The Rainbow Notion

CAUTION

Sexually explicit content, viewer discretion recommended. (Nothing serious really, just trying to enthuse more kids to read my blog)

Do not complain of feeling offended. (You never told me you were gay:-)

With green flyovers and florescent foot over bridges Chennai is definitely one of the more colorful cities around. But watching the rainbow colors coming alive and marching down its beaches in full strength was a bit of an over dose even for its standards.

If there was a Nobel prize for being conservative the intellectual capital of India might have also been the city of Nobel laureates. When this city notoriously infamous for being conservative woke up on yet another seemingly normal Sunday to a whiff of freshly brewed filter kaapi and suprabadam it was largely unaware of the rude shock that was taking shape on its beloved shores of marina.

It was the band of reluctant joggers thrown out of their beds by their ruthless moms/wives (different variants of the same problem) on a Sunday morning who were on the first line of fire. Men and woman who grew up on a staple of Indian cinema romance (or the lack of it) coupled with moral science lectures on how you could not cuddle or hold hands with even your spouse in public were greeted with the sight of lip locking man couples and cuddly female ones boldly showcasing their sexual disorientation. Cross dressed men and manly woman painted themselves in rainbow colors (as though they were already not horrifying enough) and held placards to make a statement on their right to do what they do and still be part of civil society.

The Rainbow pride march that set off from the shores of Marina on the 30^th of June this year threw the city off its guard and its people out of their wits. But why the poetic little rainbow out of all the things they could have chosen to symbolize their delusional state of mind? I thought. Agreed that it is a very colorful state of affairs, but the rainbow could have still been reserved for a better cause. But apparently the rainbow pride is meant to symbolize their unique ability to understand and appreciate the many colors that they say exists between the mundane black and white, the two natural sexes. Intellectual gays I thought.

Meanwhile the forever starved media rose in jubilation for having found the story of the season and The NEWS spread like wild fire and set off a series of events that activated the dead spirits of the argumentative Indian like nothing before and triggered a domino effect that culminated in a political hot potato for the newly elected government. Overnight India was elevated to a state that I like calling ‘the Rainbow nation’ and the LGBT community had become the mango man (aam admi) of the season.

Even the otherwise fragile secular fabric of India seems to develop strong bonds in moments of perceived national exigency. Amar, Akbar and Anthony made their faithful co-appearance on national television and even brought Banta Singh along for company this time to demonstrate their unity in adversity. “This is against all our faiths and the holey spirit!” they sang in unisonJ. Baba Namdev and a battery of other CEOs of Hindu Inc enterprises cried foul for going against the Art of loving. Some even went a step ahead and prescribed medicines and oil therapies for the alleged patients.

It always happens with our media, cometh a new story and they all go into a tizzy. For the next few days the only people on the road are journalists, reporters, news anchors, cameramen and as though that was not enough, these men are now going around like Draculas turning even citizens into journalists! (And the idea of 1 billion journalists haunts my dreams ever since). All the rest are at home glued to the idiot box that just got a little stupid. Not a soul on the road that can stand on its feet is spared, everybody gets interviewed and everything gets aired. And then a day or two go by, the news hungry ‘we’ finally get bored and so does the generous media and suddenly the TRP of big boss begins to rise out of nowhere. Most sensational stories end here. But then there are a few that wouldn’t let go that easily. These are stories that make a second homecoming at this stage with a series of events that pushes the tizzy media into a bottomless pit of jingoism. And that is it, there is no return to sensibility for a few weeks after that.

In this case there were two such events. The first being Dr Baba Namdev – the psychotherapist’s antics. It is agreeable that the sudden disorientation is more a state of the mind than a realistic way of life that it is being made out to be and logically one should be able to meditate and reorient his way out of the situation. But this may be acceptable to our intelligentsia if a scientist winning the Nobel Prize for medicine suggested it in his acceptance speech. Anything coming from baba’s and bawa’s is meant to be ridiculed and considered antagonistic to common sense and is therefore given the welcome of a uncommon nonsense. The artificial intelligentsia arrives out of nowhere rubbing their hands in glee to punch as many holes as they could in the Sadhu’s enterprising explanation of the subject.

