What India means to them

A San Francisco newspaper columnist, back from an India trip, raised in his column a cascade of questions he said readers wanted answered -  Did I get sick? Did I see God? Can you drink the water? Did I have sex on the beach? Did I find a yoga guru? Have I seen “Slumdog”? Cows in the streets? Would I ever go back? And several other such questions.

Such pieces, apart from their amusement value, gives one an idea of American mindset.  I get a sense that some  visit places to validate their  pre-set notions.  More than the columnist, the comments his article   evoked made revealing reading.

 Excerpts:   INDIA stands for “I’ll Never Do It Again” .

India?  Good hash but that’s about it.

Admittedly,  it’s not for everyone,  most Americans truly couldn’t handle it and certainly won’t understand it,  but for the few who feel at home there, the place is magical.  ..

Such a long way to go for enlightenment….maybe just give the airfare to Unicef  so they can provide clean water to those in need…

 One of the many beautiful things I got from a month in India was the realization of just how spoiled we Americans are….Most are too focused on the external crap,  so to speak,  that they miss the real blessings… The fact that even though there are people living under tarps, they smile at you and will offer any food and tea they have without hesitation….

Our man in Brazil

At our recent meeting in Chennai a blogger in our group (he didn’t wish to be named) came up with an idea – how about bringing out an anthology of selected pieces from the Mysore Blog Park.  As he put it,  we have a fairly wide group at MBP;  they write on varied topics of their fancy.  And do it competently.

He had a point.  We can think of quite a few who may have a book in their blogs.  The one who suggested MBP anthology is himself working on a book. Another MBP favourite,  B S Prakash,  has just come up with his work – Clueless in California (Konarak publicaions, Rs.195).  It’s a compilation, from his Rediff column,  with updates in reference to his years as Our man in San Francisco.  Mr Prakash has since moved to Brazil as our ambassador.

Those familiar with his column would nail the lie in the title -  apparantly a publisher’s ploy.  Mr Prakash is anything but clueless about California.  He is as knowledgeble about the prime dosa joint in San Francisco, as he is about the city’s connection with the Gadar movement.  I have read his engaging piece  on a philosophy teacher’s  take on Silicon Valley (Mr Prakash, M A in Philosophy, taught at Mysore Maharaja’s College before joining  Indian Foreign Service);  on the allure of MBA,  and about his re-discovery of the US in the company of Dr Kalam.

Invited to preside over a Stanford University music festival at which A R Rahman was honoured,  Mr Prakash did his home work so thoroughly that he used the material for a Rediff.column,  with knowledgeble references to the Bollywood Khans,  Aishwarya Rai and the then popular Rahman numbers – Chaiya, Chaiya, and Taal Se Taal Mila.   His  column gives one an insight into the man, his flair for writing and his mundane interests. Mr Prakash  watches  “a fair amount of TV,  all kinds,  movies,  series,  news, views,  sports and scandals”.  Mr Prakash’s recent piece – Is Hard Work Worth It –  is a study on hard work,  viewed  from the perspective of a Wall Street hedge fund manager (an endangered  species) and a German house painter.  I picked up from his column this German word – schadenfreude — which means  ‘deriving satisfaction from the misery of others.’  Mr Prakash had, presumably, picked it up when he was sent to Germany, at our foreign office expense,  as a language trainee.

As for the proposed anthology on Mysore Blog Park  pieces,  my first thought was whether it would interest a publisher.  Maybe the idea needs to be batted around,  blogged about , and  pickled in perspectives.  Maybe,  our blogger in Chennai  could make a  post of  it in  Giving It A Shot.

Leaving Dubai

Dubai is, perhaps, the last place with which I would have associated global recession,  had I not read Paul Lewis in The Guardian.  Excerpts:  At the (Dubai) airport, hundreds of cars have apparently been abandoned in recent weeks. Keys are left in the ignition and maxed out credit cards and apology letters in the glove box. 

