I continue to be amazed at the emotional outpouring over Sanjay Dutt's sentencing... For days, a starved media ran feverish campaigns collecting the opinion of the man and woman on the street about whether Sanju baba (Baba?!) was a criminal/terrorist or not. And quintessentially, many a man and woman on the street offered that he was not... how could he after spouting all the Gandhian wisdom in a movie and after all the good that happened in the world after the movie was released.
So, said one of the teens into a mike thrust in his face, ``In my view, he should be forgiven.'' Thank god the judiciary is not yet governed by arbit mush but the law as laid out in black and white. It's a different matter that the law of the land does not apply uniformly for all. When Sanjubaba was imprisoned as an undertrial over a decade ago, he was suitably lodged in the JJ hospital's ICU after he complained of chest pain or some such. (I forget the details now). When he continued to enjoy his stay in the air-conditioned and private comforts of the ICU without reason, a good-willed doctor brought it to my notice and got me his case papers which said the man was fit.
I wrote about it in the daily, `The Independent,' where I worked back then. The then TADA judge, J N Patel, took cognisance of the piece and ordered that Sanjubaba be shofted to the general ward IF necessary instead of depriving a needy patient.
If I recall right, the actor stayed in the general ward for long thereafter without reason and mostly remained ``under observation.''

Take his sentence. Mumbai Mirror has rendered a sterling service to Mumbaikind by highlighting how two other accused in similar circumstances have been convicted under TADA but not Dutt. Why would a court, following the thumb rule of law, follow two different sets of parameters for similar cases?

Milking the farmers dry..

Ok guys. I get the message.
Now that I have opened up comments, I have got some nice ``vicious'' ones, the ones I had specifically requested you fine people, with folded hands, NOT to send my way!!!
But guess what? what I didnt tell you in my mail was that your `dor' is very much in my hands. So, I will decide whether your comment makes it to the blog or not. Aha!
Thanks for the nice ones that have come so far, Anshu, Shammi and Arun (i.e. Dr Bhatt!).
Yes, do email me as you always do, if you don't have a blog here or cannot post a comment.

Sorry for behaving like a homing pigeon. But I can't help feeling amazed at this portly man we in the media indulgently call the `Maratha strongman. ' For those outside the state, I am talking about Sharad Pawar, the union agriculture minister and the BCCI chief. Should it be the other way round, going by his grading for each of these masks?
Last evening, the ticker on one news channel flashed, ``Eight more farmers commit suicide in Vidarbha'', (a region covering Nagpur, Amravati, Akola and all of central Maharashtra). On the screen was Pawar beaming over some Significant Moment of his life as BCCI chief.
The man sucks! Since this January, an average of three farmers have been committing suicide in Vidarbha region every day. The issue is multi-faceted and complex-- difficulty in getting seeds for organic farming, ignorance about multi-cropping, irrigation, loans going at 25 - 50% interest and so on. (have written a little more about this earlier on, for those who are interested.)
And what has this man, who has the gall to call himself an agriculturist, done in the past nine months? As far as I know, he has not bothered to pay more than one whistlestop visit to this region. Of course that visit boomeranged and most anguished farmers justifiably wanted to throw their vegetating produce at his face.
So what does our man do? He promptly drops the show, flies back to Delhi and plays boss at more welcoming places like BCCI. Any other self-respecting person in his place would have sworn not to look in any other direction until the farmers' lives got back on track. But here's a man who couldnt care less about the farmers or about Sonia Gandhi becoming prime minister so long as his kursi is firmly tethered to power. Someone needs to load-shed him.
It's India's misfortune that it's a democracy. Our skewed voting system enables us to vote in anyone who makes or promises to make a modicum of difference to our living space. So someone like Pawar can get away with this brazen callousness simply because he has improved life for himself and, in the process, for others, in his home town, Baramati, which religiously votes him to power poll after poll for 25 years. It's ironic that one region of Maharashtra (the farmers) can't do a thing because another region gives him a leg-up to Delhi.
Last heard, he was shuffling his feet in front of Sonia Gandhi to save his skin. The Sphinx was to address a Congress-I CMs' conclave at which the farmers' plight was expected to come up for discussion. It worked. The S commended his work at the conclave which mainly comprises packages and packages and promises of easier credit.
More on why he is so critical in this business of saving lives and agriculture (in that order) and why his packages are a sham. One, he is the agriculture minister. One expects him to deliver, and not the finance minister whose job it is NOT to fund cosmetic rescue efforts by his colleagues.
Two, Pawar is from Maharashtra, has been CM thrice, and continues to expect the state to fuel his ambition of becoming PM.
Three, in a brilliant perspective piece in DNA, food analyst Devinder Sharma gives a perfect insight into the crisis plaguing wheat cultivation today. The entire story can be safely co-opted for other crops as well.
The gist: Ever since the government began permitting private parties to buy wheat directly from farmers, India has become net importer of wheat from being an exporter--from 0.5 million tonnes, we now import 5.5 million tonnes (two million additional tonnes thanks to Pawar's honourable anxiety to prevent a `food scarcity') at the cost of Rs 5,500 crore. As private purchases created an artificial shortfall in public godowns, the government imports wheat. The price of imported wheat is Rs 1,100 per quintal, twice that of the government's procurement price of Rs 650. Why not pay this amount to the ailing Indian farmer instead of his American counterpart who already enjoys huge subsidies from his government?
Next, the government comes out with a Rs 2,480 crore saviour package purportedly to boost productivity in the 138 Indian districts producing wheat, but which actually helps the agribusiness lobby. So, we have generous hand-outs for sprinkler sets, gympsum supply and such. The sarkar mai baap is also actively discouraging higher yields by threatening to get out of procurement.
Yet, we had a wheat harvest of 72 million tonnes in 2004-05, enough to feed the country for a year. But does it matter?

