Will reading down 377 cure all evil?

It has been an interesting few days.

First there was the storm of “hopeful” messages and articles shared on social media. It seemed like the entire community was pinning all its hopes on one petition in the apex court. Parts of the media went nuts and started publishing doomsday articles with catch phrases like “last chance” in the title. As if, magically, all queer activism, all LGBTQIHKA spaces and people and movements and collectives would just disappear overnight if the court dismissed the petition without agreeing to hear it. At the same time, the more positive articles just waxed super eloquent about what wonderful things would happen, again – magically, overnight – if only the court would accept the curative petition, and hear arguments.

I had hopes, sure, more like wild desires with not much real chance of fulfilment actually … of the court reexamining the RE criminalization of consensual adult sexual activity – both same sex as well as heterosexual – under 377 on 11.12.2013. However, I have been a part of queer organizing (how OLAVA began and some of the things I do now are more about community building and support activities) and queer activism (what OLAVA became, and a lot of things I do now, definitely fall under that heading) in India for almost 20 years now. So, I am more wary, more cautious to hope too much, than the 20-something generation Y friends who surround me. Maybe I am just jaded and cynical, but in all the conversation we had before the D-Day, I found myself being the dampener, the voice of caution against pinning too much hope on one event, the spoil sport, the mood wrecker, the party pooper.

Well, things went better than I secretly expected. For all my sharing of optimistic articles and discussions on what India could expect from the court, and whether or not it is time for INDIA to do away with this legal remnant of Victorian colonial prudery, etc etc, I really expected the petition to be thrown out of court. So, when it wasn’t, it was a very pleasant surprise to say the least. The 3 judge bench referred the petition to a 5 judge “judicial bench” instead, to be heard “at the earliest”, after a mere 5 minute hearing.

And then the jubilation began. Some of it seemed seriously over the top to my jaded sensibilities, considering that this wasn’t any victory of any sort. All the 3-j bench did was to say… we won’t make a decision on this matter, so we will pass the buck to 5 of our colleagues. Essentially… the community and its lawyers now have to convince FIVE people instead of three of the need to de – criminalize adult consensual sexual activity. Easier? I don’t think so! The whole process begins again… with 2 additional minds to convince.

And let’s say we do all that. And 377 is read down again. Maybe scrapped altogether. How much difference is it going to make on the ground? How much is it going to change the day to day lived realities of hundreds of thousands of LGBTQIHKA individuals?

Over the last decade or so, queer movements in India seem to have become exclusively centered on 377, just as internationally they have coalesced around marriage equality. And as tends to happen, when movements begin to focus too hard on legal change, sometimes other things backslide. Not to mention the fact that 377 has a big caveat of “privacy” which excludes a large chunk of the community, who for numerous reasons do not have access to privacy for their sexual activity, and therefore remain vulnerable to discrimination and abuse. And that “not all gays” wish to be co-opted into the patriarchal-capitalist frameworks of marriage and family.  

To many, in a country that is facing increasing intolerance, sharply rising crime against different marginalized communities, and so much more, how is it possible to imagine that scrapping 377 is the only important thing, or that it will miraculously make all our lives better? In the gap years when 377 had been read down by Delhi High Court and the Re-criminalisation by the Supreme Court, how much of a real difference did the community see in everyday society? Did the “average” parent or sibling or friend, let alone the religious fanatic, suddenly accept the queer family member with open arms? Did queer people stop losing jobs, homes, families, loved ones, and lives for being who they are? Not that I know of.

This excess of jubilation is seriously misplaced in my opinion. There is a long road to travel and a lot of things to be done. There are alliances to be made and space to be given over – to those who don’t have privacy, to hose who don't want to get married, to those who do not want a politics of “conformism” of “just like you, to those who do not want to be a part of the mainstream. Maybe it is time to start thinking of larger systemic changes, of weaving all possible marginal positions together to make a strong fabric of resistance. Of collectivizing across gender, sexuality, caste, class, and start discussions to dismantle the patriarchy-capitalism nexus that oppresses so much of humanity.

Yes, this is a positive development. But let us curb our enthusiasm and remember that thiss is just a small step on a long journey we still have ahead of us, a long battle to engage in, before a truly equal and just world can be arrived at, if ever. So yes, celebrate a little, but also…. And this is very important…

Keep calm and carry on!

The TATA Circus

The emails I keep getting from Tata Teleservices Customer Care states that

“Tata Tele Corporate Services Tata Teleservices today stands certified as ISO 27001:2005 which means our services are best in class at par with international benchmarks.”

I must say I BEG to differ on the matter. Either ISO has lost all sense and credibility, or Tata is taking customers for a ride. This is my personal experience with Tata Teleservices.

I began preparations to get the Kolkata office up and running at the beginning of December 2012. As part of the process, I called up a couple of internet and WLL service providers looking for someone to get me a quick landline and data card connection for business use. I was impressed with Tata, because they got back to me instantly, after I left a query on their website. This was unprecedented and unexpected, given my experience of and impression of Kolkata work culture, and I must say I was very happy. This was the 5^th of December.

Sadly, their efficiency ended with visiting the office and collecting a purchase order. After that, it took TWENTY days to actually process the orders… for 4 Tata photons and one Walky. However, the agreements were finally signed on 20^th December after days and days of chasing and asking. And the actual instruments were delivered a couple of days later. One would think that would be the end of my troubles, but sadly it was the beginning. Activation of photons and Walky should take a couple of days at worst. In my case, one of the four photons started working the next day, but three remained obstinately unconnected, as did the Walky. After days and weeks of chasing, and a much begged engineer visit, I was told that three of the four photons were faulty, and had to be replaced.

