The Momentum of Stupidity

For eight long years, GW Bush ruined America, taking down with him several good things he inherited from Bill Clinton's presidency. For several years longer than that, India was hijacked by archaic notions, too much government control, protectionism and corruption. Corruption still exists, but impacts us a little less these days because the government has given up some of its control. In hindsight, India was down the wrong path up until the time we nearly became bankrupt and then Manmohan Singh came along with reforms that slowly brought us to the light.

In George W Bush's case, he had the support of most of the morons in his country who were willing to panic under the threat of terrorism - to the point where they continued to support the very government that had allowed Sept 11th, attacked the wrong country, did not find the perpetrators of the greatest act of terror on its soil, lied to its people about threats, gave no bid contracts in billions and essentially stole all semblance of order! In India's case, we simply had no experience with democracy and even less with self governance. We were too busy being pious and holy that we never realized for a long time that we needed a strong economy! It took a near catastrophe to wake us up and take up reforms.

In both cases, stupidity gained momentum, simply because there weren't enough minds applied against it. What is it about humans that allows stupidity when it is so obvious? Just fear of bucking the momentum? How does stupidity gain momentum in the first place? Panic? Collective ignorance? A pathological attraction to the 'wrong' choice in case the right choice looks too good to be true?

The financial crisis that started in Wall Street and is threatening to hit a lot of people around the world is no illusion. It is the unmasking of a bag of illusions. Americans thought for a long time that they could continue building their wealth on speculation rather than productivity, by just juggling money. Stupidity again, but nobody questioned it for a long time. Now, they are being forced to re-evaluate a lot of things. India has reacted with fear in the stock market, panicked at the marketplace and is still scared for no great reason. We should have known when we made our future plans based on an exaggerated expectation of continuous growth in the foreign currency dependent outsourcing business that there could be trouble. We didn't. Stupidity gathers momentum much faster and stronger than intelligence.

The CEOs of Indian companies in the IT and BPO sectors aren't leaders but Chief Emulation Officers, who seem to blindly replicate the models of the companies they aspire to be like. Well if Citibank was one of those companies, we should be seeing a one shot 50,000 strong layoff in India soon. News just came in that our marquee "Indian" CEO of Citigroup is likely to be fired. Sounds like a good plan to me if he allowed Citigroup's market value to drop 50% in three days.

If there is one thing to learn from becoming "global" it is that there are enough and more people in senior management circles unwilling to be individually chastised for being different and visionary, while very happy to be found collectively guilty of massive stupidity later. Why shouldn't these overpaid fools lose their jobs for failing to warn their companies of impending doom? If they are "helpless" why the heck do the companies need them in the first place? A duck would be equally helpless, and would even lay eggs at a fraction of the salary. Is anybody questioning the logic of hiring dummies with MBAs? Not with the helpless watching game called stupidity that is pervading corporate India right now.

Every downturn is supposed to bring opportunities with it. With the reduced demand in oil and lowered consumption, environmentalists should be really happy that there won't be so much carbon di oxide in the atmosphere for a while, but in reality they will be unhappy that cash crunches will hold back investment in newer technologies! Add to this lower oil prices and there is no incentive at all for anyone to complain about burning more oil. The next time oil goes up, it will be at the most inopportune time and then we will look back at the stupidity of not running away from oil when we could afford to, which is now, when we have extra money that we didn't spend on expensive oil! But we're so scared now that we're most likely to make mistakes. Humans don't take pressure all that well.

Last night came the news that the big automakers in the USA didn't get the handouts they wanted. It is kind of stupid to start with, like losers asking for medals, but when the BIG 3 are not likely to share profits with the taxpaying public, why the heck should taxpayers' dollars be used to bail them out for not being competitive enough? If Toyota and Honda can do well in the same market with the same pool of labour and skill, there is no reason for GM to be complaining. Of course this has to do with not knowing how to make a single good car, but just because the impact would be huge if GM, Chrysler and Ford went bankrupt, that doesn't mean taxpayers should bail them out. That is just thievery, and the thieves have been fended off for now. There are big auto ancillary manufacturers in India that supply the big three and many are OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). They're going to hurt, without a doubt. That's the thing about momentum - you cannot stop it unless you oppose it with an equal or greater force.