Saw Lage Raho Munnabhai recently. Wasnt too sure whether it will do justice to Gandhiji but Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of the Mahatma, reassured me.
And of course, many were surprised that I, a self-professed Gandhi fan, hadnt seen it.
To keep my reputation intact, I marched into the multiplex (do they have any single screens left?!) with a dupatta and a muffler tightly drawn over my head (I had a huge cold and was on sick leave). As it turned out, the AC was smartly turned off midway and I was soon sweating.
The movie was sweet, of course, with not one politically incorrect word or glance. It was nice to see someone resurrecting Gandhiji in this manner, and the effect the movie had on people.
One small quibble.. it did not bring out the import of Gandhiji's superhuman persona, which is fine. But, on the contrary, it made him look a trifle sorry at least in one scene in which Sanjay Dutt shows the other cheek to the assaulter. Here, a casual reference to the fact that Gandhiji did not only believe in getting beaten up all the time would have helped. All his life, he protested violence. But he believed that violence is better than non-violence if someone is turning to non-violence out of fear of the opponent. As far as he was concerned, cowardice was a worse vice. And, I may be wrong, but this scene left me with the feeling that Gandhiji was preaching cowardice.
I am amazed at what this movie is doing to people. There are quizzes on the Mahatma, Gandhigiri problem-solving and so on. What I find ironic is that when the media needed to know whether the movie does justice to Gandhiji, it turned to his immediate family-- Tushar Gandhi and his aunts, etc. And to think, Gandhiji hardly got any time for his immediate family, caught up as he was in tending to his country-wide brethren. For a man who considered his family as just any other Indian family, it's a sad comment on how we have treated him by deciding that his legacy is limited to his family alone. Why on earth is he called Father of the Nation?
P.S. To me, Gandhiji's family is the real Gandhi family-- the first family of India but we choose to bequeath that title to the Nehrus who for reasons unknown (or probably well known) decided to adopt the surname, `Gandhi'.

