Independence Day

I spent the first twenty one years of my life in Kolkata. I had a decent education, primarily because I was born in a well to do family. At present I am pursuing higher studies in the US.

I have many friends - all of them belong to the same social category. Some are software engineers in India, some did their MBAs from reputed institutes, some will settle in the US for the rest of their lives, and some will stay back in their home country, joining the same herd of software engineers, bankers and university professors.

For the purpose of this blog post, I will refer to these people as "We". To put it briefly, "We" denotes the urban middle class. Of course, I belong to this set of people. Every statement about "We" also applies to me.

We are Indians, and we love our country. Typically, our patriotism takes one of the following forms: 1) Cheering for India during cricket matches. 2) Appreciating movies like Rang De Basanti. 3) Admiring the Indian Army. 4) An intense disdain for corrupt politicians, as if these politicians are the only people who are ruining the country. 5) Adulation for "apolitical" activists like Kiran Bedi and Anna Hazare. 6) Anti-reservation views. Specifically, the claim that we have advanced in our careers because of "merit", and the accident of birth had no role to play in our lives.

I could go on adding more items to the above list. However, one item will remain conspicuously absent, namely, the item concerning the majority of Indians - the people living in the villages, the farmers, the dalits, the village women, the landless laborers and millions of others who had never been to Mcdonalds or the university classrooms - those 836 million Indians who live on less than 50 cents per day.

For people like us, it is common practice to cherish the Independence Day by watching movies like "Lagaan" or "Rang De Basanti". For a change, this time why don't we watch a documentary called "Nero's Guests"?



If you are an Indian and reading this blog (the people belonging to the second category have become an endangered species on the verge of extinction), please check out this one hour documentary. Unlike Lagaan or Rang De Basanti, probably you have never heard of this movie, let alone watching it. I guarantee that you will not be wasting your time.

We are the Nero's guests. Today I wish all of us a very happy Independence Day.

Random thoughts on the West Bengal election: Confessions of a Social-Democrat

It is extremely unhealthy for a democracy if it is ruled by the same political party for more than three decades. I am happy to see the Left-front getting voted out of power.

I don't buy the perception, however, that West Bengal was ruined by 30 years of left-front rule. Contrary to the urban middle-class world view, the Left-front had some spectacular achievements in the early eighties, especially with regard to land reform; and some of the states that are touted as success-stories by neo-liberal propaganda have witnessed mass suicides by farmers. If we are to judge the progress of a state by the improvement in living standards of the overall population, rather than the number of shopping malls and high rise buildings in some urban pockets, CPM rule has by no means been pathetic. It is not a coincidence that the residents of Kolkata and non-resident Bengalis are traditionally opposed to CPM, whereas the party's main bastion used to be rural Bengal.

At the same time, I don't believe that the Left-front has done anything substantial in the past decade. If we rank the Indian states according to social indicators such as literacy rate and access to basic health-care, West Bengal falls somewhere in the middle of the list. There is one word that precisely defines today's Left-front - mediocre.

I resent the way the Left-front compromised the state's education system. All the appointments in the state universities, ranging from the administrative stuff and faculty members to the Vice-Chancellor, were influenced by CPM. The schools and colleges also came under the control of one omnipotent Party.

It is unfortunate that Mamata Banerjee is not a better alternative. Admittedly, she is an honest person who worked hard (and alone, for quite a while) to end CPM's dominance of West Bengal politics. But apart from her anti-left rhetorics, she doesn't have any constructive policies - economic, educational or otherwise. And to put it mildly, I don't respect the people around her - her inner circle of advisers who helped her stop the CPM juggernaut.

I consider myself to be a social-democrat. Yet I feel it was time for the CPM to go. To conclude, it is a pity that the only thing Mamata Banerjee has to offer is the end of CPM's hegemony.

Black, White and Gray

Today I went to Duke Library to check out John Rawls' "Justice as Fairness". Amusingly, there was a book by Ann Coulter right next to Rawls' masterpiece. I have never seen such a fine example of profundity and ignorance peacefully coexisting side by side.

