Force Majeure, Indian Way

During childhood, we used to be vaguely amused by a neighbourhood dog starting a barking concert whenever the moon appeared large in the sky, closer to full-moon days. This conductor-dog commenced the music with a few others soon joining the chorus and the orchestra had a raucous run for about thirty minutes.  Then, drained by their effort and absolutely baffled by the unyielding moon, which refused to acknowledge them in any way, they curled up and went to sleep. That was a ritual which recurred with amazing regularity for a number of years and we sought some edification from our parents once.  We were told that probably the lead-dog had been witness to some tragic event earlier, which took place when the moon was shining in all its glory.  What we were frequently witnessing was apparently a visceral reaction to something from the past.  Someone else told us that the reason why a dog chases speeding cars, all the time barking the head off, is that a mate might have been killed by one such car.  This hot pursuit is an act of retribution, even if it does not affect the car or occupants in any way, much like the moon in the other episode.

Why this random talk of dogs and their sporadic acts of angst??   Recently, that erudite gentleman and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor who famously said `My name is Raghuram Rajan (RR) and I do what I do', decided to walk away from a possible second term.  This, despite his stellar first tenure of three years which saw India gaining stability and respect in the eyes of the whole world.  Not being privy to all the cloak-and-dagger action behind the scenes, pundits nevertheless generated all kinds of scenarios and dissected everything in sight, to arrive at their own concoction of what happened.  That was inevitable anywhere, but mandatory in India, where absolutely inane and puerile utterances by even low-lifes become eminently newsworthy.  Such bilge tends to occupy prime TV space for a week in some ten channels in multiple languages, keeping a bunch of otherwise unemployed and self-appointed celebrities pretending to be very busy!!

One very observant friend opined that all those loose barbs and unsubstantiated accusations by a senior ruling party member must have got RR's goat and he must have said in disgust `enough is enough'.  But, when one accepts a political assignment (the RBI governor is appointed by the Prime Minister), one cannot be super sensitive to criticism because you are in public domain; with all kinds of quasi experts mindlessly churning out their home-grown theories and palliatives while you are trying to prescribe some effective antidote to a real malady.  One should also be acutely aware of the powder keg (political pressure and consequent unpredictability) that is strapped to one's back for the duration of the assignment. Not being cognizant of that would be naivete bordering on stupidity.  RR, being neither naive nor stupid, was not decamping because of some loud, insane barks here and there -- he would not have expected unadulterated adulation sans any criticism for all his actions as RBI governor.  So, why was he not being the veritable moon, glowing down indifferently on the source of all the commotion below, unperturbed??  Running away like a wimp due to the vicious carping of a few, RR was not - that clearly militated against the personality involved.  Something more at play??  The choice of the specific high-decibel critic (not a petty politician, but another scholar and a respected individual in many quarters) and the fact that there was no serious effort to rein him in would lend credence to there being, what else..... Force Majeure??  More importantly, was there a moon-dog kind of relationship between the protagonists of this drama?  One never knows.

Another dear friend, who does not dole out opinions loosely, helpfully added that meritocratic bureaucrats like RR (not being pachyderms like seasoned politicians), deserve to be nurtured and protected by the political establishment instead of being exposed to random allegations as RR was.  That is required, if we want to see the rise of meritocracy in the government.  No doubt.  This implied that the Government itself was not keen on retaining RR for a second term, so it did not make any effort to shut down the shrill critical voices, exacerbating the situation and resulting in the current imbroglio.  The fact that the government wasted precious little time in saying adios to RR and began its search for the replacement pronto suggests that the vicious campaign in public might have been orchestrated from elsewhere.  Obviously RR was aware of the various sub-plots boiling and the build-up to this denouement must have started long back.  That would explain his gentlemanly exit on to the high ground.  But this author does not support the `protection is needed' theory.  People like RR are in position because of their ability to lead with their intellect and skills.  They invariably end up doing things their way, even if they are out of whack with the political managers' expectations and compulsions.  RR would have got protection if he, like a loyal political appointee, had probably moderated his focus on inflation to let interest rates fall earlier and more, because then he would have done the bidding of the government.  That would have helped the government to gloat that `good days are back'.  But, that would have been out of character for RR!!  By the same token, he would not have expected protection either??  So, Force Majeure, it probably was??

Talking of protection of a meritocrat who was intent on hacking his own blazing path forward, this scribe is reminded of the former Chief Election Commissioner, T.N.Seshan (TNS).  This gentleman was so focused on leaving his own individual stamp and imprimatur on the way elections were conducted in India, he did not think anything of turning against the same party (and all the other parties that were part of the system) which appointed him in the first place.  His rebellion against his political bosses was so severe in the context of elections that the latter pushed for a couple of legislations aimed only at bringing him to his heels, but did not succeed.  Could RR have followed that path?  Well, he is not cut out from the same cloth as TNS, when it comes to pugnacity, belligerence and a devil-may-care attitude, even though betterment of the system was/is their common objective.  RR, being suave and classier, reacted in his own way, by taking himself out of the scene whereas TNS continued to bulldoze the system against all odds.  May be the options were just not there for RR - Force Majeure definitely?  Then there is the case of Manmohan Singh - a supreme meritocrat, if there was one, in his earlier avatar.  But he contrived to compromise himself so seriously at every turn subsequently that all the lustre (and may be, a bit of his skin too) came off by the time he ended his career as the Prime Minister!!

Well, the damage is done and the goose is cooked, as my dear wife says, in terms of an embarrassing spectacle for the country, while simultaneously asserting that nobody is indispensable (meaning RR) and the politicians were always botching things up.  Pithy summary. She supports RR clearly in that development should not be seen purely in terms of generation of new jobs but it should also ensure that those struggling with god-given and man-made poverty at the bottom of the pyramid do not get stricken further by rising costs spiraling out of control.  Now, this author, even though not as smart as RR, knows what is good for him and he agrees completely, since this is a known Force Majeure closer home!!!

