Finally...... Something on my Life @ HelL

Its been almost two and a half months since I have been at IIM-L, but never had the time or the energy to post this.... Well life has mostly been good here, though there have been times when I felt that UC was so much better....I am now a member of 'Intangibles', the creative design committee at L, and am enjoying the work thoroughly. i really wanted to get into Manfest, but somehow things did not work out. Anyhow, no regrets.

And BTW, Our team won "WHACKOPRENEUR" the annual entrepreneurial challenge for PGP1's here at L. Our team was called "FROZEN BALLS" and our product was called "SUCK THY BALLS" [Tee hee]... we were more or less sure that we would not win, cuz the other teams' products were very high tech and very well thought out, albit not as whacky as ours. But, as it turned out to be, all the other teams got screwed regarding the technical feasibility of their products, and we, having proposed a very simple, cocky product, were let off on that front. Me, Sugam and Bitch [Hrishabh] were ecstatic, celebrated with dinner at Fauji and a trip to the city yesterday.
After coming back from our outing, I remembered that we had a section party going on at TITANIC [OH YEAH!!!]... joined it and boozed away to glory..... some people got really drunk and their antics were side splittingly funny... Most of the people got 'Bump-ed'.... Rishabh 'Placecom-Tappy' Tapadia got hit so hard, he was limping even today, Arvind got bumped many times over, People got frustrated trying to lift Vipul, and the best of all, Varun Reddy broke his tooth in half when he bit Nirav, who was trying to lift him for bumps.... All in one night!!!!
Oh shit, I forgot, Hell is definitely not all about fun, we got two quizzes on Friday, and tonnes of deadlines looming right in our face.... Gotta run.... Study OM & BIO.... Do projects for ITC.... and design a something for some committees...
WHOEVER SAID LIFE @ HelL was fun..... SADIST BASTARD....

Post Independence Day musings.... flag burning????

To my mind [please avoid thoughts of our venerable Prof. Panda], there are three levels of a society's maturity:

Level I:

Allow the people to hoist a flag whenever and wherever they want.

Level II:

Allow the people to use the flag whichever way they want (like: turn it into T-shirts, Caps, Neck-ties, Aprons, Under-garments etc. and sell them commercially.)

Level III:

Allow the people to burn, tear, mutilate, disrespect or desecrate the flag whichever way they want.

It took India 52 years of Independence to attain the first or primary level of maturity. On January 15, 2002, a young and aspiring scion of a famous industrial group in India, Naveen Jindal, won his long-drawn legal battle against the Government of India and the Supreme Court of India. It was a tireless battle that he fought for 10 years single-handedly, and finally the Central government issued an Executive Order, giving "freedom" to all Indians to fly the national flag whenever and wherever they want.

In stark contrast, the United States of America had already achieved its third level of maturity (flag-burning) by the virtue of its great Constitution that allows liberty to a common man to desecrate the flag as a form of protest (his freedom of ex-pression.)

The American people made widespread use of this freedom of ex-pression during the Vietnam war, and protested against the atrocities of the war by burning their national flag on the streets. As a natural political response to these protests, exactly 40 years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a "Flag Protection Act". Almost all of the 50 states too followed quickly with similar Acts to protect the flag.

But the U.S. Supreme Court systematically dismissed all such political attempts to bypass the "freedom of speech" enshrined so deeply in the U.S. Constitution.

The strong and consistent stance of the U.S. Supreme Court has left their government with only one option: to amend the Constitution (i.e., to demolish the letter and spirit of the Constitution) and take away the citizen's freedom to desecrate the national flag. Almost every year now, the U.S. Senate attempts to get this amendment passed, but fails to attain the required majority votes favouring such amendment.

With each passing year, the noises favouring the amendment continue to grow louder, and the gap between conservatives (read: hypocrites) and liberals continues to narrow. The most recent attempt for this constitutional amendment was made in the U.S. Senate last year in June, 2006. The attempt failed by just one vote.

EPILOGUE:

Once America achieves this amendment, it would lose its "maturity advantage" over India.

Though it would not be that India has suddenly leap-frogged in terms of maturity. It would simply be that America has finally decided to go back to its medieval roots of slavery.

Once that happens, India and America would have become gigantic equals at least in one critical sense -- immaturity.

So what if they couldn't become equals in maturity.

KARAT & STICK: The Parliament ain't a college campus...

We always knew the Prime Minister had a mind of his own. Now, we know he's finally added some muscle. When the history of Dr Manmohan Singh's prime ministership is written, the week of the 60th anniversary of Indian independence will go down as the period when the Prime Minister may have finally celebrated his personal liberation. By dramatically daring the Left to withdraw support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, he finally drew a lakshman rekha in his relationship. The big question will now have to be answered in the weeks ahead: was this only a fleeting moment of muscle-flexing madness or is this a genuine turning point in the relations between Dr Singh and his Left "allies", a moment when the Prime Minister finally realised the power and weight of the Prime Minister's office.

