Thalappavu Coming...

Why would I dedicate a post to a movie that I am yet to see? Because this is a film that has excited me from the day I came to know of its announcement and because the film is about a man who I adore to the cusp of hero worship. And because I don't see a trace of this man's sacrifice, leadership and heroism in today's generation of young Keralites. "Naxal" Varghese as we call him today was the CPM Wayanad district secretary who chucked a promising future as a politician(probably chiefministership too???) to join the Naxalite Movement protesting against the party's acquiescence of landlordism and exploitation of tribals and peasants ultimately laying down his young life for the people whose conditions he strived to better.

I am no supporter of violent upheaval but there are situations when you feel justified in your support for such movements. Naxalites are back in relevance and have even begun to rule, as we see in neighbouring Nepal where the ruling class and middle class ignored the fate of the underprivileged majority. We have states in India with naxal menace like Jharkand, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, etc that are seething at the non-improvement of their living conditions despite 60 years of independence and democracy. While India has zestfully responded to the justified need of supressing these violent movements, more importantly the efforts to address the ills that plague the societal inequalities in these states have not been tackled properly.



Thalappavu will release anytime soon I hear. Many years back I read these three wonderful articles on rediff when retired police constable Ramachandran Pillai who is dead now confessed to the cold-blooded murder of Varghese. On that same day rediff also carried this article indicting the establishment. A few years later noted Kerala journalist George Iype travelled to Thirunnelli and discovered the legend that surrounded Varghese 30 years after his death. Around the same time, mainstream newspapers like Manorama and Mathrubhumi retrieved superbly written articles from their archives chronicling the last days of Varghese, Ajitha's arrest and the fatal torture inflicted on Rajan. Unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to save those gems.

In Thalappavu, Prithviraj plays Varghese and Lal plays constable Pillai who killed him. The movie is directed by actor Madhupal who makes his debut behind the megaphone, script is by Babu Janardhanan who arrived in prominence with Achanurangatha Veedu and Vasthavam in 2006, with camera helmed by veteran Azhagappan and is produced by Tamil actor, Mohan. Check out the film's superb website at http://www.thalappavu.com. I decided to pitch this movie seeing propoganda aimed against this film by our "harmless" superstar fans who have already begun deriding it as offbeat, a "derisive" label which today is used to keep people away from theatres. A movie like this deserves to succeed but is waiting release as crap superstar flicks like Annan Thampi and Innathe Chinthavishayam continue their artificial run. Hope my little blog has given you all a heads-up and everyone will go watch this movie in its first week. Also check out two snaps I uncovered from the net of Varghese, shot by famed Manorama photographer, T.Narayanan . Note the facial similarily he shares with Prithviraj which probably prompted his casting for this role. The other one is Varghese shot to death after the "encounter".

Money Couldn't Buy Me Food...

Resurgent India has suddenly gone defensive. Is the euphoria with India's booming economy fading? Were we oozing confidence based on hollow growth numbers? At the Indian store today, they had no Nirapara kuthari to make kanji(porridge) that I suddenly had a craving for and the owner gravely tells me all non-basmatic rice exports from India have been banned following soaring rice prices. Is this the India that until a few months back proudly watched its stock exchanges break record after record? Will banning exports provide a short-term solution to inflation in India and the impending food crisis? Will Chidambaram's farmer friendly budget help in the long term? A country which serves notice on the world with Tata buying Jaguar should have nowhere to hide and deserves a round of booing for this shameless economic restriction. I had the money but I didn't get the rice I wanted to buy. I couldn't care less about exports but what if this inflation is a precursor to crippling food scarcity within the country? And my stuck-up, lazy self decided I needed to write on this.

Some years back, dad told me of the food scarcity in the '60s in the context of the influential Church in Kerala. His family had money, land and the cash crop of our times, rubber, but there was no food. They could atleast depend on tapioca, livestock, etc. Many people didn't have even that. The Church stepped in and became a public distribution system with contributions from abroad. They also earned goodwill and managed to convert many people in Kerala to Christianity. I asked my mom today what the food scarcity of the 60's meant to her family. They were paddy cultivators and grew most of the vegetables they needed. She also had an almost similar answer but her reply also highlighted a glaring irony, very relevant to today's times. They also subsisted on tapioca and everything else they raised because the rice they harvested yielded good prices in the market, so they consumed less of it! If there was a food scarcity today, what can people fall back on. Can money buy a commodity for which production and supply can't meet the demand? What will people have, to fall back on now that we are strangers to the soil, now that every inch of earth is fertile ground for production activities of modern man, save what its best suited for?

The food crisis has been building up over time and aggravated by the unbalanced growth India has been witnessing. From real estate eating up farmland in Hyderabad, Tata's auto-manufacturing company in Singur, the farm unions in Kuttanad, the uneconomical again thanks-to-globalization cotton crops in Vidarbha the challenges faced by agriculture in every part of India is different and at the same time has its origins in our apathy to recognize the importance of a healthy agricultural system. That our politicians have the solution to the food crisis in Kerala and intends to do something about this is obvious from this statement by the Food Minister, C.Divakaran. Why doesn't the honorable minister say that we depend for the milk, chicken and eggs on a state that blows hot and cold each time on the Mullaperiyar issue every time the demand for a new dam is raised!

At the junction closest to my house in Trivandrum, I was met this time by a crowd, a multitude of strange faces. People who were not residents or workers in the area until a few years before. These were not the elegantly dressed employees of the technopark, who find the locality a perfect place to live in and commute to work from. I despaired at this mini-Chandni Chowk my surroundings was becoming, I didn't know where those tired faces came from. Today I wonder if these are people who left their villages for a less-taxing, more yielding life in the cities? Gandhiji famously said "the soul of India lives in its villages". Was he not pepping up the farmer with that statement, was he making a long-run prophesy for the best future of the Indian state, or was he mourning the impending death of village life, and losing its charms to the superficial magnetism that city life had. For long, we have been worrying about the harmful effect on our cities caused by rural migration. Only a few like P.Sainath have the vision to direct our attention to the villages, the livelihood that these people turn their backs on and the reasons behind that.

A friend recently returned from a study tour to China and talked of farmer anger at officialdom which frequently uproots them from their land and plants them in factories amidst a sea of disciplined uniformed robotic men and women whose lives are as monotonous as the machines they assemble. Are we not doing something similar to the Indian farmer? We need to give back to the farmer his pride of place in society, otherwise we should soon be ready to grow on our backyards, frontyards and on every bit of soil we can find - the tapioca, poultry, cows and vegetables we badly need for our nourishment. Yes, this is a situation that will come to reality in our lifetimes, atleast in Kerala - make no mistake, like the professional beggars on our streets, an epithet - The Rich Beggar's Country - is waiting for us. We will have pockets flush with money, but stomachs as light as Somalians. Then we will surely learn our lesson - we will learn the dignity of labour and agriculture.

P.S - I dedicate this post to a friend who once tried/still tries too hard to change my thinking. He believed I had a human core which he could influence. His ideas were/are too militant for my "ghar ki safai me haath kaun gandha karein" middle-class moorings but I find myself beginning to share his thoughts. A quote in the film Kingdom of Heaven resonates within me all these years since I first heard it - "What man is a man who does not make the world better?" I know what man I am - I am a gold-digger who seems to have lost the lust for gold. What man are you?

The Erstwhile City Of God...

Once there was a sparsely populated town in Kerala. There descended upon it, capable men who built institutions. Around these institutions like the VSSC, CDS, University of Kerala, Agricultural University, Keltron, DD, AIR, RRL, CTCRI, Libraries, Govt. Bodies and think-tanks, colleges, schools, museums, stadiums, theatres, etc grew a modern city of salaried working class and their children. We lovingly call this city by various names - Trivandrum, Thiruvananthapuram and Ananthapuri. Like everything sustained by human effort, these institutions stagnated. One fine day came Globalization. The people were ready for it but not the un-extinct dinosaurs who ran these institutions. Money became the sole-motivating aim for the masses and they looked elsewhere for succour. These institutions cried foul at the hydra that was changing people's lifestyles. They stagnated further when public interest in them dipped. The replacements that globalization threw up for them weren't anything admirable either. A city is known for the institutions it is proud of. What happens to a city when the institutions it was once proud of stagnate? What happens to a city where the sole-touted institution is the Technopark which beats just to the tune of money?

Is it not time to redefine socialism? Socialism has become a dirty word. Why shouldn't socialism from now on just be about awareness of social, economic and environmental problems and implementing solutions to it? Why keep adhering to the age-old inequalities of income argument? For me, the biggest injustice perpetrated is the tendency to teach children to play it safe. The most painful aspect of a socialist system is the difficulty in getting a new initiative approved. Socialism always begins with a crusader's zeal to improve and change the existing setup. But it soon settles down into a system where the men who take charge of the social setup will not allow anyone to change this status-quo. The collaboration of interest groups works at all levels in Kerala - everybody be it the communist, the congressman, the trader, the worker, the church, the media, the intellectual - everyone who is a part of the current system and deriving benefits from it, is never motivated to change anything. This proves that interest groups don't need capitalism to flourish. An interest group works transparently in capitalism while it functions with brute power in socialism.

