The Law is an Ass

When there is no law you don’t miss it, but when there is bad law, it can wreak havoc with peoples lives. The gross misuse of IT act in recent times makes you wonder whether it’s a misuse or abuse. I don’t wish to elaborate too much on a subject on which reams of newsprint and countless words in cyberspace have been used, but what is this nonsense about ‘’ Giving gross offence’’ or ‘’ Causing annoyance’’. These are terms so vague and arbitrary that the mind boggles. For instance, if I don’t like the color of your tie and if I made a snide remark about your fashion sense on social media, and if you happen to be a real hot-shot, you could pull strings and have me arrested for the post. That is how ridiculous the provisions are in the IT act, sec-66a. In fact the punishment for some actions are far more stringent in the virtual world than they are in the real world !

What kind of embarrassment is this law where it puts us to be in the same league as countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea when it comes to online freedom. The present IT act was passed by the Vajpayee govt in 2000 amidst widespread din without any debate or discussion and some amendments were made in 2008 by UPA govt, once again in the usual bedlam without any thinking. This appallingly bad law is bad enough for the ordinary citizens who are at the mercy of the average policemen; it is also a damning indictment of our legislatures to legislate good laws which are more in tune with the demands of a modern day society. We should not obey any law that is not worth obeying.

Talking heads

Watching the so called debate on the news channels every night can be a mind numbing experience. Firstly, it starts on a self righteous note where the anchor assumes a very self important roles for himself, them he starts asking loaded questions and wants every answer in sound bytes no matter how complex the subject is, he would put words in the mouths of the speaker and the next thing you know, what began as an earnest discussion, has descended into a shouting match. Matters are also made worse by the fact that we have such a paucity of talent on television who are able to inform and educate by cutting through the jargon. Generally there are the usual suspects saying pretty much the same thing, hedging their bets, not prepared to digress from the script. Add to it the incessant interruptions where it is impossible for a rare sane and reasoned voice to get a word in the edgeways. Not to mention the anchors pushing their own agenda, and you have a recipe for confusion worse confounded.   

Cricket & I

I didn’t tune in to the final days play of the 2^nd Test match between India and England. The writing was on the wall and I sort of knew the result that India were going to lose badly. Now you would hardly find a more avid cricket watcher than me. My love affair with the game is an abiding one. I was someone who’d get up early in the morning and watch India play in Australia only to see them losing and feeling lousy all day or depriving myself of sleep to stay up till the ungodly hour when the action shifted to the Caribbean and once again undergoing the same trauma only to come back to the same thing like an addict who is beyond reform. All the important incidents or events have been marked with cricketing reference points. There was a time when India lost a cricket match, the whole world came crashing down on me. I would have trouble sleeping, to have a normal conversation with anybody until the sweet smell of victory would act as a salve on my wounded soul.

But for the last couple of years something has changed or shifted inside of me. Of course, I follow the game and the fortunes of the Indian team, but not with the same zeal or intensity. When I examine the complexity of my emotion for the game that I have religiously followed, I come to the conclusion that other passions have taken hold of me like reading and trying to get to know the world around you a bit better. Then came the IPL, and that was the real turning point. Suddenly, this was not the cricket I identified or felt connected to at any level. Here was an over hyped, sexed up version of cricket with all the razzmatazz associated with a marketing blitz. It was an incessant assault on the senses. For someone who has always put the primacy of Test cricket above everything else, it was hard to deal with. I also got the feeling that everybody was just paying lip service to test cricket but deep down, the administrators, the players even a vast section of the audience was sold to the new commercial enterprise of twenty overs cricket. Then it dawned on me that if they lacked the ambition to take Indian test cricket at the top, why should I invest my emotions and support towards their goal of turning cricket into a pathetic imitation of franchise based American sports. It is not all gloom and doom when Tendulkar gets out cheaply, a loss against Pakistan doesn’t invalidates our identity as a nation. I have moved on to bigger and hopefully better things in life but every now and then a gripping test match gets my juices  flowing and I remember the good old days when I was a hopeless romantic when it came to Indian cricket.

Arundhati Roy

It never ceases to amazes me what a volatile reaction mere mention of Arundhati Roy engenders among otherwise most gentle and sober of peoples. Some things are beyond a shadow of doubt. She is one of the most gifted of writers in English in India at the moment. I believe ‘The God of Small Things’ is one of the best novel ever written by an Indian. The artistry and the craft of the haunting prose stirred my emotions like nothing had and it is a pity that she has not produced a work of fiction since then but I keep living in hope. But in the meanwhile she has actively been at the forefront of taking up causes on behalf of the poor, voiceless and the marginalized, people who have been left out of the process of the so called development and also producing some non fiction writing in between.

