Lessons for politicians from comic books

This is as joyous a time as any for people around the globe. The new year's celebrations are nigh, so is Christmas and India's drubbing at the hands of the South African cricket team. In this festive spirit, might I say that there is one family that is not having a joy ride right now, especially not after what transpired on the morning of Dec 8. I cannot even imagine anything they are going through! 

Now that Mrs. Gandhi's dream of seeing her innocent pubescent son as the Prime Minister of India is fading faster than Manchester United's hope of retaining their title this season, let's move on to the new developments of our political landscape. The Aam Aadmi Party made a astonishing debut in the quasi-state elections of Delhi, with the rout of the Congress being accentuated by the thrashing Mrs. Sheila Dikshit received at the hands of Arvind Kejriwal (and almost drew with the BJP guy who also ran). Now Delhi is stuck in an impasse. The BJP lacks the majority (and perhaps the will to buy some legislators), and the AAP is hard-pressed to believe that its dreams of capturing power might come true. The only comparable situation I can think of is when Uday Chopra realized that his brother won't stop making Dhoom movies, so the only way for him to quit acting was to admit this was his last!

"With great power comes great responsibility"
Beaten to death, this quote from Uncle Ben becomes the beacon that guides Peter Parker to his web-slinging, world-saving ways. Unfortunately, Peter Parker was not a little short of full spider powers, else we would've known what Kejriwal and Harsh Vardhan could do in their situation. However, it would be a shame is Delhi heads to another election in 6 months, not just because of the deemed expenditure (unless the elections are held along with the Lok Sabha elections, a scenario even AAP would not like to invite), but also because the two national parties are for the first time willing to let a newcomer form the government. We can all speculate the reasons as to why the BJP is willing to be a bystander, but at least to this aam aadmi, the AAP is slowly devolving into one of those idiotic debating teams that shout hoarse every evening on prime time news. We all know that the AAP stands by the slogan "Sab chor hain", but to also believe that "Hum jo chahte hair, wahi aam aadmi chahta hai" would be too dangerous of a ploy. The AAP needs to realize that it received a large number of votes from the traditional Congress and BJP vote banks, votes that will desert them in the Lok Sabha elections unless the voters feel that they'll not be wasting their franchise. One look at the letter Kejriwal wrote to the leaders of the two parties makes it seem like a ransom note Sadashiv Amrapurkar would write in the 90's to Anil Kapoor. The AAP should form a government and try and get the doable things done on priority, and by doable, I mean regularization of illegal colonies and improvements in public health and education. Delhi's demand of statehood needs to be recognized by the union government, and Jan Lokpal is a national institution, not a state one. Also, this infatuation with the Ram Leela ground is pretty cute, but assembly session are better conducted in the premises of the assembly. If Kejriwal manages to accomplish a fraction of his promises, it will only better the AAP's chances in Delhi in the coming years.

A united team of heroes is better than one mighty villain
As we learnt from the Avengers movie, ego can be a big problem as far as winning a battle goes. The BJP needs to realize that this is a golden opportunity for them to regain power in New Delhi after being in the doldrums for 10 years now. The effect of Narendra Modi and his mass appeal are something only the Congress party would not acknowledge, but it seems like Sushma Swaraj and L.K. Advani would like to give company to their old foes. It is one thing to not like the way somebody conducts their campaign, but it is trite to destabilize that same branch that gives you shelter. Mrs. Swaraj should introspect upon her own mass appeal (or the lack of it), since the Vidisha constituency she represents as an MP almost shifted out of the BJP's hands but for the CM himself to contest from this seat along with his traditional seat. And this election was not a fair fight ala Chattisgarh, it was a landslide in BJP's favor! The mood of the country is asking for a change, and it would be a crime to not give it to them by acting like a power center when evidence points to the contrary.

PS: Dhoom movies used to have kick-ass title songs. What happened to Dhoom 3?

Celebrating life on Rs.32 per day

India is a country of odds! We are geographically diverse, with the majestic Himalayas on one end, all the way to the pyramidal south on the other. We have more than a thousand languages and dialects, and are home to some of the most prominent religions in the world. In a country where the colour of the soil apparently changes every 100km, we do have one unifying truth. We are all revelers in the joy of being an Indian! Heads instantly go up high, chests puff out with pride. 'I am an Indian'. These four simple words seem to bring out the collective pride of being born in one of the hotbeds of human civilization. Thankfully, a lot of us also make more than Rs.1000 per month. Imagine the horror of cashing only Rs.990 as your monthly salary, if you are living in a metropolis like New Delhi or Mumbai. Those extra ten bucks can change your life. They can uplift you, from being defined as a poor person by the government of India, to the next strata of the Indian society. And we all agree, nobody likes to be poor.

It therefore came as a gargantuan relief to the crores across the country, when the Tendulkar committee wrote in its report that India is getting richer, and anybody making equal to or more than the princely sum of Rs.1000 per month in an urban area is no longer poor. Crores of beggars and daily wage-earners became rich overnight. Never has such a miracle been conjured anywhere across the world! More joy to being an Indian, a not-poor one at that.

