How the Politicians ruined the politics

Disclaimer: The attempt of the article is to debate the political reasons behind some of the current absurd political developments in the world. It should not be misconstrued as a justification/encouragement for these events.

In October 2010, Brazilians voted a clown into Congress. Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known by his clown name Tiririca (Grumpy in Potugese), received more than 1.3 million votes in Sao Paulo state. He won on a slogan, "It can't get any worse."

Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte was elected the 16^th president of the Philippines. Nicknamed “the Punisher”, Mr. Duterte is an ex-lawyer and one of the longest serving mayors in Philippines. His policy has focused on a nationwide drug war to combat the illegal drug trade. He called onto the people of Philippines to fight and kill the drug pushers, brazenly published a list of alleged drug mafia on national television. As per the latest reports, over 1900 people have been killed by the police and vigilantes in the two month term of Mr. Duterte. His popularity ratings have a soared to a high of 92%.

Mr. Donald Trump is seeking a term as the 45^th president of United States of America. He attempts to become the most powerful man in the world by building a wall along the Mexican border (and have the Mexicans pay for it) and banning the entry of all Muslims to the USA. His opponent in the race is Hillary Clinton, ex-Secretary of state. Ms. Clinton’s foundation has been accused of doing undue political favours to businesses and lobbies in a quid pro quo arrangement in exchange of funds for her campaign and her NGO. As the Secretary of State during the Barrack Obama administration, Ms. Clinton has also been accused of closer ties with Islamic Terror Organizations, supplying funds and arms.

The Europe educated, often philandering and flamboyant Imran Khan Niazi won a million hearts in Pakistan and world all over, when he led the Pakistani cricket team to an world cup victory. He built a cancer hospital, the first of its kind in Pakistan and ignited many dreams when he entered politics. He was the face of modern Pakistan, someone who could lead the Country stuck in the lacuna of regressive politics and oppressive military into the new century. A few electoral defeats later, he realized that getting into power cannot be achieved by Utopian idealism. The new pragmatic path to the high seat saw him rubbing shoulders with the orthodox mullahs and terrorist sympathizers. The blue eyed boy of modern Pakistan was taking regressive steps towards his dream, killing millions he enthused.

Meanwhile in India, Punjab, one of its most prosperous states, has been reduced to a drug shanty. The drug racket is allegedly controlled by one the most powerful ministers of the state, also a close relative of the state chief minister. Interestingly, the 88 year old Chief Minister Mr. Prakash Singh Badal, was called the Nelson Mandela of India by the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi at a political rally. Mr. Mandela would have taken strong objections to the comparison had he been alive. If the political winds are to be believed, the coming Elections will see the rise of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab. AAP was formed as a result of great awakening of Indian middle class in the wake of charges of mass corruption carried out by the erstwhile Congress Government. They are currently in power in the National Capital City state of Delhi, were they are involved in daily power struggles with the current central Government led by Mr. Modi.

The continent of Africa is the richest country in terms of natural resources. However, the citizens of Africa are the poorest in the entire world. The military dictators rule the countries divided by language, race and tribe. Most of these military dictators came into power as a result of coup aided by American and European powers. In exchange of that, American and European Companies have unregulated access to the rich natural resources Africa is blessed with. The dictators have made billions and the Companies much more while the average African is battling hunger, mosquitos and guns.

Why would the citizens of a state chose a comedian as a lawmaker is incomprehensible. However, if you read the above events in an alternate sequence starting from last story on Africa ending up with the story about the clown, things do start to make sense.

The political setup of the world has constantly disregarded the necessities and the aspirations of the common man. The world is not as happy a place as it was 50 years ago. An article by Scroll highlights such deficiencies in the Indian context. People today are earning less, saving less and eating less than their parents did. The only aspect of their lives that has gone up is the stress level.

How did that happen?

Development has been a clichéd term systematically abused by politicians across the globe. Development has become a tool to widen the gap between the poor and the rich. The Banks and the financial institutions have become merely agents to facilitate transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The Governments across the world led by worldwide institutions have facilitated the movement of black money.

The political system today is nothing but a platform for organized corruption. The US Government has been in a constant state of war over since the WWII. It has fought war across the earth, toppled elected and established governments, and brought instability in more one third of entire world population today. It has created one monster after another, all on the pretext of national security but in the hindsight it was just making money for its stakeholders.

What choices do the people have?

They have a choice an armed rebellion, but one cannot fight on an empty stomach. Those who can fight end up being pawns in greater power games. African continent is full of such examples. The oppressed are still hungry, those who fought either died or fought long enough to become another group of oppressors. Power is a funny thing, it’s the world best painkiller, aphrodisiac and drug rolled into one. Those who do get power very quickly forget why they started fighting in the first place and become canny resemblance of powers they fought against.