By now it was the first week of the New Year. More chases followed, as Tata does not seem to believe in calling back and informing the client about the progress of their complaint or connections. After calling and calling and calling them the faulty photons were finally replaced. Two were immediately assigned to employees and work began (about 30 days later than it should have). in the meantime, the Walky continued to be dead to the world. My company website, which was in the process of being designed, had to be put on hold, because the contact number on it was the one assigned by Tata to my walky, and I could not go live with the site until the line was activated. After another couple of days, when I assigned the last remaining (replaced) photon to a consultant, it refused to work (AGAIN!). More chasing and cursing of Tata followed after which the photon was finally activated, about 30 days after it was first purchased.

As for the Walky, some 25 days after it was bought, and 30 to 40 telephone calls and two engineer visits later, they finally told me that it was faulty as well, and would also be replaced. However, they assured me that the number assigned to me would not change. Unable to wait any longer, because every day without a phone meant loss of business for my firm, I finally activated the website, with the number they have given me.

As I write this, it is the 21^st of January 2013, 47 days after first contacting them and issuing a purchase order, and 31 days after the contract was signed, and I STILL don’t have an active landline. When a client or prospective customer sees my site, letterheads, visiting cards, and calls on the number, they will get a message that “this number does not exist”. What that is likely to do to the reputation of my firm…you can very well guess. And the business I have lost over the last 31 days or continue to lose with each passing day is not likely to be compensated for by Tata. Neither is Tata likely to bring back the clients I am losing because they think my company is a fake/fraud. The amount of money I have spent over the last month and a half, calling Tata is not going to be reimbursed either. They STILL don’t call me back to tell me what is going on.

The latest info, after I applied a LOT of pressure from higher up, is that I now have to apply for a NEW number…which will probably take another 31 days… not to mention changing the site, letterheads, cards, … all added expense and hassle, and loss of business.

All I can say is TATA SUCKS.

The FDI circus continues

The madwoman is on a rampage again. Ever since last night’s announcement of increasing of FDI to 49% in insurance, and a possible corresponding raise in the FDI cap in pension, she has gone on a complete rampage, egged on and supported by such massive well wishers of the “common man” as BJP.  

It is pertinent to remember at this point that the BJP, in its avatar as the NDA government, was the most avid and vocal advocate of financial reforms and FDI, and it was partly over reforms in pensions that they lost power in the first place. So what is this about face really about? Is it a populist attempt at garnering some share of the amm-janta-who-have-no-clue vote bank? Or is it envy, at the UPA managing to push through some unpopular, though much needed, reforms when they were unable to do so? Or is it part of some much deeper political game where toppled governments and early elections are supposed to give them back the lost throne?

Whatever the motivation behind the strident anti reform chorus, it is not helping to improve the overall situation. What with an abysmal fiscal deficit, rampaging inflation, and a staggering debt burden in the midst of a global financial meltdown, we can’t exactly ignore the fact that we need serious infusions of cash and hundreds of thousands of new jobs to get us to some kind of sane level where the economy actually functions and maybe even grows. So, where is this cash, these jobs, going to come from? It sure as hell won’t suddenly materialize out of thin air, neither are the billions already spent on fruitless social programs by the government suddenly going to bear fruit for no reason, especially since the billions have already gone well into various pockets of the various babus from the top of the rung all the way down to rock bottom. In short, things being as they are, the only way to breathe some life into the economy and to infuse some much needed lifeblood, is to throw investment options open to foreign players. Provided, of course, that the BJP, and other political parties, ever let it happen.

To top it all, we have Madame Bannerjee, screaming herself hoarse and threatening dire consequences like no confidence motions. She’s always been notorious for reacting first and thinking later, for basing political decision on emotion rather than rational thought, and – more recently – for being unashamedly populist. Given the fact that she had to break the leftist stranglehold of 34 years in the state of West Bengal to come to power, one understands the motivation behind her obviously successful pandering to mass sentiments. However, all she is doing now, is being is obstructive, obtuse, and frankly destructive of the very state she was given – with a lot of trust and hope – to try and improve, to drag kicking and screaming into the 21^st century.

For some reason, she has decided to be more left than the left she defeated. This seems strange to normal, not knowing anything, people like me. After all, wasn’t she brought in to REPLACE the left because their system was NOT working? Presumably then, people want you to be everything they were not? So, in my limited logic, it seems that what people want for Bengal is more industries, more jobs, more open market, more opportunities for earning, given that those are the exact things that the left government systematically eradicated over the 34 years of their reign. However, she seems to have gone the opposite direction.

Instead of encouraging industries and laying down the red carpet to Indian and foreign investors, throwing open retail markets, and basically doing everything she possibly can to bring in the moolah and the jobs, what she’s actually doing is the exact opposite. Having begun her march to power on the back of the Singur/Nandigram controversy, she seems to have assumed that “revolutionary” posturing and pig headedness are more important than governance, especially in the run up to the municipal polls. So, neglecting the glaring problems at home, and the questions being raised about mismanagement and unnecessary delays in funding and completing projects of essential infrastructure and so on, she chooses to pay more attention to, and invest more time in, proving her revolutionary mettle on the national scene.

