SANDEEP AND FRIENDS

THE THREE TEMPESTS

By SANDEEP SRIVASTAVA

JAYA, MAYA, MAMATA – all ends in the beginning! Where their names end, the English alphabet begins. They are brands on the Indian political market, wooed by the coalition-wise and feared by their foes.

Maya, like Michelangelo, believes the greatness of human soul lies in their statues, and she would have easily turned Greater Noida into a Second Rome but for the Supreme Court. Mamata, like James Watt, believes in the power of the (political) steam engine that took her all the way from New Delhi to the Writer’s Building. Jaya, like all Hollywood and Bollywood stars, believes in the power of acting, acting her role to win political Oscars.

Unpredictability is the hallmark of the three brands, but there is no denying that they are the voice of the people. Crowd management is their forte, and they devastate the fortresses of their foes, turning them into desolate places apt for the political foxes and hyenas to howl.

Ambition often gets the better of the three, and a streak of megalomania is visible in their style and diction. Modesty may prevent their expressing the prime ministerial dreams openly but they love war bugles and the trappings of power. Jaya’s wish list, asking for the scalp of Chidambaram, Dayanidhi Maran and Rajapaksa, is in keeping with her brand image – governance by caprice.

It may be ironical to suggest that what Pakistan polity misses is the Brand Caprice. Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and the invincible Indira Gandhi emerged as Saviors of their democracies when men messed up matters. Had Pakistan allowed women to take their rightful place coming out of the purdha, its democracy would not have been at the mercy of generals and, worse still, the jihadis!

THE GREAT ICE-CREAM

REVOLUTION!

With candle in one hand and ice-cream in the other, they marched in their hundreds on Jantar Mandir to fight corruption. They are school children agitated by the state of affairs of the nation, who do not wish to go back to school till the Lok Pal Bill is passed. Lo and behold, even before many Indians woke up to Anna Hazare’s fast, NRIs were up in arms in foreign capitals and other cities against corruption! On television, it was a grandiose show the kind of which is rarely witnessed on our planet. But those who went to Jantar Mandir were disillusioned by the kind of people acting behind the scene. Television often hides the ugly face of reality, especially when it enacts the script of subterranean ideologues. The truth would dawn on the so-called civil society members, now basking in the limelight and walking like colossus, when they contest elections and lose even their deposits!

Indian democracy is notorious for the way major decisions are taken. They are taken, so to speak, on the streets rather than in Parliament, be it Telanga, OBC reservation or the creation of linguistic states. Brainlessness is the hallmark of a breed of politicians whose 3-D agenda is disruption, destruction and demolition. At a time when America is struggling to shrug off the ice of global meltdown and Europe still in a mess, Indian economy has done creditably well and the Indian middle class better off than their counterparts. Street politics is bound to retard the fast-track record of Indian economy. Imagine the sense of betrayal of the people when they are told they are participating not in the Second Salt March but the Second Rath Yatra! At the slightest hint of anarchy, the foreign capital that sustained Indian economy will fly out of the country, and with it India’s relative prosperity. What is bad for the Indian economy is good for the Chinese economy – especially the flight of foreign capital. The Mandarins have every reason to smile!

FROM HIROSHIMA TO FUKUSHIMA!

It is tragic that Japan should suffer the brunt of nuclear catastrophe twice in a span of sixty years: once when its military misadventure ended up in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a second time when its nuclear misadventure ended up in Fukushima. While the first catastrophe ended the Second World War, will the second catastrophe mark the beginning of the end of the Nuclear Age?

The people will never vote for a nuclear party, be it in Japan or Germany, America or China, India or Pakistan! This belated awareness turned German Chancellor Angela Merkel the nuclear hawk to a nuclear dove. Her somersault setting a 2022-deadline for the nuclear exit policy has confounded her critics and robbed her political opponents, the Social Democrats, of their political plank. While her detractors call it rank opportunism, her supporters call it robust pragmatism – the same pragmatism which Vladimir Lenin displayed providing a minor role for private sector in the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 19202s or which Deng Xiaoping displayed in allowing market socialism to function in China in the 1980s. Needless to say a series of poll debacles for Christian Democrats and a massive demonstration against her nuclear policy forced her to read the writing on the wall.

