India's options post Uri - Common man's opinion

The attack by militants on the Indian military base in Uri has once again stroked public anger and vitriolic rhetoric in the political spectrum. While calls for military action and responsible restraint by India is being advocated for by different sides, this is a piece elucidating the understandings of a common man.

One, it is certain that the government has to react. Otherwise its inaction could fuel conspiracy theorists and worst of all, Pakistan's claims that this attack is a distraction from the recent unrest in Kashmir. While I don't (want) to believe in it, just words and no action from a government with absolute majority and that which had come to power chiding the previous establishment's restraint, raises questions.

Two, lets be honest that an all-out war is not in India's interest. Sure, Pakistan and the terrorist institutions within have to answer for the deaths of our soldiers but are we in a position to take home the victories even if we win the war? The war will never see the end with absolute surrender of either party. It is bound to invite third parties for mediation between the two nuclear-powered neighbours. India would have definitely put Pakistan in its place but the impact on our economic development would be huge right when India is trying to wield its influence in a multi-polar world. Also, the threat of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into extremist's hands ensures the survival of the arrogant Army-ISI power play in Islamabad. It doesn't help that China has huge vested interest in Pakistan's territories now which might draw it into battle. Also, its never good to be the first one to offend for our 'responsible power' status in the global standing. Cut them at the knees and goad Pakistan to mount an offensive that bars China from stating terms to india and instead negotiate with its side-kick.

Three, war is not the only option. While special ops to take out leaders of extremist organisation is a great alternative, the feasibility of the same is beyond my understanding. Diplomatic offensive is necessary, not just to isolate Pakistan but also to try drive home the point that Pakistan is in the wrong and that India's non-military offensives (as I explain below) are justified. The latter is very much important given that India's is trying to project itself as a power centre for the 21st century. A (potential) growing superpower can't have the majority of the world thinking it is arrogant unless it has the economic and military might to continue to grow despite being aggressive - case in point China.

Four, lets start doing what is in our power instead of waiting for the opportune moment. For starters, take Pakistan out of the (one-sided) Most Favoured Nation status and end trade with the irritating western neighbour. The government must be motivated to take this step given that the traders in Punjab have offered support to such a shutoff. India shouldn't just boycott the upcoming Saarc summit in Islamabad but also get the other nation's in the 8 nation bloc to shun the meet. It helps that Pakistan has (probably) decided to skip the Saar anti-terrorist experts meet, Afghanistan has expressed interest to stand-by India to boycott the summit and Bangladesh has chipped in to the narrative by calling Islamabad out for its support to terrorist organisation. Remember how Modi was successful in chastise Pakistan in G20, ASEAN and East Asia summits recently without offering an opportunity for it to rebuke for the sheer lack of its membership in these groups. The same could not be said of the recent NAM session in Venezuela. India should leverage its geographical, economical and political advantage in its neighbours, convince them to express solidarity and ensure an absolute boycott of the Saarc summit in November. Finally, pull the straw by tearing up the Indus Water Treaty. Actually, India should have torn it off years ago just for the sake of spite & economic advantages but the current situation offers a (politically)justifiable reason. 

Five, its not enough to initiate action, the real power is in sustaining these actions. While the recent incidents and the honey-moon with the US has gained us enough leverage for most of the afore-mentioned actions, it is likely China (and even US) might be pushed to persuade(force) India to stay its hand. This is where the government's actual diplomatic weight will be gaged. The narrative in point Three above and the demography & market that India offers could be the game-changers in such a stand-off with the giants. Access to the Indian market (or lack there of) could be the carrot (or stick) in these negotiations. The huge trade deficit with China is India's brahmastra. Just like we raised import duties on metal to support India's manufacturing industries in the recent past, the threat of such a raise on electronics & other commodities would send cold chills down the Chinese business spines (and the Communist Party).

There will be economic repercussions, India will not have a sweet ride on this path either. But the effect on our economy will be minimal and the pressure on Pakistan will be significantly higher teaching it a lesson and potentially solve the Kashmir issue once and for all. We should have the restraint to avoid getting into another 'Shimla Agreement' at the end of this tunnel, otherwise all would have been for nothing. Whenever I read about the 1947 war ending in India approaching the UN or 1971 war ending in the Shimla Agreement, I question the logic behind such a move, probably external pressure. Let's be clear that despite being the good boy in this duel with Pakistan we haven't been able to gain much traction to our narrative or settle the score. So, lets be the pragmatic power for once and change the focus of our history books forever.

Legal Awareness! Did you ever think about it?

With the government pushing the Digital India initiative and shifting its focus from literacy to digital literacy, information dissemination has taken a huge leap in India. Successful implementation of these initiatives will lead to a well-connected populace that accesses millions of bytes of data every second and becomes more aware.

