The Poor man's Gandhi

The Poor Man’s Gandhi

India should certainly be happy to have a young leader who has the welfare of the poor in his heart. One leader happens to be a prince in waiting of an important political party and is scion of a family with a prominent political heritage. His proclamations, predilections   and predicaments are the grist of the media mill.  Yet he is reluctant to take on the burden from his ailing mother and take the plunge into the whirlpool of Indian politics.  He wants to remain for ever and ever, the poor man’s leader visiting Dalit homes and eating the simple bajra roti with raw onions.

However this personality happens to be the butt of many internet jokes and anecdotes. The Parsi community of Mumbai declared that anyone in their community earning less than Rs. 90,000 was “poor”.   Based on this was the joke that the Prince, who slept in the humble huts of the poor in Rae Bareli, would make a beeline for the houses of Parsis who are “poor” and eat with them.  Of course, there is an invisible link in this joke. His grandfather, hailing from the Parsi community was a promising, progressive and pragmatic parliamentarian.    Indians do wish that his grandsons could have shown themselves to be close clones of this fearless crusader who took on his own father-in law. Somehow neither cousins of the first political family of India have shown their real mettle in Parliament.  That is unfortunate as the party goes from crisis to crisis; the government is like a rubber raft spinning down rocky rapids.  And a tired, aging leadership is at the helm of affairs.

Indians now how have two princes in waiting under the wings of two mothers who don’t talk to each other any longer and exist at opposite poles of the political spectrum.  What can we do to enthuse two reluctant gladiators, force them to come on the political ring and slug it out?  Not many in either parties support this move.  We have too many aspirants for the higher jobs and too little seats of power.  Though the young workers want to desperately ride on the shoulders of the political family, they do not want to be seen as supporting a closed family rule, a dynasty. And the opposition is ready to stone them for this particular dementia, forgetting that they too would support dynastic rule if they just manage to get sufficient parliamentary seats and come to power.  Coming to power is the mantra of the unwashed masses of India.  Even the heavy rains of the monsoons cannot wash off the dirt of corruption from the faded khadi shirts, dhotis and saris.

The Indian poor really do not matter to the Indian politician, excepting when making silly speeches before the bodies of farmers who ended their hapless lives due to the harassment of an insensitive bureaucracy.  The poor are ready to extend hospitality to the visiting political princes with the hope that they would get their voices heard in the corridors of power.  But the poor man’s Gandhi is not yet ready.  The aspirants for this job are still reluctant, hesitant and lack confidence in their own talents.  How long can they hide under the shadows of their peers?

What once prompted a   Gujarati  lawyer in South African  to give up his vocation, travel to India and take on the job of    liberating the  enslaved masses of a sub-continent; working  against an empire that had the world in its cruel talons ?   It was his oversized ego that prompted the Mahatma that he may be the poor man’s saviour.  The very same Indians, who made him into a Mahatma, then shot him in cold blood.   That is perhaps what makes the princes in waiting reluctant to become the Poor Man’s Gandhi in present day India.  Indians could turn on their mentors and sacrifice them, if they felt their leaders were not capable of leading them any longer.  So why take the risk and become victims to terrorism and needless violence? The Revolution would soon eat up its own children.  I give no names and the readers can make their own guesses.

The Great Tax Wall of India

The Great Tax Wall of India

 The Government of India has suddenly woken up after a long Rip Wan Winkle sleep. It realized too late that the concessions given to foreign direct investors through tax havens like Mauritius were being used to launder Indian black money.  Unpaid taxes, money obtained through fraudulent schemes, money laundering, bribery, political corruption, under invoicing of export, speculation, slush money and what not, are being quietly brought back to India to buy up more money, land or power.  Of course most of the money is being mostly used for buying influence and paid into the wide pockets of politicians who in turn transfer it abroad to have it later brought back through the same method, to buy more influence and pay off the law agencies to look the other way.  Meanwhile some political parties flooded the media with reports of vast sums of money (Rupees 12,000 crores, it is said) stacked away by Indians in Swiss banks.   And the poor Income Tax people want to dig up the vaults of the Padmanabha swami Temple in   Trivandrum (Kerala) as if the Swiss have secretly deposited Indian gold there!

It is now clear that billions of dollars have been white washed and hung out to dry in tax havens. These criminal masterminds populate plush apartments in luxury hotels in Dubai, Colombo, the Bahamas, the Barbados, Cyprus, Mauritius, Bangkok, Singapore and elsewhere.  Only the omnipresent sleuths of the US Treasury burn the midnight oil, tracking the traces left by bad dollars that go to finance the empires of the drug cartels. Little do they care that most of the illegal money laundering is based on the free flow of cash that is generated in India. You do not require of the ubiquitous ‘ISI’ of Pakistan to ruin the Indian economy.  Indians are very self sufficient in financial frauds, thank you.  We are perfectly capable of both tremendous economic growth and massive economic ruin. And we are proud to have London School of Economics and Harvard experts to oversee the fall of the Great Indian Rupee Empire. Now you need a sack full of rupees to buy a dollar!

