It’s OK to be Communal

The soap opera that is the Lok Sabha elections has left its imprints on our social media timelines, TV ad-times and roadside hoardings and banners. So basically, all the places – physical and virtual – that people went to to look at beautiful women trying to get them to buy something unnecessary, has been taken over by greasy politician-salesmen trying to sell their wonderful ideas about how the country is to be governed. Talk about being worse off.

In the cacophony of noises regarding different parties, PM candidates and leaders, no one has been as discussed, as mentioned and as dissected as NaMo The Great. Now, let me make it clear that I am no NaMo The Great bhakt. I have no reason to be one. I mean, he probably feels I’m an illegal Bangladeshi living in the northeast, and so wants to deport me to Pakistan (don’t question the Supreme Leader’s logic) all thanks to my ‘ajeeb, ajeeb naam’. Now, the section of rich, upper caste Hindus who call themselves communists may sit in their libraries and call this behaviour unconstitutional and ‘against the spirit of democracy’ and all that jazz, but I don’t think such characteristics have ever deterred the ruling class in India.

Now the commies are a joke and anyway, this post is not about them. This is about their caste brethren who have hitched their rides to NaMo The Great (NaMo NaMah!). Living in India with an ‘ajeeb ajeeb naam’, I am aware of the love that fosters between Hindus and Muslims, tribal and non-tribal, linguistic majorities and linguistic minorities, upper castes and lower castes in different parts of the country. It may seem unnatural to a soon-to-be-deported-to-Pakistan liberal like me, but it is a fact that people across the world don’t like people who are too unlike them. So that religiously non-drinking/beef eating/bearded/skullcap-ed Muslim guy is on average going to be less popular than a drinking, pork-eating, nonreligious Muslim in a classroom/workplace full of Hindus. And vice versa. (If these politically incorrect and generalising statements are making you uncomfortable, you belong with the commies and certainly not on my blog.)

So it is alright to hate Muslims, to want them to be butchered and parceled to Pakistan, to want lower castes to know their place and not eat up all the lucrative IIT and IIM seats, to hate gays, to have unquestioning faith in the Hindu Rashtra, to think Hinduism is the greatest religion and India the greatest country just because you were born a Hindu Indian, to…well you get the drift. It is also alright to expect to gain from a Modi administration and so supporting him. Maybe your business interests are going to be served by his policies or maybe some distant relative of yours is expecting a plum posting there.

Why I am Not Looking Forward to Pujos

Three decades and more of CPI(M) rule in Bengal has left Calcutta (I prefer the name over the post-colonial Kolkata which was the Bengali pronunciation anyway) a shadow of a metropolitan city. More than three years ago, I had migrated to this city from the cosmopolitan environs of Shillong in search of better academic opportunities. Better opportunities I certainly did get, and am grateful. However, over the course of these years, the city has assimilated me and I have assimilated the city. Confirmation towards the same lies in the fact that I am cribbing about the city in puro Bangali style today.

Having lived in a small city throughout my childhood and adolescence, and then spent a significant amount of time in a metropolitan city, I suppose I am well placed to say that Calcutta now resembles a giant small city today. Small city, of course, in terms, of the advanced opportunities for growth that the city affords its citizens. I would have many sympathisers among my readers if I rhetorically stated that ‘nothing happens in Calcutta‘. Indignants Calcuttans may point at the recent Poets of the Fall concert or simply say that ‘amra alada’ (we are different). But that does not discount the fact that the lack of industrial activity in the state has left its once-proud commercial hub of a capital rather insignificant. In its place, upstarts like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune have run away on the fast lane towards claiming themselves as one of India‘s few metros.

The problems are to do with faulty economic policy, among others. To maintain a false sense of empathy towards the teeming poor of the state, the CPI(M) embarked on an irresponsible spree of populism. Consider the transportation scene in Calcutta today. The last bus fare hike took place on July 1, 2009, when a litre of diesel would cost Rs 35.03. A typical bus can take you from one end of the city to the other for not much more than Rs. 8. Which is great to hear, but then, fuel prices haven’t exactly been stagnant over the past few years. They have risen steadily to Rs. 44.76 now, a rise of 28% in three years. But fares have remained stagnant under pressure from governments not having the balls to take hard decisions. Instead, bus operators have been subsidised for years at the cost of who else, the public exchequer! I would have even accepted this elaborate process of progressive income redistribution had its economic fundamentals been sound. On the other hand, West Bengal today has an astronomical debt of Rs. 1,92,000 crores (as in 2011). The cost of populism fed to the masses in the name of socialism, you might say.

Putting Underprivileged Students Into College Classrooms: A Market Approach

(This article was originally written for Youth Ki Awaaz)

Children, they say, are the future of a nation. If that be true, India’s potential is unmatched across the world. We have one of the largest and at the same time youngest populations. So is the future one happy story for India? Er, not really. Poverty is widespread in our country despite the gains made through six decades of planning. Although the Government would tell us that one in three persons is poor, this figure isn’t a reliable estimate of the number of Indians who will grow up without access to what modern civilisation considers basic needs: health care, sanitation and education. The World Bank figure of more than one in two Indians suffering from multidimensional poverty tells a more accurate story of the structural constraints facing children in India today.

india calcutta bookstore (Photo credit: FriskoDude)

With more than half of our population poor, and relatively high birth rates among the poor in India, nearly three-fifths of India’s children are born in underprivileged households. And their chances to lead an educated, dignified life with economic and social freedom are stunted to say the least. As a nation, it is imperative upon us to allow all our children to access basic social infrastructure like good education and gain the capabilities that will arm them enough to contribute positively towards the development of themselves, their society and the country. As of today, this aim is just that: an aim. Nearly 60 per cent of children hailing from underprivileged backgrounds drop out of school and have very little chances of going to college, forget completing a course there. Poverty, which ushers in the necessity to work and earn a living from a very early age, is the predominant factor behind this state of affairs.

This leads us to the question as to what we can do to change the ground realities. What indeed are the stumbling blocks that contribute to our abysmally low percentage of college graduates and what steps need be taken to address the problem? The approach I’ll be taking is one that attempts to enhance the freedoms people, including poor people, enjoy rather than restrict their options in order to achieve the same goal.

India’s Iran Policy Reexamined

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped over in India this week as part of the last leg of her Asian tour that began in China. Surprisingly, the major agenda for her visit wasn’t Pakistan or terrorism. Rather, it was to persuade India to reduce its oil imports from Iran and contribute to the sanctions imposed against that country by the US and Europe.

India’s response to the US’ arm-bending over the issue has hardly been coherent. While External Affairs Minister SM Krishna pointed out to Clinton that the extent of oil imports from Iran would be dictated foremost by national interests, import data released almost parallely told a different story. Indeed, there has been a 34% fall in oil imports from Iran in April compared to March. A large part of this decrease is due to state-run oil companies Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) not importing any Iranian oil last month. If India is indeed standing up to the US stance on Iran, the evidence isn’t very apparent as of now.

The reason for this may be that the Indian administration isn’t willing to appear as if it is buckling under US pressure to act against an old ally. Instead, there have been discreet efforts to meet the US’ expectations while publicly portraying a neutral stance. And the efforts in this regard have hardly gone unnoticed. At a press conference in New Delhi, Mrs.Clinton said “We commend India for the steps its refineries are taking to reduce its dependence on imports from Iran… There’s no doubt that India and the United States are after the same goal (of preventing a nuclear Iran).”

However, it is true that India has been using the sanctions imposed on Iran to improve its own trade balance with that nation.