Sheeple!!

History is littered with products which were launched with great fanfare and hoopla, but ended being wet squibs, some of them so soggy that even a conflagration would not have enabled them to take off.  Companies behind such failed products went through the usual rigmarole of consumer surveys and pre-launch blandishments with smug corporate smiles, not sparing any expense because they thought they had a good thing going.  But little did they know.  Two good examples are - in the interest of fairness, from competitors - Crystal Pepsi in the 90s and The New Coke in the 80s.  As we know, both companies habitually splurge on advertisements and try to smother consumers with an avalanche of commercials in the media.  And they are no spring chicken when it comes to judging the tastes of the public.  So, why such massive failures, where their fizz evaporated even before the cans were opened?  Obviously they were presumptuous based on precedents and were wrong in imagining that people could be manoeuvred towards their own corporate goals.  Their market research etc did not manage to unearth the reality, in this scribe's opinion; the primary game changers for the companies were the ones this author would call Sheeple.

Dictionaries define `sheeple' as a portmanteau word combining sheep and people and naively paint them as people who behave like sheep in that they can be easily led by the nose.  The more intelligent people might object to this forced union with sheep, while ironically the latter themselves might stand on their hind legs and protest this rather unsheeply insult!  This scribe, being neither too smart nor too sheepish, has a different take on the meaning of the word - "that crowd which can be herded down any desired path nonchalantly by a `leader' half the time; while for the other half, it quietly rebels without oozing any indication, such that the same leader is paralysed by the surprising outcome at the end."  So, in short, sheeple is half herd and half muscular majority, which combine can turn out to be lethal in delivering knock-out punches, when they so desire.  Ask those two-faced politicians, who grin like Cheshire cats on finding cream cheese during election time and are singularly bereft of vocal chords when results are announced!!  Usually because their perch has been removed from under their backside without any notice, in a startling fashion.

But the mature observer is one who does not pile up all sheeple in one single stack.  There are fine variations among sheeple. Only the most avid followers of the group, with a penchant for deep-dive research and relentless perseverance can appreciate the various nuances and raise above mediocrity to hope for podium finishes.  The casual critic, going by the characterization associated with the name, - sheeple - will be impaled sooner or later, thanks to his/her practised, superficial knowledge.

First set of sheeple we look at are the ones, while going with the herd up to a point, display sharply deviant and unsheeply behaviour beyond, causing immense grief to the unsuspecting leaders.  Take the example of the Anti-Hindi agitation in Thamizh Nadu in the 1960s. This author, as an impressionable school boy,  was an amalgam of an under-duress member (because he was not really against Hindi and was part of after-school Hindi classes for years, but was threatened with reasonable violence to body parts) and willing participant (because it afforded an opportunity of throwing cricket-ball sized stones at various targets randomly designated by the glorious leaders!).  The roaring irony was that the progeny of the respected teacher-couple who conducted the after-hour Hindi classes were also coerced members of the mob, but enjoying the outing nonetheless, for aforesaid reasons.  As always, going staunchly with tradition and well-defined opening gambits, public buses were the primary targets and the cricketers in us enjoyed impressive strike rates as our throws ended with clattering glasses.  But then a few diabolical ones among the sheeple also accurately lobbed stones into the police posse, stationed as audience to appreciate the skills displayed by the mob, unless provoked.  And provoked they were, being used as targets contrary to the pre-violence agreement; they resorted to their own counter-violence and most of the senior coercers and leaders were severely beaten up and incarcerated for a few days, while those sheeple who astutely engineered that outcome were smirking away to glory!

The next sub sect which quietly causes significant diversion from the preconceived outcome is that which refuses to show its hand when surveymonkeys and exit polls are happening, but reacts at its own pace and trajectory almost malevolently, at the least opportune time for the leaders.  Market surveyors and exit poll specialists are yet to fully grasp the fact that the specimens they coax opinions out of are exactly the ones who like hearing their own voices and fancy themselves as opinion-makers.  The ones who actually swing the ultimate outcome one way or the other are in silent majority, watching without even a twitch, the brash and the bumptious making asses of themselves.  Just because these low-key, quiet sheeple are not seen clamouring, those who are loud become the mistaken voices and alas, the result is disastrous for the exit polls and surveys.  Members of this group imbibe all the opinions swirling around in their neighbourhood, on TV, in print media and elsewhere. They hold incisive, individual, internal debates in their own minds and get their fix unerringly, without so much as betraying a sign of being rebellious, inevitably subverting the grandiose plans of the chosen few!!   

Other sheeple decide purely on the basis of their affiliations to those they consider their mentors, even if the latter have neither reasons nor pretensions to being that.  Accordingly this group stays on the sidelines, indifferent to the end.  Another section may just look at the alternatives and be influenced by the most strident voice -- be it the wife or father-in-law or an impudent friend, even the choice is diametrically opposite to the popular one.  There are sheeple who make their picks and reject someone because that person stole his favourite marble during a game or she was hugely resented during childhood for her beautiful, long hair.  In essence, sheeple come in all forms and shapes, the underlying and unifying factor being their unpredictability, which ends up thwarting popular choices.

As I was firming up the above thoughts, I decided to send a trial balloon up and asked my dear wife for her valued opinion on sheeple.  She said she was in complete agreement (this indeed was alarming and I thought she was just getting my goat).  She smugly continued that she intimately knew one prime specimen but this one, even when seemingly being led by the nose, was inherently rebellious and was capable of, nay, was almost always going to steer the leader the wrong way.  She wanted to know whether my definition of sheeple covered this too.  She would not elaborate and till this day I am looking to solve the riddle!!  

Quotas, Quotas, Everywhere!