As for her own state, she is driving away whatever investments had already been inked, like Haldia, and talking of closing down even existing domestic retails chains like Spencer’s and Reliance and More, thus depriving a whole section of semi educated but presentable young men and women of decently paying jobs. She is rabidly anti FDI, supposedly to protect the common man when both farmers and the man on the street stand only to gain from the changes big chain retail can bring in, from contract farming, better prices to the farmer, better prices to the consumer, better quality, huge number of jobs from front office to back end operations, to better infrastructure to cater to the needs of these investors. So who is she trying to protect? Either the middlemen and business interests who pumped in money for her rise to power are being given their pound of flesh, or she is reacting in her usual irrational, emotional, knee-jerk way without any real thought or concern for the overall welfare of the state. Given the approaching municipal polls, where she desperately wants to establish a majority, the choices make political sense, maybe, even if they are unproductive and harmful in the long run.

As for the UPA, its sudden passion for reforms is suspect in itself. Had they made these moves soon after they came to power, one could have given them uncomplicated applause. Given that they choose to do this so late in the day, with the 2014 elections on the far horizon, in the middle of general public outcry and disgust over some of the greatest scandals and scams of our independent history, the whole thing smacks of a roman circus. Looks like a case of give the public, and the market, a feel good lollipop of reforms, and they will forget about all the indecision, inactivity, and the scams. Also, given that their numbers in parliament ate precarious at best after Mamata withdrew her support, things become murkier still. The cabinet has passed the reforms, well and good, but these are early days. The bills have to be passed by Lok Sabha, marginal possibility, and the Rajya Sabha, which is almost impossible.

Seems to me like the Congress is playing one of its age-old games. The bills will fail in parliament, and the party will go to the polls telling Johnny public “look, we tried, we want to make changes for you, but these allies, and this strong opposition, they didn’t let us succeed! So the next time give us a clear majority so that we can push the reforms through without hassle!”  God help us if the public takes them at their word! For now, all one can hope for is that some of the parties will see sense and help make these reforms a reality. Because we really can’t do without them.

Driving across the country can be so much fun!

My entire insane family is totally addicted to wheels. No, we are not car freaks in the ordinary everyday sense of the word. We don’t want expensive or phoren cars, and we don’t speed or drive rashly in the city. We are NOT that kind of car freaks. Instead, we drive small cars, a Wagon R, an Alto, an 800 Duo, and we drive well within the city speed limits, preferring to take our time getting from point A to point B. we also follow the traffic rules, yes, even when no one is watching, even in the middle of the night, even on totally empty streets!

And yet, we are the biggest car freaks I’ve ever met! How so? Well, there is absolutely no other form of transport that we would rather choose, no matter what the distance, than a car. On any holiday, any kind of travel plans, we are likely to just head off in a cavalcade of small cars rather than fuss with buses, trains, flights and such. We all find it a lot more comfortable, and flexible, and we enjoy the freedom of being in control, stopping where we wish, not stopping if we don’t wish, choosing our own route, and so on. Plus, we really enjoy driving. So, long drives have a whole new meaning for this family!

For example, when a huge move was planned, all the way across the country to Kolkata, instead of sitting and looking at railway timetables and things, we sat down for a family conference. Our family unit, my parents, my man and I, and our two-year-old daughter, were about to move from Pune to Kolkata. Democratic to the core, our major family decisions have always been made via family conferences, even when we were little kids, so having one now, for such a major move, was the obvious course of action. Ideas were batted around, as we tried to decide whether taking a flight was a better idea than trains, how to handle the packers, and more. Should someone go with the stuff? In their truck? What about receiving the stuff? If we sent off all the stuff too early, how were we to manage the last few days? And if we left on the day we sent the stuff, we would get to Kolkata too early, way before the stuff arrived, and then how would we manage? That was a problem for sure. Pretty soon, from all this brainstorming over how to manage, the simplest, easiest, and most likely for all parties to agree with solution soon came up. “Let’s just drive!”

 To many Indians, especially of my father’s age, who are living in India, this would be an impossible, unimaginable trip. Drive two thousand four hundred kilometers across the country! With two senior citizens! And a tiny little kid! I could imagine any number of people, my friends as well as those of my father, having heart attacks at the very thought! For Indians of my father’s generation, the famous and infamous midnight’s children, this is not a very surprising attitude. Cars are comparatively new things for them, things they met pretty late in life. Born at the time of or growing up around independence, they were witnesses of the changes India saw in the following decades.

They saw the country go from the “Mother India” type, chiefly agrarian, mostly village based country – to the growth oriented, urban minded, raring to be a world community member, nation it has now become. Yet, in the initial years after independence at least, the change was quite slow, and old habits really died hard. However, with economic growth picking up pace and becoming much more rapid and e-controlled in the 1980s, people like my dad, basically middle class, recently upwardly mobile, and firmly urban, began to be able to own cars. Loans became easier to get, and cheaper to pay off, and a new spurt in the automobile industry gave people like my crazy old man a much wider choice in models and types.

This was when my family’s own love for wheels, and for the road really began. With as many as seven people jam-packed into a miniscule Standard 10 (more or less the equivalent of a VW beetle), or eleven people (8 adults) in a Maruti Omni (a smallish minivan), we began to drive around and travel South India by road. One of our more infamous and wild trips included the four of us – dad, mom, bro, and I – driving from Chennai to Bangalore in the middle of an actual cyclone, while the little car kept side-slipping in the gale force winds and the massive torrents flowing across the roads kept trying to wash away our little metal box on wheels with them! We kids inherited this insane love of the road from the oldies, in a most natural way, having grown up practically IN cars. And we have been lucky, both of us, to find partners who share that love. Not surprisingly, the third generation of the clan, my daughter is now being taught to revel in the complete freedom and convenience that “let’s just take the car and head out, and forget about all this ticket-wicket!” can give to travel, and my brother’s kids are very likely to learn the same!

