The Dance Of Democracy

Yet another Lok Sabha election on the horizon and we are witness to another dance of democracy. With regional parties increasingly playing an important role in deciding who the prime minister will be it has become very crucial for the two largest central parties (Congress and BJP) to forge alliance at state level. The left front with a different ideology and with a good 2004 election result is giving the UPA and NDA a run for their money.

My analysis about the current political situation is the people of this country want a change of guard at the centre. Price rise, soft action against Terrorist attack, Congress’s usual minority favoring political card are all the important factors against the government. Recent defeats in Assembly elections in Karnataka, Chattisgarh are also crucial indicators.

The BJP on the other hand seems to be the obvious alternative simply because of its tough stand against terrorism, its model governance in Gujarat and its clear projection of a leader in the form of L K Advani. However recent events like Jaitley-RajNath spat, the hate speech of Varun Gandhi and the broken alliance with BJD in Orissa has put a serious dent in BJP’s Delhi ambitions.

The turbulence in both these political camps has actually helped the Left Front to gather some major political leaders on its side. Mayawati and Chandrababu Naidu are the most notable among them. Shri Naveen patnaik (Orissa CM) has not ruled out a post poll alliance between BJD-Left Front. The US recession, the downside of capitalism and price rice are some of the major factors which the left finds it going its way. It is a fact that our economy is not is such a bad shape as compared to US because majority of our public sector organizations are still not privatized and the credit goes to the left parties. They are the ones who opposed violently against the raising of FDI in Insurance Industry.

Who is the most likely PM?

Lal Krishna Advani is the most likely PM of India post election. This is partly because the BJP unlike other political parties believe in projecting a leader for the people before they go to vote.
However I think Mayawati runs a very good chance of becoming the first dalit prime minister of our country. I say this because she is the major player in the 3rd front and there is a very good chance that the anti incumbency votes against BJP and Congress might well go to the 3rd Front. It would be interesting to see how things unfold post election but surely we are in for a great political tamasha.

IPL vs IPL

The Indian Political League is here and it’s giving the Indian Premier League a tough time. In its second season the domestic tournament with international magnitude is up against a big obstacle in the form of General Elections 2009. A lot of people are asking the credibility of our security system which is throwing in the towel and is refusing to accept the possibility of two events happening simultaneously. It is though well understood that the cricket league is of a huge scale and involves the security of lakhs of people.

What needs to be done at this juncture? Should the Home ministry assert its power and ask the BCCI to call off the IPL. Looking at the worse case scenario of a terrorist threat to cricketers and spectators, it certainly looks like the better option. God forbid if something untoward happens, the entire image of India has a safe place to play the game will be hurt. The world cup hosting will be in jeopardy.

The other way to look into the thing is to allow the tournament to go ahead and send this message loud and clear that we as a nation can withstand these tough times and can protect our own people as well as our guest. On top of everything no can give guarantee that if the IPL is postponed everything would go according to the ideal script.

The best way to go about it is to allow the cricket tournament to proceed without affecting the elections. It gives us (the common people) the chance to enjoy the thrills and frills of the action packed tournament once again. The intent of going ahead will clearly send the right message across to the world and it will in fact dent the spirits of those who want the subcontinent to be a war zone.