In this digital era, corporations & media houses have been able to push their ideologies and notions in a well-concealed manner than before through native advertising (or what you may call content marketing). But is this the objective behind digital literacy & digital India? I would like to believe not.

Actual empowerment happens when the citizens start availing the government services through this medium & leverage it to protect their rights (not just freedom of expression).

While on one hand our judiciary is overburdened with millions of pending cases, on the other hand seldom does a common man resort to a legal course of action when caught in a dispute. We have grown to be more adjustive to day-to-day unlawful activities. For instance, did you ever question a shopkeeper selling a water bottle for higher than the MRP? or did you ever question someone who was riding on the other side & caused an inconvenience? The answer is mostly 'No'.

You can't be blamed since the efforts required to initiate a legal action is more cumbersome than adjusting to the inconvenience. Or is it really so? Actually, we as citizens are not aware of the rights & systems in place to resolve disputes legally and hence presume it to be complicated & unwarranted.

We have definitely come a long way in at least consumer dispute redressals but a lot more needs to be done. 

As I once read somewhere: 

"Power comes not from the barrel of a gun, but from one's awareness of his or her own legal rights".

The adventures of Hate'ism

We can call it racism, casteism, and what not, but the root cause of all lies in the bedrock of hatred and insecurity against diverse cultures, traditions and customs. Seldom do we try to understand the second person's predicament and jump to judgements based on their appearance. Well, before I bore you with my interpretation of such hate'ism let me tell you why I was moved to do so. The attack on a Tanzanian student in Bengaluru-a city supposedly progressive and pluralistic. There was the Dadri, Hyderabad and million other incidents which sparked the Intolerance debate but this happened in a city admired for its acceptance of varied cultures & customs and surprisingly none of the moral police and political honchos raising alarms at the raising intolerance were visible anywhere around the Bengaluru incident - maybe because it is too small a vote bank with no voting rights here.

With all the hue and cry over Indians facing discrimination in the Australia, US and other countries, we ought to be a bit more accommodating when interacting with foreigners in our soil. Although I don't intend to justify the mob's reaction in either case, but the worst part was that they attacked a Tanzanian for an accident caused by a Sudanese. Would the crowd react in the same way if an American had crashed the car and a Canadian came by an hour later? Despite suffering colonialism for over two centuries, are we still not out of our school of thought based on colour?

The genesis of this hatred lies in the insecurity over one's own self. The fear of losing out opportunities, the fear of losing control over the system and the fear of losing a pseudo-social ranking wherein one ranks higher than the other person compound and transform into animosity and grudge.

It definitely gets TRP and attention when someone starts talking about intolerance but very rarely the debates address the root cause of the issue or appeal to the viewer's conscience but are leveraged for scoring political points or staying in the limelight with ludicrous statements. At the end of the discussion it fills the viewers with more prejudice against the other side of the story than before.

It is time viewers started holding the journalists accountable for their presentation of facts and reporting for these are the people offering a platform for the representatives to score political points rather than arrive at a solution.

Chennai Sinks! Will the State too, next summer?

The 'cyclone moment' is not new to chennaites. Almost once every year, the city receives Indra's blessings, albeit a bit more than it desires. But in 2015, Tamil Nadu faced the wrath of nature with the rainfall breaking a century-old record. Let's not forget that a century back, the city and nearby districts were not so densely populated with concrete carpets. So the effect would have been as cruel as in 1918 with less than 50% of then record rainfall and hence the calamity is incomprehensible.

Every chennaite is proud of the IT corridor and the manufacturing sector that has blossomed around the city but all that pride was washed away by the realisation of the city's bad planning, or should I say non-planned growth. The Winter of 2015 will live in our memories for longest. It will haunt us for years to come with every big investment taking a page out of this calamity to move to nearby Andhra Pradesh which saw the CM getting on the ground to monitor the relief and rehabilitation in the cities bordering its southern neighbour.

All the goodwill the current administration had garnered with the investor's summit earlier this year and a plethora of social welfare schemes launched in the last four years has been shattered in a week's time. Chennai is the neural center with arteries leading to every district in the state, so it would be naive for the ruling side to underestimate the effect of rains in other parts in May 2016. Less than a year away from the assembly polls, political bickering has already started with the opposition using the winter struggle to win the summer battle.

Social Media has turned out to be both a boon and bane when the downpour struck us. While it helped us look beyond ourselves and assist those in need, it also created a platform for the so-called philanthropes to play their vanity and false propaganda. The incorrectness of information had hampered the relief operations and reduced the efficiency. 

