My take on the JNUSU Elections 2007

The Presidential debate for the JNUSU elections which was held on the evening of October 31st, might just go down as the darkest day in the annals of the history of the students’ movement of JNU. Violence broke out in the pandal erected at Jhelum Lawns after the BSF presidential candidate responded to a question posed by the ABVP candidate on the former’s views on Ram. The BSF candidate’s reference to Ram as ‘haivan’ created a furore among the right wingers present at the pandal and student supporters including candidates and office bearers from ABVP resorted to stone pelting at the Election Commission and the candidates who were seated on the dais.

However, there is enough evidence to prove that the act of violence was not a spontaneous one and was a pre- planned act which also solicited the tacit involvement of supporters of the Youth for Equality. As the stone pelting started, I moved out of the pandal and stood on a bench with several other students and witnessed hockey sticks being passed among the ABVP supporters, several of them which included people from Delhi University and members of the RSS. A few of their supporters also rushed to the stage and pulled down the dais and started attacking the presidential candidate from SFI. In the stone pelting the YFE candidate was also hurt and was immediately rushed to the hospital. In the meanwhile the whole pandal was being attempted to be brought down by the supporters of ABVP and YFE. All along ABVP candidates and supporters beat up the SFI presidential candidate and supporters as well as members of the EC. The situation was finally brought under control after the riot police were brought in to prevent a full blown confrontation.

This was followed by an EC meeting with all the parties which went on all night and finally concluded at 8 am today. The EC is still undecided on the issue of conducting the elections on the 2nd of November as scheduled as several of their members have been injured and are unwilling to carry on their duties.

Asit Das, a student of the 80’s from JNU disappointedly said, “This is the end of a chapter in the culture called JNU.” I couldn’t agree more. But I refuse to get completely drowned in sentiment about it. For me the violence last evening was a culmination of the near complete depoliticisation of the campus and the polarized times we live in. I refuse to see the event in isolation from the process of degeneration and the rot that has set in the parliamentary left democratic forces on the one hand which have made a conscious effort to keep out the common students from the entire political process of debates and critical engagement and restricted their domain to the arena of electoral politics alone and on the other remained content with taming the right wing only electorally. The mainstream left (student organizations of CPI-M and CPI-ML)on campus have held positions of power at the JNUSU for the last four years consecutively, but all along their own cadre, activists and supporters were restricted to the electoral fray and hence are left without an iota of any understanding of the left movement in the country. An evidence of this was in full display when the candidate for Joint Secretary from AISA (students wing of CPI-ML) was asked if they belong to the revisionists or the Naxalites’ line of thought to which the candidate despite being given an opportunity to consult the higher ups in the organization responded with the ludicrous and asinine reply, “There are several strains of the left movement and we belong to the movement which lies in between that of the revisionists and the Naxalites”. The Presidential debate that took place yesterday would put a ninth grader to shame. The extent of deterioration and lack of intellect in political debates on campus was once again in full display when none of the candidates from the left could ask a single pointed meaningful question to the YFE presidential candidate to question her logical understanding of reservations. The YFE candidate not only got away making casteist remarks by referring to the deprived castes as ‘unworthy’ but also defended her organisation’s pamphlet brought out a few days back referring to the lower castes as ‘inferior mortals’, ‘unfit for education’ and ‘incapable’. While she chose to answer questions pertaining to her stand on NRI quotas in elite institutions and the issue of women’s reservations with the rhetorical, “Reservations for the needy and not for the greedy”, not a single left candidate had even bothered to familiarize themselves with the contents of the Mandal Commission Report. All this while a huge section of the crowd cheered her on and what we witnessed was a vulgar display of an upper caste, upper class consolidation, what I call the urban Ranvir Sena. The YFE also later joined the ABVP in sloganeering against the left even though their candidate was hurt during the stone pelting by the latter. This, when the YFE calls itself ‘apolitical’. The last few days of campaigning also saw the YFE invite Chandan Mitra, BJP MP and editor of the Pioneer which has openly defended the Gujarat carnage for a public meeting. This, when the YFE calls themselves ‘apolitical’. The YFE claims that they believe in reservations on economic criteria but not one of them has even read the Mandal Commission Report to find out that nearly six out of the eleven listed criteria pertain to the economic domain. But what is worse is that neither of the left wingers have read it either and hence not one of them can hold their own against this kind of intellectual depravity.

