Ramana's Musings

A friend of mine and I had an occasion recently to discuss the possibility of my standing for election to the Indian parliament. My friend was of the opinion that someone with my sense of humour should be able to bring some semblance of sanity to that hallowed institution. How hallowed it is can be seen from this video which is what triggered off the original idea of my contesting the election.

Lest my readers think that I have lost my marbles, let me assure them that I have not. I don’t belong there among those elected representatives from our great nation. Incidentally, the most violent of them come from the most violent part of our nation, still mired in poverty, ignorance and feudalism. I certainly do not belong there, nor can I ever hope to get elected from those parts. If I contest, it will be from a constituency that elects a different class of MPs.

The purpose of this post however is to take my readers into another dimension of our elections. Our contestants fight elections using election symbols.One of the biggest problems for many voters in India, where a large part of the population is still illiterate, is how to identify their chosen candidates on the ballots. The Election Commission, thus, has the laborious task of allocating separate election symbols for each party and the innumerable independent candidates.

So, in our discussions, my friend suggested that I shoud have a symbol that would clearly indicate that I was of a different caliber  than the run of the mill, garden variety politico. We discussed a number of options and I finally suggested that it should be this.

Yes, a clown.

My friend, a very wise man felt that the election commission would not allow this to be allocated as it would be unfair to the regular politicos who all desperately try to project this image in their actions.  I said that I should at least try and pointed out some other cases of impossible symbols being askded for by contestants and produced this one as an example.  My friend strongly believes that it was a simple case of spelling mistake that has got blown out of proportion.  He maintains that it was not an election symbol that was being sought but….

My friend is not hopeful. What do you think?

Tags: Clown, Condom, Election symbols, Member of Parliament

My regular readers will be familiar with a frequent commentator Mitch whose blog is one of those that I regularly visit and comment on.

His weekly Sunday Question posts inevitably challege one to think and respond and the last one “What Happened To Modesty?” was no different.

A great debate among Mitch, Rose and Sire is going on there to which I too have contributed a few words. Please do visit Mitch’s post and perhaps join the debate.

And if you do visit Rose’s blog, do not miss a beaut from her called “A Bizarre Fragrance” It took me a while to recover my breath after reading that. I would be interested in your reaction too.

Tags: Brazenness, Generation Gap, Provocative Dressing, Youth

That is a refrigerator that works without electricity. It is a solution for many villages without electricity, but where something to keep things safe a for a few days can make for a lot of convenience.

That is Mansukhbhai Prajapathi, a potter by profession who has brought smiles on a lot of faces. The refrigerator shown above is made from clay. Mansukhbhai has a lot of other gadgets like water filter, pressure cooker etc in his range of products made from clay and all of which need no electricity.

You can read all about him in this news item from Rediff Business.

Tags: Indian entrepreneur, Mansukhbhai Prajapathi, Potter, Refrigerator without electricity

I hope that you enjoy reading another post of the Friday Loose Bloggers’ Consortium when eleven of us post on the same topic chosen by one of us. Today’s topic has been chosen by Grannymar.

Please do visit Ashok, Conrad, Grannymar, Magpie11, Maria, Gaelikaa, Helen, Judy, Anu and Ginger to see ten other views on the same topic. Some of these bloggers may be preoccupied with vacations, examinations, family problems and/or romance, so be a little indulgent in case they do not post or post late.

That photograph published widely in India in 2003, caused a nation to ask itself some very disturbing questions. It is of Qutbuddin Ansari, a tailor of Ahmedabad in Gujarath who was pleading for his life. Read about it in an article in the BBC News here.

That photograph also buried from India’s conscience another story. There were no photographers around to take a shot of a crying human being with tears in her eyes pleading for mercy.

In some parts of India, we are not allowed to express grief in public. So we have professional mourners like in the famous film Rudali.

According to a custom, in certain areas of Rajasthan, women are hired as professional mourners after the death of a male relative. These women are referred to as a ‘rudaali’ (roo-dah-lee), literally translated as female weepers. They in turn publicly express the grief of family members who are not permitted to display emotion due to social status. The rudaalis make a scene crying out loud. The impact of their mourning also compels other people at the funeral to cry.

Tears come easily to me. Unfortunately, they never do at the right time nor right place. They come in torrents when I am alone or with people I can trust to understand and share my grief with. That is conditioning at its best!

