Clothesline ’satyagraha’

Didn’t think, did you, that hanging out your laundry in the backyard or balcony is such a big deal. It is, for residents in Aurora, an upscale Ontario suburb, where outdoor-clotheslines, seen as an eyesore, are banned by law. The New York Times reports that a local citizen group there has taken to hanging laundary to dry out in people’s backyards, as an act of ‘civil disobedience’.
Not, perhaps, in the same league as Gandhiji’s Dandi March,  but a ‘satyagrah’ it is nonetheless, to assert citizens’ right to do their own thing with their laundary, within the confines of their own homes. Their fight for the ‘right to dry’ their laundary is no small matter, considering the ban on outdoor clotheslines has been in place in North America and parts of Europe for over three decades.
Homeowners and real-estate developers in the West reckon clotheslines on home fronts are not in keeping with the upscale lifestyle. Houses with no clothesline are inconceivable in middle-class India.  I haven’t been to Palm Meadows or other dollar-driven townships in Bangalore’s Whitefield. It is understandable if people’s thinking there is in line with the Western mindset on matters of lifestyle esthetics.
At our apartments complex in Mysore the estate developer has provided clotheslines on the terrace, in a bid to discourage residents of flats from hanging their clothes to dry in balconies facing the road. But I don’t see how he can enforce his wish on those who see nothing strange in putting their laundry out to dry.
Anyway, the clothesline satyagrahis in the west seeking to overturn the ban have an enviornmental agenda. Their point is electric dryer uses up as much energy as a fridge; and clothesline isn’t just energy saving, it effects a sizeable cutback in carbon emission. In developed countries household appliances account for a quarter of their total carbon emissions.
If pro-clothesline activists get the legal ban overturned, half the battle would be won. But victory over the other half, and a more significant half of the battle, can come only with behavioural changes. Those who put esthetics above environment; and continue to opt for electric dryers, rather than the clothesline, ought to pay for their carbon emissions. Proceeds from this should be spent on eco-friendly projects in the developing world, where clotheslines are the norm and electric dryers have not been  as an option for even those who can afford them. Washing machines sold here don’t usually come with an electric dryer.     
            

Where pawn-brokers score over banks

A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) survey carried out in some 300 districts is reported to have revealed that the rural poor continue to rely on neighbourhood moneylender. And RBI has drafted, what its deputy governor Usha Thorat calls, a concept plan to check this trend. At a Mumbai symposium she spoke of the need for banking penetration into remote areas, and to promote financial literacy and credit counselling.
Financial literacy and counselling are good things, if you know how to get villagers to listen. When in need they go to a pawnbroker rather than a bank, knowing very well they are exploited financially. Credit counselling ? Rural credit seekers care more for ready access to cash than for low interest rate; they want prompt service, not paper-work; village money-lender gives them cash for the asking, and do not ask them for colateral. The only surity on which a money-lender advances money is his belief in borrower’s capacity to pay, and his ablility to collect.
I had occasion, and this was a decade back, to observe credit habit of tea-estate workers at Valparai  in Coimbatore district of Tamilnadu. I was struck by the number of pawnbrokers in this taluk town. I counted at least six within a kilometer stretch on  the main street. There was a bank on the main street and it had problem attracting tea-workers, most of whom borrow on a regular basis from local pawnbrokers. In remote areas a village provision store, from where villagers buy household essentials, usually on credit, also advance money to favoured customers. 
Pawnbrokers advance credit on trust; charge interest rates, calculated on monthly basis. Repayment is due on pay-day, when money-lenders show up at the tea estates to collect their dues from workers. By the time a debt is cleared many tea-estate workers seek fresh loan, and this cycle continues. Pledging jewels, silverware, household valuables to meet expenses for family functions and special occasions is not uncommon.
Under the system adopted by pawnbrokers there is little scope for default by borrowers. Lenders know no such thing as a loan write-off; and pawnbrokers do not have on their books ‘non-performing assets’ like banks.
Pawnbrokers observe no holiday; they are open all days, till late in the evening. A worker seeking a bank loan stands to lose a day’s wages; for banks are open only on week days and loaning formalities take up time, and, at times, more than a day.
Relatively low interest rate charged by bank held no appeal to  workers because of a belief that getting loan sanctioned from banks involved cutback payment.    
                

