Posts
Imagine this - the Obama administration shuts down all incentives to offshore work and forces American companies to size down their India operations, in an attempt to keep jobs in the USA. At face value, this isn't likely to happen in a simple stroke of decision making, for American companies need their offshore operations to remain competitive and be able to offer their products and services at competitive prices.
But, we are still at the beginning of a true recession, and a lot of bloodletting will happen from industries that have expanded under speculative growth conditions, spurred on by high stock prices. Put simply, people have pumped in a lot of money into industries they have perceived will grow forever, and it has been easy for them to raise money to expand into the future. This has summarily come to a halt with the crash in the USA.
India has a few companies that have over the period of the last decade, done their best to diversify and build core competencies that can compete instead of waiting for the outsourcing crumbs, but the majority have indeed run for the handouts brought in by the "cheap labour" sticker. These are the companies that have mushroomed all over India, particularly in cities like Bangalore. Not surprisingly, there isn't a single Indian product that you will find on every computer in the world, and even as HCL has one of its smartypants in its ad. claim that HCL builds software that does some significant things around the world, the irony is not lost on us when the ad. ends with the claim of being a $5billion company, not a Rs.25000 crore company!
In other words, many Indian companies see themselves as totally dependent on the American economy, and the extent of them being global unfortunately is the extent to which they can beg for business from American companies. There just isn't going to be that mad rush forward growth over the next two years, because recessions are not easy to turn around, and while some Indian companies will benefit for the good reasons, many will perish because they are just not good enough.
There are two different approaches with building companies, in general. The first model is the honest model, where investors and core workers come together to build a company that will produce goods or provide services that they believe has a good chance of making the company profitable through revenue streams they can sustain over fairly long periods of time. The intent is to capitalize on ability and demand for whatever this company produces. There is competence, and there is honesty. The other model is to build a company that lasts long enough to make enough noise before going public, and then use the stock market to sucker the public into buying their stock at as high a price as possible, giving an "exit strategy" to many of its founders and early employees, particularly senior management. This is the "get rich quick legally" scheme, which works very well when there is positive sentiment about the sector and the country's economy. Indian animation companies have done well with this conniving intent, and the people who bought their stock are nothing but fools.
The .com boom period brought the second model to light in India. Many Indian companies were overjoyed at how they could con the public into investing in companies that might be duds two years down the line, but how could the investors and senior management care any more if they made tons of money and "exited", leaving the company to flutter as the winds blew? A lot of companies that are not in the core sectors like energy and infrastructure will obviously decline now that the proverbial bubble has burst and if there are Indian software companies that are low in the pecking order of larger companies built up in stock markets rather than in real produce, then they are all on their way down.
The gleeful Indian "technocrat" is about to be exposed for his true incompetence and more importantly for how disposable he is. This is going to shock a lot of people, but Indians are fiercely proud and will find it very hard to cut back on lifestyle, which in the last five years has been the single biggest paradigm shift. All of a sudden, we will witness a robust coming of age of Indian industry, particularly the software and services industry that simply has no product or service the world desperately needs. This is the best thing to happen now, rather than five years later, and it won't be fun if you are one of the people going to lose your job. But it will be fun for the rest of us to watch, since the booming retail sector might need some of your foreign accents and groomed looks - you might even get discounts on groceries and low end consumer goods.
America has been an engine, no doubt. But it has been a fake engine, fuelled by growth based on speculation and financial experts who lost their fundamentals in an attempt to build quick empires. This is a time when empires older than a hundred years old are collapsing. No amount of government intervention is going to help restore the order of a year ago, because that was not order in the first place. It was already in a state of decay, and delusion kept the world going. The US dollar is not based on gold reserves. It is helped by commodities like oil being pegged against it. The Euro is based on gold, and is bound to be much more stable because there won't be any more Euros than there is gold to buy with it. The American dollar is paper money and unless America becomes truly productive, its dollar won't be worth much in the days to come.
