On A Loose End

I can't make up my mind, whether to call this moral policing or gross stupidity. Or maybe it is just a part of the hypocritical double standards we have or then again maybe people just do not want to open their eyes to reality. Slumdog Millionaire opened in India last week in English and Hindi. The Censor Board of Film certification, in their wisdom have given an "Adult" rating to the English version and a U/A rating to the hindi version. Ostensibly the reason for this discrimination is the excessive usage of swear words in the english version. The swear words have been bleeped out in the hindi version. Does it not sound like the censor board thinks that Indians don't swear at all. Yes, there are puritans in India who do not, but imagining that no one in India has ever used the swear words or have not heard a few from the non-puritan people is closing one's eyes too much. Especially when one talks of people living in the slums, well they are the ones who do not fe...

The news channels as well as the news papers of the country are shamelessly covering the shameful event of Mangalore to no end. What happened in Mangalore is a major threat to the very idea of freedom. Freedom of any kind. Unfortunately this is not the first time the freedom in this country has been usurped by vested interests of some individuals, singly or collectively in a group. The politicians of the country and at times the law enforcement agencies in this country have time and again turned a blind eye to the perpetrators of such crimes and even when they have been forced to take action, which they have pretty reluctantly, they ensured that the guilty got away scot free. How impotent can a nation and her citizens get? What kind of a constitution did our forefathers make that permits gross violation and abuse of the tenets of the constitution as well as the laws of the land? Fanatic groups based on region, religion, caste, creed, language etc have been allowed to fester in this lan...

I had posted an article earlier regarding the Mumbai Attacks titled Gallant Soldiers Die Differently . The post discussed our failure as a society to understand the difference between loss and sacrifice, sympathy and 'pride'; innocence and valour. Today at the Republic day function the failure was legalized by presenting an award meant for Sacrifice, Pride and valour to make up for the loss, sympathy and innocence. Awards have traditionally been the best cover-up for failures. No, I am not saying that all the personnel who get awards don't deserve them, In most cases they do. What I am saying is that if one wants to cover-up a bungled operation, negligence, failure the best thing is to turn the incident on it's head and then pretend that it was something that couldn't have been prevented and the incident would have led to much more death and destruction had the agency or agencies in question had not handled the situation with the efficiency and professionalism that...

The movie Slumdog Millionaire released and as expected by many, walked away with honors at the Golden Globes and is likely to do as well at the Baftas and the Oscars. Suddenly out of nowhere came Amitabh Bachchan and slammed the movie for projecting India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causing pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots. Strong words indeed, coming from a megastar and the doyen of Indian commercial cinema. Amidst uproar from all quarters Amitabh Bachchan denied his statement and claimed that he was misrepresented. He need not have done that. What Amitabh said was right. It is a fact that the movie presents India in a poor light. Maybe his timing was wrong, but then, he was never a good politician, as history tells us. The slumdog phenomenon started a long time back with the Indian authors making it a success mantra. Dominique Lapierre started the phenomenon with A City of Joy. The book was a hit and so was the film. The smarter and the more ...

20 Jan 2009, Inauguration day, will be a historic day when Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the USA. You can watch Obama Inauguration Live Online with Streaming Video totally free. The various links which will cover the Obama inauguration live online with streaming video are at http://www.xomba.com/watch_obama_inuguration_live_online_streaming_video

Taare Zameen Par and Aamir Khan have been brought down to earth at the Oscars. Critically acclaimed, whatever it means, in India, the film and Aamir Khan were showered with accolades here in India but could not make it even to the last nine in the foreign langauge film category of the Oscars, out of 65 entries. That it made it to the 65 itself was possible because India was supposed to nominate one film and the wise men selected Taare Zameen par and any film nominated by India would be in the 65. So, no points for making it to the 65. The rejection of the film at the first level itself signifies the standard of films made here in India. There are a lot of technical factors involved in making a film and I can say, without being in the Industry, that the Indian movies are a lot of unadulterated but sweet bullshit with lots of pretty faces going through the motions. Technicalities, if any, beyond the ones required for shooting the film are something which are dug up by the critics after t...