 

Cricket as mega-buck business

Cricket industry (zero-sportsmanship venture) has evidently stretched  India’s economic liberalization to ludicrous lengths. We have DLF-IPL flogging 20/20 matches as entertainment product sold to cricket consumers by the seat – costing anything between Rs.200 to Rs.5,000 per fixture in Chennai. A season ticket could set you back by as much as Rs.30,000 (Chennai rates).  

Seven other cities have been franchised by the league promoters mainly to corporates helmed by folk such as Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya; and bollywood celebs – Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla (joinly holding Kolkata franchise) and Preity Zinta (part-holder of Mohali franchise). These people have paid big money. Mallya is reported to have paid $111.6 mil. for Bangalore and has spent another Rs.15.2 crores acquring players for the city team. 

Someone who plays for Bangalore need not necessarily be from the city or even the state. He could be from quite another country, depending on the bid size and depth of Mallya’s pocket. Players are auctioned and even the game is mutilated in form and substance to suit the requirements of a day/night fixture. Imagine the power bill involved in such a match. Cricket, as most lovers of the sport envisage, used to be a day-light game. Haven’t we seen Test matches being curtailed by poor natural light? I haven’t checked if they have a fixture on April 22; and if ‘Earth Day’ enthusiasts have plans to protest such conspicuous power consumption in the name of cricket. 

As if they haven’t thrown their weight about elsewhere, we hear IPL promoters are seeking to dictate terms to the media , laying down conditions for newspaper coverage and trying to put a cap on the number of  action photographs a newspaper can upload to its web editions. No self-respecting newspaper editor can be expected to accept such conditions. What’s more, the league promoters claim unfettered access to media material and visuals as a free lunch; and this, they demand as a right, to be fulfilled by the media at its cost. 

I haven’t , have you, heard of the corporate sector muzzling the media (instead of the other way about). The Hindu says it all in its edit: ‘Greed and arrogance’. Irony is the IPL franchise for Hyderabad is said to be held by a media group – Deccan Chronicle. 

IPL promoters or the franchise holders don’t appear to care for the interests of spectators. In my reckoning the 20/20 league organizers take for granted a multitude of their customers – cricket-loving public. Maybe IPL is aping the US business model for sports such as baseball, basketball or football. Is anyone addressing the issue whether turning cricket into a mega-buck entertainment business is conducive to our socio-economic reality. Besides, is it such a good idea to let a real-estate developer transplant in India a business model for cricket (which is almost a religion with our sport-loving multitude) for the benefit of a bunch of investors and a select group of auctioned players. If this 20/20 league gets going, it would not be long before we have multinational investors and takeover tycoons evincing interest in India’s cricketing entertainment prospects.  

 

Sapgreen is in business

Mysore’s first tree-plant start-up, Sapgreen, is now in business. Its founders – Anil Kumar and Ashwin Upadhyaya - are self-confessed greenhorns who have the backing and goodwill of  the Friends of Roadside Trees (FORT), a bloggers group, and a bunch of green-minded college students. It is a club-up of a civic initiative of public-spirited residents with a local business venture, in an effort to green Mysore.

Earlier efforts at tree-planting have been sporadic. And an ambitious scheme, launched jointly by the Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and the forest department a couple of years back didn’t make much headway because of poor funding. It was in such depressive scenario FORT-Mysore came along to promote the idea of people planting trees to celebrate life’s little noteworthy events   - a birthday, wedding anniversary, felicitation on your getting an award, children’s success in examination, son’s trip abroad for higher studies, your daughter getting spouse visa that enables her to join her husband; her first Diwali after marriage, first Ugadi and several other firsts, for so many in the family.

 

When it comes to a cause, a green one, flimsiest of reasons would do. My wife and I plan to plant a sapling this Ugadi to mark our two-and-a-half year old grandson Siddarth’s first day at play school in California. What has it got to do with our planting a sapling in Mysore? It is the thought that matters. Those who think tree would find a reason even where there is none. FORT-Mysore is about persuading people to think trees; and be inventive in finding reasons to plant them.