The only solution is to set individuals free. In Kerala, every organization has to function with interference from the top and bottom. Administrators fail to implement latest technologies, hire and fire competent/incompetent staff, streamlining the functioning of their fiefdoms, losing precious time running from pillar to post for clearing payments and bureaucratic approval. I know of an example of a person who succeeded when he was liberated. In 1998, staring at a system which he knew would deny him any chances of getting to the top of the university hierarchy despite his credentials, he interviewed for and was put in charge of a miserably performing academic institution affiliated to KU. Funded and answerable only to the UGC, functioning independent of the politicians who remote-control the university, he very quickly transformed it into the first-ranking institution of its nature in the country. He succeeded where many people capable of doing such stuff floundered elsewhere. I know that person well - he is my dad. I wouldn't say he was lead by high ideals - he was motivated by ambition and a fierce determination to stand above his peers.

From my last visit to Trivandrum, I am convinced that what Trivandrum needs more than all the requisites for economic growth and development is the revitalization of existing institutions. The reason I am proud of Kerala is that in all purposes it is a distinct entity yet seamlessly fitting within India. We have our own distinctive social system and problems, film industry, literature, subject experts in all areas, and many other parameters for being evaluated as a "country". Once, the colleges in Trivandrum like University College, Arts College, Ivanios, etc produced most of Kerala's intellectual, cultural and literary giants. Today these colleges are in a state of disuse with several vacant seats for the many courses they conduct. In their place has come up self-financing engineering colleges named after their "reputable" wealthy patrons producing graduates who have learnt in 4 years what it means to have a good time forgetting all the good things they learnt in school of social responsibility and the power of the inner self.

Some of the most talented Malayalis I have met here in the US and who will go on to lead a successful and meaningful life were people not motivated by money. They took degrees in pure sciences and arts, but developed great interest in their fields of study, that opportunities never ceased to shower on them. And our well-educated malayali frog-in-the-well parents think they know it all while prodding their unknowledgeable wards into engineering and medicine. The US is in such a strong position because of people of all talents and dispositions. A US citizen encourages activities in their communities by going out of the way to participate or encourage. The world over, intelligent societies and individuals are realizing that there is no natural or man-made wealth worthy left fighting for. I guess the blame rests on our heavily stratified society, that malayalis, whatever be the colour of their collar, can never afford to take a break from wasteful competition, and perpetrate the same mentalities on the next generation too.

There exists today no real setup for the fostering of talented people. I knew people in my father's generation from such varied fields as zoology to space science. Today all the "successful" people I know are MBA's, engineers or doctors. People drill into their children's heads that every other profession which earns lesser is the failure of the social animal. To meet and to be in the company of writers, policemen, researchers, etc if I have to climb one ladder down in the social ladder, I would gladly do it because these are the people I would enjoy talking to. Do we want Trivandrum to be a one-dimensional city like kochi? I wonder if there is anything left in that crumbling mega shopping paradise which is not subject to crass commercialization.

In a few months i will go back to being a citizen of trivandrum...i feel sad at the decline of the cultural, academic, athletic and research bodies - both govt and private owned. I have second thoughts now on the so-called urban development we are seeing in our country...ultimately everything needs support from the ordinary man and good people who can rise up to take visionary leadership. But the good people are all in useless engineering colleges out of touch with the subjects they study or the many other subjects in the world. There will be very few left to provide quality leadership in the next generation. I am woefully out of touch with trivandrum...my last visit there, about three months back didn't evoke any nostalgia. It felt like I was looking at a city of tired and haggard people. A fresh start can come only from the schools. When I return, I hope to find and band with like-minded people who can carry a message to our young ones on the dangerous ability of conventional beliefs to throttle their potential.

P.S - For long, I have stayed away from writing on the world about me. I was preoccupied with my own struggles...that difficult phase is hopefully over. Around the net, I have read several brilliant people propose solutions to propel Trivandrum's development. I am of the firm belief that nothing will change in this firmly-entrenched system unless we can mentor today's school children to replace the adults of today. The radicals and progressive thinkers of my father's generation, all of them - people who stood up to Indira Gandhi's Emergency, run the show in Trivandrum today. In their race to the top, all of them conveniently dropped their ideals. But I can't help wondering if we are all going to go their same way. I have frequently heard people cite the example of the freedom struggle where men and women came up from nowhere to give leadership and shape a national movement at a time when all hope was lost. In these modern times of Free Speech, Expression and Opportunity should we just wait for that dark hour and then get into the act? Please don't hesitate to add your thoughts and disagreements to this post.

Oh! Its Oct 2nd...What's the Big Deal???

I almost forgot today was Gandhi Jayanti. And I dont remember anymore if the last many years have also gone by in that manner. We live in a day and age where the only heroes we get to truely celebrate are armymen who give up their lives in the service of the country, business czars whose enterprise have provided millions of jobs and then we have the idols of young India, film actors and cricketers whose smiling, glamorous faces look up from a million posters and billboards throughout the homes and streets of gung-ho India. Those grand old men and women who fought the British, their memories relegated to school textbooks, their place in the sun not yet lost, ironically by idols installed at prime locations, yet I am sure not a single passer-by notices them except for birds looking for a nice spot to rest and shit. There is this statue in Raj Bhavan road of freedom fighter Akkamma Cherian, I must have passed it by for many years and always thought it was Indira Gandhi until a chapter in the textbook about her forced me to open my eyes. Later we studied about Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishna Pillai, the first of many men who fought for the amazing Freedom of Press, we now enjoy today in Kerala, whose statue I was told could be seen in Statue Jn but I never found it till one day waiting for a bus near the Marikar showroom I spotted him shrouded in the tree cover leading up to the AG's Office.

There is this favorite moment I have had with Gandhiji. It is a feeling I will cherish forever. It was during my MS days and I was walking to work on a campus road which stretched out in a straight line and ended up in an undergraduate student housing building. It was dark, close to midnight and there was this one light shining from a room, which seemed to guide me on ahead. Like most guys, the first fancy that came to my mind was seeing a girl in that room, in a state of undress. As I kept getting closer, the faint outlines of a picture on the wall caught my attention. I couldnt make out who it was, but it held me transfixed until the shape of the Mahatma grew clearer and clearer. Besides him on either side was a poster of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. I smiled to myself and wondered what possible source of inspiration could the Mahatma be to a person in the most affluent country in the world, when even Indians don't care anymore. There are moments like these, when you recognize the presence of a great man in your life, and you acknowledge his contribution to making your life a better one. Isn't that what is called immortality? Some months later we were walking on the street, when a homeless guy sniggered at us, "Gandhi Boys!" It may have been a racial taunt but we smiled, and I shouted back at him, "Thank You!" and would have loved to add, "But we don't deserve the compliment!"

Gandhiji's outward political postures, even if not in spirit are kept alive and kicking in our country, if you see the kadar clothing, bandhs, hartals, jathas, satyagraha what not. We have politicians to thank for that...if Gandhi was just a politician he wouldnt have survived...even he displayed selfishness and lack of grace at times. But his greatness was that he had lessons for ordinary people too. Even between politics he taught the importance of hygiene and a clean environment...it is funny that when ministers like Kamal Nath fight for India not to be brought under purview of greenhouse emission, he hides the fact that global warming is hurting India more than any other country in the world. I feel it...the biggest challenge before India in coming years is not democracy, corruption, economy or insurgency...it is climate change. In India, every man grosses wealth, in the safe knowledge that he is doing it for his children, but when it comes to anything that is global wealth, these same men exploit it without realizing they are digging their grandchildrens' graves even before they are born. Man is always helpless, for centuries we feared and grappled with the challenges earth posed, now we are so in the grip of technology and modernity, and acknowledge we face an earth we have tapped at indiscriminately, but cant face upto even a few minutes of power-cut, loss of transportation, air-condition or connectivity!

One moment, I make all these utopian(maybe even gandhian) schemes on how I should lead life...next moment, I find that same me, doing the exact opposites of what I thought of earlier. Truth, Non-Violence, Conquest of the Self...such impossibilities for us pampered people. For me the biggest challenge has been to win over my baser instincts...a lazy nap, porn, mindless movies, pointless net-surfing, companionships past their shelf-date and associated habits...the first book that ever gave me the tools to deal with it was no Bible or motivators like Dale Carnegie, Lee Iococa etc...but Gandhiji's My Experiments With Truth. Once you finish reading the book you realize that it wasn't an accident of history that a man like Gandhiji lead India to freedom. In his seemingly-pointless-for-us abstinence, vegeterianism, brahmacharya, etc he toughened his soul to give him the courage to face the higher aims of his life like truth, non-violence and India's freedom. It is the simplest yet most profoundly touching and inspiring book you can lay your hands on for as less as Rs.30. Truth, Non-violence and probably most of his experiments in the book are i guess beyond what we mere 21st century zombies can aspire for, but it also has lessons in simplicity, time-management, humility, health, social commitment and work-ethic we still can commit to, which can help us succeed and feel good about, in our busy lives. Gandhiji once lived amongst us, he still lives in us, we rarely seek to find out...a brilliant Rajkumar Hirani makes a Lage Raho Munnabhai and we rave about Gandhigiri for a while, every year we have an Independence Day and a Gandhi Jayanti, but if each of us truely want to celebrate him, his life and the freedom he and his men won for us, pick up his book, buy it for your friends, who knows...you or that person might discover a Gandhian thought in some simple action of yours, and who knows...we might even end up saving Earth! Happy Birthday, Gandhiji.

