So, What Kind of Ashamed or Proud Indian Are You?

I do not remember exactly when but sometime in the past 10-15 years or so, a phrase caught the fancy of people in India. “Mera Bharat mahan,” it said in Hindi, meaning, “My India is great.”

This happened much before the current ruckus around Prime Minister Modi’s remark to the effect that Indians have turned from being ashamed to proud in the past one year (presumably under his rule). The social media largely took it as an insult that the insinuation was that Indians were an ashamed lot before they elected him and his party BJP to power. The hashtag #ModiInsultsIndia started trending furiously.

The two “items” above are somewhat related and symptomatic of a virulent divide that can be seen playing out on social media, in various clubs and other platforms, among different “stripes” of Indians.

The arguments are seen flying thick and fast, without much justification or civilized discussion, often taking an ugly, unintended or tangential turn. The prevailing attitude is: my way or the highway.

Let’s first see the different sides of people in India.

One side, let’s call it Side A, comprises a small majority that wears its pride on its weapons of noise and nuisance. Some in media call them the “saffron brigade” but I find it silly to use the otherwise nice and healthy moniker “saffron” (which represents the color as well as the substance) for a motley bunch of trouble-makers. Members of Side A keep coming up with inane remarks or pronouncements once in a while, usually with distorted notions of what being a Hindu means and often with little or no impact on the society at large. (But the media adds turbo aviation fuel to their puny fires and makes the whole affair seem like a conflagration. More on media in the Side D part below.)

On another side are the majority of “common” people, Side B. In India you can see them everywhere: on railway platforms, in bustling markets (not malls), in buses, toiling in the fields or at construction sites, in factories and offices, and several other places where “the milling crowds” can be spotted. They belong to multiple religions. One way to define their commonality might be that the wealth manager of a bank wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. Constituting 70 to 80% of Indian population, they are primarily busy worrying about the next meal or sticking to their work or job. Mostly, they have no business about this “proud Indian” thingy.

Let’s call the political class, Side C. What? Why are you laughing?? It’s we, people of the page, who have elected them (in whatever fallacious ways democracy works in India). With two of them, Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi, hopes of positive change surged among the electorate in recent times—but more recent events concerning both these “special characters” are quickly dashing those hopes into the dust. (Now a third character, a curious sort, is going around on padyatras (walking journeys) after taking a two-month-long holiday and flip-flopping about what he should be doing or should not be doing—and the eyes of the nation are watching his handsome face with bewilderment mixed with suspicion or sycophancy, take your pick).

[Also read: Why Kejriwal is right about being scared?]

It is an open secret in India how its political class has failed every test: be it making India an egalitarian society, controlling population (or pollution, for that matter), achieving self-sufficiency in defense or technology, or any other parameter of the human development index. Yes, there’s one thing they have excelled in: filling their own coffers and making sure their next seven generations are taken care of, especially at the cost of common citizens they are supposed to “serve.”

[Also read: An Open Letter to Indian PM Narendra Modi]

Side D can be considered to comprise media folk (for the sake of simplicity, I’m including both mainstream and social, though it’s not so simple, I know). Barring some very, very few kindred souls, whose hearts ache for real, investigative reportage (though they may not be able to produce much “journalism” for want of financial or editorial patronage), the majority are happy-go-lucky, shouting, rash, brash, prejudiced, hurried and harried types. The kind you see on TV shoving mikes in people’s faces for “bites,” or trying to out-shout a battery of “personalities” speaking simultaneously in ominous voices from small squares on the screen, or the ones belting out quickie articles without much thought or corroboration of facts...You get my point, right.

The growing, prosperous class of entrepreneurs, businessmen and industrialists can make up Side E. They are not bothered about who is in power: they want electrical power for their machinery. They are not bothered about corruption: they want their things done. They are increasingly losing patience for long-term planning: they want quick results (read money). To be fair, there are a few conscientious, honest guys (and gals) in this category, but they are too few in number and just too difficult to find, especially in a “developing” India.

The majority on Side E are like the storied baniya (person of a caste in India thought to be shrewd at business since old times) who told Yamraj (an Indian deity said to appear at the time of one’s death, a la Grim Reaper) when the latter asked him whether he would like to go to heaven or hell: “Jahan do paise ka fayada ho wahan le chalo bhai!” (“Take me wherever there’s some profit to be made!”)

I have often seen such businessmen chant “Mera Bharat mahan” with an impish twinkle in their eye rather than pride in their heart.