In the recent past, India convulsed through two violently damaging agitations resulting in senseless loss of lives and public/private property, apart from huge inconvenience to the populace and severe disruption of routine life.  Both were community/caste driven and incited by the literally incendiary behaviour of the usual vested interest groups and vote-bank politics.  One by the Jats in the north and the other by the Kapus in the South in Andhra Pradesh.  Both sought to coerce governments to concede quota-based goodies for the respective communities through intimidation.  Since the instigators of the day are the power-brokers of tomorrow,  governments tend to capitulate, as the Haryana Government did with the Jats and further extended the list of approved quotas. 

(What?  People are already grumbling and preparing to post sharp comments like `very serious blog', `totally unlike you' etc.  Come on, folks! The idea is not to be serious for too long; please bear with me for one more para!!)

There is no denying the fact that in a country like India, inherent and institutionalised social iniquities compel the poorest to continue wallowing in their misery generation after generation. Without any genuinely structured attempt to provide short term succour and longer term livelihood solutions, quotas are the easier way out and absolutely necessary.  But, economic backwardness, measured by annual household income or some similar yardstick, should be the sole criterion for quotas, since it can subsume all other pertinent considerations like backward caste, tribe etc which are invariably the drivers today.    But this is anathema to (surprise, surprise!!) exactly those who have grown out of poverty from those segments, using the same quota system and are relatively better off now.   These bundles of avarice just refuse to move aside on the basis of economic backwardness but want to perpetuate their quotas, leaving in doldrums those unfortunate souls way below them on the ladder.  Because economic backwardness is not the basis for the current quota system, there is ample scope for undeserved sections of society to exploit crevices and muscle their way to quotas with the connivance of scheming politicos.  Consequently, the whole quota scene in India could be seen as a terrible joke perpetrated on the citizenry, but for the havoc it wreaks from time to time. But what if it were a joke??

(Whoa, that took a bit of effort to bring this back to the track readers are familiar with).

The Supreme Court has now asked the authorities running the game of cricket to implement various reforms, one of which is to have a three-member Selection Committee.  This is in lieu of the current five members, who are picked from each of the five geographic zones, with the chief being appointed by rota from one of the zones.  Typical of the quota mindset we have.  What if these five zones were mandated to contribute three players each to the team of fifteen, with the zonal selector appropriately playing God?  Obviously, talent, form and performance will be damned and the physical location of the player and his equation with the zone's selector become the overriding qualifications. Cases of a waning player choosing to uproot himself from Koodankulam to Kurhukshetra to exploit zonal quota will be commonplace.  Climax will be when an expanded bench of the Supreme Court is again forced to select the team itself,  some 12 hours before a crucial match, to negate the shenanigans of the regional selectors!! 

This scribe always wonders how our naive netas have failed to spot glaring opportunities to supeficially help their vote banks while lining their own pockets, using the much-maligned quota system. One easy route to solving the unemployment malaise among the downtrodden will be to fix a quota for the allocation of all reserved  railway, airline and bus tickets to the various castes/communities.  This way, all genuine travellers will be at the mercy of the quota class and the latter can run legally sanctioned and officially protected rackets employing thousands of `quota-entitled' people to manage the secondary sale of those tickets at premium.  Actually, this same formula will work for seats in schools, educational institutions of all hues including management schools, thereby expanding the field of opportunity multiple times.  One realizes this is being done by enterprising school and college managements now, but the lack of governmental approval inhibits the system from achieving its full potential, without a doubt.

Another area which has not been fully explored with reference to the quota system is the practice of medicine.  There are doctors passing out of medical schools, with barely any knowledge of the human body (granted, they can identify body parts as easily as the rest of us, but that is probably it) and their only focus is to milk the sick in the society to become rich rapidly.  This author does concede that this is a conundrum -- not being a good doctor and having such a lofty ambition to amass wealth in the short term.  See, if a doctor has a tainted reputation (inevitable if he is barely knowledgeable) or no reputation at all (he has to do something to develop one), one doesn't need rocket science to divine that he is going to be bereft of patients and earnings.   If only the politicians and the government think shrewdly and implement a quota system here, such doctors will benefit immensely.  All patients should be forced to join a queue and should be allocated to such pretend-doctors entirely based on a quota for each doctor. This allocation should be done through a lottery, just so that the system and government are not unfairly accused of targeting a particular individual to be sent to a low-life doctor.  This adroit step would also stop the opposition from holding the parliament to ransom on this count.  Yes, somebody requiring urgent repair his bowels might end up with an absolutely raw and untested dentist or one screaming for attention to his gall-bladder may have to deal with an orthopaedic struggling to distinguish between  fibula and humerus,  so what?  Tough luck, that is the way the quota works, don't be too stuck up about that, patients!!

Frankly, even as I was writing that, the endless possibilities struck as a bolt from the blue.  Not all enterprises do equally well, obviously due to the (dis)abilities of the management as well as the lack of quality products/services sold.  But, a government thirsting to apply that great socio-economic roadroller-leveller called the quota system can thrive in this fertile area, with only imagination to limit the scope. To sustain and mollycoddle those incorrigibly and chronically inefficient institutions, compulsory diversion of clientele can be a facile and satisfactory solution, as has been proved in the case of majority of public sector units in India.  For instance, a lousy restaurant, which prides itself on serving absolutely inedible food, but perceived by the socially and politically correct as deserving a good chance and a long run, should be given a number of customers for every meal.  Of course, the by-now-well-established lottery system should settle who should be favoured with such meals.  One can see that this quirk of lottery also makes for excitement and suspense, apart from upholding the principle of neo-natural justice, which is enshrined in the dictum `For the sake of quota-beneficiaries, the rest should all grin and bear'!!

True to form, many politicians are asking for quotas in private organizations now.  Why not, this is their benevolent contribution to the principle of dispersing the goodies far and wide.  This author's suggestion is that all those in the political spectrum and their cronies, who have gone from Zero to Billions in 5 years (sounds like competition for Aston Martin Vantage N24) should first use their wealth to set up new companies with the sole objective of aiding the quota-drive.  Some kind of amnesty programme can be run to shut the doors on all those cases involving disproportionate income/wealth, in litigation for ever, and all such shenanigans can be forgiven so long as such new enterprises  are entirely populated with our quota-entitled brethren.  Employment and reasonable salaries should be guaranteed for at least twenty years, regardless of the way the companies perform.  Those who want such entitlements only on very narrow caste/community grounds, should be compelled to hire only those castes/communities in managing their companies.  Once this experiment is conducted for a decade or more and the results are found favourable,  the next step of dipping into the state's ink-pot can be thought of.

