Ministerial birth control measures

The union health minister has come up with a one of a kind solution for population control – Watch more TV. He says if people spend more time watching TV, their appetite to indulge in activities that lead to population growth will reduce. I totally agree with him, the reality shows and soaps in Indian television sure are capable enough to make any productive men and women who watch them impotent, ‘unseeded’ tennis players in no time.

Budgetary bewilderments

Union budget analysis is one ritual that news analysts(of all sizes and shapes) in our country perform every year because it’s a tradition that we follow for many centuries though we don’t exactly know why we do it. Legend has it that this has been observed by news analysts from the time the first budget was presented by Kautlia when he was the finance minister in Chandragupta Maurya’s ministry in the 2nd or 3rd (or it could be 4th also) century B.C.

This author too is a big believer of the power of union budget because it’s the only thing powerful enough to increase the price of cigarettes and reduce the price of LCD TV at the same time. Unfortunately, this time around I missed the budget presentation and the entire pre and post budget tele-poisoning due to some other engagements and will not be able to give you a detailed impact analysis here. However, from my years of experience in analyzing budgets, I can do a quick review anytime, anywhere - even without any prior knowledge of the budget in discussion as well, here is how it goes.

Traditionally, budgets are events where some taxes will be cut while some others will be introduced so that the overall tax-weight of the country is balanced. This year also the tradition is followed, which you as an ‘aam aadmi’ would have already noticed. Also one key factor to note about budgets in India is that they are always pro-poor, growth-oriented and forward looking for you if you are a supporter of the ruling party, but will always lack ‘substance’ if your loyalties lie with the opposition. Though no economic theory explains this phenomenon, my conclusion is that it’s because nobody else is interested in it. Otherwise a third opinion sure would have been floated by now.

The most important factor you will notice about the union budget is that the finance ministers always carry the same brown suitcase when they come for budget presentation. This is also one of the reasons why opposition always say there is nothing new in this budget. I recommend the FM change the suitcase next time to a back-pack or something that’s more contemporary so that you can bring the opposition on your side to some extent. Else they will always keep shouting and screaming like a ‘responsible(for all the noise) opposition’, no matter how many benefits you announce for parliamentarians, ex-parliamentarians, their kith and kin in the budget.

Another main item(no number though) in any budget’s agenda will be to reduce the number of people living under the poverty line. The measures towards achieving this include a budgetary proposition to lower the line further so that more poor can jump to the other side. In the past also many poor who tried jumping over the line have broken many national records in that process, some even broke their own necks as well. It’s also worth noticing that this time the FM aims inclusive development, unlike earlier where we were looking for exclusive development. This in my opinion is a good move because a change is always good, look how Obama won the presidential election hands down.

Agriculture is one sector that will always get a higher amount set aside in every budget, I recommend we stop this because our agricultural production is always inversely proportional to the amount set aside Y-O-Y. Though this could be explained economically that the more money you set aside, the more will be ‘consumed’ by the babus and middle men, I would like to go superstitious on this because after all our entire agriculture sector depends on the divine intervention of rain gods. I suggest we set aside less money and more rain-pooja equipments for the agriculture sector next year on, and to ensure more religious coverage, set aside few Mullas and Pastors as well.

Then next big topic of budgetary discussion will be the amount set aside for uplifting our under performing Public Sector Undertakings or PSUs. I assume this year also the FM has followed the tradition of pumping more and more tax money into them because only then they can live up to their name – of being Undertakers of Public’s money.

I’m forced to wind-up this analysis here for two reasons. One that I’m an economically weaker science graduate to analyze it any further, secondly I’ve a solitaire game going on parallel and I find it much more amusing at the moment. But one thing that I would say is that this is not an inclusive budget as the government proclaimed, the FM missed out setting aside funds for many of the emerging weaker classes in our society such as homo-bi-a-trans-sexuals, young MPs, Ex-terrorists, LokAyukta victims, Left party general secretaries, Sania lovers…the list is long. That’s why I say this is not a complete, inclusive budget at all.

Newsweak

I had been a regular reader of Newsweek, initially by subscribing hard-copies and later through web because I turned green environmentally and red financially by then. I chose Newsweek because Fareed Zakaria was making a lot of sense most of the time irrespective of what the rest of America and the East thought about each other.

But this one article that appeared in Newsweek website recently surprised me, which presents us "The Fifty Books of our times" . I went and browsed through the list, eager to find some of the greatest works in world literature. The authors started with 'We know it's insane', 'no one needs another best-of list etc', and I was wondering then what are they up to. But on reading the list, I got why they are taking an advance bail. I think a more apt title could have been "34 American books of our times and 16 others to make it 50". So the conclusion is that literature doesn’t exist in any other parts of the world. Sartre, Camus, Chomsky, Kafka, Marquez… such names simply don’t belong to our times, may be they are all too futuristic? Or I’m too dumb? Yes, you guessed it right, the answer is - both.

The pink panther show

This report says dozens of National ‘Panthers’ Party members protested against a court verdict that legalizes homosexuality. Good to know that there are still dozens of panthers left in the country and also that they are all heterosexuals because if such endangered species turn homosexual, it will be a big concern for the conservationists and the wild-life department.