Such is the fate of Brit  expats who become victims of the economic meltdown.  The plight of construction workers from India,  Pakistan and Bangladesh is more unimaginable.  They leave,  only with the clothes they are in,  and with their debts following them  home. Most of them had sold their land in the village and borrowed money to meet the airfare and agent’s fee.

The Guardian article quotes the site manager of a scaled down construction project  as saying,   We tell them to bring their clothes to work one day and then we send them home. 

Wonder if  MBP’s  Dubai-based  bloggers and some others familiar with  the region  (Maddy,  Happy Kitten)  have anything to add to this.

I use a mini laptop

 Mini laptop or the Netbook,  as they call it, is light and handy, energy-efficient and cheaper than a standard laptop.  But would it really popularise computer usage,  the way cell phone did our telecom network?  There aren’t very many households in India that don’t use cell phone. 

Considering the value for money,  the market expects Netbooks to grow, not only in metros but also in Tier-II and III cities.  The targeted customers  for Netbooks will be students,  says L. Ramprasad,  vice-president, Transactional Consumer Sales, Lenovo India.  The mini,  they say,  would be available for Rs.23,000 to Rs.25,000.

The price may not be much for a computer;   but it’s still much, period. The price needs to be lower,  for   average urban households to get interested enough to  go in for the gadget.  Most Internet users rely on their office system or go to the neighbourhood Internet kiosk to check mail. Unlike the cell-phone , the Netbook is unlikely to widen the Internet reach and penetrarion.  The cell-phone caught on,  in slums and swanky suburbs alike, because of pricing plus product positioning.  Price range of cell-phone varies from Rs.3,000 to Rs.30,000.  Our domestic help picked up a used one for Rs.1,000.

 I can’t see her using a computer,  which still remains priced out of much of our population.  Affordablity is an issue even in middle-class households, with competing product priorities and demands on their rupee.  Rs.23,000 is still much for them.  Make it Rs.10, 000,  and you’ve  scope for widening the broadband reach in our country.

I bought a mini-laptop for $200, Taiwanese ASUS-Eee PC,  in the US,  months before recession set in.  I don’t know how much they sell it for nowadays.  When I went in for the mini-laptop it wasn’t available in stores. Interested customers had to order it online and the laptop was Fedexed to your place from a Target warehouse.  Such elaborate procedure was , presumably,  a promotional drive before they place the product in the market. 

The mini-laptop is okay, and eminently suited for the use of the likes of yours truly. I blog with it,  Google,  send and get e-mail, Skype, transfer photos to computer from a digital camera, and use scanner .  But I can’t  play video-game or burn music CDs ,  which are the features most students look for in a laptop .  Pricing is unlikely to be an issue with students who can’t do without such features.  My only  problem with the mini laptop  is  the screen size.  I got round  it by  connecting my laptop  to  an old desktop screen.

‘Myrum’ is a state brew

Karnataka’s  state sponsored  liquor  made in Mandya sugar company would be out in the market by the time you get to read this post.  Chief minister B S Yeddyurappa would formally release the liquor (Feb13) at Mysugar factory in Mandya,  according to a report in Star of Mysore.  Mysugar, the state’s oldest sugar unit, has been licensed to make rum, whiskey and brandy,  after it  ran into a spot of bother with the state pollution control board. They  had ordered its  closure  for alleged breach of pollution control guidelines.

Mysugar unit apparantly had no problem obtaining liquor licence because the state government viewed it as a way to curb hooch  consumption. ‘Myliquor’,  they say,  would be relatively low-priced to compete with hooch sales.

Sudeep Banerjee, IAS – a flash-back

 Death of a friend, particularly the one with whom you have not been in touch for a while,  sets you on a flash-back mode.  Sudeep Banerjee, IAS, who died of cancer in New Delhi ,  retired as the top gun in HRD ministry under Arjun Singh. However  the Sudeep I knew most was a relatively smaller fry in the government hierarchy. This was in the early eighties when he was in Madhya Pradesh as director of information and publicity. Arjun Singh was chief minister; and I was then posted as The Times of India correspondent in Bhopal. 

