India and the future of the world

It might seem that India has too much democracy - elections in one state or another every few months, a fragmented political establishment (with more than 40 parties represented in Parliament) and electoral processes that do little to strengthen a stable system built on two dominant parties. Indeed, some look with envy across the Himalayas at India's giant neighbour, China, which, untroubled by the vagaries of democratic politics, is in the process of stage-managing a long-planned leadership change completely from above.

By contrast, India strikes many as maddening, chaotic, divided and seemingly directionless as it muddles its way through the second decade of the 21st century. Another view, though, is that India is a country that has found in democracy the most effective way to manage its immense contradictions. This should be exciting, not alarming.

"India," wrote the late British historian EP Thompson, "is perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society... There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East that is not active in some Indian mind."

India expresses itself in many ways. Its strength is that it has preserved an idea of itself as one land embracing many - a country that endures differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, conviction, costume and custom, yet still rallies around a democratic consensus.

That consensus is the simple principle that, in a democracy, it is not necessary to agree - except in terms of how to disagree. The reason that India, despite predictions of its imminent disintegration, has survived the stresses that have beset it during more than six decades of independence, is that it has maintained a consensus on how to manage without consensus. This is the India that Mahatma Gandhi fought to free, and its turbulent politics is well worth celebrating.

Shashi Tharoor in AlJazeera. Here

Shashi Tharoor is not the end of the story...

On the evening of the first IPL semi-final, the news reports were arguably far more interesting than the match. It is only a matter of time before movies come tumbling out of such masala. Look forward to 'Lagaan’ on hormones and 'Sholay’ in designer suits. Kitney paise thhey, Kaalia?

Cynics have called IPL a circus. When you buy a ticket to the circus you get clowns along with lion-tamers, while trapeze artistes inspire the cheerleaders. But it does become a curious extravaganza when you can't tell the difference between who is who.

This much is certain: Shashi Tharoor was not the end of the story. He was the beginning of a serial.
From M. J. Akbar's blog on IPL circus. To read the full article click here.

God, Cricket, IPL and minting money

T J S George  writes :

We as a people have gifts no other people have.
Italy and New York, for example, are celebrated for their great mafia leaders. But those leaders could only think of routine stuff like kidnapping and smuggling and murder and protection money.
Only an Indian could think up the non-violent idea of making millions from the humble, rarely noticed stamp paper. Telgi never harmed a fly.

Indians have the rare genius to turn everything into an item of trade. Who else has turned God into such profitable commerce? We discovered early that this line of business required the least investment. And the returns are huge.

All it takes is the right kind of uniform—saffron robes or bishop’s cassocks or a neutral white that looks now like a saree, now like a winter shawl—and some kind of marketing mantra. Then you get enough believers around the world to keep you in eternal wealth, not to mention attractive fringe benefits provided by young devotees.

The God industry will remain by far the most widespread and lucrative of all business ventures in India. But ours is a vast and fertile land. There’s plenty of scope for all kinds of growth industries. So we have been busy developing the commercial potential of various other previously innocent ideas.

Cricket, of course, beats all other trading programmes, almost challenging the God business in scope and turnover. So many lakhs of crores of rupees are involved in the cricket business that the IPL presents its numbers in dollars and millions. Confidentiality, another word for secrecy, has been its watchword.
Could such vast sums be clean? Could they include black money, terrorist money, underworld money?
It is amazing that such issues attracted the enforcement directorate’s attention only when Shashi Tharoor and the Kochi franchise got into the picture.

Tharoor is a natural magnet for trouble, as a playboy who wants to be everywhere doing everything. But he is a bumbling Batman before Lalit Modi’s scheming Svengali. How many political VIPs are interlinked with Svengali? Will they ensure that any investigation is yet another eyewash?

Tragically cricket is no longer a sport. It too has become an item of trade, flourishing in a fish-market culture. May all the money-makers burn in hellfire in due course for destroying the decencies that made cricket cricket and the values that made India India.

To read the full article click here.

IPL, corrupt crorepatis and hunger!

Shashi Tharoor - Lalit Modi 

Do you know the cost of a ticket to watch a IPL match? It ranges from Rs. 1000 to Rs 40,000. The exorbidant rates have not dithered the audience who throng in thousands match after match. The economics of  IPL is mind baffling. With the Shashi Tharoor - Lalit Modi saga going murkier and murkier the IPL has been named as Indian Paisa League by a குறும்புக்கார TV channel.
Here is the other side of the story. You would not stop your tears when you read it. Harsh Mander writes in The Hindu:

 ‘Half the week we are able to eat roti or rice with either vegetable or dal. The other half, it is just roti, or rice boiled with salt and turmeric. But there are four or five days in a month when there is no food, and we have little option except to fast. If there is any food, we give it to our children, adding a lot of water to fill their stomachs. Any additional food goes to our men folk, because we women are used to staying hungry'.

But the children's bellies are still empty, and they are restless and clamour for more food. ‘It is difficult for us to bear their weeping', the women continue. ‘When the wailing of infants gets too much, we lace our fingertips in tobacco or wild intoxicants and give the fingers to the babies to suck. It helps them sleep even with nothing in their stomachs. If they are small, we beat them until they sleep, but as they grow older, we try to teach them how to live with hunger. It is a lesson that will equip them for a lifetime. Because we know that hunger will be with us the rest of our lives.'

To read the full article click here.