Why Pakistan can't emulate Egypt

Recently one of my friends suggested that there might be an Egypt story waiting to explode in Pakistan and the youth there might bring changes just like they did in Egypt.I beg to differ and here is why: The way I look at it, conditions in Pakistan are RADICALLY different from Egypt. There is something deeply rotten and pervasive about the fundamentalism picture in Pakistan. They have become the biggest exporter of Instability and terrorism worldwide. The elements protecting the fundamentalist forces are too many and too high and too obscure to the rest of the world yet frighteningly obvious to those who oppose them .They don’t hesitate in misleading anybody on anything .American stooges ruling the country or producing any semblance of a “Governed country” are even more helpless and clueless about the whole situation than the Americans and never too sure about their own fate.
In Egypt the uprising was against a corrupt ruler who had been ruling for close to 30 years. Now, thirty years is a really long period and having a single autocratic ruler for close to 30 years says a lot about stability index of a country(I don’t remember any other leader anywhere in the world ruling such a big non communist country sticking to power for so long without any major hiccups).There are some other basic differences, the psyche of Egyptian population is basically Secular (at least anti-fundamentalist)and if you see the historical perspective, although after originating in Egypt, globally MB became the most influential Muslim organization over the years and many of it’s members were involved or said to be involved in radical activities, the leadership of the organization in Egypt from Hassan al Banna to Mohammed Badie had been(or was kept )more towards the centre than right. The concerns of Egyptian population were social and not religious; they were more concerned about the rising wheat prices and dwindling food stocks and 30 years of Loot and mismanagement by Mubarak. In short, we can say that Egyptians might not be very fond of protecting religious rights and heritage of Non-Muslims (you have to take permission directly from the President to construct or repair any non-Muslim religious structure and that is tantamount to forced suicide of the structure in question along with everything that It represented) but they are definitely not fanatic and don’t allow themselves to be led by fanatics. There predominant voices are generally moderate and in the case of recent uprising they had a very strong headed Nobel Laureate in Mohamed Albaradei- who had added advantages of being perceived as strongly anti- American and Pro-Arab- at the helm of the things, therefore when they oppose established leadership they have somebody with a sensible head on his shoulders.
Pakistan has only radicals to lead and even their best brains were seen hobnobbing with Osama.If the topmost nuclear scientist of a country is meeting topmost terrorist of the world ,who has a declared policy of using anything and everything at his disposal to destroy innocent unsuspecting lives,if everybody right from the President of a country to Military and Intelligence heads have a common goal and that is to hide and save terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and Dawood Ibrahim,who are active everywhere from Indonesia to Phillipines to Malaysia to China to Russia to Europe,Africa to US and most of all India,and further if even the slightest moderation is being continuously and ruthlessly obliterated then what hope can we have from the youth or underground rock bands of bringing change.They don’t have any sensible leadership,they don’t have big names(other than all these fundamentalists) to be followed by youths and most of all their anti Americanism/anti Indianism is based on religious grounds .They might have a few sensible voices in Media but as a country they have only three ideologies –Anti- Americanism,Anti-Indianism and fanaticism. Not a very strong ideological base to run a whole country, even more so if you happen to possess a few hundred of nuclear warheads under your belt.
What can be better than having a stable, sensible, prosperous and progressive neighbourhood? But under the present circumstances, it seems too much of wishful thinking.It will take many very lucky Obamas just to clear the surface and the rot deep inside might be totally incurable.

