Two recipes

It's the story of two recipes designed by two persons of different tastes and different beliefs but with the same objective in mind. The first person announced his recipe on April 4, 2013, which "shocked and pained" the second person. He lashed out at the first person, dismissing his words "not worth listening". The first person was even warned, "...due to your ignorance, do not try to destroy the culture and tradition of this country."

Then two months later, on July 14 the second person came up with his own recipe. Surprisingly, the ingredients of his recipe appeared to be the same that were proposed by the first person but he described them differently. I don't know why he was angry with the first person, when he himself had to come up with the same recipe.

Both the recipes are for putting India on the path of development and helping its people realize their aspirations. The first recipe was proposed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at the annual CII General Meeting in New Delhi on April 4 and the second by the Gujarat 'strongman' Narendra Modi while addressing Fergusson College students on July 14.
Let's have a look at the similarities between the two recipes:

Modi: There is a difference between others and us. Others are interested in power, my priority is empowering the nation.

Rahul: No one can stop this tide of Indian aspirations. Our job is to channel these aspirations by empowering the people.

Modi: China prioritized education in its budget. In India, we dream of 7% of our budget for education but are stuck at 4%.

Rahul: There is great urgency to 'weed out the obsolete from our education system'.

Didn't I say the ingredients of both the recipes are same? But Rahul should not be accused of copying since he presented his recipe earlier than the 'strongman'.

Now I end with some statistics released by the 'strongman's government in Gujarat for the funds spent on some heads in the first quarter of the current year. Ideally 25% of the allocated budget should be spent in each quarter:

• Education: Only 8.18% of the allocated Rs 3580 crore
• Woman and child development: 6.71% of the allocated Rs 1300 crore
• Health services:  13.82% of the allocated Rs 3800 crore

Perhaps the 'strongman' is busy drawing up plans for uplifting the entire India, so the education, health services and woman and child development in Gujarat can take a back seat for some time. 

Dislike scores 17.6 pc and 31.8 pc. Which side you are?

Beena Samuel, I suppose she is an aam Hindustani like me. She writes at the NDTV website about Anna Hazare's disapproval of Narendra Modi as PM: 

Anna Hazare has been reduced to a tragic figure. I respect him as a saintly person who led one of India's major revolutions in the last 25 years. But he is unable to be pragmatic and shows no political acumen. Leaders evolve over a period of time. Whether Modi is the perfect leader is not the question — but Modi's still the best we have amongst the current crop of political leaders. Do we select our best or do we just sit and elect nobody?

Liked by 218, disliked by 102; Dislike percentage: 31.8

I reply to Beena Samuel with the following post at the NDTV website:

Not long ago, the middle class had identified itself with Anna Hazare's movement for the Lok Pal Bill. In fact, today if the social media is so much active against the UPA government, it's due to Anna's first 'anshan' at Delhi's Ram Lila Maidan two years ago. But today for this middle class Anna like Amartya Sen has no value if he dares question Modi's credentials to be PM. By the way, has anybody heard the Gujarat 'strongman' say how would he add more teeth to the Lok Pall Bill if elected PM? Wasn't  the Lok Pal Bill an issue close to our hearts few months ago?

Liked by 42, disliked by 9; Dislike percentage: 17.6

So, the Netizen dislike percentage for me (17.6) is less than the dislike percentage of Beena Samuel (31.8). Please don't think that I am boasting or I consider myself a better aam Hindustani than Beena. The point here is that greater dislikes for Beena prove that more and more Indians are ready to accept the double standards in our thinking and actions. Maybe, in future this acceptance would lead us all to create a value system and adhere to it. A value system is a must to eradicate corruption. The early we understand it, the better would it be for building a strong, self-reliant India.

Another important point is that Beena and myself have expressed our opinions as educated and civilized citizens of India to enable people like and dislike us in an equally civilized way. But this way is quite contrary to the brash and offensive language often used by many BJP and RSS leaders and supporters to run down their opponents. If a research is conducted that who mostly starts the slanging match in Indian political and public life, I think the results would adversely speak of many leaders of the Saffron outfits.