The Socially Responsible Company

What’s the idea of a socially responsible company? I often come across this term and it makes me to think that it is a unique characteristic to have and adds a lot to a company’s USP. After all everyone in the society will like to see such organizations who in addition to being an excellent service provider to its customers also make contributions back to the common people.
So that puts us (the common people) in a really nice position isn’t it? Government, whom we elect through the democratic process can do whatever little it can (Lets say at least 50% of the work it promises) and the rest will be taken care by these ‘Socially Responsible’ companies. So we end being served and all our aspirations and expectations are met.
A lot of companies (I don’t want to name them) have already started to make an impact through school programs, traffic congestion solutions, helping out NGO’s. But according to me they are not doing enough.
To begin with, I feel the social responsibility they talk about should be a self less service. I am afraid, its not. It does not take a nuclear scientist to see that the work they are doing is ultimately intended to create a better image in front of their potential customers. The idea is to be socially responsible in such a way which will enhance business proposition.
If business organizations had to walk the same path along with social responsibility then it would be a catastrophe for them. From the Indian perspective, a lot of IT companies have resulted in a population imbalance because of the huge influx of people to a particular city in the country. Had they realized the need to be socially responsible, they would have gone with the plan of diversifying their business centers long back thereby bringing social harmony, stability to even the backward regions. Obviously how on earth that can be possible if they were to make higher profit returns?
Take for example a certain Bangalore based IT company which takes pride of its role on its association with a certain society of physically challenged children. If we look deep into this role, we see that the society’s children have contributed hugely to the making of its identity during its inception. The company’s contribution in return has no where been in the same scale.
The point which I am trying to emphasize on is the fact that being socially responsible is about contributing to the society which will make a lasting impression for its growth in the future. It’s something like nurturing and planting a new seed rather than trying to water a branch of an already grown tree and then trying to advertise that.
Some examples of a socially responsible work which can be undertaken by organizations are:

1) Sponsoring a group of children from say class V to their bachelor degree. It should include their education expenditure as well as their meals during their stay at school. It should include one to one contact with each of them and their parents. Merely working with them for one month and leaving them after that won’t serve the purpose.
2) Nominating someone from the company who will directly be responsible for the immediate block, constituency where the office campus belongs and will be communication with the political leader in charge of the same.
3) Start forming small teams who would like to volunteer to go to any specific place in their city and promote a clean drive, plant trees.
4) During elections the company should encourage and help its employees to take active participation in voting.
5) Above all, there is a need for every organization to identify certain sets of value which distinctively identifies its immediate society.

Cricket-A victim like the Common Man

March 3rd, 2009

Guns and bullets have ultimately threatened the cricketers in Pakistan. We in the subcontinent always feel that Cricketers are god. They are worshipped, respected and looked upon as our heroes. So in spite of living in a volatile region courtesy numerous terrorist groups we never had the slightest idea that one fine morning these much adored heroes will be under the line of fire.
Terrorist’s blocked the touring Srilankan bus, fired grenades, bullets from all angles in broad midday light at Lahore. The security situation at Pakistan is out of control and its time the rest of the world don’t make the mistake of misunderstanding this fact. Today what we see at Pakistan is its own creation and the silent support of US. They are the ones who kept on giving financial aids even though they knew that a considerable amount of that money is going to wrong hands. To further enhance our anger, Pakistani official appears in Indian media channels and continue to give sharp, stupid and illogical answers to some nerve wracking questions.
At this point in time, the United States of America should immediately go into an introspection mode and look carefully at its policy of considering Pakistan a partner in its fights against terrorism. After all how can the terrorist itself become a part of a fight against Terrorism is beyond me. It is an alarming situation and its time that the US and India launches a joint operation against these terrorist groups. If the Pakistani army wants to cooperate well and good. If a drastic step is not taken now then who knows, oneday we might see a nuclear strike by a Terrorist group. We don’t want that do we?

The Media Circus

I was going through CNN-IBN’s program 'Face The Nation' yesterday. The program discusses the main issue of the day. Yesterday it was about the changing face of the Terrorist and how it is observed that muslims youths are nervous about police resorting to area wise searches first in Jamia Nagar and than in Azamgarh.

Interestingly during a commercial break I switched to NDTV and I found that their topic of discussion is same!! The difference was ofcourse the host and the panel. As I watched Face the Nation I was wondering what really these news channels intend to come out with? Do they want some masala debate or do they really want to come out with a real solution to a particular problem?

Take the recent attacks on Christians for example. The media was more focused on collecting all sorts of abuses from around the country against the BJP and its so called ‘Communal’ actions. None of the news channels went to the people who were beaten or none of them went to those who had reasons to vandalize these churches. What they did instead was to sit in their studios and ask questions to ‘LEADERS’ who were not present at the ground.