So, with a detailed route mapped out, and with stopovers tentatively planned, we headed out on our long trip, Christmas morning, really early in the morning. The plan was to go via Hyderabad, rather than via Nagpur because – as we have seen – the roads down south are so much better, the streets much safer, and we really wanted to take advantage of the brand new Golden Quadrangle – a perimeter like stretch of six lane highways that are still under construction, in an attempt to make India much more easily navigable by road. The Pune Hyderabad stretch we had done many times at this point in time that we were very familiar with it, and we covered easily in roughly nine hours, in spite of a longish stop for lunch in the middle of the 590 km.

Now most of the people I know, even the ones who do drive to places further than Lonavla or Mumbai, could never imagine being out on the road, with two women and a small child, without rock solid reservations for all the stopovers. We however, knew that India has, finally, made enough progress that technology would solve the stopover accommodation issue for us. Driving into the city, and all the ones after that where we wished to stay over, we simply called the information service Justdial, a version of which is now available in most of the larger and some smaller Indian cities, and asked for phone numbers of hotels in Hyderabad. A large bunch of names and numbers soon arrived to both the laptop and the cellphone, and all it took was a couple of calls, and we were soon driving to our first night of well earned rest.

The next morning, bright and early, in keeping with our grand road trip plan of “leave early, take frequent breaks, and stop before it gets too dark”, we started the next leg of the journey after a quick but filling breakfast. This was a new stretch of road, a stretch we hadn’t done before, and the plan was to get to Vijaywada that day. On this stretch, we noticed other changes in the overall travel experience on Indian roads. Now tea and snacks by the roadside, in the dhabas and little hut-shops have never been a problem on any Indian highway. However, when we began our nomadic, independent, self driven style of travelling, actual meals were not really so easy to come by at the road side. We have had many misadventures in trying to find lunch on the road, ranging from super yummy but super small Tamilian “meals ready” places, to really awful shacks where we only ate because we had to, otherwise we would all have passed out from starvation! As for “facilities” that was a whole different adventure leading to a lot of familiarity with roadside hedges and farmlands! This trip, I realized that more Indians are on the road than they were even ten years ago, and as a direct result of that, fuel stations on the highways are now little islands of fun and convenience. There are parks for kiddies with fun things like swings, slides, and assorted other treats. There are little stores selling biscuits, chips, snacks and things. There are restaurants serving meals, as well as all hours of the day fast food. And, best news of all for the fastidious and the ladies, there are well maintained and clean restrooms.

As the trip progressed, as we went through city after city, and got on to the super highway, my daughter pointed out something we were all seeing but maybe not registering consciously. “Do you see how many private cars there are on the highway now?” and it is true. Where we had habitually been among a small minority of people travelling long distance in our own cars, most of the people we saw on the roads were in buses, shared semi public transport like Tata Sumos, and Tempo Trax, or just truckers. That was no longer the case. A lot of people were on the road in private cars, often self driven versus the “let’s get a professional driver for the long trip”. It seems to be an indication of not just the changing economic climate, but also of changing attitudes, especially among younger Indians for whom cars are no longer a new thing, Indians who have grown up riding in, and driving, their parents’ cars, and who can afford to buy their own cars at a much younger age than their parents could have even imagined in their lifetimes.

This trip showed us that Indians are definitely travelling a lot more, and not just by car. Whether for business or pleasure, the increased fluidity of the new Indian populations is a large part of why travel has become so much easier now. There are now really good hotels, at very decent prices, even in the much smaller cities, as we found in Berhampore, Odisha, for example. Where we had pretty traumatic experiences of quite horrific hotels even 10 yrs ago, in our many cross country jaunts, when trying to find a decent place to lay our heads, finding a comfortable, clean, and safe hotel, in almost any budget, is no longer a problematic issue when seeing the country by car. Roads overall, at least the important roads, are also better maintained, and the introduction of toll highways has made driving in India much smoother, and much more of a pleasure. Some stretches are even good enough now to do a 120 or 150 KMPH on, cutting down the time between stopovers significantly.  There are highway patrols, and helpline numbers visibly displayed on the fringes for the traveler, and, best thing of all, the help-lines actually work and help arrives quite promptly. In the same spirit of change, hotel employees are no longer surprised or shocked to have unannounced arrivals of an entire family disembarking from a car, looking for a room for the night.

All in all, things have really changed on the Indian highways. As a result of all these positive changes, we managed to drive into our own parking spot, in our own housing complex, early on the night of the 28^th of December. With long lunches, more than 12-hour stops every night, and frequent bathroom breaks for the little one, we still managed to get from Pune, Maharashtra, across the widest part of India, taking the long way round detour via Hyderabad, to Kolkata, West Bengal, a distance of over two thousand and four hundred kilometers, in four days of driving! It would have taken twice as long even a decade ago.  

Watching the fools’ theatre on TV

Admittedly I am no economist. Neither am I one of that super articulate all knowing intelligentsia that is so visibly everywhere these days. But I do have half a brain, and yes, I have a load of opinions too. And I really don’t see what the hoopla is about certain economic reforms that the so-far-completely-useless government of ours is finally introducing.

