A Meeting Of Two 10 Percents

There is something about Justice Markandeya Katju that’s keeping him in the news. Yesterday, the former SC judge and now PCI Chairman once again reiterated his belief that “90% Indians are fools”. I don’t agree with a lot of other things that Katju says but I do find some sense in it when he frequently suggests 90% of Indians are fools. I am also quite certain that he doesn’t mean ‘fools’ as in deprived of thinking skills but rather the unwillingness to think. For a start, it is people from this very 90% that vote for an alien to power for no rhyme or reason. It’s also quite possible that ‘Fair and Lovely’ thrives on much of this 90% population. We have been told that 70% of the nation is made of up youth. Unfortunately, most of the 70% is also made of Katju’s fools. One can’t blame the 40% or so people below the poverty line whose daily struggle would leave them with little or no time to think. But Katju doesn’t specifically state anywhere that this ‘90% fool population’ also includes much of our media. Some of our media people are not just foolish, a few of them border on outright anti-national. That is the only explanation for their going overboard over a private visit of a much-maligned President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan. Affectionately called ‘Mr.10%’, Zardari crossed over to lunch with our PM, Manmohan Singh, on his way to pray at Ajmer. Perfect! Why MMS is not called ‘Mr. 10%’ is a mystery to me.

From Times Of India

Take a look at this cartoon from Times of India. Observe carefully. There is something seriously missing. I will leave it to you to figure what is missing for now. Sometime in 1998 in the middle of all the sex scandals Bill Clinton bombed Sudan and Afghanistan. Turned out the target in Sudan was a pharma company. Never mind. Clinton was then accused of diverting attention from the scandal and the incident even seemed inspired by a movie; ‘Wag The Dog’. Zardari’s visit is somewhat similar. Look at Pakistan – plagued with troubles, a bounty on terrorist Hafiz Saeed recently announced by the US, a general election around the corner and the list could go on. It was the perfect time for Zardari to go on a religious trip to a shrine in Ajmer in India. To add to emotional content he tags along son Bilawal Bhutto. Aha! Like our own Priyanka Vadra, Bilawal doesn’t seem very willing to let go of the Bhutto tag. Perfect! On the other hand there’s MMS, drowned in a sea of scams. If Zardari wants to pray at Ajmer MMS makes sure he doesn’t pray on an empty stomach. So he invites him to lunch on the way. Nothing wrong, these are common courtesies to be extended to any state head. Nothing wrong, except another foolish episode by our media.

From the morning of April 8 till around 4pm in the afternoon when Zardari finally left Ajmer all the usual suspects were on TV. Fortunately, Rajdeep Sardesai and Arnab Goswami chose to stay away. However, we had Barkha Dutt on NDTV, Suhasini Haider on CNN-IBN and the rest with a non-stop commentary on a non-event. Was there anything to the luncheon meet? Except for small talk maybe nothing was expected and nothing happened. The usual invitation to the PM to visit Pak, and a similar invitation by Bilawal to Rahul Gandhi apart, the other loose change was predictable. Zardari talked about Kashmir and Siachen and MMS talked about terrorism. This is the ‘foolishness’ Katju is probably referring to. Fed on a daily dose of tamasha and cover up of real news,  people generally ‘drink the sand’ even when they know it doesn’t quench their thirst. And if nothing came out of the lunch, there was always soap in the form of Rahul-Bilawal.

Pic received from @Sheefal

So some of our media slaves started belting out stories of how Rahul and Bilawal are similar. How both are soft-spoken and thorough gentlemen, though I’m not quite sure Rahul wants to get rid of his newly acquired ‘angry-at-everything’ image. I don’t know much about Bilawal because he is yet to demonstrate his stupidity. However, if stories that abound somewhere, as here in the Daily Mail, he is truly equipped to match Rahul in every respect. Like drama-queens they even strike similar poses as the pic shows. Would be harsh to comment on Pakistan and Bilawal. But yes, it does take a nation of fools to put an established fool like Rahul Gandhi in any seat of power. But like Katju says, we have 90% fools here and which is the reason RG is even in the limelight. The much touted ‘intelligent’ youth of the nation is brought up by our media on a healthy diet of Pyjama Cricket, Bollywood crap and shows like BigBoss. I can assure you 90% of these youth, the future of India’s glory, can’t find Bangalore or Bhopal on a map. I would credit them with extra-ordinary intelligence if they even manage to name the state capitals of MP or Kerala unless they are residents of those states.