Indians are going to lose their jobs. No question about that. Quite simply because we are great at competing against each other here at home, but lousy when competing against the rest of the world. While it is unlikely that Eritrea will be making more steel than India in the next fifty years, it is highly likely that we find our economy has bloated because of IT dollars and a higher standard of living that we briefly subscribed to is suddenly going to be unsustainable. We don't have to look far - we don't sell software to end users, we write software for others who sell products and solutions. The "others" are mostly American and some European. These people aren't going to do anything new for a while, and we would have rolled in the momentum of their stupidity! They're owning up to their failed economic models, but we're yet to own up to our overdependence on the US dollar. More stupidity that is not being questioned right now, because of some dangerous remnants of optimism. After all, when we love the Americans so much, you bet we bought some of their delusionary talents too!

The Indian real estate industry is getting the wake up call right now, but is not responding to it. If you ask one developer why he isn't dropping prices, he will tell you nobody else is, so he is going to wait and watch! Momentum. Nobody escapes it, and very few want to escape it. Sheep falling off the cliff, and more to follow. About a billion. The only reason Indians won't get killed jumping off the cliff is because so many of us jumped before us that the valley has been filled! When we do see prices drop, we still won't see sales pick up because people will expect prices to drop some more! That will throw more panic into the industry, and builders won't be cashing in on cheaper cement and steel prices because their moneys are stuck in unsold properties. The biggest ones will see the opportunities and wait out the trough, but the bottom feeders will all look for other industries to play in. We haven't seen the worst panic yet, but the show is coming!

Somehow the Indian government, as if it is qualified to talk about this, is throwing out assurances, based on absolutely nothing, that India is not likely to see layoffs! This is beyond stupidity. It is delusion, which has had momentum a lot longer than stupidity.

The Currency Of Sex

Anand Jon, fashion designer, is found guilty on eight charges of rape and sexual assault on a minor girl, and is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail. To me, there's hardly anything sensational about anything in the above sentence, except for the number eight. Does it really take eight charges of rape to bring a rapist to justice? It would be interesting to study why it took this long in this case, wouldn't it?

The fashion world, just like the world of cinema and showbusiness, offers plenty of opportunity for naive, impressionable young people to be lured into a dreamworld of glamour, success, fame and luxury by doing things that seem fairly easy on the body and very easy on the mind. So, the currency that automatically becomes the differentiator is often sex. The casting couch is by no means a figment of imagination, and many young people are propositioned nicely enough to take it or leave it for the next struggle to get a shot at the limelight.

Many youngsters choose the casting couch in the same vein of thought that brought them to it in the first place - easy success. So, it is no big deal to have sex with someone who can potentially promise you a big bonus in return. This is prostitution, except that the prostitute has a choice attached to something that is important to him or her. Most youngsters can walk away from having to make this choice, but their egos will hurt even more with failure than with having unwilling sex. So, the claim is that there isn't much choice, but the real choice is between paying a price using the currency of sex, or having to stick to your virtuous ways and struggling some more. More often than not, it is stupidity that leads young minds to make wrong choices, and it is no different here.

Stupidity lends credibility to the fact that this particular success is the only shot that person will get, and that it is somehow important to choose. Making it look like a choice between success and failure is the dark talent of the crooks who have the power to control the careers of these young people. Even darker is the talent to sell the world the idea that fashion and glamour are somehow important artistic endeavors that have some meaning in the real world. The world that consumes glamour in any form is equally guilty of creating the atmosphere in which crimes like this can take place.