Tears also come to me in torrents when I am joyful and laughing. I used to wonder if something was wrong with me till I read this little paragraph. “Darwin thought that monkeys, like humans, laughed. In this, he disagreed with Aristotle, who claimed that humans were the only creatures who laughed. Darwin’s purpose was to show that the expressive facial muscles had evolved from animals and that therefore man was not a separate, divinely created species. Duchenne kept a pet monkey and reported to Darwin that he’d often seen it smile, but Darwin relied on his own empirical experiments to argue that they laughed as well. “If a young chimpanzee be tickled—the armpits are particularly sensitive to tickling, as in the case of our children—a more decided chuckling or laughing sound is uttered,” Darwin wrote, “Young Orangs, when tickled, likewise grin and make a chuckling sound and. . . their eyes grow brighter.”

More recently, people are spending time and money on this very enigmatic practice about which you can read here.

I bet that the paragraph on Darwin will generate tears in Mayo’s eyes. Does it in yours as well?

Tags: Aristotle, Darwin, Godhra, Qutbuddin Ansari, Tears

This is one of Bollywood’s top stars, John Abraham. From his modeling days, he was Urmeela’s favourite actor.

His cultivated image is one of a macho biker.

I therefore could not believe my eyes when I read this news item about this macho actor of Bollywood.

What is the provocation I wonder?

Conrad, did you by any chance promise to do to him what you threatened me with?

Tags: Biker, Bollywood, John Abraham, Macho

This article in the Guardian, is a balanced as well as nuanced one, and for me the key paragraphs in it are these two, almost at the bottom.

“However, beyond the Bangalore IT hubs, the manicured lawns of the ministerial bungalows in South Delhi and the Mumbai stock exchange is another India, featuring neither in the ministers’ breathless itinerary nor in their equally breathless praise for India’s accomplishments. A new UN poverty index shows there are more poor people in eight states of India than in the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Child mortality rates remain among the highest in the world and two-thirds of the country do not have access to a toilet. In many places, there is simply no rule of law.

“There is a lot to counter the gung-ho optimism,” said Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, senior deputy editor of the Hindu newspaper. “The institutions of the state increasingly serve the very powerful and wealthy. In many states it is getting worse and that is frightening.”

Strangely enough, last week, I have been having an email debate on what needs to be done, arising out of a book that I had just finished reading, a review of which can be had here.

The key paragraph in that review which is the core around which our debate was built is this one:

“Easterly, therefore, argues that good institutions are the basis for economic growth by creating the right market-based and market-guided incentives. And these institutions are: rule of law, competitive markets, low taxation, noninflationary monetary policies, and free trade. These institutions then foster other cultural patterns of conduct, hard work, savings and industriousness, honesty and trustworthiness, creativity, and self-responsibility. These are the bases of the wealth of nations.”

My friend (MF) asked this pertinent question – “Could you clarify what’s referred to by the term ‘wealth’ used below? If it means material affluence, then I have considerable reservations. I’ll need time to articulate these.”

My response was – “I would include ‘human’ to ‘material’ in the term wealth.”

MF responded with – ” Human material wealth meaning HR resources for corporate consumption? Or character, wit, and stuff like that which thrives best outside organisations?”

My reply which will continue to generate more thoughts is as follows:

“Expand the horizon. Go macro and with Indian Human Resources treated as such, rather than as liabilities, healthy and wealthy, can take on the world Karl. To do that, we need to enable them. The brief paragraph gives a route map to achieve that.

Just use your imagination. Supposing all Indian farmers, irrespective of how big their land owning is, are allowed proper records of their titles, are free to use that assets as they see fit, including easy access to mortgage for working capital, or to expand, within an environment that offers them legal protection, the might of the law, with easy access to markets to source their inputs and to market their output, with labour available in plenty to hire and fire, what Indian agriculture/rural sector can achieve.

Similarly, the millions of Indian small businessmen, the road side vendors, the small tea shops, bicycle/motorcycle/other automobile repair shops, the retailers, the push cart vendors and so on, can achieve if they are provided with the same.

I can go on and on.

Indian entrepreneurship is what has been keeping us afloat. Not some great governmental interventions. The last has happened only in the last twenty years, prior to that the ordinary Indian is the guy kept us from becoming another Mayanmar. If that Indian can be given the benefit of all that the paragraph suggests, we can be world beaters. We have done that despite the claustrophobic atmosphere of the politico/bureaucratic set up.

All that is lacking is political will, added to the apathy of the Indian middle class which is busy feathering its own nest. If this class decides en bloc to bring about change in the body politic and the bureaucratic environment, it can. I wonder if it will.

On Sunday, a friend who makes a monthly visit to me to let off steam and to recharge his batteries, inevitably on Sundays when he has his weekly off, came over to rant about his latest outrage.