Political debates on campus which are presented through pamphlets almost everyday have now been reduced to the domain of mudslinging and slander. Devoid of any theoretical understanding of their own parent party’s line on the state, capital and the Indian society, students are subject to the mainstream left organizations only calling each other names like ‘absconders’ and ‘ habitual regretters’. The process of depoliticisation has been a conscious one and sustained effort by the two organizations like SFI and AISA who have only indulged in the politics of chaos in the last four years of their being in power and have denied common students and chance to participate in the political process of debates and questions by not even holding the mandatory number of General Body Meetings every semester. Where the JNUSU constitution makes it mandatory to have at least 4 GBMS every year per school, we have only one GBM per year to pass the convenor’s report and people aren’t invited to debate but only to vote. This results in about 40 students debating and 400 people voting. Students of JNU are no longer agenda setters but are only responders to a given set of agendas set for us by the JNUSU office at Teflas. As a result we have about 10 public meetings on the Indo US Nuclear deal because the social democrats in the UPA government, viz., CPI-M wants to build a mandate among all sections including students against it in the parliament and JNUSU office which has representation of their students wing provides them the perfect opportunity for doing so. While I am against the Indo-US nuclear deal myself, although on grounds beyond that of the ‘national sovereignity’ argument repeated constantly by the CPI-M in parliament and parroted by the SFI on campus. AISA keeps screaming on the top of its lungs about the ‘killers of Nandigram’ and the ‘rapists of Tapasi Malilk’ for as many as 10 public meetings. All along SFI and AISA refuse to tell us that their parent parties fought the Punjab Assemble elections in alliance. The ‘killers of Nandigram’ and the ‘rapists of Tapasi Malik’ of CPI-M and the ‘infantile disorders’ of CPI-ML become revolutionaries a mere 1500 kms away. But we refuse to discuss increasing instances of gender harassment, ragging and communal violence even for a single public meeting. SFI and AISA have reduced themselves to being mere news reporters wherein after an instance of communal violence in which an ABVP students beats up a minority student both the parties come out with a reporting of the event failing to see the process of communal violence that actually starts manifesting itself during the T20 Indo Pak match during which about 40 odd students shouts gendered slogans against Pakistan and it goes unprotested. The two mainstream left organizations pride themselves on having tamed the communal forces electorally on campus but what they fail to see is that each year the ABVP vote bank has increased, so much so that they have increased from 12 votes in the 80’s to 700 in 2005. What they fail to take serious note of is that the loudest applause is for the ABVP candidates in the School of Social Sciences councilor elections GBM and the first slogans that are raised are those of Vande Mataram. We only react to symptomatic manifestations of communal violence but fail to engange students on campus effectively and defeat the ideology of hatred and bigotry that perpetrates the campus all along and sustains the ABVP as they grow in strength steadily.

We, the left, have reduced politics on campus to a culture of symbolism and socialization. The culture of ‘mashaal juloos’ during the pre election phase as a show of strength makes it inevitable for the hegemonic parliamentary democratic left organizations to enlist students en masse into their organization but fail to engage even with their own cadre and activists which results in a complete divorce of ideology from action. This results in SFI activists actively participating in ragging and sexual harassment and even refusing to acknowledge it as sexual harassment. This results in AISA top cadre leaving the organization and now leading the YFE when they enter the campus in 2006. This results in a party like YFE coming in for the first time in 34 year left dominated campus and that very left is reduced to a situation of near defeat. The situation is so grave that SFI and AISA admit that their own activists vote for YFE and they express their helpless about it. We may have enlisted people in number but we have failed to engage with them and enlist them in mind and spirit, we actively promote a culture of depoliticisation. Votes are now being garnered on grounds of excuses like, “we assisted you during the admission, so please vote for us” or “we kept you in our rooms till you were allotted hostels, so please vote for us”. There is no ‘mashaal juloos’ against the increasing instances of communalism or against ragging. There is not even a united front by the left at a time like yesterday when we had to put a joint front against the violence of the ABVP which was tacitly supported by the YFE. Each organization was trying to outdo each other in lung power from different locations even as some of us pleaded for unity at that point of time.

And while this process of depoliticisation grows each day, where the new students are completely sidelined from being initiated into the political environment at JNU, the old students are frustrated with the existing state of affairs where they have no say in the political process unless they are members of some organization on campus. They are reduced to being responders to a given set of agendas when in reality they should be the agenda setters. So in a state of apathy and complete withdrawal from the political culture and the space is in turn left open for right wing forces to appropriate. They enter under the pretext of being ‘apolitical’ while what they really stand for is for a politics of ‘status quoism’. While the left indulges in myopic sectarianism and creates a politics of chaos, we are all along preparing the ground for a growing polarization, only because we fail to critically engage with the students, we fail to take note of the changed context in which we are operating. We fail to note the changing class, caste character of the students in JNU and change the course of our movement accordingly. We fool ourselves into believing that this is our territory and no one can uproot us from here, all along giving up all the idealism and values that we stood for. So much so that we even defend a Buddhadeb in Bengal for what he calls ‘development’ but what we should actually be calling ‘capitalism’. We pride ourselves for having raised our voices against imperialism and the neo-liberal agenda, but restrict ourselves to the theoretical domain alone. When we see the manifestation of the neo- liberal agenda in JNU in the form of six new car parking lots when barely 1 percent of the population in JNU owns cars and we see mosaic floors being replaced with marble flooring and a criminal waste of money in other such beautification attempts, and simultaneously we do not see our basic need fro scholarchips, more books, more public computers, we humbly accept the administration’s and the JNUSU leadership’s repetition of the excuse, “there are no funds.’ Whatever happened to the theory of praxis? Why is there no juloos then? Why can’t we attack the administrations excuses on sound theoretical grounds, supplemented by protests and not let the car parks, marble flooring and other needless concrete structures come up before we get week long health facilities, more books, more computers and more scholarships? The reality is that we have failed in understanding the linkages between our lives and the political economy of our times. And we are comfortable being that way. We occasionally throw a few terms like ‘infantile disorders’, ‘revisionists’ and pride ourselves upon that. The reality is that the mainstream left movement on campus today is a career and not about a commitment to the notion of Revolution.