America currently imports more than it exports. China holds most of the debt Americans owe, and they can afford to because they are a manufacturing economy. They are regularly producing things that the world cannot live without. India is in a bind being a services economy since it is much more dependent on what others want from us. America wanted cheap programmers, we produced them. America wanted people with fake accents talking on phones, we manufactured them. Now, America wants to reduce its energy dependence on oil and wants millions of solar modules and wind turbines, it is going to ask China, not us, to make them!
That is where we stand today. Our biggest boon is our size and our people have to consume and be the engine for our own economy. But our software "techies" haven't produced much for our consumption, and we basically don't have so much need to drive this overgrown and overrated industry. We did not grow other areas in the same time, because we were shortsighted and highly opportunistic. Now we will witness the reality check. Techies without jobs. The big shots will do fine if they adapt and have saved money, but the middle to bottom rung of fools who can't put a sentence together but have been in the software industry for a few years are toast. These aren't "techies" but low level assembly line workers in an air conditioned environment. If an ape could read code, it could do this job.
Suicides, broken marriages, they're all a coming, my friends. Indian pride will be hurt, and our sense of panic will come to the fore again. It is never pretty, but this time, the show promises to be particularly ugly.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Barack Obama and America's coming of age.
Today, it has been all celebration, and rightfully so. Barack Obama today became the first person of African American heritage to be elected President of the USA. The significance of this shouldn't be lost on anyone following this exciting news. In over 200 years of the USA existing as a nation, and 389 years since the first Africans were brought to America as slaves to work on British colonies, this is the first time any person of colour has been bestowed the rare honour of being the country's leader and indeed occupy the seat of one of the most powerful people in the world.
Not only were the odds heavily stacked against him, he was also fighting to be elected in a time of strife for the USA, with two wars and a looming recession that the whole world has felt and reacted to, not too positively. But Obama, being the brilliant leader he is, ran a campaign that was so sophisticated and so inclusive that all the traditional Republicans and their think tanks were reduced to sideshows with no substance at all. The Obama campaign outthought, outmotivated, outspent, and completely outplayed the republican campaign and made them look like amateurs in a world of phenomenal professionals.
The romance of all this is indeed beautiful, and the whole world has waxed eloquent about the significance of this historic moment, emotional for a lot of people, and amazing for the ideals upon which America has always said it stands upon. Indian media has been very sharp, as representatives of the world's largest democracy, to present this spectacle in its colour, although largely positioning their reporters in liberal bastions where the story was juiciest, particularly after it became obvious that Obama was going to win and win big.
If there is one thing that is totally missing from all media so far, it is the mention that America the adolescent of 200 years of age has finally shown symptoms of becoming an adult, officially getting past puberty and coming of legal adult age. For all its greatness, America has always been a sum of its various interesting parts, and never a grown up as a whole. Now, finally, with this emphatic expression, thanks to youngsters and people who chose to stay awake, America has shown that it is not genetically flawed and is capable of adulthood and adult behaviour.
The greatest progress in America in any sphere has taken place in Blue states - those that traditionally vote Democrat. In fact, Blue states overwhelmingly overshadow the productivity of Red states, who sometimes seem to produce nothing but voting blocks and religious zealots who clearly should have no place in the twenty first century. Sarah Palin, scarily is from one such state, and this right wing nutcase who wants to legalize aerial hunting and thinks Putin is going to attack America over Alaskan airspace, did come perilously close to having her chance to be President!
At the time when India was getting its independence from the British empire, won with a non violent movement that still baffles humanity, segregation was legal in the USA! It was perfectly normal to expect a black person to be hanged without trial if charged with a crime, and the likelihood of a black person ever getting the same treatment as a white person was almost nil. To this day, there is a significantly larger percentage of black people in America's jails in comparison to their percentage of the nation's population, and there are still many, many places you can visit in the United States of America where if you are not white, you will be looked upon like a parasite fully worthy of nothing but suspicion.
Racism is as American as apple pie, and it exists in its ugliest forms in American people's minds. This is not to define the whole country by the actions of a few, but it is worth remembering as we celebrate and join in America's greatest political step forward. There are American parents today who are busy warning their children that their country is doomed to be taken over by Muslim terrorists because Obama became president. Earlier today, when John McCain was delivering his concession speech and congratulated Obama, his supporters were booing! Booing! That's how retarded some of these people can be. There are Americans who are scared to their bones by Obama being president, and for reasons that are uniquely American - usually prejudiced, baseless, and conditioned by an upbringing of ignorance and intolerance. That is not about to change anytime soon.