But the law is myopic enough to allow the vast majority to consume and pour money into a sham industry, while the few who rise to prominence have the power to exploit. This is no different from any other industry, but the big difference is that there are goods and services that are essential to us so we can't shy away from buying a shoe knowing fully well that it might be made with child labour, but we can certainly shy away from attending that pathetic fashion show where young men and women strut uncreative clothing and jewellery and what not and actually imagine they have a career ahead of them.

If it takes eight charges of rape to bring down one of these shenanigans, it is because it dawned on quite a few of them rather late, that they gave what was asked and they still don't have careers! All of a sudden, they realized they have been had, and decided to make a case of it. If they had soared to fame, it would have all been hunky dory. For heavens' sake, it really isn't that hard to figure this out, is it? So, this is really a case of the sore losers trying to get something back for having been stupid in the first place.

It is no news that the promise of easy sex attracts a lot of people to the world of show business. That is hardly to taint the efforts of those genuinely attracted to the art and craft and various other serious pursuits in these industries, but fact remains that physical proximity and the need to please certain people can put people in rather awkward situations. We can almost certainly trust a seventeen year old who has put in a year of effort to get to that point to feel as if he or she has invested a lifetime for this "moment" and feel that it would be stupid to let go of the "opportunity" that beckons. It is like entering a threshold to something special, a portal to climb above all peers, an escape from the drudgery and a shot at the "real" thing, whatever that may be.

The power of sex as a currency is never to be underestimated. It is often used by two kinds of people - those with low self esteem, and those with a shortage of every other currency - intellect included. There is absolutely nothing to prevent our young men and women to call in the press and bring down the house on a pervert pretending to be an artist of immense capabilities who can launch careers. But that is not the kind of fighting spirit that brings them to these positions in the first place. They are used to grovelling and begging and pleasing in order to have that one shot at success. Such people will almost never complain. So, it takes eight failures and probably eight fools waking up to reality that they have no careers in fashion to complain against someone of this "stature".

There's another reason for this easy prey phenomenon. Parents of the so called victims. They want bragging rights and want their children to reach for fame that usually evaded them. So, they do whatever it takes to push their children towards stardom of some kind. There are some who are actually stupid enough to tell their kids they can choose to sing and dance on TV but not get into films because the world of films is "bad"! But behind most of this absurd behaviour is the confusion with material goals. Most parents get a little desperate wondering how to get their children to a future that is secure and abundant, and are actually willing to pay a price for getting there a bit quicker than other parent-child teams might.

The currency of sex has been used for centuries. It will continue to be used for centuries, and one example of bringing a guilty person to justice is hardly going to make a dent in a phenomenon that is well heeled, copiously nurtured, hardly spoken about, and completely accepted as normal. Given the opportunity to be sexually predatory, it can be either a fashion designer, film producer or a pastor, and chances are that person will choose to be an animal, especially when the consequences are not likely to be harmful in the slightest way.

The Hindu Terrorist.

The dreaded Hindu Terrorist is here at last. It is not so much a new arrival of a phenomenon, but an acknowledgment that is beyond denial now.

Soon after the Babri Masjid destruction, I felt violated by an act of terror. One of my country's monuments had been destroyed, and even without the other incidents this act triggered in the years to come, I maintain that this was a singularly ugly act of terror against India. It was also significant for the clear evidence of the Hindu terrorist.

I had heated arguments with people who claimed in all their well meaning stupidity that these were people trying to correct an historic wrong, and that there was originally a temple in the site where the mosque had been built. Now, as far as I am concerned, I am an Indian citizen, and my country was born on the 15th of August 1947, and on that day, if it was a mosque, then it is my country's mosque, and I am proud of it. I don't care about what existed before for that may be part of the legacy of the Indian land, it certainly is not part of the Indian nation's history.

The greatest argument I had was with a group of people who interrupted a cricket game I was playing in to ask for donations, ostensibly to build the Ram Janm Bhoomi temple on that very spot. I flatly refused, but they proceeded to give themselves an iota of respectability by saying they were from the Indian Institute of Science. This got me furious. I asked them why when they had the gall to claim respectability by belonging to the INDIAN Institute of Science, how could they support the destruction of an INDIAN monument in the name of Hinduism?

