The power of Shivaji

There is so much to write these days but then these statues keep popping from everywhere. I was just done with Mayawati's concrete avatar and now there is already competition to her. I wrote about him two years back. If it would have been a plan to do something good for the people, impacting them directly and adding some value to their lives, it would have surely been long forgotten. But then how can you forget Shivaji? Specially when elections are fast approaching. So the plan was taken out of the dust, file was cleaned and now they have taken the decision (Though a formal government's approval is still pending). It seems whenever a state grapples with fears of drought, they tackle it by planning the statues. First UP and now Maharashtra.

The entire project of putting Shivaji Maharaj in sea complete with plush gardens would cost the exchequer a cool 350 crores. Those who are not too fond of Shivaji can enjoy books at the library, if you are not too much of a 'sea' person you can visit the museum and the foodcourts there or if you are not into statues there would be a 200 seater amphitheatre.

What a monumental waste of money!

Cheers!

BJP At The Crossroads

The party with a difference is surely a different party these days. It’s limping badly. One can draw parallels with Jinnah. The preacher of communal harmony in 1916 became the sole messiah of Muslim in 1946. Same way as BJP from the single largest party and the ruling one in 2001 is now, in 2009, an organisation that resembles more like Pakistan Cricket Board as far as infighting, bickering and power struggle is concerned. The change is swift and radical. The party which sells itself for its ideology is struggling to define it.

In the last 5 months, party has spent most of its time in defending venom spewing Varun Gandhi, trying to satisfy the ego of Jaitley and Rajnath Singh (remember Sudhanshu Mittal episode), ignoring the poll debacle, mishandling Vasundhra Raje episode and the expulsion of the veteran leader, Jaswant Singh. Yesterday, Sudheendra Kulkarni dissociated himself from BJP because of ideological differences. All these are clear signs of breakdown.

With A B Vajpayee out of active politics, at 81, Advani cannot be seen as the future of the party. In fact, many say that the decision to expel Jaswant Singh was taken to douse the chants (RSS chief among them) of instating younger leader at the helm. With no clear succession plan in place, this ego tussle between the individuals is bound to grow exponentially and there is no dearth of second string leaders in BJP. For every Rajnath Singh, there is Murali Manohar Joshi, for every Sushma Swaraj, there is Vankaya Naidu and for every Yashwant Sinha, there is Arun Jaitley. Not to forget the state stalwarts like Narendra Modi, Sushil Modi, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Kalraj Mishra, Ravi Shankar Prasad etc and then there is RSS burden to tackle.

BJP catapulted to the national scene with the emotive Hindutva issue and managed to encash it for few years. But, to be honest, the issue practically died down with the demolition of Babri masjid. Now there is a makeshift temple at the disputed site and everyone in the BJP knows in their hearts that the talks of proposed temple at Ayodhaya are mere fiction. They briefly tried to reignite same agenda on the name of Kashi and Mathura but realised that people don’t buy stale food. They then tried to tread the aggressive tone with the nuclear tests in Pokhran, Kargil and then Operation Parakram. Then there was the aggressive economic agenda which they tried to sell through much maligned 'India Shining' campaign and failed miserably. Since then, Congress has patented the idea of economic progress of India.

BJP now stands at crossroads, unable to decide what its core ideology is and what agenda to pursue. With only a handful of states in its bag and the ever diminishing seats in parliament, BJP now plays the role of opposition which can be passed as laughable at best. And with a herd of leaders with fat egos sitting at various influential positions within the party, their future looks bleak, atleast for the time being.

Cheers!

WTF!

Read this.

The Cricket Board on Thursday cleared the deck for ex-ICL players, who have been granted amnesty, to take part in the third edition of the Indian Premier League with a cap on their payment being a maximum of Rs 20 lakhs.

Great!! I thought. First line of the article probably carried the best thing BCCI has done in recent past, amnesty to ICL players. By the time the line ended, BCCI was at it yet again proclaiming, “We are fools but love to flaunt it”. Cap on their fees, maximum being 20 Lakhs in a scenario where others including foreign players are minting money? Poor lads are still being discriminated. After being banned from playing any sort of serious cricket for more than 2 years, they are now being welcomed to IPL with the ICL tag firmly pasted on their purse by BCCI. If BCCI would have its way, they would have asked the ICL players to complete a period of 6 months rigorous imprisonment before being eligible for national selection or IPL. Niranjan Shah would have asked each player to polish his shoes one by one for a week before being given amnesty.

In 1869, Charles Darwin gave his theory, ‘Survival for the fittest’. These days, BCCI is. They are the ones who have the power and are calling all the shots in world cricket and the scenario is likely to remain unchanged for at least a decade. So we can expect more coming from them in near future. They are in world cricket what America used to be in the world for most part of last two decades.