Racial nuts

It’s high time the United Nations declare racism against Indians as a pandemic I think, its spreading faster than all the other flues put together. Here is another victim, a town councillor of Indian origin in the U.K whom a fellow councillor called “Coconut” . Your question obviously will be can inanimate things like nuts have race, well the answer is that anything that can symbolically represent a race can also be a racial thing. Since coconut is 'brown outside and white inside’, it perfectly resembles a person of Indian origin living like a white in the West, hence coconut is a racial nut is the theory.

Now if we extend this theory further, we can associate many other human groups with fruits, vegetables, nuts etc. Here are some that comes to my mind right now,

Onion – Layers of skin, nothing inside – Politicians?

Castor beans – Black outside, poisonous inside – Lawy...ok, I don’t want to get sued, so let me stop imagining further, you can continue.

Majority, minority and the rest

I’m a strong believer of democracy because I don’t have another alternative to strongly believe in. But that doesn’t mean I’m in agreement with majority bullying minorities, I value rights of minorities of all types, as long as they don’t hold hundreds of neutrals* hostages in traffic jams by conducting rallies in cities to score over their majority counterparts. This post is on some of the challenges our country is facing today because of having too many kinds of majorities and their corresponding minorities with many unfortunate neutrals getting caught in between.

As I stated earlier, I respect minorities, be it the religious, racial, trans-racial, cultural, trans-cultural, genderal(a better word than ‘sexual’, which makes me feel ‘harassment’ follows), trans-genderal, linguistic, professional, physiological, psychological, habitual … the list goes on which means I got to respect almost anybody because everybody is some or other type of minority in our country. Now that more and more of these minorities are coming out of the closets where they claim the majority had hitherto locked them in, I think the government should take a strong stand on their rights and wrongs to avoid majority-minority tussles.

What is the most essential thing a typical minority needs? Freebies? Job reservations? Educational concessions? Or is it constitutional equality? All these can be arranged easily by amendments in the law, which is easy. But if the problem is the attitude of majority towards them (neutrals are neutralized, they have no attitude, no emotional attachments, no particular affinity towards anything anyway), then we got to plan better because that involves a lot of work. We might have to try all four ancient political methods - Sama, Dana, Bheda, Danda (in the reverse order as we always do) – to stop the majority’s discrimination against the corresponding minority. Let me explain why this is difficult with a scenario study(Please note that the scenario is fictitious, any resemblance to any majority/minority living or dead could be because you are a pervert).

Say you are a member of majority who think men are men and women are women, and children are of both, by both, for both is the only possible ‘genderal’ orientation. For argument sake let’s call this majority as ‘the shortsighted’. It’s not that easy to educate you that among other groups of people things are not that simple, there men can be either men or women and women can be either women or men and some men and women can be both while some others can be neither, depending on what the situation demands. This many permutations and combinations are simply too much for (majority) shortsighted to accept because they are all bad in math.

Now the question is how do we educate them? Can we have school text books changed? That means Kabil Sibal and his team got to do hell a lot of rework on the present education system that they are already planning to mess-up, especially places where we teach morality, religion, physiology, anatomy and stuff like that. Now even if we decide to educate the younger generation of ‘shortsighted’ against discrimination, what about their adults? Mr.Sibal has no control on them, he cannot bring them back to school except for the usual Parent-Teacher pandemonium, unless of course somebody sues all the ‘shortsighted’ adults and hires Mr.Sibal as the attorney.

Now let us look at the possible ways to influence adults. One option is by using Mr.Chidambaram and his forces to force them to accept the minorities, but this is 21st century and we are a democracy, Mr.Chidambaram will not do anything that will get his party voted out in the next election, public is simply too aware these days. The other option is to hire Amitab Bachchan, Rajani Kant and the likes to run ad campaigns. Again a lot of adults are not fans of movie stars, who will influence them? Can we hire Bollywood item-girls to do the job? I doubt because there is a limit to how much flesh somebody can eat, also what about ‘shortsighted’ adult women? Bollywood’s Chest-nut item-boys look too dumb to influence their own girlfriends, let alone somebody else.

Now, there is another future problem as well. Say somehow we managed to play a lot of cards – Mr.Sibal, Mr.Chidambaram, Mr.Bachchan, Miss.Fleshly, Mr.Chestnut etc – and somehow managed to make the majority accept the minority. Then what if the majority transform to minority - like what happened in the case of religions in the past - seeing the privileges, freedom etc that the minority enjoy? Don’t we have to again start from scratch (our own backs I mean) to safeguard the majority who now became a minority? That’s why I say the majority-minority equation in our country needs a clear strategy to handle; it’s a very complicated problem, more complicated than even Rakhi Sawant's Swayamvar I would say.

Unfortunately, I’m not a philosopher, political thinker/tinker, think tank, water tank or not even a tv-expert to suggest a solution to this ever prevailing problem, all I can say is this majority vs minority is an issue that needs more government attention, it needs a permanent solution that takes care of the interests of both minorities and majorities of all kinds, at the same time protect the neutrals who just want to live their lives, pay their mortgages, bring up their children and die.