ELECTION RESULTS 2009-INTERPRETATIONS OF JANTA’S VERDICT

I.BIG NO TO CRIMINALS

These results have been remarkable in many regards. First and foremost, most politically significant aspect of all, we must congratulate the electorate for cleansing the system effectively. Almost all the Mafia/goonda element has been wiped clean by the voters in this election –
Atique Ahmad(Apna Dal)from Phoolpur,
Mukhtar Ansari(BSP) from Varansi,
Afzal Ansari (SP)from Ghazipur,
Mitrasen(BSP) from Faizabad,
D.P.Yadav(BSP) from Badaun,
Arun Kumar Shukla(Anna-BSP)from Unnao.
Akshay Pratap Sigh(Gopal Ji-sp)from Pratapgarh also lost .
Congress was saved from embarrassment as Ranjeeta Ranjan(Wife of Pappu Yadav)and Shanti Priya(Mother of Pappu Yadav) contesting from Supaul and Purniya -with full congress support- respectively both lost and along with Sadhu Yadav.Hena Shaheb(W/o Shahbuddin)contesting on RJD ticket also lost from Sewan.
Lessons (if they are willing to learn)-
A.We do not want criminals in the parliament. We have cleansed the system once ,keep it clean now by not giving them tickets in future.
B. Ms. Mayawati do not take us for fools, there is no way that you can get away with enrolling all the big time criminals for parliamentary elections. How ignorant can a person try to be, telling that BSP could not get the expected number of seats because people were scared that BSP will later start negotiating with BJP-bring something more audacious ,anybody. Truth is staring in your eyes, you are not willing to look at it and expecting everybody else to close their eyes also.
C. If a systematic effort is made to make people understand ,they do understand. All the Corporate and Media houses are to be congratulated for their all out efforts to keep the system clean. What is most encouraging is that such efforts were made for the first time, were spontaneous, motivated by a sincere desire to clean the system and they proved to be so effective.

II.Black-mailers/Brokers/Arm-twisters kindly excuse

How many King Makers/Prime-ministers in waiting had to eat their words-Lalu Prasad and Ramvilas Paswan duo,Mayawati,Sharad Pawar,Mulayam Singh-Amar Singh Duo,Jayalalitha,Prakash Karat in particular and Left parties in general. These are people /parties with loudest ambitions and most unveiled threats and demands. People of this country have had enough of them. I found the fate of RJD/LJP in Bihar funniest along with SP in UP. Congress did the right thing by calling their bluff-when your closest allies suddenly leave you in the lurch and you have to slug it out all alone, do it with all the heart and there is an old saying(as Lalu,Paswan and Mulayam must have learnt the hard way)-Luck favours the brave. People have started understanding that these are all small time leaders with truncated visions ,doing politics of/for one particular caste or region without the capacity to realize the ill-effects of what they are doing, how much fragmented the society is becoming due to all their social-engineering or Madndal- Kamandal experiments and most importantly they do not have any ideology or vision at all except for a fierce desire to keep clinging to the seat of power for making as much money as they can. Thank god their next generations are much better and educated and seem to understand that politics is about the nation(As In Bharat that is India) and not about their own clan,region,language and so forth….

III.GOOD GOVERNENCE HAS FINALLY STARTED PAYING IN OUR COUNTRY ALSO

Chief ministers of Delhi,MP,Andhra Pradesh,Gujrat,Chhattisgarh and most notably Bihar and Orrissa have reaped rich harvest for all their good works and also some of the policies at the central level have paid handsomely for Congress overall(Agricultural Loan Waiver Scheme and NREGA in particular and being able to contain free fall of economy in general).I hope one day they will all learn that governance only can lead them to the seat of power, even more importantly, people will learn to vote on the basis of policies and governance only keeping aside the usual divisive issues that are created to confuse and befool them.

IV.Do not underestimate the power of one

All the big ,grown up leaders, political stalwarts in their own eyes ,who were laughing openly at Rahul Gandhi or watching him with bemused expressions and calling him Kal Ka Chhokra, must understand that if your conscience is clean, you can talk to your audience maintaining eye contact all the time(i.e. you do not have any guilt inside),you have faith in what you are doing, you do not have any intentions of grabbing power by hook or crook rather you are willing to refuse what may be duly yours, then illiterate population of this country has a uncanny ability to somehow judge it all. Emergence of Rahul Gandhi is a remarkable phenomenon, it is very clear that he is a political novice, but at the same time and even more forcefully are conveyed his intentions and his basic thought process, the bondage with the audience is instant and spontaneous they seem to understand that this young man is speaking from the core of his heart for their sake and has come to them with an open mind and clear vision. They could see that his vision is not clouded by Religion, caste, language or political or financial gains and they responded in the only way they could have responded (By casting their votes in his favour).This was a natural chemistry between a straight forward person full of youthful energy and a population fed up with convoluted politicians. Almost similar traits were displayed by Priyanka during her campaigns.

V. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF CALLING A SOFT SPOKEN AND DECENT PERSON A WEAK PERSON

I have a feeling that calling Manmohan Singh a weak Prime minister might not have gone well with any soft spoken ,well behaved ,decent person. How can you call him weak-He managed to run his government without any major hiccups DESPITE Left support for full tenure, he did not release any terrorists in response to attack on Mumbai, he went ahead with Indo-Ameriacn nuclear deal despite severe arm twisting by Left, he managed the economic crisis well without any major tangible effects till date. Yet, suddenly everybody from BJP to his own allies start calling him weak. Despite their ideologies, many well meaning persons will vote in favour of congress just to prove his detractors wrong.

So, in my opinion this is clear verdict in favour of a stable Congress government, expunging the criminals, excluding any scope of arm-twisting and was influenced by sound judgement and a few good decisions of the Mamohan Singh Government with remarable contribution from sensible politicking of Gandhi Family and a clean image of Manmohan singh. At the same time,good governance at state level was also rewarded in general and people have given a vedict more complex and mature than reasonably expected.

Many cheers to this verdict.

Regards,
Vikasendu.

P.S.-These elections are important for another reason also, cutting across all the party lines, tickets were given to many young politicians in these elections and a very healthy percentage of young MPs will be visible in the Parliament this time-there must be more than a hundred MPs who are 45 years or less in age (87 already and I am still counting)most notable among these being Rahul Gabdhi,Varun Gandhi,Jyortiaditya Sindia,Priya Dutta,Akhilesh Yadav,Jayant Singh,Milind Deora,Supriya Sule,P.Venugopal,Kumar P.,Dayanidhi Maran,Sarika Singh(Only 29 years),Kunwar Jitin Prasad,Dhanajay Singh,Sanjay Nirupam,Ajay Makan,Sandeep Dikshit,Ravneet Singh,Dev Ji Patel,Sachin Pilot,Jitendra Singh,Meenakshi Natrajan,Shruti Chaudhary,Ashok Kumar,Deepender Singh,Naveen Jindal,Ashok Tanwar etc..etc….The list is really a long and impressive one. If somehow they are given a chance to form and run the government cutting across party lines………………IF ONLY……………..

GOOD MORNING,DEAR POLITICO!AND HAVE SOME MERCY ON US

Yesterday I woke up to see a very convincing and serene Mr.Amar Singh on some news channels .He was very much disturbed by the fact that by telling us the obvious-Investigating agencies work under influence of party/parties in power-Rahul Gnadhi has suddenly systemized misuse of the same by political parties. His concern was even more appealing since his own party has enhanced the level of politicking in India by reforming so many hardcore criminals and giving them entry into the highest temple of Indian constitution. Also, his party as an upholder of highest values in public life has every moral authority to find the utterances of Rahul Gandhi objectionable. What they do not find objectionable is the fact that 31% of their total MPs are such reformed persons and out of total 229 Violent crimes commited by our lawmakers in parliament 80 have been committed by MPs from SP BSP being a close second on this front and exceeding SP by 11% on the previous one (Most of the mainstream political parties have more than 10% of their MPs from this category, in fact they might soon be the single largest group in the parliament and many state assemblies –if you want to check party wise/state wise status check the information available at this link- http://www.nationalelectionwatch.org/downloads).