Cheers!

Sab Maya(wati) Hai!

On Monday, Mayawati has raised a fresh demand of Rs 556 crores from the supplementary budget of the state for the memorial projects. Not forgetting the state drought, she has asked for an additional sum of Rs 250 crores.

A prominent party functionary has asked behenji to review her demand. In a letter written to Mayawati, he has asked her to merge these 250 crores to 556 crores as the contractors working on these memorial projects are already managing all her statues and a large number of elephants on a shoestring budget. As per him, drought has become yearly phenomenon and there is no solution to it other than waiting for the next year rains. On the other hand, memorial parks and statues will remain there forever, reminding people of the glorious achievement of Behen Mayawati.

Update: The budget is now approved. Mayawati gets Rs 806 crores for memorials. Demand for the budget for drought has been dropped. In a separate letter to the above functionary, she has asked for the meaning of the word ‘shoestring’.

January 2010:
All the pending memorial projects are now complete but in the meantime 258 new memorial projects have been announced and now they are pending. Out of these, 105 are parks with statues of Mayawati, 65 are parks with statues of Mayawati along with Kanshiram, 30 are parks with statues of Mayawati, Kanshiram and B R Ambedkar, 40 are shopping malls with the statue of Mayawati with a designer bag at the entrance and 18 are women’s mega toilets where only dalit women will be allowed. All the parks will bear the name “Mayawati memorial parks” .These will be differentiated from each other only by the colour of the statues. All the malls will be christened as “Mayawati Malls”. These will be differentiated from each other by the brand of the hand bag her statue will hold. Fresh demand for budget has been made to the UP assembly.

July 2012:
All 258 projects are now completed as these were fast tracked and took priority before 27 bridges, 10 dams and electrification of 234 villages. As usual, 315 new projects have been announced. At the last count, UP has
26,512 elephants – 512 in flesh, 26,000 in concrete
6423 Mayawatis – 1 in flesh, 5000 in concrete and rest in bronze
2367 Kanshirams – All concrete
1215 Ambedkars – All concrete

December 2012:
Mayawati has just launched a ‘one of its kind project’. An order has been passed where all road dividers on state highways would be replaced by the statues of elephants. Elephant statues will be erected one behind the other and these will serve as road divider. Party supporters have expressed joy and have demanded “MTV innovative idea of the year award” for her.

May 2013:
Mayawati has made it compulsory for all the citizens of UP to display either an elephant or a Mayawati outside their houses. Citizens need to bear the cost of the statues as the state’s finances are in doldrums. In an unrelated announcement, she has banned the ‘laughing Buddha’. Instead there would be miniature ‘Laughing Kanshiram’ which people can buy from Mayawati stores after paying a ‘voluntary’ undisclosed sum. This money would be used for Mayawati’s birthday party.

April 2020:
Mayawati is serving her 6th term as Chief Minister now. Any influx of people from other city to Noida and Lucknow has been barred as there is severe space crunch in these cities. A recent census shows that the number of elephant statues have outnumbered the number for people below the age of 30 years in the state. In a new directive, Mayawati has declared that any new statues of elephants will be made hollow and big enough to accommodate one family inside it. These will be used to house dalit people who are currently staying in various shanties in slum areas. These shanties will be bulldozed and space for more such hollow elephants will be made. Party supporters have expressed joy and have demanded “MTV innovative idea of the year award” for her for 9th straight year. Fresh demand for the budget for these hollow elephant project has been made to the UP assembly.

Cheers!

Babudom and Netaland

One thing that I badly missed during my two year stint in UK was books of my taste. Though there were government libraries providing books free of cost, I rarely found books of my liking. Now that I am back in India, I am on a reading spree since past 9 months. Ideally, I should write a review of at least half of them but the reviews are written best if you write them just after you finish the book. So let’s leave them at that.

Currently the book that is featuring on my pillow is a class 'Journeys Through Babudom And Netaland' by retired IAS officer T.S.R Subramanian who last served as cabinet secretary in Government of India. He is someone who has seen and worked with bureaucrats and politicians from close quarters. The book is a real insight and first hand account of the red tapism and the corruption which is prevalent till the roots in public sector. A perfect blend of humour and satire. It portrays the moment of frustrations he had during his 37 years of service most of which were spent as the collector or district magistrate of small districts in UP.

