Passionate About India

Almost a month has passed, since a teenaged girl in Guwahati was molested by a mob and the video went viral all across the nation, but neither the state government nor the central government woke up to counter such a menace. This being one discreet case of molestation, the government could comfortably choose to ignore it at large. But then, the recent riots in Assam and now its retaliation in Indian metros, which largely got instigated through hate SMSs that went viral all across, highlight the repetitive indolent behavior of the government towards an entire set of people belonging to one region. The choreographed hate messages played a significant role in the migration of people of Northeastern states of India from cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai; and such a migration clearly is a blow to the pledge of a free India with equal rights for all. The government on its part banned bulk messages for 15 days, as well as multimedia messages of over 25 KB through...

Dear Muslim Brothers, I first thought of writing an open appeal to our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. But then I realized that it would be worse than banging my head against a granite wall. I also thought of making an emotional appeal to the President of the Congress Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi. But then, people far more powerful, important and experienced than me have tried doing that. When I read about the riots in Assam, I was slightly perplexed. Why now? And then I was bewildered when riots broke out in Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, a town that was spared communal violence and divide even at the peak of the Babri Masjid crisis. I was shocked when I saw visuals of a mob rampaging in Mumbai, desecrating and destroying even the Amar Jawan Jyoti. I was boiling with anger and helplessness by the time I read about how bona fide Indian citizens belonging to the Northeast felt so threatened that they were fleeing cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. And I ...

We are probably among those few developing countries that are pegged to be next superpowers but who still do not have any idea of their unemployment rates, birthrates, income disparities and actual poverty counts. This is quite clear just from our government data. Imagine; various commissions of the same government come out with separate reports on poverty that have different counts! If that was surprising, then consider the unemployment rate shown by different government agencies – the figures vary so widely that they seem to be of different nations than of one. Our NSSO surveys go steps ahead. Firstly, the data takes inordinately long, many quarters, to compile, assemble and analyse; secondly, the credibility and accuracy is still always under doubt. And finally, our census count, which is the worst of all. While most countries are undertaking their census exercises every year in order to comprehend the real-time social and economic situation of their respective countries, our census...

I had written this after the Virginia Tech shootout and I write again – capitalism is a great slave, but a pathetic master. This truth unfortunately gets lost in our chase for that elusive dream... especially in America, the land that has been marketed as the land of dreams – the Great American Dream. It’s the dream of being independent masters of our lives, the dream of making big bucks and the dream of being happy – even if that happiness is being bought by money, which all of them chase out there. No doubt, the US, on its part, has been fairly successful in creating material comfort aplenty. It has upped the living standard of its average citizen to an extent that it stands amongst the highest – even if that is a result of more than 200 years of unbridled growth and exploitation. Thus, the shop window of Americanism looks lucidly attractive; you’ve got all of them standing there – from Bill Gates to Michael Dell – in Tommy Hilfigers and Ralph Laurens! And that is what has made the r...

One needs to be a Sanjay Dutt to fetch lakhs in auction for his work, and that too while serving his jail term. For other prisoners, even a few hundreds is a boon. Indian prisons are still more like Nazi-era concentration camps than being places for correcting the guilty. With over 3 lakh prisoners packed across 1200 plus jails, the government is shamelessly unable to manage these centers and has reduced our prisons to human slaughter houses, where self-respect, dignity and morale are butchered at every single moment. Prisons in India are not only a liability on society but have lost the very essence of their objective. Let me discuss this issue point by point. Most of the prisons in our country (barring two or maximum three) are a cost for the nation. The total expenditure on all prisons combined, across the nation, was estimated to be around Rs.2,69,726.80 lakhs during the year 2010-11, with every prisoner, on an average, costing the exchequer Rs.19,446.60 (2010-11 data)...

It doesn’t require the world to point out that Manmohan Singh is a puppet Prime Minister! The question actually is, who is the “real” Prime Minister? Unlike the perception of many, I don’t believe that Sonia Gandhi is or was the “real” Prime Minister. It was Pranab Mukherjee, the man who was virtually running the entire show of running the nation, while Sonia managed Manmohan and a large part of party politics. Can you believe it that out of a list of 40 plus EGoMs (Empowered Group of Ministers), Pranab Mukherjee was heading almost a whopping 66%? Yes, that’s the truth; Pranab Mukherjee was not just Congress’ crisis man, but also the man running the government and its intricacies. No wonder then that Congress was so nervous about announcing his candidature. And had it perhaps not been for the Mamata jolt, Congress might have still tried to think about alternatives! Now that the man – who should have been Prime Minister in place of Rajiv Gandhi long back, and definitely in place of his ...

I was watching a movie in the first floor of our house that fateful afternoon of '94 when that call came and changed our lives forever. It was my mother who had called from the ground floor of our house to inform me through her uncontrollable tears that she had just then received a call that my younger brother had died in a road accident. I rushed down hoping against hope that it was someone else. My dad was sure it wouldn't be someone else – as I drove our car frantically towards Gurgaon where the accident had happened – and advised me to drive slowly. He had done his maximum possible to see to it that we never developed a fascination for motorbikes. An avid reader of about a dozen papers everyday, my father was definite that a motorbike was a sure-shot route to disaster on Indian roads. So the soonest he could, he bought a car for us. I still remember that day in 1993, after he had bought a fifth-hand 1977 model Toyota, he entered the house, lay down on the bed in a relaxed m...