Recipe for disaster – the Maoist problem
The recent confrontation between the security forces of India and the Maoist extremists in the state of West Bengal is a sure recipe for disaster. On the one hand is the corrupt egotistical government of West Bengal, on the other are a handful of extremists who purport to hold up the interests of the impoverished tribals in the area of Lalgarh. At the bottom of it all is another power struggle. But this time the stakes are much higher than eny such struggle before.
The main reason for the difference in this unrest and the others preceding is the explicit support of the tribals and the local population for the Maoists. In most other civil unrest areas in India the individuals who support the movement (without actively participating) prefer to stay hidden from the eyes of the government. But not so over here. And there is a solid reason for that.
The locals over the past many years in West Bengal have been exploited to the fullest. Tribals and ethnic populations get exploited everywhere in India. However prosperity eventually provides some relief as the general living standards improve. West Bengal perhaps is one of the few states in India where the quality of life has deteriorated over the many years that the Left has been in power. Rampant corruption in the government is hidden behind politicking and boastful talk about equality and equal opportunity. The fact that a large impoverished population (indigenous as well as from across the border) is being exploited, is carefully hidden behind petty politics and arm-twisting of local administrative organizations.
The average villager in West Bengal is worse off than in neighboring states – in spite of the fact that West Bengal had one of the highest literacy rates in India at one time ( along with Kerala). These people are then easily influenced by extremists like the Maoists who at first seem to offer a better life than that offered by the state. The locals believe that the only way their lot can improve in this world is by aligning themselves with the Maoists. The Maoists on their part have made sure that they seem like the “better government” with good and quick delivery of justice and other benefits like road-building projects etc.
However at the end of the day the Maoists also are another power hungry faction of extremists. Although their causes are genuine their methods are far from correct and effective. A show of power by cornering few villages and blocking off access to them is hardly an effective demonstration of power in a country of 1 billion people. They eventually got over run by the security forces and now they are “under ground” – whatever that means. The reality is they are still very much there. They are just a bunch of people among the general population and knowing their alliances by looking at their faces is an impossible tasks.
What is now going to happen are sporadic acts of violence as these factions dissipate among the masses and start their own small wars and protests. Its like cancer and by cutting up the tumor and allowing the pieces to flow around in the blood stream is just the best way to make sure that whole body gets affected with the disease. As for the local population – more numbers will join these secret organizations as mayhem returns while the “security forces” leave. The fact is the government in West Bengal has been ineffective in dealing with the problem of exploitation in the past many years – and the scenario is not going to change after the military initiative is over.
The ideal solution to such a problem is to make an aggressive development strategy after the forces leave. This will prevent the addition of more “fuel to the fire”. Also the local administrative organizations need to be revamped quickly to reflect the views and aspirations of the local populations. Representation from among the tribals has to be quickly inserted into administrative bodies – before these same representatives stoke the fires of rebellion among the tribals again. Its time that a comprehensive solution is determined, and the lethargy of the West Bengal government in implementing policies – is scrutinized by the center.
Ironically it would have been better for the state as whole, if the security forces had entered and evacuated the Writers Building rather than the Maoist headquarters. The real problem is not the tribals or the Maoists – its the ineffective and egotistical Left Front that is sitting like a malignant tumor in the middle of this most educated and culturally evolved state. They will eventually be the real reason why the whole state will go to the gutters.
Govt to bail out a leaner, trimmer Air India
“Govt to bail out a leaner, trimmer Air India” was the headline on the Times of India news. I have seen Air India in action for quite some time now, and more than a bailout what they really need is a solid “kick out”. In the following few paragraphs I will try to explain why I have come to feel that way.
Let us first compare Air India with other carriers in India right down at the ground level. Private carriers in India are notorious for ridiculous cost cutting and general “pay all the way” attitude. They offer the minimum that can be provided without looking like a transport bus on wings. And yet whenever I have traveled with Air India it felt worse. The staff is mostly oblivious to your needs and have the air of the arrogant host rather than that of a polite service person. The private carriers at least make sure that the staff is not rude to the customer. I guess it is something to do with their perception about who pays their salaries. While the personnel of the private carriers know too well that they wont get paid if there are few fliers day to day – the Air India staff are secure in the knowledge that “government is going to pay anyway”. And the news headline is the best example of this fact.
In-flight service is the best differentiator for the private fliers. They compete with each other to appear courteous while trying to be cost-effective. Every cheap trick is used to make sure that the flier feels more pampered that he actually is. The service on the Air India flights charts the opposite course. They have all the means – but try to behave pricey and least bothered to create any impression, leave alone a good one.
Air India had all the advantage. They had reach and they had leverage. They could cut out original and value for money deals with the help of the different tourism departments within the government. They could make and sell “package holidays” better than anyone else could in India. They had the resources. But even today we rarely see a “package” where Air India is the flight service provider. All the great deals are with the private carriers.
To quote the Civil aviation minister Praful Patel :
The Prime Minister has said that the entire weight of the government is behind Air India. It is a national carrier and it is our pride. But there is a condition that Air India must put its best foot forward. The employees must realise that there is a problem and it is a cumulative problem.