It’s a must read for nonfiction lovers. There are so many anecdotes that I can mention but this one takes the cake :

"Contrast this with K K Dass, who had been chief secretary of UP in 1960's, and retired from service sometime in 70's.When he served as secretary to the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, his minister was the late Uma Shankar Dikshit. Dikshit soon thereafter became the home minister of India, and his staff officer Rajgopal, a dear friend of mine, showed me a file with exchange of correspondence between Dikshit and KK Dass. On his retirement,Dass had written a polite letter thanking Dikshit for all the courtesies extended to him and formally bidding farewell to him.The next letter in the file was the copy of an acknowledgement from the home minister to Dass, with a paragraph added, asking whether Dass would be available for a gubernatorial assignment. It is the home minister who usually initiates the proposals for the post of governor in the various states; and it was not a casual offer. Dikshit had made a mention on the file that he had discussed the matter with prime minister. In his reply, which is on record, Dass said that he was flattered and overwhelmed by the kindness shown by the home minister.Then he went on to add "I have served the Government of India for nearly 40 years. During this time, I have neglected the two true loves of my life -- my wife and my rose garden. Could the home minister excuse me and allow me to spend the few remaining years of my life in the company of my wife and the roses"

Such men existed!

Cheers!

Where are students?

About 5 years back I visited Hyderabad for the first time. One thing that caught my eye was the number of billboards advertising upcoming or ongoing Telugu/Tamil movies. Sheer number took me by surprise. Almost 80% of the billboards were displaying giant images of movies and it seemed as if whole city was painted by them. Cut to Pune, Oct'08. Here, movies were replaced by the advertisements of upcoming residential societies, Villas and and Apartments.


Two weeks back, I visited my hometown, Gwalior. For Geographically challenged (and I am one of them) its one of the city in Madhya Pradesh. Whole city was carrying large hoardings of new and existing colleges and institutes. Education is not new here. Gwalior had become an educational hub even 15 years back when coaching classes for PET, PMT and IIT mushroomed everywhere. This time I saw a number of hoardings attracting students for engineering, BBA, BCA, MBA, nursing, B. Ed, D. Ed etc. When I cleared my engineering entrance exam in 1999, there were 4 engineering colleges there and now I am told there are 25! I wondered who would be their potential students and wont they find it difficult to attract students. The other obvious question was the capability of the owners of these 'self financed' colleges and Institutes to cough up requisite facilities, campus and labs to start them.


I got my answer today when I read ' No students yet for 42 engineering colleges in Tamilnadu' on times website.


Only 27 colleges including Anna University's three constituent departments and government-run institutions have managed to fill up more than 96% of the available seats in various courses. "Less than 15 seats (1 to 10%) have been filled up in 177 engineering colleges, while 8 colleges have recorded an admission rate of 91 to 95%,"


So the situation is same everywhere. Now we have got a number of sub standard colleges owned by the rich and powerful but no students to join them. This too when every 'gali ka chora' is doing engineering and BCA these days. I heard that the same is happening even with the institutes as elite as IITs. With the number of IITs increased to 13 now, there is a dearth of students even there!


This is a glaring example when you start doing something just to showcase progress on paper. Education is the mirror of the society and the country and its high on every government's agenda be it central or state. Just to show that we are making progress permissions are being granted to all kinds of bogus institutes. This is to enable government to take the credit for opening so many colleges and institutes (needless to say these permissions are being granted in the most corrupt way) and we end up having colleges without students.


Soon we will see colleges distributing cash prizes to the student taking admissions in their institute and soon the headline ' Take admission and get two free tickets to Bangkok' wont be a joke!


Cheers!

Legend

I am not sure why a sporting event as gruelling as Tour de France is not covered extensively either in print or in electronic media. I understand that an event which spreads over 23 days does not attract too much attention from public but then then a race which requires participants to cover 3,500 Kms through steep climbs and arduous terrains throughout France and bordering countries and a race which can be termed as the ultimate test of human stamina deserves a bit more respect. Tour de France 2009 concluded two days back and any of the 1000+ news channels hardly covered it. I dont want to write about the winner. The guy is supremely fit 26 year old.

Lance Armstrong, a seven time Tour de France champion, at the age of 37 years stood 3rd. Now thats an achievement. Now consider this. He retired from professional cycling 3 years back after winning the event consecutively between 1999 and 2006 and returned from retirement only this year.

That he battled life threatening cancer disease at the age of 25 ( before winning any of his titles) make him the stuff of a legend. Two years back I got a chance to read his autobiography, Its not about bike and it had a deep impact on me.

Those who are looking for some inspiration from real life heroes, this book is a must read.

PS: Dont read his second book, Every second counts. That was written only to milk the success of his first!

Cheers!

Tears...

...sometimes its good to shed a tear or two...your gender not withstanding...

The Maestro

You must have read hundreds of articles on him. I have.

This is one that touched me.

Yes. Bit long but then all good things don't come in small packages!

Cheers!