One of the other problems with the media and our politicians is this mirage of  a peaceful and friendly Pakistan. This not only gives them enough to spin tales, it keeps the money flowing. Sons often carry on the legacy of their parent or the promises the parents made. This Bilawal is the grand-son of a Bhutto who has promised a “thousand-year holy war against India”. This Bilawal is the son of a Bhutto who can be credited with fomenting and sowing the seeds of terrorism in Kashmir. There will never be peace with Pakistan. NEVER! Our option is to not seek a war or any conflict but this charade of peace is a tool with which politicians and media fool the fools from both nations. And we have 90% of them, as Katju frequently reminds us.

Change is inevitable. But we have had a long line of PMs who have had less of a political inclination and more of an emotional attachment to the nonsense called Pakistan peace. And the media, in its quest to earn a few more bucks, adds to this blatant untruth. MMS may long for his hometown in Lahore or Advani might long for Sindh. The emotional connection is fine. But unless and until India has a PM who has no baggage of historical connections and is willing to look at Pakistan for what it is today, there isn’t the slightest chance of any reconciliation or peace. Zardari is affectionately called ‘10%’ but MMS is a ‘10%’ too. MMS is 10% PM and 90% either a puppet or a doormat. Worse, MMS could be 10% and the rest of him could fall in Katju’s basket. The problem with the TOI cartoon I first referred to is that it shows only Zardari sitting on the lap of his army boss. The right one would have been to also show MMS sitting on the lap of Sonia Gandhi. That would be reality. In absence of any real powers vested in either Sardarji or Zardarji, this is just a meeting of two 10 Percents.

Sponsored Fear

By now there is hardly any politician or editor who has not written or spoken about FDI in retail. There is nothing much anyone can really add and I am no economics expert and don’t have a stand on it. I simply believe that retail FDI is neither good nor bad and will not make a significant difference. But it sure might help the real estate business which is in the doldrums for a while. “In my local market, shopkeepers say that even the smallest shops are worth a crore” So writes economist Swaminathan Aiyar in TOI. He must be kidding or out of touch with reality. If you go to a kirana store in the suburbs of Mumbai any shopkeeper will tell you that the ‘tile’ on which you’re standing is worth a crore. So Aiyar calls it a battle between the ‘Aam bania’ and the ‘Aam Aadmi’.

Aiyar adds: “Dominated by banias, small shopkeepers are notorious for cheating customers through adulteration and fiddled weighing scales. They are also notorious for evading sales tax and income tax. That's why the bania is widely despised (although it is wrong to tarnish all with the same brush)”. Really? If this man is an economist then I count myself as a rocket scientist. The biggest crimes against state and aam aadmi haven’t exactly come from small traders but from the biggest corporations. The biggest frauds haven’t come from banias and corner-shops and I need not go into a list of such looters. To the credit of the wiseguys in the Congress they have managed to make almost everyone get into the debate of FDI. Let’s take an example – the one of Big Bazaar (BB). Any supplier dealing with BB would tell you that they have to accept an extraordinary terms of credit, sometimes even up to six months and still remain unpaid. And when BB does badly the first ones to disappear are the poor check-out clerks and bagging attendants. So much for the huge employment that large retailers will generate. Another one, Subhiksha, after grand pronouncements quickly disappeared. These debates in the media were not all spontaneous. Some of them appear to be ‘sponsored’ (as they usually are), especially on TV channels.

When faced with a bad season in parliament on 2G scam, inflation, black money, terrorism, Lokpal bill, it was important for the ruling Congress to come up with bold action. So just around the third day of the winter session of parliament they drop the FDI bomb. This was neither an economic event nor a political event. It’s called “Wag the dog” and a media event. The law of distraction by phenomenon. It’s a strategy by which the public can be distracted, for a good length of time, from important issues, by one which occupies more news time. This strategy works usually when you suddenly have a war which puts everything on the backburner. But in absence of war a media-event will help. This is precisely what Retail FDI was – a media event forced by the ruling party. And what better trick than to instil a good deal of FEAR among citizens about some monster called FDI. It’s always a great strategy. So you had the NDTVs, the CNN-IBNs, TimesNows and all the major and minor newspapers out on the topic.