The Supreme Court of India threw out the case against Vodafone as technically unsustainable; the Indian Government could not levy a hefty tax on proceeds of a sale of majority shares between two telecom companies that did not take place in India.  So what prompted the Finance Ministry to stealthily draft the “Vodafone” tax Bill to ostensibly rein in international skullduggery by MNCs? Nothing within the tax laws in India justified the Indian move.  So they made the new Act and gave it retrospective effect just to squeeze the telecom companies some of their ‘ill gotten’ money. 

Following the resignation of Pranab Mukerji as Finance Minister on 26 June, some suspicious moves were made by some Finance big wigs.  The Finance Ministry Mandarins hastily drafted the bill and leaked it through the media till the Prime Minister’s Office caught them in the act.  It appears the poor PM was not shown the draft despite having taken over the burden of the Finance Ministry on his fragile shoulders. Why the haste? It does appear the Revenue people are hungry to get their hands on the 20,000 crore rupees that Vodafone is supposed to pay as back taxes. But it does not gel easily with Indians who like to analyze and speculate the hush-hush of money deals. Wise and money savvy Indians had supported the tremendous growth of Reliance.  So, it appears that someone within the Finance Ministry could stand to gain from the passing of the bill.  Or are the political brokers putting the pressure on Vodafone?

The permit Raj created by this new Great Tax Wall of India would make the harassed Indian industrialists to make a bee line for the Finance Ministry.  And then the mandarins can play their Game of Foxes and open a casino in North Block.  Flush funds could flow into personal accounts in Swiss banks of bureaucrats and make them invulnerable to the machinations by the unwashed politicians who till now had the upper hand in the open handed piracy of industrial India.   Who does not know that selling and buying influence is better than dealing in stocks and shares on Dalal Street?   The government had often boasted that they dismantled the “Permit Raj” whereby the  nexus between corrupt officials and corrupt politicians made  the Indian citizen run around in circles, till a hafta ( bribe) was quietly paid.   So the hapless telecom companies refused to pay ‘proper respects’ to the powerful mandarins and political brokers.  It was very foolish of them.  A donation to the politicians or their parties would have saved them all this embarrassment, harassment and saved them millions in attorney fees.  Their attorneys did not read between the lines in the Bofors case, which was quietly buried in some unmarked grave in the Alps.  So have numerous tax frauds and commissions and cases; disappeared into the caves of the gnomes in Switzerland.

 It must be remembered that it is not only African and Philippine despots who deposit their ill gotten gains of massacres in tax havens. The majority of depositors in Swiss banks are wealthy Indians who hate to drop even a paisa in the begging bowl of the Indian Government, as taxes. Are we not proud that among the biggest frauds in the World are Indian frauds, who have made their millions through all kinds of insider trading and cooking the books? When a man named Telgi offered to print stamp papers free for all Indians, the angry bureaucrats put him jail, poor chap.

 We do not need to teach our PM, simple economics or how to run the Finance Ministry. The more complicated taxes you have, the more frauds you create. My dear Indian citizen, at least be honest and pay your taxes regularly. Otherwise how can we pay the Russians for all the junk we have ordered? And Anna has already made ‘hazare’ statements on how corruption is eating away the innards of our nation. We need to breach the Great Tax Wall and let in some fresh air before another “Bhopal tragedy” of poisonous corruption kills or corrodes our brains! 