The balance may have shifted for now in favour of a more progressive America, but that doesn't provide the grounds for us to assume that America has done anything more than somehow endure its coming of age. To be fair, America has had in place for a while the framework for greatness, the structure to provide the opportunity for anyone to step up and take up enormously ambitious dreams. It provides for great checks and balances that carefully prevent the hijacking of a democratic system, and yet, it watched helplessly as Bush and co. systematically ran into the ground America's surplus economy, waged a war based on lies and treachery, gave no bid contracts worth billions of dollars to companies in which their politicians had vested interests, and ruined the country's reputation to the point where Eritrea and Solomon Islands might well be the most celebrated members of the Coalition of the Willing that the supermoron from Texas put together.
It is possible today to lead a life in America where you can do well financially without much of an education, you can buy enough insulation to never have to deal with a human being too much unlike yourself, and live a life of complete ignorance of the rest of the world. There are many pockets in the USA where people have chosen to do exactly these things and their vote could still decide which country gets bombed next. Driven by belief above knowledge, they have an icon in Sarah Palin who believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed at some point, and these are the people that constitute 48% of the popular vote that Barack Obama did not win! (Imagining T-rex on Noah's ark still makes me smile in abject resignation!)
There was more negativity and cheapness from the republican campaign against Obama than there was any substance and dignity. Sarah Palin's attempts at linking Obama to a well known fear psychosis of terror, knowing fully well that this domestic terrorist is a university professor, should give us enough insight on the kind of people she knew she was addressing. These are the people who continue to pull the USA down to the stone age, and her "folksy appeal" is hardly directed towards any good folks who believe in hard work, abundance, and wonderfully universal concepts of brotherhood. Indeed, the biggest believers in Palin politics are more likely to be fear mongers and religious creationists who want to reject all scientific education, who do not mind being ruled by trepidation and suspicion of those "big city liberals"!
The fact that Republicans lost this election doesn't mean that America has gone beyond extremely conservative, narrow minded, fear driven, ignorant and prejudiced thought processes. America is by no means setting a great example for the rest of the democratic world to follow. Countries like India should smile and congratulate America for its bold step forward, like a special needs child of enormous physical power that has just uttered its first word.
The lesson for India from Barack Obama's success should not be the romantic, unsophisticated views that our Padma Shri winning journalists like Barkha Dutt seem to be so enamoured with inflicting upon us with Disney like sweetness. (The funny sideshow - the immature joy on Mira Nair's face last night as she spoke to Barkha Dutt to demonstrate exactly the limit of her understanding of American politics - nothing surprising coming from a filmmaker who makes a living out of trashing India for the viewing pleasure of white people.) The lesson for us is to trust our fundamentals and put more faith into our democratic processes. We never condoned racism, we never legalized segregation, and we threw enough clout around to kick South Africa out of the cricketing fraternity for practising apartheid, and we led the Non Alligned Movement. We are not an ideologically compromised nation to need to look up to "America" for any kind of direction.
We as a nation still occupy moral high ground, and we're only sixty one years old. Still, we should see the intelligence of Barack Obama in having to fight through mentalities that are centuries behind our people's. His positivity should be an inspiration to us. His unwavering energy and calmness should encourage some of us to get engaged in our democratic processes. We should exercise our rights more, and grow up with awareness and courage, in much the way Swami Vivekananda has long since told us. It wouldn't take much to note that America still wants to be one nation "Under God", but India's founding fathers got way beyond human constructs and concepts of belief, while putting "Truth" as our highest ideal. Satyameva Jayate!
Not only were the odds heavily stacked against him, he was also fighting to be elected in a time of strife for the USA, with two wars and a looming recession that the whole world has felt and reacted to, not too positively. But Obama, being the brilliant leader he is, ran a campaign that was so sophisticated and so inclusive that all the traditional Republicans and their think tanks were reduced to sideshows with no substance at all. The Obama campaign outthought, outmotivated, outspent, and completely outplayed the republican campaign and made them look like amateurs in a world of phenomenal professionals.