The latest case is of BJP Rajya Sabha member, the learned Chandan Mitra, editor of the Pioneer newspaper. Poor Mitra found it tough to restrain himself from running down Nobel laureate Amartya Sen for his anti-Modi remarks. He tweeted:  Amartya Sen says he soesn't want Modi to be India's PM. Is Sen even a voter in India? Next NDA government must strip him of Bharat Ratna.

A common BJP supporter Netizen goes a step ahead of Mitra to degrade Amartya with these words on a news channel website: Abe bhaklol  tu congeressi hai, es liye apni salah apne pass rakh. Amarya Sen  ki beti ke baare mein janata hai? Nangi ghoomti rahti hai saali. Jo aadmi apni beti ko sanskar nahin de sakta, vo Modi ko salah deta hai. Saala bhand!

So the only difference between Mitra and the common netizen is that he has not hurled abuses on Amartya. Thankfully, Mitra has now regretted the Bharat Ratna part of his tweets. But in the first place, Mitra himself being a man of letters must have respected Amartya's freedom of expression in the vibrant democracy of India. 

Great men think alike

This blog post is about two great men. One of them is legal luminary Fali S. Nariman, former additional solicitor general of India. Before I tell you about the 'other great man', let us share a joke which Fali narrated during an interview to The Week magazine (July 28, 2013). "In a room of 12 Bawajis (old men), 13 are mad. How is that possible?" Fali asks the interviewer. Then he himself answers, "Because at least one is, like me, double-pagal."

Again, before telling you about the 'other great man', I tell you what makes the 'other great man' that he thinks like Fali. In The Week interview, Fali says, "One has to think about a country that has given you so much. It's a fantastic country despite all its governance. I share  a view that most don't, that this was the time when parties with different ideologies should have got together to form a national government to tackle the economic crises and governance issues, like they do in wartime."

The 'other great man' is I myself. For the last 2-3 months I have also been thinking like Fali. Hope you have understood why I quoted the expression the other great man. The simple reason is that myself, an aam admi, just can't be anywhere near Fali. However, as now Fali has set the ball rolling, I am going to search the paper where I had  noted down the email addresses of PM Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi to write them about Fali's viewpoint.

Fali's viewpoint carries a lot of weight in view of the personally honest PM Manmohan Singh's inability to provide us a clean government. Moreover, the politics of coalition government over the last 15 years is also an indication that people don't have faith in a single-party government to deliver. So, it's the time that all political parties done away with their baggage of tainted politicians and joined hands to form a national government without any fear of gathering numbers to prove majority in the Lok Sabha. This would help shift the focus from frivolous blame game to the real issue of good, inclusive, corruption-free governance and make India a world leader.

Is Dharam Sati Primary School located in Mars?

I begin with some bits of information:

• 23 children died from a poisoned government-supplied lunch in a Bihar school. 
• A Bihar government inquiry has blamed widespread mismanagement by the school for the tragedy.
• The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is set to launch its Mars Orbiter Mission Spacecraft in October-November 2013 to establish the Indian technological capabilities to reach the orbit of mars. 
• In 2008, India launched 11 satellites, including nine from other countries, and it became the first nation to launch 10 satellites on one rocket.

You may be wondering at the clubbing of contrasting bits of information about the Bihar school tragedy and India's space research feats. But this information contrast is the stark irony which India as a nation, its political  parties (ruling as well as those in the opposition) and its masses represent.

We can send 10 satellites into space in one go, proving our expertise at handling a complex, zero-error scientific job. But we are criminally inept at providing a simple, hygienically cooked nutritious meal, which is no rocket science, to the kids who are the future of India.

The negligence, which snuffed out the life of 23 innocent kids in the Dharam Sati Primary School in Bihar's Chappra district, is an integral part of our lives. But we have developed gargantuan tolerance for this negligence.

We just need to turn our head to find this negligence staring us in the face. Like,

• The Dharam Sati Primary School principal and her husband, who supplied groceries for the kids' mid-day meal, had no fear of law while serving unhygienically stored and prepared food to the kids until the tragedy happened. But perhaps, the school was transported from mars to earth only on the day of tragedy, so neither the media nor local politicians were aware of the fearless dirty deeds  of  the teacher-trader couple. Otherwise, our sting operation expert journalists would have exposed them long ago.  
• A contractor building a road in our neighbourhood is leaving no stone unturned to present the road as the classic example of a shoddy construction job in a country which not long ago had built architectural marvels like Taj Mahal. For, the man has got a licence to waste your and my money by stuffing the pockets of the right people at right places. But, the media is too busy with politicians, film stars and cricket to care about a small fry like this contractor. However, it's another matter that when this shoddily-constructed road would cave in or its surface would wash away in just one heavy rain, the media would faithfully carry detailed reports with big pictures.