It has been way too many years since privatization started in India, for the employees to realize that “there is a problem and it is a cumulative problem”. They are really beyond repair. And this constant bailing out is not helping at all. When the bailout is guaranteed, their will only be just enough incentive for the “paperwork being done”. Any improvement in the services or the organization as such will just be the figment of the fliers’ imaginations.
The airplanes Air India uses sometimes compete with the crew in looking older and more gray haired ! Sometimes on a rough landing – I used to feel that the plane was just holding on. I imagined the jaded technician going through the motions, without any hope of an honest appraisal of his work. I imagined the contract management teams taking kickbacks and filling the planes with under rated and low quality spares. I imagined the usual government machinery at work. And then one day I met a colleague who had worked in their maintenance teams before. Voila – my imagination was quite spot on ! All he had to say was that he was surprised most the flights could even take off !
Someone please tell our honorable minister that Air India is definitely our national carrier but not our “pride”. Rather, they are a facet we like to collectively hide from outsiders. You will be hard pressed to find an Indian who bragged about the great time he had with Air India. We often tend to forget to mention the fact that we arrived on the national carrier. Its like avoiding to say “I could not get a seat anywhere else !”
The minister added :
Until and unless serious steps are taken to improve the functioning and the financial viability, it would be difficult for the government to continue supporting the airliner
Why not say impossible rather than difficult. Even better - say f*** y** you piece of sh**. And let them drown within the cesspool of collective lethargy and utter corruption. I would support a minimalist “national carrier” with just enough flights for essential services and government personnel. Everything else should be completely privatized. There definitely is a need to monitor standards – but that should apply to all carriers. Anyway I have more often seen private corporations have better standards than the government ones, except a few which are worse – Reliance for example.
When the whole oragnisation is a problem – one should get rid of it. Trying to repair it is like repairing an old run down car – you fix something, and something else falls apart ! That has been quite the case with Air India, for a long time now. The pilots go on strike, the staff go on strike and almost anyone who is someone in the organisation always chooses to throw his/her weight around. Its time we got rid of the “government scale malignant tumor” and start from scratch. Let the idiots fight for their survival. Maybe they just might turn the corner themselves. At worst we will have less delays because of these slow moving monkeys.
The Endpoints and the Connections …
The traditional view of the “living” world is that of organisms inhabiting it, while they interact with each other and the environment to produce the “buzz” of life. Each organism is an entity and humans along with all other animals, understand the world around them from the perspective of the “me” or “I”. Every plant and every animal has a rudimentary consciousness and the greatest display of this consciousness is in us “humans”.
As humans have progressed over the times the conscious part became stronger and soon was able to overcome our animal selves. Our actions were determined more by our thoughts and less by our instincts. Although there has always been a glorification of the “instinctive” persona, the cogs and wheels of this world moved mostly to the tunes of “discussions” and “exchanges of thoughts”. Our corporate culture is the best example of an area where people with foresight and networking skills are preferred over the “raw” types.
However now the ways of the “living” will change. Before the advent of computers and the Internet our thoughts mostly lasted as long as we did. Except the charismatic leaders and people with “reputations”, almost every body along with their ideas were forgotten after a few years post their demise. But now our thoughts live – in hard-disks, Google accounts , Facebook , blogs and what not. The electronic media is rife with ideas and thoughts. Although mostly in a disorganised mass of digital information – our thoughts have finally found avenues to live longer than our bodies.
So let us examine this situation from a fresh perspective. We have always perceived thoughts as extensions of the person. That is because the person came first and then his thoughts. However now as our thoughts have learnt to survive beyond the individual – the thoughts are eventually going to come before the person. That is because as more of our thoughts get trapped by the immortality offered by our digital toys, they will eventually cluster and form strong “lines of thought”. And every new person born will more likely than not – fall on one of these lines. Thus we will come to this world – attach ourselves to the “thought”, work for the “thought” and then leave some of us in the “thought” as our physical selves dissolved in death.
Connections are Humans !
In the new world the thoughts will live and the people will die. The nerves in their brains will provide temporary vaults for these thoughts. Some of the minds may become the “labs” for a “line of thought”. Other minds may just help in making the “line” stronger. Eventually, if we have complete convergence of our mental and digital selves – the thoughts will become the “real” living beings more alive and longer lived than the mortal humans.
If we ever manage to produce artificial intelligence – we will make sure that we will become “unnecessary” in the long run. The beauty of artificial intelligence will be its exponential nature of evolution. Humans have had to evolve physically to become “more intelligent”. Our unit of “intelligence’ is our brain and its bound by the skull and the hardware inside it. There is really no such limit for an “artificially intelligent” being. It will be able to evolve exponentially from generation to generation. Eventually it might not need any “generations” to evolve.
