Here comes the ‘Happy Birthday’!

Right from childhood, everybody is fascinated by those two words. And yes, those two words are always together. My younger cousin Rohan used to say, ‘Udya maza Happy Badde’ ahe, and that’s what I feel today :-)

Many a times I try to convince myself that there is nothing great in the day, it is just another day. I will get up the same way, get ready, have my same idly-dosa breakfast, come to the office, go about the same clients, friends, colleagues, go home late and go to bed. All this will be interrupted with a flurry of phone calls (That’s what I expect ;) ) and the day goes down as yet another day.

But should it be? It’s the day in my life which brought me into this world; I opened my eyes for the first time to see this beautiful world. This is the very same day my parents, relatives and their friends were overjoyed because of me, it is a day all too important in their lives.

It was a great feeling. When in school, I used to take those chocolates with me. Used to stand on the stage during the morning assembly with a ‘colored dress’ and then everybody would sing in ‘Happy Birthday to You’ just for me. And then the final moment came in when I had to say ‘Thank you my dear friends’ right there in front of the mike. Let me tell you, that was the greatest stage fear I ever had in my life! Then distributing those chocolates within the class and then going all around the school distributing those sweets to the teachers, the principal and also the bai (Maids). I still remember the joy I always had in getting that Happy Birthday card from our father principal and the anger I had for those maids who used to make the most of getting my chocolates.

Things changed after school. Never ever did I feel the same excitement again.

Wake up Parikshit, It’s yet another day :-)

Rang De Basanti !

First day of the opening and I was off to see ‘Rang De Basanti’ at Rex Cinema. Before I say something about the movie itself, let me say something about parking, yes PARKING! That is the dirtiest word, if you are on Brigade road, Bangalore. It was my friend’s brand new Honda Dio and as the traffic cop didn’t allow us inside the theatre premises, we parked it in a Bank’s compound after Bank hours. It was so creepy, the guy had no authorization to do what he was doing and we had no idea if that was safe. But still we trusted him, and that’s the risk appetite every Indian has!

The film had all its hype it required, thanks to objections from the Defense Ministry to the Animal Welfare Department. And yes, the defense ministry had very political reasons to have a look at it before it went to the theatres. I am sure the earlier government would have been much more critical.

The film starts on a very happy go lucky note and takes us through the life of young guys and a girl who know nothing but enjoyment. Lead among them is obviously Amir who is brilliant as ever in every scene of his. The one to always spoil their party is a saffron clad political worker who takes objections to their westernized ways of celebration and hates the Muslim guy among them for dogmatic reasons alone. This has been excellently portrayed by Atul Kulkarni. Man, this guy hasn’t failed to impress me from Dum, Satta, Khakee and now in Rang De Basanti.

The foreign actress also plays her part pretty well with the famous dance number and also with her Hindi slang word. The film has enough comic scenes to keep you giggling in the first half.

The twist in the tale comes in when these guys are helpless over the death of their Airforce Pilot friend in a MiG crash. The Defense Minister is guilty of corruption and then again of mutilating this brave soldier’s reputation. As usual, he feels above the law and makes a mockery of democracy.

Now these young men do something which every one of us has felt at least once in our lifetime. There comes a time in our life when emotions takeover pragmatism, anger takes over rationality, we tend to forget the law and the distinctive line between good and bad becomes ever so thin. What these guys do is something unprecedented in Indian history which they rightly call the ‘dhamaka’ which can wake up a sleeping nation.

The way in which past sequences of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru are superimposed with the thought processes of these new age guys has been executed superbly. In the end you feel, may be what these men did was really stupid indeed, may be they could have tried a better alternative, may be they could have had a more rational way of achieving the same thing, but then again, the situation they are in really seems hopeless at the outset.

Jaago India Jaago!

And well, the vehicle was safe and sound. The man had earned his trust and his Rs. 5 while we heaved a sign of relief ;)

The Not so Great Indian Dream

In the book, “The Great Indian Dream”, there are many things which I disagree. I don’t know whether I am totally correct but I simply do not agree. I will highlight some of those points here and leave the points which I think are correct for the later post.