That Sudeep, for much of his bureaucratic career, had served the same political master was no coincidence. Arjun Singh took Mr Banerjee with him wherever he went – from Bhopal to Chandigarh as Punjab governor, and then on to New Delhi. The flipside of it  was that whenever Arjun Singh was ‘Kamarajed’  out of office or when the Congress weren’t in power at the centre Sudeep found himself bounced about in relatively un-noticed posts in Bhopal and Bastar.  Mr Banerjee, a Jabalpore Bengali, belonged to the 1971 IAS batch in the MP cadre.

The thing about Sudeep was that he seemed to make the best of his situation, wherever he got posted -  as head of the national literacy mission,  regional commissioner in Bastar, or as Madhya Pradesh forest dept. secretary.  He once wrote, in response to a letter of mine, that the more decent in every walk of life were  ’feeling out of sorts & tune’  with the changes all round.

About some of my media colleagues in Bhopal Sudeep noted that the decent ones such as Rajan (who has since died of cancer as well), V T Joshi,  Suresh Mehrothra and N K Singh were aging with dignity and grace, and many others, including our common friends in the MP bureaucracy were aging without purpose and absentmindedly. Speaking of himself, Sudeep said he was aging, but still ‘holding on to some marginal spaces of hope and recovery’.

 Wherever placed, Mr Baneerjee managed to evoke in his staff a sense of loyalty,  by delegating authority to juniors. He protected their interests, and fought their battle for promotion and perks, with an uncaring higher bureacracy.  With the media he dealt with as PR director Mr Banerjee’s relationship transcended that of a bureaucrat with the newsmen. 

In many ways He was a hands-on PR director,  who often escorted us on state-sponsored press tours.  Such closeness with the media, while it helped him keep a tab on what we were upto during these tours, created friction when things didn’t go our way. Any competent PR person would know that the media people are not a homogenous entity;  and it is impossible to please them all.

Sudeep had taken us, Bhopal-based media,  to Bhind in Chambal area for a function at which a bunch of dacoits,  led by Malkhan Singh, surrendered themselves in the presence of chief minister Arjun Singh. After the surrender ceremony the dacoits were taken in police van to the Gwaliar jail. Mr Banerjee said he would arrange for a select media group to meet Malkhan Singh over lunch at a PWD rest-house on our drive back to Gwalior. But the police had other plans. 

As we were hanging out at this mid-way rest house, waiting for Malkhan Singh to show up,  they had taken the dacoits straight to the Gwalior jail.  Whether it was a communication goof-up or a deliberate design by the police to ditch Mr Banerjee was not clear. What was worse, unknown to the PR director, a group of New Delhi-based journalists gained access into the jail for meeting Malkhan Singh.  Like the media, bureaucracy in MP  had its share of infighting. The IAS Vs IPS  act  here was played out at the expense of Mr Banerjee.

Sudeep was a media’s man among bureaucrats.  And he often found himself taking fire from not just a section of the media, but also from some of his own kind in the bureaucracy. That he was seen as Arjun Singh’s man didn’t help him get along with some of his own senior colleagues in MP.  Working for Arjun Singh was a challenge;  and those who knew Sudeep were well aware that he carried  out his duty with fairness and dignity.

Related item:  A man for all seasons  -  a  tribute by Raju Santhanam in The Statesman

A Jail monthly from Chennai

Speaking of in-house journals, Ul Oli (Inner Light),  sounds unique. It’s a monthly of, by and  for  jailbirds in Tamilnadu.  It can count on a captive circulation of 16,000 in the state’s 137 prisons. Ul Oli is not available at news stands.

As journalist Pushpa Iyengar put it,  the magazine may not be Pulitzer material,  but it deserves an honourable mention. Pushpa has done a pageful on Ul Oli in her Outlook magazine. The 50-page jail monthly,  launched in mid-January,  is reported to be the brainchild of Tamilnadu Director General of Prisons, R Nataraj.