The romance of all this is indeed beautiful, and the whole world has waxed eloquent about the significance of this historic moment, emotional for a lot of people, and amazing for the ideals upon which America has always said it stands upon. Indian media has been very sharp, as representatives of the world's largest democracy, to present this spectacle in its colour, although largely positioning their reporters in liberal bastions where the story was juiciest, particularly after it became obvious that Obama was going to win and win big.
If there is one thing that is totally missing from all media so far, it is the mention that America the adolescent of 200 years of age has finally shown symptoms of becoming an adult, officially getting past puberty and coming of legal adult age. For all its greatness, America has always been a sum of its various interesting parts, and never a grown up as a whole. Now, finally, with this emphatic expression, thanks to youngsters and people who chose to stay awake, America has shown that it is not genetically flawed and is capable of adulthood and adult behaviour.
The greatest progress in America in any sphere has taken place in Blue states - those that traditionally vote Democrat. In fact, Blue states overwhelmingly overshadow the productivity of Red states, who sometimes seem to produce nothing but voting blocks and religious zealots who clearly should have no place in the twenty first century. Sarah Palin, scarily is from one such state, and this right wing nutcase who wants to legalize aerial hunting and thinks Putin is going to attack America over Alaskan airspace, did come perilously close to having her chance to be President!
At the time when India was getting its independence from the British empire, won with a non violent movement that still baffles humanity, segregation was legal in the USA! It was perfectly normal to expect a black person to be hanged without trial if charged with a crime, and the likelihood of a black person ever getting the same treatment as a white person was almost nil. To this day, there is a significantly larger percentage of black people in America's jails in comparison to their percentage of the nation's population, and there are still many, many places you can visit in the United States of America where if you are not white, you will be looked upon like a parasite fully worthy of nothing but suspicion.
Racism is as American as apple pie, and it exists in its ugliest forms in American people's minds. This is not to define the whole country by the actions of a few, but it is worth remembering as we celebrate and join in America's greatest political step forward. There are American parents today who are busy warning their children that their country is doomed to be taken over by Muslim terrorists because Obama became president. Earlier today, when John McCain was delivering his concession speech and congratulated Obama, his supporters were booing! Booing! That's how retarded some of these people can be. There are Americans who are scared to their bones by Obama being president, and for reasons that are uniquely American - usually prejudiced, baseless, and conditioned by an upbringing of ignorance and intolerance. That is not about to change anytime soon.
The balance may have shifted for now in favour of a more progressive America, but that doesn't provide the grounds for us to assume that America has done anything more than somehow endure its coming of age. To be fair, America has had in place for a while the framework for greatness, the structure to provide the opportunity for anyone to step up and take up enormously ambitious dreams. It provides for great checks and balances that carefully prevent the hijacking of a democratic system, and yet, it watched helplessly as Bush and co. systematically ran into the ground America's surplus economy, waged a war based on lies and treachery, gave no bid contracts worth billions of dollars to companies in which their politicians had vested interests, and ruined the country's reputation to the point where Eritrea and Solomon Islands might well be the most celebrated members of the Coalition of the Willing that the supermoron from Texas put together.
It is possible today to lead a life in America where you can do well financially without much of an education, you can buy enough insulation to never have to deal with a human being too much unlike yourself, and live a life of complete ignorance of the rest of the world. There are many pockets in the USA where people have chosen to do exactly these things and their vote could still decide which country gets bombed next. Driven by belief above knowledge, they have an icon in Sarah Palin who believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed at some point, and these are the people that constitute 48% of the popular vote that Barack Obama did not win! (Imagining T-rex on Noah's ark still makes me smile in abject resignation!)