Pirates of the Web

The World wide web is a vast tropical jungle. Before the advent of this convenient medium of  worldwide communication, the poor beggars of the Twentieth Century had to huddle on the London pavement, with a torn blanket in front, begging for a few coins from some sympathetic passersby.  That is passe. Now you get web begging spam mail by thousands. So and so is suffering from such and such disease and  urgently requires a huge sum of money for treatment. Please send the money to my account , or ring me on this number, etc, etc.  I do wonder if the recipient of this mail would not wonder how a person who has  easy access to the internet and can afford  a desktop or laptop, has hit so low as to beg for a living on the Web.it may be the Great European Depression. Some persons are so  dirt poor that they are able to go on the internet to solicit funds, with open hands   and  expect that some fools would fall for the sob stories  and wire them hard earned money. While half the World makes money, the other half lazes along and lives off the hard earners , the classic ant and grasshopper story.  Nowadays the grasshopper has become a web locust.
 And  then comes along  absolute  web frauds, who offer  money spinning methods that a mentally retarded snail would not fall for.  I recently got a mail from some bloke trying to interest me in supplying some kind of herbal extract, which he claimed he has already found a supplier, but he  has no money, does not want his company to find out, only wants a banker to pay for the consignment, will offer a commission and so on. The whole thing sucks and is a big scam.  Luckily the mail server has dumped this in the spam bag and issued a red band warning . Yet we do  find  a few idiots falling for  the  dangled bait like a hungry shark snapping at a tuna. On one side you have widows sobbing their hearts away in tear jerking e-mails but in a language that  is mostly full of spelling mistakes that identifies the sender's probable nationality as some one comfortably sitting in the scam capital of Rumania. You get mails from some familiar names, screaming that they had been mugged while visiting Spain and needs money urgently. It appears the robber took away everything ,wallets and credit cards, passports and hankies etc. ,leaving behind a very bruised ego. And they expect that  before you can say Jack Sparrow, you would send them the money or talk to someone on a dubious hotel number who would tell you how to despatch the sum. Then you get the smart ones who say you have won fabulous amounts and wants to know how to send it to you, bank details of course included! Then the old Nigerian scam of  seeking your urgent help in transferring  large sums money out of the country.
 The Pirates who sneak around on the Web are  just as dangerous cut throats, as the  'black beards'  who once roamed the Caribbean Sea.  This time they are after your bank account and credit cards not doubloons and pieces of eight.  Since this is also piracy, we have to bring back the harsh punishment for cyber begging and piracy: hang them on the yardarm or make them walk the plank.
The latter method is better, as we can feed them to the Great White Sharks, and prevent their extinction. And  if you get unsolicited mail from bums and tramps, just dump them in the trash can. And burn your credit cards and stop using internet banking. Go back to using hard cash: euros or dollars or pounds or lira or yen or yuans. When someone asks for money via e mail, send them  a  picture of  Benjamin Franklin and give this legend under it: "Go fly a kite when the lightning strikes"! Probably the greedy beggar would  send a reply mail, demanding that you give him money to buy a kite!

A Tale of Two Eco-worriers

 “A Tale of Two Eco-Worriers”, (RD, June 2012) defines the environmental concerns of many of us. Lucy Siegle and Bittu Sahgal have shown that ordinary people too can do something to augment worldwide efforts to minimize the carbon footprint.  Indians through decisive efforts can reduce carbon emissions and stop wastage of water. Saving water is a great concern for humankind as unpolluted fresh water resources on this planet are now limited to mountain glaciers, lakes and ice at the poles.

               

 Living for two years in Jaisalmer, in the middle of the Thar Desert, taught me a lot about saving precious water. Yes, we must reuse water from laundry and bathing for watering plants. I have also used a drip irrigation system based on small piece of a coconut coir rope fixed to the end of a used PET water bottle with the other end placed into the soil close to the roots of my potted plants. The slow drip of water for days keeps my precious plants healthy without any waste.  Placing a closed PET bottle of water in the water tank of a closet can save hundreds of liters of fresh water flushed daily into sewers.

 Yes, we should restrict our urge to keep on buying expensive new clothes and reuse old clothes. Yes, land now used exclusively for growing textile fibers like cotton and flax can be turned to producing food crops like potatoes and vegetables.  But restricting  use of woolen clothing, common in the colder climes, would not do much to reduce carbon emissions since people would just turn up the radiator and  burn more fossil fuel just to keep warm. However, we must change the present trend by people in tropical climates to wear clothing like those worn in colder places. Why do we insist on wearing pants, jeans, woolen suits ties and leather shoes in warm and humid Mumbai, instead of using traditional clothing which is more comfortable? Our carbon footprint only goes up with our increase of aping the West. Of course, we can ape Bollywood trends of going about in minimal clothes, if it can save the environment! But most humans would not agree to go around stark naked just to save the Earth!

Yes, we must popularize usage of mass transit public transportation based on clean fuels and stop needless conversion of precious land to roads. People roaring around on powerful motorcycles and expensive SUVs run on fossil fuel just add to carbon emissions. Can we not make ownership of private vehicles very difficult as in Singapore?  Usage of e-bikes and e-cycles like in Paris should be encouraged for moving around in crowded cities here.

Yes, recycling is the precious mantra we must all adopt. Everything can be reused or converted back into raw materials, saving on energy and reducing carbon emission. Yes, we should not burn fallen leaves and other branches but let the earth worms, termites and soil bacteria convert them into compost. Vegetable cuttings and other kitchen waste with a small drop of yogurt kept in a closed plastic garbage bag, turns within two weeks into powdery compost which can be used for growing vegetables in a used plastic sack on your terrace.  Old Plastic bags can be reused many times by cleaning them. We must recycle them and avoid discarding them in garbage heaps or into drains or rivers. 