 

But then many people with such green intention cannot always carry it out in action. This is where Sapgreen fits in. They take care of the nitty-gritty. Sponsor a tree; and Sapgreen takes care of the rest. FORT-Mysore can synergize with Sapgreen; FORT-Mysore can generate  people’s interest (in tree-planting), and the other translates it into action.

 

They haven’t discussed tariff, but Sapgreen plans to put a price tag of  Rs.300 on every tree-sponsorship. A sapling would cost hardly a tenth of this price. Over 90 percent goes into protection and upkeep of the plant till it takes root and can fend for itself. The plus point about Sapgreen founders is they guarantee survival of every sapling that is sponsored; and the odd ones that wither away for some reason are replaced.What is more, the status of every sapling can be monitored on the company website through a tree-coding system. Every sponsor gets a certificate of planting. Ashwin says they have plans to have a photo gallery on the web, with pictures of sponsors who plant their own saplings. They also have plans for putting out video-clips of tree-planting on YouTube. The packaging of the sponsorship sounds impressive. Whether their price would be acceptable to our middle-class mindset remains to be seen.

Maybe Rs.300 would become palatable, if the company chooses to plant in pairs; which means every sponsor would get two trees for the price of one. After all, there wouldn’t be much difference in the cost of upkeep of the pair.  

 

              

Media-harassed Rahul evades reporters

There was a time – in the 70s and 80s – when newspaper reporters enjoyed a reputation of being a hard-boiled lot. Many of them had an ‘attitude’, and simply walked out from wherever they were unwelcome. Now, they sulk, and shout slogans against event organizers. The media persons in Mangalore did just that the other day; because, they were not allowed in, at three of the four Rahul Gandhi functions. 

A newspaper report said agitated media persons blocked vehicles at a venue by squatting on the road. Wonder why they had to make such a spectacle of themselves? After all, there was nothing personal about the media ban; and, by keeping reporters out, it was the Congress, and, to a lesser extent, Rahul, that stood to lose media goodwill and coverage.  

With such unseemly protest our media friends were not upholding the  cause of press freedom; or asserting people’s right to information. Do the Mangalore reporters believe that newspaper readers really cared, if some meetings Rahul had with his party youth, school kids or fisher folk, went unreported in newspapers?  

As it is, I reckon, our media have overdone Rahul Gandhi’s ‘discovery’ tour. On top of this, we have these reporters cribbing that they were not being allowed to do more. The Hindu story – Discover-India tour leaves media fuming…- makes pathetic reading. Shouting slogans against the Congress, Mr G or the security doesn’t enhance media’s public image. It smacks of frustration. The reporters’ case is that they were turned away from a venue, after having been invited by the state Congress leaders appealing for ‘wide publicity to Rahul’s visit’.     

Perhaps, there was an ego issue. Reporters were cut up because a bunch of guys in khaki had the temerity to turn them out, citing security reasons. Real reason, presumably, was that Rahul wanted to share his thoughts with the party youth, school kids, the local fisher folk or whoever, without the inhibiting presence of reporters. After all, Rahul was on a discover-Karnataka tour; and was entitled to the privacy of his ‘discovery’, without a platoon of media persons breathing down his neck.

When reporters had the door slammed on them by the security people they took it as an affront to the media. My hunch is that the assembled reporters would have willingly obliged, if the event organizers had made a request; better still, if Rahul Gandhi had worked his charm, and told the assembled media to take ‘a coffee-break’. Mr G, it seems, intervened, but did so after some media guys blocked his vehicle. 

Rahul is reported to have admitted that he evaded the press because they were after 30-second ‘bytes’ wherever he went. Reporters, on their part, appeared under pressure to produce a Rahul ‘quote’ every few hours to feed 24×7 news channels. Too many channels chase the same story, as if there is little else happening that makes news.

Illegible hand, a doctor’s trademark

Poor handwriting and the medical profession are  closely associated in our mindset. Which is why I was amused to read about Mysore pharmacists representation to the government about crappy handwriting of doctors. The medical shop guys want local doctors to issue prescriptions, with a printed list of drugs (striking out those not applicable).