There’s another, much smaller class, though. Side F defies stereotypical categorization but you can be sure they do exist. I’m not supporting or endorsing anyone, but I’m talking of the Anna Hazares, the E Sreedharans, the MS Dhonis, the Khemkas of India who are doing what they must to salvage, nurture or enhance whatever pride India is left with after centuries of foreign rule, exploitation, ignorance and misdirection. Here I would also include people with some sense of discretion and a modicum of education and decency in their head who can perceive all the histrionics going on at the moment. They may lack monetary means or political capital or influence but they have wisdom in ample supply.

Sure, there are overlaps and inter-connections among the above sides. But the point is, before you go batty over the question of hurt pride, you may want to look at which side you are on. And, along with that, consider how you would like to answer these questions:

* Who are the people in India who have the right to take pride in being Indian?
* What are the specific things to take pride about India—from its glorious past as well as its jumbled present?
* Is there a proud future for India as a whole in the next 10, 20, 30 years? (Don’t quote GDP only, please!)
* What are the various ways in which that pride can be hurt? Which of those ways are most harmful to India in terms of real impact? How much time should be spent on discussing minor hurts versus that spent on taking effective measures?

Maybe it’s high time we stopped getting on our high horses every now and then and, instead, started putting things in their right perspective. No short-cuts but long, even arduous pathways; no slanging matches but exchanging well-reasoned arguments; no shouts, nor murmurs but just the right tone to convey the right sense of pride in the right context.

An Open Letter to Indian PM Narendra Modi

Dear Narendra,

I’m addressing you with your first name even though you are the Prime Minister of India. This I’m doing after taking a cue from you during Barack’s recent visit to India (Barack, as you very well know, is the President of the United States of America, also known by the quaint acronym POTUS, especially, I’m told, by the legions of security personnel who protect him from known unknowns, unknown knowns or whatever…you get it, right?).

I hope you now have some breathing space from your jet-setting schedule and from entertaining world-renowned guests to tea at expansive lawns, amid the sharing of stories of courage and hardship from your childhood and youth. You, like your bespoke tailoring suit, rock, man! I know this because you yourself have told everyone loud and clear at multiple forums.

And even though you have tried to share your Mann ki Baat (matter from the heart) on state-sponsored radio, something tells me you are hiding a lot deep down your 56-inch chest.

In all possibility, this hiding may be causing you undue pain, pain that is hidden from this cruel world that only knows to laugh at, ridicule and criticize politicians rather than show any empathy.

The other day, I overheard a bunch of wealthy businessmen chuckling at your discomfort. One of them remarked, “Bechara Modi! (Poor Modi) He must be sick and tired of one or the other of the Sangh Parivar making some religiously loaded or divisive comment every now and then. If this goes on, his economic agenda will be derailed sooner than Kejriwal can change his mind!”

As of writing this post, Kejriwal hasn’t but Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India’s long-ruling Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, is probably thinking of changing his mind about something critical in his life—perhaps because he couldn’t change the sinking fortunes of the Congress party in the last general election.

But then I digress, so let’s come back to you…

You apparently set in motion a Modi wave that swept through the poor country that India is. The millions of jobless youth, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs whose businesses were suffering because of UPA-II’s scams and indecisions (and the handful of mega-industrialists who had billions riding on that wave), among countless other voters, brought you and your party to power.

It’s possible that the pain in your chest is a manifestation of all the unfulfilled election promises. And it doesn’t help that your poll prospects from the rest of India (after Delhi) wherever elections are due are seen to be declining.

I know you have tried hard to package old Congress wine of policy schemes and structures into swankier new bottles but, unfortunately, many people want results, not hangovers.

Every now and then, there are comments from one business tycoon or the other, including some international credit rating agency, that the prospects of growth have begun to look good for India. But there are contrary opinions as well.

At least one industry shouldn’t be complaining: media. I have seen your ads on innumerable pages of newspapers, on hoardings all over the city, on so many websites where you would least suspect them to appear, and wherever there has been space to accommodate your well-bearded, avuncular face. And I have not yet reached the state of naiveté where I can believe that the media moguls have given you space for free because they are all Modi bhakts (devotees) or consider splattering those ads an act of patriotism.

Let us get this straight: I’m all for ads because they affect me too, for I’m also part of the media industry. But I think spending on building toilets and recycling waste will be more effective than saying, “Clean India, Clean India!” or “Swachh Bharat, Swachh Bharat!” a hundred thousand times.