Fine, I understand that raising the prices of fuel oil is a problem. I personally have been dealing with steeply rising prices of petrol over the last few years which has basically thrown the domestic budget for a major curve, and managed to put a damper on even our obsessive road trips. But, there’s a problem here. Apparently, this price rise is because of the heavy losses being suffered by the oil companies in importing the oil, because of the international prices, and so on. Makes me wonder then, why it is that I have to pay almost Rs 75 here, for a measly liter of petrol, when the same thing costs 3 dollars, or Rs 150, for FIVE liters in the US! Why am I paying more than more than double the price?

Doesn't sound like a problem caused by international market to me. When you look a little deeper, it’s the taxes. So, instead of raising the price, maybe one can take a new look at all these weird taxes, octroi, surcharge and whatnots? And are the Indian petrochem companies really suffering such huge losses? If that were the case, how are they declaring hundreds of millions of rupees of profits every year? How are their CEOs paying themselves millions of rupees in salaries? So that’s definitely something that needs to be looked at, reconsidered. Yet, subsidies are not the answer, they are never the answer. So maybe that’s something the economists should think about?

As for the corresponding increase in the more heavily subsidized diesel prices, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Yes, diesel is the lifeblood of our entire goods and freight transport system, and any rise in prices has a ripple effect on prices of everything, essential commodities to luxurious fripperies alike. However, there is another angle to this. Diesel is also what the most expensive, luxurious, status-symbol, cars – like a whole range of SUVs, run on. So, while on the one hand subsidizing diesel prices is essential to keep an overall check on inflation, especially of essential goods, what it also means is that the richest people in the land get to drive around in their cars at less than half the cost of my driving in mine – which is utterly ridiculous.

When someone can afford to spend a minimum of 10 lacs for a car, versus my little garib-rath costing 2 lacs, what kind of sense does it make that I have to pay 75 rupees when they buy fuel at 32? So what’s the solution? If you raise the prices, as was recently done, it affects mass transit facilities, and freight. Keep it low, and it not only puts a huge strain on the budget and the exchequer, it is hugely unfair to people who earn less, but have to pay much more to travel in their vehicles, while the wealthy get away with paying peanuts. One solution could be to have differential pricing for the fuel…. When a truck or tanker or bus rolls in, sell the fuel for 32, and then, when a rich man’s SUV rolls in, charge them 70.

Anyone can see that THAT’s not going to work. Even apart from all the cries of partiality, unfairness, etc, … how are you going to implement it? How can you make sure that the rich get billed higher? Not likely, not feasible, not possible to implement or oversee. So what then? The other suggestion offered, and it’s the only one with any chance of working is to increase the taxes, surcharges, etc on the SUVs substantially. This way, the rich man does end up paying a large amount extra while buying the car, which he can presumably well afford, which then gets forwarded to the government as taxes. Not an ideal solution, given that I will end up spending much more over the years of using my car, but slightly more equitable than the system in place now.

As for cooking gas, or LPG, I completely support, agree with, and applaud the recent move to de-subsidize anything above six cylinders per family per year. This is perfect. So far in India ALL domestic LPG has been heavily subsidized. Where the market price is around 750 rupees, the consumer has been getting the cylinders, endless numbers of them, for 400 each. That’s untold billions going straight down the drain. And all it does is encourage wasteful cooking practices. 99% of Indian families I know don’t use pressure cookers for their kitchen activities, most of them don’t make any effort to conserve gas, leaving the gas on while they chop veggies or clean rice etc. at this rate, most families I know get through a cylinder in just 15 to 20 days. And so, they are all having heart attacks at the thought of having to pay double the price for any cylinder they buy from the 7^th cylinder onward.

My family unit uses 4 to 6 cylinders a year. If a gas refill finishes in 2 months, I sit and wonder why. Average is about 2 months and 20 days. And why? Do we starve? According to the chief minister of Bengal, one of the most vocal protesters to this move, even if u just have tea or coffee, you need 24 cylinders a year!!!! TWENTY FOUR?!!! What are you doing? Leaving the gas on all night? We have 3 meals a day, more cups of tea and coffee than the average Indian home, and in winters, and pretty much all through the year, we heat bathwater for the baby. And we still don’t need more than 6 cylinders a year! Do I know magic? No…. I own and consistently use four pressure cookers for anything from rice and dal to maccher jhol and chicken/mutton. In fact, I feel handicapped without a pressure cooker, and make practically everything in them. Also, I make sure that everything is ready before I light up the gas. Veggies are chopped and washed, masalas are ready, utensils within arms' reach. Not a single second of gas time is wasted.

Years of messages on television and radio and on billboards have not managed to inculcate these habits in most Indians. People have gone blue in the face trying to explain to them that fossil fuels are a limited resource, or that subsidies cost the government (and me as the taxpayer), billions every year, and it has made zero impact. They have just continued cooking their mutton in a kadhai (that’s TWO hours instead of 20 mins!!!), boiling their rice and dal in hanndis (20 to 30 mins instead of 10 mins), and even boiling green bananas for their koftas in a pan (30 to 40 mins instead of 10 mins). They continue to let the gas burn away as they wash utensils, chop vegetables, wash vegetables, grind masalas, and take care of a thousand cooking chores that they should have finished BEFORE lighting up. These are the people who ONLY understand the language of double prices. If they have to buy every eighth cylinder …and every one after that … at double the price, then, and only then, are they likely to even try to change their habits and to try and make the gas last longer. This is essential not just for the nation and its budget, but for the planet as a whole too.