Though it has been two months now, the representation hasn’t had any effect. I am not surprised. Printed prescription, as pharmacists association suggests, would take away the personal touch; wouldn’t be quite the same  as  an old-fashioned prescription, written in doctor’s own flowing, if somewhat scrappy, hand. 

Pharmacists plea is that the docs could try to be more legible; and write out the names of drugs in caps. I can’t visualize our medical fraternity sign up for a hand-writing crash course. In fact, any effort to engineer improvement on this score would be tantamount to tampering with a doctor’s trademark –  poor hand-writing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is in their DNA. But then haven’t we heard parents, seeing their children’s kindergarten scribble, saying they might  grow up to be doctors?

Of course not every kid with scrappy handwriting becomes doctor; but empirical evidence suggests that every other doctor has a handwriting that looks like ‘chicken droppings’, as my wife would say. But then she says journalists share this handwriting thing with medical profession. She has often  helped me  read my own speed-written notes so that I could,file a cogent report to my newspaper.

Mysore pharmacists claim there are chances of a mix-up in dispensing drugs if they can’t read a doctor’s prescription. And nowadays there are a number of drugs with similar sounding brand-names, adding to the confusion.The pharmacist’s prescription to the doctor: Use printed format; or write the names of drugs in caps. 

As an old-fashioned stakeholder – someone who gets indisposed  now and then – I am all admiration for the reading skills of our pharmacists. It is because of their unfailing skill I have managed to survive nearly seven decades now, without a single mix-up caused by a medical attendant who couldn’t read my doctor’s prescription. Old hands in most medical shops have this intuitive skill to decipher what doctors prescribe. I used to think this came with their schooling. Today’s pharmacy schools, it seems, don’t teach students the life-saving prescription-reading skill. 

A horse story

Wilcox Memorial Hospital, Hawaii, is pretty liberal when it comes to visitation policy. They allow visitors to bring in cats, dogs and other pets that are certified by a vet. But Lani Yukimura brought a horse to cheer up his grandfather, admitted in the hospital.

The man brought his animal up the elevator to the third-floor, where the security wouldn’t let them in to the ward. Lani, having made it this far, wouldn’t return without his grand-father seeing his horse. The security, now joined in by a ward nurse, was being difficult. They put their foot down and said the beast couldn’t take a step forward. They however agreed to wheel the patient out of his room so that he could have a ‘dekho’  before the horse was turned back into the elevator, to be taken down to the lobby and then to the car park, this time under security escort.

I heard an interviewer on BBC radio ask hospital spokeswoman how the horse took the elevator ride. “He was well behaved”, she said, adding there was no damage other than “a few scuff marks”. If you wonder how the horse got past the lobby, without as much as a gate-pass,  a local newspaper reported that his minder took care to take in his animal after the staff at the hospital front desk had gone home.

The hospital’s policy, they say, was to inspect all animals brought in by visitors.The man, presumably chose to sneak in because of his sense that they wouldn’t let his horse in; and he wasn’t going to let such technicality get in the way of his desire to cheer up his ailing grandfather by taking his horse to visit him. And how did the old patient feel on seeing the animal ? He had a good laugh, observed the hospital spokeswoman, and then she heard him shouting out to his grandson, near the elevator, “but that isn’t my horse”.  

Who moved Manivannan’s file ?

I know Mr Manivannan wouldn’t want us making a fuss over his postings & transfer. True, it’s an administrative matter, and transfer-of-job goes with the turf, for IAS or any other govt. officials. Moreover, Mr M doesn’t have a personal stake in holding to or giving up any particular post. His pay & perks remain unaffected.

Knowing him a little, as I do, through one informal meet and subsequent exchange of a few e-mails, Mr Manivannan doesn’t appear the person who views the latest change in his posting status as an ego issue or a punishment. For those who haven’t read, Mr P Manivannan, deputy commissioner, has been relieved of his additional charge as the city municipal commissioner. Admittedly, it’s a thankless charge that doesn’t enhance Mr M in official hierarchy. But folks in Mysore have come to accept Mr.M as the municipal chief, for the foreseeable future; even those who have reasons to feel uncomforatble with his no-nonsense approach.