Pushpa,  Outlook bureau chief in Chennai,  who has had access to the inaugural issue says  the magazine has stories by jail inmates on their life in prison.  It has poems, drawings,  anecdotes and spiritual quotes and other literary contributions, all  by convicts in theft, smuggling, rape,  murder, and bomb blast cases. On the magazine editorial board is a Sri Lankan Tamil Santhan,  who faces death sentence for his role in the LTTE conspiracy to kill  Rajiv Gandhi.

Incidentally, Pushpa was among the journalists on the scene of the suicide bomb attack on Rajiv Gandhi in Sriperumbudur.  She had covered the story for The Times of India.

‘Incredible India’, incorrigible automen

 I’ve not had occasion to deal with women driving autos during my recent visit to Chennai, but then this post is about the incorrigible auto-drivers  in our  ‘Incredible India’.  I did spot an auto-rickshaw with a painted message at the back, saying ‘This is a tourist-friendly auto’.  A rare species, I believe. Tamilnadu tourism website lists  39 such auto-drivers,  giving their names, addresses and cell numbers.

Experiences of a majority of those hiring autos  have been such that a long-time Chennai resident has even gone to the extent of suggesting in a blog post  that it is time governments of other countries issued a travel advisory to their nationals not to hire auto-rickshaw while in Chennai.  A researcher in Madras University, Mr Jesuraja,  is reported to have done a thesis on the behavioural pattern of the city auto-drivers. His study is based on interviews with 130 automen from T Nagar.

My recent  experience in dealing  with these guys proved educative.  An auto-driver was the last person from whom I expected to get a lowdown on the state of recession, inflation,  petrol prices and allied economics. I found them agressively pragmatic in negotiating fares.  Did I say ‘negotiation’ ? It’s not the word; the Chennai auto-drivers have the last word, often the only word, when it comes to fare-fixing.   They know of no such thing as a fare-meter.  In terms of business ethics Chennai auto-drivers appear to be guided by the  take-’em-for-a ride  approach adopted with impunity by the likes of ‘Satyam’ Raju and Bernie Madoff. 

Like the celebrity swindlers,  autowalahs have no qualms about looting the gullible.  But aren’t out-of-town visitors meant to be fleeced?  Which, presumably,  what this auto-driver on South Boag Road (near Sivaji Ganesan’s place)  had on his mind when he asked for Rs.50 to take me to FabIndia on G N Chetti Road.  When I asked if it wasn’t a bit much for a two-km ride the automan snapped, “what,then, would you pay? Five rupees?” So scornful was he that I felt silly having bothered him in the first place. I skipped the next two automen we passed by; and  let my wife tackle the third one we came across.  He wanted Rs.40. When we asked if he couldn’t bring it down, the automan gave us a kerbside talk on rising cost of living, falling value of the rupee,  not to speak of high petrol prices.  But haven’t they brought it down ?  The auto-driver held that a reduction by a couple of rupees at the prevailing living costs made no difference to auto-drivers’ living standard. His punchline: “After all, I asked you for Rs. 40,  not 40,000″.  I couldn’t figure out what he meant by that. 

Eventually, we ran into an automan willing to take us for Rs.30. It may be well above the official minimum fare for a two-km ride. But then who follows the metered rate structure? Auto thozhilalar union president is quoted in Deccan Chronicle as saying auto-drivers could not be expected to go by the government fixed rates, and still hope to improve their living standard. 

 Such attitude of blatant defience of authority smacks of what I would term the  ’Cooum syndrome’. It is a situation wherein you leave an issue unadressed so long that it becomes utterly hopeless.  Once a navigable river running through the city of Madras,  Cooum has,  over decades of neglect and inaction,  degenerated into a stagnant sewage dump. Cooum is  so far gone that the authorities can no longer address the issue of cleaning the river in a  meaningfully  manner. With apparent inablity of the local authorities to  discipline auto-drivers,  that  travel advisory may well  apply to  all visitors, not just foreigners.  As for Chennai residents,  they  appear   accustomed to their incorrigible automen, as they are,   to  an unflowing Cooum.