The fourth pillar, or a potential weapon?

Reading newspapers is a habit I acquired early, and not because of some interest in national issues, but because of the stories. It was precisely the same reason that I liked history books too. Stories of people succeeding, people innovating, people motivating, erudite historians explaining war strategies, esoteric economists explaining market movements. Up down. Up down. Comes the pedantic orator, who decides to enlighten everyone with his views on these issues. But all of it made it worthwhile.

Slowly, the trend defining the print media changed. I liked the editorial sections, because they focused on opinions. Much like the pedantic orator. But rest all changed. The success stories of people transmuted to protests. Motivations converted to sedition. People raged, rioted, looted, raped, getting killed! The newspapers weren't worth reading anymore. I started to predict what the highlights would be. More graft, more scams, more protests. But what seemed even more fascinating was how the mood of different newspapers changed periodically over time. Once a praising session begins, it continues, and suddenly it is revealed that the government isn't doing such a good job after all, and the collateral criticism starts. In the recent past, a myriad of under table deals have suddenly surfaced. This sheer volume coming out in such a short time is astonishing, and when the media too starts lambasting the government instead of being impartial and putting both perspectives forward, it is hard to not be skeptical about the reliability of newspapers today. Even to the extent that would exonerate the government from various blotches on its image. In a movie of Hitchcock, he shows a similar fate cornering James Stewart, when public opinion accrues to charge him with graft, even though he is the one unveiling it. Just imagine, such a powerful force somehow pressured to follow a directive. And it is not hard to do so. In most of the country, with pronuclear arguments coming from people like President APJ Kalam, or the hard earned Nuclear treaties signed with USA, people are voicing in favour of the Kundankulam Nuclear Plant. Voices supporting the protesters are difficult to be heard. Or with the Jal Satyagrah just finished in Khandwa, the Madhya Pradesh government came out in good light even when it was culpable for the problems plaguing the people there. With the Congress bashing going on at present, there was no space in which to fit the plight of the Khandwa villagers, so the news remained elusive for 20 days. And it came out with the promise of Chief Minister proclaiming "Government flexibility for suiting people's wishes".

The tendency of a business to shift its products towards the consumer base is evident when newspapers skew articles to fit public opinion. When the public opinion is pro-government, the shortcomings of the rulers get carefully draped. This happened a while ago too. Indian government was lauded for the Copenhagen Summit. The newspapers praised the diplomacy of Jairam Ramesh, showed how the decisions benefitted India and made its liability for environment minimal. Then came the Wikileaks, and blew the lid of the act! The US supposedly scripted the whole event, sending secret wires to national representatives, pressuring, forcing them, and finally passed its own model. And as it came out, all the news reports became a sham, inconspicuously lured in creating a false public opinion without knowing the truth. And this is just the tale of one country, on government. There is an ensemble of governemt and non-government actors waiting to stage their acts. And the sad part is the truth remains elusive to most till a breach inside reveals it. The mood at present is anti-government, and with even the foreign elements now blaming the government for its indecisive and deriding policies, the sudden comprehensive surge in the anti-government sentiments overhauling the newspapers seems perfunctory. It is hard to believe that the forces are not at work again, that it is entirely true, and many crucial elements aren't hidden while the articles are construed to suit the public opinion.

Truthfully, since the WikiLeaks came out with their horde of documents, it has become hard to believe that a secret government, or anti-government channel is not functional to try and feed us the news it wants. And unlike Hitchcock's hypothesis of a single person controlling the entire faction of media, it is the secret information flows between the controlling group, which I think exists and we don't know about, that trouble me. Much like the wind currents in higher altitudes which mysteriously bring rain.

If I ever wanted to join politics, it was only to get a look at these secret information flows.

And be a part of it.

'Don't turn the Page'

An open letter published today in the Hindustan Times for the perusal of the Indian bureaucratic and political class. Adds to the numerous issues plaguing the country, which I know about but have incongruously ignored.


Dear Prime Minister, Chief Minister of Maharashtra & fellow countrymen,

Read this, don’t turn the page. I am a cotton widow from Vidarbha – yes, I know you’ve been hearing about farmer suicides in this region for years, but I really do need urgent help. Just yesterday, four farmers committed suicide while Ajit Pawar, the deputy chief minister was here for a janata darbar. We need you to pay attention. I live in village Huira, near Panderkawda, 150 kms from Nagpur. My husband and I were eking out a living, somehow managing two meals a day. I could only feed my son and two daughters dal and rice every day, adding a vegetable to the meal as a bonus, may be once a week, but we were happy with that. I’d say we were even content.

We are poor; a BPL family in government records but we had a pucca roof over our heads.  My husband, Chattar Singh Bass, owned four acres of land. He was happy selling the eight to ten quintals of cotton that he grew. But slowly, the costs started escalating. Seeds which were available for Rs. 300 per 500 grams shot up to Rs. 1000. The cost of fertilizers and pesticides also increased and the cultivation costs were higher than the returns. A bank loan was the only option.