As for FDI – foreign direct investment – in retail, there’s a whole lot of noise being made by people who don’t seem to have really even thought about it, or understood it. Sure, I am the worst person to talk, being from the urban middle class, and the direct beneficiary of FDI if and when it happens. I will get a wider choice in produce, at better prices, with retailers competing for my custom. In a real retail market, consumer is king, and being the consumer, I would much rather have a huge Wal-Mart to go to than have to deal with the sullen baniya who treats me like shit and sells me 100 gms of stone chips for every Kg of rice I buy. However, BECAUSE I am the urban middle class, no one cares about my opinion. I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t farm, but I do have relatives who do. They are among the most vocal SUPPORTERS of FDI in retail. How come? Aren't these the people that great leaders like Mamata Bannerjee are trying to protect from the rapacious FOREIGN retailer? The farmers tell me simple things. They sell potatoes for 3 rupees a kilo. The middleman who buys it sells at the mandi for 18 rupees a kilo, and it is sold to me for 20 or 22. The farmer is not the one benefiting in this scenario. However, when the big scary pepsico came in, and started buying potatoes from them, they got a much fairer price! If big chain retail stores come in, they will not IMPORT their potatoes, or rice, or dal, they will buy them here, source them directly from the very farmers Ms Bannerjee is so energetically trying to protect. And they will pay much more than the middlemen now pay. The end consumer will also get the produce for much cheaper than the prices we are paying now. So who is really being protected? The farmer? Or the dalal/agent, the middleman who is such a powerful force in Indian politics.

Add to this the sheer numbers of jobs that the huge chains will bring in… from the basic cleaners and janitors all the way up to regional managers, and it boggles the mind. Even back a decade or so, when the domestic retail chains appeared, they changed the face of urban and small town India. A whole new niche was created for not so educated but able to speak a couple of languages well youngsters to find good, paying, respectable work. The entry of foreign retail chains will only hugely expand this opportunity, providing massive employment options to previously unemployable youth. This is much more than all the jobs that our esteemed leaders fear will be lost because of smaller retailers shutting down. In addition, when you think about it, the jobs lost are not just fewer, they are only in front end niches like counter sales. The ones created will be in every possible field from cleaners to counter sales, from truck drivers to inventory keepers, from loaders to managers, and everything in between.

As for the big boogeyman, that all the little mohalla stores and kirana walas will go out of business, we heard this same tune when chains like Spencer’s, Reliance, Pantaloons Big Bazaar, etc were opening up their doors. And did it happen? Nope! After all, I am not likely to run to the Big Bazaar, much further from my house, stand in a long checkout line, and waste a lot of time when I need a quick dozen eggs or a loaf of bread for the morning. Even if I do my major monthly shopping at a megastore, all the daily top-ups, as well as the milk, bread, eggs, type daily needs, are much more likely to be picked up at the neighbourhood store on the way back from work. In addition, I have seen my neighbourhood kirana wala buying his stores regularly from these retail chains! Seems to me like he benefitted too! So who are we trying to protect? Again, it looks like the middle man, who bought cheap from farmers and sold so expensive to the stores, is the main beneficiary of all this protest against retail markets being opened.

Our dear leaders are concerned that “these foreign investors” (spoken in the same tone of voice as “these rotten tomatoes” or “these stinking fish”) will siphon off all the money to their own countries. First of all, why would u allow that to happen? Why would u not put in place regulators, and laws, that make it mandatory for them to reinvest a large part of their profits into the market? We’ve done it successfully with the insurance sector, I am sure we can manage in retail too. Secondly, assuming that they do take their profits away – the hundreds of thousands of employees working in the hundreds of thousands of newly created, better paying jobs, will presumably not be sending all their money abroad? They live here, work here, earn their salaries here, so they will SPEND here, injecting huge amounts of liquid cash into the economy, which it badly needs!

And, instead of looking at all these advantages, or in spite of knowing them very well, our leavers and rulers are playing political games, whipping uninformed, unthinking public into frenzies with the FEAR of the dreaded FOREIGN HAND. Ms Bannerjee goes one step further and actually decides to table a motion to shut down even domestic retail chains, with another stalwart of Bengal politics, Asit Mitra makes a completely stupid statement like “contract farming by pepsico must be oppose, so what if it gets farmers a better price”.

ARE THESE THE FOOLS WE SHOULD BE LISTENING TO?

Freedom Land

What the situation is, 65 years after independence.

·         20 crore Indians live without adequate food

·         Eight thousand die every day of starvation

·         2 crore children don’t go to school

·         20 crore Indians are illiterate

·         43% children suffer from malnutrition

·         66 crore Indians don’t have access to hygienic sanitation

·         India ranks 66th (Pakistan is 61) on the international hunger index

·         India ranks 132nd among 142 countries in terms of developmental index

These are numbers from a bunch of information links doing the rounds online. While they may not be exactly accurate, (at least, I am not sure whether they are) they are pretty close to the real situation overall. Not much cause to celebrate, if you ask me. Add to that India’s “record” showing at the London Olympics 2012, with 6 whole medals, not one of them gold, and I really don’t think there’s much to CELEBRATE right now.

And then there’s the madness going on all over the country with thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people FROM the seven north eastern states fleeing their places of residence all over India because they no longer feel safe in those places. And why did I just put the FROM in all caps?? Because many of them have been living in those places of education, work, residence, for years, decades even. Yet, one whiff of trouble in some far corner of the country, and they are being attacked, harassed, and driven out to go BACK to this place they are supposed to belong to. Rumours are flying, threats being issued and realized, attacks made, and a large segment of Indians are feeling  threatened within the sovereign territory of India. And news channels and papers are playing up the immigrant situation and the harassment of immigrants. (are these people immigrants in their own country? By what definition? What law?)

