The Price of Honesty?

This is in response to Pritish Nandy's article on Corruption.

The article is utterly boring with nothing new said.  Just after the mention of several leaders engaged in their pursuit of India's destiny, by claiming that "What no one figures is that at the heart of all our problems lies Corruption." you have shown the ease of generalization that will form a fruitless conversation with an ignoramus passing time on a railway station. What value do you bring by this "figuring out"? Isn't this a retrospective observation?

You make no mention of the RTI Act. There are numerous examples of small and large RTI successes some of which are collected on the RTI wiki. Here are a few examples:

• For delay in RTI reply, IIT-Kgp staff made to pay
• Class III Student Uses RTI To Stop Garbage Dumping Near Her School

RTI is a valuable weapon that the democracy has given us to fight corruption. If an information is seeked from a PIO and is not provided within a fixed number of days, some government official may have to pay fine out of their own pocket at up to the rate of Rs 250 per day. 

Instead of keeping thumping your chests, look around yourself and find out the positive developments. RTI activists and other NGOs are working daily to improve the situation. If you have time, subscribe to RTIIndia.org, "Hum Janenge" yahoo group, or other groups. Join them in their battles -- they need you.

In short, the author seems to have spent no longer in writing the article than I spent reading it. The proverbial choice is in our hands: keep saying the old things again and again, or do something new.

Where words come out from the depth of truth

The best ever conception of a nation. By Rabindranath Tagore.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

Easy RTI Wiki

I have been working on creating a wiki for Right to Information Act of India.

http://www.easyrti.in

The vision of the site is to present the information about RTI in a manner that is easy to use. I work on it every Sunday for 2-3 hours. We are looking for a few RTI enthusiasts/volunteers to join us. Right now the site is young, so this is a good opportunity to influence the basic structures of the site that will decide its future.

If you or your friends are interested, please let me know at in4tunio gmail address.

Time to Move On

Reaction to the article by M J Akbar on Twitter issue with Shashi Tharoor. Also see the articles by Swapan Dasgupta and Kanchan Gupta.


The author, as many politicians and journalists, has forgotten that the basic tradition of Indian culture is acceptance -- at least this is what is taught in the textbooks in schools. Acceptance of no less than other religions, not just sly remarks. Although it is true that Mr Tharoor needs to be more careful not to hurt people, it is silly to demand that Mr Tharoor should resign.

Mr Tharoor wants to work for the country in his productive way. He is not charged with any corrupt practice. His manner of work causes nobody any harm. He needs to travel almost everyday -- long distances and short (as do the other ministers). But he is being compelled to work in a different manner than is natural to him. This might not be in the best interest of the country.

Where does austerity end? What will be the date when the government says -- "business class now"? Probably it clearly does not make sense till 5% of Indian fly? Or is it 10%? By the way, a good time to share with the government these few other productive steps to austerity: http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/sep/16/politicians-care-a-damn-about-our-money.htm . In principle, I agree with governmental savings, but it is easy to overdo the austerity measures so that it becomes a popularity drive. This seems to be the case from Mr Gehlot's demand for resignation.

Just like some people would not have appreciated the medium of newpaper when it was first published centuries before, the author clearly does not appreciate twitter and why a politician should share his person online in real time. Inevitably, the popular opinion in a few years will be that Mr Tharoor has done a commendable work of connecting with the masses -- so much needed in an India frustrated with closed government offices, closed files and closed hearts. He has about 2 lakh followers now on Twitter. By the way, Obama is on Twitter too. To remind, Obama used internet widely to his advantage during the US elections. Obama and Manmohan are my role-models, and I am sure they are role-models of many other young Indians too. I have no hesitation to say that Dr Manmohan should visit Twitter more often. Further, and on similar lines, India needs all e-governance it can afford.

The author has made an implicit assumption that Indians are aghast about the cattle class remark, while the only aghast may be the storymakers in the media  and the age-old politicians. The median age of India is 25. They may not be half of the voters now, but within a decade they certainly will be. Does the author really think the young population does not understand the innocence behind the remark? Or, they do not understand what is productivity and austerity?

This essay, as well as by Swapan and Kanchan makes me feel we are living in the 1970's and that New Delhi is so far from New York that they can never meet. The average Indian was born when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister. They were in their childhood when they heard about Mandal Commission and then the "opening of the economy" when Dr Manmohan Singh was the finance minister. For them it was akin to a second freedom. While it is a fact that the economy was opened as almost a last resort, many young Indians still thank Manmohan for taking a decision that can be considered brave. In his maiden speech he quoted Victor Hugo, saying that "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come".