The mounting of the quota flag on the social summit can be something like this.  Quota-based job rotation for everyone, could be the literal clincher. Certain percentage of forward communities should periodically be assigned jobs like coconut tree climbing, pig-rearing, garbage clearing, construction site work etc to teach them empathy and the meaning of dignity of labour.  Anyway this will come about logcially if we continue to provide quotas for others to do other lucrative jobs mentioned above; no specific effort in this direction may be required.

With the way the quota basket is sought to be expanded and extended,  we may soon arrive at that watershed moment in history, when it might dawn on the powers-that-be that it is far easier to list the few castes/communities which are excluded from quotas.  Easier to track and maintain. This may be the only reform we will see in this context in the near future.  My dear wife has patiently read all this and has one question: `What is the one thing that might change things in India, with reference to quota-regime'?  My guess is the only antidote is the possibility that India will end up worse than Pakistan in all spheres of life, with the continuation of the present system.  Her real concern is that someone up there, who is as seriously hare-brained as the author, may happen to read this post and decide to launch an experiment.  She refuses to believe that this author is only mimicking reality, it is not the other way around!!

Rumour has it that Harsh Bhogle's exclusion from the IPL commentary team this year is also due to the quota problem??  Sony has removed its quota of one they had - for an Indian commentator reasonably sensible, refreshing even in the routine, humorous when the opportunity comes through, extremely incisive, cohesive and erudite to the extent one can be in this sphere.  With the abolition of that quota, out went Harsha??  Is this true?

Bans!

Ever since the age of ten, this author has watched with fascination, governments banning something or the other, completely ignoring their ability, or the lack of it, to control or predict the outcome.  He had grown up in a very 'lively' town in which petty rivals used machetes and sickles liberally and whimsically to separate chosen limbs from bodies, over-ruling objections of the owners, who obviously preferred to stay whole.  Consequently, the earliest ban he was blessed to witness was under the oft-used Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which prevented unlawful assembly, including that of dangerous urchins lurking with deadly weapons like marbles, plastic bats etc.   Sec 144 was always the topper of monthly charts by a long distance, as bans went those days and one must admit that there was a woeful lack variety in bans in general.  Probably because the governments of the day in the 60s had to do some real work and also were not as imaginative of the current ones.   People who fancied consumption of mouse-meat or monkey-meat (now, please don't start a riot, this author is just being creatively fanciful!) were at liberty to indulge in their favourite gourmet dishes without riling Ganesha or Hanuman devotees and the authorities had better things to do than monitor the dietary habits of the citizenry.

There has been an electrifying transformation in the `ban' scenario since those days and the repertoire has widened in scope dramatically (tracing this important historical development has to wait for a while because the body of research into this entertaining subject is still work in progress due to severe funding constraints) with multiple parties being added as regular 'ban'ners, besides governments.  Any political outfit which has mustered three goons and thirty aspiring goons under their tutelage or any unknown disgruntled group from a sub-caste of an obscure religious sect or just a band of an aggrieved community demanding (of course, unreasonably) immediate relief for something festering for a couple of decades, can declare a ban and enforce it much better than the government agencies. Such bans, when declared and orchestrated without any accountability for the consequences, by seemingly non-state actors, are called 'Ban'dhs - as you can see, it is just a small variation.  It is rumoured that various such organizations desirous of pursuing the high-profile business of bans, have hired full-time-equivalents with a wealth of relevant prior experience, speciously designated them `Event Managers-cum-Mentors' and tasked them with successful execution of the weirdest of bans.  Now, the timid and innocuous lay-man can probably comprehend why there is a sudden spike in bans - against a particular scene in a movie or a dish in a restaurant or thirteen isolated words in an eight- hundred-page-tome,  protesting a commercial ad, objecting to a pseudonym used by an erring author, whatever.  Mind-boggling variety has arrived.  This sowed the seeds in the feverishly creative mind of this author, of an urge to experiment with a ban of very limited proportions within the confines of his own home, so that violence is limited, if not completely averted, knowing fully well who the eventual victim would be!!

Nobody is perfect when it comes to eating vegetables; some like this and some avoid that.  There is no shame in owning up that as a mere mortal, this scribe also has his aversion to one vegetable, which shall remain anonymous as a measure of abundant caution.  Leveraging the intervention of our housekeeper who sources vegetables, with some astute molly-coddling, I contrived to impose an unannounced ban - I smugly decided that it paid to be subtle about these things.  After a couple of weeks of deprivation, my dear wife who just loves that vegetable, wondered about its mysterious disappearance and was given some excuse by my wobbly co-conspirator.  After a month of agonizing over this, she brought in the supply herself and I persuaded the housekeeper to cook that after five days when I would be out on a trip.  But disaster struck when he retrieved the stuff to improve its edibility - it had rotted in parts. All hell broke loose when he, stripped of all flimsy defences, pointed not only one finger but a whole fat hand in my direction accusingly.  A sinister, withering look from that mother of all sinister-look-deliverers and a few chosen admonitions later, the objective of my attempted ban was stood on its head effortlessly! I was forced to eat that abominable vegetable some twelve times in the following two weeks - some kind of a record I was told by the pleased-as-punch housekeeper.  Moral of the story: Do not think of ban, if you cannot enforce it!! If only other `ban'ners are administered such swift and merciless retribution, why would the next ban come about??  If only there is a way of bulldozing the law enforcement agencies to come around for some coaching classes!

