From the sublime to the ridiculous. From the orderly conduct and salutary results of the election, to the ugly scramble for portfolios by our greedy politicians. How selfish are these “leaders”, how narrow their minds.
The coalition setup in the last five years was marred by the blackmailing tactics of the junior partners in the Government. Some ran their portfolios as private fiefdoms. The Prime Minister seemed to have no voice even when ministers like T.R.Baalu and A.Raja took highly questionable decisions that attracted charges of massive corruption. When an alliance minister is answerable only to his party boss and not to the Cabinet, it is coalition adharma.
There were several paragons of corruption in the last Government. But the DMK was special because it projected the view that India was just a part of Tamil Nadu and Tamil Nadu a part of the family estate. How else can we explain the DMK’s proprietorial demand of nine specified berths?.
Don’t forget that the proposed ministerial list was headed by son Azhagiri, daughter Kanimozhi and grand-nephew Dayanidhi. Isn’t a modicum of administrative experience necessary for a minister in such a vast and complex country as India? Azhagiri’s experience is confined entirely to the streets of Madurai. Kanimozhi has hardly ventured beyond poetry. Yet, they are fit to be rulers of our great country because their father loves them.
But then, do we have a right to fault Karunanidhi if he puts his family’s interests above his country’s? The Family First thesis was elevated by Indira Gandhi into a major plank of patriotism in India. The promotion of sons, daughters, wives, nephews and girlfriends has become the most outstanding feature of our democracy. Politics is the preferred family business today.
The Congress continues to spearhead this idea. Look at the way the Prime Minister publicly pleaded with Rahul Gandhi to accept a ministerial position. See how every Congressman attributes the present victory to Rahul Gandhi’s brilliant campaigning and brilliant tactical thinking. Manmohan Singh is hardly given any credit although his quiet efficiency and clean image have been major factors in the Congress victory.
To be sure, Rahul Gandhi is an energetic modern-minded young man and therefore an asset to political India. So are Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot, Navin Jindal, Jitin Prasada, Priya Dutt and Supriya Sule. But so, too, are Shubhra Saxena, Sharandeep Kaur Brar and thousands of others. The first lot got on top because they are the children of their fathers. Not the second lot.
Shubhra Saxena came first out of nearly 12,000 men and women who wrote the final IAS examination this year. She has IIT background and international work experience which makes her, in terms of qualification and ability, equal to the Deora-Pilot-Jindal-Gandhi lot. But she won’t be on top of the political heap because she is middle class and her father and husband are neither famous nor wealthy. Same with Sharandeep who came second in the all-India rankings.
For that matter, someone like Indira Nooyi (of Pepsico fame) was once reported favourably disposed to a political appointment in the US. Why are such people of proven quality not available to the political leadership in India? At best they can only become unseen, unheard-from backroom advisers, like Sam Pitroda is to Rahul Gandhi.
Our system is strong enough and will eventually triumph. But the first step to that victory is the recognition that political power as a family right is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Thanks to Indira Gandhi, it has became a reigning concept in India. The concept gives opportunities only to those who have the right fathers. It is bad for India. It must go.
.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Call for entries for Environment Film Festival: Quotes from the Earth 2010
Quotes from the earth: The Environment Film Festival (2010)
4th-5th Dec 2010, New Delhi
Organised by Toxics Link and India International Centre, New Delhi
Call for Entries
Toxics Link invites film entries for the upcoming ‘Quotes from the Earth: The Environment Film Festival, 2010’ to be held on 4th-5th Dec 2010 at India International Centre, New Delhi.
Criteria for choosing a film
The films should be in and around the environmental milieu and be able to bring to the fore a subject/issue/concern on it. The films should preferably be recent, however a film from the past not gained much public attention but deserves it is an amiss. Of the entries, the films to be screened will be selected by a panel that includes experts from the field.
Film makers send in your entries with the completed application form latest by 1st of September 2010.
Application form can be downloaded directly from http://toxicslink.org/filmfestival/2010/web/films.html
For further information please visit:
http://toxicslink.org/filmfestival/2010/web/index.html
RSVP:
Anjali Pandey - E: anjali@toxicslink.org Ph: +91-9990180880
Nitin Jain - E: nitin@toxicslink.org Ph: +91-9810759190
Toxics Link
H2, Jungpura Extension (Ground Floor)
New Delhi - 110014
Tel: +91-(11)-24328006, 24320711
Fax: +91-(11)-24321747
Email: info@toxicslink.org
4th-5th Dec 2010, New Delhi
Organised by Toxics Link and India International Centre, New Delhi
Call for Entries
Toxics Link invites film entries for the upcoming ‘Quotes from the Earth: The Environment Film Festival, 2010’ to be held on 4th-5th Dec 2010 at India International Centre, New Delhi.