Indeed, for the thinkers, it is better that they look ahead instead of behind. Till when will we keep on considering India poor, making it even more real by our thoughts and actions? Kanchan (still) debates about Jinnah? Recently Zardari said Democratic Pakistan Group wants to be friends with India. Will we allow for that?

Unless we allow the liberal, young and appreciative India so raring to emerge, to emerge, in the least in our own mirrors, we will be stuck with pseudo-governance and pseudo-growth. Mr Tharoor is doing his work well (now he has attracted even more eyeballs) and additionally also connecting with people. At a more general level India needs executive politicians, India is done with seat-warmer and old-time politicians. Young Indians will definitely favor young-at-heart and energetic leaders. When the pseudo-governance has been completely uprooted, in the eyes of the youth who were born about 35 years after independence, India would have achieved its third freedom.

Indian Voters Have Done Good!

Indian voters have always surprised the exit polls. This time they have agreed to give the Congress a free hand. The Congress is the only progressive party in India, that is reasonably well-maintained. The opposition of BJP is based on divisive notions, and age-old traditions, which do not matter, because what matters is food, water, shelter and clothes.

The manifestos of the Congress and BJP are available on the excellent India-Elections site maintained by an independent group. A comparison is illustrative. Not only the Congress manifesto looks more "ready", it also is not based on "what other parties do" and "why we are better". It is based on "let us work for you". Of late, India is seeing not a great leader, but a team of good leaders - Sonia, Manmohan, Chidambaram and Rahul. Not only this team is well-educated and humble, they are keen on putting their best foot forward. This team has the will and ability to take the country to the next level.

If such governance continues with a free hand, which it does now, and the governance works as people have voted it to work, it would be the best fortune for India. The lesson for other political parties are:

• Don't be a bum (left) - when govt is trying hard to improve things, please don't come in the way with populist speeches or withdrawal of support,
  
• Don't play divisive (BJP) - although the regional parties like Mayawati etc are based on one group (in this case Dalits), no national party can stand on only one group. To be able to grow, you must include all.
• Work hard, work well (example of Congress) - there is no room for corrupt/divisive politicians at the top. People at the top must be leaders by example, must be truly concerned with all Indians as one and many.
  

There are high hopes from the Congress team, but a bad apple can spoil the whole thing. A bad apple can turn humble public servants into free-hand-devils. But this is highly unlikely - the Congress team is on a rock-solid foundation. The team has learnt well from the experiences of India's past - socialist policies in economy, nuclear deal, terrorism, etc. India is prudent and progressive. That's the way it should be.

First Thoughts

The birth of this blog coincides with the counting day of 2009 Indian Elections. It's been about 60 years since independence. Although 40% of the voters are first-time voters in these elections, the outcome of the counting is unlikely to reveal new leaders on the face of the led-by-old country.

The median age of India is 23. But the young - are they independent thinkers? Many of the urban youth are. They are cosmopolitan, newly-rich/newly-middle-class and optimistic. Sadly, they only sometimes come out on streets, not as a sustained force. In reality I believe their last-generation-Indian education did not teach much cooperation, but overwhelmingly and invariably focused on competition. As a result, there are more arguments on each topic than there are number of people. There is no youth-led/youth-populated political party.

But even this population of uncooperative but optimistic urban youth is a small minority - let's say 20% of all the youth. I say 20% because that is the ratio of the work-force in India that is trained at all for the work it does - the other 80% never had any vocational training. The youth in rural areas and a lot of urban youths are entangled within the cobwebs of the past -- the cobwebs that are growing thicker by the day.

I can go on for hours, but I don't have that many. So I summarize the cobwebs below, in hope I will dwell upon each of them for the time they (do not) deserve in the future:

- old cobweb 1: Caste System, communalism and divisive politics
- old cobweb 2: Illiteracy and ignorance
- old cobweb 3: Corruption
- new cobweb 1: Competition, never cooperation
- new cobweb 2: Almost no active research in universities
- new cobweb 3: Poor infrastructure

I have reasons to fear that the old cobwebs are still growing stronger (certainly not weaker), only assisted by the new cobwebs.