What ought to concern you and I, who are looking for proper governance in the politics-driven civic body, is the apparent lack of administrative provocation for shifting Mr. M. It is not as if the decision-making babus in Bangalore have found a suitable official to take independent charge. For Mr M’s replacement as municipal commissioner is MUDA (city dev. authority) commissioner Mr V Shankar, who would hold additional charge and function as a care-taker municipal chief.  What’s the idea ?

Maybe Mr M, feeling stressed out as deputy commissioner, wanted it this way. But then MUDA can’t be any less stressful for Mr S. And whether it is Mr M or Mr S who holds additional charge, the job of municipal chief carries the same hassles and headaches for any official who goes for performance, rather than posturing. We know Mr M as someone who delivers. Mr S would need time to establish his credentials in the ‘can-do’ department. Whether Mr M’s replacement would execute his predecessor’s threat to pull down unauthorised structures remains to be seen.

My guess is Mr Manivannan had to go because of his penchant for going by the rule-book. We may never learn of the ‘hidden hand’ that moved Mr M’s postings file. Mr Manivannan may be here today, gone tomorrow. But we, as Mysore residents, have to live with the ‘hidden hands’ that move official files. Who knows, they may well be amidst us.      

MRV: Reporter, friend, and now, an author

M R Venkatesh’s slim volume – in tribute to Ramachandra Gandhi and Daya Krishna – tells me more about its author than I had ever known/found out about him in our two decades of friendship. We were colleagues in my Chennai newspapering days; we used to meet on a daily basis; and have been together on many media junkets all over Tamilnadu. This was in the 90s. 

Reading his recent work – A Gandhi and a Socratic Gadfly - I realize that, in all those years of close contact, I never did try to learn of him as a person. We had spent our time together talking shop, which, in the case of newspaper reporters, pertained to political development of the day, our office politics, hassles of reporting, peer group gossip, and other such mundane media matters. Some journalists later write books on the mundane matters, and even make money. 

I can’t see Venkatesh doing a self-serving biography after retirement (anyway, he still has quite a few years before he hangs up his boots). What he has done instead is write a booklet on a couple of teachers who had impacted him during his university days in Jaipur. And MRV worked on this, in addition to his daily newspapering for The Telegraph, Kolkata, as its Chennai-based correspondent.   He has also shared the cost of printing with an old professor and some university alumni members.

 I was aware MRV had taken Philosophy at the university; but I didn’t know he topped in it at Madras university and went on to do research at Rajasthan university (1983-84) as UGC scholar. This ought to make you and I wonder what a guy with philosophical bent of mind like him is doing in a newspaper.  MRV knew as a student that ‘philosophy bakes no bread’. He chose print media for his bread and butter; joined the PTI news agency as a trainee journalist in 1985. (Wonder what his stipend was then; in the 60s when I was interviewed – and didn’t get through - for such an opening in PTI, New Delhi, the going payment was Rs.150, monthly) 

 If I have skirted around the subjects of MRV’s work, it is because I know little about Ramachandra Gandhi (other than his connection with Gandhi  and Rajaji, as their grandson), and even less, about Prof. Daya Krishna. It seems other journalists were no more knowledgeable. Which was perhaps why the media widely ignored Prof.Daya Krishna’s demise.  MRV recalls he knew of no major newspaper, other than The Hindu, that carried an obit on Dayaji. 

This was when Prof. R S Bhatnagar, a former associate of Dayaji, got in touch with MRV in Chennai to get something written. It was a shame, if he, a leading figure in the field Indian philosophy, were allowed to go so unnoticed. Dayaji’s colleagues and some former students, worked out modalities of publication. MRV readily offered to bear part of the expenses, apart from writing the volume. 