My friend, let us call him KD, is an atheist born in the Roman Catholic tradition. He is a bon vivant who is totally secular. He is divorced from his wife who is a non practicing Protestant Christian and daughter of a pastor of one of those prolific evangelical Protestant sects that dot the Indian landscape. Her family has many pastors in it and most other members are devout and have slogans like “Jesus Saves” and “Praise The Lord” on their vehicles.

With that background, the story will now become clearer. KD has a step son, from his exe’s previous marriage. KD has three children from his marriage, all now grown up and away in many other parts of the world. The step son, the eldest, got married recently to a girl from his mother’s religious sect for which all the children had come to Pune.

After the marriage, all the children, with the new daughter in law, went to pay their respects to their maternal grandfather who has been catatonic for the past eight years in a hospital. When he became aware of the children, he opened his eyes and just asked one question to them – “Has K been saved?”. The children returned on Friday from their visit and reported to KD about this and KD went into a state of total rage and could not sleep.

This was followed by a dinner at KD’s place for the new bride’s family on Saturday during which, the family did not exactly endear themselves to KD with their frequent prayer and oft repeated “Praise The Lord!” during normal conversation. Before the meal started, the senior most of them asked permission from KD to pray and just to be polite, KD agreed. The dinner was no better with very solemn and silent eating at the end of which, permission to pray was again asked when KD who had had enough, said “No thank you.” The guests were aghast and quickly excused themselves and left.

KD stewed again the whole night and decided to come to his friend and confidante to share these two stories and to ask whether he needed to be saved? He cheered up quite a bit when I said, “yes, from these people”.

I have nothing against people holding on to their beliefs and practicing their religion to the best of their abilities. But surely, they should have the sensitivity to leave such behaviour aside on social occasions among people who either believe differently or do not believe at all?

Tags: Atheism, Family, Religion, Table Manners

Jean from Cheerful Monk and my friend Anil who wrote the guest post on Defilements have raised the question of honour killings in India, an idea about which you can get from here and here. I believe that I should explain this phenomenon to my readers in some detail. That is difficult unless I explain the present state of Indian civilisation to start with.

At the outset, I wish to categorically state that I am not justifying honour killings. I am simply giving the sociological background to the phenomenon. Indian law treats honour killings like any other murder and the killers are prosecuted for the crimes and punished. Neither the victims nor the killers are however, stoned to death after being buried up to their necks. It is also to be impressed here that for every relationship that ends in honour killing, there are scores of inter caste marriages that take place, which of course do not merit attention from the media.

India is split into many categories. Language, religion, caste, sub-caste, urban, semi-urban, rural, tribal, educated, uneducated, literate, illiterate, poor, rich, middle class, young, old, aging, and so on so forth and overriding all these categories, will be gender. India is a federation of 28 states, seven federally administered Union Territories and 28 official languages and several hundred spoken dialects.

To generalise or stereotype AN Indian from such diversity among 1.18 billion people, is therefore next to impossible.

It is a complex nation, but a functioning democratic republic, well on the way to becoming a major global power. What cements this diversity into one recognizable whole, is predominantly the major religion, called Hinduism, which too is unclassifiable as a religion for it is more anarchic than a structured religion as is popularly understood in the West. Please see my post on Ganesha for more information. Along with Hinduism, the other religions of India share some common values, influenced by the root caste system, buttressed by the influence of Islam and Christianity that was brought into the land by conquest and colonialism. None of the latter religions have been able to eradicate the caste system among the converts, despite proclaiming that there is no caste system in them.

All Indians, irrespective of what religion they follow, share some common cultural traits, one among which is the institution of “Arranged Marriages”. The other type, boy meets girl, falls in love and gets married, is not very common, though it is on the increase due to reasons that I shall explain later. The latter is called ‘Love Marriage’ for want of a better phrase or word to call it something. Barring the Goan Christians and the Anglo Indians, arranged marriages are the norm and love marriages are the rare exceptions. There is also the widely prevalent custom of marrying cousins in all the religions. Wikipedia explains this phenomenon in general and with particular reference to India, which is worth a read.

Traditionally, Indian families kept and continue in most cases, to keep their women separate from men and social interaction between the sexes is strictly within the family, which in most cases, was and in many cases is, extended to include numbers that are unimaginable to most westerners. In these circumstances, marriages had to be arranged by parents and elders in the family and the tradition continues for the vast majority of Indians, irrespective of what religion or caste that they come from. The underlying principle is that one marries within one’s own caste, avoids endogamy by marrying a person from a different gothra and the wealth stays within the family/ caste/community.