It began as a riot/ethnic clashes in certain areas of Assam primarily between illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and the resident farmers. The trouble was over rights to the land, and the attempt to prevent sneak-over-the-border-in-the-night people from encroaching on it. As is the nature of such conflicts, things got bigger and more complicated as it was allowed to go on for longer (although local Muslims are still pretty happy there, and safe), and since the news channels didn’t bother to even try to put anything other than a religious/communal colouring on it, this territorial, anti illegal alien clash began to be seen as another of the Hindu-Muslim riots that we are getting more and more used to. That’s new, although riots in themselves are not. What is really new this time, the year of the 65th anniversary of our becoming a nation, is the backlash against people seen to be from the “north east” in far flung parts of the country -- parts that have nothing to do with Assam, and face no added pressure from the refugee movement generated by the clashes.

From flash riots in Mumbai, to threats and rumours in Pune, Bangalore, and more, the overall perceived threat level has risen sharply, especially in places with a considerable presence of students and workers from the north eastern states. People are leaving in droves, with something like 9700 tickets to Guwahati booked in a single day from a single station, and four extra trains having to be made available to accommodate the huge waves of people leaving from Bangalore on a that ONE day. So, what’s really going on here? Does a bunch of mixed ethnic, mixed community hooligans (the bunch arrested in Bangalore for rumour mongering etc include Hindus and Christians) really care so much about the trouble in Assam? Are they so emotionally invested in, and swayed by, the people rendered homeless in Assam that they have to avenge them by harassing, assaulting, and killing people from Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, and West Bengal?

What it is, is a bunch of people making a noise, lashing out, creating trouble, for reasons and motives of their own. From chauvinistic political parties looking to strengthen their communal vote bases, to ruffians looking for any excuse to indulge in a little vandalism, reasons and motives are many and varied. What concerns me however, really worries me, is how easy it seems to have become to drive a large number of people out of your city, area, state on the pretext that they don’t belong. I am concerned because, this has a lot to do with people like me. As I blogged in January 2010 in SporadicDiaspora (premonition? Foreshadowing?), I belong to the increasingly larger segment of the population who are not really FROM anywhere. Of course, this is a concept most Indians don’t seem to get. So, for me there was never a question of going BACK to some safe place where I belong.

As populations grow and resources become strained, such things are only going to get more common. The refrains of “go back to where you belong” will continue to get louder as the years roll by, as they have in the last few decades, posing a massive problem for me and my ilk. I don’t BELONG. Having lived in some six different states till date, I have no domicile, no hometown. As for Bengal, I have no roots there, I don’t have a mental emotional connection there, and I don’t belong there. Yet, I have recently acquired a flat in Kolkata, a sort of roof over the head arrangement, even though it is no secret how much I have come to dislike the place over the last few years. A childhood friend, someone I have known for the last 36 years, and who is in kind of the same predicament, was fantasizing last week about selling up Kolkata flats when we are older, and moving back to Dehradun, where we were born, to live out our retirements.

While that sounds unbelievably lovely, and nostalgia inducing, I realize it is never gonna happen. As I was explaining to my chuddy buddy, no matter how much we feel like we are not  REALLY Bengali, no matter how much more comfortable we are outside Bengal as opposed to in Kolkata, no matter how much Doon, or Pune, feels like home, like where the soul belongs, for the “other” we will always remain outsiders. People will always ask “are you a local?” and mean “are you Garhwali/Maharashtrian?” they will always ask “where are you “originally” from?”, leaving you speechless, and when push comes to shove, they will – nicely or not so nicely – ask you to leave. It happened and continues to happen in many states, and is only getting worse. The Bengalis I know who chose to remain in Dehradun after their retirement are already facing problems, and they belong to my parents’ generation. How much worse are things going to get by the time we are ready to retire? In Maharashtra too, the erstwhile muted murmurs of the “Maharashtra for Marathi manoos” political language have been getting louder over the last decade. As the focus shifts from Biharis to the North Easterners, I can only wonder how long before it shifts again…to the Bengali.

And if it does, as it eventually will, where do I go? So, I have that little roof over the head insurance in the land that I feel no belonging in, in case I have to leave all the lands I feel connected to, in case it becomes impossible for me, or my child, to live threat free, safe lives in all the places I would rather live in. what makes me really sad, angry, disillusioned, disgusted, and depressed is to see this drama unfold each morning on the news, where on the 65th anniversary of the formation of a nation people of the nation are not free to live in their choice of location in it. To see that in this free land, this secular democracy, a segment of its own citizens is being called “immigrant”, to see that they are being driven to drop educations, livelihoods, settled lives to go BACK to a state where they supposedly BELONG, makes me fear for my future and that of my child outside the mythical land of my belonging.

Epistolary adventures

When I was about fifteen or sixteen, my man and I used to write to each other three or four times a week. Each letter was fourteen or fifteen fullscap sheets, about thirty pages. Living as we did, one in Dehradun and one in Chennai, the only means of communication really open to us was letters. Telephone calls, especially interstate, were prohibitively expensive, and mobiles in every kid’s hand was not even a remote concept. Back in those dark ages, we had not become used to the idea of personal computers, and the internet was still a US Government and NSA fiefdom. Snailmail, as we know it today, was the only way two sundered hearts could keep in touch over 2000 kilometers.

