The cool factor

LK Advani is not cool.

I don't care how much he might talk about "India Shining", "The
Internet Age" or any of the topics that fancy to keep him current. He
is simply not cool.

I don't know why the BJP wants to woo younger voters through internet
campaigns and such, because at the end of the day, put Advani's face
on anything, and it becomes really boring. The guy doesn't smile,
doesn't say anything fresh, doesn't do anything out of the usual, and
doesn't get my interest. He isn't cool.

The cool factor is not something to be taken lightly. Rahul Gandhi,
Jyotiraditya Scindia and Priyanka Gandhi are way too cool. They are
people I'd like to see in the news, and though not in the same class
as Barack Obama, are deservedly more attractive than Advani or Modi.

Showing up on the internet doesn't make you an internet generation
person. Barack Obama is very much an internet persona, and he even
has his own Blackberry, now secured to the nth degree because he is
now the President! He ran a very tech savvy campaign, but it was in
tune with everything else he was doing. It would have been really
stupid for GW Bush to send out Twitter messages to his supporters
telling them he is going to attack the wrong country, but that didn't
happen.

In every likelihood, Advani and Modi will send out live video feeds of
them building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. I hope they can stay live
till the riots play themselves out. Advani is a raving lunatic in the
garb of a politician. Putting a lunatic on the internet cannot
convert him to a diplomatic, future thinking prime ministerial
candidate.

Manmohan Singh on the other hand, is fairly cool. He is articulate,
squeaky clean, and even has a sense of humour! God, what a relief
that our PM has a sense of humour! With leaders of other countries,
he belongs as a gentle, proper representative of India. Most
youngsters in India would find it quite easy to say they like Manmohan
SIngh. The guy has also done his job quietly and without fanfare.

LK Advani allows himself to be crowned in public! What is more
hilarious than a guy who wants to lead a democratic country allowing
himself to be crowned like a king? He is very unlikely to follow in
the rich tradition of Vajpayee, because he simply is not cool.

In fact, he is a religious crusader just like GW Bush, who is a born
again Christian. He actually claimed he is doing God's work, while
bombing Iraq! Advani belives he is doing the same thing, but in the
name of Ram, to whose existence no scientific fact exists. Every now
and then the BJP mentions how the sentiments of Indians are hurt when
Lord Ram is discounted and pointed out as an epic, a myth of the land,
a story.

Again, religious stuff isn't cool, especially when it leads to riots
and people dying. All of India's youngsters will come out and
celebrate Holi and Ramzan, Diwali and Christmas with equal zest,
knowing fully well that there is a religious significance to each of
them. But at the end of the day, it's just cool to have culture play
its part in some fun. That's about it.

The BJP has many followers who are against the celebration of
Valentine's Day. I agree it is a media hyped, over sold, stupid
excuse for celebration, but just because it is much newer doesn't make
it less of a right to celebrate than Ram Navami. What right does
anybody have to tell anyone else what to celebrate and what not to.

To put it in blunt contrast, nobody dies on Valentine's Day, and
nobody expects to have a riot. Some youngsters give it a lot of
importance, but do not impose any problems on any one else. But come
Dec 6th, the day of the Babri Masjid demolition, the country suffers
tensions, year after year. That is the problem that the BJP wants to
exacerbate by building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

Why is there no nationwide vote on whether we want the temple? Quite
simple! The BJP will lose that vote and everyone will simply express
what we already know - the BJP is just not cool. They might use the
internet as a tool, but at the end of the day, if they have a fool for
a candidate, that's what is going to show!

Think about this the next time you are about to voice your opinion on
an issue - which is the cooler of the two options? Chances are, the
cooler option will be the one better suited to making some real
progress.

The new fa(r)ce of Indian politics!

Here we go again!

A debate took place amongst four candidates in Bangalore South. Mr.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, in his blog
www.rajeev.in/blog calls this the "changing nature of Indian
politics". I saw a plane fly high in the sky last night, and I
suppose we can ignore all our roads now, since this could very well be
the changing nature of transportation in India.

It appears as though Bangalore South is suddenly into a new fashion -
political debate. It also appears as though the mix of people in this
debate is a fairly homogeneous one. It does not appear, however, that
this model can be replicated elsewhere in the country or across the
country, simply because we have too many different languages and a
vastly diverse culture of communication and very different ideas of
what makes India.

There are thousands of migratory workers from Maharashtra and Bihar
working in the fields in Tamilnadu, now that the sugarcane harvest is
on. I would be curious to know whether any of them would even know
what a debate is, and if they would care about any issues being
debated upon by a bunch of urban literates. I wonder if they even
know their representatives from their home constituencies. But if
they didn't do their jobs, we wouldn't have much of a sugar output
this year. Absolutely nothing will come out of a bunch of
Bangaloreans debating the future of the nation, for they won't
implement anything they debated upon.

That's what is unique about India - the people who have all the great
ideas don't have much of an impact upon the way things are done on the
ground, until their ideas percolate all the way down to
implementation. The ideas at the top come from people who don't have
a clue on how things are at the bottom. The people at the bottom
don't have much to choose from and do not have an expectation of a
great India - they just want to get by.