Same is the case with Bihar floods. Media was more busy to take Nitish kumar’s reactions to Lalu’s allegations against the state government. What I mean to say is even when the flood has affected lakhs of people, the media was more interested to highlight the blame game. Sometime politics should take a backseat and it the media which can easily do so by not even asking questions which will lead to blame games.

When MNS workers attacked innocent north Indians on the streets of Maharasthra, the cameramen of different news channels were busy taking live footage of such actions knowing fully well that these offenders were beating innocents intentionally in front of the cameras so that their message goes out to the public.

The Media must understand that they are the tool for everyone to get publicity. Be it the political parties or be it the people who want to create instability. It is very important that these news channels should have a purpose behind reporting news.

Coming to the program, which I was watching I would like to say that as a news channel they have to decide what they want to telecast. A university student saying that “Probably the victim could have been shot on his leg” was something which according to me did not deserve to be aired. Same is the case with the report that “Muslims youths are nervous because of the police’s crackdown”.

In a democracy everyone has to express his/her views but we must understand that in the name of democracy we cannot afford to encourage anyone doing or saying anything they like.

Sometimes for the larger good not taking the middle path is the best option.

Uncle Sam goes for a Russian Lesson

Newspapers all over today are reporting US federal Reserve Bank’s bail out of American International Group(AIG). This is the 3rd time in last one month that the US govt had to bail out major investment firms.

The irony is that the pillar stone of a Capitalist economy is resorting to socialist tactics. The government is funding and rescuing these huge private enterprises. We Indians actually are watching all this in dismay and probably economic analyst are a bit confused with the policies to adopt at this point of time. Post 1990’s the Indian government started to throw open its economy to private players. We call it the the liberalization period. Congress as the principal party never supported socialism but it also never practiced the American way of doing business. Today as we see the Bush administration taking desperate measures to bail out companies, it is evident that Government even though less efficient and less progressive is after all more stable.

So for the Republicans it’s a bitter pill to take. India should take it as a lesson and role out its own economic policies much more cautiously in future. A need for a central control is necessary in whatever business is carried out in the country.

In our common language we say that if one gets a Government job, at least he will never be in danger of loosing it. But that’s not the case with private jobs. Thousands of pink slips are just an indication of that.

Are the Soviets laughing?

East Bengal –Mohun Bagan Rivalry

Football rivalries are among the most passionate affairs which can ever take place among all other things under the sun. On their day they have the power of creating separate groups of people based on their loyalties for a particular club. In the soccer mad continents of Europe, South America there are many such famous rivalries which leaves us in awe.

Some of the famous rivalries are Manchester United –Liverpool, Barcelona-Real Madrid, AC Milan-Inter Milan, Celtic-Rangers, Boca Juniors-River Plate etc. Back home in India we have a rivalry which dates back to more than a 100 years. The East Bengal and Mohun Bagan rivalry is as much as at the same stage as the other mentioned ones in terms of passion, supporters, match day excitement and spectators.The Salt Lake stadium at Kolkata with a capacity crowd of 1,10,000 can match any other football theatre in the world. What lacks though in this rivalry is quality of football as compared to others ones. Sadly that’s because of the decline of Indian football over the years.

Being a lad from this city I have known what this match is all about in the life of a common Bengali. Sentiments dating back to pre independence period is attached with this match. I would not like to go into history of this rivalry. Instead I am giving you all this two links from where you can learn more about these clubs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohun_Bagan_AC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bengal_Club

Coming to the present situation today’s match is very crucial as East Bengal although out of the Calcutta Football League title race will have a big role to play in the identification of the eventual winners. If the red and gold brigade(Jersey of East Bengal) beat the men in green and maroon(Mohun Bagan),than it will be left to Mohd Sporting(Another Big club with a history as old as the other two clubs) to win the title provided they win their match and go ahead of Mohun Bagan in goal difference. Also interestingly Mohun Bagan has defeated East Bengal in last 7 consecutive matches ! A reason strong enough for East Bengal to spoil their rivals party. All in all it has all the makings of a classic !