When to this cultural background, the paternalistic structure of families and castes, which revolve around the strong instinct to survive and flourish as separate identities as castes, is added, modernisation in the form of love marriages, is perceived to be evil and something that must be tempered to adjust to existing value and culture systems. Add to this, the very real honour and reputation of the family within its environs, there is a potent mixture to cause wielding of power over members of the family. Very often, for the young people wanting to undergo the love marriage route, opposition is also likely to be due to prior commitments made by their respective parents or potential alliances in the pipeline, often with consideration of financial matters in the background.

Post independence, major changes to the status of women in India has been taking place, gradually in some states and very rapidly in some others. More and more women are going to schools and colleges. Educated women have been moving into higher educational institutions and the work force and this is much more the case in urban India than in the rural. Many girls from rural and semi urban locations, move to cities or big cities to pursue advanced education or careers, and in this milieu for the first time ever, get to mix with men and many men with similar background too get to meet and mix with girls.

When Cupid plays his games, such mingling leads, in some cases to romance and in some cases tragedy. Cupid does not let caste or class come in the way of the attraction, and inter-caste marriages have been taking place with increasing frequency for decades. While in the cities, with two or three generations of city living behind them, inter caste marriages do not cause much of tumult, for the newly urbanised young people, with families still in rural parts, life can be difficult, and as the stories in the two links show, end in tragedy.

Young impressionable boys and girls, being exposed to our cinema and television which glorify romance which end in marriage and happy endings , are influenced to take the plunge. What cinema and television does not show is the reality of opposition and possible tragedy.

After I wrote this post and had scheduled it for publication, New York Times wrote an editorial which more or less explains the situation in brief, but its conclusion is rather whimsical. Interestingly, the article says “in recent years they also have taken place in Italy, Sweden, Brazil and Britain.” The chances are that at least in Britain, the honour killings are among from those of Middle Eastern, or South Asian origin, and very likely also in Italy and Sweden.

It is a complex issue and top down measures like legislation are not likely to change the ground realities. Harsher punishment is unlikely to deter families steeped in a value system that considers such killings as heroic. When for those who matter, the killers are considered as such, punishment is unlikely to deter them from carrying out such heinous crimes. Urbanising rural India, and better communication and exposure to modern thinking can only speed up the process of change, which is taking place, albeit at snails pace.

Tags: Caste, Cousin marriges, Gothra, Honour Killings, Inter caste marriages

Jean in her blog ‘Cheerful Monk’ quoted a very true statement – “Foreign aid: When the poor people of one country give money to the rich people of another country.”

Here is final realisation in Britain that aid to India ends up in the wrong pockets.

David Cameron, I take my topi off to you. There are a lot of people like me in India who will too.

Our erstwhile Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, before he lost his innocence, and full of idealism, wanted to tackle corruption in India and said that only about 15% of any money slated for a social welfare projects actually got spent on it; the rest got siphoned off in various directions. The figure of 15% was later revised downwards by commentators to 5%. Despite much water having flowed down our rivers, the situation has not changed much since then. There are however signs that in some parts of the country, it is changing and one hopes that the rate of change will get speeded up by the various initiatives announced recently.

Many right thinking Indians have been stating that India is not a poor country but is a rich country with many poor people who get exploited by an unwieldy bureaucratic system which is allowed to flourish in collusion with grass root level politicians. There is exercise of power without taking responsibility for the alleviation of poverty to the most deserving.

“Worthy of the respect of the people are those content with a calm and frugal life.” – Lao Tsu.

Our political and bureaucratic establishment flaunts power and wealth in a most vulgar way. Frugality is what is most lacking in the Indian political dynasties and bureaucratic colluders, that divide up power and tax payers money. India’s new class of the super-rich politico-bureaucratic establishment exploits millions of poor Indians. These poor people are deprived of basic amenities, schools and basic medical care, as well as of human dignity. Not because the funds for improving their lot is not available. They are. The allocated funds just disappear in the pipeline before they reach the poor.

It is an insult to India to offer it “Aid”. Some Indians may swallow such an insult for personal benefit, but I for one, am not among those. I hope that all the other countries, which continue to offer “Aid to India”, also follow David Cameron’s example.

Tags: David Cameron, Foriegn aid to India, Rajiv Gandhi

I leave my readers with just two links to articles on the above subject and leave it to them to do what they can in the matter.

I have no comments to offer, except one. Human rights lawyer Mostafaei believes a language barrier prevented his client, the victim, from fully comprehending court proceedings. Ashtiani is of Azerbaijani descent and speaks Turkish, not Farsi.

The Examiner article.

The Guardian article.

Tags: Human rights, Iran, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, Sharia law, Stoning to death, Women in Islam