But, then what are they supposed to be ashamed of-Hamam mein sabhi nange hain.Every political party has her own shares of musclemen/women/hardcore criminals being given tickets for legislative assemblies and parliament. If people like Shahabuddin,Ateeq Ahmad,Mukhtar Ansari,Krishnanad Rai(Late),Pappu Yadav,Brij Bhushan Saran Singh etc ,etc…… are able to attend assemblies/parliament, then we do not need ISI supported terrorists to attack our parliament ,our political parties are doing their job, and much more effectively. If you want to destroy a country, break the will to fight first. What moral authority can an administrator/police officer has after saluting and protecting the likes of such. Not being able to stop the entry of criminals in the political system has been a big failure of the legislature and judiciary and as more and more criminals with more and more heinous crimes keep on entering assemblies and parliament, we will all have to sit, take stock of the situation and take some concrete steps before goons take over the system fully.
Also,it is very convenient to forever shift the blame for the grim scenario, so called Intellectuals are also to be equally blamed. Most of the electronic media has gone insane in their quest for ever elusive TRPs.If they had any serious regard for the cleansing of political system, they should have devoted their prime time slots to election related issues(mind you not gossip-real issues) instead of sensational Jyotish related/crime file/superstitious trash that has become routine for almost all the news channels .Anybody and everybody is a celebrity, some channels keep on interviewing these Media made celebrities and showing programmes related to them for many days continuously and what is more appalling is that these interviews are not conducted by some obscure third grade journalist but the same high profile political editors who have the calibre of asking most incisive questions and taking on most obnoxious politicos. I’m really at a loss to understand how they mentally prepare themselves to do these sleazy shows, I mean it is really pitiable to see a top notch political analyst/editor interview a lowest notch Item girl(??who coined this term)!But, I think that money(read as TRPs)take precedence over all and everyone and our poor intellectuals do understand this and one after another they all jump into the fray-one interviewing, another flexing his muscles in a court(Adalat).God have some mercy on them and let them realize that good quality humanitarian stories might also gain same TRP(and ,what the hell, had they joined Journalism for increasing TRPs of some news channel !).
As I sit and dissect dispassionately, I find that there are many things which we have helped our political parties systemize by not opposing, neglecting discussion and not giving proper thorough coverage to issues related to these-First and foremost issue of accountability is “Education”.
The fact that 61 years after Independence, we still have to provide reservations to a vast majority of our population itself shows the utter neglect of education system for the lowest strata of society. No political party could provide /cared to develop a system to provide quality education to the children from lowest socio-economic background. Instead of asking “Why reservation even after so many years?”, we helped them systemize caste based reservations fragmenting the society-politicos got everyone busy in discussing how much reservation and to whom and were thus successful in deflecting the fundamental question-“WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STATE OF AFFAIRS WHERE WE STILL HAVE TO PROVIDE RESERVATIONS AFTER SO AMNY YEARS”. Then we helped them again by voting on caste lines because they helped us get reservations. If a group is really backward then the real issue can never be who helped get this group Reservation, the issue should be who tried for their overall upliftment by initiating the process of opening good schools with dedicated teachers, better job opportunities in the pockets of this particular group (which incidentally does not mean big factories only; good vocational training, target based coaching institutes whose teachers do not treat these as a way of earning some extra money but are passionate about their jobs, organising dedicated and honest self help groups are the best ways of increasing job opportunities ),providing health care facilities ,education about sanitation and most of all, a feeling of being self-sufficient .
What happens is exactly the reverse, there are no schools of any quality, if they exist teachers are totally demotivated, absenteeism is rampant-more amongst teachers than students-drop-out rates are astronomical, nobody seems to care about job opportunities; instead a myth is propagated that Reservation is only cure for all the problems never mentioning the fact that in Toady’s India, a very minuscule proportion of jobs is in the government sector and covered by reservations and Education is the only key to upliftment.Baseline is –Parties are not doing any good to anybody by promoting reservations, ground situation is just opposite and indicative of failure of our political system, demanding and providing reservations has nothing to do with upliftment of anybody ,political parties have been using this ploy for keeping their vote banks consolidated by dividing the larger society and people should demand a system/society where they are uplifted to a level which makes reservations meaningless by bringing them educationally at par with so called forward classes.
How is all of this possible!
Some suggestions-
1.Start from the scratch-Open residential schools starting from class 1 to class 12 with full state sponsorship-books,dress,lodging,food, fares for occasional home visits -everything.
2.Find dedicated teachers, people who enjoy teaching and take pride in the outcome.
3.Give these teachers at least double of what their counterparts get –for staying in the campus and for performing.
4.Develop a system of incentives and disincentives –both for the teachers and students.
5.Plan well in advance so that all types of provisions are available well before time-everything books,stationary,dresses,money for food, repairs ,whitewash,phonebill,maintainance of the building(this is just a small list, what I mean to say is provisions for everything ,smallest to largest should be planned well in advance)
6.Fix responsibilities for everything.
7.Take these responsibilities seriously-any delay poor performance on any front should be taken seriously with in-house and if needed external audit of every single deficiency in service.
8.Do not allow people from creamy layer in these institutes.
9.Develop a mechanism sans beaurocratic delay and if things are delayed due to unnecessary nitpicking by beaurocracy,take them also to task.
10.Make these institutions totally free of political intervention of any kind-from local village/town level politics for admissions to higher level politics(say when services of a teacher are terminated after continuous poor performance).
11.Keep thresholds low-Do not tolerate any nonsense, any stupid nonsense for delayed procurement/delivery of provisions or excuses for poor performance.
12.Demand results-Chalk out clear objectives and demand to see the same achieved.
13.Audit the performance regularly and severely.
More I think more I believe that these are the only solution to Educational upliftment of the backward classes which will eventually lead to their overall upliftment.After all what is the state providing by reserving seats for these classes –marking a certain percentage of seats in government higher education institutes, government jobs which are to be filled by SC/ST/OBC candidates whatever their performance might be. Why not try and elevate performance to a level where they corner not only their reserved share of seats but on the basis of their merit only , corner a much larger chunk. This will be real upliftment ,nobody can grudge it,people from all walks ,all sections of society will support it and might actually participate if things are run in such a way that some confidence in governments’ good intentions and capacity to actually move things in the right direction is restored.
There are many more issues like minimum Job security,health,childcare,right of access to clean water, proper basic sanitation etc..,etc….I will try to cover them one by one.