This elections I campaigned very very actively for an organization called the Progressive Students’ Union which follows the line of thought of Communist League of India- Marxist Leninist. I must have about a 1000 students during my campaign at messes, hostels, class rooms. Our effort this election has been to fight the air of ‘no politics’ pasted across hostel rooms. Our effort has been to politicize the campus once again, to get students back to the movement and to get the students movement back to whom it belongs- the students. That we have been gaining ground is evident from the fact that the SFI and AISA have been actively involved in getting their foot soldiers to get the rumour mills working. Personal slander campaigns asking people not to vote for us because they cannot counter our political logic are being resorted to. The latest pretext after yesterday’s violent outbreak has been to ask people to vote for the entire SFI panel or the entire AISA panel and not the split the left vote by voting for a contending left candidate like ours as according to them, we don’t have a chance of winning and will just end up paving the way for YFE. For the last four years they have fed the same set of lies to the students here and I will not even hesitate in saying that all along they willingly paved the way for YFE. It is important for them to keep the ‘enemy’ alive in public conscience not because they want to isolate and eliminate it completely but because it helps sustain them in power. Electoral politics has consumed the entire political process in JNU.

On a personal note, these elections are not important for us in terms of winning or losing. If we win, we get a legitimacy to be a part of the seat of struggle- the JNUSU. If we lose, it will only make us ask for our right to all the missing GBMs and ask the powers that be to democratize the campus even more, politicize the campus even more and then revolutionize the politics of the campus. What matters to us is to be part of the revolution, a part of the left movement more than our organizational affiliation. Like Hafiz said to me, “We have nothing to lose and the whole world to win!”

twice rejected...

third time lucky!


yup...made it to JNU..finally!! am about a little more than a month old...and throughly enjoying every bit this experience.


have already brought out a protest poster(on a rather flippant pun, have been called the "new poster girl of JNU")...have already walked out in protest(against sexual harassment at the freshers)...have already been dubbed the unofficial 'dalit' by my juniors in the centre who refuse to sit next to me in class, thanks to my walkout...in menon's words, "have already picked up fights!" phew!!


But on a more serious note, the academic environment in JNU is nothing short of invigorating. what adds more vigour to the academic environment here is the heightened level of awareness and political activism amongst the student community. No issue escapes being discussed. Not a single issue is allowed to pass by without a relevant poster and talk on the same.

Of course, sometimes, the debates become sterile, of course, sometimes, party politics takes over and debates are reduced to mud slinging (and if we havent seen enough, am sure there's loads of it coming up in the forthcoming JNU Students' Union elections), of course there are times when posters are reflective of nothing but ideological bankruptcy, but then I believe that this too is a reflection of the times we live in. Also, what compensates for the occassional lapses is the fact that the space for debate is never reduced.


Having always been a left wing bastion, that we live in changed times is well reflected in the space that has been carved out by the Youth for Equality (who i unabashedly detest), a party devoid of any intellectual or ideological base, but still managed to to win a sizeable number of votes on a one point agenda of anti reservations. That we live in changed times is well reflected in the fact that not a single seminar here is organised without Coke or Pepsi being served. And that we live in depressingly changed times is confirmed, when a member and very vocal activist of the ultra left hurriedly makes a move to get a glass of Pepsi.

But, despite these failings and inspite of the failings, JNU is what it is only because of the level of political activism that takes place here and the integration activism with academics that prevents the latter from becoming an ivory tower. And after a very inspiring evening spent watching a film on Comrade Chandrashekhar, a former AISA activist and JNUSU president and listening to Medha Patkar, one would have to definitely and willingly stay blind or deaf to remain untouched by the strength, magnitude and the intensity of the students movement here and various issues outside the pristine walls of this campus.

This post is not meant as a paean to the institute that i feel privileged being a part of, but simply as a reflection of life here which is very different from the academic institutes that i have so far been part of. This is only the beginning for me.

25 years old...

and am still around...(it was yesterday)

well...to begin with..i think i have finally grown up..coz one sure shot sign of it was that hardly anyone remembered it...i remember i used to be yelled at for sleeping off before midnight..coz friends who wanted to be first in wishing me would call..and i wouldn't be around to answer...but this time..i stayed up (thanks to a test the next day)..and voila!! NO ONE CALLED!! not even the expected calls...so that's settled then..i have finally grown up! (and an sms from an old friend (i hope) confirmed it when it read 'welcome to adulthood at last!!')

so the next day was depressing to the core...i spent about six hours studying for the test..four hours writing the test..and the next four hours contemplating and waiting for calls...and then there was a time when there used to be rushed surprises pulled together by friends who forgot the day...goof ups with gifts and cards... reassurances about how they set reminders on their mobile phones...

well...that was then...and this is now...and i must say i'm holding out pretty well...the three heads of the four headed entity (comprising of menon, abhishek and anshika, the fourth head being me) salvaged what was left of the day with chocolate walnut brownies and ice cream...

and of course thanks suhas, gaurav, imran and padma. i promise to blog more often henceforth...(that being my silver jubilee resolution..i think...)