This whole spirituality vs morality in the laboratory thingy goes on for sometime. Talk shows and social debate programs play out to packed galleries. Of them all, the most ridiculous one was the show on which the anchor thundered “Who decides what is natural and what is not moral?” well.. maam.. Nature decides what is natural and perhaps each individual should decide for oneself on what is moral. Her’s may well be a great argument and excellent prime time material but please for gay’s sake get real. These people may definitely help make your beach colorful on a random Sunday but they definitely wouldn’t help in the endurance of the human race or fit anywhere in its social setup. They are an exclamation mark followed by a full stop on the family tree. Spare a moment to think of what the world might have looked like if Adam and Eve went on a rainbow parade after biting the forbidden apple! Funny people really J

The second event was perhaps the more significant one. The Supreme court’s ruling against article 370 (the lone anti rainbow law in the world’s longest constitution) was received with a standing ovation. The law obviously doesn’t say “catch the gay and hang him by the pole until dead”. It simply is a legal prohibition on perpetuating the idea of homosexuality on unwilling individuals. And the judgment was against an attempt to misuse the provision. Consensual relationships between adults perhaps would never reach the public domain let alone being convicted or reprimanded and that is precisely the way it should be. Mumbai has always been home to a much larger LGBT community than London and Paris put together. But this has always remained outside the public discourse. Even the thriving morality and culture police of the city have largely ignored them and these men and woman have carved a space for themselves in this exhaustively diverse society to live in peace and tranquility. It is best left this way. Parading them into public space or scrapping laws in their honor is not going to help the cause in anyway.

Lets get it straight - Alexander may have been The Great gay, Elton john might well be the singing gay and MJ may have been neither or a bit of both, yet there is nothing glorious or poetic in being one. It is merely another complex manifestation of the confounded human mind which has shown over years its ability to stoop down to dingier lows. It may certainly be a complex state of being but there has never been a need to glamorize or dramatize it. Any attempt to do so would only pave the way for even more outrageous ideas that are now creeping into the grey fringes of society to follow suit and claim mainstream space. It is important to understand that we today are what we are as a result of the metaphysical combination of what we want to be and what the world wants us to be. And it is often the latter factor that ensures the end product remains more or less human and it is absolutely critical to ensure these checks and counter balances in society remain, after all man is the ultimate wild animal.

Well that reminds me, there is these days a clan emerging as a distant cousin of the rainbow people who have taken the adventure to an all new level by daring to venture beyond the human race. At this rate the day may not be far off when taking your dog for a morning walk might qualify for a speed date and MNS volunteers would celebrate Valentine ’s Day vandalizing the offices of Blue cross and PETA(People for Erotic treatment of Animals) for a change!

- An$ar Za!nul

(c) Copyrights reserved.

Ohhh…..Mmmm…..eRRRR !!!

Having still not found a job that could get me kicking out of my sleep, doing a mini-dada-ballet on my bed with a swiveling t-shirt and yelling “Thank god it’s Monday! ”, I usually stick to the more mundane style of waking up to the week. The usual kicking and throttling of the alarm clock is followed by some unsuccessful negotiations with the less dominate-able biological alarm clock - my mother, on my fundamental right to sleep for another ten minutes. And eventually like always the second alarm clock has its way and the ever growing burden of man being a civilized animal is bestowed upon me. The series of morning chores that have emerged as ugly by-products of our evolution begin to take turns to haunt me and all through this while my obnoxious little mobile phone would be crying for attention. It is perhaps the only creation of man that could challenge god’s super creations - woman in their ability of getting into your life and gobbling up all your time. And in either case, one has to eventually give into the temptation after dodging for a while. I reluctantly pick it up (the phone:-) and explain to my furious boss how I was just driving past all the landmarks around my office that he knows and could be there anytime. At this, I finally decide to leave my house and set out on my daily voyage to OMR - Chennai’s own Information Superhighway!!