Coming back to the original topic, Dear Mr.Politico don’t get disturbed by honest ,though off the mark admission of a young leader ,he is only stating the obvious. Instead feel ashamed for systemising almost everything rotten-Systemising Criminals(Not the ones with political cases, hardcore criminals –people having case of murders ,attempted murders,rapes,dacoity,damage to national property,people who are in the most wanted list of their local police stations for heinous crimes) in the assemblies/parliament(Even the upper house), Systemising dividing the society in the name of caste/religion, Systemising giving reservations in place of education, Systemising getting elected with one political party/ideology and supporting/taking support of radically opposite political party, Systemising neglecting the voter or worse still showing scant respect for public sensibilities, Systemising political clowns as political visionaries, Systemising ministers with criminal records in the Union cabinet, Systemising Halla Bol(remember Guest House incident at Lucknow).This list is also endless and everyday shameless chameleons called political leaders keep on enlarging it making the previous offence look many times smaller to the latest insult .I have no doubt that if Dawood Ibrahim comes back to India and somehow becomes our home minister(Do not drop your jaw, it is only a matter of one political party initiating the process of offering him a ticket, at least ten will follow immediately),he will not be able to cause so much harm as these thick skinned, shameless creatures can do by their divisive, all polluting politics.

So much for now, rest in a week or so.

Vikasendu.

http://vikasendu.blogspot.com/

SHOES AND INDIAN ELECTIONS 2009

This election has started a whole new ball game in India-throwing Shoes at leaders.This game of Iraqi origin has become very popular in India though we do not have experienced players yet, all three have missed their targets till date.

It was a reporter who started the Indian version of game by hurling a shoe at our Home minister -he missed the target, was evacuated, arrested,interviewed, released, reinterviewed and forgiven twice-once by Congress party and second time by P.Chidambaram-within a span of hardly an hour. I'm still trying to figure out why he might have to be forgiven twice!DidChidambaram have no faith in forgiving capacity of Congress as a party, what have been going on in his mind-Juta khayen ham aur mafi de party ka official spokesperson,ye kahan ka nyay hai.Whatever ,now, where does it leave the doubly forgiven culprit, what might he be thinking-meri jindagi bhar ki mehnat barbad kar di,ek baar juta phenka,who bhi laga nahin aur ab agar roj ek congressi mujhe maf karega to meri to puri jindagi maf hote-hote nikal jayegi. Anyway, no damage to anybody except for the person who picked up the shoe and is still unconscious .

Final outcome for the nation-A leading anaesthesia making company has offered the reporter a handsome amount for all his used socks, he has accepted the offer and company's share price has skyrocketed resulting in gains for millions. Congress are now proudly singing their new slogan byJairam Ramesh-JUTA KHAYENGE,SAMRADHDHI LAYENGE.

Second to go for it was a retired school teacher in Haryana,he was fully drunk when he decided to take a shot at Naveen Jindal,A congress MP andindustrialist. It is common belief that the booze company had sponsored him and they were planning to use the episode for promotion of their brand as a Concentration Enhancing Liquor had the shoe not missed the MP. Immediately after hitting the MP ,the teacher was supposed to address a press conference where he would have disclosed the name of the brand and made his booty. Now there is some confusion in the booze company as the teacher is saying that he be paid the agreed amount in full because he missed the aim due tocompany's fault-when he said that he wanted last peg on the rocks, he was taken to a rock about 10 metres away from the place where he was originally planned to sit and as a result he could not take aim properly. Now he says that if the company does not pay him the agreed amount he will call the Press conference and disclose the brand name.