The reason we cannot have a debate like the American presidential
debate is because no two leaders represent anything close to the
aspirations of the Average Indian. There is no Average Indian since
people living in Rameswaram have issues totally different from those
living in Assam. It is a great thing that India is holding together
despite our enormous diversity in culture, concerns, language,
abilities, food and outlook on life. But the truth is, we love the
idea of India and that India does not have to be anything other than
this confusing mess.

It is fashionable for the urban literate to think they can model our
country like something they have in their heads. The reality is that
no matter how much anyone tries, the whole of India is not easy to
grasp in one lifetime. Urban literates have the time to discuss
ideas, while the migratory worker, the fisherman, the farmer and the
train driver keep this country running. Urban literates can afford to
go to www.nocriminals.org and talk about real snakes getting tickets
and make noises about "no criminals"! But the real India doesn't
quite stay glued into these vanity visionaries. The snakes amongst
them will come to power, no matter what, for it is the snakes that can
feast upon the helplessness of the rural masses.

We haven't empowered the majority of India, and we will continue to
reap the rich harvest of ignorance. We will have chief ministers of
individual states refusing to accept that the chief of the LTTE is a
terrorist, while the nation's policy clearly defines him as such. We
have no cohesive "Indian" thought process that applies to the whole of
India. Indeed we can do very well without a sanitized homogenity, but
we can have no national debate until the worlds we live in can have
some common ground. An educated South Indian does not live in the
same world as an uneducated rural criminal politician from Bihar.

The ONLY thing that can hold the fabric of India together is economic
opportunity. As long as there is a reasonably good chance of most
Indians making their lives better, we don't have to question status
quo. There is no magic, no silver bullet, that will cure this country
of all ills, but we can do with a pill that can wake up our urban
educated and get them to think beyond their sterilized, protected
existences, their cute notions of how their debates and civilized
exchanges can actually do something to change the reality of the
underserved, underutilized, ignored, eroding India.

The most important question still begs to be asked - how many Indian
candidates trying to get votes actually have a brain that can process
a fair amount of information, that can make sense out of chaotic
issues that beseige us, come forward with confidence and participate
in a debate that is interesting, engaging and useful at the end? If
the figure crosses zero for any geographical area, we would be
blessed.

Come on! Let's have some truth!

Shah Rukh Khan said at a press conference earlier today that all the
owners of the IPL teams wanted to do something for sports. Yeah, I
suppose they did by investing astronomical sums of money in a sport
that has already flourished and thrived and pretty much has put India
at the control of where it goes globally.

Lalit Modi and the IPL shamelessly claim that their idea was somehow a
pioneering effort, and he does not shy away from lies that the IPL is
the first of its kind enterprise in cricket, knowing fully well that
the ICL and Kapil Dev definitely hold that distinction.

L.K. Advani is doing everything he can to distance himself from the
events following the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to
Khandahar during the last BJP tenure at the top. He claims he was not
part of the decision making process. That's kind of like John McCain
claiming he was against Bush's war.

LK Advani is also claiming that he will bring back all of India's
wealth stashed in the Swiss Bank. It is a totally fake claim,
considering he will need to get through a whole process culminating in
Interpol truly attesting that a certain amount of money stashed in a
particular account is indeed India's wealth and has been "illegally"
accrued, not just "improperly". It will involve actually proving to
the Interpol that every single account of every single Indian who has
"improperly" put away money in Swiss bank is actually stolen from what
would be India's money!

What is even more preposterous is that there are any number of havens
out there for loosely accounted money - Cayman Islands, Solomon
Islands, Belize, the Bahamas, Channel Islands, Panama, and if you have
the right connections, even the Vatican City can protect your ill
gotten money as long as there is enough of it. There was once a short
study conducted in the Wall Street area of New York around lunch time.
Two thirds of all ATM withdrawals were accessing moneys from offshore
accounts!

So, it is not as if L.K. Advani is fighting against a bunch of Indian
thugs sitting in some mountain in the Swiss Alps on suitcases of
money. He is a moron to even make the claim that he will somehow
bring back all that money stashed in acres of protective policy across
the globe. And even if that money came back, do we trust our
politicians to handle it right? Of course not. So...

Why the lies? What is wrong with Shah Rukh Khan saying he really
thinks the IPL is a good business opportunity and if his star power
helps his team, so be it!? What is wrong with Lalit Modi saying the
ICL was the first to do it, but the IPL has got it better? Would we
respect Advani any less if he said "I am not proud of the way we
handled the Khandahar affair."?

Would truth really be that much out of fashion compared to lies? We
don't really believe kids who drink Complan would grow 3 cms more than
kids who don't, do we? So, if a wannabe politician comes to us and
says, "I don't have any bloody experience in this political cellpool,
but I really think I can do better than all these pompous fools out
there", wouldn't there be something in us wanting to give him a
chance?

It isn't as if we can't tell the difference between blatant lies and
something closer to the real thing. But the presentation is killing
us. Everybody has got into this "TV clean" culture of being
presentable. They are all quickly learning from each other how to
present themselves, not what to represent.

Just for freshness, wouldn't truth be fun to have around? Who knows,
it might even become fashionable, patrotic, efficient, and even
nationalistic. I remember there used to be a guy called Gandhi.....