Tiger Woods

I see the Tiger Woods "scandal" with scarce disbelief. There is no justification for his alleged behavior, no excuse for his callousness. He has wronged. But wait a second, he has not wronged you, or me, or the public at large. Certainly not the media which has gone to town with the moral angles.

What is the benefit of this yellow journalism? Did his wife get information about new alleged liaisons from the newspapers, and even if so, how does this help her? Did the channels "out" a enemy of the state, and so did they perform a public duty?

The Tiger Woods saga is a case in point of the 'TRP chasing' downhill slide that world media is inexorably going towards. Punch the fallen, especially if he was right up there prior. Show that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Feast on the remains of trashed dignity.

Are we not to blame equally? We want the ringside view on the trashing. We want to hover and look over the shoulder at the shamed, and a secret side of us feels the better of it, even if hypocrytically. Not for us 'he who hath not sinned must cast the first stone". Eliot Spitzers all of us. Now HE was a public figure that needed bringing down - sponsoring tough legislation against street trafficking with utmost indignation at the harm to society one day, and hiring high priced call girls the same night. Walk the talk he did not.

Marion Jones cheated her peers by taking drugs. She hurt others. She cheated on the public. She hurt the sports' image by doing something wrong WITHIN the sport. Vilify her all we must.

Now one could argue that Woods created a public persona of the family loving clean sports superstar. And sponsors paid him huge amounts to endorse their products. Did ANYONE in their right mind buy products and services from these companies because of that image?

Would you invest in a ponzi scheme only because Sachin Tendulkar appeared for an advertisement of the scheme? Would you do your own research and undertake a rational buying decision? If not, YOU are naive, gullible. Susceptible to advertising that brainwashes you. You value form over function.

You are probably the kind of person who would deify a hero and villainise the person if such an event happened such as befell Tiger Woods. Blame yourself. Not Tiger Woods.

Now if Tendulkar endorses a company that makes crap cricket equipment and you bought it and were dissatisfied, he deserves tabloid journalism. But Tiger did not advise you not to have affairs and then quietly go and conduct his indiscretions ( a la afore mentioned Eliot Spitzer). He has not been advocating fidelity and truth. He is a golfer. That is all. And if the Nike clubs he peddles(d?) make you feel less like Tiger because of this scandal, go out and practice.

He is a morally conflicted man with many demons who needs help to value what is important to his long term health - his wife and children. He needs counselling. He needs deifying for the right things - his superb domination of golf.

Leave him alone. Leave his family to be. They don't need our curiosity. They do not want our attention. They need our quiet sympathy and tacit support to sort their affairs. For the sake of the children. For our sake. Because we need families to be the bedrock unit of society, and these are becoming a dying breed in our rush for individuality. More on that later!


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Arrogance and Resentment

I was getting into the lift this afternoon in the office and motioned to someone already inside to move further in as there was sufficient space to allow more people to come in. He glared at me.

Tell the poor driver who blocks the road to stay on the left side. Ask the person who wrongly walks on the road at his own peril to instead use the pavement. Invite someone to honour the queue like you do. Insist that someone who throws waste on the road puts it instead in the dustbin.

Most civilized people would be first embarrassed, knowing they were caught out doing something wrong. Then they would likely comply.

In India, you would be abused for trying to educate. There is an arrogance that is breath taking. The sense is of superiority, of being better than others. The caste and class system means one cannot be told of being wrong. The sense of false pride requires that one cannot be pulled up in public, no matter that one's actions are not worthy of pride. There is no absolute benchmark in our culture, it is relative to the surroundings. So the educated Indian is a boor in Bangalore, and a Roman in Rome. Indians are ashamed of being out of place in the 'developed' West and will largely conform to some basic disciplines. That is however too much to expect back home in India. Here we are too busy, too tired. The government has not provided toilets. The city council has not placed enough dust bins. The public works department has created terrible roads. The person in front of me drives badly.

The sense of not doing wrong oneself, but believing that everyone else does. The sense that others must be responsible and oneself is blameless and is doing all one can.

This arrogance combines quite nicely with a sense of resentment. There is an ill will towards one's perceived betters. The class system also has institutionalized a constant and nagging negative envy. The story of the Indian crabs in a bucket refusing to allow the best crab to climb out and escape, pulling him down every time is a good metaphor for the situation. Our political class has espoused socialism as a way of tapping popular anger at one's own poverty. The zamindar is a good target. The landlord always has obtained his wealth on the backs of the poor laborer. The rich have got there apparently at the expense of the poor in movies and political speeches.

In a road accident, the larger vehicle is to blame. The pedestrian hit by a cyclist while crossing the road without looking, the cyclist swerving into the path of a motorcycle, the bike rider who attempts to squeeze at high speed between two cars. In every case, there is no attempt to understand cause. The mob sides with the underdog. The under class will never want to learn from the perceived upper class. The messenger significantly altering the meaning of the message.

The arrogance and resentment that permeates India means that we will never become better where we should. We will not become civilized. Yes, many will become rich. More will become prosperous - the much touted middle class. We will harvest the demographic divide. The hopeful even argue that with an improving economic future, we will become gentler. What of our culture, our civilization. Brash. Loud. Bling. In your face. Big, bigger.

I despair. The mark of a civilization is an awareness and education of right and wrong. Compliance to this is an individual evolution but a mark of a developed society is to extract a collective larger social will on its inhabitants. I see neither in our immediate future.


Monday, November 23, 2009

Awareness

A mark of a good civilisation is awareness. Macro awareness is a sense of place, geography and time. In constructing monuments to stand the test of time, in records of books and art and other such remnants of pride.