Third one took aim at LK Advani,his slipper missed Advani by kilometres and had the electronic media not highlighted his chappal holding hand repeatedly by encircling it with a red fiery line, nobody could have noticed him and we might have lost this saga of bravery. Advani was visibly upset after the incident for many reasons. First one being -Itne bade kad ke neta ko miss kaise kar diya. Second, he learnt that the chappal was a local cheap brand made of recirculated plastic collected by some Bangladeshis. Third, the person who threw the chappal was an old RSS/BJP worker who had attended Shakhas for many years. Advani was upset at what the Shakhas are teaching these days-one person who claims to be going to Shakhas since early childhood can't take aim at such an important target, What is the future of RSS then .

A Bihari Bhai has developed a technique which gives an accuracy of 97.368 %at a distance of upto 25 meters with a certain brand of shoes thrown after consuming a certain brand of booze taken with a certain brand of soda and is starting a school called "Juta Mar Desh Sudhar School".When asked how he reached the figures of 97.368 and 25 ,he told "Simple hai Bhaiyya ,ee hamar lucky nambarwa bhaye".When asked about particular shoe ,liquor and soda brands,he said "Kaa tohar akal bhaisan charane gayi rahin,arre bhaiyya,bhizniss kar rahe hain koi majak nahin na hai,ee company sumpany sub hamarsponsor bhail ,ee ka jikarwa na Karin to dukan kaise chalin,poora ka poora vigyapanwa ka kharcha ee deban rahin hai bhaiyya".Asked about his future plans he tells "Bhizniss bahut potensal wala hai bhaiyya,ek bar larka log juta nishane par marne lagen phir dekho.Hum teen category ka larka taiyyar karenge,ek jo bare netaon par jute uchhalenge-gaur kariye ye marenge nahin sirf uchhalenge ,juta stage ke pass se hota hua neeche gir jayega.Juuta aur phekne wala donon janta ko saaf-saaf dikhai dega,4 news channel ko hum libe kubrage bech diye hain,yahi hamar sabse menhaga larka log bhaen.Doosari category mein who larka log rahin jo chappal hath mein le ke khare rahin jabtak koi aa ke pakar na lebai.Yeh thore chhote netaon ke liye hai.Ab bhaiyya har koi aira gaira neta pe chappal mar ke brand ikity thore na khatam karni hai.Ham koi Amitabh aur Sarukh nahin hain ki ek-ek rupiya ka tel ka puriya bechne chal dein.Teesra catgry mein juta rokan wale larke rahin,yeh pahle kam jam jaye tab lane ki soch rahe hain,juta chalega to rokna wla ki demand bhi ayegi bhaiyya,bari bari partiyan khareedengi ise.Yeh to amrika tak jayenge,Obama jab khari mein jayega to oo ka kahbat rahin,ander ka ghera-inner circalwa ma yahi log honge.Ham to ye shart bhi rakhenge ki pakrahua juta pe hamara hi adhikar hoga,Sasur ko neelam kar ke dugna munafa kamao.To yeh hamari planig hai bhaiya,ab kya hoga yeh to oopar wala malik jane ,baki kasar ham koi chhor nahin rahe hain,1-2 saal maein market issue bhi lana hai bahiyya. Achchha bhaiyya Ram Ram ,tum bhi koi larka ho to bhejo,biznis chamakne tak har larke pe 500/- ka kamishan de rahe hain,accha chalat hain,ram ram"

So, much for the elections and potential business and forex possibilities they genrate.Rest later.
VIKASENDU.