Impulsive Iyer...

is my new name...

it so happened that i went to see off a friend of mine (a junior of mine in college...menon is what we call him, just to ensure credibility of his existence at this point of time) at the bus stand..coz he was leaving for Goa...

he happens to have an extra ticket on him as his cousin didn't turn up...so all he does is ask..."hey..you wanna come along?"

and guess who goes instead..with just a bag and hardly any money on her...just like that...just hopped on...made the randomest decision of late in my life...went to Goa by bus..woke up with a crick in my neck (thanks to the bumpy roads) and landed in Goa at 8 in the morning...

and after breakfast at this very funky looking cafe...surpise ma at 11 in the morning...

two days of beaches and good food...and am back to the slaughter...
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and my AWWWWW moment would be...
menon and i are heading back to pune..we are sitting at the travel agent's office..and the lady there is trying to chat us up...and then all of a sudden..she exclaims, "by the way..your mother asked me to make sure that you safely board the bus back to pune!"

by the time i gather my senses..menon is on the floor holding on to his stomach and laughing his head off...i am turning a bright shade of red...and before you know it..calls have been made to pune and of course i am still being ragged about it!

of course i have given up trying to make ma understand that i am 24...coz' no matter how old i begin to look...i will be 12 till i die!

continuing the discussion...

hmm..we seem to be getting somewhere with this one...i am going to post the comments that i received for the previous post here and post my response in the form of a blog post.

Alex says "It depends on what connotation one gives to Globalisation. The middle class tend to gain from this integration. Creative destruction is an inevitable by product of this phenomenon. National identities are compromised with. It results in a dilution of identities.

shreya says "kinda ironic, coz there is another theory (hypothesis?) going around about how it (globalisation)actually results in a sharp delineation between ethnic (not necessarily national) identities, and leads us deeper into a religious fundamentalism...
in my experience, there is more to be said of that theory than the dilution one...
perhaps later in the cycle (i see it as a cycle), there will be a dilution of national/cultural/ethnic (in that order)identities, but for now, no...
case study in question (again, in my opinion) would be the caribbean, especially trinidad and tobago...
and then of course you may be talking from a solely indian perspective, and i dont think i can comment on that...
hmmm...."

well, shreya...even if we are talking in the indian context..we are seeing an upsurge in an assertion of a very perverse kind of nationalism...for example the VHP kind of naitonalism...which in one sense is an assertion of one's ethnic identity...now obviously we cannot equate this ethnic identity with a national identity...

again we have examples of a greater assertion of one's ethnic or religious identity in countries other than india...case in point being the london bombings...

or for that matter the French protesting against the Arcelor bid...

alex..if we are talking about dilution of identities...well, yes..one can talk about the increasing demand for dual citizenship as an example of dilution of identities...it's national identity for convenience...the LN Mittal brand of national identity...

but then again..here is a question that i raised in the debate..can globalisation be necessarily held responsible for the dilution of national identities? (remember.. i had to speak against the motion, "globalisation has diluted unique national identities)if we are to define national identity as the sense of belonging to a nation and striving towards its spelt out goals...then there are enough and more instances wherein we can say that the State itself has been responsible for alienating its citizens and hence diluting their sense of national identity. there are enough and more examples of seperatist movements both in and outside india which prove this. and then of course how do we define national identity...if that itself is defined by a narrow section or class, then how do we even expect the term national identity to hold good for the whole country? for example, the naxalite movement is still seen as a law and order problem..the Narmada Bachao Andolan was dubbed by a wide section of the media as going against the national interests...

can we see it as a class assertion which might be finding vent in the form of ethnic or religious assertion as well?...but am not entirely sure...sir could you help??

Just Discovered...

Economic Sociology. a critique of mainstream economics and so far so good.will post more as i finish reading some more.

and also that i can cycle on the roads during peak hour traffic ...went for a film festival all the way to FTII and even to the travel agent to book my tickets...

on life here...well, have to debate on the motion, " This House Believes that Globalisation has diluted unique National Identities" have been asked to make a case against the motion for Pulse 2006. (that's our fest)...opinions welcome.

This Independence Day...

we paved our own way!!
(i know this is coming in late..but still..)

there we were... boys and girls...juniors and seniors...all together..breaking bricks...laying them out..levelling the road...that led us to our hostel.
i think we were fed up of complaining...fed up of waiting for a response. trust me..i never thought this road would get us together..but amazingly it did. and i am proud of it. every time i walk on it..ride on it..look at it. there's no more slush, no more puddles..no more of people falling and hurting themselves. of course we snubbed the authority responsible for it after we completed the road..but i think we are allowed to have our little joys. which by the way also included a "samosas and chai" treat after we finished the road sponsored by the Girl's hostel! am thrilled!
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and then i trekked!! (this one's for somu who fell off the chair laughing when i told her this)

up and down Lohagad..ruins of Shivaji's fort...his treasure house...the little chambers where one could see how the enemy was progressing..trekked past waterfalls, streams and stone laid paths..etc, etc...

but of course..it was tiring..yet came back..played two games of tabletennis...took a long walk after dinner...thinking i am quite fit...hehehe..

then next day my body decided to be honest with me.my legs had decided to rebel for an independent entity status and took me to places i hadn't stepped into before...while..my torso could only be an unwilling partner, by pure virtue of a technical compulsion of being attached to my legs...as i hobbled...and tumbled along the weekend.
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the Grand Finale!!
and we did put up a brave front yesterday.were were better prepared than they expected us to be.and we stood strong.together.better late than never!
(cryptic as this one might be, i had to put it down for posterity)

last weekend...

in my mumbai...

will be gone to pune..only 150 kms away...but somehow for me it always seems like an eternity away from mumbai...

of this vacation in mumbai i will remember...
endless weeks and weekends spent working on a comp all day...with no one but data for company
waiting at Khar station for joyie and then sitting there on the platform with her watching people go by...
evenings by the sea spent with joyie...and alone.
sleeping off in movie halls watching johnny depp (how will i ever forgive myself for this..hehe)
staying up with somu beyond my 11 pm deadline and making her laugh with GRE wordlist enriched sentences...
seeing suhas off at the airport...bombs and all...
trying real hard and succeeding at not chopping off my hair...
only memories of 26th and 27th of July 2005...