I have been reading a biography of Albert Einstein, one of my favourites along with Isaac Newton since my childhood. Even he had to pay the price for being a Jew in pre-Nazi Germany and could therefore appreciate the virtue of non-violence and Gandhiji.
One of Einstein's comments that gripped me as a kid has been about his own relativity. He would stroll down the beach and often wonder at the universe (or space?) before him, and ponder over his own insignificance in the larger scheme of things. Like a speck of sand on the beach, he said.
If a genius of his order thinks this way, what are we? It is this humility that makes Gandhiji and him just so admirable.

Now, for a few good laughs:

My Mallu husband was born and brought up in Kerala. One fine day, he decided to up and study in Baroda, least daunted by the fact that he knew no Hindi, let alone Gujarati. There, he ganged up with a few fellow Mallu students to give us the benefit of some hilarious moments:

He bought a pair of slippers at a shop. The bill was in Gujarati. So, he asked the shop-keeper the price. The shop-keeper said something in Gujarati. My man thought he said 75. So, remembering someone's this-worldly advice about bargaining being the key to happiness in Gujarat, he said, ``No, give it to me for Rs 70.''
The shop-keeper stuck to the amount. After much head-banging, the shop keeper took out some currency notes and showed him Rs 45! ``It's only Rs 45,'' he said exasperatedly. ``Why should I take more?!''
Some sincerity this! And they still say Gujjus are money-minded.

After a few months, his Mallu friends grew confident of handling small talk themselves. So, at a restaurant, when they were served two plates of unda bhurji and they wanted to swap one for a curry, one friend bravely called the waiter, and brandishing the plates, said, ``ek unda bhurji jao, ek egg curry aao.''

The funniest is the anecdote about a friend who would go to the bus stop and, unable to read bus numbers in Gujarati, ask people around, ``Ye bus kiska hain?'' Not surprisingly, he got only funny stares and no answers.

One of his Mallu friends was left home alone one day. He was taught two Hindi words to tell the maid: ``Idhar saaf karo,'' pointing to the kitchen platform. When the maid came, the friend did as told. The bai nodded and told him, `` Ok. you need to take away all the stuff stacked on it first.'' To which he said, ``Idhar saaf.'' She said, ``Yes, but how do I clean with this mess around?'' To which he repeated, ``Idhar saaf.''
This apparently went on for a respectable amount of time after which the maid shook her head, slammed all the paraphernalia on the floor and went at it.

A softcore Mallu (as opposed to hardcore, because he thought he understood Gujjus well) had to see the doctor. But the clinic was closed. So, he asked some people nearby about the doc's whereabouts. He was told, ``Woh off ho gaya.'' ``Oh,'' said the friend, and went back home. The next day, he dutifully trudged to the clinic and heard the same story. And the third day too. After some reflection, he asked a friend, ``Does `off' mean a long holiday?'' The Gujju enlightened him, ``It means the doc is dead.''

Another Mallu had a funny experience with his doctor. He told the doctor, ``Kuch bhi khao shardi hota hai.'' The doc was foxed. How come? he asked. How can all foods cause a cold? After some decoding, each figured they were misinterpreting the other. The matrubhakt mallu meant vomitting and not cold, as `Shardi' in Malayalam is vomiting!

Here, I partly reproduce a mail sent to a friend abroad with some additional writing. Thought some of you might be interested:

The other day, I was speaking to a bureaucrat, who offers me a very typical take of the farmers' problem. Over the years, I have been watching thousands of acres of farmland disappear to make way for industrial, commercial and residential constructions.
I was asking him if he has any idea how much land has thus been sacrificed to so-called progress. He said urbanisation is an inevitable process and one must not resent it if villages disappear. I told him the farmers take the lumpsum money given for their fields and then have no steady source of income.
But he was on to bigger things. Even if villages dont exist in Maharashtra, he told me, it doesn’t matter because we the people don’t depend on the state for grains or pulses. We only get our fruits and veggies from our neighbourhood.
So what's the big deal? he said. Most farmers grow jowar and bajri for local consumption. That shouldnt bother us city slickers, he argued. When I pointed out the state’s popular crop, sugarcane, to him, he said only cash crops grow in Maharashtra for real sales and they don’t suffer. So it's perfectly alright if they die or sell their fields.
I remembered cotton but i decided to stop this silly conversation before it got more inane. When I told him Punjab and Haryana, the wheat bowl of India, too were seeing farmer suicides every day, he said, oh yes, but that should not concern us because Maharastra cannot do anything about it.
He implied thus that our concerns should be limited to what we can do something about. How callous and self-absorbed can we get?
If you look at how these dead farmers' families get relief, it's even more pathetic. Some junior official peeps into his home, asks his family questions. If he finds a family problem, there is no way the family gets any money; the suicide is promptly attributed to internal problems even if he has a huge outstanding debt staring in everyone’s face. If the land is not his name, he is doomed, and so on. And, just how much does this dead farmer get anyway if he kills himself? All of one lakh rupees, which comes, if it does, after six whole months or more. Some of these process have now been streamlined. But again, as someone said, one cannot take pride in giving prompt `compensation’ (such a disgusting term!) when we couldnt prevent the farmer from killing himself in the first place.
I seriously cannot understand what's wrong with us as people that we cant see the suicides clearly as something very wrong, unethical, unequal and outrageous.
The world over, the pattern of development is skewed. Urban agglomerates thrive at the cost of villages which ironically provide the feed for this parasitical growth.
India being agrarian (soon, we will saying this in the past tense), it cannot afford to blink at the problems facing its villagers. The entire community fabric of the village –its culture, spirit, and self-reliance, -- is coming apart. The crafts are dying, there is no colour left in the green belts, and the fields are starved of water, power.
The way I see it, we are paying the price for ignoring Gandhiji. India lives in its villages, he said, implying thereby and saying it loudly on too many occasions as well, take care of the farmer and his village and you will have taken India on the road to prosperity. Today, India lives in two halves—one half is upwardly mobile, prosperous and a go-getting wannabe while the second is a stark picture of poverty, deprivation and hunger. We depend on the villages instead of the other way round. So, shouldn’t wealth too flow from there instead of the other way round?
Even if you don’t agree with this argument, we urbanites are directly affected by this neglect of our rural countrymen. Thanks to ceaseless migration, life in cities has become difficult for each one of us. At least for that reason, lets speak up and stem the rot.

Today, I want to share with you an experience that gnaws at me...
Last week, I was on my way home by train when a eunuch jumped into the ladies first class compartment at Kurla. Slim, athletic build, bright red lipstick standing out in a made-up face. She squatted on the footboard, and started crying silently. No sobbing but I could see the tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
Not knowing what to do, I buried myself in the paper. We have been conditioned by society to fear eunuchs. But though I dont fear them much, I felt awkward about approaching her probably because of the others around and because I didnt know how she would react.
After 15 minutes of this should-i-should i-not, I decided to talk to her. I tapped her knees which were thrust protectively in front of her and asked her, ``kya hua?'' She ignored me. Again, I asked her, Kya hua? She continued looking down.
I turned to the door, and stood there. Suddenly, she looked up at me with a tear-stained face and said in perfect English, ``I am suffering from AIDS.'' I was stunned. She continued, ``I don't want to die. I love my mother very much. I dont want to leave her.''
I swallowed that with some difficulty. I had thought it would be a more manageable problem of abuse by cops and clients or some such thing, and I could help. Recovering, I asked her if she was taking medication-- the anti-retroviral therapy prescribed for AIDS patients. She nodded and started sobbing now. I told her not to worry, that many AIDS lived for 15 to 20 years and as she didn't seem to have any apparent health problem, she too would live. ``Nothing will happen to you,'' I told her uncertainly, not knowing what else to say. As we were nearing my station, I patted her shoulder, gave her some money and was about to jump off when she suddenly knelt down and kissed my dirty big toe. ``God bless you!'' she said with big teardrops shining in her eyes.
The lipstick took some removing...
Why do we shun eunuchs? Why can't they earn a decent living, like the rest of us? Instead of sympathising with them, we condemn her to a contemptible existence because of one organ gone wrong. And then, we condemn her again because she is forced to sell herself to eat.
We seem to accept all those men who torture, burn and murder their wives or rape other women much more easily. Isn't this too inequality of the sexes?
The thought keeps nagging me: what exactly was her fault? Do we shun people who have a hole in their hearts or don't have a limb? Do we throw them out of our homes and ban any civilised living for them? Gender profiling, what?

