SCAMA SUTRA FOR TRP HIKE!

SUNNY THOMAS

Congress is BJP, and BJP Congress, judging from the Kejri Fare! In princely times, rival Kings married from rival families to establish peace and prosperity. If Congress and BJP form a united front, we will be back to Jawaharlal Nehru’s days when the opposition was miniscule because it was almost impossible to beat a ruling party candidate. In the bargain, BJP will gain a secular image and Congress, a deeper root in Indian culture. If the twain will not meet on their own volition, Kejri will force them! 

Anna Hazare is doing a dressed rehearsal not to let Kejri steal the thunder. Election time is show biz time for political tycoons, and what better show biz than street shows and comedy shows! Jantar Mantar should be renamed Charlie Chaplin Mantar to woo more crowds and business.  

  

To assume that in a country of 1.2 billion, only one person makes all the news that deserves an hour of viewers’ time is grossing undermining the people’s intelligence and their discerning power. And to assume that the capital of the world’s malnourished nation, which is making headlines for gang rape and obscurantist’s remarks by politicians, and for schools that exist only on paper, has just one issue to address is the tyranny of the trivia that television viewers have to grin and bear.   

 

Not to be outdone, all television channels practise Scama Sutra, some judiciously and to palatable degree while the TRP-crazy go for the whole hog! Certain channels produced incriminating documents, clinching evidence, and irrefutable facts to put some VVIPs behind the bars; but they are all free birds now! But, alas, the incriminating, clinching ad irrefutable material failed judicial scrutiny. So they are after fresh villains – Suresh Kalmadi, Spectrum Raja and Ashok Chavan are discarded. Fortunately for them, there are any number of people who become rich overnight, milking the system. But Television Studios have become the ultimate refuge of these scam patriots!   

Since Barak Obama cannot be given one more Nobel Peace Prize, the committee decided to award it to Angela Merkel, indirectly, of course. The European Union is a euphemism for Angela, who controls its destiny and whose austerity is hurting the Greeks and the Portuguese to unbearable levels. Frankly, Nobel Peace has outlived its utility and global terrorism has made it anachronistic! But other Nobel endeavors significantly point to the giant leap human civilization is taking. 

 

This year’s Nobel for Physics went to scientists for path-breaking experiments in quantum system, the very foundation of the digital world. Said the wag if you are not confused reading quantum physics, you haven’t understood it. The quest for eternal youth and anti-aging gets highlighted in studies in G-protein, which won two scientists Nobel in Chemistry. Reprogramming cells seems the ultimate in medicine today, for which two won Nobel. Game-theory-applied market design won two professors Economics Nobel. The Nobel in Literature gets widely talked about, especially in the absence of a credible candidate for Nobel Peace Prize, and the Chinese author Mo Yan’s hallucinatory realism has caught on the imagination of the world.  

A playboy sitting in the cockpit can be too dangerous for the passengers. But this time around, it was the life of his employees that he has put at risk – the entire staff of Kingfisher Airlines, not paid salaries for six months!  

 

RAPE, SCAM & CAMERA!

SUNNY THOMAS

Mercifully, Om Prakash Chautala the former king of Haryana, did not suggest female feticide as a solution to gang rape. The pure logic that rape exists because women exist does not cross his mind!

In India, we have three classes of politicians: the anachronistic school, the professional school, and the die-hard ideologue school. Narendra Modi and L K Advani, for whom means are less important than the goals for which they are admired or hated, belong to the ideologue school.

Prime ministerial material Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, or Architect material P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal belong to the professional class, who are qualified to lead a meritorious Cabinet of professionals to give India a new vision.    

Baba Ramdev, Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, who want to eliminate corruption from one party but maintains a dignified silence over corruption in other parties, represent the 19^th century blinkered vision of blatant partisanship. The newspapers of this period blacked out news about their political rivals but found themselves isolated in the end, the phase which Anna Hazare team found themselves in. Politicians of UP, Haryana and Bihar en masse belong to this group.    

A television anchor reporting scam has three options: treat scam as scam, treat scam as news, treat scam as truth (TRP). Most television channels gleefully treat scam as truth and turn the whole news hour into a scam mongering session. Scam is news but treated with circumspection (like reporting sex and crime) remains scam shorn of the respectability of news. Once the canons of professional Journalism are violated, broadcasting becomes voyeurism. 

  

For a scam-shy television viewer, much relief came from CNN-IBN’s anchor Sagarika Ghosh, whose cerebral approach turned a panel discussion into a lesson in contemporary history – the (de facto) first family has to learn to live with prying eyes and intrusion into their private lives.  Srinivasan Jain of NDTV (Profit) anchored a remarkable panel discussion with a unique sense of direction. Most panel discussions end up in a mayhem, which some anchors believe is the ultimate in debate, though the truth signals to the contrary.  