Allow me to take just one example: I sometimes use the public loos in Delhi where a lot of swanky urinals were installed in ex-CM Sheila Dixit’s tenure (around Commonwealth Games I think). But hell, there is no water or flushing system and people just keep pissing into the ceramic receptacles ad nauseam.

Would it be possible to divert some of the tidal water from the Modi wave to flush out the filth in the capital’s urinals? (Other cities and towns would be worse off, I presume, and also in need of urgent watery intervention).

Another instance where I can speak from personal experience is the poor state of data connectivity. While your government has quickly launched some websites and your social media machinery is quite active, those gestures do not a Digital India make. I know, I know, other initiatives are in the works—but my fear is that as far as broadband connectivity in India is concerned, it has been always in the works for the past 10-15 years (many other “comparable” nations, meanwhile, have zoomed past India in “digital index”).

Narendra bhai, everyone knows your full name and that you are the PM of India by now. Ab naam ki nahi, kuchh kaam ki baat chalu karo! (Now start talking of the work rather than the name.)

I know you sleep fewer hours than many of your other, able-bodied political brethren. But please remember that hundreds of millions of Indians still sleep on an empty stomach. And those who do get their fill, still have no choice but to empty it in the open.

As of now, shit is one of the biggest things we make in India. The pun, though unfortunate, is intended.

You must fix a lot of things before India can proudly unleash its “lion” out in the world for its roar to be heard.

Maybe you can start by doing more and saying less.

Railways, Connectivity and Governance

The trio, in their intertwining ways, may be set for a big leap forward if the new Modi government follows its intent with propelling power

Like a lot of people who chug along a nostalgic track at the mere mention of Indian Railways, I also imagine a black chhuk-chhuk engine billowing smoke as it majestically pulls on the sturdy red bogies in the uplifting backdrop of verdant hills.

I'm also reminded of an old slogan played numerous times on Doordarshan: Bharat ki rail: hum behtar issey banayein, aur iska laabh uthayein. (Indian Railways: let's make it better and benefit from it.)

As we all know, the idyllic image of yore gradually gave way to a realisation that the world's largest rail network also became one of its most burdened, creaky and squalid. What primarily happened over decades was that nobody made it better (not the passengers, certainly not the government) while everybody used and abused it to the hilt.

There were a few attempts at betterment in the form of Rajdhanis and Shatabdis, but largely, much of what exists today was built or enabled by the British (with Indians as labourers, true)—with occasional tweaks, tricks and “expansions” by the Independent babus and netas.

To me, one of the most useful and significant changes came in customer service through electronic ticketing. (The guys at CRIS have done a humongous job.)

So it came as a whiff of fresh air when the Modi government announced its intent and a few ideas to modernise the Indian Railways and make technology a driving force for that endeavour. Among the things that the PMO has suggested are Wi-Fi connectivity on all passenger trains in three months and the use of closed-circuit television for monitoring cleanliness (in addition to security, of course).

Earlier in July, the government had announced a Diamond Quadrilateral of high-speed trains (that some in the media referred to as semi-bullet trains!)

The most important announcement, in my own view, concerns the mandate for different but allied ministries and departments to work together (highways, water resources, transport, etc.) As most people in IT know, silos are often bad for agility and performance—and governance couldn't be any different.

In another positive sign last year, RailTel, the telecom arm of the Railways, launched Railwire broadband service in certain areas of the country. Around the launch, RailTel MD RK Bahuguna had said that it is designed to provide “an open source content delivery platform for providing various services, including broadband internet, eHealthcare and eEducation,” among others.

Imagine what Modi & Co could achieve if they were to expedite the process and get the maximum out of RailTel's 50,000 or so kilometres of fibre optic network: for the benefit of the Railways; for the sake of better and wider Connectivity; for what is the raison d'être of Governance—benefit of the masses.

Maybe it's time to dream a different dream.

Abki Baar, Technology Apaar

When you sit down to write a post on the very day election results in the world's largest democracy are announced, it is hard not to be touched by the surge in people's mood.

But that's just about how much I'm going to give it leeway for. Like Kejriwal would have said (or should have said): Miles to go before we sweep.

While we have seen and heard a lot of I-told-you-so's, cries of wolf and not-fairs in the past few days (ever since the upswing for Modi/BJP appeared on the horizon), there is so much work to do that any victory parade is not only premature but uncalled for.

It is hight time the conversation moved to setting things right: the sooner, the better. And time it moved from the prolonged kerfuffles on caste, religion and laddoos to a well-reasoned discourse on nation-building, mess-clearing and forward-moving.

