Yet another human observation – The war in Iraq, Ambedkar statue and Bertrand Russell

The headline said it all – three killed, sixty injured in Dalit protests in Osmanabad over the desecration of B.R. Ambedkar’s statue in Kanpur.

So an Ambedkar statue is damaged by someone in Kanpur and subsequently Maharashtra goes up in flames. The Deccan Queen – a train that runs between Mumbai and Pune is burned by Dalit protesters and three people are killed in a number of different ways. Around a hundred buses are damaged in Mumbai in the ensuing violence.

It really is such a global phenomenon. To mobilize masses for any kind of cause by politicians or miscreants ( in a vast majority of cases, the terms can be used extremely interchangeably) is such an easy thing to do. Whether its the war on Iraq, which at one point was thought as a great experiment by a majority of the American people or be it mobilizing the Dalit in India to somehow convince them that their interest as a community was under attack because some statue was damaged in faraway Kanpur.

The former results in monumental regional crisis and three thousand dead soldiers ( an overwhelming majority of who are so painfully young), the other results in damage to public property and more than a few people dead and injured.

My point is not to compare the two events. My point was to illustrate that it is so easy to control the emotions and feelings of the masses – in which ever scale desired by those in power to achieve their ends. Its not new – the masses have been manipulated into different areas for the benefit of power brokers throughout the course of human history.

We are made to believe that going to war is the only way we can ensure the safety of our children, the German nation during the 30’s was made to believe that the only way to protect the “Aryan” bloodline was to exterminate an entire group of people, the Islamic fundamentalists have made the millions of their followers believe that their causes ( real or wholly imagined) can only be furthered by killing innocent people in cafes, cars and trains. And the list can go on.

Bertrand Russell once said that humanity is composed of hordes of unthinking masses just waiting to be given a direction they could blindly follow. And these are but examples of that notion. We follow our saviours, our prophets, our leaders, our religions, our nations, our politicians – without expending that one trait that separates us humans from every other known form of life on this planet – the ability to think rationally – the ability to ratiocinate.

I suggest banning reality television to start solving this problem:)

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Blogging India: Indian Blogging Statistics (from MSN/Windows Live)

According to rediff.com, 42% of all online users in India read blogs. Apparently, 49% of all users read blogs for reasons of “entertainment”.  There are a lot of esoteric statistics about the phenomenon of Indian blogging – but I’ll leave that to the article reproduced below.

What I find heartening is that MSN and Windows Live actually wrote up a report titled Blogging India – which I am assuming is based on real research and polls.

Reproducing the article below from here. (Rediff.com)

India’s blogosphere is driven by youth and a
passion for self-improvement and entertainment with 42 pre cent of
online users reading blogs to stay informed about world events; 49 per
cent citing entertainment as the main reason they read blogs, and blogs
written by business leaders ranking as the most interesting, states an
MSN and Windows Live report titled Blogging India.

The
Indian research also highlighted that while growing in popularity in
India the blogging community is still nascent with only 14 per cent of
India’s netizens actively blogging while 39 per cent was aware of blogs.

India’s
blogosphere is heavily dominated by men; three quarters (76 per cent)
of its bloggers are male. India’s blogosphere is also fueled by young
adults with 54 per cent of bloggers between the ages of 25-34, 32 per
cent under 25, and 15 per cent over 35.

The
report also states that around 87 per cent spend up to five hours per
week reading blogs or updating them while half of all blogs receive 10
visitors or less a week (the long-tail effect).

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The state of Indian cricket

As is customary, Indian cricket is in doldrums yet again. After months of showing promise, in what was touted as an emblem of the new, confident, self assured India – our “boys of blue” are back to doing what they do best – uninspiring, tepid cricket – losing to whomever they are pitted against – and in the process, yet again, causing a lot of blues to our cricket crazy nation.

As the author writes this, India has lost yet another ODI in South Africa very tamely. The issue has been discussed in the Indian Parliament and Dilip Vengsarkar has been promptly dispatched to communicate to the captain the “feelings of the nation”.

Of course, that isn’t going to do a whole lot of good to a team that is basically inept on the cricketing field (save those glorious moments every two years or so) and very adept in any other profession apart from playing the game – specifically around modelling for and endorsing soaps, toothpastes, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, colas and kachhas.

India should stick to being cricket regulators – we do that rather well. We bring a lot of revenue to the game, we can mobilize world opinion to fire errant umpires, we can take on ICC head to head on broadcast rights – we do all that very well.

But unfortunately, when it comes to playing the game – we are a flash in the pan at best and an utter disgrace at worst.

Here’s signing off on my undying support to the Indian Cricket Team after 31 years of endless, unquestioning support.

GFY!

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Sprint EVDO problem solution

To continue with my earlier post – where I had reported that my Sprint EVDO card has started behaving in a very erratic manner after a firmware upgrade from Sprint ( Firmware upgrade: 160). My connection would continually keep getting dropped every five minutes or so regardless whether I was in an EVDO or Rx1TT coverage area.

After some experimentation, it turns out that the card works absolutely fine if I don’t use the Sprint Connection Manager to connect; instead, I use the Windows Dial Up Connection (in Network Connections).

So I tried this yesterday at around 7.30 pm and I have been online without getting dropped since.

Just an FYI- just incase, anyone else faces the same issues I have.