There was more negativity and cheapness from the republican campaign against Obama than there was any substance and dignity. Sarah Palin's attempts at linking Obama to a well known fear psychosis of terror, knowing fully well that this domestic terrorist is a university professor, should give us enough insight on the kind of people she knew she was addressing. These are the people who continue to pull the USA down to the stone age, and her "folksy appeal" is hardly directed towards any good folks who believe in hard work, abundance, and wonderfully universal concepts of brotherhood. Indeed, the biggest believers in Palin politics are more likely to be fear mongers and religious creationists who want to reject all scientific education, who do not mind being ruled by trepidation and suspicion of those "big city liberals"!
The fact that Republicans lost this election doesn't mean that America has gone beyond extremely conservative, narrow minded, fear driven, ignorant and prejudiced thought processes. America is by no means setting a great example for the rest of the democratic world to follow. Countries like India should smile and congratulate America for its bold step forward, like a special needs child of enormous physical power that has just uttered its first word.
The lesson for India from Barack Obama's success should not be the romantic, unsophisticated views that our Padma Shri winning journalists like Barkha Dutt seem to be so enamoured with inflicting upon us with Disney like sweetness. (The funny sideshow - the immature joy on Mira Nair's face last night as she spoke to Barkha Dutt to demonstrate exactly the limit of her understanding of American politics - nothing surprising coming from a filmmaker who makes a living out of trashing India for the viewing pleasure of white people.) The lesson for us is to trust our fundamentals and put more faith into our democratic processes. We never condoned racism, we never legalized segregation, and we threw enough clout around to kick South Africa out of the cricketing fraternity for practising apartheid, and we led the Non Alligned Movement. We are not an ideologically compromised nation to need to look up to "America" for any kind of direction.
We as a nation still occupy moral high ground, and we're only sixty one years old. Still, we should see the intelligence of Barack Obama in having to fight through mentalities that are centuries behind our people's. His positivity should be an inspiration to us. His unwavering energy and calmness should encourage some of us to get engaged in our democratic processes. We should exercise our rights more, and grow up with awareness and courage, in much the way Swami Vivekananda has long since told us. It wouldn't take much to note that America still wants to be one nation "Under God", but India's founding fathers got way beyond human constructs and concepts of belief, while putting "Truth" as our highest ideal. Satyameva Jayate!
Monday, November 3, 2008
Against all greatness
Knowing fully well that The Hindu is a better paper, what makes some of us reach for The Times of India? When both papers are right in front of us, all things considered, The Hindu should never have to compete with The Times of India. Yet, there is a place for sub standard, mediocre, and absolutely crappy product in every sphere! How do we let this happen, even when there are no financial ramifications involved?
How do we voluntarily choose to watch song and dance programmes on television, when it is on plain view that neither is the talent on display so breathtaking, nor is the format of the programme all that exciting? Quite simply, we have a great amount of space reserved for the mindless, for the easy access "fun" experience, which can take us from one moment to another, without having to tax our minds. This can be therapeutic once in a while, but when we put up with sub standard all the time, we are on a slippery slope.
Visit the Madras Boat Club and you will find fairly elite people enjoying dinner on the lawn at the back, facing the river. If you were smelling impaired, you'd have the greatest time, but whatever is wrong with these morons that they would completely ignore the stench of the river which is nothing but sewage?! It is unbearable and most sane people would run from that stink, but for the members of the MBC, no problem! That's the amazing part - it is as if it is normal to pay a lot of money to experience dinner with the huge stench of sewage all around!
There was a question in the Indian media asking where our Obama was. A bit of a stretch, perhaps, considering Senator Obama is yet unproven, but the signs of a visionary leader are there. The signs of greatness are there without doubt. So, if there is an Obama amongst us in India, we have to kill him early, and nothing succeeds like India stifling any and all attempts at greatness, no matter who it is putting the effort. We love to pull everyone down to the average, below standard level, so that we can all be in a level playing field. India is one of the few countries that still genuinely believes in making it as hard as possible to be great. Collectively, we hate it when someone forces us to set higher standards for ourselves.
A few weeks ago, I called 139 to find the status of my train, and got an automated voice telling me it was on time. I went to the station on time and found the train was a hundred minutes late. I was furious, for what is the point of having this automated system if I cannot get accurate information? A hundred minutes of my time is valuable, but more than that, the lousy maintenance of the system is no excuse for stealing a hundred minutes of my time! I duly filled out a complaint, in triplicate as the Railways have it, and got a sympathetic railway official who gave me another local number to call to get "reliable" information! This is the problem I have with India - we never seem to make intent and action meet.