At the individual level, civilisation has 'civilised' people. And that brings me back to India and Indians.

I wonder constantly at the constant chest puffing breast beating pride - chain emails that point to videos showing India's future in 2020 (Click the link at your own risk and get bored to death http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4734602537631882606&hl=en#), or listing the great things Indians have brought to the world (Aryabhatta invented zero et al), or the great Indians (25% of NASA engineers, 10% of Microsoft employees), the endless news channels running repeats of the smallest achievement (Nobel Prize winner Venkataramanan Ramakrishnan feeling hounded and lashing out).

A nation that needs to beat its own drum. A people that need to reaffirm our greatness by stating it loudly.

Look around at us. We lack awareness. The necessity to be called civilised. And we must not criticise the uneducated or the rustic. This is across the educational, social, economic spectrum. We lack social awareness - how we must behave in the company of others. We lack contextual awareness - how we must act differently even in the same company in a different context. We lack physical awareness - the necessity to respect space, even in the crowded country that live in.

Add to this the disinterest, resentment even, to be told, to be educated by others who are aware. Arrogance and a disinclination to learn.

I despair. Tagore would (should) roll in his grave and rewrite Gitanjali.

Pavements and traffic

I could write a tome, more a diatribe on the state of our roads and us users of our roads. To decide whether we are a superpower, or even an emerging one, or then a to-become-one, don't read the Economic Times. Do not watch NDTV. You will get lots of emphatic pronouncements that we are..

Walk out, drive out. On our roads.

There are many problems. I don't know where to start. The list is long.

For instance, Why will pedestrians not use pavements? Granted, many pavements are poorly maintained. Many pavements are broken and discontinuous. They are used by hawkers. There are electric pylons on some. Trees on other parts. Broken stones on some. Drainage covers left open on others.

But I see good pavements. And pedestrians walking next to them on the road. Cars and buses missing them by inches on their right side. With 3-4 ft of clear pavement on their left side. And they will not step on it. I have seen puddles of water on the road, and 'walkers' moving to the middle of the road to bypass the puddle rather than walk on the pavement!

An already crowded road is worse off with those walking wanting equal use. It is not uneducated people. It is everyone - exceptions are rare, very very rare.

Dear reader, after reading this post, observe yourself the next time you go out. And be aware of your actions, and others' around you.

Into pavement walking heaven, oh father, let my country awake.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Media - Free publicity is oxygen to radicals' fire

Do we deserve our leaders? We elect our leaders. Do we deserve our society? We live and create our society. Do we deserve our media? We have a media which reports events, chews them and then spits them out contemptuously. We are dumbed down - how much is the cause, and how much the effect. We are deadened.

What is the role of a free media - In India, more often than not, the role is to sensationalise - capture eyeballs, raise TRPs. The media in India is often a joke. Witness the incessant wall to wall coverage of any radical action by fringe elements - a political party vandalising cinema halls in Gujarat showing Mahesh Bhat produced "Tum Mile" because his son has voluntarily given information of socialising with a terrorist.

Why does the Indian media provide free publicity? The media will argue - we highlight the pathetic nature of the event and show to our viewers the intolerant face of right wing facism. Well, then:
DO NOT Show to the public the hoodlums openly throwing stones filmed by cooperative cameramen. Refuse to air the film. Share the film with the police to identify the culprits and produce as evidence. It depresses all of us that this can happen in a free India. It scares all of us that we live in this society.
DO NOT name the political party concerned in public. Deny them any say, any interviews, any chance to explain, expound their view and get any opportunity for their propaganda.
DO show the police up for being influenced by politicians and not doing their duty.
DO follow up on whether the guilty have been brought to book.

NDTV hounding Manu Sharma to jail for the murder of Jessica Lal is terrific stuff but not often enough. There may be a few more cases they and other channels undoubtedly will bring up in their defence. In relation to the brazen doings of everyday India, these are few and far in between.

I want to challenge each news channel, every newspaper and all news magazines to take a new year resolution - one cause for each year. 365 days, 8760 hours, atleast 17520 bulletins. Enough space and time to relentlessly nail one issue, undo one injustice, raise awareness of one cause. Sustainability is key.

THE MEDIA IS THE WATCHDOG OF OUR DEMOCRACY. STANDUP TO YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES. FREE PUBLICITY IS THE OXYGEN TO THE RADICALS' FIRE.

What sense feeding it?

Thursday, May 1, 2008

False morality

Cheerleaders are causing a stir in the Indian premier league of cricket. The very definition of twenty20 cricket was about creating an entertaining event with the two cornerstones - Bollywood and Cricket. Now the politicians have got into the act, criticizing the cheerleaders for propagating the "wrong" message with their revealing dresses and suggestive routines.

I cannot passover a chance to psychoanalyze -
1. If this is done so that we can refocus on cricket, ok. But then, take out the rest of the tamasha too.
2. If this is done from the so-called moral viewpoint, it is crap. There is more on 'display' on the typical bollywood item number - women dancing in the group dance numbers are scantily dressed white women. It has become a badge of bollywood. Totally pandering to the lowest common denominators-fantasy of sex with a fair 'easy' woman. Have a devi at home who cooks and does not complain/ demand and is not emancipated, and have a vamp for the fun in bed.

Indians are inherently generally racist (white over black), elitist (rich over poor), snobbish(high class/caste over low) desperates (want sex but suppress it as there is a social stigma about it - coming from the land of the Kamasutra and the temples replete with sexual poses, it is a bit rich).

No chance of so much hungama happening if these were brown Indian/ black / Chinese cheerleaders even if they were scantily dressed and shaking their hips more vigorously.

False morality.