India revolted too, albeit peacefully. Millions and millions thronged the street, there were candle lights protests, they were non-violent prayers held in disagreement of the selfish government and there was hope. Then the tyranny of the elected cried out, the people protesting in the streets cannot make laws, it’s the prerogative of the elected. That anger led to the formation of new “political” party, but as highlighted it was a political party, yet another political party. As long as it was a peoples struggle, it was united and sacrosanct, but it became easier for opponents to disrobe and defame a political party. There were power struggles within. A lot of mudslinging and accusations later, it started losing the trust of the people.

Trump and Rody Duterte embody the discontent and sentiment of the people against such establishment. The politicians have long taken the common citizens for granted. The common man does not know who is more dangerous between Clinton and Trump, he does not know what is more evil between a system that enslaves thousands to drug abuse or a system that kills thousands in the name of war against drugs. He no longer knows if it makes any difference to him.

Then when he cannot do anything else, he elects a Joker………… for “It cant get any worse”.

Of India, Kashmir and Burhan Wani

Kashmir is in a bad shape right now and as an Indian it worries me. It worries me to see young kids, who ought to be shaping their future, dying. It worries me to see young men and women hurling stones on Indian army and sustaining life threatening pellet injuries in return. It worries me to see a 30,000 strong crowd in the funeral procession of a terrorist, in contrast to a meagre 3,000 odd support for a dead CM of the state (elected with a lot of promises almost an year back). It worries me to see yet another Indian Army personnel ambushed, stoned and killed.

But make no mistake, if anyone dares the Indian Army, calls upon its people to ambush and kill the men of Indian Army, he is inviting the wrath of the entire nation. If those hurling stones are kids, those injured by pellets are some misguided youth, so are the men of the Indian Army. They bleed and along India bleeds along with them. With every Indian Army personnel killed, killed are the hopes of an entire family (mind you, most of them are from rural and extreme economic backgrounds). Want to empathise, empathise with these men, who are there because their duty reckons them to, armed with bullets they do not want fire, facing an enemy they do not want to kill, but the enemy sees them as their oppressor and would leave no chance go to harm them.

What for?

I do not wish to write a post on Pakistan. They do not need an Indian to count their problems for them and recount their horrors for them. Their newspapers are full of them and their everyday life is living testimony of how hatred can swallow the hopes of an entire nation. I want to remind those Kashmiris, the 30,000 of them who attended Wani's funeral possesion, to be diligent in their choices. A Country where the two Nobel Prize winners ware denounced, one because of his religious choices, and the other for speaking against extremism, and a country which rendered millions Muhazirs just because they were born on the other side of the line, will not welcome them as its own. The Baloch are a living example of that non-acceptance. The atrocities on Kashmiris in POK is not for me to report. I do not need to re-iterate the act of Lashkars in 1947 or the Operation Gibraltor of the 70's, those wounds are still fresh.

The world currently is a very dangerous place. Freedom or unification on the basis of religion has turned this world into a ticking time bomb. Trust is a scarce. The choice that those misguided youth of Kashmir need to make is very precarious. Freedom is a choice of both the body and the mind. However, redrawing geographic lines on the basis of religion only has not served the world well. There are a few out there who want to establish a Caliphate, killing and raping, for their religion and rest of the Muslim world is having to explain it to others that those men do not represent their faith. Their faith is much more than a few opium powered men wielding AK47. Islam is a faith of peace and tolerance. The next time a Kashmiri youth picks up a gun to kill, he has to chose the face of his religion he wants to be a representative of.

Independence or freedom is natural justice, its a right of a human being or any animal for that matter, but cost of that freedom ultimately determine the course of such freedom. The entire middle east saw one uprising after the other, one freedom movement after the other but were they liberated after all. In the name of freedom, smaller Countries in Africa have been mere colonies of European Powers delegated through evil dictators. A geographically strategic state as that of Kashmir will become another pawn in the bigger games of India, Pakistan, China and USA. Its a position India cannot afford to have.