We celebrate chaos and we love being out of order. It is all great if this order we are fighting against is one of extreme regimen, and we are losing our minds and our freedom, but completely to the contrary, we do have a lot of freedom! We have so much freedom in this country that we don't have to perform up to snuff in anything we do. The few of us who choose to be great at what we do, have to do whatever it is that we do in complete insulation from everybody else, because we don't encourage any attempt at being great at anything, unless it is close to bringing a windfall bonus!
Even the educated amongst us eat at unhygienic places, do not demand basic sanitary standards out of our all encompassing logic that there is no point, and almost consider it unfashionable to take action against the ever ready low minded unthinking mediocrity worshipper that can and will affect our lives negatively. The bus that plays a movie way too loudly absolutely beckons us to walk up to the driver and tell him to put down the volume. In extreme cases, I have had to cut the wire to the speaker directly above me, and damn the loss in entertainment value the other deaf passengers have to endure! Sometimes, we have to be militant about keeping our sanity. The truth is, you pay for a bus ride, not for the noise, and you bloody well have a right to a peaceful journey.
The Indian government machinery is famous for recruiting low minds, and absolute morons. When there is a quota system designed to infuse the system with underperforming idiots, who won't be fired if they don't perform, this is to be expected. But on our side of the coin, we have every right to demand that they perform. The right to complain is something we should not have to think twice about, but given that we put up with a mediocre system, there is absolutely no need for us to be stuck with the faults of idiots who can stall our normal conduct of life. The Right to Information is a great right, but only when exercised.
At all levels when you demand information that is not forthcoming, you are bound to meet an attempt to intimidate you, either through a low mind government servant that throws attitude or ignores you until you make it unbearable. And then, your decency will come under question, with the underlying hope that somehow you will not be willing to let go of a little dignity, and will therefore "behave" when you don't get the service you deserve. Sloths who work for the government think it is their birthright to not perform, and act as if you are acting way above your authority when you ask them to simply do their jobs. Why do we put up with fools like this? Because we love them!
We in India have this enormous empathy for the underperforming sloth, unless he is a cricketer. That is the one uniform that carries a lot of responsibility. The cricketer must be an all conquering, intense, positive, world class performer with attitude to boot! Everybody else is allowed to graze on the plateau of collective pathos. Why is it that we demand so little for ourselves when it isn't hard to do so? Do we love so much to be backward? Or is it our discomfort with the pursuit of greatness because it demands that we get off our lazy butts and become active?
Fact remains that we love to belong in some kind of greatness, as long as we don't have to work for it. Our five thousand year old heritage is the biggest culprit in breeding this lethargy in us. Who can take that away from us? Nobody, and that is the problem! What work does it take for us to lay claim to having one of the greatest civilizations in our ancestry? Nothing! What joy! But, what are we willing to do to make India work better today? What can we do to make our lives better? Forget the patriotism and nationalist nonsense - it isn't worth the sweat. It is worth the sweat to have our system work properly, atleast for most essential part. Let's forget about the thousands of years of our forefathers' legacy that is supposed to be all bathed in glory. That is part of this land, not part of our lives, our nation or our realities today.
What India is today is a herd. A herd of mindless, selfish, uncaring, unspiritual individuals who don't really care about anything remotely reaching greatness. We have no place for original thought, no tolerance for brilliance, unless that brilliance is unstoppable and already at its pinnacle of achievement. And then, we have our cynicism towards over achievers, only too eager to find faults in individuals who have taken their passion seriously and climbed their own peaks. We are a negative lot, finding humour in failure, comfort in low thought processes. We'd rather be led than show the courage to beat our own paths. This is the reason we will be badly affected by shifting paradigms, that other people control, for good or bad.