The past two days have been spent panicking over the next terror target. The fear was always in the air but it's now verily palpable. And while Britain and the US grind their teeth and rub their noses to the ground to ferret out potential terrorists, we in India are coping with a bigger crisis: The Government.
What was India's first reaction after 11/7 (isn't that how WE write our dates instead of 7/11 as most newspapers have been obligingly calling it?) ? None. On the third day, when the whole world was wondering what we are waiting for and when the country was agonising over the deafening silence, PM Manmohan Singh took a ``hard stand''. He said the talks between India and Pakistan ``may'' suffer. Wow!
All dailies lapped up his tough talk and nodded grimly in appreciation. What else did we expect? A complete freeze on all talk of talks with Pakistan? A crackdown on terrorist factories in Pakistan, and mass detention of the trouble-makers from SIMI and allied forces? Pressure on the US to bring Pakistan to book? A complete stop to all those friendly buses plying between the two countries and legitimising the transfer of terrorists and their lethal wares?
Nah! This is what right-thinking countries do. The US and the UK would do. We know what the US did post 9/11. We also know what the UK did after the 7/7 train bombings. Actually, we should leave the US out of this. It went too far. The Bush brand of terrorism which destroys countries is much, much worse than 9/11, by any standards. Many, like my mother, couldnt sleep for days after his attack onIraq, feeling for all the innocents being bombed. I actually began hoping Saddam wont be caught and was positively depressed when he was.
Just a few days ago, Tony Blair branded all subversive acts in Kashmir as terror acts. A big step that finally got India some kind of international recognition that the violence of Kashmir was not a local concern. Something we couldnt achieve with all our coaxing and tomes of proofs for decades, one single act of terroism on his home ground has managed.
Leaving aside its terror act in Iraq, the US too has done some hard sniffing and hard talk. A few days ago, Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed, founder of al Qaida’s political wing, Jammat ul-Dawa, was about to enter Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, to make some pre-Independence Day speeches when US pressure forced Pakistan to detain him in Islamabad. Sayeed’s right-hand man, Jia ur-Rehman Lukhvi, heads the operations in India and operates from Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir.
I dont know why we are so diffident. India has been very firmly yanked into the terror dragnet of late. But even as terror knocks at our doors every now and then, we are still unprepared to cope. It is still grappling with archaic policing methods, weak intelligence and political will – all of which erode its prevention and detection capabilities.
In May, when 13 kgs of RDX and a cache of AK-47 rifles were seized in Aurangabad, three key terror operatives – Fayyaz Kagzi, Rahil Sheikh and Zabiuddin Ansari – managed to flee in good time. Had they been nabbed, many believe 7/11 would not have happened.
If the police don’t err, the political bosses do. Every time, the cops grab a suspect, they are told to back off. The US and the UK, on the other hand, are known to be brutal in their treatment of suspects so much so that a Muslim constable in the Scotland Yard was stripped of sensitive duties after the 7/7 bombings last year. While that amounts to discrimination, what we have in India is reverse discrimination.
Nobody had heard of Raju Khan until he got a summons from a local police station inquiring about his recent visit to Dubai. The next day, Khan, who we now know is the son of choreographer Saroj Khan, was all over the papers. Some more Muslims were detained for questioning in different parts of the state, causing a first mention on byte-starved TV channels and then a full-fledged outcry in Asian Age. How dare they? fumed Seema Mustafa. (Only namesakeness, nothing more here!) Feeling left out, other papers including Times of India joined the chorus. Soon, police chief A N Roy was defending himself before the media and his political bosses, in that order for acts of omission he hadnt quite committed. ``We are questioning 3000 persons out of whom 800 are Hindus,'' he said plaintively.
What gives? Why can't he simply say yes, we are questioning everyone we think is suspect. If you don't want us to, dont complain when you get bombed. We could be wrong but then, we could be right too. We havent quite killed or tortured anyone yet. We are damned if we dont get a lead on the blasts, and we are damned if we question someone for a lead. How can this approach work?
Look at Australia. It has told the hardline Islamic radicals to buzz off if they want to crib about the country. Not very kindly too. Nobody found anything amiss. Imagine anyone even whispering something like that. They would be roundly packed off to oblivion.