Since Hiroshima, not a decade passes without a nuclear disaster. The year 1957 saw two mishaps, leading to radiation, one in the Soviet Union (Mayak) and the second in the UK (Cumbria); and in 1961, a minor explosion while the US Army was conducting experiments. And in 1979 came America’s worst disaster causing radioactive emission in Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island; and the nightmare of all was Chernobyl in 1986 when one of the reactors exploded, the fire burning for nine days emitting radiation a hundred times more than that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then started the rethinking on nuclear energy, not just by the Soviet Union but by the entire sane world!

(Copyright: Sunny Thomas @2011)

BACK TO THE FUTURE

While Anna Hazare took to Jantar Mantir and Baba Ramdev to Ramlila Grounds, much to the glee of TRP-hunting Television channels, industrialist Rishi Pal Chauhan took to character-building through education. If a superficial television show could eliminate corruption and a Lok Pal Bill could create value-oriented citizens, India would soon emerge as a beacon among the comity of nations!

Distressed by what he saw – an India of teeming talent and knowledge base, trailing behind some of the poorest countries of the world – Rishi Pal Chauhan, who comes from a famous family of entrepreneurs, decided to make a difference. Leaving behind his lucrative job in the US, this young engineer decided to set up a school for character-building and talent nurturing. Thus was born Jiva Public School way back in 1983.

In 1989 Rishi met Steven Rudolph in the US. The two shared a vision of India’s potential and her pivotal role in the emerging global scenario. And the duo returned to India in 1994 with a model of learning combining the ancient wisdom of the East with the technological advancement of the West.

Jiva Culture is committed to rediscovering the greatness of Ancient India, revisiting the major cultural motifs and studying indigenous customs and rituals to understand their deeper values. Restoring the triangular bond of relationship between man and man, between man and animal, and between man and environment, is the primary task of Jiva Culture.

To this end, it engages scholars, sociologists, historians and writers to bring to the fore the embedded traditional knowledge systems hidden in indigenous literature, arts, customs, and rituals. It will establish greater meaning and a sense of direction to human civilization, for which our ancient education system was famous.

AWARD FOR TSJ

What makes a good syllabus? One that empowers the student to face the future confidently or one that weighs heavily on the student with the burden of the past? Our syllabus from school to college cramps creativity – the very intellectual vitality of the student whom it is supposed to envision.

A highly reputed Dean of Columbia Journalism School tried to introduce a new curriculum, tailor-made for a knowledge-based society. But such was the vehement protest by the students, faculty and alumni that he was forced to make a hasty retreat! The Dean waited for his moment and did introduce his pet curriculum as a separate stream. But this stream MA in Journalism failed to capture the imagination of the students at Columbia as the existing MS, built on the concept of craft over theory.

When Times School of Journalism was founded in 1985, it followed the Columbian vision of craft over theory, and produced Journalists some of whom turned out to be illustrious, like Raju Narisetti, Samar Halarnkar, Senthil Chengalvarayan, Manoj Mitta. TSJ, as it is now popularly called, is the progeny of The Times Training Scheme, housed in Bombay, the then headquarters of Bennett Coleman & Co. It was started in the 1960s to pick up the brightest lot and train them. The story is told of a bright young lad who appeared for the entrance test of The Times Training Scheme and IAS; to his great disappointment, he failed in the former but made it to the civil services, which was his second preference. Rajdeep Sardesai and Gautam Adhikari belonged to The Times Training Scheme. This scheme was pioneered by S. Viswam and carried forward by Pathanjali Sethi.

Pathanjali was a gifted actor and dressed himself (of course, ably assisted by his students) as a leper, sat in front of The Times of India office across Victoria Terminus (now Chitrapati Terminus), and earned Rs 95 and some paisa in an hour, and promptly appeared on the next day’s paper as anchor. The training scheme had no structured plan but its success lay in selecting 10 inquisitive minds who will rotate after a six-months’ grooming in all the departments of the editorial conglomerate. The department heads kept a lynx-eye to facilitate the selection process. The students sign a bond so that they don’t run away during or after training.

Sheshagiri Rao, Chief Reporter of TOI, was fond of playing pranks. He sent five of the interns one after the other to the Western Railway General Manager’s cabin to report a minor short circuit, which was noticed and the fire brought under control in just five minutes. Panic gripped the top brass when the fifth intern entered the GM’s cabin. He rang up Editor Sham Lal and pleaded for help. Sham Lal summoned Pathanjali, who in turn directed the Editor to Sheshagiri. Finally, the whole of The Times of India exploded into laughter when the Chief Reporter in his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style narrated the story!