We are happy to be defined by others, by trends, by messages that subtly alter the way we think. The Indian today is one whose character can be palpably demonstrated by the way the vehicles on our roads have become extensions of our egos. We are always one step away from becoming a mob, because we revel in our little triumphs when there is no risk to our own status quo. We are vastly available to an injection of collective stupidity. We love rumours because our lives aren't that interesting anyway. We discuss other people because our minds have a hard time discussing ideas. At best, we discuss events, because we have the time.
Aha! Time! That is the big one! We just have the time to remain stagnant - no wonder we allow stagnation. We are not in a hurry to get anywhere beyond where we are. We are sedentary but not content, inactive but unhappy. We would like to ensure as much safety as possible to be built around the coccoon of mediocrity that we have mired ourselves in. What can be better than to be unaware? Ignorance has been bliss for a long, long time. It is proven and it is tested against everything. So, we choose to be ignorant.
So, what does an Indian contribute to life on earth as humans? What goes in comes out. We swallow mediocrity by the ton, and spit it out. This shouldn't surprise anyone, for just as we don't mind corruption, we condone laziness, incompetence, and generally do whatever it takes to avoid friction. We are weighed down by our legacy, burdened by our glorious past, and we refuse to come to the present where we don't really count for much. We are the rat race. But then, we are great Indian rats! See, one of us is by Lord Ganesh himself!
How do we voluntarily choose to watch song and dance programmes on television, when it is on plain view that neither is the talent on display so breathtaking, nor is the format of the programme all that exciting? Quite simply, we have a great amount of space reserved for the mindless, for the easy access "fun" experience, which can take us from one moment to another, without having to tax our minds. This can be therapeutic once in a while, but when we put up with sub standard all the time, we are on a slippery slope.
Visit the Madras Boat Club and you will find fairly elite people enjoying dinner on the lawn at the back, facing the river. If you were smelling impaired, you'd have the greatest time, but whatever is wrong with these morons that they would completely ignore the stench of the river which is nothing but sewage?! It is unbearable and most sane people would run from that stink, but for the members of the MBC, no problem! That's the amazing part - it is as if it is normal to pay a lot of money to experience dinner with the huge stench of sewage all around!
There was a question in the Indian media asking where our Obama was. A bit of a stretch, perhaps, considering Senator Obama is yet unproven, but the signs of a visionary leader are there. The signs of greatness are there without doubt. So, if there is an Obama amongst us in India, we have to kill him early, and nothing succeeds like India stifling any and all attempts at greatness, no matter who it is putting the effort. We love to pull everyone down to the average, below standard level, so that we can all be in a level playing field. India is one of the few countries that still genuinely believes in making it as hard as possible to be great. Collectively, we hate it when someone forces us to set higher standards for ourselves.
A few weeks ago, I called 139 to find the status of my train, and got an automated voice telling me it was on time. I went to the station on time and found the train was a hundred minutes late. I was furious, for what is the point of having this automated system if I cannot get accurate information? A hundred minutes of my time is valuable, but more than that, the lousy maintenance of the system is no excuse for stealing a hundred minutes of my time! I duly filled out a complaint, in triplicate as the Railways have it, and got a sympathetic railway official who gave me another local number to call to get "reliable" information! This is the problem I have with India - we never seem to make intent and action meet.
We celebrate chaos and we love being out of order. It is all great if this order we are fighting against is one of extreme regimen, and we are losing our minds and our freedom, but completely to the contrary, we do have a lot of freedom! We have so much freedom in this country that we don't have to perform up to snuff in anything we do. The few of us who choose to be great at what we do, have to do whatever it is that we do in complete insulation from everybody else, because we don't encourage any attempt at being great at anything, unless it is close to bringing a windfall bonus!
Even the educated amongst us eat at unhygienic places, do not demand basic sanitary standards out of our all encompassing logic that there is no point, and almost consider it unfashionable to take action against the ever ready low minded unthinking mediocrity worshipper that can and will affect our lives negatively. The bus that plays a movie way too loudly absolutely beckons us to walk up to the driver and tell him to put down the volume. In extreme cases, I have had to cut the wire to the speaker directly above me, and damn the loss in entertainment value the other deaf passengers have to endure! Sometimes, we have to be militant about keeping our sanity. The truth is, you pay for a bus ride, not for the noise, and you bloody well have a right to a peaceful journey.