In Mumbai at least, the police force is in a sorry state, thanks to weak will. A senior officer such as Hemant Karkare came back from a useful stint with central intelligence agencies to the Anti-Corruption Bureau instead of being lapped up by an intelligence wing—and that, after a three-month neglectful wait.
Similarly, many feel that the crime branch, which was once an elite force, should have been asked to lend its might to the Anti-Terrorism Squad in busting the blasts. As somebody told me, the line between terrorism and underworld is very thin and sometimes, not quite there. The crime branch’s inputs would have been invaluable, had it been pushed into service. The only hitch: who will tell the cat, our politicians?

Indian agencies has a long way to go before they achieve the wizardry and sophistication of their US counterparts. The book `The true face of Jehadis,’ by Pakistani journalist Amir Mir quotes from Gerald Posner’s book, `Why America slept..the Failure to prevent 9/11’ to narrate the skills used by the US to make a top al Qaida operative sing.
Pakistan was forced to hand over Abu Zubaydah, captured from Rawalpindi in March 2002, to the US. According to Posner’s book, the man was taken blind-folded to Afghanistan to a simulated Saudi jail with a created Saudi environment that made Zubaydah comfortable. He is alleged to have then told all about terror’s political patronage and Pakistani military sympathizers. This degree of conception, planning and execution is still unthinkable for us.
But if we aim there, we might manage a little better than we do now.

I am vehemently anti-quota having suffered because of such systemic ills myself. And I am all for this who-blinks-first between the students and the spent force-with-nothing-to-lose, Arjun Singh. In fact, I am puzzled at the way everybody is behaving as if it's only the students' nightmare. We have decided to stay mute outsiders. Each one of us gets directly affected by this nonsense. You will have more students with a substandard education-- he will pick only what he can understand-- treating us in hospitals.
The production quality all round -- whether it is a building, a newspaper, or a handbag, will suffer. And then, we'll all put a hand to our heavy heads to complain that we, as a nation, are never going to make it.
There must be something seriously wrong with this democratic system that allows everybody to prey on the aam aadmi. Doesn't he too have any fundamental rights? we pay for the so-called sins of our ancestors -- and for how long? Will someone please tell me what kind of payment/retribution is this that lets someone who didn't make the grade to get into a college leaving behind someone who did. Isn't it far better to let that someone be funded for his education but that he try for the seat on merit?
what message are we sending out to all, as my father says? That the backward classes, SCs, STs, Vimukta Jatis, Nomadic Tribes, OBCs are all no good with their brains? That they need a concession in marks rather than money? What exactly are they weak in-- brains?
Let's all spare a thought for the future and take our lives in our hands!!