The key pillars of such a conversation, in my opinion, are legislative, industrial, technological and environmental—which, if taken cohesively together, will lead to a rise in India's stature and improvement in its human development index.

In the tech aspect, which is our concern here, there have been several lost opportunities in the past 10-15 years. To give but one hint, we celebrated the year of broadband several years back, but are we a broadband nation yet?

Sure, we have done really well in software exports and the BPO sector, but as a consumer and “owner” of technology, we are way, way behind others.

Thankfully, things are at a stage where they can take off big time—and if the new decision makers in government would just give them a nudge, it would help.

Already, India is said to be the No. 2 market for Facebook in terms of user base. Over 40 million smartphones were sold in the country in 2013—a three-fold annual increase. And around 250 million Indians use the Internet.

And yet there is no IT manufacturing to boast of. Much of the apps and content used here are either developed elsewhere or their IP is owned by firms abroad. Most of the young IT graduates entering or working in the industry are “code mules” rather than cutting-edge programmers, creative types or risk-takers.

To put it straight, even if tritely, the ICT scenario in India is not developing holistically.

For some initial years of its growth and recognition on the world stage, it might have been all right for India to follow a lopsided or opportunistic model. But for India to stake the claim as a true IT power,  the ICT story needs to be accelerated as a whole. What the government must do is press the pedal and shift the gear.

Files to go before we tweet.

India and the Morality of Corruption

A scathing look at the state of corruption and its root causes in the world's largest de-Mock-racy

For the past few weeks, corruption has become a fashionable topic in India. Starting from Anna Hazare's fast over Lokpal Bill to Baba Ramdev's anti-black money drama, anyone who's got an opinion is voicing it stridently. There's a flood of opinions in electronic media, in the papers and on the chatter of Facebook and Twitter.

But all this brouhaha is the product of an increasingly and shamelessly corrupt nation. And it would hardly result in a major change in the way politicians and bureaucrats have been looting the country.

Before giving my reasons for saying so or suggesting any semi-cooked corruption-curing recipes of my own, let me state where my loyalties lie.

I'm neither with BJP-RSS-Sangh types nor with the Congress or its multiple splinter groups, nor with any just-for-name's-sake-group on any social networking site. I am with the proverbial and much-abused common man who, while all this media circus is going on, is busy carting a back-breaking load of supplies through our ramshackle markets.

I'm with the man who is trying to survive with meager earnings from his nondescript kiosk-shop. I'm with the girl who must hurry home if she doesn't want to be raped or teased and who hasn't got a chauffeur-driven car to take her home. I'm with the homeless beggar who is being harassed by the policeman and the gangster alike. I'm with the farmer whose irrigation water is diverted to serve five-star hotels and resorts...

In fact, I'm with about 700 million poor people of India who never understood the meaning of Shining India and probably never will.

Let me take you a little back in time. I'm not sure how many of you would appreciate it, but I grew up on an ample dose of all-round prosperity shown on Krishi Darshan (a government TV program). It was also taught in school books and preached through a state-controlled media.

I was under the impression that the founding fathers of this nation had done a great job by putting together a wonderful Constitution. And by following in the footsteps of our erstwhile rulers (the British), they kept a gargantuan bureaucracy as well-oiled as you would find in a spanking factory.

How was I to know that all that oil was actually grease, exchanging millions of palms for the enrichment of their owners alone? How was I to know that while our leaders threw out the tyrant rule of the British, they wittingly or unwittingly installed a draconian regime that thrived on abusing power?

I wouldn't bore you with all the details of a newly Independent, proud India with great leaders having a great vision for our great nation. But the bottomline is this: our population control measures have failed. Our aging infrastructure (much of it bequeathed to us by the British) is deteriorating. The sub-standard products made by our 'license raj' industrialists have mostly failed to stand against global competition (do a count of how many products we buy come from China and elsewhere). Our socialistic mutlipoint programs and hare-brained schemes have failed to give social security to the poor...

The list of failures just goes on and on.

But yes, we have succeeded in creating a vicious, greedy, bloated and extremely corrupt 'governance' system. And at the tentacled head of this system sits that obsequiously dynastic, shamelessly appeasing and pathetically spineless 'grand old party' – with a foreigner madame and a stooge of a man currently at the helm.

This otherwise useless party seemed to have done a good thing when it opened up the Indian economy in the early nineties. But, alas, it all came a cropper!

While the license raj was being disbanded, a new band of robbers and looters emerged – and they were of all forms and persuasions, comprising politicians, bureaucrats, land grabbers, deal brokers, thugs and curmudgeons.