As is the norm in a happy society, there are naysayers and skeptics, who claim that Rs.32 is too small of an amount to live satisfactorily in an Indian city, and that the UPA government is trying to save face by fudging with numbers and statistics. To those naysayers I say, that first of all, the current government is not smart enough to fudge with numbers, let alone statistics. Hell, half of their MPs may not even be able to spell statistics! Secondly, an honourable government official, who lives in a humble abode, and has no access to the glamour of foreign trips and vacations, has said that Rs.32 is 'not all that ridiculous'. This gentleman never complained of inadequate bathroom facilities in his office in New Delhi. He simply thought that spending more than Rs.35 lakhs on fixing some toilets in his department, could help relieve the stress his team goes through in keeping India rich. 

Now, we have more proof that you can have two full meals easily within the limits of Rs.32 per day. First Raj Babbar, and then another gentleman, Rasheed Masood, has laid waste to the argument that you cannot have two square meals in this amount of money. Babbar said that you can have a sumptuous meal for only Rs.12, which also comes with the delicacy of Sambhar and vegetables. You can spend the remaining amount on his or his son's films if you wish. If only I knew the location of this reasonably-priced eatery in Mumbai, me and my friends could have saved a fortune on mess expenses during our IIT days. That amount of money could've propelled us to the upper middle-class (maybe, just maybe!). What a waste of money all those years! 

So there lies the proof to the argument that half of the beggars and jobless roadside dwellers in our country are not poor. They are simply lazy. Maybe they should learn from our efficient MPs and ministers, who work so hard to earn their money. They have kept the government running like a well-oiled machine. Such is our faith in their capability, that a lot of parents tell their kids to grow up and join politics. 99.99% of those parents are themselves politicians.

PS: I love my country, and I hope that we will all take a step towards cleaning up the mess of the last 5 years in next year's general election.

Mr. Advani, this is not 'Back to the Future'

Letting go can be hard, and even harder for individuals shored up in the lofty heights of fame and popularity. None of those criteria necessarily hold true for the Bheeshma pitamah of the Hindutva movement, Lal Krishna Advani. Advani, an octogenarian, who would be a nonagenarian by the time he retires from his dream of the responsibility of being the prime minister of India. Advani is, and will always remain a polarizing figure in the annals of Indian politics- often derided, yet well respected for stabilizing an opposition, to the Congress, and its Gandhi dynasty.

Getting back to the bidding adieu part, Advani has clearly missed a sizable chunk of the recent electoral results, for only then could he stubbornly stick to his demand of being acknowledged as the tallest leader of his party, the BJP. A party, which is facing somewhat of an existential crisis. A party, which has been reduced once again to ruling the hindi heartland, with virtually no presence in the south or the northeast. While the BJP has a plethora of local and national leaders of face value and recognition, it also has perhaps too many of them for its own good. Nobody saw the genesis of this crisis coming. After the shocking defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections (which left me bewildered, and my friends at our coaching class confused), the outgoing prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was forced to step aside due to health complications. As has been well documented, the opportunity was ripe for Advani to take charge, and tide over the embarrassment coming at the heels of the 'India Shining' campaign. Instead, Advani ended up committing a mistake that made him persona non grata in the eyes of the RSS. Calling Jinnah a respected lawyer and founder of Pakistan is one thing, to call him a secular leader, when he split India along the lines of religion and led to a still-persisting unease at the border, is career suicide. The Indian public and media took those comments for what they were: the desperate attempts of a leader who was finally given charge of the main opposition party, but had spent his career under the shadow of the more affable Vajpayee, still beloved to most Indians. The UPA I policies favored the masses, while the BJP faltered in chalking out a clear progressive policy to appeal to the voters. The result: Congress sailed past the 200 mark for the first time since 1991, while the BJP shrunk from 143 to 118, in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Any other leader would have seen the writing on the wall. Unfortunately, Indian politics fails to throw up new leaders, unless they have their father or siblings in positions of power, and such leaders end up playing to the whims of seasoned politicians (look no further than Akhilesh Singh Yadav, or Omar Abdullah). Hence, Advani persisted. He was booted out of the post of Leader of opposition, but made the chairman of the NDA parliamentary committee. In the meantime, Narendra Modi was doing his best to cleanse himself of the taint of the 2002 riots. Gujarat was consistently growing, investors were flocking in, and his own personal clout was now beginning to overshadow the party in the state. No further proof was required of his growing popularity, than when the UK government decided to end its boycott of Modi, and open negotiations about business possibilities in Gujarat. The urban middles-class voter, tired of buying milk at Rs. 40/liter and pulses at Rs 120/kg, knew that Rahul Baba and his trite 'Discover India' tour just won't cut any more. Modi thumped the opposition in Gujarat in 2013, and is now looking set to give the ruling dispensation a mighty tussle next year.