If we combine the above concept with the the concept of immortal thought – we can start getting the picture of the new “way of life”. Our minds and brains will become the connections and the thoughts themselves will become the endpoints. The strongest “line of thought” will become the God of our existence. So omnipresent and inherently potent that no single human or “thought” can overcome it. Hopefully this “line of thought” will include the requirement of human existence even after the “artificial” life is created. Otherwise we may be headed for a slow but sure extinction !
Peddling the “science” or the lack thereof !
Scientific Vastu !
Going through the papers the other day , I came across this wonderful advertisement about “Vastu”. Now Vastu is a touchy subject in India. Almost every one here knows its mostly crap. But almost everyone will never want to engage with bored fat housewives who will usually believe in all this.
So “Vastu” survives along with the cottage industry doling absurd advice to absurd people. Part of the reason that it is so resilient to debunking – is that it usually has some nuggets of knowledge in some nooks and crannies. It’s like a cocktail of common-sense facts with a generous dollop of “absurd science”.
So lets examine the advertisement on the left. The first section is the common sense – switch on the lights to dispel depression. Along with that you can dispel the “evils of darkness”. Ghosts maybe ? Apparitions ? Or maybe just the harmless evil of “tripping over the telephone cord in the dark” !!
The second section attempts to explore the science behind ringing bells. Now make no mistake – there is definitely an explanation behind the allure of the sound of ringing bells. That explanation usually includes the science of hearing and how we react emotionally to various sounds. But the “science” in this advertisement ventures further.
We get to learn that
Bacteria have a hearing mechanism
Bacteria die when they hear bells ringing
Now that’s quite a lot of “science” in a few lines. Perhaps the author might care to explain which peer reviewed paper he is quoting. Or maybe the paper he is quoting is from a tattered book of the village quack.
The last part gives us some insight about the author of the advertisement. A certain doctor (PhD ?) who specialises in “removing vastu defects without demolition”. Also this person can sense negative and positive energies. What a package! I say this person should pay a visit to the Writers Building in Kolkata. He will find so much negative energy that “demolition” might be the only option left !
Ten ways to lose Twenty-Twenty
Looking at India’s despicable run chase in the just concluded match against the English (in the ICC twenty-twenty world cup), I felt like enumerating the ten most important ways you can lose a twenty-twenty cricket match !
- Who looks better ? (On the field)
1.) Push the third time losers like Ravinder Jadeja up the ranks so that they can make their test match debuts in the Twenty-Twenty format. The funny side of the whole affair was his face. He has more expressions than a monkey on heat. But he had no shots unfortunately.
2.) Come in down the line with mammoth expectations like Yuvraj, and then get stumped while your backfoot hangs above the ground like a limp phallus. Here I must give some credit to the man. He puts an honest effort all the time. Better luck with Kim Sharma.
3.) Come in as captain like Dhoni and then start playing like an entry level cricketer playing his first Ranji trophy. I wonder if Dhoni stopped getting his milk. Maybe he should head to the nearest cow and stick his head under the udder. He looked more like a “doodh pita baccha” than the captain during the match.
4.) Get cocky like Harbhajan during the usual interview halfway through the match. He thought it was a “good pitch to bat on” . I thought his lack of foresight and intelligence is a “good pitch to Bet on”. There is nothing like making cocky statements like that and then coming a cropper.
5.) Get all confused with loopy bouncers. Suresh Raina needs to understand that he is no good if he can only play “good length balls that come on to the bat”. He looked like a guy trying to fly a kite. His expression after his dismissal , conveyed the distinct impression that he wanted to hit the ball higher in the air – so that all the eleven on the fielding side could get underneath it !
6.) Put a kilo of white sunscreen on your face like Gambhir and then play like a zombie. He needs to get his act together before he lands up being the “borderline case” all over again. The guy probably put in the best efort in the whole side. But alas … it was just too little. The better thing to do would have been to take a swipe at Jadeja, so the guy could be removed from the match and thus improve our chances.
7.) Come in like the next Nemesis of the balling and then drag the ball to your stump like Mr. Sharma at the top. Sharma looks confident. He moves confident. He gestures confidantly. He does everything right in terms of the show. And then he plays like a third time loser. I wonder if he was thinking this was the IPL – and there would always be “another match” surrounded by those foreign babes swinging their booty at the ropes. Come on man – can you please grow up !
8.) Win the toss , and then mis-read the pitch and then choose to chase just because you lost the last match playing first ! ( Which is what I think our good captain had in mind anyway !)
9.) Play like a opener in the third last over. This one must be the best way to lose the match without getting blamed for not trying hard. Our great players were taking the “ones and twos” diligently while the required rate was 12+. Qualifications for playing in the Indian should include proficeincy in basic math !
10.) Play the “same team” in all the non-consequential matches. And then start doing the experiments in the important ones ! This probably is the single best way to confuse your own team members and lose the important matches. Suddenly we see “new” faces when the most important match comes up !
The Indian team has this uncanny ability to make benign cricketing sessions look like russian roullete. Their confidence is as thick as the ice on a frozen lake during a warm summer. Some one just needs to jump a little hard, and the whole surface of the lake cracks up. At the end of the match all I could say was – “well we deserved to lose !”