P.S - Albert Einstein, the man who pipped Gandhi to the 'Time Man of the Century' Award said of Gandhiji, "Generations to come will scare believe such a one as this in flesh and blood, walked the face of the Earth". I wonder if Einstein's fine statement will become a prophesy...Gandhiji becoming some unattainable freak great soul rather than the very human being he was...he will be remembered for sure...but how he is remembered lies very much in how much of him we can find in our lives, we the youth of India who are a link between a morbid, stagnating recent past and an exciting but hazardous near future owe atleast this much to that man.

World Political Roundup...

Am back to regular newspaper reading after a long long time...its a wretched world of politics out there...had enough matter to write on atleast 15 of the states in the indian union and an equal number of countries in the world...but for the moment this will do...my hands have itched to do some writing and after all, politics is a resort for every scoundrel around...so how can I be left out!

UP Elections...No Lesser Devils Here
Those who even casually follow the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections will know sure enough that it is an indicator of the depths to which the Indian democracy has plunged. The BJP and BSP have brought out CD's that urge people to vote on religious and caste lines, the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav after 5 years of misrule and corruption shamelessly believe they are still the best of the lot, the Congress has thrown out its future face, Rahul Gandhi into the political minefield and on expected lines the cow-dung littered cow-belt has become a happy hunting ground for this St.Stephens-Harvard(or is it Cambridge!) educated future Prime Minister's to land his cold feet in, with innumerable gaffes...the way he, his mom and sis shamelessly remind people of the Gandhi-Nehru legacy is embarrassing to say the least. The Election Commission's deployment of paramilitary forces was the saving grace...now when can we see electoral reforms that firmly uncloak the politician's garb from criminals...will it happen in our lifetimes?

Smart CM!!!
VS Achuthanandan after almost torpedoing the crucial Smart City project achieved the impossible by forcing the DIC to come around to agreeing to most of the conditions his team set for them. I feel sorry now for Oommen Chandy who is fumbling now to come forth with an answer for why he couldnt project the same unbending attitude VS showed...the fact is he didnt have the time in an election year, and more importantly he took the attitude of "Beggars cant be choosers". It remains to be seen if the govt can maintain its 25% stake in the project as it keeps getting bigger..after all we have a treasury which is forever on the verge of default...the news that the Cochin Infopark cannot repay its loans to KSIDC just made the rounds. Anyways alls well that ends well!

Pushing Bush...
So what if the American people gave the Democrats a clear mandate in both the Senate and the House of Representatives to withdraw from the Iraq War. He can just shirk the democratic lasso on his cowboy act by a mere veto. If there is one quality you gotta praise him for...that is his steadfastness. His defense of Attorney General Gonsalvez and World Bank President Wolfowitz, two cronies of his, even in the face of their proven misdemeanor could be praised/condemned depending on which side of the political spectrum you vouch for. This is one man who just cant see the clear writing on the wall and wants to go down as the worst US president ever. Elsewhere his party's nominees for the next prez elections fumble everywhere while the Clinton-Obama-Edwards triumvirate are breaking records by the dozen in their fundraising act.

Who's Afraid of India...
The Indo-US nuclear deal was a milestone...the only problem is it came up in a dead alley. India cant conduct anymore nuclear tests which speaks miles for Developed World hypocrisy/snobbery and neither can we reprocess spent nuclear fuel. America maynot be the last word in business anymore but energy companies here know that if India with its huge thorium reserves uses the reprocessed fuel they are losing a huge huge market for years and years to come. Cheers to the two Indian scientists, Kakodkar and Chidambaram who stood up to the Goliath even while the PM and bureaucracy beamed like schoolboys at the press-photographers.

The Stakes in Africa...
Indians, Chinese, Americans, Saudis...it seems the whole world has a stake in the poorest continent on Earth. Indians continue to face the heat in Uganda, elsewhere in Africa(i forget the countries) China is facing trouble for economic-exploitation. Reading about Darfur is a sure-shot way to feel despair at the politics and apathy that the capable world displays in putting an end, to worthless violence for the capture of a region that cud be the closest place on earth to biblical hell.

Judicious Activism!!!
Manmohan has never been a fan of PIL's and the Judiciary's enormous appetite to intrude into the turf of the Executive-Legislature turf has vexed him often. But when ministers-bureacrats-legislators gang up against the common man it is only fitting that the same loopholes which allow the unholy trio to sin without fear of the law allows the judiciary to take up cudgels for citizens without fear of the vague laws in the constitution that determines its scope of functioning. Kudos to the men in black and white who have thrown a challenge to caste-appeasing politics of OBC reservation. At the end the government and Thakur Arjun will win...but I hope to see the creamy layer denied easy skimmings of a pie they were waiting to lap up in a country that will never see meritocracy functioning, thanks to a wretched past which everyone seems wanting to preserve for the present and the future.

Tony Blair, Goodbye...
In 1997, when a youthful looking man who defied the cliched description of the stiff upper-lipped Englishman, took over the reins of England, a few years after a handsome, charismatic Clinton arrived on the scene across the Atlantic in an America poised to go into the millennium, i watched with gushing admiration his inaugural speech in Parliament to Britons on BBC unveiling his concepts of New Labour, at a time when septuagenarian H.D.Deve Gowda slept and tripped through his tenure as India's PM. Of course, not many would have noticed, in that speech he spoke a sentence of how England would have to piggyback on the US to maintain its relevance in international affairs. It is a pity, that this wise man kept his word so seriously that he followed one of the most stupid men around, George W. Bush into a needless war that today leaves him a mere shadow of the fresh-faced statesman he was touted to become 10 years ago.

Preparing for Post-Mushy Pak...
Its official. Gen.Mush is getting increasingly cornered. After suspending his Chief Justice and then getting him manhandled, followed by capitulation to a set of clerics who fatwa'ed his minister for an innocuous hug and now increasing criticism for Pakistan's withdrawal from its own territory, Waziristan for the Al-Qaeda-Taliban duo to run free...if Pakistan's next leader is a Mullah, it will be a situation India hasnt faced before...dealing with a theocrat in a nuclear-possessing rogue state. Will soft-spoken Manmohan, crowd-savvy Vajpayee, baby-faced Rahul or Loha-Purush Advani measure up...

The Bitter Harvest...

They say I am a 50 year old...I am not sure though. They honoured me and celebrated my birthday with great pomp, confusion and disunity. I puffed up with pride...though only momentarily...hearing the great man who made missiles for my Mother and before that had lived with me for 20 years...heap lavish, mostly undeserved praise on me. This is my story, but I wonder what I am in this tale...the narrator, the stage, the prop, the bystander or just an onlooker.

When I was but a year old, Mother decided to turn me over to my people, hoping they would bring me up well, as she had her other 15 children too to look after, not knowing yet how many more would be carved out of her womb. Not a bad decision because she gave birth to twins a few years back, i suspect her 27th and 28th child...pardon me, but i have lost count. As for my Father he died 8 years before my coming...a sad, disappointed man he was when his end came. I leave it to you readers to let your vivid imaginations take flight, to figure out if i am a case-study for divine conception or bastardy. Anyways to take my story forward...my good people, both the poor and the enlightened of the land handed over my upkeep to something we will call a trust, which I must say did well. They gave land to the landless farmer, ushered in affordable education for all and a good many sweeping changes.

Before I could turn 4, the Rich, the Establishment, the Church and Mother's people colluded in what they called a struggle for liberating me and things were never the same again. I fell into the lap of a Governor for the first of many future ones.

Throughout my early childhood I was witness to a great dichotomy; the men who spoke great principles and supposed to nurture and lead me on forsook all their responsibilities in the quest of an eternal mojo...they called Power. And so for, with and by Power they flourished as a great multitude of associations they called Parties which swore by bigoted interpretations of religion, caste, the oppressed, the middle class and the farmer. And the greatest tragedy was my poor people who were beginning to make a name amongst my Brothers for their intelligence, hard work and education become toys in my name but everyone elses for gain.

In my teens we got a fellow companion, a mean bully, who went by the name of Trade Union. He struck us hard when we worked, studied or tried to usher in changes. Because of his adamant stand, I saw many people losing jobs, others bidding me farewell, some watching the tamasha in approval and a majority feign apathy or helplessness. Our backs had all begun showing signs of rubber than any presence of spine or bone.

The teenage years almost went past, when a woman who came so close to taking Mother's position in my mind, decided I had turned a juvenile and had me and brothers put in shackles for plotting her fall. A friend of my age studying for engineering was taken away never to be seen again but his father's struggle for justice will remain the stuff of legend for as long as I live.

Soon I was in my 20's and yearning to break free but the men who made my life miserable in the past was in no mood to let go. The storm in my life refused to abate...it was decided one front would pull me from the left and another front from the other side. And so they prostituted me in the farce they called coalition which continues to this day, though they have sucked me dry.

Then I turned 30. Not too late to learn computers, i thought and turned towards it. But rowdies, though they call themselves students, in one stroke, obstructed the one avenue I had hoped would lead to my survival. Meanwhile some of my Brothers latched on to IT and today almost all my educated young friends work for them while so many capable men and women who could have helped me out remain lost forever. Of course they built two lopsided parks which continue to grow belatedly; in two unplanned, unclean and unscalable cities called Trivandrum and Cochin where chaos is waiting to happen not too far away in the near future.