Interestingly enough, Prof. Daya Krishna, had some years earlier contacted MRV (as journalist, he seemed the obvious choice) to ask him to write a piece for JICPR – the journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research -  on Prof. C T K Chari, an outstanding thinker who died unsung in Chennai. Prof. Chari had been on the faculty of the Madras Christian College for nearly four decades. As MRV mentions, even the local papers in Chennai did not take note of Prof. Chari’s death.  

In his tribute MRV writes about the Kachori afternoons with Dayaji, when the philosophy professor let his students have a free-wheeling discussion on matters that lent themselves to what he termed ‘creative philosophizing’. The weekly afternoon of chats, laced with Jaipuri tea and kachori, came to be known as the ‘Jaipur Experiment’; an event to which Prof.Daya Krishna invited many notables, by turn. The invitees included Prof. Ramachandra Gandhi.  

That was when MRV, then a research fellow, came to meet Prof. Gandhi. Describing his meeting at the university guest house MRV writes that he picked up enough courage to express his desire to read out to Prof. Gandhi a paper he (MRV) had done some months earlier, on ‘the problem of death and the Self’. Prof. Gandhi listened to our friend (full 15 minutes of it), and then “gave me a very concerned look, the wrinkles of his Rajaji-like forehead indicating unease, if not downright anger”.  MRV, in his paper, had made out a philosophical case for justifying suicides in some human contexts at a certain level.

“I don’t know what motivated you to write this,”  Prof. Gandhi lashed out at MRV– ‘it was then that one saw the fire, the passion and the commitment blazing forth in one sweep’. Prof Gandhi proceeded to demolish MRV’s paper, titled pompously as ‘Meditation on Death’. “It was too stunning,” writes MRV, “and at the same time a very humbling moment, a kind of ‘satori’ (the Zen way of sudden enlightenment) for me as a student of philosophy”. 

MRV’s  not-for-sale publication is purely for the interested readers. They may contact the author at melapalayamv@yahoo.com 

Karnataka train tour in five-star comfort

A passenger on board the Golden Chariot luxury train is reported in The Hindu as saying, tourists in Vienna get to dine inside the palaces there. She wished the Karnataka train tour organizer had lined up some such thing at the Mysore palace, instead of taking her and other tourists round the place for a couple of hours.

The tourists on the train, paying nearly $2,000 (minimum) – fare can be as high as $ 3,400 per head - for a week-long tour through Karnataka – did Mysore sight-seeing on March 11. The official Golden Chariot website mentions dinner at the Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel. But this is small beer in comparison to the prospects of dining at the real place, as the tourist from Vienna suggests.

Maybe, the Maharaja (erstwhile, that is) who lives in the palace could be persuaded to join them, whenever he is in town. His wife, who is into fashion design and branded soap-making, can only benefit from such interaction with the five-star tourism. Karnataka tourism development people (KSTDC) and the Mapple’s group of hotels, who are partners in running the luxurious Golden Chariot, would need to devise more imaginative programming, than taking their high-paying guests to the bird sanctuary or the Chamundi Hills and putting them through a cultural show at Rangayana, which can’t be billed the best or the most exciting show in town. 

Not every passenger on the train would want to be part of the same package. In Mysore, Golden Chariot passengers could be given other tour options, at least for part of the day. For the passengers, not keen on doing the usual touristy rounds, organizers could line up a programme for seeing Mysore as the locals do -  the agrahara, the local markets, a visit to the grand old banyan on Beden Powell schoolyard and some other heritage trees, historic temples, the Idgah, Bannimantap and other such interesting spots. 

Such tours are best done on bicycles, the green mode of transport that has been revived in eco-conscious Paris and many other cities in Europe. Golden Chariot passengers could opt for the other Mysore tour while booking their tickets. Organizers could consider proposals in this regard from locally knowledgeable groups, enterprising enough to take on such off-beat tours.

Another suggestion from passengers was that organizers should improvise in areas such as food and information sought by the travelling group. In this context the official website on Golden Chariot luxury tour should go interactive. I would suggest that webmaster should feature in the website passenger  blogs where those travelling on the train could log in and post their impressions and experiences on the trip. The blog posts, besides being a feed-back channel for the tour partners, would make interesting reading for those planning holidays in Karnataka.

Cross-posted : SiliconIndia blog