...and of course...things i will never blog about.

the heights of irony...

coz' we will now take the Pakistanis' help to resist authority...

this time it's a reminder of the Emergency to all of us who weren't born around that time...

one of the reactions of the govt. to the bomb blasts has been a clampdown on blogs..

i found a way around...here it is...

please visit www.pkblogs.com

or simply type http://www.pkblogs.com/vibster (an example) in the address bar to access ay blog

to put it even more simply..put your blogname or anyother blog name in place of vibster in the above mentioned example..

this is an effort by the pakistani bloggers to help access blogs in pakistan when the government there blocked them...

more later..too much work.

can't make sense of this madness...

each day as i talk to people as young (or old) as me or younger or older than me...

the country they hail is israel "we really need to go the israel way..no one cares for their citizens the way they do..you bomb one school of theirs...they will bomb ten schools of yours"
the leader they seek is a dictator.even a fascist. "we don't like modi..but we think we need someone like him right now"
the government they seek is one that will equal in terror. "We are too soft"
all this even as the media dedicates paeans to the mumbai spirit..well.. there is this other side too...

missed this one too...

by about five minutes and fortunately was in the opposite direction...travelling in a train on the same line.

the streets are pretty empty today...so are the trains.

a lot of things have changed...was at the airport yesterday just after the blasts...and there was absolutely no panic. everyone calmly making their respective strategies to get back home.

on our way to the international airport (was going to see suhas off) the police stopped us, checked our baggage...asked the cabbie to show his license and other papers...and when he had none...the matter was settled for Rs. 50.

some things never change.

Immortalised...

forever...as a journo of a tabloid...:)

it's been about two years since i gave up reporting...in pursuit of perspective. i thought that would have been the day when i bid goodbye to calls from harried residents about overflowing drains..flooded compounds...monsoon wrecked roads, illegal encroachments, thefts, murders, etc, etc.

but i realised that the patrons of the tabloid i used to work for continue to make me hold the post of a reporter and very expectantly call me up even now to report on the same issues or sometimes just to say hello...trust me i still get invited to "chai" even when i am in pune by this old couple in Versova whom i had once contacted for a story. and then there is this old Commie journo who still calls up to find if i am doing ok in gokhale...

just today, as i was struggling to make my way through the crowd in the train to get to work...i get a call from a Mrs. Dias. she asked for me and was relieved to know that i remembered her. her problem two years since i quit remains the same. her building compound and the road outside gets flooded almost to waist level thanks to some illegal dumping and encroachment by a local MLA. children can't get to school, people can't go to work, and they all live in the perpetual fear of a short circuit.

her husband used to call me up earlier.."he passed away 8 months back...of foodpoisoning"" she told me. i spoke to her ...often searching for words in the precise two minute conversation. and then gave her joyie's number and hung up.

i don't know what to make of it...although i felt a little happy that people still remembered me even if it was at the time of distress i sort of felt a little like a loser coz' despite reporting several times on the problem..nothing ever got done. monsoon after monsoon...the problems remain the same. and people continue to have faith in a tabloid that reports on local issues. but nothing really changes. and we continue to wait for once in 5 years to take our revenge at the time of an election. but that's about it. am a little repulsed by the dormancy that sets in democracy.

p.s. well..so much for being accused of writing journalistic trash and so much for wanting to change the world.
:)

...

am dumbstruck!!
completely...
have nothing to say...
coz' all my hard work..sweat and toil...hours of unpaid labour...have just gone down the drain...because technology decided to strike against me which resulted in a loss of data...
am back to square no 1...and have to begin almost afresh..like 0.1 percent above the level 'start'.

which means...coming to work an hour earlier..leaving an hour later and yes..working full days on Sundays...

and even as my prof..broke the bad news to me mildly...i just burst out laughing...i couldn't think of anything better to do.

what just happened is funnier than Bal Thackeray saying that the Shiv Sena should focus on enlisting the support of the Naxals in fighting Islamic fundamentalism!! don't blame him too much..maybe he got carried away with the fact that the divide between party ideology and policies is way too wide these days...case in point being Bengal.

Morbid times ahead...

at least till the weekend..as i sit and calculate death rates, infant mortality rates..and suicide mortality rates...and compare suicide rates against death rates...

just a random thought..doesen't reflect my state of mind or anything...

so we all end up as a statistic...someone many years from now will probably calculate death rates..hopefully to serve a larger purpose..and i will account for one tiny decimal point in those reams of pages filled with statistics on death...
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went to the Directorate of Statistics and Economics today..taught the staff to burn cd's...:)entirely for a selfish purpose..so that the next time i go..i don't have to stoop over scores of books and painstakingly select the required pages and get them cyclostyled.

met the Director...and funnily enough of all the things i saw a shield announcing victory in a Wrestling Championship placed on his desk...statistics and wrestling...make for strange combo..doesen't it?