A senior American colleague of mine, who was a strict disciplinarian and an avid enforcer of rules was very annoyed by the employees eating their lunch in the open office.  The result, the entire space constantly smelled like the interiors of a frontier restaurant which prided itself on its meat specialities, prepared with generous doses of butter, onion and garlic.  A peremptory order was served, banning the office from doubling up as dining room.   During the next two months, overtime ballooned and unfinished work piled up because most of the mule-headed old timers decided to go for long lunch breaks outside and cited crowded restaurants as reason for delays.  Obviously, a very meek surrender occurred, no different from that notorious case of the ban on an undesirable vegetable.  I have also heard that similar overturning of thoughtless bans was required to quell unarmed rebellion in other places - (1) An insensitive foreigner-manager questioned and banned multiple visits to the prayer room daily in a Muslim-majority country; he was hyper-critical of females taking additional time, without realising that they had to remove their make-up before praying and then restoring status-quo-ante.  (2)  An almost puritanical Englishman decided to impose a ban on the leisurely Spanish practice of merienda, that enjoyable filler of time between two meals and triggered a revolt and (3) An ignoramus of a boss banned employees from their visits, armed with toothbrush, paste and towel, to rest rooms after each snack or meal; he was completely clueless about the damage to the quality of air in closed spaces in the office, resulting from people's love for abundant garlic in their meals, which could be countered only with periodic brushing of teeth!!  So, never ban something without a clear understanding of the reasons why your predecessors have never attempted that.  You will be the unfailing target of the boomerang!

Those who were in Madras in the 70s would recall that it was very fashionable for students to hang out of buses, hanging on the railings near the entrance and exit.  No denying the fact that there was no space inside the bus to accommodate the spill-over, but students, as a class, also wanted to enhance their macho appeal to the girls in the bus, by doing some circus en route.  Doubtless, this resulted in a few accidents and some casualties; so the police promptly banned what was euphemistically termed `foot-board travel'.  But, when each bus during the peak hours had some twenty reckless youth perilously attached to the railing by a crooked finger and resting one toe on the foot-board, what can the police effectively do?  When one bus was stopped and twenty students booked for the offence, some twenty more buses went by; the booked students screamed blue murder because others were going scot-free.  There ensued student strikes with the usual assortment of soda bottles and stones being thrown about and colleges being closed for a few days.  Finally and tragically, `good sense' prevailed among the top brass of police and they lifted the ban, letting the suicidal tendencies of the boys continue to maim and kill themselves.  Sad, but again, a case where implementation of a well-intended ban going awry.

But there are a few bans which will be appreciated by the public at large, will be of immense relief to long-suffering people and will be welcome measures to enhance the image of India and Indians:

@Ban all political activity, especially the mindless and painful bandhs, hartals and all other disruptions, in public spaces used by others.  Set aside specific arenas (grounds far away from the city/town) and specify times for participants to hold their protests there, nowhere outside.  Video-tape the activity and show to admirers and followers who longed to but could not be present.
@Ban all religious activity outside temples, mosques, churches, other specifically denominated religious places.  Not even a single loud-speaker should be facing outside from these premises to broadcast anything; if required, let those be turned right back into the faces of people inside, who love high decibel preaching.  Let them enjoy.
@Ban all disruptions in parliament, assemblies etc  Stop the rot which has set in amongst parliamentarians who besmirch the idea of democracy with their repugnant actions.  Ban them from breaching time-honoured protocols and traditions and punish them if they refuse to fall in line.

You see, this author is not against Bans.  Just that he prefers to pick and choose the good ones!!

Rising Intolerance!

Those readers blessed with elephantine memory and tremendous power of recall may just manage to remember that recently, all of three months back, there was a raging controversy in India about the country having suddenly become very intolerant.  If they wonder how and why the hue and cry dissipated as quickly as it emerged, probably there lies part of the solution to the puzzle.  There was no spectacular effort from any quarter to effectively douse the fire, but still doused it was - one does not hear newspaper headlines and TV channels scream the stuff at you non-stop.  There was an election around the corner and various political satraps and their bands of excitable followers found it convenient and profitable to keep the pot boiling with all kinds of theories to keep their own vested interests going.  One was reminded of the witches in ancient tales, avidly stirring the inevitable bubbling potion in a cauldron, symbolic of cooking up something nasty.

Accusations of the government of the day abetting growing intolerance flew thick and fast, with opposition parties waking up with new instances of intolerance every dawn.  While the government made noises and tried to ward off the aggressive pitch of opponents, unfortunately the surfeit of  moronic elements on its side just fermented the broth further, virtually unchecked.  Such elements should have been permitted to open their mouth occasionally, only to imbibe something for sustenance -- while this scribe is saying this out of political correctness, he is yet to be convinced that even this allowance is necessary. That too only if long term intravenous feeding was declared unsustainable for huge numbers, for justifiable reasons like endless cost of catheters and medical supervision!  This illustrious group had an open field for a while and contrived to exacerbate the situation effortlessly until the government got burnt by a surprisingly stinging blow-back in the said election and decided to clamp down, obviously too late after heavy damage was done. All these divisive elements have since been probably herded into well-fortified subsistence quarters in the nether regions and given enormous license to bawl out as they please, on the condition that  no one else is around to pay heed.  Last heard, these people are hugely enjoying their new-found `power'.