And 40 I turned. A time to invest, dream big and a plan to empower and emancipate my people ended with them looting me and leaving my coffers dry. The loans to help people get self-employed and develop subsidiary incomes was a ready reckoner to the poor businessman I was, and recovering none of the spent money, in desperation I turned again to the two hydra-headed monster brothers they affectionately or otherwise call adb and wb whose loans today keep me afloat despite the quicksand of unreasonably huge interest payments that eat into my revenues viciously.

Now I am 50. In the pangs of a large mid-life crisis. The fighting doest happen anymore between my two fronts...but within them. I turn away from them for some relief to the movies but the rot has set in there too, elsewhere mosquitoes with their vicious fangs bay for my dying lifeblood as the darkness approaches. I see the future written boldly but none else bothers to listen or see me crying...the roads will choke, the rivers run dry, crops fail further, more heads hanging on ropes.

Well that was one story on my life, there are others too...I know tales of losers don't sell, but if you are good at it, someday you can tell it with conviction to your grandchildren and sugarcoat it with a nice moral that appeals to them. As for me...
I am bitter at all the pent-up potential gone down the drain,
I am bitter as past achievements pale away into stagnation,
I am bitter that I am the luckless ground that stands beneath your all-stomping feet.

Mullaperiyar: The Sad, Sad Water War

As I write this post, the news has come rolling out that the talks between Karunanidhi and Achuthanandan have ended in a deadlock. It is a real sad situation...I never wanted Kerala to be caught in the national limelight on such a divisive issue. I have followed discussions on this issue on ibnlive.com, orkut and many other forums and have seen a lot of hatred and heated outpouring of words between indians of two neighbouring states. Politicians in both states have spat out a lot of rhetoric and worrying is the effect it is having on the Tamil Nadu side with men like Vaiko and Nedumaran around. For one, they know they hold a great bargaining chip of being the essential supplier of most food items to kerala...vegetables, milk, chicken, eggs, beef, anything you name which have threatened to blockade and already done though on a limted one-day basis which caused great harm to traders who saw their farm products rotting away at the Valayar check post. The greater threat i feel is to malayalis living in Tamil Nadu who may have to face the ire of Tamilians whose blood is on the boil as they feel another great wrong being done to them after the bitter Kaveri dispute.

The seed of the whole problem dates back to 1978 when leaking of the Mullaperiyar Dam forced Kerala to curtail the water flow down to 138 feet for the first time. Going back even further is the 999 year lease signed under duress by the Maharaja of Travancore-Cochin under pressure from the powerful Presidency of Madras under the Britishers through which water from the Periyar flowing entirely through Kerala was diverted to irrigate the water-deprived Kambum-Theni belt using the newly constructed Mullaperiyar dam. All was well until the recent earthquake and further leakages to the dam made its safety doubtful and Kerala was forced to cut down the water level to 136 feet from the 142feet it was earlier. To compound the confusion on the Kerala side has been recent media reports on who actually controlled the dam...while some said TN police had taken over the dam, others said it was still safe in Kerala's hands.

Thankfully Kerala has been blessed with good rains for the past many years and it has never hesitated in sharing the waters of the Periyar, but now that the issue of the safety of the people and their property in the five districts of Central Travancore if the dam bursts has come up, it is surprising Tamil Nadu hasnt shown the sensitivity that was expected especially when it is faced with the issue of Karnataka not releasing TN's deserving share of Kaveri Waters after its newly constructed dam has come up. While demands have come up in Kerala to scrap the 999 year agreement and stop sharing the water altogether or to go in for a fresh lease, Kerala's proposals of a new dam being constructed close to Mullaperiyar and decommisioning the current one has not found favour with Tamil Nadu. Further damaging is the fact they have closed their eye on the recent damage to the Theni NH across the border when heavy rains caused the water level to rise above 136 feet at the dam causing water to overflow through the spillways.

The Supreme Court judgement that asked Kerala to implement the 142ft level complicated matters further as Kerala passed an ordinance circumventing it. It must be stated here that while Tamil Nadu showed the CWC report that stated the dam safe the Kerala side failed to argue its side properly despite several reports by its agencies, contrary to the CWC report. Seems like the highest court of the land is looking to review its earlier stand by now requesting both chief ministers to meet to sort out the issue instead of enforcing its judgement. My ancestral home and land in Idukki lies bordering the Periyar river and its not just loss of life and property, many of our valuable flora and fauna too lie under the threat of this disaster. If the Mullaperiyar dam bursts its not just the people of Kerala who will lose, the people of Kambum-Theni can kiss goodbye to their precious source of livelihood, agriculture. Building a new dam might take a few years, and cost a lot of money but if that is the only solution to unneccessary quarrel, i hope our politicians will be wise enough to go that route. Culturally, economically and for humanitarian purposes people can come closer...westernization, globalization, United Nations initiative are valid examples, but where mindless politics drives all meaningful intercourse, political boundaries will remain a hard fact of life. To wind up, it all comes down to a simple question like does not water belong to everyone, and to even tougher posers, what will happen to the National River-Interlinking Project, etc...is all this even remotely feasible in this age of fiercely independent meaningless entities like our Indian states.

Diverting totally, read this wonderful short story that is taking shape at this blog-pal's site if you haven't already.

He Versus Me...

I looked at the adversary sitting next to me in the darkness. Only our voices spoke to each other. We were like boxers trading punches, not yielding any ground to the other. Noone had derided me, questioned my ideals and labelled me ignorant in quite a long time and what began as a discussion between my pal, Sreehari doing his masters at Haryana Agri University in Hissar where I was visiting him ended up becoming a debate, argument or quarrel as our constrasting beliefs clashed, depending on how a third person percieved the situation. I thought it worth to share with you all some of the stuff we talked as Sreehari's ideas and thoughts are on a plane different from many of us and though I couldnt agree with him on much, its nice to read about the alternative socio-politici-economic systems others think should be in place of the one we fortunately or unfortunately have in place now.

He: I dont agree with the IT Boom happening now, the BPO revolution we see now is making India a slave. Instead of asserting our creative energies we are working cheaply for Uncle Sam and his cronies, bcoz it costs them more there.
Me: Look at the number of jobs this has generated. Havent you thought of the huge urban unemployment crisis that would have been created. For 50 years before the mid-90's what creative resource channelling have we done. Atleast the Brain Drain stands reversed today.

He: Why dont you open your eyes to reality? We are being recolonized again. The WB and IMF keeps pumping in funds and we recieve with open arms. Do you know anything about the Chinese Model and that they dont beg for aid.
Me: In 1991 we were on verge of default and about to pledge our gold. The economic reforms we undertook thanks to the conditional aid they gave us has rejuvenated atleast a part of India. It is the West's helplessness of their lack of manpower to leverage the technological revolution that they are turning to India. It is fiction that our billing rates are dirt cheap. I know Infy bill at more than $25 an hour which is more than my first salary in the US.

He: 65% of India is dependent on agriculture. Compare this with US where only 2% lives on agriculture. Ignoring agri and villages in not the way to gun for development.
Me: I agree. But if you put things in proper perspective you will find that coz we have solved the problem of urban unemployement to a great extent the govt has been freed to pursue rural development now. Havent you read how NREGP, Bharat Nirman and PURA are all doing good work.

He: Gandhi's call to go back to villages and the self-sufficiency inherent in that model would have saved India. The bastard Nehru's socialist industrialisation programme ruined everything.
Me: Cant you guage the enormous amount of responsibilities Nehru worked under. There were communal riots, states reorganization, the kashmir problem, refugees, etc and then india was lacking in any sort of industrialization and only the govt had means to invest money. Until the 1st FYP and 1957 our focus was entirely on agriculture b4 Nehru changed focus to industries and in 1960's green revolution came and we had a food surplus.

He: Whats the use? They havent implemented land reforms except in WB and Kerala. Kerala has been ruined by joining the Indian Union. We were a self-sufficient state. We had the leading spice trade in the world. Today we have to beg to India for everything.
Me: Would Kerala have been able to pay the salaries of our huge edu and medical and other govt employees with just the spices trade? It is meaningless to conjecture separatism today. No state in India can survive by itself. You are not looking for ways to improve the current system but just ranting and raving at it. I have an Indian identity and there are millions of malayalis like me who are proud of it.

Me: Look at Smart City. So many people would have got jobs. That land lies waste now.
He: We dont need Smart City. It is obvious from T&C's that Smart City is a fraud and eitherway if jobs come from selling our land and resources to foreigners to do dirt-cheap work, we dont need those jobs.

He: You are speaking for your class. I expected you to have a voice for the underpriviledged. You are just another bourgeousie.
Me: You speak from outside the system. Your grouse is you feel frustrated at not being able to be part of the changes the 91 reforms brought about. You havent attempted to see the change through millions of young people who can dream of good jobs now and you doint attempt to find out how we can channel these changes to rural India too.