Remembering 9/11

It’s been seven years since the dreaded Terrorist attack, which shook the world. The most powerful nation’s pride was reduced to the rubbles of the World Trade Center. The famous tourist spot of WTC turned into Ground Zero.

Today as we enter 11th September 2008 there is a need to analyze the situation and to what extent we have been able to curb the chances of yet another such attack. USA since 9/11 has been pursuing these terrorists with a single-minded objective of finding them and killing them. The war in Afghanistan was a right start according to me but it got distorted when Iraq’s invasion began. As we stand today even the Bush administration knows that Iraq was not needed. Instead getting a strong foothold in Afghanistan was necessary. Today the Taliban is making a strong comeback and that has caused Washington to sit up and take notice of the root cause of this development.

What will always remain surprising to me is why in spite of numerous CIA reports president Bush was more than happy to keep Musharraf as his ally? From his sources he must have known the reason behind Taliban’s regrouping. Yet Pakistan was Bush’s major ally. Barrack Obama recently claimed that much of the aid US gave to Pakistan has been utilized by the later in preparing itself for a war against India!! Close on the heels of this statement the US army launched an offensive against terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan.

So what we can see is a sharp change in the perception of who really is behind the menace. But what about Terrorism itself? What have we done to reduce it? According to me there are two ways to reduce terrorist activities. One is towards identifying the cause and one is towards preventing it from causing havoc with efficient handling.
If we need to identify the cause we have to understand the situation under which a human can resort to such work. Why is that certain organization with evil intentions are getting men who are prepared to die fighting against nation states? Poverty, lack of opportunity, long lasting hatred against his/her own country can be some of the main reasons. Its time we look into these issues.
The other way is to handle terrorism with strict hands like what USA has done. Why the US was able to do it? Because it feels that it has given everyone a chance to live happily, earn money. Than whosoever will work against it, it will crush them to death. Our country cannot adopt such a stance because we realize that we have not exercised the first option at all. Have we given J&k the kind of development, which a state like Maharashtra has seen? Have we allowed the people of Jammu & Kashmir to dream big staying at their homeland? I am afraid we have not. Same is the case for the north eastern states.

We have matured in our handling of terrorism and shown a lot of restraint against countries that promote such activities but with this maturity I expect that Terrorism should be treated as a problem of the nation just like other social problems like education, employment etc. The target should be to cut the supplies of these militant outfits by pulling away of youths from joining them.

I do hope that such incidents of 9/11 do not happen even again and our next generations can live in a world free of Terrorism.

Saurav Ganguly – Is this the end?

I was passionate for Cricket since my childhood and loved to play as well watch the game more so when the Indian Cricket team played. The English summer of 1996 and I had the privilege to watch two of the greatest Indian batsmen of all time making their debut at the same test match. Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly.

Both went on to become idols for the lakhs of supporters around the country. On one hand Rahul became an epitome of solid technical batting in Test matches and on the other Saurav took Indian cricket to another level with his charisma, flamboyance and fighting spirit. I was so happy to be able to live in this era of Sachin,Saurav &Rahul.
Things got even more sweeter when Dada was handed the Captaincy.

Do we remember the critical time when he took over? Some of the fancied Saurav bashers might not remember but it was the time when Cricket was going through the turmoil of Match Fixing. I would not like to talk about what he achieved as Captain as we all know that and probably all of us will salute him for that. I would rather like to talk about the reason why I as an individual started getting irritated with Indian Cricket and it went to a point where i even stopped watching them play.

The chapel era combined with Pawar coming to Power at BCCI made me upset. This was the beginning of the end of Saurav Ganguly. Many people squarely blame Greg Chappell for what he did to our Dada but I would like to believe that what he wanted to bring in to Indian cricket was a shift in attitude. He wanted to tell the selectors that look you got to shift out the elders and bring fresh blood. The politics of Shard Pawar came at this point when he and the rest of BCCI started treating this judgement of Greg only against Saurav. So thanks to BCCI Sachin,Rahul were treated on a different level compared to Saurav.

