A life with no internet and cable TV

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I knew of a world without Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter. I even knew of a world without Internet and Cable Television. Life was so different back then. I was still in high school. Projects required a visit to the library if you wanted to do extended research. I didn’t have Wikipedia to give me all the answers. I read a lot of books in those days. I used to wake up early in the morning to catch a few minutes of newspaper before I had to surrender those rights to my father. I would then devour all the sections starting from the sports section moving to entertainment and so on. I quickly learnt to appreciate the quality of both language and content in the editorial sections. 

I actually went to playgrounds and played games other than those found on my Atari. The only friend I had never met in my life was a girl from Italy who was my pen friend. We communicated 2 or 3 times a year by physically writing letters to each other and getting to learn more about our respective cultures. I would then cut out stamps from those letters and add them to my stamp book collection. I did not know any other stamp or coin collector in my neighborhood.

We watched old English and Hindi movies on VHS tapes and never thought to question its quality. If the quality was bad we would either use a VCR cleaner or simply use the tuner on the VCR and continue watching.

We had only one phone in the house and it was called landline. If you wanted another phone or did not have one in your house, you had to send an application to the telephone department and wait patiently for a few months for your allotment. There were no cell phones then. No SMS and MMS. No smartphones and awesome apps.

Satellite television had not yet invaded our homes. In India, we have one channel called Doordarshan or “DD 1” that was available to everyone. If you lived in one of the major cities of the country, you also had “DD Metro”. They broadcasted songs for 30 minutes once every Wednesday. No 24 hour music channels. We all watched the same shows and had common ground to discuss.

It seems like an era has gone by but it has been less than 20 years. Life has completely transformed. For the good and for the bad.

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The Chinese Conundrum

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China manufactures and exports
America buys and pays dollars
China loans dollars to America
America buys more Chinese exports and pays dollars
China moans about American spending.

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Winds of changes in Arabia

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Something is brewing in the Middle East and nearby Islamic countries. Country after country are under going transformation and the change is coming from the least expected quarter, the people i.e. civil resistance. Democracy in the Arab/Middle-East world is not a fully functional word. In some countries its royalty that rules the roost, in others black as night dictatorship is backed by an unaccountable military.

Some of these dictators have ruled for decades and decades. Muammar Gaddafi as the Libyan head has ruled for 42 years although it looks increasingly unlikely he will manage to stay in power for his 43rd year. Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956 and it has had only two presidents. The first one, Habib Bourguiba ruled for 30 years followed by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was President for 23 years until the January 2011 uprising forced him out. President Hosni Mubarak also ruled Egypt for 30 years before being forced out.

In the case of  Tunisia and Egypt, it was non-violent civil uprising to led to the ouster for their respectively leaders. The resistance was bloody for the protesting people. Many lost their lives. An estimated 800+ people died at the hands of security forces in Egypt in the first half of 2011. In many ways Tunisia laid down the marker for the rest of the Arab world and will be viewed by history as the catalyst for change. The January 2011 success of Tunisia was followed by non-violent civil resistance and disobedience in countries like Egypt and Syria.

The prosecution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has largely been an American show. They send their armies and toppled the Iraqi regime. Then they caught Saddam and handed him over to the locals. Saddam's hearing was short, swift and brutal (and well deserved) but none of it would have been possible without the Americans. Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali however became the first ruler in memory to face justice arranged and dispensed entirely by the people whom he ruled for more than two decades. He escaped to Saudia Arabia and was sentenced to 35 years 'in absentia'. Public perception has always been that such powerful men remain out of the reach of law. That the law does not apply to them in the same way it does to the common people. With Hosni Mubarak now in custody and charges laid down against him, this is expected to change. Mubarak's trial will be the next landmark for people from the Arab world. It has garnered the maximum eyeballs from across all the Arab worlds. The rest of them Dictators better watch out. The winds of changes are blowing across the Arab world. Syria and Libya are next in line for revolutions.

* Longest serving rulers in the modern world have not come from Arab countries. Cuba comes first, with 49 years of rule by Fidel Castro. North Korean President Kim-II sung has been in power for 45 years. I am discounting royalty.
* If Tunisia is be regarded as the catalyst for change in the Arab world then Mohamed Bouazizi  has a curious role to play. He was an ordinary poor street vendor supporting a family of 8 members. In December 2010 he self-immolated protesting against the humiliation and injustice meted out against him by the local police and bureaucracy. His protest and government apathy and high handedness to public outrage ultimately led to Abidine Ben Ali ouster by January 2011. Sadly he did not survive to see the day.

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Constitutional rights of Anna Hazare and Government strategies.

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Everyone and his dog knew that come 16th of August 2011, the anti-corruption movement would gather fresh momentum. The Anna Hazare movement and the Government of India were headed for a showdown. At 7:30 AM on the 16th, he was arrested because he would have broken prohibitory orders of the local police and staged a fast unto death.

The media coverage was a full blast as expected. Political analysts were bemoaning the infringement of rights citizens of this country have as per the constitution. Opposition parties in an extremely rare show of unity screamed foul and even contemplated boycotting the Parliament for 3 days. Elsewhere across the country people came out in support even if they didn't "Jail Bharo" as Anna wanted. The Government's position as articulated by its numerous representatives on New channels was that it had nothing to do with the whole situation.

The government expects its people to believe that
1. The Delhi police independently and without any political backseat driving set stringent rules that Anna Hazare could not/would not except.
2. That Delhi police on its own visited Anna Hazare and arrested him as - preemptive measure - because he was going to go to JP Park.
3. That the Delhi police and the judiciary sent him to a 7 day remand on his declining to provide a bond for his release.
4. That the magistrate then had a change of heart and as is his prerogative, decided to send release orders to Tihar jail.

