On What India needs..

Somewhere close to our 64th Independence day, I'd floated a tweet with the message that what  India really needs going forward is good education and good healthcare and that with these two taken care of most everything else would naturally follow.

There were a few sharp reactions to this tweet-o-mine, as might be naturally expected when you solve a centuries old problem in the space of 140 characters. The one reaction that I remember came from a dear old friend of mine Prabhu Narasimhan.His take on this was that education & healthcare are fine but what India really needs is a mature and clean Polity first and foremost.Now this chap, has and remains, in my short life, the most difficult person to win an argument against , and therefore I was pretty happy at his reaction because  on this I feel I have a winnable argument.

To state my case:

Is an honest  and mature Polity likely to solve all of India's problems ? That's too loaded a statement to merit a serious answer, because while clearly  there can only be an affirmative answer to this question, it automatically begs the question -how do we put in place a mature and honest Polity?

My bet is that  an honest and mature polity can never really come about as a result of  a lone crusade led by a JP or an Anna Hazare. It comes about gradually :-

• When Government after successive Government does serious work on cleaning up our rather corrupt system.
• When Generation after succeeding Generation feels that corruption is less prevalent around them than it was in the past, and as an extended corollary feels it is less acceptable than  it was in the past.
• When IAS official after succeeding IAS official realizes that lining his pockets doesn't help him as much as getting caught would damage his career, reputation and standing in society.
• When Minister after succeeding minister is forced to understand that corruption ,indolence and lack of initiative will result in two things , (a) him not getting elected ever again and (b) the wrath of the same constituency that had idolized him (or her, for that matter) and voted him into power.

All of this takes time, and more importantly, it takes an educated electorate to react consistently over a period of time to bunglers, cheats and lazy bureaucrats/politicians. It's only after these bunglers/cheats/indolents realize that the electorate won't reward them any further for shabby and slipshod work willl they be prodded to change themselves, And this is why I feel that without a redoubled effort to educate our masses on their civil responsibilities and duties; on the rights conferred  to them by our constitution; we can never (not in the distant future , not decades from now, not in a rosy scenario a few years down the line, but NEVER!) arrive at  a day when we have an honest and Mature Polity in place.

That's my education angle.

The healthcare angle is something I feel even more strongly about. India can never catapult itself into its glory days without addressing its severe lack of effort in the healthcare space. Having  stayed for more than three years in Sub-Saharan Africa , I feel entitled to my opinion that Indians deserve better healthcare than they have access to today. I feel this way because we have access to better doctors than sub-Saharan Africans have access to, and yet, our average healthcare facilities are at best at par with facilities there and in most cases - shame on us - worse than theirs. Oh yes, the best healthcare facilities we Indians have access to is definitely slightly better than the best facilities sub-Saharan Africans have access to , but that isn't much to be proud of !
Also, in a couple of years from now, given our tendency to gloat when we shouldn't, I wouldn't even bet on this last scenario being true anymore.

That's my healhtcare angle.

Let's just get these two things right, because frankly no one has even bothered to do anything on these issues till date.

On Mainstream Media (MSM) Credibility, Big Shot Journos, #barkhagate and #vircrasher

The evolving 2G Scam and #barkhagate (for those following on Twitter) raises serious questions on the credibilty of our Mainstream Media (MSM) and our revered journos. 

Even if there is no illegality involved, at the very least it underlines two things: 

1) There is an unacceptable nexus between media , corporate lobbyists and Politicos 

2) The credbility and independence of opinion that one expects from famous journos doesn't exist 

To me, point # 2 is even more important, as journos like Barkha Dutt are revered in our country. Not by everyone mind, as someone who has been pissed off no small number of times at the inane fashion in which BD conducts her " We, the people" debate - shouting down, attacking views by experts that don't match her views and giving inordinately high air time to that spectrum of views which she clearly comes with an agenda to promote. The absolutely cursory level of preparation with which she comes armed for such programs , etc 

#barkhagate if nothing should harm her credibility, and thats good , in an India where she is one of many false gods. 

#vircrasher too, knowing twitter, will soon catch steam , but Vir Sanghvi largely got off lightly here i feel on account of the fact the Barkha Dutt is so blatantly the face of irresponsible journalism in India, that mauling her on twitter was a long awaited event :D

Our revered journos used to be hard hitting, independent opinion giving , genuinely making a difference breed when they started out. 

Today, all they do is respout lobbyists' and government spiel, create a ruckus where unnecessary, "break" stories that they really shoudn't report without considerable restraint (26/11 being point in case) and like to plug their showcased programs at all possible opportunities in pursuit of more visibility and mucho big bucks (LOL at Rajdeeps Sardesai's mauling on twitter by @jhunjhunwala ) 

The worst part is media's (except Twitter) silence on this story, insider solidarity ??

Defending Jaswant

I'm a Congress person. Have always been as far back as I can remember, and yet it's true that the congress has a long way to go before it can be the party that I would unreservedly support.The Congress is far from perfect:- conspicuous errors in policy, rampant evidence of corruption by party members, a tendency to play to the galleries by even the highest level of leadership, an irritatingly continuing dependence on the Gandhi family to provide incumbents to the top post of the party, etc.the list goes on and on...