The Indian government machinery is famous for recruiting low minds, and absolute morons. When there is a quota system designed to infuse the system with underperforming idiots, who won't be fired if they don't perform, this is to be expected. But on our side of the coin, we have every right to demand that they perform. The right to complain is something we should not have to think twice about, but given that we put up with a mediocre system, there is absolutely no need for us to be stuck with the faults of idiots who can stall our normal conduct of life. The Right to Information is a great right, but only when exercised.
At all levels when you demand information that is not forthcoming, you are bound to meet an attempt to intimidate you, either through a low mind government servant that throws attitude or ignores you until you make it unbearable. And then, your decency will come under question, with the underlying hope that somehow you will not be willing to let go of a little dignity, and will therefore "behave" when you don't get the service you deserve. Sloths who work for the government think it is their birthright to not perform, and act as if you are acting way above your authority when you ask them to simply do their jobs. Why do we put up with fools like this? Because we love them!
We in India have this enormous empathy for the underperforming sloth, unless he is a cricketer. That is the one uniform that carries a lot of responsibility. The cricketer must be an all conquering, intense, positive, world class performer with attitude to boot! Everybody else is allowed to graze on the plateau of collective pathos. Why is it that we demand so little for ourselves when it isn't hard to do so? Do we love so much to be backward? Or is it our discomfort with the pursuit of greatness because it demands that we get off our lazy butts and become active?
Fact remains that we love to belong in some kind of greatness, as long as we don't have to work for it. Our five thousand year old heritage is the biggest culprit in breeding this lethargy in us. Who can take that away from us? Nobody, and that is the problem! What work does it take for us to lay claim to having one of the greatest civilizations in our ancestry? Nothing! What joy! But, what are we willing to do to make India work better today? What can we do to make our lives better? Forget the patriotism and nationalist nonsense - it isn't worth the sweat. It is worth the sweat to have our system work properly, atleast for most essential part. Let's forget about the thousands of years of our forefathers' legacy that is supposed to be all bathed in glory. That is part of this land, not part of our lives, our nation or our realities today.
What India is today is a herd. A herd of mindless, selfish, uncaring, unspiritual individuals who don't really care about anything remotely reaching greatness. We have no place for original thought, no tolerance for brilliance, unless that brilliance is unstoppable and already at its pinnacle of achievement. And then, we have our cynicism towards over achievers, only too eager to find faults in individuals who have taken their passion seriously and climbed their own peaks. We are a negative lot, finding humour in failure, comfort in low thought processes. We'd rather be led than show the courage to beat our own paths. This is the reason we will be badly affected by shifting paradigms, that other people control, for good or bad.
We are happy to be defined by others, by trends, by messages that subtly alter the way we think. The Indian today is one whose character can be palpably demonstrated by the way the vehicles on our roads have become extensions of our egos. We are always one step away from becoming a mob, because we revel in our little triumphs when there is no risk to our own status quo. We are vastly available to an injection of collective stupidity. We love rumours because our lives aren't that interesting anyway. We discuss other people because our minds have a hard time discussing ideas. At best, we discuss events, because we have the time.
Aha! Time! That is the big one! We just have the time to remain stagnant - no wonder we allow stagnation. We are not in a hurry to get anywhere beyond where we are. We are sedentary but not content, inactive but unhappy. We would like to ensure as much safety as possible to be built around the coccoon of mediocrity that we have mired ourselves in. What can be better than to be unaware? Ignorance has been bliss for a long, long time. It is proven and it is tested against everything. So, we choose to be ignorant.
So, what does an Indian contribute to life on earth as humans? What goes in comes out. We swallow mediocrity by the ton, and spit it out. This shouldn't surprise anyone, for just as we don't mind corruption, we condone laziness, incompetence, and generally do whatever it takes to avoid friction. We are weighed down by our legacy, burdened by our glorious past, and we refuse to come to the present where we don't really count for much. We are the rat race. But then, we are great Indian rats! See, one of us is by Lord Ganesh himself!
Labels:
civilization,
greatness,
history,
india,
indifference,
legacy,
mediocrity,
tradition
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)