We can talk hoarse about how the government has no right to stop its citizen from protesting and discuss constitutional rights. We can also talk about how a citizen has no right to dictate what a duly and legally elected parliament should or should not enact. I think there is fair amount of arguments for both. If the Government thinks that it is being blackmailed then there is enough evidence to support such a thought process. Equally one can question the effectiveness of what civil right activitist are adamant is a watered down version of a Lok Pal Bill that will not be effective (or as effective) in tackling corruption.

What surprises me is that the Congress and the UPA have known about Anna Hazare's intentions on 16th August for many months now. While they tried to engage with him, some of its members called into question his integrity (for allegedly spending 2 lakhs for a birthday celebration), called him a stooge of the opposition, talked about conspiracy theories. At the same time another section talked about elected parliament (i.e. people's mandate) versus civil rights activists who are not the people's representatives. Its reactions and back tracking on the 16th show a lack of proper plan to handle an emotive and explosive situation. Media seems to suggest that Mr. Sibal and the Home Minister had planned the strategy. Now both of them are well known and eminent lawyers, articulate and well educated. If it is them that came up with this solution that I am very disappointed with the thinking of the UPA.

Perhaps with the Delhi police setting up conditions (only 3 days and less than 5000 people) for the fast and Anna Hazare refusing to accept them, gives the Delhi police a leg to stand on in a court of law. The police and therefore the Government can say it is following procedure in accordance to law. So what if a bunch of people invoke the memories of Emergency. At the same time the government is in a position to quell/disburse the movement without too much political damage. I do not know if that is what the political strategists of the government thought and I cannot but feel that they miscalculated on two fronts.
A. They underestimated the mood of the common people. By calling corruption an issue that bother's urban/educated populace is a very dangerous presumption. 
B. Even if they are right in their actions (which multiple lawyers claim they are not), politics is as much about perception as it is about right or wrong. Their actions have only made Anna Hazare's movement stronger.

Anna Hazare in all likelihood will walk out of Tihar Jail on his own terms, i.e. fast as long as he wants to with no restrictions on number of people. If the Government does not bow down to his terms that he will continue to fast from Tihar Jail. Either which way his goals are met.

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The blotch on Dr. Manmohan Singh's legacy

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I have long held the opinion that Dr. Manmohan Singh will be viewed by history as the most influential man in post Independent India. To me the three prime ministers from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty do not even come close to matching the achievements, the impact and the influence Dr. Singh has had in shaping modern India. For me two of his biggest achievements are the liberalization of the Indian economy and the Nuclear deal. Like the liberalization, the effects of the nuclear deals will be known in the coming decades as India begins to fully meet the energy needs of its population and economy.

There is so much to Dr. Manmohan Singh's achievements that cannot be listed here without rehashing his  Wikipedia entry. In a country where politics is dominated by all sorts of undesirable elements, here is a guy who is the most educated prime minister in our short history. He is more educated than all the other contemporary world leaders around. He is not a career politician, he has decades of real administrative experience spending much of his life in the Indian bureaucracy. Among the many posts he has held, he has been the Finance Secretary, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Governor of RBI before becoming the country's Finance Minister and eventually Prime Minister. Above everything else he is known and perceived to be a man of impeccable integrity.

These and for many other reasons it is painful to see my favorite Prime Minister preside over a government embroiled in many controversies and allegations of scams, with ex-ministers spending time in jail. This is after all a second term for Dr. Singh, the Congress and other UPA constituents. It was the Left parties that held back the first government from disinvestments, from pursing better relations with the U.S and objecting to the nuclear deals. The people gave a resounding answer to the Left objections by wiping them out; by taking them out of the equation for UPA's second term. Finally I thought, Manmohan Singhji would be allowed to move ahead with much need reforms without political pressure.

Since then UPA-II has been busy firefighting all the time. instead of steaming ahead They had to face the CWG scam and the 2G scam costing the country astronomical sums of money if you go by the CAG reports. Add to this is their perceived reluctance to implement a strong Lok Pal bill that can potentially be a strong deterrent against scams of such scale.

 I once read/listened to explanations from the Congress party and Dr. Singh about coalition compulsions. What I understood from all the beating around the bush was that the government will be a minority without its allies and therefore when an ally is found to be engaging in hanky-panky stuff, then coalition politics mandates you look the other way. It made sense to me actually. General Elections cost lakhs of crores of rupees and months of election drama with no guarantee of throwing up a stable government. So we have to deal with what we get in a multi-party election system and a population of a billion and more. For the sake of argument let us agree that the UPA had little choice in the matter when it came to Raja and co.

What I do not understand is what coalition compulsions forced the government to continue with Suresh Kalmadi as chairman of CWG Organising Committee (OC)? The stink associated with CWG rose much before the CWG got underway. It was missing deadlines, it had substandard construction in some places and material had been purchased at exorbitant rates. The government though continued with him. What was the compulsion? The only plausible answer is that by the time the government came to know what was happening, it had little choice but to bail Mr. Kalmadi and see that the CWG went through. The pride and the honour of the country was at stake.

Above all where the UPA-II government failed the people of this country is by sticking to the perception that they are not serious about tackling corruption. They have failed to convince me and millions others that they can stem the rot. That they do not have the political will to weed out the Kalmadi's from the system nor the will to stop their allies from doing what they want. My greatest regret is that presiding over this entire mess is my favorite but unfortunately very silent Prime Minister masterfully practicing the art of coalition politics. 

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