Both Sagarika Ghose  and Sreenivasan Jain started with the print media, which teaches the basics of Journalism, namely what is news. Some of the anchors who start straight on television master histrionics but know nothing about the fundamentals. Except that they are seen, they sound like announcers at airports and railway stations!  

Capitalism would have been history but for Barack Obama’s historic ($85 billion) bail out of the beleaguered American economy. State subsidy is the antithesis of capitalism and state intervention is the biggest sin against capitalism. Yet President Obama had to resort to it to prevent America becoming another Soviet Union. Bush the father and Bush the son could not catch the trophy of Osama bin Laden’s head, the symbolic enemy of America who symbolically chose to destroy the Twin Trade Tower.

Yet there is a conspiracy by the super rich to defeat Obama, who will not grant them tax concessions that Mit Romney will. If robbing the poor to help the rich is unethical, that suits the selfish interests of the super rich who are withholding investments that can generate jobs which will help Obama win. The whole world knows how Ronald Reagan won against President Jimmy Carter by having a secret deal with Iran to hold on to the American prisoners till the election is over to embarrass the incumbent. Capitalism breeds unmitigated self-interest, the same self-interest with which some greedy Realtor and unethical bankers in America created a global meltdown in which millions across the globe lost their jobs.  

Up for auction is capitalism in the November election, and at stake is the future of America as a Super Power. Another global meltdown, and you can write America off!    

MONKEY POLITICS AND 

MONKEY DEBATES! 

SUNNY THOMAS

A monkey gives amusement to his spectators. After Anna Hazare, the Charlie Chaplin of Indian politics, it’s the turn of Arvind Kejriwal to entertain his spectators. While Charlie Chaplin’s trademark was his ill-fitting dresses, Anna’s incongruity lies in the grotesque mismatch between the ground reality of thinning crowds (to a handful) and his pretensions to being the father of the nation!  After his honest friends deserted him, Kejriwal started a political party to cleanse the system of corruption, for which he has neither the caliber nor the character. 

If Kejriwal loses his deposit in the next election and Suresh Kalmadi of Commonwealth Games fame wins with a record margin, whom will you blame? The Indian Constitution, the Commonwealth, or his own dismal record? Diabolical games will always end in a fiasco, it might amuse some for a while, though.  

After losing its relevance in the national gladiator show, the all-India Mamata party has decided to have a conclave with the all-India Jayalalithaa party and the all-India Mulayam party and the all-India Naveen party to roadblock multinationals from entering retail trade that might end farmers’ committing suicide.   

The all-Sri Lanka Karuna party and the all-India cyber party of Chandu Babu, and even the Iceland party of Marxists are not invited, for they are unlikely to support a no-confidence motion against the Manmohan Singh government. Even if they do, there are reasons of animosity.  

Once bitten twice shy, BJP has become wiser. It knows that no-confidence motion only strengthens Congress – this time a no-confidence motion may even double the Congress majority! Just think of it, with all the coalmines under its thump, and the purchasing power of MPs almost at the same rate as last time, the astute floor managers of Congress will ensure its resounding victory. But it’s all right for all-India Mamata party to whine and moan!!   

And every time there is a monkey show, our television channels vie with each other to give a full coverage, followed by a monkey debate where the most intelligent is hardly given time to speak and the brainless buffoons dominate the show. In fact, these political shows are exclusively designed for the TV cameras, and will come to an end once the cameras shun the show.  

Can a government of liars, for liars and by liars do any good for a country of 1.2 billion? By constantly vituperating against a government that has taxed the people beyond the endurance level, the Opposition parties are creating UPA III indispensible!    

American democracy is tilting towards Plutocracy where the poor subsidise the rich! The rich invest and create jobs – at least, that’s what the Republicans believe. The Democrats tax the rich and bring the much needed social security and health care. But not all federal funds are wisely spent, creating discontent. The outcome of an American election much depends on the business cycle of boom and bust. That explains why some mediocre Presidents get two terms while some more deserving ones wilt after one term. Bill Clinton has managed the economy so well, and kept the unemployment rate so low that his Presidency is fondly remembered.  

After Abe Lincoln, Barak Obama is the only President to have risen from such humble origin.  Many White Americans felt during the last election that it was their duty to right the wrong by electing a Blackman in the White House. But the Obama magic has waned – notwithstanding his Nobel Prize and His prized trophy, Osama Bin Laden’s head. What is surprising is that a political lightweight like Mitt Romney is running neck and neck with the President who deserves a second term. Will the anger of the unemployed tip the scale of the verdict? Come November, things could change! 