I will not shy away from confiding that I am a sympathiser of the current dispensation, although my conceptions have been shaken a bit by the irresponsiveness of the administration during the deluge. But is it cause enough to vote against it? Or vote in favour of a party neck deep with corruption charges and record of poor management (let's not forget the 20 hour power-cuts in 2010-11)? or empower a coalition of multiple small parties with no leader? My answer would be a definitive 'No'. Let's not forget the fact that the calamity was of disproportionate magnitude and no government could have solved the problem in a week's time although the current one could have been more pro-active. So, let us not jump to conclusions and pass decree on the administration today for the harder part comes tomorrow. Millions of lives have been jolted with thousands homeless and entire districts under the fear of epidemic in the days to come. The government's efforts in putting people back on their feet will have to be observed and give it a chance to prove its calibre.

There are some things in life, especially politically driven that one can't help but look at in despair when information dissemination is biased (TRP based) that could lead to the establishment of unsavoury and inefficient governments. Of course, my hate for the opposition supersedes my dislike for the government's ineffectiveness in the last month, so take this piece with a pinch of salt.

In the Game of St.George's, Summer is coming!

Intolerance.

The buzzword of the year that proved a costly affair at Bihar for the BJP. This should be the waking up call for the party to set its house in order at first. While Modi talks of development politics, his minions have expressed opinions that raise grave concerns for many who supported the party at the national games last year. Still many hang on to a glimmer of hope for nothing but this: if the current establishment loses political capital, whatever little hope there was for reforms will be lost.

Indeed the literates have gotten too much attention towards India at the international level by returning their laurels but this is a two edged sword. While it might nudge the leadership to take actions against those stepping out of line, it also erodes the diplomatic and social standing of the nation at the global stage. Again if we really are an intolerant nation, maybe we don't deserve that high ground but the  world of politics had little to do with the logic of deserving and ethics. So, the government has got its hands murkier than before the Bihar polls by jumping into the pit with Lalu and hurling communal statements. Earlier it just had to convince a part of minority to drop the communal tag it has been labelled with but now even Modi's international charisma might lose luster and his support base contract.

Even I have been hiding behind the logic that if Congress was forgiven for 1984 and other numerous atrocities over the decades under its watch, so should BJP for ayodhya and godhra, but the hard truth is citing precedents is not the best form of defence in a criminal case-it establishes your guilt before your acquittal. So the ruling party has to act more like a democratically elected government instead of a loud mouthed organisation on a mission to alter history and beliefs of the nation. In the end, the towering claims of reforms & developing the country will fall on deaf ears if social security is snatched away.

As usual, I can't stop badgering the media this time either. While they have done a great job in highlighting the shortcomings of the ruling party and hitting its achilles heel, it has performed dismally when it comes to informing the society's shortcomings. While the news of beating up a muslim for eating beef was plastered all over, little was heard about the plight of upper caste victims here. The intolerance is no longer the sole right of upper caste Hindus but the right of every immoral bully in the country (sic).

I would say that we have become too tolerant in a way. Yes, too tolerant to  politics of caste and communalism, too tolerant to the bullies around us and too tolerant to the public representatives who speak hatred. Unless the society acts against this tolerance towards the unreasonable and vindictive minds, the list of communal violence victims will never end. So, lets do more than writing about intolerance and tweeting about it.

If you know your boundaries definitively, there is no room for quarrel over encroachments, so lets start by pledging to respect the freedom and rights of others before pushing in with our beliefs and customs.

Washout.!

I haven't been able to do justice to the title like this ever before. I can relate the topic to the subject in more than one way. Everyone (edit,thanks to a friend:well not everyone but only everyone with an ounce of interest in politics) would be aware of the washout of the monsoon session in the parliament, owing to the Congress raining on BJP's parade. I have been contemplating about writing on the deadlock in the parliament and a chat with an office colleague today offered the added incentive to pen my thoughts.

It is clear as a sunny day that Congress is losing its relevance in the current political landscape and the current hullabaloo in the parliament is one of its numerous attempts to gain some lost ground. The situation is partly the government's own doing. If it was not for the arrogance and over-reaching ambitions of the ruling party to expand its horizons in regions where it has no base like Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal has left it isolated in the arena. Even its allies like SAD are worried of its behaviour like that with Shiv Sena in Maharastra. They seem to be realising their missteps sooner than I thought. The courting of Mamata in Bangladesh and Amma at her residence by none other than the PM should hint the Congress that BJP has learnt to accept its peripheries and is becoming more of a centrist instead of a right-wing organisation. Although it has got less to do with its rightist ideologies, for someone like me they very attempt to allow room for regional players is enough to convince that it is indeed making an effort to bring everyone along. The government made strides in cooperative federalism when it managed to bring around majority of states to agree with a reasonable draft of GST and the deal with Bangladesh (getting Mamata onboard is a remarkable feat) is and will remain one of the greatest achievements of the Modi government.