*Neutrals - those who enjoy neither majority, nor minority status and privileges.

Why nobody thought about this earlier?

The Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) believes that Meira Kumar was made Speaker of the Lok-Sabha just to keep her away from people, and also that, in this position she will not be able to do anything for the welfare of her community according to this news report

Since I’m also equally ignorant on the Constitution and the above constitutional positions like the BSP, I agree with them, we shouldn’t appoint people from any type of minorities to such toothless and sluggish roles because that will hamper the uplifting of the community they belong to. However, we don’t have to abolish these positions, we can effectively use it for handling terrorists and mafia - catch hold of all their masterminds and appoint them at these posts, since they cannot do anything from there for their ‘community’(the terror-groups and Mafiosi I mean), the community itself will soon die without leadership. We don’t have to spend those millions on intelligence, arms and ammunition also. Yes! I think I’ve found a solution to all our problems! Thanks Team-BSP, you are welcome to join my government whenever I form one, let’s build a new nation together; one full of statues.

Intra-racial racism

Racial problems are still haunting us Indians, I think it's becoming the second biggest social issue; after reality shows. What concerns me is that the racial attacks are taking new dimensions - with Indians starting to racially abuse their own countrymen and countrywomen. The first known victim of this intra-continental racism is a VVIP who complained about it in an international conference on water resources. He says people from other parts of India racially abuse him by asking whether he is an Indian. You might be wondering how that is racist, my question is not only that, I also want to know what’s the connection between water problems and racism - unless of course the water in discussion here is of a different ‘spiritual’ level altogether.

Whatever that is, the point is that whether enquiring about somebody’s nativity/nationality is racial abuse. Even if you agree with those who think it is, the question that remains is whether an Indian asking another fellow Indian his/her nationality can be racial or not. Now that a lawmaker himself says it is, I got to agree. Now I remember, a cab driver in Delhi once asked me whether I was from the south. The cabbie got away with that since I was not this informed a person at that time. Else I could have dragged him to the nearest police station and would have ended up bribing the cops for getting both of us out.

Be careful - is what I want to say to my readers. Hereafter if you meet a person and want to check on his/her nationality because you cannot deduce it due to the artificial hair color or the made up English accent or both, don’t inquire on the nationality directly, you can get into trouble because that’s a racist question. Instead, – supposing the person is from Nepal - ask “Are you related to Madhav Nepal”. Since this is a family related question, it cannot be racial. If it’s a Nepali woman whom you are trying to ‘nationalize’ without hurting her racial sentiments, ask whether she is related to Manisha Koirala, she may even buy you a coffee, let alone being upset about racial abuse. Now, if the person looks like having a Dravidian origin, you can check on their kinship with Rahul Dravid and if that sounds too stupid, ask about his/her favourite dish/film star, you will get some clue easily.

This intra-subcontinental racism brings in administrative problems as well, compared to its inter-national equivalents. Because currently there is no ministry in-charge of ‘highly condemning’ these domestic racial abuses. Hitherto we only had trans-national racism; hence we had that job split between ministries of External and Overseas Indian affairs, depending on who grabs the mike first. The National Human-Rights Commission that we have itself is violating human rights(as reported here ), so no hope there. I recommend setting up a Ministry of Racial Abuses, that way couple of more coalition partners can be bought without horse trading as well.

Before I take leave, I’ll leave you with a question – The question is whether a person buying a fairness cream/ hair color is racially abusing herself/himself as well, because essentially what he/she is stating is that dark skin/hair is bad and is trying to become fair-skinned, fair-haired, harebrained etc, isn’t that racist too?

Reincarnations revealed

Those who are hungry for some real news, I mean other than the usual murky stuff like recession, sarkozy, burqa, Barkha, bakra etc, here is some solid meat(ok, paneer if you are veggie) - a researcher has found that "Gandhi has been reborn, and his name in the current incarnation is Van Jones" .

According to the said researcher, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam was Tipu Sultan as well. Though the write-up don’t say how he deduced that except for the rocketry connection, I think he is right because there are a lot of similarities between the two if you look closely. Both are men - which also means both are not women and children, both are connected to Bangalore airport(Dr.Kalam worked @HAL,ADE near old Bangalore airport, Sultan was born @Devanahalli, near new Bangalore airport), both are connected to weapons, both became heads of states…now if somebody confirm about the Sultan’s hairstyle as well, the hypothesis can be proclaimed completely accurate.

Hang on…I have a feeling I was Abraham Lincoln. Here is why - both of us agree slavery is a bad thing, both our first names don’t start with Z, both of us got a mouth exactly below the nose, gosh! Lot of similarities, so hereafter address me Mr. President, else I’ll ask my ghost to spook you, even if you live outside the Whitehouse.

What if the fence starts eating the crops?

The national human rights commission has been fined by the court for doing human rights violation . I’m worried now because we also have national commissions for Women, Child welfare etc as well.