    

VICTORY BEFORE BATTLE!

SUNNY THOMAS

The critics were busy writing his political obituary. Notwithstanding his office, he was the most inconsequential man in Indian politics, they said. The doctors diagnosed him as paralysed; not suffering from the common paralysis but policy paralysis that only Presidents and Prime Ministers are capable of. Stormy petrel Mamata Banerjee left him, expecting a red-carpet welcome back to UPA. But the learned Sardar just mumbled, Economic Reforms, and the whole world hailed him as the Winner, Leader and Messiah! Even a die-hard critic like Arun Shourie lauded him as a man who displayed leadership qualities!!

General Manmohan Singh won even before the battle, which could be the envy of even Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1969, driven to the wall, Mrs Indira Gandhi nationalized 14 private banks which her political opponents controlled, crippling their economic power and reducing them to mere noises and voices. She skillfully added a socialistic dimension to the political drama that the people thought milk and honey would flow on the streets thereafter. But it was the late Amul Kurien that flooded the markets with milk, which people call the White Revolution, and the enterprising bee hive keepers that flooded the markets with pure honey, for which socialism had no role to play.   

In the words of the former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, in 1991 when the politicians had no answer they turned to the economist who in 15 days turned a crisis into a grand opportunity. The foreign exchange crunch became a matter of history and India became a land of Opportunity. The learned Sardar has done it again! As soon as Mamata left UPA, the rupee stabilized, and the bulls of the stock market started jumping up; the foreign investors are packing their bags and baggage to stage a comeback while the Walmart-happy Indians are dancing on the streets!  

There is hope for farmers and consumers that farm products now rotting on the fields – 30% of farm good are rotting for want of refrigeration – will be available (in good condition) to consumers in the metropolis, bringing down their prices while farmers will get better prices, preventing mass suicides. But there is one problem that the middlemen who are the backbone of some of the regional parties are jittery. Their profit margin will come down because their profit comes from throttling the poor farmers and exploiting the consumers.  

Prices of farm goods will undoubtedly come down in the initial phase because otherwise global retail chains will not get a foothold on the market. What changed the mood of the nation dramatically was the Prime Minister’s address that turned the table on his critics. There was more intelligence in his words than in all the screeching and screaming of the Opposition. The husky voice of the PM had a ring of honesty that you seldom find in his detractors’ speeches.   

Yet the PM was not speaking the whole truth, though what he said was true. The economic mess that we find ourselves in is not the creation of America, China or Pakistan. It is UPA’s own creation, beginning with the profligacy of the Commonwealth Games, 2G Spectrum allocation and finally the Coalgate. Who can deny that coalmines auctioned would have generated enough funds and more to buffer wild fluctuations in international crude prices? That is prudent economic management, which the PM did not engage in.

Every time a housewife goes to the market, she is angry with Manmohan Singh because he has pinched whatever little money she had in her purse! It must not be wide of the mark to say Manmohan remains India’s most insensitive Prime Minister, insensitive to the needs of the common man. There is not a shred of evidence to prove the contrary.  (Of course, we are not including part-time Prime Ministers who have not completed even one term). In sheer cold blood, Narasimha Rao squandered all the goodwill Congress had enjoyed so far, by his pro-Rich policies, eternally mortgaging its safe vote bank – the backward class and the minorities.     

Every argument has a counter-argument: India invested in Commonwealth Games to create Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, Vijay Kumar, Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt! And 2 G spectrum allocation afforded cheap mobiles even for the humble domestic servant. But what about coal scam? What scam? Today everyone is talking about Reforms, and no one is taking about coal scam, not even the Opposition. That’s, perhaps, because (as Ajit Ninan has brilliantly put it in his cartoon in The Times of India, (Friday, Sept 28: No, not a gay marriage . . .) It's a UPA scam in which NDA also has a tie - up. The bitter truth is elections need scams, because Congress and BJP, and all other political parties, need to cough up funds for 2014! And the television boxing (debate) goes on.  

At last, wisdom has dawned on L.K. Advani, who hinted that the party should have a secular image. The plain truth is the majority of the majority community are broadminded and would not fall into the ideological trap. Their upward mobility and frequent foreign travels have given them a global vision, not to be traded with a religious tag. Unless the party woos a section of the minorities, electoral arithmetic simply won’t work. But there is a deadly missile in Advani’s words: secularism instantly disqualifies the Most Eligible Narendra Modi, for whom India’s hundred million population are beauty-and-figure conscious and hence go hungry or are malnourished. Modi’s contribution to his party in 2014 would be to block a winnable Prime Ministerial candidate from BJP!  

With all the scams and high inflation, if Congress still emerges as the single largest party – no matter how slim the margin – it will be a sad commentary on BJP leadership!