In a sense, a parallel can be drawn between Dr Singh and his predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee. In his first term in office in 1998, Mr Vajpayee did not enjoy the freedom to choose his own cabinet, which is why Jaswant Singh was kept out from the finance ministry on the firm instructions of the RSS chief K S Sudarshan. It was only in 2002 when Vajpayee had been prime minister for four years that he was able to make the shift in North Block without consulting the sangh leadership.

Prakash Karat is not Sudarshan (thank god for that). He is an articulate, scholarly leftist, who is careful with his choice of words, has written and edited three books apart from being on the editorial board of The Marxist. As a student leader at JNU, he was twice arrested and spent eight days in jail during the emergency. Known for his personal integrity, he has been a permanent fixture in the party's central decision-making bodies for three decades. It's a curriculum vitae that is impressive enough for him to be the youngest general secretaries of the CPI-M. Unfortunately, these qualities are not enough for him to be seen as a leader suited for the age of coalition politics, where ideological dogmatism must necessarily be reconciled with shining pragmatism.

Contrast Karat's tenure with his predecessor Harkishen Singh Surjeet, a communist who believed that politics was the art of the possible. His critics saw him as a deal-maker, but at the same time, there was a recognition of the genial sardarji's immense utility to stitch together coalitions. Karat, on the other hand, has had a more doctrinaire approach. Then, whether it is reading out the riot act to squabbling Kerala communists, sending out periodic warnings to the UPA government, or even denying the Left's very own Somnath Chatterjee a shot at presidency, Karat's style of leadership has been more like a boarding school headmaster than a party leader. And while he might have restored a moral gravitas to the left, he seems to lack the common touch that is vital to engage in mass politics, especially when circumstances have made him one of the most powerful politicians in the country.

Perhaps, Karat still carries the ideological baggage of history, which has allowed the Indian Left to remain frozen in time. As an apparatchik of the party at the central level, Mr Karat did not have to contest an election every five years and make any adjustments in his political style or beliefs to suit the electorate. For the Left too, there has never been a persistent demand to look beyond its immediate political goals in Bengal and Kerala. The Bengal communists, and to a lesser extent, their Kerala bretheren, adjusted to coalition politics because they needed to. A Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in West Bengal needed foreign direct investment because he was in a competitive environment. The CPI-M central leadership had no such compulsions. So much easier to write stirring editorials in Peoples Democracy and dismiss foreign investment as neo-colonialism. An elitist debating society in New Delhi versus a pragmatic government in Kolkata: the Left appeared comfortable with the dichotomy (and the hypocrisy) of the situation.

2004 changed all that. In a remarkable psephological accident - it can only be described as such - the left found itself in the vantage position of being able to shape the contours of the new government, despite having got barely five per cent of the popular vote. A hung parliament gave the left the opportunity to play a decisive role in government by sitting on the political high table. Three years later, it is apparent that the Left saw the split verdict as an opportunity to exercise virtual veto power on the UPA government. The CPI might have liked to join the central government, the CPI-M was wiser: why not exercise power without carrying the odour of responsibility? Then, whether it be public sector disinvestment, insurance and pension reform, banking or labour reform or civil aviation restructuring, the Left has sought to dictate terms to the central government.

Ironically, while more than twenty state governments have favoured pension reform, the move has been stalled simply because the Left leaders at the center are disapproving. Coal sector reform has been stalled because the Left-run coal sector unions will not allow it. Labour reform, so desperately needed, has been prevented, again because the Left fears that it will lead to a loosening of its control over organised labour.

That the Left would push its economic agenda was to be expected: opposition to market economics has been fundamental to the Left identity. The shift that has taken place is that the Left's opposition has now moved from the economic to the political. The presidential election provided the clearest example of just how much three years of pussyfooting by the UPA had emboldened the Left. Virtually every candidate of the UPA was vetoed by the left, further undermining the authority of the ruling arrangement. If a Shivraj Patil could be rejected because of his proximity to Sathya Sai Baba and a Karan Singh because he headed a spiritual "Hindu" body, then it was apparent that the Left was determined to leave its ideological imprint on all levels of governance.

The Left opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal must again be seen as part of its attempt to impose its ideology on the country's political agenda. This is not about the details of the 123 agreement any longer, not even about a robust discussion on the country's energy needs, this is simply now about the unseen "dangers" of forging a closer strategic relationship with the "Evil Empire" in Washington. For those Left ideologues who have spent a lifetime seeing the world through the prism of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union has not meant the end of ideology. If anything, it has reinforced their belief that the Indian communists remain the last bastion against the "Americanisation" of the world. While the ideological debate might make interesting listening at a late night meeting on the JNU campus, its relevance in the contemporary political context is less appetizing. It reflects an unwillingness to grow up, to recognize that while one has the legitimate right to oppose, the nature of the opposition cannot be such that it begins to resemble a spoilt brat who is being denied the entire cake of power.

The Left is now faced with a stark choice:either it learns to co-exist in coalitional politics through a process of give and take. Or withdraws support, brings down the government and is reduced to a member of a third front rump. Or worse still, suffers the embarrassment of getting phone calls from the original "enemy number one" L K Advani seeking support for joint action. Maybe Mr Karat and friends need to realise that parliament isn't a college campus.