This band set out in earnest to divvy up the natural and other resources of the country. They did it largely among themselves, but threw away some bits and pieces off and on for the rising middle, lower middle, lowest middle and god-knows-how-even-lower middle classes.

Some crazy statistics were rustled up about the benefits of all this 'wealth creation' trickling down to the lowest rungs of society. Never mind that the trickle has been nothing but a stinky obnoxious drain.

If you are stats oriented, chew these: more than 75% of Indian population has a purchasing power of less than Rs20 a day. Nearly half of Indian children are malnourished. About 110 million agricultural workers found employment for only 209 days in 2004-05 compared to 220 days in 1999-2000. Around 150 of India's 607 districts are engulfed in Naxalite movement. And while the much-touted GDP growth races ahead in the 7-9% range, employment growth has been a meager 1%...

In these twenty or so years of liberalization, one of the most 'liberalized' things in India has become honesty and integrity. While the slogan of India's freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose was “Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhein azadi doonga” (You give me blood, and I'll give you freedom), the prevalent leitmotif in an increasingly corrupt India has become “Tum mujhe ghoos do, kyonki main kisi aur ko doonga!” (You better give me bribe, coz I gotta give it to somebody else.)

Mera Bharat mahaan, indeed! (My India is great.)

It is this ghooskhor or bribe-infested culture that seems to have captured the absconding imagination of a few lakh people (a handful in the colossus of India) all of a sudden.

Ask any businessman – from the local chaiwalla to the global Ambani – about the number of times they have to bribe the multiple power brokers in order to survive (in Ambani's case, thrive).

Ask the owners of the buildings in any Indian city (most of which are truly ugly and urgently in need of fresh air) whether they could have erected those eyesores without making “the authorities” turn a blind eye to their multi-storied plans?

Hell, ask yourself, would you be able to survive the daily horrors of getting a gas connection, registering a property, obtaining a government stamp of approval, securing school admission for your child and innumerable such “tasks” without paying any bribes to someone?

So, in a broader view of things, almost all of us are corrupt.

But the way in which the high and mighty are corrupt – and the way they engender this culture of corruption all around them – calls for special discussion.

Imagine a unit of society in which the head of that unit is corrupt. The unit could be a family, a resident welfare association, a local governing body, a state government or the central ruling formation. This head goes about lining their pockets at the expense of others, asks and permits others to do as they please so long as all those “involved” get their “cuts”, and generally remains unaffected by the misery of those way down below in the hierarchy. How do you think one can cure this unit of the curse of corruption?

By asking those at the bottom of the ladder to not pay bribes? By just complaining about the situation and the whole machinery? By pressing the Like button on someone's anti-corruption page?

No, dear reader, of course, not. And that's precisely what we the people of India seem to be doing. From the above example, I'm sure you would agree that the most effective way of making the unit corruption-free is to remove the head of the unit and replace him or her with an honest, caring one.

And that's where the biggest challenge for India lies. My question is, who do you install in place of the current corruption-laden ruling parties in India? Which national-level party today is without the stains of corruption?

A bigger and related question: Do we have any leader of the stature who can clear up the mess in our heritage-rich but idea-poor country? Can anyone take India to the social, economic and scientific heights achieved by the likes of US and Japan (or by its own people centuries ago)?

Is there anyone who can ensure that calling India a superpower in the making is not a laughing matter but a matter of progressive achievement? (For one, I laugh out loud at such peasant-like thinking, given the way things are going.)

Who is going to be that person? That leader?

Anna Hazare? Hmmm, perhaps, but let me think...

Sonia Gandhi? I was so happy that she refused to be Prime Minister (PM) – only to be much angry later when she installed that puppet-puppy PM...and we all know how many corruption scandals have erupted. Why, you are reading this article because of that!

LK Advani? Gadkari? Narendra Modi? No way!

Baba Ramdev? He doesn't see himself in politics – and neither do I!

Rahul Baba? He has neither the credentials nor the credibility (what he has is the Gandhi dynasty and a boatload of sycophants)...

You? Me? What are we talking about!

Alas, my dear reader, no one. To my eyes, there is NOT A SINGLE human being (as far as that weary eye can see) with the moral courage, impeccable integrity, caring humanity and a wide support base who can lift India out of the abyss of corruption and then take it to the greatness we are so fond of remembering.

And so? So we keep on trying (or pretend to), while the millions keep on dying. Sorry, CK Prahalad, despite your philanthropic economic advice, when it comes to India, there's only misfortune at the bottom of the pyramid.