He: You are ignorant and unable to percieve things better. Your class always wants to keep the poor in chains. You are hiding in the convenience of pragmatism like thousands of Indians and dont want any meaningful change in our feudal system.
Me: You speak of idealism and utopian change when it is so hard to bring changes in present system. Good things are happening and you are blind to it coz the changes are not happening the way yo want them to. You look only at the negatives. I am frustrated at your inability to see even a little silver lining.
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We ended it there. It had taken harsh tones. We had to use words that fell below the normal courtesies among friends. Somehow we relaxed. An unspoken agreement to not talk on these issues emered. The rest of my time in Hissar was spent in malayalam songs, old memories of schoolife, a junior of his who entertained us to some soulful rendering of Hindustani vocal and a little sightseeing. Meanwhile I am pissed at Manmohan that while he urges G-8 leaders to take a strong stand on terrorism while the best stand he could do was block bloggers like us from talking to the world. Now I want to take you to another scene, another conversation, what you read may disturb you. All this happens only in India!

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First Friend: I am sad man. My mind is telling me to cheat. I know I fall in the creamy layer. Its so easy to get an income certificate and so much easier to crack the civil services through the OBC reservation. What should I do?
Second: I made a mistake. I didnot know my community was notified as an OBC. This time I wrote in the General Category. But next time I'll fix it.
Third(a Mallu): When others are manipulating the system why should we be left behind. I decided long back that I would make use of OBC reservation.
Myself(a little uncomfortable, yet unable to muffle a smile): Do you guys know what Narayanamurthy said, "India must be the only country where people fight to be called backward".

Smiles all around. My point was made for a little time but will soon be forgotten. In India our youth are taught to survive at all costs. Morality can come later!

Mandate for a Time-Freeze???

The elections are over...I felt depressed seeing the difference in calibre of the two left leaders who won...buddadheb in bengal, looking at the way ahead for his state and asking young men who left its soil to return, talking astutely on a wide range of opportunities for bengal and vs achuthanandan in kerala on the other hand looking back into the past and raising his bogeys of forest mafias and sex scandals and of the great foreign investment conspiracy!

The Congress didnt do badly...all over the state from trivandrum to kasargod all the congress leaders with a mass-base and who consider themselves answerabile to the people...have won belying all predictions!! Oommen Chandy's victory in Puthupally, G.Karthikeyan in Aryanad, Aryadan Mohammed in Nilambur, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan in Adoor, K.C.Venugopal in Alappuzha, C.P.Mohammed in Pattambi, etc, etc are just some of the names i need to mention. Even when everyone predicted the UDF would go down I always had this feeling that several Congressmen who had worked hard in their constituencies would still romp home comfortably.

The DICK as predicted by all is over as a party...it was tragi-comic to see Mr.K in tears...the kingman of kerala politics looks set to waste away in oblivion(ouch...i feel the cruelty of my own words!). I have a suggestion for K.Muraleedharan...with all the allegedly immense wealth he has inherited, should get into film production and save our poor cinema industry. The Muslim League is finally paying for ignoring the poor people who have been their votebank for ages...I really dont think fundamental groups like PDP and Jamaat mattered too much...their leaders had lost their abiding link with the masses. Anways, sad to see Dr.M.K.Muneer who was an intelligent leader too getting felled. And to make it super-sweet all those good-for-nothing allies of the udf jss of gowriamma, mv raghavan of cmp, the rsp's, the kerala congresses of balakrishan pillai and tm jacob(now erstwhile!) have bitten the dust...next elections i'd like to see young congressmen get to become ministers instead of these big guns who've been ministers for too long and had just as much vision as their failing eyes afforded them!!!

Coming back to the cpm...there's a lot of things to cheer about too...there are some capable and reform-minded men among their midst too...Thomas Isaac, M.A.Baby, P.J.Joseph and some really decent men like Paloli Mohammed Kutty, N.K.Premachandran, Ramachandran Kadannapally, etc who will be becoming ministers. Lets hope for the very best from them. And another interesting thing to note is that more than 130 of our mla's are atleast graduates which is great but when we juxtapose them with national level leaders of cpm, inc, bjp we find they pale out in terms of their fluency in english, and media charm...no wonder most of the mp's we vote from kerala are derided as backseaters in parliament...someday hope even that changes!!!

Well, i just wanted to key in a quick post, as a quick aside i'd like to report that the monsoon seems to have set in a few days earlier than the weathermen predicted as its been raining non-stop for the last 5-6 hours and getting back...everyone's crossing their fingers on the fate of kerala, but then lets face it, there's a huge class-divide here. the peasant and labour class root for everything v.s.achuthanandan stands for while we the middle classes cant bear his sight for a second. Kerala has kept its date with its past and voted out an incumbent, sadly this was a well-performing one. It wont be long before the new govt gets into its act, spells out its policies and shows where its political and economical leanings lie...until then i'll wait in silence and not rant and rave anymore about a missed opportunity!!!!

Dividing, Young India...

Woe Befall Thee, Arjun Singh!!

He is proof that senile men should be forcefully retired from politics. With Manmohan Singh's break with the Left getting pronounced day by day, is this his latest gimmick to position himself as the next in line for PMship??? The added reservation foisted on Central Universities for OBC's, will ring the deathbells for many a promising youngster, whose only fault has been to be born in the General Category segment. The people of this country have gracefully accepted every reservation up till now including the Mandal Commission but how will they tolerate such injustice perpetrated on their children's education. At a time when Indian talent is taking the world by storm, it seems our government is bent on reining them in. If casteism still stays strong then look no further...the inconsiderate application of reservations still keeps this decadent concept fresh in our young people's mind in an age when rational thought and modern education could easily have swept these anachronisms away.

I have had a private education all my life and it never mattered to me who was nair, ezhava, muslim or christian but what about others who depend on the Government to educate their children? In Delhi, I saw a student community indescribably saddened, frustrated and helpless at how the best education still lay beyond their reach and kept getting tougher...all for votebank politics. Their angst has begun to almost border on hatred and I hope more cultured voices in the Government can talk sense into Arjun. The communal, linguistic and regional divide could not fracture India, but this one I feel threatens the very idea of being an Indian for many youngsters. It takes a Rang De Basanti to remind young students of their duty to the nation, but then it just takes an Arjun Singh to remind them of the grimmer details of Indian life...that the Indian standing next to him/her may have a different caste, religion and better opportunities for material advancement.

Where's The Creamy Layer??? The benefits of reservation, I beleive in a majority still go to the creamy layer of India's reserved segment...the most deserving continue to be oppressed by everyone for their selfish needs. Even in a state like Kerala where unemployment is the bane of every section of the population the govt implemented the Narendran Commission report for certain communities instead of on the basis of the economic status of all deserving applicants(which would have been such a progressive step for a state that prides its social development indices).

So where does this leave us Indians. Its easy to by cynical, indifferent and pathetic. For all the good the UPA did, everything stands reversed with a dying politician's last attempt at recapturing centrestage...what can we do??? Do we go ahead with a belief that private universities will come up that lessens our dependence on the government, do we go ahead beleiving banks will offer us student loans for financing our education in these private univs which will invariably be more expensive, or do we tolerate and accept gracefully this new social welfare measure. A set of pathbreaking economic reforms bailed our country out of a looming social crisis of urban unemployment...I foresee the regressive paths we take today will lead soon to an educational crisis and then a revolution too...in the ultra-competitive country we are becoming now its becoming impossible to keep our youth in chains any longer...I dont think the buoyancy in our economy is just a mirage and fuelled solely by outsourcing...it has been fuelled by vast availability of an educated workforce allowed to unleash their potential.

In the not-too distant future I foresee the setting up of private universities of the calibre of Stanford and Harvard in our country ..the demurring voices of Ratan Tata and Narayana Murthy to the new set of reservations could be indications of how usefully these decent men intend to spent their soon-to-be-retired lives to be remembered for eternity (how abt a Tata University?!). Well what I said above is the rosy future...but today, reservations have gone far beyond all sane limits and is serving gross inequalities to huge numbers of young Indians without offering equal alternatives in place. Ultimately, and in the meantime I feel sorry for one huge section, the poor, general category student...where will he find his place...in reserved government education or expensive private institutions...who will fight for his lost cause???

Listen To Me, Kerala???

Landed in Tvm in the midst of the Mahabharata War...or it seems like that atleast...heated discussions everywhere...in homes, streetsides and family functions!!! In the most literate, politically aware state of India after weeks of precarious religion, caste, sex and regional balancing amidst an already tenuous tightrope of coalition politics to walk on, the allknowing Keralite looks all set to throw the Congress out of power for the next 5 years. Though I licked my lips in anticipation of being present in kerala at this time of the year something happened that made me swore not to even bother with politics anymore. It takes years to mould a man into a leader but it just takes a few mins of irresponsible politics and a false case to finish off his career. I am not giving names but when the person in question even sold his flat to raise money to be a representative of the people and then to see the trauma he and his family went through, I am convinced Hell, though debunked by theologians, cant yet close shop...there are politicians waiting outside with deep pockets and darker sins! So where do I start...should it be from Pinarayi blundering by not contesting so that he could keep "THE PARTY" under his amrpits, or from Oommen Chandy's superb strategy to keep the DICK out of the udf only to see it torpedoed by Antony aka The Saint, Veerappa Moily, Chennithala and Kunhalikutty, or Achuthanandan's rantings and ravings from Parassala to Kasargod of saving Kerala from a "development coterie". We'll leave politics at that. Lets see the pressing needs of Kerala over the next 5 years and what I think will be the fate of kerala whoever the next chief minister of kerala is.