Into this prickly and significantly politicized debate, waded a small section of the intelligentsia and a bunch of well-meaning, smart individuals.  Each one had his or her own edge of angst and agenda and the witches' repugnant concoction in the cauldron quickly got rancid and acidic.  Dozens of authors of various hues took umbrage and condescended to return awards they had received up to a decade or more earlier, not from the government but from a literary body.  Nobody has explained well why this group  imagined that such a gesture would seriously highlight the disenchantment with the current government, especially when the awards were given in the past during the tenure of another.  So much for impact assessment, if any, done by that eminent group.  If they thought this would galvanize public opinion, one could fault their collective wisdom because the majority populace was blissfully unaware that these writers and awards even existed.  You cannot blame the callous public, because these awardees dwelt in an esoteric domain, far removed from the popularly recognized movie and TV awards our men and women usually thrive on!  So all that happened was the literary body sardonically whimpered that it is not in the same business as Amazon or Flipcart and these awards, once accepted, cannot be returned and there was no procedure to even receive the scrolls back!  This scribe's guess is that the scrolls were accepted by the authorities (because they preferred to avoid further courier expense in sending them back to folks who anyway resented the awards) and might be reused in future in some way.  The avalanche of public protests the authors hoped to instigate ended with some eighty authors (out of 1.3 billion people in the country) forming a close-knit rebel band, with a sprinkling of support elsewhere, no doubt.  That these authors were castigated by others as representing a motivated anti-government platform, with an ulterior political agenda was to be expected.

Enter Amir Khan, with an uncharacteristically shambolic confession that his wife was worried about bringing up their child in such a vitiated atmosphere and was wondering whether they should move abroad.  For someone who has always been seen as intelligent and balanced, this was more than an error of judgement, considering the fact that if he shifted residence, he probably would never do even a TV commercial again in India.  He is not a mutt to throw the baby with the bath water.  Why, then, for god's sake, make that bloomer and take a bed-room conversation public in this context?   Apparently, a few days back, Amir has sheepishly and inevitably resorted to that amorphous weapon of shameless skulduggery usually employed by motor-mouthed politicians -- denial of his own statement by saying he was misquoted or some such banality, just to salvage vestiges of whatever! Though, Amir found huge resonance with the original statement closer home.  My dear wife asks me twice a year if we can move to USA, not because of rising intolerance, but because she loves the idea of proximity to our boys who live there.  As is her wont, she ignored my pointed query as to what she would do if they move to Africa or Argentina with their next jobs.  Forgive that digression.

Once all the frenetic breast-beating by aforesaid individuals, groups and the hyper loquacious TV news anchors subsided without any apparent change in the level of intolerance in one direction or the other -- which happened after the Bihar election --  a bemused lay-man was left with some basic, unanswered, troubling questions:

**Did all those who returned awards and held up an angry flag against rising intolerance have any statistical proof that things had gone amiss?  Yes, there were reports of a man being lynched for keeping mutton-masquerading-as-beef in his fridge, some cows looking for old-age homes for want of options, the usual rant about Ram Mandhir in Ayodhya etc.  But, as a common man, this scribe (it cannot get any more common than that!) did not encounter a single incident personally that made him feel that religious or social or gender intolerance had changed - whatever was there, was there always!!  This was confirmed by almost everyone who was asked this question.
** How does a small group of intelligentsia develop such an inflated opinion of its own power of persuasion to assume it could change history by protesting on its hind legs when the numbers were negligible and voices terribly feeble in the overall scheme of things?
**Why did the rebellion completely vanish the way it did - without a whimper and who did what to put a lid on that?

Having said all that, the same lay-man in me does appreciate a few signs of intolerance emerging in India:

**Cricket selectors getting intolerant of some old war horses because these keep stumbling too often.
** Prime Minister's intolerance of bombastic and obnoxious extreme right wingers in the party, who could, with mindless statements, undo months of serious and critical work.
** Bangalore residents' intolerance of the pathetic governance and maintenance activities of the City Corporation, when it comes to a bit of road among potholes, mounds of garbage and the like.

This whole episode helped this author to solemnly undertake that he will not return any award, if any was ever to be given to him even by mistake, for whatever reason and make an ass of himself.  But a personal pinnacle was reached when my dear wife's tolerance level snapped with a vendor who was outrageously leveraging his non-existent goodwill with me for a few years now, much to her chagrin and he was shown the door - one way for exiting.  Now, I am spared the weekly harangues for his repeated misdemeanours, from the most tolerant of individuals I have come across.  God bless her!!

Business Of Competition!

If one wants to capsulize the most perturbing trend in contemporary life in two words, this author's vote is for `Unbridled Competition'.  Even if you are not looking out, what hits you in the face unfailingly whenever you step into public domain (even if that is a group of two including yourself) is the strident and naked aggression displayed by competing forces in all spheres of life.  Be it media/TV channels or e-tailers or political parties or educational institutions or your own family and friends.  Just look up and you will see Bajirao Mastani is head to head with Dilwale; Sharukh Khan is jostling with Amir Khan always; Arnab Goswamy is crying hoarse competing with himself and Rajdeep Sardesai simultaneously.  Ours is a society wherein parents and educational institutions bully children to compete ruthlessly, right from lemon and spoon race to IIT exams and torment youngsters if they do not live up to their (parents') own skewed expectations.  If a school is perceived not to be aggressively competitive enough in its ways, parents have no compunction in pulling out the kids, even if the latter are really enjoying the school time.  Very seldom does one get a reprieve from this onslaught and one cannot hide indoors from this menace since our belligerent TV channels compete to serve huge dollops of this during prime time at your own home and one's own kith and kin are avidly and unabashedly involved in this pursuit.  So, instead of peeking around the corner apprehensively, this scribe, fortunately blessed with a huge dose of pragmatism, decided to leverage the meta-data in his own possession to see who is competing with whom, for what etc.  Here goes.

Countries are competing heavily in the global arena, obviously.  Russia, for instance is perking up of late with Putin, being a man heavily shorn of subtleties and readily abrasive, rattling the sabre rather violently at USA and the West in Ukraine first and then in Syria.  While harking back to the pre-Gorbachev era when USSR was a super power could ostensibly be a reason, some collateral benefits might also be in the cross-hairs.  One, with oil prices going down convulsively, Putin might have decided wisely to use surplus unsold stocks for his own air force and navy instead of selling below cost to disrespectful renegades, who have joined NATO with unseemly haste in the past decade or so. Two, while in Syria, he may also decide to bomb a few oil fields (allegedly producing or selling oil for the benefit of ISIS and also a few guiltless others, to be explained as collateral damage) out of existence in the middle east - that will mean reduced competition in oil in future.  If, in the bargain, after the US led and Russia led groups cause adequate mutual destruction, they manage to scratch the offending ISIS ultimately, both competing sides can indulge in macho chest-thumping for having saved the world -- all those who suffered due to their own actions be damned!

