I have restarted with a Bang!
I have restarted blogging due to the sheer variety of events that surround me. Last year in September, I returned from 10 years of living abroad and I am still trying to re-adjust to my Indian life. We are a chaotic culture and we make all kinds of excuses to legitimize it. My mom blames IPL for her inability to take her medicines on time, my colony security guard blames the kids for the dents on my car, my dad blames lack of food source in the refrigerator to consuming copious amounts of sugar for a diabetic person and finally I have started blaming the weather, corruption and the lack of traffic rules for waking up late and going to bed late. We , Indians, thrive on this culture of excuses and I love it. This is what makes us one of the slowest moving culture in all fields of modern living in the 21st century. Yes, you will wrong me with articles about Indians scaling the heights of computer geekness, mathematical brilliance and path-breaking "Jugaad" business models but "hello!", that is a drop in the ocean in a community of a billion and one third population of homo sapiens.
The sheer variety of events that surround me ranges from the the mundane like tales about a neighborhood cat terrorizing us by ransacking our garbage and my neighbors month long interior remodeling using an ear deafening diamond grinder for all day for the entire working week to polish their new floors or my near death or dismemberment by a two-wheeler in Hyderabad and finally the most amazing experience of having seen the street celebration of India's World Cup win in Cricket after 28 years. I have missed out some interesting incidents like a missed out episode of "snapped" from NBC, of an employee and junior team member yelling at the top of his lungs as an end result to a design discussion. It did not help matters as he looked more like a butcher's masseur than a designer who sells design or lifestyle ideas.
Having got over such incidents and issues, politics continues to amuse me even after 10 years of living abroad. The everday TV is such a sheer theatre of politics that all television soaps, Bin Laden killings and Royal wedding take a backstage to Indian politics.
Let me start with where we are and how we got here from last September, a time that defines my most current political memory and re-education. Th ruling party has been hit by scams ones after the other. The CWG scam, the 2G scams and the Adarsh housing scams are finally in the news everyday. Notice my lack of sensation in stating them, because I was always aware of the fact that our nation runs on scams. All projects, tenders, qualifications, selections are based on connections, contacts, bribes, kickbacks and various methods where merit is not the first word nor the last word. The CWG scam is an exponential manifestation of a rigged railway contract to lay a culvert for a passing train or a rigged road contract to finish a sidewalk in a neighborhood. The 2G telecom scam is larger manifestation of a rigged tender order for buses by the BEST undertaking for thekinglong buses that break down everyday on the Mumbai roads after running 16 kms of their route. The Adarsh scam is the mother of all scams that happen everyday that award buidling permit to developers, builders who bribe their way to get there books through for housing and development projects whose polices are deliberately kept ambiguous.
In all this who loses out and on what? We , the people lose out on a way of life that is built around merit for us to get the best of what we deserve and can afford. For most of us, we do not really understand what is democracy. It is not belittle everyone, but it is a fact that most of us do not understand what is democracy.
Have we forgotten that each one of us have the right to question our government? Unlike, the board of a private company, we all are paying taxes and thereby funding the salaries, benefits and perks of all government officials. As a taxpayer, we all have the right to question, seek transparency and demand accountability of the public servants who are elected and appointed that form our government administration. Why do we not continue to question our polity for them to give us definite clear answer on what they provide us everyday. Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare is just a drop in the ocean of dissent that is needed to wash the Indian polity of the ineptitude, disaffection, corruption and brazen power misuse.
Our Prime Minister, who needs a vocal chord cos his voice is so slow and low that only he can hear himself, looks like a person whose spinal cord may be broken, almost clueless, listless and plain boring for most of his public speeches and images. We need someone who has a spring in his step when he leads our country who puts adults to sleep during his monotone sermons on national security.
We need our elections soon and we need to have this government out of power soon , if we wish to continue a path that can be termed as improvement. For that to happen, we need the Gandhi bosom buddies including the like of Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh, Renuka Chaudhary, Sonia/Rahul and all the Gandhis to be dethorned from their assumed legitimized power positions.
The sheer variety of events that surround me ranges from the the mundane like tales about a neighborhood cat terrorizing us by ransacking our garbage and my neighbors month long interior remodeling using an ear deafening diamond grinder for all day for the entire working week to polish their new floors or my near death or dismemberment by a two-wheeler in Hyderabad and finally the most amazing experience of having seen the street celebration of India's World Cup win in Cricket after 28 years. I have missed out some interesting incidents like a missed out episode of "snapped" from NBC, of an employee and junior team member yelling at the top of his lungs as an end result to a design discussion. It did not help matters as he looked more like a butcher's masseur than a designer who sells design or lifestyle ideas.
Having got over such incidents and issues, politics continues to amuse me even after 10 years of living abroad. The everday TV is such a sheer theatre of politics that all television soaps, Bin Laden killings and Royal wedding take a backstage to Indian politics.
Let me start with where we are and how we got here from last September, a time that defines my most current political memory and re-education. Th ruling party has been hit by scams ones after the other. The CWG scam, the 2G scams and the Adarsh housing scams are finally in the news everyday. Notice my lack of sensation in stating them, because I was always aware of the fact that our nation runs on scams. All projects, tenders, qualifications, selections are based on connections, contacts, bribes, kickbacks and various methods where merit is not the first word nor the last word. The CWG scam is an exponential manifestation of a rigged railway contract to lay a culvert for a passing train or a rigged road contract to finish a sidewalk in a neighborhood. The 2G telecom scam is larger manifestation of a rigged tender order for buses by the BEST undertaking for thekinglong buses that break down everyday on the Mumbai roads after running 16 kms of their route. The Adarsh scam is the mother of all scams that happen everyday that award buidling permit to developers, builders who bribe their way to get there books through for housing and development projects whose polices are deliberately kept ambiguous.
In all this who loses out and on what? We , the people lose out on a way of life that is built around merit for us to get the best of what we deserve and can afford. For most of us, we do not really understand what is democracy. It is not belittle everyone, but it is a fact that most of us do not understand what is democracy.
Have we forgotten that each one of us have the right to question our government? Unlike, the board of a private company, we all are paying taxes and thereby funding the salaries, benefits and perks of all government officials. As a taxpayer, we all have the right to question, seek transparency and demand accountability of the public servants who are elected and appointed that form our government administration. Why do we not continue to question our polity for them to give us definite clear answer on what they provide us everyday. Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare is just a drop in the ocean of dissent that is needed to wash the Indian polity of the ineptitude, disaffection, corruption and brazen power misuse.
Our Prime Minister, who needs a vocal chord cos his voice is so slow and low that only he can hear himself, looks like a person whose spinal cord may be broken, almost clueless, listless and plain boring for most of his public speeches and images. We need someone who has a spring in his step when he leads our country who puts adults to sleep during his monotone sermons on national security.
We need our elections soon and we need to have this government out of power soon , if we wish to continue a path that can be termed as improvement. For that to happen, we need the Gandhi bosom buddies including the like of Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh, Renuka Chaudhary, Sonia/Rahul and all the Gandhis to be dethorned from their assumed legitimized power positions.
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