What V.S can do...
1. Agricultural Revolution...Despite hundreds of tons of excess rice already being purchased by the govt to save the rice farmers(yeah we still grow rice...our high wages have made farmers take to rubber and other cash crops in large numbers only for achu to arrive on the scene and vettinerathufy) he will force more land to be brought under rice cultivation, that is if any is available.
2. No Foreign Capital - Kerala will have at the most a hundred millionaries(in dollars) and I doubt if even 10 of them will have the acumen for investing in an IT business. With Infy, Wipro, Satyam and TCS heavily committed to other states so where do we look to for trigerring off an already belated IT revolution in our state...like godsend the Dubai Internet City lands here in our lap and almost 2 years of talks, moratoriums and agreements everythings still on paper!!!
3. Leader of the Masses - VS is undoubtedly the leader of Kerala's unskilled labor class. As was evident from a small chayakada owner and acquaintance from my college days praising VS on his statements of ending corruption, blocking Smart City and bringing the rich and powerful of Kerala to book...what the poor guy doesnt realize is that the VS brand of socialism will do more harm to him than good...ppl like me fleeing kerala after college eludes him of business for a lifetime!!!
4. Old Age City - I can safely assume my colony to be a microcosm for Trivandrum at large. Everyone is either abroad, or in bangalore and everyone cribs of being given a fair chance to come back home. Impossible...everyone better save up their money and invest in apts or houses in whatever city you are based... 5 years of VS rule will kill any chances of an IT boom.

What Chandy can do...(Or a Pinarayi Too)
1.The most dynamic chief minister the state has ever had will stop at nothing to etch his name firmly in golden letters as modern kerala's architect . I firmly believe his promise of the IT Corridor in Tvm and the Smart City in Cochin will take shape. Infact if he comes to power I will certainly stay back in kerala and take part in its development either as a capitalist or an employee.
2.I believe if given another term he will lean towards ending the udf coalition and re-establishing single party rule in kerala. With the CPM already moving towards ending the hegemony of the eerkili parties in its fold I doubt whether the Congress can keep bending over its back any longer for groups like Muslim League, Kerala Congress and Dick.

What Kerala Really Needs...
1. Jobs, Jobs and Jobs...Having the highest unemployment rate in India is one distinction kerala can certainly do without.
2. College Education - An entire generation of youngsters like me has been ruined by the mediocre education dished out in our colleges to go with the archaic syllabi and "brainy" question papers set by our universities. My advice to kerala youngsters is...dont wait for graduation to flee kerala...Go Fly at 17!!!
3. More focussed governance - Kerala is just perfect for becoming a developed state in India. If only the govt could focus less of its energies on politics and more on its health, education and public works sector we could redeem our state from the intense stagnation that's setting in here with the onset of competitive private schools and hospitals which though they charge astronomic rates offer better salaries and services.
4. Prices - Despite increased privatisation, Kerala has been saved from inflation in essential services because of a combination of socialist parties, an activist media and people's attitudes. Today the consultation of even the best doctor in tvm is available to people, rich or poor...Lets all fight to keep our innate consumerist tendency at bay and indulge less or else it will be the poor of Kerala who suffer.
5. The People - If only Malayalis lived better in their home state! This is the most cliched yet most truest grouse of every nrk.

I dont know what this post intended to do. The few readers here will not vote...the masses of kerala out there who will sweat in the may sun to have ink smudged on their fingers have a mind of their own...they consider themselves, as knowledgeable as the newspapers they read. For many it doesnt matter who gets elected as long as the candidate will have a religion, caste or some identity similar to his or else he is a party worker waiting to reap the benefits of his hard campaigning by milking his local MLA. Well, if 125 odd years back, if papers like The Hindu, Amrit Bazaar Patrika and Kesari could rise amidst humble beginnings to awaken the nationalist spirit in Indians to challenge the might of the British Empire we bloggers could very well be forerunners of some future technological change that allows us freebooters to reach as many people as our newspapers which have succumbed to compulsions of ideology, populism or compromises. And heck yeah, who wants to be a journalist, when you can write all you wanted, without an editor waiting to cut you out!!!! This article concludes a series of posts I have written over the last one and a half years on why the Congress needs to be given another last chance to rule us and this should probably be the last post I'll ever write on our electoral politics. I am not a Congressman nor a Commie-hater, but even if one leading CPM leader came out with a development agenda, I too would have gone with the incumbency wave and supported them wholeheartedly. Lets wait and watch whats in store for the State...miracles could happen...maybe VS will go the Buddhadeb way...after all, there's nothing impossible in politics!

And Now, The NRI Votebank...

After the politics of reservation, religion and regional causes here comes a new votebank that politicians in Kerala and India can aim to corner...the NRI votebank. The Congress-led Kerala government has prepared the draft for a bill giving voting rights to NRK's. Almost the entire top leadership of the Congress in Kerala is now in Delhi lobbying with Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi to get Central approval for a bill which may turn around the Congress' fortunes in Kerala.

I dont know the exact figures of NRK's abroad but i am sure it must be atleast 15 lakh(the overall number of mallus outside kerala must be atleast 50 lakh or 1/6 of state's population!!) and if the massive campaign for the Smart City on the net is anything to go by and from my own interaction with and knowledge of mallus outside kerala the UDF looks set to corner a majority of these votes...remains to be seen if the government can get the logistics of this complex operation of collecting international votes in place by next May when elections are due.

An undeniable aspect of Kerala's well-being today is the emigration of Keralites to places outside and their massive investment back into the State which helped us overcome the crippling effects of militant trade unionism, industrial stagnation and zero job creation. The left parties though unhappy i doubt will raise a voice because they realize the only reason they still survive is because kerala overcame the bad effects of communism thru this continous inflow of money that kept the whole economy on its toes.

I read somewhere that the total difference in votes between the LDF and UDF in the panchayat election was 7 lakh...with the NRI vote plus the increase in udf supporters who sat at home for last months election I hope Congress(I) makes up the deficit in the assembly elections. Its not that I am a hardcore Congress supporter but this government is doing such a great job compared to previous ones that they definitely deserve a 5 year term and not the 20 months they will get now. The irony is that if other states bring up such bills the Congress High Command will be in trouble as I have seen most Non-Resident Indians, north of the Vindhyas to be ardent supporters of the BJP.

Gimme a Reason...

The dust is yet to settle down on Kerala's Panchayat elections. Alliances and last-minute adjustments are still on...ironically politics is only for the common man...for politicians convenience has become the byword. The hilarious spectacle of CPM-BJP, Congress-BJP, Congress-CPM, League-BJP, League-CPM tie-ups in many of Kerala's villages indicate how grassroot politics work despite all the bravado and stances taken by state leaders. Despite all this, what left me most disheartened was the cold-shoulder Keralites lend to a Chief Minister who has worked tirelessly and almost 24/7 in bringing so much development and dynamicity to a government machinery which has stagnated all these years and as I write, this man is in Chandigarh attending the Chief Ministers conference and bagging more funds, projects and support from the central government. Shame on you all!

Oommen Chandy's sins:
1) Bringing a Smart City Project to be located on land provided in 60's and 70's to industries to set up shop and start functioning but who stayed away bcoz of fear of lockouts, militant trade unions and which left all that prime real estate unused all these years.
2) The much delayed expansion of the Trivandrum International Airport which has been in the negotiating phase for 20 years and he achieved it in 6 months.
3) The Palayam underpass...another project which wuz talked and talked abt for years! What I love most about the Congress is how much our Trivandrum roads have widened over the last 4 years of their rule!!
4) The Vallarpadam Trans-Shipment Terminal - Though Antony got the sanction for it, it has been Chandy's pereseverance as he lobbied with tirelesssly with Manmohan to make this project realize fruition and make Cochin the hottest cargo destination in the Indian Ocean.
5) The Mass Contact Program - No CM has dared to step outside the air-conditioned comforts of the Cliff House or Secretariat so regularly and interface with the public, hear out their complaints, take steps to solve their problems like OC has done...visiting 14 districts, sitting with the people 12 hours at a stretch clearing files which had gathered so much of dust over the ages....comeon mates give this man something to cheer about.

Its a pity, all thats wrong with Kerala's pseudo-morality gets blamed on this man... if an ice-cream parlor case, kiliroor sex-scandal, VAT implementation all gathers flak...we as citizens are equally responsible to prevent these from happening just as much a politicians. VAT succeeded in Andhra Pradesh but failed in Kerala...despite an astute man like Vakkom Purushothaman at the helm, the powerful Vyapari Vyavasayi Bullshit Samiti has ensured the valuable revenue collection that wuz needed to take all our develolment efforts ahead failed. So much is being made of the DICK-factor in these polls, but everyone knows how badly they fared in places they stood without CPM support...again shame on all you people who could vote for an enemy of the state like Murali and Karunakaran. What a pity, Antony didnt quit much earlier...4 years of his hesitation(or fear?) to act against dissidence have alienated the people from the Congress. Our 92% literate and most politically-aware state saw 9 MLA's make a mockery of democracy by affixing their loyalty to Mr.K rather than the people who voted them in by resigning their seats. Thankfully the days of blackmail and political brinkmanship are over...