India and China competed, till two decades ago, only in the area of exercising the loins of their men and women, resulting in  population explosions in both countries.  But the latter has since moved ahead in terms of economy, manufacturing etc thanks to its military-style do-or-die political structure (this is not referring to the spirit of the Chinese) embracing capitalistic communism (??) India, in the meantime, as the most lawlessly democratic of democracies, has been mired in its own native version of internecine squabbles, losing myriad opportunities to catch up on economic progress.  But now, interestingly India wants to compete with China in the area of Bullet Trains. Not in manufacturing them but in running them wherever it can.  True, India should logically focus on running all its ultra-slow trains without any accident for a decade before increasing the speed even marginally.  But logic be damned, for some inexplicable reason it wants to leapfrog to three times the current peak speed of trains at a massive cost and with fervent prayers, hopes to run the bullet train effectively, aided by the Japanese.  So, India's bullet train will compete (not literally) with China's and this competition will be born of the intense rivalry between Japan and China to set up the bullet train technology in India with the former winning the mandate.  So, now China will seek to set up Bullet Trains in Pakistan, where they are more critically needed!

PM Modi has India's competitive position globally in his mind all the time.  That is why he is competing with a lot of over-worked long-haul commercial pilots to log the most air miles in a year, in his attempt to make the world realise that India is seriously competing for global attention as well as a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.  So that it can really begin believing that it has started competing with China in the world fora.  Modi is also encouraging USA, Russia, Japan and European countries to compete fiercely in bringing those things to India which either they do not want in their own countries (like Nuclear Power Plants) or their military would rather manufacture at lower costs in other countries for re-export (like armaments, missiles etc).  But, our PM cannot be blamed since he has very little political wiggle-room to legislate in favour of local manufacture, so going global seems to be the most productive alternative in order to manufacture locally. Undoubtedly, he is doing better business with foreign governments than in India, thanks to the hugely disruptive, suicidally inclined and pathetically breast-beating Congress party.  That single reason is good enough to justify all his travels.  And at the end of it, our military import bills might come down significantly in the next few years, even if nothing else is achieved.  Which may mean we will not be in competition with Pakistan, but that should be fine.

What should baffle us in all this is this conundrum.  China did not develop all the technology for things on its own; it reverse engineered most of it, learning from products of Western or Japanese manufacturers, be it the nuclear power plant or bullet train.  Now, why cannot India compete with China by doing the same thing?  Are we suddenly shy of something? Or we cannot even copy?  But then we did complete a successful Mars mission. I get it, it is somewhat like Modi's travels.  We can do things well, so long as we take off and go somewhere else but not in our own place.

Who else is competing?  Flipcart, Snapdeal and the like.  They are fighting viscerally to dole out filthy discounts on everything they sell.  Such favours are not coming out of their own pockets but that is all the money investors have sunk, in the fond hope that they could see some profits a few centuries later.  But, then the primary lure for the fiercely competitive investors is not the immediate profitability of the companies itself, but the truly bloated valuations done in the minds of hotshot financial wizards, who are very good at playing with others' money. Who are they competing with?  Each other and all the brick-and-mortar retailers.  While many of us might still want to visit a store, touch and feel before buying whatever, there is a horde of people, who spend oodles of time online, whether at home or at work.  Actually, it is practically impossible to differentiate between this tribe's work time and shopping time because it is all done on the same device.  And these people are vying with each other to avail more cashbacks, coupons, freebies from the etailers, probably buying things which they may not need or would not actually buy at a brick-and-mortar store.

Then there comes the list of competitive businesses which have not managed to damage the rivals seriously but have not done badly themselves despite all the newfangled competition.  Take, for example, Cafe Coffee Day, Dominos, McDonalds and the like.  Their arrival on the scene and growth has not changed the turf for small and big Udupi joints. Actually Adyar Ananda Bhavan has flourished in the last twenty years, precisely the period of growth for the fast food giants.  All those grocery chains and supermarkets have not been able to obliterate the neighbourhood Kirana stores, which seem to be as determined and well-built for endurance, like the indomitable cockroach.  My mother still calls one of these stores for all her groceries, the same way it has been for over four decades and things get delivered better and faster (managed now by the next generation's youngsters) than any online grocery store.    This has transpired, principally because each segment has predominantly catered to its own clientele with the customers crisscrossing periodically from one to the other without any serious issue. Sure, some very small Kirana stores might have suffered, but the casualty may not have been humongous.  My dear wife is raising that questioning eyebrow again and asking `how do you know'?  I don't, am just guessing - that is my usual muffled answer, when the query comes from that particular incisive source!!

Driverless Cars

Even as Google and Tesla are racing towards proving the technology used in their Driverless Cars or Self-Driving Car (let us call it DC) and commence commercial production of these contraptions, this scribe has a few gnawing doubts.  While such cars may be more suitable to the driving conditions and roads of USA and some advanced countries, they are bound to compound the chaos on Indian roads, should they be introduced here too.  And, given the penchant of the moneyed and the class-conscious Indians to mindlessly mimic those countries, such cars will arrive on Indian roads sooner or later, regardless of their suitability to our conditions - just because we like to show off.

Imagine DC handling some unique challenges posed by Indian roads.  An officer, miffed with his wife after an especially trying session of viscerally verbal pyrotechnics, may retaliate and decide to unilaterally convert a two-way street into one-way, without any notice to anyone.  A traffic light which normally works well as it is programmed to, will get manually over-ridden at the busiest hour by an egotistical officer who entertains enormous aversion towards anything automatic evading his control, just to demonstrate to himself who the boss is.  A senior politician's visit to a member of his harem may trigger a sudden two-mile long traffic snarl on a usually somnolent road. Or a convoy of slow-moving cows with their numerous progeny in attendance, might deceive the unsuspecting system in DC and cause a malfunction. The intelligent and perceptive readers of this blog may undoubtedly bring up umpteen other similar India-manufactured intricacies in traffic conditions, which will bamboozle the best structured platforms of the expensive DC.