To me, these people were supporters of terror, and should have been thrown behind bars for even attempting such an audacious task. India is a secular country, and we signed up for our constitution, which reaches well above a God concept and bows only to a Truth concept. We are way more secular than any other nation has ever even imagined itself to be. Religion and faith all have their places in our country, but more than anything, our respect of our principles of tolerance and acceptance should and will rule supreme.

The games of political parties already stand ruthlessly exposed. No Indian citizen's glee or disappointment with a political system should reflect negatively upon that person's contribution to the nation's ethos. Our ethos is one of knowledge, progress, truth, justice and compassion. No piece of history that took place before the 15th of August 1947 should put any responsibility upon any of our citizens to correct today, and no piece of legislation that came into existence after this date can be ignored without showing disrespect to the India we have today.

The presence of Islamic terror in India is a well documented fact and continues to be on our radar. What we now have is irrefutable proof that the Hindu terrorist exists. Political parties will run helter skelter to distance themselves from these elements, no doubt, and that is to be expected, for our politicians are rats in the majority. We have saffron clad, politically active public personalities involved in bombing that has claimed Indian lives. For parties like the VHP and the BJP, who love to claim that there is no Hindu terror, this is a clear "Shut up, thank you". The biggest alarm bells for us are indeed the involvement of military personnel, particularly those of officer ranks, in acts of terror in the exact fashion of Islamic terror - bombs!

On TV yesterday, I was puzzled by the expression used to describe a certain "militia in support of the government" in Congo. I would think this means the military of the country - wearing a national uniform, working in tandem with the government, officially entrusted with the job of protecting it from external threats. For some reason, this sounds like a group of armed people with no official sanction, but still supporting the government in a multi party, multi faceted clusterf^%k! If our military is fighting terror officially and unofficially causing it, where do we stand?

The loss of faith in our institutions would cause our nation to bleed a lot worse than any terror attack. We already do not have any faith in our police. We definitely do not have any faith in our politicians, except for the top few. We used to have faith in the military, but now, that is under severe test. Nothing short of hanging the guilty will do to restore some of this faith. But knowing our country fully well, this will probably get dragged into a long drawn affair, and end in a nebulous status quo that neither answers the question nor dismisses it. That is the India we are used to - a sluggish, unclear, directionless, chaotic mass that defies all logic and intelligence.

The Hindu terrorist could not have stated its existence at a worse time, but better late than never, and definitely it is never too early to show up if you exist. It is clear the Hindu terrorist has arrived. Using positions within respected institutions, with plenty of sanctuary in political ranks, Hindu terrorism is unlikely to give up and fade away, now that there is no reason to hide any more. We aren't just interested in rewriting the history of our monuments, we would like to bomb India as well, just like the Islamic terrorists we hate!

What could be the agenda of the Hindu terrorist? What hate could they possibly direct towards us Indian people? The scariest enemy is one whose motive is unknown. In comparison, the Islamic terrorist is fairly clear in its stupidity. We do not know the Hindu terrorist, except that he could be wearing a Lieutenant Colonel's uniform. The sanctity of no Indian institution lies above suspicion now. The culprits shouldn't just be brought to book, they should be roasted over a slow fire in public and killed mercilessly, since human rights should not and cannot apply to people who do not behave like humans and threaten the very existence of other humans.

Expect more chaos. Expect this to become a test of national character. Expect us to fail that test by not even beginning to answer it. Expect us to not feel bad about that either. Expect us to write another confusing chapter in our chequered political history that will baffle people for years to come. Expect our media to never get deep into this matter for it threatens to become too politically sensitive. Expect great lip service from our politicians. Expect India to treat this as just another incident and not like a tip of an unknown iceberg that looms just below the water level.