One day in 2007, my neighbours barged into my house and told me that Chattar Bass was lying listless in the field. He had gone there, like he did every day, but the pest attack had killed our crop. My husband’s loans had spiralled to 70,000 in a two year period and the dal and rice that we had become so accustomed to – minus the weekly vegetable – appeared an impossibility. Dying had become easier than living.

I had told my husband, we could survive on roti and salt; I’d comforted him by telling him I’d work as a farm labour and bring in Rs. 100 a day but he had become a loan defaulter and the moneylenders squatted at our door. Consuming the pesticide was his way out of the drudgery.

Nothing new, you must be thinking, but put yourself in my shoes, or in those of most households in Yavatmal, Amravati or Wardha. I was perhaps lucky to get the compensation of Rone lakh from the government. After clearing the debt of Rs. 70,000, I was left with only Rs. 30,000, not enough to buy seeds, fertilizers and pesticides and pay the moneylender. Not enough to get back to eating dal and rice. I had to revisit a moneylender and now my son Ganesh is in debt. The pesticide bottle often tempts me, but Ganesh is only 18.

Mr Prime Minister Sir, you had visited us in 2006 and announced a package of Rs. 3750 crore.

Two years later, you had generously offered Rs. 71,860 crore worth of loan waivers for farmers across the country, but the suicides have not stopped. I hope your officials have reported the truth to you: large sums of money have been siphoned off.

Sir, I hope you know that the waiver was meant only for farmers who had taken bank loans but 75% borrow from money lenders. Relief packages were also restricted to farmers who own not more than four hectares but so many of us don’t have farms in our own names. Lata Rathod, who, as widowed this year on August 25. Her husband Hitesh Rathod killed himself but she won’t even get Rs. 1 lakh in compensation because the land is in his brother’s name. Hitesh has left behind a sorry legacy for Lata – debt worth Rs. 96,000. Where is she going to get any money from? Her family now says she might have to become a commercial sex worker.

So many crores have been spent but the number of suicides are only spiraling. More than cotton, we are harvesting death. I also need to let you know that the administration sometimes say that the death are due to excessive alcohol or domestic tiffs but can you afford to make us part of a statistical game. Does it not bother you’ll that our shrouds are woven from the same cotton that we grow; that we are the aam aadmi your government likes to showcase. Hitesh Rathod did not drink himself to death, but which official will believe that? They have developed immunity to a story that is more than a decade old.

Sir, do you know that 2012 has aggravated the crisis? We sowed cotton in May and June but the crop died due to lack of rain. We borrowed money to buy more seeds and the unseasonal rain has killed the second crop. This double blow has led to a spate of suicides. Vidarbha has already recorded 530 deaths.

Sirs, can I plead with you to repackage our future? Make water conservation a mass movement. Do not earmark more money for irrigation projects, for despite the crores you might spend, irrigation will not benefit a majority of us. Please give us a decent minimum support price. Increase it from the current R3900 per quintal. Just before the election in 2009, the loan waivers were announced. If you are planning another one, do remember that most of us are bank defaulters. Lastly, we are willing to diversify but don’t have the means. Help us raise greenhouses. We can grow flowers and send them to the cities. Sir, if nothing else, they will make your houses look prettier.

On behalf of the dead and the living,

Yours till I can hold on,
Baby Bassi
Resident of Yavatmal
Maharashtra, India

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Maharashtra/Don-t-turn-the-page/Article1-926787.aspx

Was Lennon a Communist?

Never mix spices and honey. You will ruin both!

I was listening to playlist I made a while ago, and suddenly it started to play Lennon, Imagine. The playlist had mostly SOAD and POTF's songs, so Imagine came as a pleasant shock. I closed my eyes, and started mouthing the words. But, perhaps it came so out of context, that I became overtly critical of his lyrics. Midway, I realized that someone else had also said similar things. Someone famous, who's regime was tainted with corruption and blood. He was Lenin. This was Lennon. Was Lennon a communist too?

I quickly pulled out my Laptop, and started searching, hoping to find someone who would ridicule my notion. Nobody did. Over and over the webpages I read. Forums on philosophy, music, famous critics. His lines in the song,

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

were the first to make me realise how imprudent and stupid he was. He asks us to imagine a world of peace, set in a future without possessions, without a self? A life in a continuous oblivion, with no entity of one's own? What would such a peace pertain to? Each and every man working selflessly towards a common goal of institutional success, with his own life's measure no greater than that of another, or of no worth whatsoever? This utopian ideology, twisted to Animal Farm and 1984, was published years before Imagine by George Orwell. Other verses are no good either,

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

We can imagine there are no countries. Sure. But governance would require division of land into areas easily controllable. Any random selection is possible, but policy making would be efficient only if the local culture is taken into account. This should invoke a sense of belonging, and pride, and again a devotion to the motherland.
Unless.
There is no devotion towards one's self. So you can't appreciate or accept the traditions. This way, you wouldn't mind whatever policy the government imposes on you. You would neither have the will, nor the longing to preserve what you deem is yours. You are just living. You would be at peace, but you would survive as a living dead. It seems easy to believe such a brotherhood, but innate human nature is never accounted for. I don't think Lennon did that either. You would have to kill one's nature before you go on to implement a rule where habit would drive behaviour. In Life of Pi and A Clockwork Orange, we all see a Lion and the protagonist undergoing Behavioural Modifications to suit another's will. It doesn't seem a felicitous example, to quote from a work of fiction when trying to critic a great work of art, but it is true. A similar act on the part of the government would be required here too. That is perhaps the very thing Orwell showed in 1984. The act of thoughtcrime, to raise a spark of self even in one's thoughts, will have to be punished. It wouldn't be far fetched to say this song was inspired by The Communist Manifesto itself: From each as per his abilities, to each as per his needs. We all saw how it fared, when the mighty Soviet Union fell down in August 1991 (My friend always reminds me of this date. In the 12 years together that he has known me, he has never failed to remind me that it was on his Birthday that the great Soviet Union fell).

