Shut up amid the cackle.

India this week

That's enough said about America. India is not to be left behind in any race in the world now, even if it is about running in the wrong direction. After that potent mixture of Bihar and Orissa, Mumbai decided to join the revelry. India sure is having a party now. And how.

First, lets all get into the habit of saying "Aamchi Mumbai". Anyone saying "Hamari Mumbai" faces a risk of being beaten and bundled up into the general compartment of trains bound for Bihar and UP. Wow. That's taking Linguistic racism to new levels. For the time being, it remains "Aamchi Mumbai". I am sitting in office and writing this, and I would really like to reach home safely.

Not only that. In the course of the past one year, I have seen all English and Hindi signboards being replaced with Marathi ones. McDonalds' turned Devnagari. While it is a noble thought to honour one's own mother tongue, I have a feeling we are getting territorial here. What next, passports to come to Mumbai from any other state?

Furious that there was not enough "Local Representation" in the Railway examinations, north Indian candidates were not allowed to appear for the exams too. This was the final straw on the camel's back.

On the surface, Thackeray looks eminently and may I dare to say, proudly guilty. Mumbai is, after all, the Marathi Manoos's property. But if I sit back and think, I realize that Thackeray is only giving vent to the ire of thousands of Indians, and amongst them, are others apart from the Marathi speaking public, though it is just the north indian public who are he face of the movement now.

While I can argue that no one is stopping the Maharashtrian common man from appearing in the Public Service exams, I see, as a common indian, an astonishingly large number of undeserving people clearing the exams and winning these coveted posts. I know there are people who deserve it, and I am not against them. Who looks into the credentials of the candidates who do not deserve it?

While I am at it, I can safely say that a majority of people from many regions of India are in the Government due to, lets be honest, "Family ties". I know of my Bihari classmates who have told me up front that if nothng works, politics is always an option for the average Bihari because of some uncle / cousin / aunt at some post in the Administrative services, or better still in the Legislative Assembly or Parliament.

In Gujarat, the newspapers have announced the results of a sting operation.. Rs. 30 lakh for a class I government post, Rs.15 lakh for a class II government post. So the people managing the country are eventually the people who can pay and / or have influential connections, rather than the people who are capable of doing the job well. Oh forget the "well" in that sentence. It is enough if we can have people who know the job. Is the progress of this country so trivial a matter htat it is handed down on such flimsy premises? Who will answer that for our future generations?

Having said that, I am not going to support Raj Thackeray in whatever he is doing. His cause may be just, but burning down buses, and changing signboards, and harassing innocent commoners is just not going to help. His campaign comes across as just a racist gimmick and nothing of much substance unless there is an element of regulation in it, regulation of who enters the Administrative services and how.

When I look at Raj Thackeray, I see a much deeper problem, a very disturbing conflict at its heart. He is just a drop in the whirlpool of the racist ocean brewing in the heart of every Indian. Arresting him is like treating the symptoms and leaving the disease untouched. The disease eventually will re-surface, and possibly in a much more serious manner.

A niggling question finally...Are we unfit for democracy? Are we heading towards being the biggest democratic failure in the world? If we are, this time the crash is going to be louder than the sound of Wall Street's collapse. This will be the destruction of a civilization, of a people who were given the freedom to think, speak and act, and ended up not knowing what to do with it. It will mark the beginning of the end of Democracy as a principle, for Indians at least.

Freedom at Midnight, indeed.

Dear World, have I caught up with you yet?

posted by Anupama. @ 6:58 pm 4 Comments

MCDONALDS AND SUCH...

I have been reading up....there is so much to talk about! The apocalypse officially known as the wall street crash...Raj Thackeray's arrest...I guess the world just needs to stop running. It is going all wrong again.

The Apocalypse.
Wall Street died a month ago. (Yes, I have to say it like it was a person). It began with ominous sounding crashes of big things like Lehman Bros. Now if Wall Street were a collection of furniture, Lehman was a glass topped dining table. (Ouch!). Naturally, the crash was heard till the Far East. In the words of a friend, nearly 7000 people suddenly stopped going to office in India alone. (Make that a HUGE glass topped table. Or better still, a glass Chandelier. Or maybe a glass roof).

By the next day, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were nervous and fidgeting around for takers. None-other-than Warren Buffet himself became the knight-in-shining-armour for Goldman and invested something lke $% billion in them. Hallelujah! Morgan was left out in the cold. Sigh.

Henry Paulson, then, decided that nothing less than 700 billion dollars would be needed to save Wall Street from becoming rubble of broken glass. That, by the way, is a sum larger than the entire debt lent by the International Monetary Fund since its inception. (Investment bankers sure know how to spend, or rather, to borrow and lend. Wow, that rhymes).

Wall Street has paid over 3 billion dollars in salary to its executives over the past few years. Paulson wants to save that over the widespread anger of the public, which I admit, is natural. After all, when the common man has to take double mortgages to spend, how can a few yuppies wearing tailored suits walk away with the kind of money that ensures they never need double mortgages? Completely justified I say. Now everyone will need double mortgages. Amen to equality. That was one of the ideals of free America, I guess.

The bill has been accepted. But with that tiny asterisk which says "CONDITIONS APPLY" in tinier words. The sum is slashed. Wall Street executives are not going to take fat bonuses home. And the public shall have no more double mortgage debt on their heads, because it is all going to be written off by Paulson.

They are free to take riskier loans, which, I think, shall happen fairly soon knowing America's instant gratification economy. The first ones shall be the bankers whose offices are only empty glass buildings now.

In the name of McDonalds, may Lord save the world.

posted by Anupama. @ 6:40 pm 0 Comments