I came to realize that US is a strange country: She has nurtured an extraordinary number of great scientists, philosophers, thinkers and political activists - Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Richard Feynman, Martin Luther King Jr., Noam Chomsky - the list is endless. On the other hand, there are crackpots like Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza and Rush Limbaugh. How astonishing it is that a significant proportion of US citizens still dispute Evolution by natural selection and believe that the earth is only ten thousand years old!

NDTV

I have deep respect for Pranoy Roy. He founded NDTV and was one of the figures who played a pivotal role in changing the landscape of Indian journalism.

As far as political ideology is concerned, the star anchors of NDTV purport to be secular liberals. This information, coupled with the fact that it is a channel founded and run by Pranoy Roy, should have been sufficient to convert me into a regular viewer. However, I stopped watching NDTV long time back, even before the Radia tapes broke out, for a simple reason.

Today I visited their website after at least a few months and this is what I found.

Top Videos:

1) Vikram Pandit on Citigroup turnaround.

2) Irish giant killers live up to reputation.

3) Vidya's SRK dream come true?

Top Photos:

1) Is Twinkle Khanna pregnant?

2) Spotted: Amir, SRK, Urmila

3) Oscar 2011: Red Carpet

4) Anushka, Ranveer at Shahid's birthday bash

And here comes the editor's video picks:

1) Desparately seeking attention.

2) Item numbers: kiss of life.

3) Oscar 2011: The hope and the glory.

Finally, the list of top stories include gems like "Dandi March in US against corruption in India".

Is this some kind of joke?

On a serious note, I will suggest anyone with a tiny little bit of interest in politics and society to subscribe to Economic and Political Weekly.

Pujibad

jok naki jonaki, ale-aar bati.

ke ashok borolok hoy ratarati.

bhalo-jone ano-mone kore becha-kena,

nei tar day-bhar, manobik dena.

amrai kore khai, amrai dami.

kono dosh, apshosh nei, achi ami.

koto shoto holo goto, shopner pur

roddure ache dure, ajo bohudur.

Freedom of Expression

I was watching this week's The Big Fight on NDTV. Vikram Chandra is one of the few anchors I admire; he is composed, articulate, and unlike most of his ilk, is not in the habit of shouting at the pitch of his voice or rudely interrupting the invited guests. Having enjoyed the show, I decided to convert my thoughts on the topic into a blog post.

Vikram asked an intriguing question that can be briefly summarized as follows. A democracy cannot function properly without freedom of speech. However, consider the following situations. 1) A person makes a hate speech instigating the audience to kill members of a certain religious community. 2) A person makes a comment that is clearly racist, or derogatory to women. 3) A person writes a book offending religious sentiments, people throng the streets demanding a ban on the book, and riots may ensue if the government doesn't succumb to their demands. Shouldn't we be better off by restricting freedom of expression under such circumstances? Can a country ever accord unfettered freedom of speech to her citizens?

I do not hope to settle such a nuanced question in a short essay. Nevertheless, I state my point of view. Freedom of expression necessarily implies the freedom to offend. If I am only allowed to praise you, and you will put me in jail whenever I say something that you consider offensive; it should be called freedom of sycophancy, not freedom of speech. Moreover, if I am allowed to offend your political sentiments, reason dictates you must allow me to offend your religion (or in case of atheists, the lack thereof), as well as race, gender, and every other identity. This provides an answer to the second and third questions: No, freedom of expression should not be curtailed under these situations.

As an aside, I should mention that being a liberal, I get deeply offended to hear someone make a racist or sexist statement. And sometimes a sensible government might have no choice other than proscribing a sacrilegious book, though such incidents will further highlight the fact that we have a long way to go in order to become a mature, tolerant and progressive society.

Finally, freedom of expression does not imply the freedom to kill or physically hurt someone. Hate speeches and inciting riots don't fall under the purview of freedom of speech; there should be separate laws to deal with religious fanatics.