Let down again...

this time by data...

even as we work religiously on sundays...keeping the faith that probably all this number crunching will lead to some conclusive results in our efforts to highlight the prevailing crisis in Indian agriculture...we discover that the NSSO doesen't quite support us in our endeavours...

firstly, this Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers takes into consideration only farmers...that is people who have soem land in their possession..so no data on landless labour in this survey...

secondly...just when i was getting appreciative of the fact that the surveyors had visited the same sample twice, once in the kharif season and the second time in the Rabi season...we realised that it was quite a pointless visit. there is absolutely no data on loans taken or assets (including landholding) possessed in the second visit. the surveyors have assumed these factors to remain constant between the two cropping seasons..while common sense would tell you...that indebtedness situations could differ depending on the success of the previous season's harvest.

anyway...here's something amusing that you should know about having extremely clean data...(especially the NSS data) with no glitches...it could lead to two conclusions..either the level of understanding between the interviewer and the respondent is very high..or in all probability the data has been entered under a Banyan tree...

p.s. trust me...it's much easier dealing with being let down by data than by anything else.

When in Zululand...

learn Zulu...

at least that's what Reebok learnt from a recent advertising campaign...

advertising campaigns love to get as gimmicky as possible..and a touch of exotica always helps..doesen't it?

so Reebok decides to shoot one of its ads amongst some tribe in South Africa...they decide to make one the tribe members wear the shoes and run...at the end of the ad film...the man picks up the shoes and mumbles something in his language...the company decides to retain that part...

the company airs it in the Cannes Film Festival..mecca of advertising and all..only to find out from one of the audience that the tribal dude had said, " These shoes hurt!!"

p.s. was related to me by a friend who watched the Cannes festival video when in advertising school.

Flashback.

...to about three years ago. i was working with a mumbai based tabloid. my friend and colleague had to go on an assignment to interview two authors ofa the latest book that had been released on Mumbai titled," Mumbai Meri Jaan". she hadn't read the whole book then...asked for help on some possible questions that could be put forth. i read the introduction..obivously it was yet another romanticised description of the city. but it had a line which said in effect that Mumbai is a city where although there is a section of people who lead lives like animals which would put any zoo keeper to shame, no one dies of starvation.
i had a problem with the line and asked my colleague to question the authors about it(that no one dies of starvation). she did. the response was defensive and was something to the effect that they hadn't come across a single instance of it.
i even had a comment posted on my blog then from the author saying that no newspaper had reported on it (starvation), hence it did not exist. i was quite amused by the comment because the author was a journalist himself (and a pretty senior one at that)...and he would (i thought)know as all journalists do that newspapers often enough do not report an event until it is worthy enough of making headlines.
let's fastforward to the recent spate of reporting on malnutrition among kids in the urban slums of mumbai. so it's there now...for everyone to see that there is a higher level of malnutrition among kids in Mumbai slums than the tribal kids in Melghat...the domain of malnutrition in rural maharashtra.
now, there is another point that one needs to note here...that most of these kids were probably admitted due to high fever. there are several such cases that are admitted in government hospitals which cite TB or Fever as the detected illness. but the cause of it is itself malnutrition. in the recent city reports of course doctors have pointed out that malnutrition is the cause behind the fever. but several times as has happened before, death reports will only cite the disease that caused death mentioned and will mask the real cause that broke down the human immume system- Starvation.

Gainfully Employed..

at IGIDR..assisting on a book on Agrarian Crisis in India. so it's back to hours spent in the library collecting data..entering..analysing..writing...etc etc...all week long...no holidays...from 9am till 7pm...but i am not complaining..generally a continuation of my efforts last year at trying to analyse the media reportage of farmers' suicides in Maharashtra...we are trying to build up from there to the national level...

but the coolest thing about the whole affair is that Tech Retard vibster is now learning a new econometric software..and is currently in the process of extracting data from the National Sample Survey 59th round to make it more analyse'able'...hehehehe..how i love jargon dropping...so feeling mighty cool...
--------
p.s this one's for shreya...sometimes just a hard hitting.."Where the f have you been? write babe write" helps..hence the post.

Mumbai Update

so finally am in my favourit'est' city...waiting to start working..to get my mind off several things...including a disastrous end to what could have been the perfect beginning to my vacation...hoping that this city could help save what's left of it(the vacation).

anyway..am completely uninspired...so until i get over my writer's block and this hopefully temporary phase of disappointment...
Adios!

Dedicated to Sir

Spent a week with someone who i hold in high regard...trekked up forests...sat by rivers...battled leeches and had a tryst with the Lion Tailed Monkey albeit at a distance....

and finally he has a blog..he helped me make sense of politics not too long ago..and i continue to count on him to help me make sense of the world. economics or otherwise.

Check this out!!

In mind and spirit

Down
Disturbed
Depressed
Disillusioned
Defeated
Destroyed.

Do you feel powerful enough?

WOW!!

And you don't need to travel to the end of the world to be delighted!
sometimes.
Here's one reason why.
Click Here!

Dammed!

That's what we are...in the debate on the Narmada project.
Damned by the media, damned by the government and damned by journalists who can equate Medha Patkar with Advani without blinking an eye!