The excitement of receiving each letter is still so fresh in my mind I can virtually taste it! This was “first love!” This was my “boyfriend” writing to me! Just that would have been enough to give anyone the total thrills. Consider the age. Fifteen years old and in love for the first time, we were living so faraway from each other. Distance denied us all those little intimacies and pleasures that people in love take for granted. No little looks, no shared laughs, no “how was your day”, no handholding, no stolen kisses were possible for us. From acknowledgement of feelings to sharing our lives, letters had to perform the functions of all the senses.

I can never forget, or recapture, the wild, heart thumping, pulse beating, palm sweating suspense of seeing that letter, with that “oh so familiar” handwriting on it, on the dining table as i came home from school. Pretending to be nonchalant about it, leaving it there for just a little longer while I changed and had something to eat, so as not to seem overeager, added to the high. After what seemed like a safe amount of time (and felt like hours and hours), I would get up the courage to pick it up from the table, and escape to my room with it. Oh heaven! Oh hell! I still had to open it and actually read what D had to say!!!!

Trembling hands tore open the envelope and picked out the pages. Hmmmm… only 11? My last one was 18 pages … huh! I knew it! He loves me less than I love him! Every little thing was a matter of life and death almost. From counting the pages to weighing the words, and the tone, of every page, it was all more important than any of those paltry national security matters. The first reading went like a flash. In my eagerness to see what he writes next, I would just completely miss the line I was reading. It was like some intense, hopped up, speed reading session where nothing penetrated the consciousness.

Calming down enough to read through again, and understand this time, wasn’t easy, especially since we had a “no closed doors” rule at home. Pesky bro would choose just these moments to get on my nerves more than he did (and oh! How he did get on my nerves sometimes!), going into his “dikha na dikha na” mode. Mum or dad or both would be in and out of the room on some routine errand or another, and I would have to pretend it was just another letter from just another childhood friend….nothing special y’know. (Of course, I realize now that there was no need for all that pretence and tension. The folks knew, and had no problems with a little natural, innocent romance. But at the time it was an added thrill, I guess, to think of myself as one of those misunderstood and persecuted Hindi filmy heroines).

Once I had read the missive twice, thrice, a couple of dozen times, and practically knew every word by heart, it was time to compose a reply. Another massive undertaking. Every word had to be analysed, for tone, emotional intent, and all kinds of subtext. Then a fitting retort, response, reply had to be drafted. Always failed at this though. Being the emotional creature I was, I always got too carried away by what was happening in my life, and my own emotional responses to his words, to make too much headway in the who writes better letters game. My man tells me that was the fun part of getting my letters – knowing that there would be tear stains and angry rants, and other nonsense.

There were others I wrote to as well; pen friends in Edmonton, Canada, in Germany, and elsewhere; other childhood friends in Dehradun and Delhi; the occasional cousin; and so on. Each letter was a labour of love. A thought intensive communication that took hours, if not days, to plan and write. And I saved all the replies. They were pieces of that person, to me, little fragments of someone I loved, that I wanted to hold on to for all time.

Then, came the internet. I got my first PC in 1995, and now these machines are like an extra limb. I began to write on the desktop, finding that words flowed more easily when I saw then ALIVE in black and white, on the screen. Editing poems was easier with a backspace or delete key than with run-throughs on a page. By the time the internet, and email, became a household phenomenon in India, I was already an old hand at both. My man and I broke up, and lost touch, and all the other friends of the plume and the epistle fell by the wayside. People still in touch switched to technology, as email became part of the “cool quotient” and phone calls became simpler and cheaper.

Last week, my mother wished me to mail something for her, ‘the old fashioned way’. A huge civil war erupted, and everyone came in for a lot of flack when none of us could remember seeing a post box anywhere close by. All kinds of theories were advanced, ridiculed, and discarded, including ‘there are no post boxes now other than at post offices’. Lambasted, yelled at, and made fun of, I finally went on a post office hunt, found one in the back of beyond, and posted the damn letters! It still didn’t strike me! This morning, on my way to pick baby up from school, I finally spotted a red postbox in an alley close by (probably noticed it because of the recent hullabaloo).

It was while I was laughing at myself for having missed it before that I realised I can’t remember the last time I WROTE to someone! In fact, when I was about to mail those letters for mom, I realized I had no idea what amount of postage was necessary. Dad, on the great post box hunt with me, suggested that a rupees two stamp was probably the minimum now. Turns out, those days are long gone! The minimum postage is apparently five rupees these days! And I had no clue!

I email people, sure, all the time; I text frequently; I call often; but cannot, for the life of me, recall the last time I put pen to paper for anything, much less to communicate with someone. My work gets done on word and php, my writing on blogs and wordfiles. The only things I use paper for anymore is to make shopping lists or draw pictures for my four year old! It’s amazing what technology has done! Not entirely sure if it’s all good though. Sure it’s a lot more convenient, and definitely cheaper, at these prices. However, I have a horrible feeling that the excitement of getting letters is lost forever.

The avalanche of technology has changed the way we communicate forever, and though I love the scraps, walls, glitter, and cartoons, I miss the hand drawn caricatures my man used to draw of himself. Maybe its just nostalgia. I am, after all, hitting the age when people begin to say things like “humare zamaane mein” and “aajkal ke bacche”; when everything old seems golden and everything new seems like trash. And although I love technology, use it extensively, live it, and earn my bread from it, I can’t help but breathe that tiny little sigh of regret for those “pehele pyaar ki peheli chitthis” that I will no longer be able to hoard for posterity.