India on the other hand needs to be careful on how it treats Kashmir. Apart all the provocation from across the border, the Kashmir problem has been dealt with very poorly by the Indian establishment. There is a need to understand the real problem of Kashmir (which only the Kashmiris can tell, and that includes the displaced Pandits too) and address it and stop making Kashmir another diplomatic tug of war between the two nations. They are our people. Violence is not a solution to Kashmir, it has never been the solution to anything. You do not smack a baby who cries. You hold him, cuddle him and comfort him and ascertain of what ails him. The Kashmir cannot be India's with some Kashmiris looking at India as their enemy. Kashmir cannot be another Gaza. A country which has a collective ambition of growth and development cannot afford to have its people engaged in war against itself. It cannot have people working against its interest and a vast workforce rendered ineffective due to civil unrest. They need to brought together. Dialogue is a cliched term in these conditions but some effective means need to sorted to initiate some meaningful conversation. Dialogues should be our first option and the only option and hope the things do not come to a last resort. Kashmir needs books and laptops in the hand of those kids, not stones.

They are our kids and they need to trust us and the trust can not be won by bullets or pellets.

To sum it up ... my poem on Kashmir on my last blog.

http://monologues-of-a-misplaced-bihari.blogspot.in/2016/07/blog-post.html

वो इंसा शायद गलत नहीं

तुमने जिससे घृणा किया, वह व्यक्ति किंचित घृणित नहीं,
जिसे देख पसीजा था मन तेरा, वो घायल इंसा हीं पीड़ित नहीं|

यह मानवता की है अजब लड़ाई, लिए कटारें खड़े हैं दो भाई,
दूर खड़ा मन है आतंकित, कब कौन गिरे है किस बताई|

धूं धूं कर के जो जल रहा है, ये मेरा घर भी कल तेरा रहा है,
वो दूर खड़ा हँस रहा है हमपर, उसने भी है क्या ये आग लगाई|

कब कौन गलत है किसे पता, कोई पूछे तो शायद पता चले,
पत्थर और गोली जब दोनों हीं बंद हों, तब कहीं जाकर हवा चले|

तुम थम के देखो ज़रा दो पल तो, रुक के सोचो ज़रा दो पल को,
समय गलत हो, कृत्य गलत हो, पर इंसा शायद गलत नहीं|

Whats happening currently is wrong. Without taking sides, its men falling on both sides. Men who bleed, men who hurt. Men who love their mothers and men who love their Country. This madness has to stop.

Random train of thoughts.

Random train of thoughts. Why do such thoughts only occur when you are half asleep? All you need is a minute of tranquility and you can fall into a deep slumber, but your mind is in deep turbulence, filled with random thoughts, thoughts that do not make sense. Some obscure childhood memory buried deep inside a part of your brain, so deep that you were not even aware that it existed anymore, suddenly resurfaces like it was only yesterday. You toss and turn in your bed pleading your thoughts to die down so that you can get that rest that you desperately wanted. What is a train of thought though? Trains have directions, these thoughts don’t. They wander like a lost soul, without any purpose. Jumping from one scenario to another totally unrelated scenario, like a movie with a convoluted, complicated plot but an excellent screenplay. You might know some actors, some you may not even recognize. Freud doesn’t help, you try to trick your mind to fall asleep but mind you, your mind is a powerful tool. It makes you who you are. Its akin to fighting with yourself, an enemy that knows you, knows your strengths and your weaknesses. The childhood memories jump to some violent news you saw on the tele and it turns into a nightmare. A nightmare you are trapped in. You are not asleep but you cannot awake. The nightmare has you, you cannot move. You cannot shout, you try very hard to get out of it. It takes all your mental strength, tearing the cacoon you are trapped in, you finally manage to move your hand with a great effort and you wake up with a shudder, drenched in your own sweat. You look at the watch, what seemed like hours of struggle was just 30 minutes on that slow watch. You go to the loo, drain that cold bottle from the refrigerator and you hit the bed again. You are still shaking from the nightmare you just had. You do not want it to return. 

You slowly doze off, this time in a quiet and peaceful sleep.

How smart is a smart city?

"Smart" is a pretty abused word these days, thanks to the smart phones. Add to that noise, the hooplah behind the ambitious "Smart City" Project, and you have SMART which is does not do what a smart does. Dont belive me, take a look yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGpVpsaItpU

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/3-girls-fall-into-sea-while-clicking-selfie-man-drowns-in-rescue-bid/

Smart phones do not make us any smarter, on the contrary, the time we spend on the phone would otherwise have been spent on social and personal interactions, so I am pretty sure smart phones make us a little dumb in the long run.

Coming to other smart, my city rejoiced when the declaration was made to include Bhagalpur in the list 100 smart cities to be developed in India.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Bhagalpur-to-be-developed-as-Smart-City/articleshow/52424075.cms

FB posts on how this would change the face of a city which has seen little change in the last 30 years were all over. I was born in Bhagalpur, went to school there and it is the only city in the world I call home. I have been living in different cities over the last 18 years and have never been in Bhagalpur for a period of more than a fortnight in the last 18 years. I hope this absence does not take away my resident status and my authority to write a piece on it.