The Satyam fraud seems to have come at a real bad time. The economic scene in India was taking a turn for the worse, despite the Government telling everyone that the Indian economy was fairly insulated. Two stimulus packages and three rate cuts later, the Government was still going on about the insulated economy when Ramalinga Raju decided to wake up the Government. Shaken up, the Government is, at the moment, what with the general elections staring down on them. Add to that the state assembly elections in Andhra pradesh, where Satyam is based, their woes have been compounded. Initially there were a lot of bold statements from the ministers about Satyam being a corporate matter and not having to do anything with the Political governance, now murmurs have started about a potential bailout package by the centre. Does Satyam really merit a bailout? Or will it be just an exercise in killing the truth? The politicians of this country have as usual confused the term bailout. Bailout is the a...

A friend of mine once told me about the futility of Collective Bullshit. He was talking in terms of a boss bullshitting his subordinates collectively. He said, “It is simple, whenever the boss is bullshitting collectively, one needs to just look at some other person in the group and the entire bullshit gets deflected to that person.” In other words, everyone looks at some other person as if that person is the culprit and that way every one can keep his/her own conscience clean. The same holds true for collective responsibility also. Let’s take, for instance, the Mumbai terror attacks. When the question of responsibility came up everyone right from the Home minister of India, the chief minister of Maharashtra, the deputy Chief Minister and Director General of Police and the Mumbai Police commissioner refused to acknowledge their responsibility. The Home Minister of India had to be forced to resign by the congress part and did so very reluctantly, as did the Chief Minister and his deputy...

Satyam Fraud, Mumbai Attacks! It may surprise some, using the two incidents in the same line or the same breath. Fact is, irrespective of how different the two incidents might be, they have affected many people across the board. So what is the common factor that the two have? Complicity and/or connivance of Government agencies including Politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, regulatory agencies, enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies and whatever else one can think of. Essentially, both were classic example of failure of Governance, one political and the other corporate. After both the incidents happened everyone feigned ignorance and indulged in shameless blame game. It happened in the case of Mumbai Attacks and is happening right now in the case of Satyam. If Mumbai attacks were not a lesson in importance of coordination and joint efforts, the State and the central governemnt are hell bent on stealing the thunder and making any kind of investigation impossible. First the state Polic...

There was a news item recently that Sanjay Dutt would be the candidate of the SP (Samajwadi Party) from Lucknow in the forthcoming elections. It is hardly surprising. The Political Parties in India are only interested in winning seats, they couldn't care less about the eligibility and the background of the person. Anything as long as the person can get in the votes. Considering that Sanjay Dutt is the right man for politics. Sanjay Dutt, by Indian standards of Politicians is highly eligible for contesting elections. He does not have any college degree to boast of. He does not have any background in Politics. He has been a drug addict in his younger years. He has been convicted and sentenced to 6 years RI under the Arms act( Rigorous Imprisonment ) in the 1993 Mumbai Blasts case. Everyone knows that his acquittal under TADA was largely influenced by his sister Priya Dutt, MP of the congress party and her association with Sonia Gandhi. What else does one need to become a politician i...

Update - Mr Raju has been granted bail in the Rs 25000 Crore fraud. This after nine months of treatment, for God only knows what, (He couldn't have been pregnant) in a hospital. What he was there for, what kind of disease was this which could not get cured for nine months and will get better now that he has been granted bail. The health dept is obviously in connivance with Mr Raju. The judiciary too seems to have now joined hands with the rest of the governing agencies and has granted bail to Raju. Satyam - the word means truth in Hindi. The company sure did not live up to its name. The Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju’s has admitted that Satyam Computer Services Ltd’s Balance Sheet was manipulated rather fabricated had its usual effect on the market, the sensex went on a downhill slide and no one knows where it will stop. It is a fraud worth Rs 50 billion, no mean amount. In the long run, the Satyam fraud will have long reaching consequences on how the markets operate, corporate gover...