To compare Patkar (who i think after Gandhi has effectively been able to question the morality of law) with Advani (who i hold as no better than a fascist) is nothing short of outrageous and only reflects your shallow understanding of this country.

in case anyone is still wondering ( which i doubt) i am clearly for the NBA.

as for people who are questioning her fast and have termed it as" the country's development being held ransom to someone's whims and fancies" (this includes BK Verghese and Saubhik Chakravarthy)I question your understanding of human rights or even of the Constitution of this country. and just to remind you, this has been a step that Patkar has resigned to after several letters and several meetings and several cases filed.

1,50,000 people who have unwillingly agreed to give up their livelihoods, ancestral land and homelands so that we can have electricity and more water...can we not even assure them of what they have been promised? Raising the height of the dam now is going to create more homeless people. All Patkar is asking for is to rehabilitate those who have already been displaced before creating more displaced people. and we begin to brand her as being "anti development"?

I am not going to refrain to the famous, " Imagine your houses being washed down or your lifetime of accumulation being submerged" kind of rhetoric coz' i think we have come a long way since that with the Narmada debate.

there is the larger issue of Big Dams itself, which is something i question again. for me it is nothing short of technology dumping and Nehru's "Big is beautiful" and "dams as temples of modern india" ideology which continues to haunt us...and an entire generation meekly submits to laid down norms of "development". Have we already resorted to the famous TINA (There Is No Alternative) argument?

...and this is how we amuse ourselves!

Economists that is...

attended a seminar on the financial and economic factors in Terrorism..and it ended up being a micro lec on maximising a terrorist leader's profit maximising function which had elements like the value of his life which is taken as a discounted value of future streams of income and even had the probablity of being caught!

The function was subject to a budget constraint that had income of the outfit constrained by the number of followers or some such thing...

The wonders of using Mathematical functions to reduce ever human aspect to an equation will never cease to amaze me.
--------------------------------

on a more serious note...
the presenter made a statement to the effect that women have been found to have a sobering effect on men..hence the more educated the women in a society, the lesser the chances for terrorism.

just by the way...that is changing..Gujarat saw hordes of educated middle class families happily participating in the massive raiding and looting of shops that took place when the pogrom took place in 2002. These included women who helped their men stack their cars with consumer durables and gleefully goaded them on even as thousands of Muslims being hacked in their neghbourhoods.

as a witness told me, " even as one part of Ahmedabad burned, Hindu families were happily eating at the newly opened branch of McDonalds!"

Some sobering effect that was...

another thing...
Regressions don't necessarily imply causality...hence by fitting in regressions and stating that educated women have have a negative impact on terrorism...doesen't make much sense. it's equivalent to making spurious correlations.
we need to desist from making generalisations like "All women have maternal instincts", "Women by nature are more peace loving", etc etc.
which brings forth another tangential point to my mind...Gandhi was accused by the Hindu Mahasabha and his assassins of "effiminating" the national movement, a passive (which shouldn't be confused for a non active response)response to violence was seen as emasculating the struggle. Hence the whole idea of even seeing the nation as a motherland (females seen as weak and seekers of male protection) and the need for its sons to protect its honour, which adds to the jingoism and pathological nationalism that prevails amidst several NRIs.

Changing equations

I was all of a foot and half or two
It was my very first time by the sea
I squealed, a little in fear, a little in delight
as the foamy edges reached for my feet

I held my father's hand a little tighter.
the waves were teasing,
But I stood still
little aware that thrill also meant beware

And then there was the time when a huge wave
nearly swept me away,
Comfort levels grew
but fear remained

There was then the phase
When going to sea meant
sandy beaches and castles of sand
watched on from a distance

I grew taller,perhaps wiser too
Each day as i walked by the sea
No one to watch on me this time
In solitude, the waves saw me through

But each time I tried holding back sand
It would slip through my fingers
Leaving only a few crystals
stuck to the dampness of my palm

So this time when I sat by the sea
Gave up trying to hold on to sand
Held the crystals that stayed back
Up against the sun instead

It scares me...

... to know that the probability of a person supporting the Nuclear Disarmament movement in India is 1 out of 11!!

that was the result of a group discussion that we had in college the other day..i was obviously the unpopular one. so in all fairness..the probability could be much lower..in fact it is...

the reasons given for a nuclear india are the same old ones...credible detrrence theory and the no first use policy...which is supposed to make us look like saints in a world that is racing ahead in the arms race.

to begin with the credible deterrence theory is a hoax...nothing stopped Kargil despite going nuclear...the BJP didn't even win the election on the basis of the Kargil victory..which proves that people who send their kids to war are the ones who are most against it...so stop selling us your idea of jingoism.

secondly, the no first use policy contradicts itself...coz if you don't use it the first time..you won't even be alive the second time around to use it anyway...and if you really mean what you say and do believe in no first use..then why the hell are we spending so much in accumulating more of something that we are never going to use? what a farce!

where does all this lead us anyway..we go nuclear..Pakistan follows...then we follow them again...then they try to match up...so on and so forth...playing a game that only ends in a loss for both parties..wasting useful resources even as millions starve.

But thanks to the Great Indian Middle Class these theories will continue to do their rounds...just like someone in the discussion endorsed it.."We need to go nuclear so that we will be the most feared and the most respected in the world."

the parameters for any kind of debate on nuclearisation are so constricted right now in the country that each party irrespective of their ideology, left or right, actually stakes their claim to who got the idea of going nuclear first. media obviously hasn't been spared and unfortunately academicians too have decided to toe the party line...and the result is that the only group that actually cries out against the arms race is frightfully a minority.

so have people really never heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or have people just decided to willingly erase their memories about it? or do we just enjoy living in an increasingly unsafe world where there is always this impending threat of being bombed away beyond recognition?

but then again i guess, there isn't much one can do when the President of the country himself subscribes to these theories.