Getting back to the FB Posts, they filled my wall. Demolition drives were in full swing, property prices had shot through the roof overnight and my parents had called me to wish me ,"Bhagalpur will be smart city when you come next", they said. It overwhelmed me.

My memories of the city are very distinct. As my memory serves me, school books and studies are accompanied with the dim yellow light of earthen lamps and smell of burning kerosene. Going to my village 22 Kms. from the city was an ordeal of five hours which included a two hours boat ride across the angry river Ganga. I was once swept away in a drain during rains as the flash flood had swept away the only lane that led to my home. Going to the only hospital in the city was considered the last journey, few folks ever came back from that grim looking building.

The city had no infrastructure. The next 18 years after I left were not any good either. It still does not have any infrastructure. I was there last week on a short trip. The roads are non-existent. The water connection is available only to one-third of the city. With the monsoon hitting the city hard, open, overflowing sewage lines have turned into small flash floods. The hospital is still grim and again, the city has no electricity. It brought back all the childhood memories.

I went through the smart city presentation made in the initial rounds of the smart city challenge. Its available here. http://www.smartcitieschallenge.in/city/bhagalpur
The team of consultants working on the presentation had a tough time making it. How do you propose to convert a city which lacks basic infrastructure facilities into a smart city? How do you incorporate 21st century technology in a city stuck somewhere in the pre-indepence era?

Bhagalpur was a a great knowledge centre in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikramashila ). It was one of the most important commerce centre in the eastern India with direct links to the sea route through Bay of Bengal. All that glory vanished over time, and layers of political and civil inactivity turned it into to semi-urban jungle.

Turning all this into a smart city will be a challenge and possibly a great accomplishment of the central government, if there vision turns into reality.It will be a challenge for the local administration to move beyond their lackadaisical and lethargic attitude and start taking steps to make the city smart. It will be a great challenge for the citizens for the city too. A city is only as smart as its citizens.

The Dilemma that is pakistan

Two news headlines from across the border sent shivers down my spine this morning. In one incident close to hundred innocents lost their lives in yet another terror attack on Pakistani Soil, this time in a relatively safer city of Lahore. In the other incident thousands held the city at ransom while they marched towards the Parliament House in Islamabad. They were protesting against the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard who killed Imran Taseer, the former Governer of Sindh.

The scenario reminded me of the Hindu mythological story of Bhashmasur that I had read as a kid. Bhashmasur, a demon, won the heart of Lord Shiva and was blessed with a boon “to turn into ashes, all that he puts his right hand on”. Little did the unsuspecting Lord know that his holy head would be the first that the demon would try to test the lethal boon on.

In Pakistan though, the demon unleashed in power on others first before turning against its creator. Some in the Pakistani establishment jumped with joy as their Frankenstein wreaked havoc in the world, they nurtured them, trained them and armed them. They ignored these terrorists even when they shot a girl through her head because she wanted to go to the school defying their dictat. Pakistan kept hush hush even when the worlds most wanted man was hunted from their soil.

But then these incidents became a daily affair. Terrorists killed people daily and randomly. They even blew up mosques. Hardly a day went by when one or the other city did not witness a bomb attack. Hardly a night went by when the sobs of newly orphaned and newly widowed was not muffled by the dread of the night.

They barged into a school in Peshawar and killed 132 Pakistani children. 132 Unsuspecting, innocent  Pakistani children murdered in cold blood in a school where they had gathered to get the education for a bright future that Pakistan desperately needs. The world took notice. The world had been taking notice for years while Pakistan was busy distinguishing between the good and bad terrorists. Now Pakistan took notice but by then it was already too late. The Country had slipped into a state of chaos. Nobody knew who was in charge. Nobody knew who could tackle this menace. Pakistan had become the global hub of terrorism. Even America, its strategic partner in its fight against global terrorism abandoned Pakistan because it had bigger problems to tackle.

History has seen many such monsters turn on their masters. India had their own in Bhindrewala.
America has had many like Taliban, Al-Qaida and now ISIS. Do we never learn from history. The world is in a state where 1/3rd of its population is under war. Pakistan is a state, it has a responsibility. A responsibility towards its citizen to give them a safe habitat. A responsibility to its children to give them a bright future, a future free of guns and bombs. A responsibility towards humanity.

Meanwhile another excellent read: http://nation.com.pk/blogs/28-Mar-2016/how-weak-is-your-faith-if-the-only-way-you-can-defend-it-is-by-using-violence 

Image courtesy: http://www.economist.com/news/21631778-political-satire-will-increasingly-be-pixelated-paperless-cartoons