Then this scribe came across another article detailing how the DC will exercise its choice in case of an accident, resulting in danger to the occupants of the car or to those outside.  Simply stated, such a decision will be preordained by the car-maker and hard coded into the DNA of DC, of course following some logic.  Meaning, the occupants, in the absence of a driver, will be at the mercy of the algorithm built in, which may be coded to save the lives of people outside in the path of the DC rather than its own occupants for some `moral/ethical' reasons.  Well, one may argue that this is probably no different from a situation where the driver will have to decide quickly which way to go, but the fact remains that the driver will probably choose to save himself along with the others in the car, whereas the algorithm may have no such predilection!  In India, road accidents being an almost government sanctioned device of attrition to whittle down population to some extent (that explains why driving licences are given out indiscriminately, sometimes to even non-existent people, against bribes), such a feature may not alarm the public or discourage sale of DC.  So, the focus in the following sections are on rather non-serious aspects of DC in India, as and when that happens.

Those who buy DC in India would want it primarily for a trophy, but may not entirely go driver-less because of the depreciation dent that brings in their status.  For instance, when the owner gets down, the driver has to come around and open the door for him or his wife, since most owners would have, by now, forgotten how to open car doors.  While having a DC may enhance self-esteem in these people, being driver-less would peg them back a few notches, which would be unacceptable.  How would this conundrum be solved??  Simple.  The driver would metamorphose into `Transportation Manager' and would occupy the front passenger seat!  He cannot anyway be dispensed with, since the master would not deign to perform the menial function of punching in co-ordinates, trip data etc into the system.   The primary difference this would make to others on the road is that the door which the driver opens when the car is in motion and spews spit on the road will change!  Also, the status conscious DC owner would hate to park the car about hundred metres away and trundle to the destination, since that wound unnecessarily burn some flab in the carefully nurtured body of the owner.  One may argue that it is possible the car would be wired to probably automatically find a parking lot and settle down, if the owner so desires.  That may be so, but after dropping the owner, if it happens to be a ten-level parking lot in a mall, how would the owner know where the car is?  Can he summon it like he would summon his dog?  Dogs have exceptional sense of smell, through which they interpret their whole world, but DC will have such extraordinary connectivity to the owner??  Hopefully Google is thinking about that.

Can software glitches make the DC run amok??  Come to think of it, this is something akin to a driver having a heart attack and passing out while having to control the car on the road.  If something untoward results, who is responsible? Under usual circumstances, the driver cops the punishment, even if the boss was driving the normal car by using the proven-through-the-ages proxy rule, in exchange for some booty to set the driver up for life.  But in this context, there is no driver; the boss does not steer the car; car is self-driving, for god's sake.  So, the car goes to jail??  May be the software engineer, who is deemed culpable??  Or just the software?? This author's hope is that a case should be filed to determine this rather crucial matter before the government allows DC in India.  That should do for the next two decades, knowing how fast cases are concluded in our courts.

Some other sundry thoughts:

** DC will be made so sensitive (equipped with powerful sensors) that it probably would stop every time some other vehicle cuts into its path.  This will result in the ridiculous situation of the DC being stationary more often than mobile in our environment, since most drivers in India cannot move hundred yards without dangerously veering sideways.

**In the first few months, there would be numerous reports in the rural areas of ghosts driving expensive cars and a special police team would be required to assuage the anxieties of the folks.  Tantriks could smell an opportunity and make a pile doing the assuaging after the police team has finished.

**If a non-driver is tasked with ensuring that the DC follows the desired route and this person falls asleep, what happens?  A driver is less likely to doze off (at least theoretically so), but someone with not even a wheel to grip and turn around might easily fall prey to `innocent sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care', with some undesirable consequences.

**Is it likely that Uber would run some DCs as cabs?  This possibility opens up an entire vista of scenarios and this author has no intention of insulting the intelligence of the readers by dwelling on them.  Best left to imagination.  Having said that, driver-less auto-rickshaws would be very welcome, unless the crooked but ingenious owners manipulate the manufacturer to programme the vehicles to refuse to take passengers, charge multiples of metre fare and generally behave like their `driven' tribe. But any attempt to let the driver-less auto-rickshaws use the footpaths should be summarily rejected, to optimize the benefit to the populace.

** Some would rather enjoy the DC experience - those who are inveterate back-seat drivers (men and women) and those who constantly educate men how to improve their driving - as a force of habit - without having driven a car themselves in their lives (women only).

** It looks like the DC would not have a steering wheel or pedals for brake and accelerator.  In order to sell in India, the makers should take care to provide at least a horn somewhere in the car.  Without the toot, DC will not sell, market research would hopefully tell them.  Cars without brakes are okay, but without horns are a strict No, No, in India.

By now, one should be disoriented.  Just as this author's head started spinning uncontrollably at an `rpm' hitherto never experienced, the lady who brought light into his life, his dear wife came to the rescue one more time and shined a torch on an absolute gem of a redeeming line in the article about DC in general -- the technology in DC cannot yet recognize pot-holes on the roads.  Hurrah!!  Three cheers!!  India will not see DC for a few decades at the least, since a pot-hole-less Indian road is just unimaginable, against our tradition and Vedas, a stark violation of the order of creation; it might even be prohibited under the Constitution.  Who knows, the local government in Bangalore may unanimously decide not to fix any pot hole on the roads, just to keep the greater evil of DC at bay!!  Personally, given the general quality and skills of drivers, I prefer `car-less drivers'  to DCs!

Note:  The author's knowledge of DC is at best shallow.  So, those experts who are bristling to email expletive-laden comments may want to hold the horses and let this piece pass!!