And that is when the trouble begins. Because she challenges and confronts the traditional paradigm of development and tries to puncture the bubble under which the average middle class Indian has put himself, she is seen as someone who is out there to upset this balance. The vast section of educated Indians perceive her to be disturbing their cozy consensus, an interloper about to shatter their American dream. Besides subjected to volley of abuse in the social media, the most charitable of observers have called her an apologist for the Maoists.

My contention is that whether we agree with her or not is beside the point. What matters is that in a genuinely vibrant democracy we need people like Arundhati Roy who hold up a mirror to us as a society from time to see our reflection warts and all. No matter how unpopular or uncomfortable the question may be, we must not shy away from dealing with them and forcing our government to account. If we have to challenge her, let us challenge her on the plane of facts and reason rather than bullying and abuse. Indeed our society will be a poorer one without vigorous dissenters like Arundhati.

An American Institution

If you describe somebody as an Institution, you put a great deal of your personal conviction in that individual. And you also hope that the person has transcended a generation and stood the test of time. To me John Updike is nothing short of a not only the giant of American literature but a colossal institution of our time. He has captured the heart and soul of post war America like no other writer has. His work has been a fascinating insight into the small town middle America with its generally protestant work ethics, the prejudices and the gnawing hollowness of the desire of the characters created by him are simply awe inspiring. Updike has the unique capacity to turn even the most banal into a thing of beauty. He was simply a magician with the words. His Rabbit series, a collection of four novels would forever remain one of my proud  possessions . Eulogizing Updike in January 2009, the British novelist Ian McEwan wrote that Updike's "literary schemes and pretty conceits touched at points on the Shakespearean", and that Updike's death marked "the end of the golden age of the American novel in the 20th century's second half." McEwan concluded that the Rabbit series is Updike's "masterpiece and will surely be his monument’’. He was known for his highly distinctive prose, rich in detail and honed with a lot of craft. No matter how much I try, I can never convey my deep and abiding admiration for this Genius chronicler of the heart and soul of America of a bygone era.  

We Are All Thackerays | Rohit Chopra

We Are All Thackerays | Rohit Chopra

FDI in Retail

This ridiculous confrontation  on FDI in multi brand retail in the parliament shows how pig headed and out of touch our political class is from the real India in whose name it claims to speak. Everybody tends to forget how bad things were for the average consumer during the wretched old days of our so called socialist economy when as a people we were literally thirsting for the good things in life. We would always try to look for any member of a family or extended family or friends of friends who was going to or coming from abroad so that we could lay our hands on that stereo or shampoo or that camera, I could go on. The point being that lots of goodies being taken for granted by people in other countries were simply not available to us at affordable prices and hence we had to make do with shoddy products which were home made and that too at outrageous prices.

It was only because some shackles of license permit raj was dismantled in 1991 and foreign competition was allowed that we realized what we had been missing. One of the last bastion of resistance is multi brand retail and it needs to be broken in order to ensure that the multiplicity of layer is removed and all the middlemen who jack up prices, are eliminated so that we have  a chance to have world class consumer experience for all and not just for some. I am aware that the FDI in retail may or may not work on the ground, we are not sure, but there are no guaranties in life. What we must keep in mind is that we have seen the same tired old policies that have failed repeatedly in the past. So let us not try to be afraid in doing something new, something radically different. Unless you try a new policy you would never know what will work and what will not.   

parliament

Winter session of Parliament began today. This was going to be such a crucial session with so many pending legislation which will have a bearing on how this country will progress in the years ahead, but guess what, the entire political class particularly the opposition back to its cynical brand of disruptive behavior with usual slogan shouting forcing yet another washout on the first day itself. If this session also goes down the same route as the previous one, we will seriously become a laughing stock for the entire democratic world and the term banana republic will become a self fulfilling prophesy. 
AM.. 

Public Intellectual

Public Intellectual is increasingly becoming a vanishing tribe in this country. There are two kind of intellectuals in my view. One who is quite content to be in his comfort zone and who likes to operate among like minded people and is very academic in nature. In other words, he is preaching to the converted. The other kind of intellectual is the public warrior. Someone who is not afraid to be out of his comfort zone and is willing to not only take on his adversary but also to engage with general public in order to educate them about the larger picture. But the growing intolerance in this country about being able to express oneself freely and without any fear of reprisal is pushing many spirited individuals into the shadow of self doubt and silence. This will be a terrible loss to our heritage of learning and tradition of fierce debate.