In one of the daaru pe charcha with colleagues after office, one of our wannabe political analyst colleagues brought in the arguments over the performance of the current central dispensation. Views were mostly similar. Is the government better than Congress? Yes. Is it the government we expected when we voted for a majority BJP government in April 2014? Definitely not. As much as I discredit Congress for its nuisance at the Parliament, I wouldn't blame it for accusing the PM as an excellent salesman, for he is one. I wish he is also the ops guy. If he were able to implement yojanas and schemes instead of campaigns and proclamations, it would do more good to the nation. Well, I am drifting again. Back to the focal point-monsoon session and the entwined politics.

If it was the audacity of the BJP that left it desolate, the scare of losing their relevance gathered the disjointed opposition. One conspiracy thought in me was that BJP is ready to give up the monsoon to serve it cold to the Congress in the winter. In case the phoenix like Congress miscalculates its interim relevance to its reincarnation and decides to overplay its hand in the Bihar polls, say press too much in the seat-sharing talks to wreck the grand alliance it has so meticulously built, it will not only make it easy for the BJP to win but will also be stranded in the winter session. Assuming politics to be like the dice-game of Sakuni, it would be a masterstroke if the Modi-Jaitley-Shah trio offered Sushma-Shivraj on a plate to embolden the Congress momentarily to win the Bihar polls and concurrently smear the credibility of Sushma, to write her off in the medium term. Again, these are quite a conspiracy theories.

Is it justified to raise state issues like Vyapam gate or a case of nepotism (whatever the BJP says, the Lalitgate is a simple case of nepotism.Sushma's husband is Lalit Modi's lawyer) to create a brouhaha in the house? Absolutely not. While the Congress leadership might have offered the much-needed energy boost to its cadre, it has lost its credibility to be a critical opposition amongst the middle-class by being a cynical and frivolous one. One might argue that the government is to be accountable for the misdeeds of its members but lets face it, if we are to implement accountability in the letter, we would be left with none in the executive or legislature of judiciary. The Congress could have gobbled the credit by demanding a debate in the assembly and presented its case with facts and forced the government to take action instead of demanding resignations before debate. It has presented the case when it was the ruling party and BJP created ruckus. That is the worst possible explanation they could give for squandering the country's time and resources by hampering the proceedings: tit-for-tat. I wonder why no one has questioned the Congress for its dubious ploy,not the journalists or the parties on the sidelines of this drama like ADMK or BJD or the NDA allies.

It is safe to assume, everyone is in the game to save their own skin and not for the welfare of the state. I was becoming intolerant towards the Modi dispensation for non-performing till the monsoon session started but now my exasperation over Congress overrides my intolerance. With someone like RaGa as a replacement offer to Modi, I would say Congress is turning arrogant and over-reaching and in the process unwittingly strengthening the BJP's position. When will they learn? Or probably I am not smart enough to understand their masterplan. :P

Presence of mind

I recently read Mark Manson’s four stages of life piece. It was definitely an eye-opener. Often one gets into discussions with friends, colleagues and acquaintances on many a journey that revolves around the question of ‘purpose of life’. That piece helped me understand what I have perhaps always known. It is the legacy one leaves back and seldom is it driven my intelligence or pros and cons but rather passion decides the course of one’s legacy. One could say that our instincts are the actual masters in our decisions although most claim to base it on facts. Something that was reinstated in my beliefs after the latest episode 'The Jury Room' of the tv series by TVF.

In many an occasion we react to situations based on our instincts or should I say emotions. We have always been told to treat others the way we would like to be treated. One seldom recollects this piece of advice before responding especially under stress when it is vital. But my thoughts on this recently contradicted my intuition. Shouldn’t you treat someone the way they wish to be treated rather than how you would like to be handled. We all gain experiences and accumulate perceptions regarding various aspects in our life and these hardly match with the other person in a conversation. So it becomes increasingly arduous to conceal these prejudices, before expressing oneself. Even if we succeed that, the next task is to get a grasp over the other’s notions within the short span of conversation. Then comes the herculean task of doing these two thoughtfully and not completely emotionally. It might sound like advising ruthless pragmatism but even pragmatism involves emotions. Like someone retorted “Courage is nothing but dispelling fear” rising above the heat of the moment by understanding the feelings and preconceived ideas of the other person before reacting to a situation requires emotional intelligence or in simpler terms - presence of mind.

Of the three hurdles, two-not letting emotions prevail on our actions and discerning the notions of the other with respect to the topic of discussion-are accomplishable whereas when it comes to presumptions, it is not a walk in the park.For, of the former two, one is a control on self and the other is an experience gained in the course of interaction which can be fathomed. On the contrary, opinions are built over the years and are built upon the circumstances one has been through. Again, not all can be experts on all traits. So unless one gets off on the wrong foot, two out of three should help maintain the status quo in any plight.