I was so disappointed with the election results until I talked to my mom, who said the UDF actually stands a bright chance in the assembly elections. With a 60% polling rate, the victory margins for the cpm were not big though they they won 70% of the seats in this elections. In assembly elections Kerala has an almost 80%+ polling rate and this 20% rise is entirely made up of udf voters who are unfortunately not as politically zealous as their left brethren to venture out of their homes on polling day. Her reasoning gave me a lot of hope. Moreover I remember the case of Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh who overcame incumbency in a strange way much similar to what the Congress is going through today. After winning a landslide election and first term he lost every following by-election, parliament and panchayat polls but turned the predictions of every political pundit around by winning a second term as Chief Minister. Well, Kerala never had a CM win a second straight term but this is a crucial year in our State's history and development and we finally have a man who is humble, sincere, courageous and intelligent and has the long-term plans, the political will-power and the energy needed to undo 40 years of Kerala's self-destruction. All you people, wont you give him another chance, for our sake and for our future generations, if not, gimme a sound reason...

Our Constitution, A Case of Diminishing Returns...

Its almost 60 years past Independence...the world as we know it has changed and so has India...we have become servile creatures yet again...not to any foreign power this time but to the political class...the people who have made a profession of serving us have turned the tables...it increasingly looks like they are our masters! Any institutuion be it a democracy, monarchy, school, corporation,etc will stagnate if it stays resistant to the changing times. Isnt it time to revamp the whole Constitution??? 58 years back when B.R.Ambedkar and his men set out to draft the Constitution the politicians they saw around them were leaders of the caliber of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Shastri, Abul Kalam, etc...the charter they created was in tune with the times in an India abounding with freedom fighters and men who seethed with optimism and idealism to architect modern India...the rot that set in with the passing of these men has gone unchecked for years and years and the Constitution has been left with too many loopholes to effectively curb these traitors to the Nation and to the Constitution from taking advantage of us. It is not the Constitution that failed us...but we who failed the Constitution. Once a passionate student of Civics in school, the interest got reawakened seeing another democracy evolve, rectify and move ahead with the times.

1977 paved a great opportunity for being called a second freedom struggle, but the anti-emergency protests under a great leader like Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan deteriorated into an effort to supress Indira Gandhi rather than become a correctional force to rectify many of the things wrong with India. Maybe if JP was not at the fag end of his life and had chosen to take reins of the govt instead of a morbid Morarji Desai he would not have lost sight that he had a once-in-a-liftetime chance to reinvent India's democracy. Today many criminals go scot-free with offences, many a time our courts failt to provide justice in time or over-time except for the ones which come with a push from the Law Ministry, the legislature has made a mockery of passing laws with debates in parliament and assembly that reek of politics, the executive tier has become a tool for men seeking power to armtwist corrupt deals, manipulate people in the name of religion and votebanks and the bearaucracy has swollen to become a behemoth lacking guidance and often going wayward like the political masters they serve. Just a casual thought and i felt i had several top-level ideas that could easily give us a better way of government - but like all others this is gonna remain on paper or on this blog until all our politicos suddenly wake up one fine morning and feel its time to reform themselves and our government - highly unlikely, well the other hope is the arrival of a charismatic leader, who draws enough supporters to capture the seat of power at Delhi and puts this idea into practise - highly unlikely again, just as unlikely as another freedom struggle for a new India in a country vying to be a major player in world trade without setting its internal affairs in better order.

The Executive - Do we really need ministers??? We all know its the senior beauraucrats under these ministers coin, draft and spin out all policies...so why do we need these men in khadar, who indulge in scandals, whose eyes are entirely on garnering votes and money. I feel a system akin to the US where only one or two elected officials are part of the govt would be an effective solution...we have highly qualified IAS, IPS and IFS officers who should make up the core of the government and execute their ideas and policies without short-sighted, ill-educated politicians hampering them.

The Legislature - So where does this put our MLA's and MP's...they are our representatives in the indian constituion...but why do we they have to run our government...this system has failed miserably! What we need is several house committees say for eg, Home, Finance, Education, etc in which these esteemed men/women would be members and where they deliberate, vote and finalise policies to be implemented...leaving the execution to the higher beauraucracy who are answerable to the House...unlike the parliamentary committees of today which merely perform an advisorial role and have been reduced to puppets! Anti-defection wuz one awesome rule passed...i'd like to see a law come up which prevents parties without a certian percentage of vote be derecognized by the Election Commission...that would certainly put an end to many regional eerkili parties in India! As for the Rajya Sabha imagine populating that house with 250 members like APJ and Manmohan Singh instead of over-the-hill, discredited politicos who dont have the guts to face the people's verdict and one from among whom becomes the esteemed president of india...so that an highly esteemed person like APJ becoming the president doesnt become a once in a 50 year event!

The Judiciary - Though its the third tier of our constitution and the one which protects our democracy, our founding fathers were flippant in their focus on this pillar of our system...as a result we basically inherited a flawed, outdated structure from the British, who had drafted many of the laws or the precursors to them, we have now, to give a semblance of order to a country, they only intended to squeeze financially and not to govern with justice. With independence and a larger number of people having access to courts and the lawlessness which accompanies a free society, in no time the courts filled up, justice had to wait for years, the corrupt got off scot-free, rapists abounded, criminals have thrived...its only recently fast-track courts have opened up...that the judiciary is not free from corruption has been proved by several recent self-contradicting judgements passed in recent times. Its time to rewrite many of our laws...and cut down on gestation periods...no more court adjourments beyond a few days...its so frustrating...just when a sentence is laid down, an appeal goes to a higher court, or a stay and its years hence that justice is finally delivered!

The Police - Our policemen badly deserve a facelift. Its high time they are reorganized as a modern, professional force akin to the Indian Army, free of intrusion from politicians. Improper, unscientific training and laws which lack clarity have marred their maturing into community leaders - to protect and serve us, as only tales of their bigotry and misuse of powers reach our ears. LAPD officers, here garner so much awe as they treat us with such respect if caught breaking traffic rules, arrive to help people at any time of the day, work as community leaders and though tales of corruption emerge once in a while...it hardly ever affects the common man.

Reservations - Why cant reservations be based entirely on an economic basis??? How long will parties pit people against each other promising more reservations? And are these seats kept apart for reservation ever filled? The reservation of seats for women at the Panchayat level needs to be broadened to state legislatures and parliament...they certainly will make a difference to a male-infested field .

Bureaucracy - Our bureaucracy is bloated...admitted! Most of the red-tape and corruption that affects common people happens at the lower-levels...computerization can save us a lot of grief as it will keep babus who interface with the masses at a minimum...i wonder why our govt which promotes IT in such a big-way doesnt commission an e-governance ERP package from one of the tech majors! As for the upper tiers of IAS, IPS officers - cut them loose of politicans and we can have some of the best brains in the country unleashed to put to practise all the schemes, policies and measures which they now draft for politicians to take all the credit! To cut the beauraucratic flab disinvest from all PSU's, stop creating new government departments.

Local SelfGovernment - Kerala's much hyped People's Plan Programme was a step in the right direction but the men behind it failed in their planning - the people who got loans to start self-employment invested in perishable goods like chickens and goats, etc who finally ended up as chicken fries and lamb stew and defaulted on their loans landing the govt at the doorstep of bankruptcy. The lessons from this misstep seemed well-learned as new welfare measures like Kudumbashree have become models in constructive development. Ultimately LSG can achieve desired results only if devolution of powers to these bodies is better executed. Talking about Corporations and Municiplaities its high time they synergised their activities better with public departments as fast improvement of urban infrastructure is a must to keep pace with the spurt in IT investment thats going to be witnessed in our cities soon. As I write this the preparation for Kerala's LSG polls are moving ahead in full steam with reams of space taken up by political alliances but not a single column dedicated to the development agenda for the next 5 yrs...I sincerely hope the people ask the candidates if they read their parties' election manifestos when they come seeking votes!

Last post had mention abt a fr.pulickal....he taught me history and civics for three years and for many of us that was when we started looking at polity from a different light...my bad that i didnt capitalise on what would have been a great start for any civil service aspirant...if this was one of the expositions he would makes us deliver in class or his history answer paper, whatever blunders i have written here would have made it to the school notice board for juniors and seniors to laugh at us...i am giving away too much material that would have made a great post about him! I feel a little odd writing abt improving india when i am perched elsewhere...realize there are too many holes in my arguments but it feels nice to casually put on my political thinking cap on occasionally...i know all i wrote is impossible to achieve against a political class so well-entrenched, whose bills to increase their salaries and pensions are passed unanimously...men and women like Gandhi, Netaji, Patel, Nehru and Sarojini Naidu who once served and sacrificed so much for India must surely be born every day in some village or city but they will never make it to the political frontlines...they are ordinary people whose acts of everyday heroism are seen only when a tsunami or an earthquake strike or a city goes under water. Time is due for a constitutional review which happens every 10 or 20 years...but where is the political will to usher in change...havent these men heard our IT czars voice the same words..."better business processes"...in every interview they give?? The day we can confidently call many more of our politicans statesmen, we'll have an india that can become a model to world nations!