At last I have hit pay dirt!
My last post earned me lots of wrath from people who defy branding. One asked me why `I' had pegged the number of Bangladeshis in the city at 1 million. ``why not two or three?'' demanded an activist. A friend queried sarcastically if I didn't want Bangladeshis in my backyard, who did I want? More clones of myself? Well!
Didn't know the choice was soooo limited.
Another one suspected I was a BJP supporter. If the BJP indeed is raising this point, -- I don't remember the last time they spoke on the subject -- could it possibly be because Bangladeshis are NOT Indians? IF the BJP is indeed vocal about it, surely it is not as if the presence of Bangladeshis hurts only Hindus? Give it a thought. At least there is merit in THIS logic of theirs, presuming it's theirs. (More on how it hurts each one of us later.)
Conversely, are the Congress and its clones quiet because Bangladeshis are Muslims and by virtue of that fact, should be allowed to settle down into OUR country? Shouldn't you recognise an illegal immigrant as an illegal immigrant irrespective of his religion or nationality?
Yes, we did have a policy to resettle Hindu refugees from Bangladesh for a while but that owed to the terrible political climate of that country which persecuted them, leaving them with no option but to flee.
The casual mention of Bangladeshis has indeed been very revealing.
Of course, there were several -- many, many more than the hate mailers -- who enjoyed or agreed with what I had written. But the problem is they are a silent majority. It's absurd that a wrong view prevails simply because the people with these views are forceful, and those with a perspective prefer to sigh and resign themselves to their fate. Lest they be tainted as BJP supporters!
Now, let me explain to my friends and foes why every issue need not be viewed with coloured glasses. For decades now, everyone has been complaining about Mumbai bursting at the seams. The city has been short of power, roads and water. Check out the slums where many of these Bangladeshis -- I talk about them because all my respondents are now talking about them. I would ideally include all encroachers into the picture -- are squatting. They consume water from punctured pipes or illegal supply; they get illegal power, and of course they hog our roads.
Someone will promptly argue they consume less water than families living in buildings. True, but then, they shouldnt be consuming any water at all.
While cribbing about load-shedding, we automatically point accusing fingers at the utilities for not planning for the future. But the encroachers-- the illegal immigrants-- are a co-accused in this case. They are responsible for snatching away portions of infrastructure that was built for us-- the legimitate citizens of the city who pay for everything we use. or at least are supposed to.
Yes, there are those obnoxious developers preying on every inch of legitimate space building legitimate towers that draw more people into the city and that consequently also legitimately poaches our resources. I would be the first to agree that their activities have caused our resources to shrink much more than the illegal immigrants. But since these guys are a matter of policy-- we have no vision in place to cope with such an influx into the city or means to deny them their right to living here -- unlike the illegal immigrants who are necessarily not wanted.

So, the next time you have an issue with the city's crumbling infrastructure, look out of your balcony. Part of the problem probably rests close to it. And think. Are you large-hearted enough to permit all countries to settle down in your city as if it were their birthright? I am not sure if there is any political philosophy that allows this.
But do give me all that headbanging. Go on. Makes the blog a better place to be in.

Ok, this is extremely loose talk...if you hang on too long, you may find yourself suspended from your senses! Don't say you weren't warned. You're of course welcome to crib your heart out later!