Criteria for choosing a film
The films should be in and around the environmental milieu and be able to bring to the fore a subject/issue/concern on it. The films should preferably be recent, however a film from the past not gained much public attention but deserves it is an amiss. Of the entries, the films to be screened will be selected by a panel that includes experts from the field.
Film makers send in your entries with the completed application form latest by 1st of September 2010.
Application form can be downloaded directly from http://toxicslink.org/filmfestival/2010/web/films.html
For further information please visit:
http://toxicslink.org/filmfestival/2010/web/index.html
RSVP:
Anjali Pandey - E: anjali@toxicslink.org Ph: +91-9990180880
Nitin Jain - E: nitin@toxicslink.org Ph: +91-9810759190
Toxics Link
H2, Jungpura Extension (Ground Floor)
New Delhi - 110014
Tel: +91-(11)-24328006, 24320711
Fax: +91-(11)-24321747
Email: info@toxicslink.org
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Common Wealth? Games -2010
We might all have missed the point about the Commonwealth Games: the problem is not in the games but in the Commonwealth. Britain took the event seriously when it began life as the Empire Games, for it was a good opportunity to find out how the natives were getting along in approved pursuits. Even the Queen is no longer interested in a collection of countries that don’t take orders from her, have little in common and less by way of wealth.
Why then should Usain Bolt be interested? There is neither the financial reward of professional engagement, nor the prestige of an Olympics medal. The CWG is the ultimate competition of also-rans. The most versatile athlete at the Games is probably going to be the acrobatic Katrina Kaif, who may not be much good at the 100-metre dash, but is the undoubted star of the 100-metre-wide wriggle and writhe which will surely be the most interesting event of the two-week tamasha.
The Games were never about sports. They were a fortuitous opportunity for Delhi’s ruling class to divert a vast fortune from the national exchequer, in the name of national prestige, and spend it on just those few parts of India’s capital where the elite lives. As patriotism, despite its many virtues, is also the last refuge of the scoundrel, a healthy part of the money was siphoned off, evidence of which has begun to move towards the front page.
Trenchant critics like Mani Shankar Aiyar could be falling into a trap when they pray for calamity. (By the way, which would you prefer: a good monsoon or a good CWG?) The oldest PR ploy is to deliberately lower expectations so much that even if the event is halfway average it can be billed as a triumph and all memory of corruption can be washed away in the ensuing gloating and self-congratulation. You have to be seriously stupid if you cannot get a few stadiums in shape after spending Rs 35,000 crore, and we should never underestimate the intelligence of the corrupt. So expect Delhi to have the Games without a hitch: the weather will have improved; the streets will be light on traffic because locals will be on holiday and tourists absent; athletes will get their feed thanks to last-minute contracts at inflated rates; and a Rs 40-crore balloon, bloated with controversy, will provide adequate laser lighting to Katrina’s sultry gyrations. Sports will merely be a boring hyphen between excellent opening and closing ceremonies.
Would David Cameron, prime minister of the premier Commonwealth nation, be caught, dead or alive, at the opening ceremony in Delhi? As his extremely successful visit to India last week proved, he is, sensibly, far more interested in a bilateral relationship with India than a disjointed, multilateral extravaganza, even though Britain is the mother of the Commonwealth. The only flaw was our disconcerting tendency to call Cameron “Cameroon”, but this was the hangover from a far more successful sporting event, the football World Cup. We will have mended our ways by the time he drops by again.
The relationship between India and Britain must be one of the more astonishing success stories of history. There is a moving anecdote about an argument between Kasturba and Mahatma Gandhi during their last detention, in Pune, after Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement in 1942. Age, and life with a difficult, indomitable husband, had begun to wear “Ba” down. Once, seriously ill, she chided her husband for pitting impoverished Indians against the might of the British Raj. Why, she asked, did Gandhi want the British to quit? India was a vast country, and they should stay, but as brothers, not as rulers. This, replied the Mahatma, was precisely what he had been telling the British.