Ray the Rockstar! (Part III) concluded. (only for now...)

Shatranj Ke Khiladi!

what a script! the man does it again...hilarious...
a political satire on the waning Mughal Empire (of course it still holds true of the Indian government)...indulgent emperors who were there only to serve as titular heads...and a whole class of courtiers...who were nothing but rent seekers (reminiscent of the indian bureaucracy)...but the movie i guess has proved to be timeless so far...

Amjad Khan was brilliant with his expressions...the pained look right thru the film...and the spontaneous breaking into a song everytime there comes up a serious issue of concern...my personal favourite was when he is holding a private court with his select ministers and is actually wondering where he went wrong as a king..."my subjects still sing my songs...ask the british if they have known of any other king who is as popular among his subjects?"

General Outram who compares Wajid Ali Shah's harem to a military regiment...haha..

and of course sanjeev kumar and sayeed jaffrey as the ministers who have time for nothing else but chess..so much so that there is almost a willing ignorance of the fall of the empire...and the last of the dialogues is too poignant..when jaffrey bemoans the fall of Awadh.." Let's play another round of chess...this time a rapid one...just like the British do..", says Sanjeev kumar..." and when it's dark, we'll go back home... we need the darkness to hide our faces."

the landscapes are brilliant...camera work as usual commendable...my favourite moment...when jafferey cheats by moving kumar's chess piece in his absence and the camera sneaks in from a gap in thw wall to let go of the secret...

but one thing that left me most impressed was the witty script!! brilliant i hope is a word that can complement Ray's genius!

Ray the Rockstar! (Part II)

Pather Panchali...

overwhelmingly beautiful...the imagery, the narration, and the soulful depths to which the camera could carry the human eye...and of course let's not forget the simple humour...subtle and yet very lifting...

simply love the way ray gives birth to hope everytime you feel let down by the miseries of poverty weighing down apu and his family...

and what a way to signify the birth of hope...tadpoles creating ripples as they sprint about in the water...water lillies swaying...durga planting a new sapling as she grows to see to new desires...and the finality of it with the lashing rain....and even as you begin to hope...it's that very rain that takes it away from you...and then the celebration of the human spirit which refuses to let go...there's always a new beginning...no matter what.

you have the watch the extent to which ray belives in continuity...for instance the first scene in which durga lifts kittens out of the pot to feed them water...they are there,frocliking...falling over each other...or just simply there... till the end of the whole sequence...
and the long cuts...awesome...and despite that you never really get bored...coz of the variety of shots he has used...and when he zooms in slowly to capture the sorrow or the excitement in the mother's face or Apu's wonder...

the humour is very subtle...and like i said...simple...whether it is the trumpet blower's quivering moustache...as apu looks up at him...or even the old aunt who is constantly bickering with the mother and keeps threatening to leave...her expressions are hilarious!

the musical score (composed by Ravi Shankar in a record time of 9 hours) proves to a fine accompaniment to the narrative...builds and lifts at times and at places...more than substitutes for missing dialogues...

If there was a dignified way to show human poverty...it was definitely Ray who could show it...so much so that the audience all over the world no matter how far away from the early years of the century and the dwellings of poverty they may be...they cannot help but empathise with the family...

Ray the Rockstar!

of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne...
superficially about two village idiots...
but the movie is so much more than that...
a simple tale...much like a folktale or even a fairytale for that matter...
simplistically and innocently hilarious...
so many little messages passed on to you...
about the discontentment of man no matter what...
about the pointlessness of war...
and then almost immediately...Ray brings you back to the reality of the film's characters Goopy and Bagha...when Bagha looks at his would be bride and says,
"she'll do!"

Tailpiece
Legend has it that two student representatives in my batch decided to have a Ray film festival during the last semester. So they approach the SPIC Macay group which hosts indian classical music concerts to promote an appreciation of Indian culture amongst Indian youth.
So the kids ask the Spic Macay dude, " We were wondering if you could help us organise a Ray Film Festival? (i mean these Spic Macapy guys are pretty well connected you see...)
SMdude: Of course, in fact we could probably even have Ray talking about his films.
Student reps: Really! that would be awesome!
but legend also has it that before they put up a notice about the same and invoked Ray from the ashes, a noble soul informed them about his death and put the matter to rest.
do i love this place or do i love this place?

Dear Suhas

How i wish we could be five again and the biggest problem for us would be to wonder what my mum has packed for me in my tiffin box or if we would get selected in a team while playing 'Chor Police'
How i wish i could just rewind to even about five years back...and we would just be sitting on that damn wall, doing absolutely nothing...
And talk absolutely nothing for hours and yet leave with a feeling that we had the best conversation ever...
And talk about the pointlessness of hope...and the end of expectations...
And how we pledged to meet exactly 10 years from then and wonder how each of us had grown...
And how we wondered (and still wonder) why we never fought...
And of the fifteen years that i spent in the colony, the best years were the ones after we became friends.
And all those hours spent putting thought bubbles to people's heads...
Going back to the colony will no longer be the same...though the strange attachment to the wall remains...almost signifying a comforting permanence of things...