Passionate About India

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 ...

As London burns and USA is downgraded with fears of another recessionary wave hitting the world, there is one thing that becomes amply clear. You can’t have a world full of inequity and live in peace. Never before in its history has the gap between the rich and the poor widened as it has in the last 40 years in America. And every right wing party has only worked hard to enrich the rich. Every time the Democrats have come back and tried to increase even half a percent of tax on the rich to use it for those marginalized by the markets, the Republicans have screamed hoarse. No doubt, Obama has knowledge about economics, but what is happening in America right now is a shame, especially the way right wing fanatics are making the scene look worse than it is. The problem in UK is however another side of the same coin. The whites were sitting happily claiming that the blacks and other minorities live better in UK than they would have in their country of origin. However, happiness is a comparat...

There is this flippant yet popular joke that goes like this: if you clone yourself four times, one will be Chinese! That says it all about the manner in which the world perceives the ubiquitous Chinese – populated and copycats. There’s no doubt, China has become numinously overpowering and has integrated itself into the lives of people all across the globe by their sheer human power and the power to produce goods and services at a prodigiously unprecedented pace and volume. So much so that from Greenland to Antarctica, and from Middle East to Europe, if one were to try and search the origin of the products used in these countries on a daily basis, in all probability the ‘origin’ would turn out to be China. Be it your cell phone or the laptop, or even the engine of your car, everything turns out to be made in China. An original iPhone or even its look-a-like (with similar or more features), both are made in China. In fact, all this is known. But what is mostly unknown is the infrangible...

When two nations started upgrading one of their cities, one nation aimed to make it an industrial & manufacturing hub, the other aimed to upgrade it to be their only and biggest IT hub. Coincidently, both these cities are located at the south of the respective nations. But then, one nation chose a port city (to exploit the sea trade), while the other ignored the very economy of sea and chose a landlocked city. One has a land size of 7,434.4 sq km with a population of 9.94 million while the other has an expanse of 741 sq km but has a population of 5.7 million. These two nations are none other than the favourite choices of economic critics – China and India. While China went ahead with Guangzhou on their industrial spree, India settled down for Bangalore to make it India’s biggest IT hub. Both Bangalore and Guangzhou laid their founding stones in the early 90s, and by the end of 20th century, had established themselves as an IT and industrial hub respectively. But then, the differenc...

Mumbai has become a living example of how terrorists can come at their will, kill hundreds of innocents, destroy property worth hundreds of crores, instill a state of perpetual fear in those who manage to survive and thereby blatantly spit on the face of Indian sovereignty, time and again. And the best that we can do is offer condolences for the aggrieved, and wait for the next blast to happen. No doubt, we have attained a state of shameless vulnerability and have almost epitomised it. And that is the reason why since the last few years, the incidence of terror attacks has not only seen an unprecedented surge, but has become increasingly blatant, gory and on the face. It is as if a blast or two a year has almost become an annual ritual. And every such blast also blows away into pieces the resolve that our government had taken during the previous attack – calling it a bold step against terror. And the saga continues... The matter of the fact is that today, not only do we lack political ...

As a media house, from the very beginning, we have been extremely vocal about the Indian judiciary – and that’s why we have also started our bimonthly supplement of Governance Watch with a special focus on the judiciary. We strongly believe that a poor justice delivery mechanism has been the root cause of most of our problems. It goes without saying that India has a weak, or rather a limping justice delivery system, which makes sure that justice is denied in most cases; and even if delivered, it does not hold any value, thanks to the time (read lifetime) it takes to be delivered. By the Centre’s own admission, there is a staggering number of nearly three crore court cases pending at several stages in different courts of India. This situation is a deliberate creation of our successive governments. If criminals were to be punished, how would they rule? Thus, to make the rule of criminals easy, the governments in India over the years have deliberately kept the judicial system in our count...

A few years back, I had written an editorial on why Kashmir should be given independence. That article of mine invited a huge debate and a lot of ire from people who felt that I was being unpatriotic. If one just bases one’s responses on emotions, yes, it is hard to accept this independence proposition; but for all practical purposes, we would probably do more good to the region and its people by leaving it free, than by holding on to it forcefully. It is not that the government has not made an attempt, but all its attempts have backfired. As a result of all this, Kashmir has long back lost its charm of being the heaven on earth. Unfortunately, those are its people who have been perpetually at the receiving end and have actually experienced a near hell-like situation in the region. And it is not just that they have been living under constant fear and surveillance, but also that basic freedom has become a thing of the past. From laws that prohibit prepaid cell phones connections to ban ...