Some people outside have an exaggerated notion of the accuracy of Times reporting. Once the captain of the winning team rang up the Sports Editor and complained: `Sir, we are the winning team. Your paper has reported we have lost the match’. Pat came the Sports Editor’s reply: `If The Times has said, you have lost, you have lost!’

Prof Thomas Oommen launched Times School of Journalism, under the name TRF (Times Research Foundation) Institute for Social Sciences, Research and Education in 1985. Initially, the classes were held at Punjab National Bank, Patel Chowk, New Delhi, which was later shifted to 10 Darya Ganj (popularly called 10 Downing Street since the word Darya Ganj sounds so jarring). The school ran for eight years and went into hibernation. Two years later Bidyut Sarkar started the school again and ran for two years (1993-1995). Divya Rana (1996-1998) gave it a shot after two years of hibernation. And finally, it was re-re-re-launched 2004 and came to its present form sending out seven batches of students and the next batch all set to go.

Then came the verdict, silencing the cynics and critics. An award in recognition of its excellence in syllabus! Credit must go to Gautam Adhikari, the globe-trotting Dean of the school, and Umesh Chandrashekhar, the Principal to whom nothing is impossible. Of course, the faculty, too, would like to have a finger in the pie.

Empires have risen and fallen, civilizations have flourished and decayed, institutions have come up and gone down the memory lane. Can we alter Newton’s Law of Gravitation!

© SUNNY THOMAS 2011

CROCODILE TEARS

Raj Shekhar Jha

CBI in any case did not kill Aarushi! Nor the Noida police! Think of a hypothetical situation where four persons were sleeping in a house. Lo and behold, the next day two of the four were found dead. There was no proof of forced entry or exit, which means none came in or went out that night. Inhabitants from the Mars won’t come and kill people on this planet. Then who killed the duo? We are not talking about the Aarushi murder case, at all.

Can a butcher cut with the precision of a doctor? Can some domestic help inflict a doctor’s cut on a dead girl as pointed out in a post-mortem report? These are nagging doubts that refuse to go as readers glance through newspapers. We are not talking about Aarushi murder case in particular.

Rajesh Talwar and his wife Nupur appeared on Headlines Today. Rajesh cried like a schoolgirl, declaring: `I can’t live without my daughter’. Even Nupur cried, saying, `No one believes us’ (giving the story away). In doing so, they put the crocodile to shame!

MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SINNING

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was, in fact, addressing the nation indirectly while talking to the TV editors on Wednesday. The newspaper editors now-a-days are hardly known outside their offices and hence ignored! The PM spoke like a lamb about to be sacrificed, zealously guarded by his press secretary who kept a hawk-eye on all the editors, including Times Now’s Arnab Goswami, the chief trouble-maker for scam-tainted ministers and crony bureaucrats.

On the whole, it looked like a full-dressed rehearsal rather than the finale. Whatever the prime minister may say and however eloquently he may put it – assuming the PM is eloquent – the slow pace at which the Wheels of Justice are moving signals a mirage: the closer we approach, the farther it goes. Like the ghost of Bofors that appears and disappears! .

V P Singh came to power promising to put the guilty behind the bars; Singh came and went; Chandra Shekhar came and went; Narasimha Rao came and went; Vajpayee came and went; but Bofors refuses to go! From V P Singh to Manmohan Singh, it was a relay race. The hawalah and Tehelkha scams, though of the same magnitude, failed to capture the imagination of the nation.

What’s intriguing is while Ramalinga Raju of Satyam computers is in jail, B S Yedurappa is in office; while Spectrum Raja is in judicial custody, Kalmady is roaming free; while a poor man called Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged charged with rape and murder, the killer of two innocent children and the Australian missionary Graham Staines was spared of the gallows, presumably because he had a noble cause behind it. The irony is that a mass murder with political clout goes scot-free while the one with no political clout even if he commits only one murder goes straight to the gallows, especially if he is poor and cannot afford a criminal lawyer!

The prime minister promised to eliminate corruption, but think of what happened to Gulzarilal Nanda. Nanda was a Union home minister in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s cabinet, who said he will eliminate corruption in two years. It was not corruption that got eliminated but Nanda! Dr Manmohan Singh is a brilliant economist who steered the country out of global recession with minimal damage while America and Europe are still reeling under its impact. But brilliance is no guarantee for longevity in office. If Dr Singh earnestly tries to get rid of corruption, the winner will undoubtedly be Corruption, not Dr Singh – who could be the sacrificial lamb! .