Kasturba, who did not live to see freedom, would have been pleased this week: Indians and the British have become, almost imperceptibly, brothers. Britain and America are mere partners. Cameron admitted, during his Washington visit, that Britain was the junior partner. There is no seniority in the equal British-India relationship. Scottish jute mills were once the largest employers in India; Tata is now the largest employer in Britain. There is far more genuine, if latent, sentiment than both countries are loath to admit. While political bonds might be stronger across the Atlantic, India and Britain are united by unnoticed details of cultural contiguity. Cameron would scoff down a curry without a thought, for curry is as British now as Indian. But look carefully at the photograph of Cameron eating a hot dog, in Mayor Bloom-berg’s company, in New York: his lower fingers twirl away in implicit disdain of the unfamiliar. Hot dog on main street is not Cameron’s fav-ourite fast food.
And now that the ranking dove in the Indian Cabinet has decided to purchase 57 British Hawks, things can only get better.
Why then should Usain Bolt be interested? There is neither the financial reward of professional engagement, nor the prestige of an Olympics medal. The CWG is the ultimate competition of also-rans. The most versatile athlete at the Games is probably going to be the acrobatic Katrina Kaif, who may not be much good at the 100-metre dash, but is the undoubted star of the 100-metre-wide wriggle and writhe which will surely be the most interesting event of the two-week tamasha.
The Games were never about sports. They were a fortuitous opportunity for Delhi’s ruling class to divert a vast fortune from the national exchequer, in the name of national prestige, and spend it on just those few parts of India’s capital where the elite lives. As patriotism, despite its many virtues, is also the last refuge of the scoundrel, a healthy part of the money was siphoned off, evidence of which has begun to move towards the front page.
Trenchant critics like Mani Shankar Aiyar could be falling into a trap when they pray for calamity. (By the way, which would you prefer: a good monsoon or a good CWG?) The oldest PR ploy is to deliberately lower expectations so much that even if the event is halfway average it can be billed as a triumph and all memory of corruption can be washed away in the ensuing gloating and self-congratulation. You have to be seriously stupid if you cannot get a few stadiums in shape after spending Rs 35,000 crore, and we should never underestimate the intelligence of the corrupt. So expect Delhi to have the Games without a hitch: the weather will have improved; the streets will be light on traffic because locals will be on holiday and tourists absent; athletes will get their feed thanks to last-minute contracts at inflated rates; and a Rs 40-crore balloon, bloated with controversy, will provide adequate laser lighting to Katrina’s sultry gyrations. Sports will merely be a boring hyphen between excellent opening and closing ceremonies.
Would David Cameron, prime minister of the premier Commonwealth nation, be caught, dead or alive, at the opening ceremony in Delhi? As his extremely successful visit to India last week proved, he is, sensibly, far more interested in a bilateral relationship with India than a disjointed, multilateral extravaganza, even though Britain is the mother of the Commonwealth. The only flaw was our disconcerting tendency to call Cameron “Cameroon”, but this was the hangover from a far more successful sporting event, the football World Cup. We will have mended our ways by the time he drops by again.
The relationship between India and Britain must be one of the more astonishing success stories of history. There is a moving anecdote about an argument between Kasturba and Mahatma Gandhi during their last detention, in Pune, after Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement in 1942. Age, and life with a difficult, indomitable husband, had begun to wear “Ba” down. Once, seriously ill, she chided her husband for pitting impoverished Indians against the might of the British Raj. Why, she asked, did Gandhi want the British to quit? India was a vast country, and they should stay, but as brothers, not as rulers. This, replied the Mahatma, was precisely what he had been telling the British.
Kasturba, who did not live to see freedom, would have been pleased this week: Indians and the British have become, almost imperceptibly, brothers. Britain and America are mere partners. Cameron admitted, during his Washington visit, that Britain was the junior partner. There is no seniority in the equal British-India relationship. Scottish jute mills were once the largest employers in India; Tata is now the largest employer in Britain. There is far more genuine, if latent, sentiment than both countries are loath to admit. While political bonds might be stronger across the Atlantic, India and Britain are united by unnoticed details of cultural contiguity. Cameron would scoff down a curry without a thought, for curry is as British now as Indian. But look carefully at the photograph of Cameron eating a hot dog, in Mayor Bloom-berg’s company, in New York: his lower fingers twirl away in implicit disdain of the unfamiliar. Hot dog on main street is not Cameron’s fav-ourite fast food.
And now that the ranking dove in the Indian Cabinet has decided to purchase 57 British Hawks, things can only get better.
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