Passionate About India

Each discovery and innovation comes at a cost. The gift that Tim Berners-Lee gave the world in 1990 is no exception. While, the World Wide Web has revolutionised the very ways the global economy, various national governments and ordinary individuals function, the price tag it bears is significant. What are the focal points of dispute that I’m referring to here? Two questions. Are acts of espionage over the Internet healthy? Is surveillance over the web a necessary component of some greater good for a society, one that claims to be democratic? As per a 2013 report published in Web Index (the annual journal of the World Wide Web Consortium), the surge of online censorship and surveillance is a potential threat to the very “future of democracy”. That incidences related to spying and surveillance (on the web) are causing tides that the Internet was not originally expected to influence is no surprise. The Internet threw open an age of information, where flow of information was expected ...

Today, India is at a critical juncture with all socio-economic as well as political ills engulfing the nation from almost all possible directions. Starting from a series of bribery scams that are being exposed, to our plummeting ranks in almost all economic indicators – everything corroborates the hope for the rise of a fourth front (considering the third front still exists and is potent) in the form of Arvind Kejriwal’s political debut with India Against Corruption, along with an emerging coterie of social activists, who are gradually morphing the political landscape and are all collectively reshaping the political couture of the nation. Without even an iota of apprehension, Kejriwal has been able to create a wave of passion and excitement among common Indians for a probable better political future. Through his campaign against political parties and leaders, he has been instrumental in giving a vent to the pent up anger of the public against the corrupt, inefficient and slothful ...

I was too young then to really remember it all; but I have heard from many people that the mass protests generated by the arrest of Anna Hazare are similar to the uprising called Total Revolution led by the late Jaiprakash Narayan in the early 1970s. In fact, it was the Total Revolution and the chaos that followed – and a historic blunder by Indira Gandhi – that led to the imposition of the Emergency in India in 1975. Many people are comparing today’s situation to the Emergency days. The people of India are so fed up and so disgusted with corruption and our rotten and corrupt system that the wave of protests we see is hardly surprising. I have often publicly called India not a democracy but a demonocracy where crooked politicians and their criminal cohorts are openly plundering the nation; well aware that a dysfunctional judicial system will allow them to get away. In almost all cases, they have actually got away and have hence acquired the arrogance and swagger of pirates who know ...

The modern day Jalianwala Bagh at Ramlila Grounds shows the demonic attitude of the government, the weak spine of the opposition and the hypocrisy of the media towards Bharat! My question is, are we living in a democracy or in a shamelessly unapologetic dictatorial regime? Has the government finally lost it totally? Or do they believe that the people of the country are so foolish that they will quietly accept any amount of dictatorship and vote them to power again in 2014? Is there absolutely no learning from DMK’s huge loss in Tamil Nadu where it virtually controlled the media and yet people kicked them out? What happened on June 4th, 2011, is an absolute blot on the Indian democracy. There is absolutely no exaggeration when people compare the incidents of the day to Emergency or the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre. June 4th is the 2011 equivalent of both. Today, one doesn’t need to shove people inside a well and fire. Going in the midst of sleeping protesters – men, women and children – bea...

Last week I was very fortunate to be a part of this wonderful, moving and inspirational seminar on the ‘Power of One’ (coverage of the same is there after my editorial)! The speakers included Tarun Tejpal, who so very inspirationally spoke about the founding fathers of our nation, their vision and saga of sacrifices. Indeed, hearing Tarun speak is always a pleasure, just as much as seeing him – a real life hero of public interest journalism in India – always is! His words had the power of making me forget for a while that the same Nehru, whose birthday is ironically celebrated as Children’s Day in India, founded an India where today, seven times more kids suffer from malnutrition than they do in China – something Tarun himself quoted. He spoke of how we shouldn’t forget where India resides – in the villages. And the onus was on us to fight for the right cause. He spoke of things that at least we never forget at The Sunday Indian. There was Neelem Katara who spoke next in the most movin...