This brings us to the latest, and probably the last controversy, Advani would ever stir. Man, this guys career is a roll-call of controversies, right from his early career to the last elections, so this sounds odd to me writing it! Advani is hoping that Modi would be unacceptable to the majority of the NDA alliance, which would be the need of the hour post-elections. The BJP can hardly dream of winning 272 seats on its own, even if it wins every seat in UP, Gujarat, MP, and Chattisgarh. However, it doesn't need to. Previous experience dictates that the fickle regional parties, that have no loyalty to anybody, but only their self-interest in mind, wouldn't mind supporting the BJP in lieu of rewarding portfolios, if it can get to the 200-220 mark on its own. That would mean that the urban voter would need to vote heavily in favor of the BJP, more so than it already does, in order to make that possibility come true. As stated earlier, Modi has the public in his hands right now. He has an agenda, even though critics would argue that it is simplistic in nature, but an agenda nonetheless, to give a boost to the slumbering economy, and regain the faith of the public that actually pays taxes and faces power cuts and water shortages in return. Advani on the other hand, has no appeal among the youth, many of whom will be turning out at the voting booth for the first time next year, and more importantly, already had his shot at immortality in 2009. The fire that Advani displayed in 1991, seems to have vanished altogether (not that there is anything unnatural about that happening with age). Modi is just firing up on the national stage!

There appears to be a ceasefire called for the moment, but the NDA alliance is already starting to fizzle. JD(U)'s impending departure will leave a deep dent in the party's prospect in Bihar, a state that voted in large numbers for the alliance in the last election. Moreover, both the BJP and the JD(U) run the risk of cutting into each other's vote share, much to the apparent joy of the RJD, and maybe Congress. The message from the BJP cadres is clear. Modi's ascension is a risk worth taking, for another defeat next year would severely dent any hopes of making a comeback to power in the future. For us masses, this will condemn us to a long period of the Gandhi family rule, one that seems akin to surrendering your democratic choice at the doorsteps of a dynasty. 



PS: Summer is a great time for going to the movies and picking up a book. Here are two personal recommendations in each category.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8908.World_War_Z

Domesticated warriors

The Border-Gavaskar trophy has changed hands again in the span of a year, and what a year it has been! After two back-to-back humiliating defeats, the Indian cricket team seems to have taken affront to the media ritual of labeling them as warriors only at home. How? Play like one and beat Australia in a home series. True, the current world number one, South Africa, have not toured India in a while, and the number two, England, left last year after extracting further humiliation on the test team and beating us at our own game. However, the fortress had to be resurrected, newly laid with a fresh set of soldiers to guard it after the old generals bowed out (or were thrown out), and most importantly, the Indian cricket fan had to be replenished with a cornucopia of hope and enthusiasm about our prospects in the crucial away tours coming up later this year. Let me just say, it has been a good one month of test cricket as an Indian cricket follower. 

The Indian cricket team, much like the Indian politics, is going through a period of major upheaval and shake-ups. While the UPA government is bracing up to the likely challenge of a Narendra Modi-led NDA in the parliamentary polls next year, the Indian cricket team is bracing up to falling expectations and glaring deficits in key areas of their game. The opening partnership of Sehwag and Gambhir, long been the Achilles heel of the Indian batting line-up, has been shunted out for a new-found Vijay and whoever-is-not-suffering-from-an-injury at the other end. Sehwag, who is now equipped with ultra vision and some extra inches around the waist, looked miserable the entire time he faced a delivery in this series, even during his rotation in the slip cordon. Never a bad time to consider other avenues towards optimizing your value to the team. Maybe he can turn into a Hafeez and work some spin magic! Gambhir, on the other hand, is still living in the Shahid Kapoor-fairyland: I will keep churning out bad movies and hope that you watch them, because you also watched Mausam and Badmaash Company with the expectations of a Kaminay. Vijay now has a golden opportunity to permanently scuttle Ajinkya Rahane's chances of upgrading from the 12th man to a regular in the test team, Poor Rahane! If he just collected the labels of all the bottles he has lugged on to the field in the last year and a half, he could have had a scrapbook thicker than all four years of an IITian's effort.

We have also reached a conclusion on the test future of Harbhajan Singh. Just in case you were living under a rock, he should cherish his 100 caps and not hope for another chance based on his current form. We are now living in the era of Sir Ravindra Jadeja, the goggle wearing, athletically daring, left-arm spinner who has taken more than a handful of all Australian wickets that fell in this series. I would not be shocked if Dhoni plays him as a specialist spinner in South Africa, where his batting would obviously fall well short of expectations. The Rajkot Ranji wicket, Jadeja's dreamland, is as far away from Kingsmead as Arvind Kejriwal is from Digvijay Singh. On a more positive note, Jadeja seems to have taken his online popularity seriously, and is on a mission to prove his detractors wrong. If only we could anoint Sir Rohit Sharma!

As a fan of the Indian cricket team, all I care for is some show of intent from our cricketers, which seemed amiss for the past year whenever we played a top tier test team. Remember how Australia are considered unbeatable at home, and how we complain about the English conditions favoring their bowlers every time? In my opinion, we should be unabashed in our proclamation of domination at home, once we are sure of it. One small step at a time towards the number one ranking!

PS: Siddle has done enough with the bat in this series to put Hughes and Warner to shame. In case you haven't seen this, he can also rip a mean one from the other end of the wicket.