Sometimes help comes from unknown quarters. The Mullaperiyar dam came into focus with its own fears and politics. Politicians and people of Kerala drummed up the fear of the dam cracking up. They might have had some genuine concerns and in response politicians and people from TN rubbished the claims of the dam being a threat. Any PM would have intervened to quickly reassure both parties of action and fairness.  Should MMS have intervened and brought about a truce between the two states? Are you serious? This was a God-send that should be welcomed at a time when fear is the key. And on cue our media goes into another frenzy. FDI and Mullaperiyar, that’s a combination that is tailor-made for the orgy that happens nightly on TV. I cannot but be reminded of these famous lines from Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’: “All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the street…” That much pretty much describes the banal nonsense on night time TV.

Fear helps. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma probably never had so much exclusive time on TV as he did on the FDI issue. Articulate as he is, Sharma did something the Congress would have considered a crime in any other situation – he even cited Narendra Modi being in favour of FDI. And guess what.. NDTV played up that interview over and over again, more often than they normally do, to push the FDI agenda. Clips from that interview where Sharma mentioned Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh being in support of FDI were played out a zillion times. Manmohan Singh, in between, found time to suddenly visit Imphal and inaugurate a new Assembly building. The success of fear-mongering finally culminated in an all-India bandh by over 50 million traders on December 1. Mission accomplished for the Congress!

Is that all? No, not yet. From the time parliament session commenced in November the clown prince, Rahul Gandhi, had only one thing on his mind – change Uttar Pradesh in 10 years. He did not attend parliament even for a single day and was wisely busy with the UP campaign and the youth congress rally. What’s his game? More fear of the Mayawati govt, of more UPites turning into beggars if Congress wasn’t brought back to power in the state and how the Elephant in Lucknow was eating up all the money meant for the aam aadmi. In hind sight Rahul Gandhi’s campaign was the only comic relief in this season of fear. Does RG have any views on FDI in retail? You will know in 10 years! Not enough!

Manmohan Singh mentioned it is “difficult to roll-back FDI”. I had jokingly tweeted asking why and if the kickbacks were taken in advance. Well, here’s the answer: It is reported that Walmart spent over 60 crores in lobbying for retail FDI in India. Where exactly does lobbying money go in India? Ummm, maybe some PR firms like the one Nira Radia operated? Maybe a small percentage but a good chunk has to go elsewhere where real decisions happen. So with parliament being stalled with all this FDI thing and other issues our media comes up with another gem. Both NDTV and CNN-IBN start a campaign, “No work, no pay” for MPs.

“No work, no pay” for MPs if parliament doesn’t work. It must take an extra-ordinary helping of stupidity for the morons in the media to further mislead and deflect the discussion on issues to such silly campaigns. If the Kirana banias are so anti-consumer as Swaminathan Aiyar suggests there is no real reason to believe that foreign businessmen coming into India are going to be exceptionally friendly. They aren’t going to be here for charity either. Such perverted arguments fuel the fears that a failing govt thrives on. Aiyar believes every shopkeeper is worth a crore, so much are our MPs worth? You’ll need a flashlight even on a sunny day to find an MP who isn’t worth crores and yet our stupid media peddles the “no work, no pay” argument. Nothing but mindless populist dialogue that you will find in a cheap Bollywood movie. The govt creates the fear and the media plays the sponsor.

But even organised and sponsored fear has to take a breather. The death of Bollywood legend Dev Anand shocked everyone and news channels covered it with flashbacks and obits. For once, even if it was repetitive,  it was nice to hear just good old Dev Anand songs through the day on Sunday, December 4. The nation, including political leaders, came together to pay homage to this great artist. But make no mistake, fear will be back. Corrupt governments throughout history have used fear to survive. In 21 century India they have a sponsor – our news media. Sponsored fear will be back.