JAI HO ??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here we are, guys. Nation of >one billion going gaga over an Oscar(Well, 3 Oscars to be precise).
Now our news channels have something for next 15-20 days to take the people for ride(They are still trying to keep the TRPs up by devoting many hours daily to Mumbai attacks-latest topic of discussion seems to be –whether we should hand over Kasab to Pakistan or not and obvious gratitude is palpable for Pakistani diplomats for letting us keep him!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think our starting position was that we have all our options ,including military options, open and Pakistan should hand over all terrorists responsible for attacks to India. Thanks to our politicians and focussed news channels ,we are obliged to feel obliged that Pakistan are letting us keep Kasab here and have even allowed his trial !!!!!!!!! I don’t think anywhere else in the whole universe can media make fun of collective intelligence of an entire nation so brazenly. Their prime time presentations are so much below standard that I find watching these a direct insult to common men’s intelligence. Between 8 to 12 PM many channels are showing totally irresponsible, violent, sexually explicit and offensive, misleading trash in the name of news and when government tries to say you can’t do that, they all collectively cry foul. Even renowned names can be seen interviewing IRRELEVANT PERSONALITIES repeatedly and regularly. Trivialisation of important events, undue emphasis on non-events, creating news where there is no news and provoking people to behave irresponsibly to get some bytes has become a routine for many .Most common question that a journalist can think of asking a dead persons’ relatives is –How are you feeling? Now how is one expected to answer that!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well I am feeling sort of high after all these interviews or better still just ask the jerk how should one feel?

Coming back to the original topic.A.R.Rahman gets 2 Oscars for Slumdog music. As far as I can understand that says nothing about his genius and our being so ecstatic about it is a bit belittling for this maestro. It is as if had he not got these Oscars ,there would have been some doubts about his creativity, as if Oscars have made him more AR Rahman than he already was. I feel that any awards ,however great their perceived value might be, redeem their own prestige by being bestowed upon people like Rahman and Gulzar. Artists like them do not need all these awards to establish their place in contemporary art history. As to why is this his first Oscar or why did no other Indian get the Oscar or BAFTA for music, direction, sound editing ,etc…etc… is as stupid as asking why any American movie could never figure in the list of Filmfare Awards or Indian National Film Awards. BAFTA is British Academy Of Film and Television Awards and Golden Globe and Academy awards are American awards for predominantly American/English Movies ,so much so that all foreign feature length films are competing for a single award-Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. So how can any Indian or any other non-English national Movie/ personality be awarded an Oscar when Oscars are simply not for them.

Coming back to AR Rahman again, like most Indians I’m also very happy that he got more international recognition ,that he won a big award, (that too with Hindi songs and maintaining his signature style),that a movie with predominantly Indian cast and totally Indian theme could sweep the Oscars. I’m disappointed, not because of how India is portrayed(If such exists ,let such be shown) ,I’m disappointed because what is shown ,might actually be near reality. Let us not belittle the movie, it seems to be an above average presentation (only problem being with the intent and content of the movie), but it got all these awards because it is an English movie, made by English Producer/directors .Had that not been the case, it would not be even short-listed and why should any Indian movie be short-listed for predominantly American/British awards, whatever the intrinsic qualities of the movie might be. After all, we do not nominate Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List for our national awards just because these are very good movies. We do not get Oscars simply because Oscars are not meant for us exactly the same way as our awards are not meant for Foreign language movies. Media creates unnecessary and ill-informed hype and most of the times most of us are carried away.Rahman’s music is definitely beyond all the awards and though Jai Ho is a very good song with beautiful lyrics by Gulzar Sahib and equally soulful rendition by Sukhwinder, getting all these awards does not make it Rahman’s best. In fact his slower compositions(Masakkali,Gendaphool,Kahna hi kya,Chhoti si asha,Bin tere kya jina etc…etc..the list is endless) and songs with Sufi touch (Khwaja mere Khwaja,Maula)and semi prose(Dil Se re,Ma Tujhe Salam)are much better though they carry the same force and energy levels(and this is typical of him –slow songs with boundless energy and such enriching soulfulness that you become mesmerised by the overall effect).So, these awards are a welcome tribute to theses great artists but even before these awards they have given us many and much better masterpieces and let us not forget that these awards have only re-established the greatness of these artists and in doing so have re-emphasized their own value also. Because, awards or no awards Rahman and Gulzar will remain what they are and Sukhwinder will sing just as soulfully and anyways I do not think that European/British/American populations can ever be able to understand the meaning of Mora Gora Ang le le or Phir se aiyo Badra Bidesi or Chhoti si akhani se,wadiyon ke pani se. This mysticism is beyond them. So let them be happy with their Pretty woman and enjoy Masakkali and Sasural Gendaphool.
So much for the Oscars ,Indian media(specially news channels),AR Rahman and all.
Regards to all.