Quote

While reading the book 'India After Gandhi', came across an interesting quote by V.N. Gadgil.

In India you do not cast your vote; you vote your caste.

India After Gandhi

I have started reading "India After Gandhi" by Ramchandra Guha, and am slowly getting addicted to it. The book documents the political history of India from 1947 to the present day. Though it will take more than a month to finish a 900 page volume, I hope to stick around till the end. Here are some excerpts.

...throughout the sixty years since India became independent, there has been speculation about how long it would stay united, or maintain the institutions and processes of democracy. With every death of a prime minister has been predicted the replacement of democracy by military rule; in every failure of the monsoon has been anticipated countrywide famine; in every new secessionist movement has been seen the disappearance of India as a single entity......The heart hoped that India would survive, but the head worried it wouldn't. The place was.....far too diverse to persist as a nation, and much too poor to endure as a democracy.....

....On my way to work, I had to pass through Rajpath, the road whose name and location signal the exercise of state power. For about a mile, Rajpath runs along flat land; on either side are specious grounds meant to accommodate the thousands of spectators who come for the annual republic day parade.......By the time I had moved to New Delhi the British had long departed. India was now a free and sovereign republic - but not, it seemed, an altogether happy one. Signs of discord were everywhere. Notably, on Rajpath, the grounds meant to be empty except on ceremonial days has become a village of tents, each with colorful placards hung outside it. One tent might be inhabited by peasants from the Uttarakhand Himalaya, seeking a separate province; a second by farmers from Maharashtra, fighting for a higher price for their produce; a third by the residents of the southern Konkan coast, urging that their language be given official recognition by inclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the constitution of India. The people within these tents and the causes they upheld were ever changing. The hill peasants might be replaced by industrial workers protesting retrenchment; the Maharashtra farmers by Tibetan refugees asking for Indian citizenship; the Konkani-speakers by Hindu monks demanding a ban on cow slaughter.....I wished I had the time to walk on Rajpath every day from January 1 to December 31, chronicling the appearance and disappearance of the tents and their residents. That would be the story of India as told from a single street, and in a single year.....However, this too, is a story, above all, of social conflicts; of how these arise, how they are expressed, and how they are sought to be resolved.......

The forces that divide India are many. This book pays due attention to them. But there are also forces that have kept India together, that have helped transcend or contain the cleavages of class and culture, that - so far at least - have nullified the many predictions that India would not stay united and not stay democratic. These moderating influences are far less visible; it is one aim of this book to make them more so....Suffice it to say that they have included individuals as well as institutions.

Feminist Rant

March 8th was women's day. The upper house of Indian Parliament passed the historic women's reservation bill on March 9th. Though I have serious misgivings regarding many aspects of the bill, it is heartening to see the issue of female empowerment receiving a degree of political attention that was long-overdue.

I grew up in an urban middle class society and have never been to a village. Thus it is not appropriate for me to comment on the grave socio-economic discriminations the females suffer in rural India. I will rather highlight some practices, quite demeaning to women, that are still prevalent amongst the so called educated sections of the populace.

1) A girl has to get married before a certain age, even if she is not financially independent by that time.

2) The husband should be professionally more established (in terms of job profile) than the wife.

3) The husband should be older (and taller) than the wife.

4) Even if both the husband and the wife are working, it is the wife's duty to manage the household chores.

5) If the parents of two kids (a boy and a girl) are constrained financially and have to make a choice, the boy will be encouraged to go for higher studies (PhD / MBA) while the girl will be married off as quickly as possible.

6) The girl's family will pay for the bulk of the cost of organizing the marriage.

7) It is the wife's duty to give up or change her job (or seek a transfer) and relocate to the place where the groom is working. She should not expect her future husband to relocate to her place.

8) A woman cannot preside over a religious ceremony. How many female purohits have you seen?

I can only hope the next generation will be more liberal and open-minded than us, and things will change for the better.

Belated HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY!!!