While moderating a discussion on the Dharam Sati School tragedy, the presenter on a TV news channel said he had lots of stats to show how mismanaged is the implementation of the mid-day meal scheme in Bihar. May I ask the presenter that whether there was any condition that these stats could only be released after a mid-day meal tragedy?

My compatriots in the media, if your concern for corruption and mismanagement in government functioning is real then please do your bit to highlight the shoddy implementation of well-meaning but money-devouring government schemes and thus prevent avoidable tragedies like that of Dharam Sati Primary School.

I'm too a NATIONALIST INDIAN, but...

The Gujarat 'strongman' Narendra Modi says he is a Hindu Nationalist. Like him, I am too a Hindu and a nationalist. But I don't think by clubbing my religion with my nationalism makes me more nationalist than a Muslim, a Sikh, a Parsi, a Buddhist or a Jain. But, then I don't have a prime ministerial dream.

The game of polarization has just begun. Whether the Gujarat 'strongman' scores a century in this game depends upon how far he succeeds in making the Indians masses, particularly young ones, press the voting machine button with Ram, Mohammad, Nanak, or Jesus on their lips.

To me, an aam (ordinary) Indian, what matters most is if the Gujarat 'strongman' spells out that, if enthroned as prime minister, what would be his mantra to curb price rise and remove corruption. If anybody knows what is his take on the pending Lokpal Bill or what is his blueprint to fight corruption, kindly let me know.

Dear Kejriwal, no politics on rape, please

"5 saal ki gudiya ko bachaya" (He saved a five-year-old innocent girl) — I have seen this sentence written below the picture of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) president Arvind Kejriwal on a poll poster behind a three-wheeler. There is also a picture of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit adjacent to Kejriwal's. And, she is blamed for the rising crimes against women in Delhi. Does it behove Kejriwal, who claims to be a selfless leader doing principles-based politics, to ask votes in the name of a five-year-old innocent rape victim?

About a year go I had emailed a letter (published as the August 7, 2012 post here) to India Against Corruption when Kejriwal had decided to leave Anna Hazare's apolitical movement in favour of a career in politics. The India Against Corruption had replied with a formal 'Thank you' mail. In that letter I wrote if you become part of a system (Kejriwal joining politics), your priority would be to survive in that system. So now to survive in politics Kejriwal has no scruples to thump his own back for saving the innocent child and ask votes in her name.

It's ok to criticize government for corruption. But as we are receiving rape reports from various states, rape is not a problem restricted only to Delhi. And, to check rapes you just can't have a policeman in front of every house and office and CCTVs in every room and every moving vehicle in Delhi. Many researches have shown that a great number of rapes are committed by people who are known to victims. So, how can a policeman or for that matter anyone save a girl or woman from her own people?

Our leaders, particularly those who swear by religion, and we ourselves as parents have to impart the value for respect of the fair sex to our children to tackle the grave social problem of rape. We also need to keep a constant watch on them, as they have easy access to the porn world through the Internet. So, my request to Kejriwal, please don't do politics on rape.

In Delhi the inflated power or water bills are not the real issues. The real issue in the capital is how to check people's growing inflow. If you succeed in doing so, many problems will get solved on their own. On July 4 after years I by chance had to travel from Preet Vihar to Shahdara (both in East Delhi separated by about 5 km) in the evening. I was surprised to find that a small stretch of hardly 1.5 km from Preet Vihar Metro station to Karkari Mod took me 20 minutes to clear despite the fact that the Metro line over this road also shares a great load of daily commuters. Delhi doesn't have sufficient water to quench the thirst of its one crore plus people. However, Delhiites are lucky that they are being provided power almost round the clock. Maybe Delhi has been allowed to extract a lion's share from the Northern Grid.

To make Delhi a city actually befitting its status of the nation's capital, all political parties must join hands to check people's inflow and to find ways for judicious use of its limited water and other resources for the benefit of its present population.