And there is one way to control the mosquito without chemicals. Place some water in   used coconut shells, overnight, on your balcony or terrace. Everyday, carefully dump the mosquito larvae in these shells into you fish tank.. Within a few months, incidence of mosquitoes will decrease dramatically in your entire mohalla, if everyone follows suit. That is the crux of the problem. Like most Indians we remain selfish and give little importance to cooperative civic behavior, till someone leads the way. I wish Anna Hazare would divert his battle on corruption by politicians and instead  work  on reducing  carbon emissions.

Would a Phd make a better teacher

When I was a student in a primary school in Singapore, there were a number of teachers who had only education up to high school level.  But they knew their subject and could teach us wonderfully well. Among them was a teacher who could recite stories so well that we started harassing him for stories during his hour. The system then was to complete six years of primary schooling and then go on to do four years of higher schooling leading to a  Cambridge School Certificate (O-level). Not one of our teachers had a PhD. They however knew the psychology of a school student.  I remember Mr. E.R.Robeson, a wonderful teacher who had a mixed parentage. His spoke fluent Quandongese as his mother was a Chinese and fluent English, from his father who was an Eurasian. He had a good sense of humor and loved to talk to us on many subjects. Built like a wrestler, he drove a huge motorcycle. He could overhelm you with his personality, something a PhD  holder can never  do. These were real teachers.  Not the quacks of today.
Some years ago, the Human Resources Department of the Indian Government through its University Grants Commisison decided  that all College teachers , then teaching in colleges must acquire a doctorate in their subject.  For new posts, they insisted that only doctorates be recruited and that too after a tough eligibility test.   In addition, all Universities had to arrange for Refresher courses for  all teachers. Teachers whoe acquire doctorates  got three increments in their salaries which were then hiked. Teachers went in droves for training courses and other took off to join PhD courses under various guides.  No one checked to ensure the quality of the PhD they were acquiring.  The loosers were the students who found that the teachers lost interest in teaching anything.  They neglected their work and the students ended  their academic sessions with low or  poor marks in end of the year examinations. Who was the winner? The Teacher who, returning from the FIP ( Faculty Improvement Programe;some called it Family Improvement Programe) was out of touch with the latest subjects. Most teachers remained computer illiterate and poked like a chicken at the key board, painfully spelling out words. Their PhD was worthless to improving their teaching skills.
The UGC should have ensured that the Universities select the teachers for PhD after evaluating their teaching skills, perhaps through  the very same refresher courses they were organizing.  The teachers were left to pick and choose trheir guides who unfortunately could not come up with anything innovative when deciding on the subjects for research.  The guidies themselves  turned out to be  poor teachers.
 The ancient Indian system of Guru-Shisya ensured that the skill of the teacher was the sole criterion  when parents and guardians sent their children to them for schooling.  Nobody tied to find out if the Teacher or Sage, was a qualified PhD holder.
The idea that someone could work for a couple of years on some esoteric subject, cooking up some chemicals or testing water in wells and ponds or researching on the love life of a chameleon, could become good teachers, just by waving the magic wand of a PhD thesis.  In fact, even    highly qualified Professors who guide several research scholars, at times fall foul of cyber cheating. Many cut and paste their thesis, liberally borrowing from past work without changing a single comma. Again the sufferers are the poor students in colleges and schools who have to suffer  these specimen as teachers!
Who ever had thought that the teacher with a higher academic qualifications would also be a good teacher, must be hanged  with a nylon rope from a jackfruit tree and stoned to death with cowdung. Students are to be taught not to just acquire marks and become doctors, engineers or administrators.  They have to be trained to acquire human skills , compassion and ethical behaviour.  They are not mere automatons to satisfy the greed of parents and guardians who see in them as economic earners for life. No wonder, students nowadays turn violent, indulge in smoking, drinking liquor, using dangerous drugs or indulge in hooliganism.
Where are the PhD qualified teachers, the highly qualified 'Gurus' who trained these hapless students? Many enjoy their retired lives, on high pensions or indulge in coaching more helpless students who aspire the hights of academic excellance to become high earning doctors,IT specialists and so on.  Education in the Twenty First century is an industry controlled by a mafia that only wants wants mediocrity, not excellence.   In the end, we  are already seeing changes in our society, like Japan, there are too many suicides by students, frustrated with the pressures of  a harsh, unreal world of study, study and study.
Chinese students, have proved to be excelling in international competitions in Mathematics and Sciences. It would be relevant to find out, how many of their teachers have PhD degrees. Why do we wallow in this myth that only Phd holders can become good teachers ?