The exclusion of Saurav from the rest of India side is the final signal in his career. As a player I am sure he is not at all perturbed with the development. At 35 he has become an elder statement of this game and an inspiration for many from all walks of life. Dada fought back once before to prove it to the world that he still had the zeal to play cricket at the highest level. That comeback was completed when he got the award of Ceat Asian Cricketer of the year award.

Saurav Ganguly gave the Australians a run for their money,gave them back their own chin music. He changed the way Indian cricketers think and brought on this amazing believe that we can compete and beat teams like Australia at their own backyard. As an avid viewer of numerous India’s matches over the years I am delighted to see one of the great sons of Indian cricket.

Good luck Dada!

Mumbai Meri Jaan – A Learning Experience

Time and again Bollywood has come up with many movies which have created a lasting impression among movies viewers. Mumbai Meri Jaan is the most recent addition in that category. Hats off to PareshRawal,Madhavan,Irfan and Soha Ali Khan for giving power packed performances.

I would not like to go into the storyline as I am sure many have already seen it and a lot of other people are planning to see it. What I would like to stress instead is the powerful message which is carried along with the movie.

We often wonder as common people that is our country the number one target among these terrorist? Why is it that India is the most frequent victim of these crimes? A lot of the young educated people want to leave this country and live peacefully in countries like US,UK etc which are ‘Paradises’ in this world. The first message in this movie goes to them and makes it clear that Terrorism in the form of blasts, sucide attacks have become normal practices in almost many corners of the world and it is high time we understand that the threat looms large wherever we go. Characters like those played by Madhavan in the movie are hard to find nowadays but yes they do exists and it is a matter of time when our conscience will rise above our other senses and we shall find many more such Nikhil’s(Madhavan’s Character) who will be willing to fight the odds and will try to clean the system where he lives.

The second message comes with the Character of Suresh(Irrfan Khan) who has grown frustrated with these attacks and holds the Muslim community responsible for every heinous act so much so that as a businessman he is not willing to deal with them even in a situation where he needs money. We must remember that it is never the right thing to hold a community responsible for the act of some people. Yes most of the terrorist are muslims but we got to stop retaliating at them or look at them in a negative sense and instead try to find out whats the reason which prompts them to join such work. Economic upliftment of Muslims is a necessity. A lot of discrimination which are not visible from outside exists which we got to remove. You develop the state of Jammu& Kashmir,generate jobs for the youth,set up more and more industries and I am sure the number of Kashmiri youth turning militants will reduce drastically. Same is the case of the under developed areas of our country like North Eastern States. This group which are recruiting young people are promising them more money than what they are earning otherwise and preaching them hatred against the ruling state as well as the western powers. So stop wasting time fighting and instead focus on the root cause.

The third message is the face of the media and how it makes the story of everything and only cares about TRP and NOTHING ELSE. We all are aware of this and I think there should be a regulatory body which sets a mark or standard which needs to be followed.
The movie beautifully exposes the ruthless,story hungry media with the character of Rupali Joshi(Potrayed by Soha A Khan) who in the process of designing her TV channels TRP formula looses her fiancée.

The fourth message is to those who wants to change or who have not done the right thing but at least realized the importance of showing the right way to those following them. Paresh Rawal is a laid back police man happy to sit and watch the movie which goes on around him everyday during his duty but when he starts working with a junior officer and understands the frustration caused, he urges others to follow the right path.

Movies such as this should do more than a weekend entertainment to us. They should be able to ignite that human within all of us which is badly missing in today’ world. India needs it even more as she is desperate to break the taboos and march towards a brighter future. As human beings we should all know and understand that our deeds will create a lasting impression amongst the future generations.

I would give Mumbai Meri Jaan a 5 star for the message it carries.