Received this post in a viral mail. Excellent write up by Karan Kharb. Must read to understand the divisive and vote bank politics working in our country. Surprising that the media also toes the same line. It is often said that in democracies people get the government they deserve. What is even truer is that they also get the quality of security they deserve. Is there a difference in 'loss' and 'sacrifice'; 'sympathy' and 'pride'; 'innocence' and 'valour'? We all know there is a qualitative difference and the value of 'commission or omission' in performance becomes vivid and clear in events involving high risks. There should therefore be an appropriate qualitative difference in the Nation's way of conveying its gratitude or sympathy through grant of honours and awards for the sacrifices and assistance to bereaved families. Here are a few points to mull over:- 1. Innocent Casualties. Hemant Karkare and his 'Quick Reaction T...

In yet another incident of a road traffic accident an 83 year old gentleman was killed by a 15 year old driving a motorcycle. The boy obviously did not have any license. The boy was let off on bail and the Police was still to decide whether the charges should include culpable homicide not amouhnting to murder. I fully sympathise with the family of the deceased and agree to the offence of the boy. But there are other aspects to this case which obviously our much enlightened society will not bother about. The pedestrians in this country are a lawless breed. In fact, if one permits, i would like to term them as walking terrorists. Everyday these lawless people terrorise hundreds and thousands of motorists on the Road. The irony is that while the motorists are paying road tax, the pedestrians do not and still use the road blatantly. To add to it everytime a motorist hits or even nudges a pedestrian, he not only has to bear the brunt of the public but also face the law. The pedestrians in ...

The Professionals Party of India is the 232nd political party of India. The party has been conceived and formed by a group of professionals based in Pune. The party is registered with the Election Commission of India and is striving to fight elections on the basis of the, till now largely untapped, potential of the middle class of India. The official website of the Professionals Party of India or the PPI is at http://www.ppi.net.in/ The concept behind the party is a long cherished one amongst the Indian educated class, who know for sure that things could be better. It is a move in the right direction and if it succeeds it could turn the fortune of the country towards the better overnight. The party has indeed made the right statements on their blog and in their manifestoes. However, implementation of the ideas and the concepts is something which is a different ballgame altogether. I have not interacted with any of the members and my only touch with the Party is through their website, ...

Gandhi had a rule for people to follow to be good; See No evil, speak no evil and hear no evil. The phrase has often been used to describe people who do not want to get involved in a situation. Gandhi even had three monkeys to depict the rule. Monkeys that they already were, the behaviour of the Indian politicians and the government is akin to the phrase except that they seem to have taken the rule one step further. They have stopped seeing and hearing completely and are speaking only mildly without any malice and without any evil. What else does explain their inconsequential mutterings on the Indian war against terror? Pakistan has blatantly switched statements, opinions and stances based on their convenience and more than 40 days after the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government is still crying foul and running here and there to any world leader of significance who is willing to give them a listening ear. The government wants the world community to act, rather than do something themsel...

Some people never learn. Salman Khan for one and all the law makers for the other. The Mumbai Mirror reported, in a rather patronizing manner, that Salman Khan on Friday had five to six drinks of Vodka at Olive and after that drove an auto rickshaw with Katrina Kaif sitting behind. Read the article at http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=MM&BaseHref=MMIR/2009/01/03&PageLabel=27&EntityId=Ar02700&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T The article goes on to report that Salman has made a habit of it and has in the past driven around with Govinda and Willard Carroll. The way it was reported the reporter seemed more worried about Katrina Kaif's discomfort rather than the lives of innocent bystanders who Salman may have run into under influence of the Alcohol. Salman Khan in the past has run over people in a case of drunk driving. Despite that the man would not learn and so doesn't the media and the public and of cours...

Circumstances – Massive dip in the oil prices world over. Good news - A few days back Air India announced a fare cut by 45 to 85 % in various sectors. Others are likely to follow suit. Bad news – The cut was limited to the basic fare charged and not on the fuel surcharge. What is happening, one might be tempted to ask. If the fuel prices have gone down, the fuel surcharge should go down, why the basic fare. There is a lot of economics at work here. This is an example of a Government aided scam. Let us try to understand it. The fuel surcharge here in India was introduced in Nov 2005 for the airlines business, primarily to offset the volatility in the prices of fuel and hence the Aviation Turbine Fuel or the ATF. No, it is not the brain of some over-intelligent Indian economist; it has existed in the west for a lot longer and has pervaded other sectors too, besides the aviation sector as it will, in our country too. How does the airlines company benefit? On the face of it, it might seem...