ONLY THEN WOULD WE KEEP GETTING GOVERNMENTS TRULY FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE AND OF THE PEOPLE Last December, the state assembly of Gujarat passed a bill to make voting mandatory – that bill is still to see a nod from the Governor. Revisiting the issue, L K Advani and Narendra Modi both recently echoed the viewpoint again and asked the legislation to make voting compulsory in the state, especially after a low turnout rate in the recent civic elections. On an average, the voter turnout rate in Gujarat has been around 50 per cent, while a month back Bihar saw a turnout rate of 43-45 per cent! The recent developments with respect to compulsory voting remind me of an editorial of mine that I wrote way back in 2007 – on allowing voting through SMS! Although I never advocate mandatory voting in a democracy, as that is not logical, what is essential is a larger engagement of the electorate which has been diminishing by the day. In fact, this larger engagement need not be just for a few con...

I recently came across an intriguing research, conducted by a Washington based research group. The research analysed the news reports for the month of April and found out that the American Presidential campaign has taken up almost 33% of the editorial space, followed by general economy which took almost 6%. The Pope’s visit and the Texas polygamy case equally shared an editorial space of 4% each. It is intriguing that as bodies of innocent American soldiers and that of equally innocent Iraqi’s kept falling, it could garner only 3% of editorial space!! It is not to draw any conclusion whether the American Presidential campaign is more important than Iraq, but then the media coverage in itself indicates that though Iraq is a burning global issue, the American media doesn’t feel likewise, otherwise it would not have given a mere 3% space. And the bigger issue here is that by reducing media space over a period of time, the American media is systematically trying to take Iraq out of people’...

While the world was about to acknowledge the Chinese ascension in the 21st century through its hosting of the Olympics this year, the ghost of the typical Chinese style persecution and how human rights still remain an alien concept in this supposedly 5000-year-old civilisation has stared haunting all over again. Last heard, the unofficial figures are put at a death toll of 80, while the Chinese media puts it at not more than 13!! Strangely, despite the incredible economic growth and even putting behind the First World in terms of manufacturing feat, the gap between Chinese and non-Chinese media when it comes to estimation of figures still remain very pertinent. While the world assumed that China as a country has come a long way from the days of Tiananmen Square, and while many thought that economic maturity and prosperity would somehow soften the Chinese regime with respect to human rights, the sheer threat of use of force and brutal subjugation that is coming from the Chinese regime e...

Since the declaration of the state of emergency by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, the world has been much divided between those who have been advocating that only a dictatorial military regime can save Pakistan from becoming a failed state and those who claim that only democracy can revive Pakistan. This debate, no doubt, would persist for some time to come, but the issue at large is whether such dictatorial regimes eventually succeed in resurrecting a failing state. For most of the time in the 20th century, many such regimes, especially in Africa, came on the pretext of saving their countries from disaster. However noble their intentions might have been in the beginning, their sustained stay at the helm of affairs, eventually proved disastrous for their respective countries. To start with, let’s take the example of Sudan. Incidentally, this country has also been given the rank of numero uno in the recent ranking of failed states by The Foreign Policy magazine. Omar Hass...

As I watched with excitement the finals of Zee Sa Re Ga Ma, glued to the TV sets at a friend’s house, what struck me was the massive number of votes that each of the finalists got. It was a mind numbing figure that crossed a whopping 10,00,00,000!!! Yes! Those were over ten crore votes that were polled! While my friends debated with excitement at how Bengalis reaching the finals of any such show were bound to win due to the massive way they vote, I couldn’t help but wonder at the irony around the fact that these are the same Bengalis who allow their votes to be rigged election after election in West Bengal and allow muscle men to dominate and snatch away their rights to what Bengalis love doing most – vote and debate. After all, Bengal was amongst the first in the world to bring in communism through a democratic process. Though the situation is better in most other states, yet rigging and non-participation in the electoral process remain India’s biggest problems. It is because we belie...

With the Parliament set to resume its monsoon session by the next fortnight, the media would have a new series of pandemonium after the one which just got over with the election of our first woman President. Well, if not anyone else, at least the electronic media would find it delicious fodder, as their crew would ceremoniously wait outside the Parliament to capture ‘that’ moment whereby some non-descript Minister of some worse non-descript Ministry (we had around 53 Ministries, till the last count!) or a Member of Parliament pops out. What follows is a volley of rhetoric, from both sides, relating to topical issues pertaining to the nation. Well the honourable Parliamentarians cannot solely be blamed for such rhetoric as after a ‘consuming’ session, they are often too engaged with the thought of eating delicacies steaming in the highly subsidised Parliament canteen or cooling heels in the luxury of the opulence that the government has provided them for being the elected or selected re...