P.S - I apologize for the length...if you have scrolled down this far! Forget all I wrote. Indepedence Day is over...for those like me who almost missed this article let us all belatedly pay tribute to another unknown indian freedom fighter. The Forgotten Spy

THE Rising...

I finally got down to watching The Rising and I loved every bit of it...what struck me most about the movie was how it rightly pictured an India at its lowest ebb, at the very nadir of its 5000 years of history, of a people who had degraded into a spineless, fractitious, humiliated race to turnaround the history of the world by declaring the arrival of modern-day civilization with a 90 year awe-inspiring, non-violent freedom struggle. August 15 heralded the birth of the world's largest democracy and the proud Englishman, Churchill's prophetic words of the sun finally setting on the English Empire became true.

Mangal Pandey, may have been an accidental hero as historians claim but when he lit the spark of rebellion he had also unknowingly checked the centuries-old decay of India's civilizational ethos. The very instruments of modernization the East India Company created to expand their trade and wealth helped catapult their fall. They united the entire Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan in the west to Burma in the East, Kashmir in the north to Kanyakumari in the south under their sphere of influence, networked the whole country with roads and railways bringing into contact people of different lands, started schools and colleges to educate men and women to work as their babus, and as greats like the Mahatma, Swami Vivekanada, Ramunjan, C.V.Raman, Tagore and Netaji kept springing up they realized it was only a matter of time before the Indian Nation would rise.

The India of today...where else in the world would you see such diametric opposites...people who speak more than 1/2 of the world's known languages, people who look and dress differently, people who believe in different faiths, people who differentiate between each other on the basis of castes, a people ideologically divided from the day of the country's birth...yet we dont see civil wars based on these contradictions i mentioned above which have torn apart nations like Ireland, Sudan, Pakistan, Yugoslavia or bloody dictatorships like in Nigeria, China or Afghanistan...even a supreme power like the Soviet Union fell apart not being able to manage their internal contradictions. I belive the way we won our freedom has the answer to this paradox....if we had taken to the gun instead of satyagraha, the Indian psyche would have altered to an aggressive, hotblooded race which would have turned violent for every issue caused by the co-existence of such diversity and though many within and without, ridicule us for being a "soft" state, the Indian people havent suffered at-all for belatedly exploding the atom bomb or the countless withdrawals from Pakistani territory after each Indo-Pak war(America sweating it out to ward off Iraqis on their own soil wud give us enuf ideas...wht it wud have cost us to hold on to those Paki lands we gave up!)...many violent movements have cropped up in our country but none have succeeded or will succeed...from the early Tamil nation movement, to Punjab, Assam, North-East to the himalayan fortress god gave us...Kashmir! Many of these movements began in non-violence but without the support of the people they claim to represent, they failed and the extremist elements within them took to the gun...and u know where that story ends or will end!

Kerala may accuse Tamil Nadu of stealing water, TN charges Karnataka with blocking the Cauvery, Punjab and Haryana hotly claims Chandigarh to be their own(the Govt wisely named it a Union Territory!), the demand for Khalistan has reared its head again, Gujarat remains divided on communal lines and Bihar on caste, the naxals fight for their version of utopia as they strive for the naxal corridor...superficially it all looks a bloody mess! But watching The Rising...i felt there was this chord lying deep within each of us that makes us an Indian which ties us up so inextricably into a nation which will rise up again...and again when affairs go out of hand...too many lives have been taken and too much blood has been spilled on our soil to build this country...the memory of those martyrs and good movies like these that keep coming out(if not for our history textbooks...anytime i'd choose one like that over a movie) should serve to remind us of a nation built of sweat, blood, toil and satyagraha and how each and every one of us is a vital cog in taking our proud nation to greater heights.

Jai Hind!

Go India, Go...

Manmohan Singh landed in Washington today, receiving a royal welcome the US today reserves for only a handful of world leaders. In the course of just 15 years India has graduated from being labelled pretenders,pharisees and inconsequential as a result of our dalliance with non-alignment to occupying a place of prestige and respect from world leaders all over despite no significant change in our opinions. The only difference is today we are an economic power. Just think abt it...the scientist who pioneered India's defense and nuclear research and the economist who architected India's face changing reforms is our president and premier.

Today its just not economics that draws the US closer to India. The US is slipping as a super-power...the first battle it lost was failing to rein in its multi-national conglomerates which moved to china to further their profits though the selling market was still the US....today what China did to US in the manufacturing sector India has become the hot destination for all these same MNC's, albeit in the IT and services sector. Soon more Indians rather than Americans will work in IBM and GE, for long symbols of overwhelming american economic supremacy. America's trade deficit with China has ballooned to the extent they have postponed repayment by dangling securities at the chinks who slowly but steadily have started acquiring companies in the us heartland...recently they topped the bids for a california based oil company and brazenly declared their intention of exporting the american gas to China while gas prices shoot over the roof in petrol-hungry Cal.

Bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, stumbling with the domestic economy, allies from the cold-war NATO era who have lost their bite and influence in global forums, an increasingly powerful China which went to the extent of ordering the US to cut down its fiscal deficit America's vision of a long-term unipolar world doesnt look feasible anymore. I expect any day now to see China and the US clashing headlong on some economic, political, military or diplomatic issue to signal the start of the next cold war. Then it will be neither the NATO, nor the EU...that will play centerstage....but a strong, economically and democratically vibrant neighbor to China called India will be the swing state...whoever we take sides with will win...for sure. Of course the danger to us is within...one such called CPM which even collected money for their chinese brethren during the 1962 Sino-Indian War...and who brazenly accuses Manmohan of selling Indian interests...and its a pity God's Own Country send 19 MP's to parliament to work against Mother India!!!

Indian diplomacy turned the tide in 1998 following Vajpayee's bold conduction of the Pokharan blasts and came of age by the outright rejection of foriegn aid in last years Tsunami. No more a developing country, no more a Third World Country...I find the phrase, "the other Asian Power" being used continually to refer to us here in newspapers and television...I think its just a matter of time before we get addressed as a world power...the permanent Security Council seat we now ask for will soon come seeking us...if it doesnt let us dismiss the United Nations as a forum of imperialists who lost their teeth a long time back. As for our friendly neigbour, Pakistan - they seem to have lost their zest to keep pace with us...having failed on the battlegrounds they lost another fight in the warzone of the future when their bpo firms mainly call centers suffered indescribably from a two-day telecommunications failure...they will become a power too...as the epicenter of world terrorism...a failed state ruled by a federation of militant organizations and self-styled mullahs...who will export labor(read terrorists) to other countries...blast a few bombs here and there...and maybe scare a few innocent people for a few days! Let us travel more on our buses and trains and bikes rather than our cars...importing oil is killing all the benefits we reap elsewhere...let us educate all our kids and in a better way...let us forget our fascination with our religions and castes...let us preserve our trees, water and our air for future generations...for India, greatness is ours for the taking...we are right there people...we are almost there...may god and good reason go with us...so that we get brilliant and upright men for our leaders, for an economy that will only keep growing and growing and most importantly for a people who will ask what they can do for the country and not what the country can do for them!

Karunakarji...show us some mercy!

It seems Yamadevan is facing the same problem Sonia Gandhi is having with K.Karunakaran. I along with many other keralites have unapologetically waited years for this kizhavan to die but it looks like both heaven and hell are scared of the ruccus he'd create there.... he just seems to get more chirpier with age. I hope Oommen Chandy's tough stance works....the useless and puritanical A.K.Antony is more smarter than I thought...he is pleading with the high command for the very people who made his life hell...with Murali and Karunakaran out of the way Chandy is goin to be the numero uno in Kerala and that will plunge him into oblivion(the way i see it these days is antony and karunakaran were playing ball all these years and the two I and A groups they created were just a means to ensure their hegemony in kerala. Antony's able and immensely popular lieutanants-the trio of Chandy, Aryadan and Thiruvanchoor who were the main troubleshooters of the A group seem to have realised the pawns they have been made all these years by him and are keeping their distance these days.

All through the last 4 years the K-Family's brinkmanship has caused the ruling UDF to divert valuable time from development work to solving the never dissidency. I just wish the holy trinity (father, son and daughter) are dumped by the Congress in the same way people trashed them in the last elections. For the last 12 years that I have been closely following Kerala politics I have always hoped of a day when the Congress wins an election with enuf seats to rule by themselves without such corrupt and self-serving allies like the Muslim League and Kerala Congress. In Chandy I saw the man ready to accomplish the task but increasingly I am seeing a man weary of the frequent troubles he has unwittingly fallen into. From being the media's darling he has to skirt the press and is seeing his enimies use them as great weapons in hurting him. I must confess I am a great fan of his despite his alleged shady dealings bcoz we have had enuf of two previous CM's...one who talked and talked and the other who baulked and baulked. Pinarayi Vijayan's ascendancy in the CPM is a positive change bcoz I hope they will dump their archaic communist philosophy's and adapt progressive measures like the 4th world concept. ...he is by the way another slick-n-shady customer but like Chandy reputed for being an able administrator. I somehow have this feeling that Kerala is going to get into rapid development mode despite the mindless political games our netas play....the rapid growth the Cochin area is witnessing these days gives us all cause to dream. Any takers(all u other states) for an 87 year old octagenarian who is sending the age-old indian tradition of respecting our elders for a toss!