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Umrao Jaan: Music review

I very rarely do the same post on both my blogs. But, in the interest of dissemination of information about this absolute gem I recently heard and wrote about – Umrao Jaan’s music – I decided to post the link on this blog as well.

Read the post here

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Interesting Statistic….

Is Belgium a really sad place? The top cities that searched for “Sadness” in google – the top 3 are in Belgium.

Take a look!

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My Kind of Exile: Tenzin Tsundue

I stumbled across this article – apparently the Winner of Outlook/Picador Non-Fiction Essay competition. Written by Tenzin Tsundue – a Tibetian born in India and living as a refugee without a nation, like so many of his country mates.

Beautiful essay. Read it. Offered without any other comments.

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Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan Violence: A Lesson in History

The New York Times today ran a news article on how the recent upsurge of violence in Afghanistan is based out of Pakistan. And how Pakistan’s effort in stopping the training, the financial backing, the supply of equipment to terrorists is stopgap at best.

We’ve all heard time and time again – about how relatively impotent Pakistan is in stopping dubious activities on its terrorist infested, wild, tribal lands of its North West Frontier Province. Given the social, political, religious and historical nature of the tribes that inhabit those lands, it is understandable why it would be difficult for the government of Pakistan to really have control as to what transpires there.

Having said that, Pakistan’s intents towards a non- Taliban Afghanistan have always been circumspect. Readers need to understand Pakistan’s predominant national psyche. Pakistan, for all its fragmentation and imminent threats of breaking up along sectarian lines, has survived on a common national platform of paranoia and hatred towards India. It has manifested in the three wars fought over Kashmir, it manifested itself in Musharraf’s inspired mis-adventure to take Kargil from India using insurgents and regular Pakistan Army troops, it manifests itself in Pakistan opposing any pro-India action in any world forum – be it the United Nations or the World Bank.

So given this almost religious obsession of hatred of India as an entity (strangely enough, not as a people – because of the cultural affinity), Afghanistan has always been a country that Pakistan has looked at to providing strategic depth against a much larger, much more powerful and increasingly much more prosperous India.

Pakistan, especially since the reign of Gen. Zia Ul-Haq ( a close ally of the United States, a military dictator and a rabid India hater) has actively encouraged and incubated the growth of these fundamentalist Islamist forces – which they wanted to engage in a low intensity war against India in Kashmir. Which is why, it found natural alignment with the Taliban government of Afghanistan – it was one of the two countries in the world that recognized the Taliban government. It offered Pakistan of what it needed the most – strategic depth against India as also the ability to tap into the millions of disaffected, fundamentalist Muslim youth to go to Kashmir to fight the “holy war”. And this had been going on for 15 years till September 11th 2001.

Hence, now, post September 11th, to have a government in Afghanistan that is obviously close to India is antithetical to Pakistan’s historical and geopolitical goals.

September 11th forced “alignment” of Pakistan with the United States to fight the “war on terror”. So consequently, now, Pakistan is caught between a rock and a hard place – almost literally as much metaphorically. On the East, Pakistan has India – a country with an economy on fire, with vast intellectual capital, poised on a historical transformation of the nation. On the west, it has Afghanistan with a moderate government desperately trying to strengthen its foothold. Both countries are democracies. And Pakistan is stuck in the middle of the two. With a military dictatorship.

And to make matters worse, now the fundamentalists are getting restless because of Pakistan’s much vaunted cooperation with the United States. And the United States is getting impatient because Pakistan’s military junta – specifically its rather loud, dramatic, clownish and ineffectual president has been promising a lot and delivering very little. Yes, it would occasionally bomb its own country ( with American drones every now and then – specifically before a high-profile state visit or before an election in the United States) – but generally, very little.

And the funny thing is Pakistan is a punjabi dominated society – and punjabis are very liberal, rather hedonistic people. Just goes on to show, what a lack of democracy and very bad long term strategy can do to a nation.

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Take 2

To continue my rant, Performancing seems to have stopped working again on Blogger. Wrote this long post on Borat – which I had to subsequently post on this blog and not on the other blog I wanted.

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“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” lawsuit

For anyone who has watched Borat – remember the scene when Borat gets picked up in a trailer by some college kids on a road trip – then talk trash, get drunk and eventually, after he learns that Pamela Anderson isnt exactly a pure virgin he wants to take as a bride, gets heartbroken and subsequently, really drunk.

Well, it turns out that those guys have apparently sued the studios for apparently being “duped” into making those statements- in the lawsuit they say, they were made to believe that they were being shot for a documentary outside the United States – as if that would make their bigoted, ignorant, sexist statements more legitimate. (For the benefit of those who have not watched the movie – they go ranting around how slavery was a good thing, about how women deserve to be sex slaves etc etc. You get the picture.)

My point is if these people suffer mental duress, they need to suffer mental duress. If they suffer “material losses” – it is just as well that they do.

This culture of suing for mistakes and choices you make in life, this culture of everything being excusable and not taking accountability is one of the biggest social banes of this country.

Frankly, it sickens me that a bunch of privileged, uncouth, drunk, bigoted morons – can sue the movie company for essentially just letting them say what they believed in all along.

Anyways, my personal theory about why Borat, being the kind of rather offensive, crude comedy it is, did so well is because it brings out, what most people, in parts believe. And it brings it out without holding any punches back – which is why people are disgusted and are attracted to it at the same time.

All in all, Borat is a funny movie that isn’t funny.

And to hell with those trailer guys. They got what they deserved.

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