The first rains of the season pulverised Mumbai, reduced the sprawling megapolis to a crumbling, stumbling sea of people stuck at the predictable bottlenecks dotting the city.
And, typically, the media came down heavily on the usual suspects: the municipal commissioner -- whose own office had to go without power, the traffic police, and of course the `State Government', that unwieldy monolith conjured up by voters to bear their share of responsibilities as well.
Suddenly, we found ourselves back to square one. After all those endless trips to Mithi river-- you got the feeling that the river by itself would cure the city of its flooding woes -- by everyone who was any kind of authority, we had been comforted into believing 26/7 was the climax of our waterlogging history. And that this time, we would all be singing, rim jhim gire saawan....all four months.
But alas, nature had other plans. So, we are back to doing what we do best. We throw garbage out of our window-- check out the railway tracks ALL ALONG the harbour line and piles of debris on EVERY road we walk on ---and curse the BMC for not clearing it up.
Where else would you find citizen apathy of this level? The city is like a vacuum cleaner that never gets cleaned. It keeps sucking in people in thousands every day. Where they live and what they do cannot be important because this is after all a democratic country and we all have the right to live where we please. Even if we are not Indian.
The last time I wrote on the subject, intelligence agencies pegged the number of Bangladeshis alone at one million. Do you know how many people this means? The city has a census population of 12 million.
And this is the official count. There are any number lurking in places like Navi Mumbai-- there has been a surfeit of beards, sherwanis and fez caps in places like Sanpada in the past ten years and Thane, not to speak of the rest of the country.
They invent a ration card and become citizens of the country. Have you noticed of late how many crimes and accidents seem to involve people with strangely un-Indian names. That bit also gives you an idea about the kind of occupation that earns them their rozi roti.
But mention the B- word to some of our dyed-in-the-wool `socialist' (which kind, I wonder) friends and they see red: look, they argue, these Bangladeshis provide cheap labour in the construction industry, powerlooms, etc. So in effect, they are subsidising you and your economy. what's your problem if they earn some poor pennies and live on the roads in the bargain.
What indeed is my problem? My problem is that these construction labour types, who make up less than half of THEIR population, are eating into my fellow countrymen's rights. Because they come cheap, some needy Indian has been deprived of his right to occupation.
Next, they are extremely unclean-- litter and shit all over, come in a package deal-- two-three wives, countless children follow in the fortnight they arrive -- and are susceptible to violence.
The most important question of them all: why should i have to put up with these illegal immigrants on my land, even if they are angels from Paradise?
There are enough of my own countrymen bothering me anyway. Look at the daily influx into Mumbai: about 300 families - that is 300 x 4 = 1200. Consider a year's collection -- 1200 x 365 = 4,38,000. In 10 years, this would be an addition of 43.8 lakh people feeding off the same supply of power, roads and water, among other things. For a measure, Singapore, the city-state is 40 lakh.
I have lived in a beautiful Mumbai locality all my life. It was a beautiful place with lots of trees, neat gardens, acres of clean pavements, and PEACE. Today, you have to watch your step if you set foot there. Chickens, yes actually, crow away on festering mounds of garbage; rowdy youths spit and storm past you along the sidewalks, and scrawny children in soiled clothes bawl their lungs out outside your door.
What other than a serious population explosion could have caused this nightmare to be heaped upon us in broad daylight? Yet, when someone proposes an entry restriction for the city, we oppose it immediately, partly because it comes from an autocratic saffron leader with whom we are loathe to share even the air we are breathing, let alone our views on the city.
The best way out then is to curse the BMC and its corrupt ways for letting the city go to the dogs. We have no involvement in our own future, other than fighting for the rights of all our global brethren to come and live here and live irresponsibly in the true spirit of Vasudaiv Kutumbhakam.

Next post on why things are sooo bad in our cities. (promise to keep it shorter!)

My first post

Have been thinking of doing this for almost a year now.
The idea behind the blog is to air and share my views on all the goings-on around us --messy, murky, happy, nice... so far, i would circulate among some discussion forums and personal e-groups.
now, I am hopefully on to a bigger canvas. With your support.
I plan to work this more like a diary, so i hope you will bear with me and let me know what you think. Let me begin with today.
Today, I met Dr Parthasarathy, a genial person and former secretary of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Two days ago, when I called for an appointment and told him we had met once, he praised a sterling piece published in a daily in 2002 and asked me whether I had written it. I promptly denied. How couldnt I! I rarely ventured into atomic energy and when I did, I didn't think they were sterling pieces. Today, he showed me that piece. And of course, it was mine. I was thrilled to see how well I had put across the issue of radiation in medical establishments practising nuclear medicine.
The piece had stirred up controversy and landed up as a Parliament question as everyone got alarmed at the absence of nuclear safeguards. I now remember the background of the story. It was not too well received in my office. The reporter who covered the beat was naturally resentful about the fact that someone else wanted to step on his turf. The story went inside and did not have my byline. (I hadnt taken any, I recall)
It is at moments like these that you feel all your thousand odd years in journalism were well worth it. When someone remembers you by your clipping written long ago! AND when you find you had done justice to your job even then!
The feedback to my stories was tremendous when I worked with a non-Mumbai paper like The Statesman. Trust the Bongs to read every word in their paper carefully. Journos like me live to see these days...after all, what's the point of our writing if someone somewhere is not reading it.. I hope you are!
More when we meet next.