1. Sacrifice your Lipstick for his Toilet.

A comparison has been made such as some $ Billion is spent in Europe on Ice Cream and an equivalent amount is required to provide food for all in this world or something like that. Some $ billion is spent on cosmetics alone in the US while an equal amount is required to provide health and sanitation to all. If communism/socialism means that I do not eat ice-cream so that some poor person eats his meals OR I do not use cosmetics so that somebody has a toilet then sorry, I am against communism and for that matter this becomes a very basic human instinct.
People who advocate this thought should play Caesar III. It’s a computer game about town planning which teaches you how the demands of people go on increasing one after another. Once the people get water & food, they need entertainment, and then they need education, sanitary facilities like baths and barber shops. After all that they need pottery, furniture & wine. The list ends in this game but in real life it goes on. As a person evolves from his hutment to the mansion, you have to let him have his wine otherwise he runs away from the city to explore better pastures. And it’s not at all the case that the poor remain poor. If given proper opportunities, education, sanitation then they too can come up from the abject poverty and that’s where the government comes in. Sadly, it doesn’t.
So basically, the demands of everybody are equally practical & valid. There’s nothing wrong in enjoying your money if you have. If you can help others come out of their misery, please do but the Government’s failure cannot be my loss.

2. We are Born Communist

The book then makes an equally ridiculous comparison. He says, everyone is a born communist at heart. When in a family we never play the ‘Survival of the fittest’ game. Everyone earns according to his ability and everybody gets according to his need. Apply it to the whole nation. The most basic flaw in the argument is the fact that a family relation cannot be extended to the nation or even the neighborhood! For God’s sake! You cannot apply the law of Induction here! The family is bound by blood relation, love relation and that can never be true for anybody else.

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3. Don’t sell PSUs. Manage them professionally.

Who in India will take that? This, especially after years of bleeding and crores of rupees have been lost in red tape, bribes, wrong policies and losses in the PSUs. And all this was tax payer’s money, the so called ‘Rich’. Still petrol/diesel continues to be subsidized while the Oil companies show losses every quarter. The customer must be made to pay for what he uses. If I cannot afford petrol at 70/- for my bike, I will definitely use it conservatively.

Privatization is not the problem. Selling off of the PSU for peanuts to the aides of politicians is the problem. Anti-Trust laws should take care of large monopolies and the wealth would then not accumulate in the hands of few.

4. Non-Profit private enterprises.
Mr Chowdhari explains how non-profit private enterprises (Some 1 between 10 villages) can solve India’s problem just like the Towns – Villages Units in China. This idea however ideal fails on two counts. You cannot expect thousands of private enterprises to mushroom across India on a ‘Non-Profit’ basis. Secondly, to implement such a scheme you would require a dictatorship like china.

5. Bill Dates

By referring to Bill Gates as Bill Dates and trying to tell that how greedy man can become, the book fails to recognize the immense value organizations like the one Bill has does to a society. While maintaining a monopoly in the OS market, it has created thousands of jobs across the globe, given thousands of dollars as tax to governments the world over and has done immense technological advancement. Not to mention the odd thousand dollars given for AIDS relief by the foundation. Even if that was for personal gains, it was indeed dollars. In the process what if he becomes the richest man in the world? Envious?


If somebody can explain me the rationale behind these points, then please.
I am waiting for it.

LPG

Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) was blasted in India in 1991.
The fruits of LPG are all very visible to us now. The explosive growth of Aviation, Automobile, Telecom, IT, Real Estate, Consumer Goods, Education, Health Care, BFSI and so many other sectors is proof enough that the LPG model has made India a better place to live in.

On the other hand, we hear stories of farmers committing suicide, blatant consumerism and Americanization through the Archies - Mcdonald culture, death of smaller Indian industries etc.

So whom do we blame for the situation? LPG? I think the screwed implementation of LPG is the problem with our country. Liberalization should have come first, then Privatization and then Globalization. Unfortunately, we had no choice then. But today we do have a choice. Why not go the Liberalization way in full swing for a starter? Let everything get liberalized, get rid of the license raj totally and it would be that much easier for us to accept globalization as a reality.

The politicians have eaten in the pie (or in some case the whole pie!) and so the benefits which should have come in are lesser than expected. But was something else expected of them? Everybody today knows the level of corruption in India. The thought of going to a government office, be it the RTO or the Collector Office or the Post Office, makes one feel disgusted.

If the government does the work of governance, there won’t be any problems at all. Its rightly said, “Business is not the business of the government”.

How did I come up with this topic all of a sudden? Read the blogs of Hrishi & his dad Vijay Kaka on Globalization, socialism, capitalism etc. Thought for a long time on all the points put forward. It was a very interesting discussion indeed. I recently came across a book, “The Great Indian Dream” by Arhindam Chowdhary and then it made my thought process even faster and I couldn’t do anything but jot it down over here.

I know this is a very short write up but I intend to write many more on related topics. More on the Americanization and Archies – Mcdonald culture later…