In recent times the alternative has been BJP, a party that I would not normally subscribe to simply because it's roots lie in a jingoistic pro Hindu agenda that stands contrary to the very fibre of Hinduism as I understand it. Also because it roots lie in an organisation (RSS) that draws its inspiration from Hitler and the National Socialist Party.
[aside]One of my closest friends happens to be the great grandson of one of the key founding leaders of the Sangh. I have all respect for the positive contributions the RSS has made to many communities. But I'll be excused for my decided opinion that the RSS's ideological underpinnings are fatally flawed and that, in general, it's not a club that I'd want to be part of[/aside]

We'll return here when trying to understand what the BJP's core ideology is all about (Going against which is what,as you'll grant me,resulted in the expulsion of one Mr. Jaswant Singh from the BJP). And yet, again, I have to admit there are many many things about the Party, it's leaders and its policies that one simply had to admire(forgive my use of the past tense but that is how I feel today) One of those leaders was Jaswant Singh, and another was Vajpayee ( Again forgive my use of the past tense but neither of them remains with the BJP today). Vajpayee's historical address in Hindi at the UN general assembly remains one of the bravest and most suave assertions of India internationally that I can recall. Let's not forget that it was the BJP again that not only had the balls to take India overtly nuclear but also the tactical wherewithal to steer India's foreign policy excellently in the aftermath of the blasts and Pakistan's tit-for-tat response. This was the party that had the insight to espouse "sadak-bijli-pani" and underscore the critical nature of Infrastructure and its role in the future of India's progress. This was the party that started the Bharatiya Pravasi Divas and engaged NRIs so so so much better than any government before it.This was the party that espoused the concept of a uniform civil code and equality before law. This was a party that had plenty of young , vocal, erudite and dynamic leaders (jaitley, mahajan, shourie, swaraj, modi and many more) and no "dynasty" syndrome. Above all it had four-five towering leader figures Vajpayee, Advani,Yashwant Sinha,Jaswant Singh,M M Joshi , etc.

There were errors as well, no doubt, not for a moment am I suggesting things were perfect. There was plenty of humble pie for Vajpayee at the Kargill-aceous end to his grand peace overtures to Pakistan or for that matter the hastily concluded Agra summit with pencil-mustache. To my mind the signal error plaguing the BJP was an inordinately high tendency to project itself as the next US/Israel. It wanted to or tried to change 50 years of world perception that India was a soft state over night. It didn't work out for them, or rather in hind sight I feel it couldn't work out for them.Consequently, there was humble pie for Jaswant Singh as well at the turn of the millenium with the IC 814 hijacking. And yet, Singh remains one of the few leaders that simply ooze refinement , erudition and finesse for me. I recall his interview with Tim Sebastian on BBC (Of HardTalk fame) simply awesome!!

In short here was a party that despite its fallacious ideological base did seem to have a lot of things going right and if you were an average Indian living in the India of 2003-2004 you might have voted BJP or you might have not when the elections happened in 1998,and then again in 1999, but you sure as hell were proud of the country and not too displeased with the govt. of the day. Five years from that point of departure I am pained at how drastically different things are with the BJP of today.

On Wednseday, the BJP expelled Jaswant Singh for writing a book on Jinnah. I haven't read the book but I have my doubts that Jaswant Singh covered any fundamentally new ground here. Basing my opinion on the one experience I have of his authorship I would definitely want to read this book. But the question I really haven't found an answer to is - exactly which core ideology of the BJP has he violated? According to Jaitley, he has transgressed the avowed stance of the BJP that Jinnah was the originator of the two nation policy. My question is - is the core ideology the BJP to oppose the Two nation theory ( which all said and done is not really a matter of choice now 60 years after the partition)or to insist on who originated it? If the latter,then Jaswant Singh's claims in the book seem to be good stuff for the party to build on rather than shun. ( I mean, really, if you can blame the partition on the Congress that's not all bad politically)

I'm not saying that what he has written is right or wrong, just that it shouldn't have resulted in his expulsion. There are two reasons for this - the first being that when similar statements were made by L.K. Advani after the initial clamour and his subsequent offer to quit as party president, things just tamely died on that issue. So why are things so different now, that a senior leader of the party is pointedly informed of his expulsion without so much as being offered a chance to explain himself. The other reason is that, if I have correctly digested the gist of what his book seems to imply about Jinnah and Patel-Nehru, then, the premise of his writing is actually a good ideological bolstering for the BJP a new plank / angle against the congress that the BJP sorely needs, given its dismal performance at the last hustings!

On whether what he is saying is historical fact interpreted with adequate judgement or not is something that I can only comment on after reading his book ( sitting here in francophone Africa, it must needs await my trip to India, I think, before that happens) but I have read one book by Jaswant Singh, a book titled "Defending India" and I was seriously impressed by the book.
[aside] To my delight I have read a personally signed hard copy of the book.The inscription signed by Jaswant Singh reads "To my Guruji" and is addressed to my late Grand Father who was his professor when he was a cadet at NDA Khadakvasla [/aside]

I just feel that it's a sad sad day for the BJP and that they've alienated a few erstwhile fans & followers with their arbitrary behaviour these past couple of years.I hope that they get a grip on themselves,because all said and done, the BJP has played an important role in shaping India's polity and gearing it for this century. Here's hoping they manage to salvage their relevance going forward...