Lennon asked to Imagine a world with no posessions, no country, no self. So did George Orwell. But it is easier to believe Orwell's version than Lennon's.

Post Publishing Edit:  Found this online. It is taken from The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2:
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

You may say I am a Dreamer, but I am a lucky one!

(Oh my bed!! I missed you so!)


Imagine yourself on a four hour journey to the airport, changing buses, fighting with smokers, screaming, hurling luggage at the conductor, bargaining with autowalah, running behind trains! And the next train gets delayed, the bus somehow gets its driveshaft broken, and the conductor on the next bus has to be assured of the legitimacy of your tickets.

Imagine yourself at the airport, wishing it didn't happen, but knowing that it doesn't bother you. You are going to board your plane, leave all this boring stuff behind. Even the guard at the security door knows you. All is starting to go well.

Imagine a tall beautiful girl, the kind that  would get a dimple on her cheeks when she smiles, waving at you. You start talking to her and decide to cancel your ticket and board the next flight instead. How good is that?!!


Before you ask, this is not a word for word account of my day. Exaggerations have been made to the level my imaginations can run naked. But the essence of my day is still delicately intact in this written piece.


AND, the talk, or let us say chat with the tall, hot beauty went surprisingly well. I tried to be a suave, debonair gent, and failed drastically. She laughed it off, and brought herself to the level of my stupidity. By my standards, this is a lot of improvement!


Expect details on the journey soon (unless I sleep on all this, or wake up before the dream ends. Depending on which dream level I am in). Don't expect details of the chat. Again, since you don't read my blog, this statement is moot anyway (Moot: rendered unimportant by recent events. Refer to TBBT S04E21).


(Oh my pillow!! Found it under the bed!)

All you can think about, after Ambedkar and Mamata cartoon row

I add a twitter panel to my account, and to provide uniformity, remove the About me section. When it comes to naming the twitter panel, Heisenberg motivates and I name the section "Uncertainly Yours". Now, as it turns out, there is no telling when the panel will show my twitter feeds, and when it will just stare back blank black!

Befitting!

Sinnerman and Crybabies

This is supposed to be just a fill-in post, as I had not written anything in a long time, and I feel too lazy to consider anything important to write about. Moreover, if I had even the slightest inclination to think, I would have spent that on my studies, with Majors approaching and every deadline possible surreptitiously declared by the Professors to be at the end of this week. Anyways, Sinnerman is playing in the backdrop. I don't know how or when it happened, but I have started liking Nina Simone! Had I listened to her in my school days, my first reaction would have been to search and delete her. But the more songs I listen, the more I appreciate the finer details, and not just the loudness and screech of metal or the lyrics and guitar of Blues. My initiation was Linkin Park.Their song Numb to be specific. But LP is long gone from my playlists. Their was no more space for them, with GnR, Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd coming in. And now my younger cousins have stopped asking for songs when I visit them. They want harsh Metal, or the crude melody of "Truly Madly Deeply". The intersection of our likeness is very narrow. I definitely like it. One more "elder brother" card to play when they are around. Maybe soon the set will be empty...

And before I forget to mention it again, I received a mail from my Modern Fiction professor. She liked my previous post, Cultivating the wilderness! Okay I had mailed her the link and her response was a single line, "It made a very interesting read, and I enjoyed it a lot!", but still, she read it and enjoyed it! And she happens to be one of my favourite professors. (Yes I have more than one. And no I am not your typical nerd). I remember being so overwhelmed by the response that I rambled about it to my friends till they picked up stapler. I think that was my cue to shut my mouth about it. And before I do it again, I will stop writing about it.

Before finishing this post (I may call it a fill-in, but it has started to look like most of my other posts) let me tell you about a particular cry-baby. He went to the supermarket with his friends, who bought him a bar of chocolate. He got it for free, and it was as tasty as any other chocolate bar, but the entire way back he cried and cried about a particular brand of chocolate which the supermarket didn't have. He didn't complain when his friends gave him the chocolate, nor did he frown when he ate it, as the chocolate was as good as any. But as was his nature, he couldn't shut up about how he never gets anything in life.

I don't know if I disguised it well or not, but I have met many such cry-babies this semester. And I would be more than glad to get rid of them when the semester ends.

Do good in exams, and if I don't write soon again, have a great summer vacation!

PS: Another step in the integration of my public profiles. I am going to add a twitter panel on the blog. Let's see how that goes.