Old Mahaballipuram Road might sound more like some haunted by-lane named after a legendry unforgiving goddess of death or something, but ironically it is meant to symbolize the surging exuberance of a new and youthful India that is to inhabit it. The almost 50 km stretch from Adyar to Mahaballipuram was slated to house some of the world’s greatest technology giants and some of India’s finest young minds and provide them with world class infrastructure. When I say world class infrastructure I obviously don’t mean some under the sea over the sky roadways or any earth shattering metro rails, I simply mean a simple plain road that doesn’t feel like you are on a mountain safari on a Monday morning and is built “exclusively for the use of vehicles” unlike most other roads in our country(more on this later!). A dream project hatched in the turn of this millennium to put Chennai firmly on the international IT roadmap.

It was rather an audacious vision for a man who had lost his own vision several decades ago. Any other government employee might have completed two cycles of retirements by now. Like all ‘sarkari’ dream projects this one too had its share of early hiccups and excruciating delays and by the time it took off the ground ‘The Mummy’ returned and brought it all to a grinding halt.

For the uninitiated, as a thumb rule in the politics of this state, all projects and proposals good or bad alike need to be turned on its heads and halted the moment a new government is elected to power as a thanks giving gesture to all their voters. I often wonder how we actually managed to get so far to be one of the better developed states in the country despite such hopeless traditions and weird practices and what on earth could be possibly happening in some other parts of this country who lag even behind?

To make matters worse in the case of the big Mummy, most government decisions are made on the basis of some ‘scientific’ predictions made by her notorious set of astrologers who perhaps prescribed halting work on OMR as a remedy for her constipational problems. And thus was halted the work on the OMR for the next five years. Until 2006 when the dead old man made yet another comeback from the grave.

As somebody who has been driving through this mess for the past two years, I can’t help but notice how this forever incomplete project has taken some shape from the original heap of mud and dust that it was not too long ago. The strategy was simple, take five village panchayats and the haunted road that connected it on the outskirts of the outermost suburb of the city and turn it into one weird eco system where farmers and software engineers co-existed in harmony. Where BMWs and water buffalos languished symbiotically. Where the ‘shining’ India would come face to face to its not so shining reality. And all this would be held together by this never-going-to-be-complete super highway. A truly audacious vision!

By now, I have managed to navigate my way through the by-lanes of alwarpet and adyar and their numerous pot holes to reach the beginning of the end – Madhya Kailash, the mouth of the OMR. Today has been a surprisingly good day, this first 3kms of my voyage has taken me only 30 mins to cover which considering the usual standard can be called 'at break neck speed'.

As you make your way into this superhighway you are greeted by some insanely large railway terminal complexes, ridiculously painted foot over bridges and a large welcome arch proclaiming your arrival. At first impression this road could be deceptively appealing. With well landscaped bushes and some dramatically designed bus stops seemingly awaiting the next space ship to land over it or something, you almost begin to believe in the surreal. As yet another train hisses past over your head and a few more insanely large train stations and ridiculously painted foot over bridges pass by, you are mesmerized by the charm of the OMR.

Often adding to the charm is our good old man himself along with his better behaved son taking poses at every corner waving at you and playing the perfect hosts. In the beginning you almost forgive them for their absolute lack of humility and let them take some credit for a project they actually 'completed'. But it is when they insist on doing this right through your journey and appear after every second bush morphed into some funny looking suit, that they get on your nerves. But on the brighter side these poster boys help keeping the crows away from the bushes.

By virtue of going through this treatment twice everyday for all days on both ways I have been numbed to immunity by now. I have now learnt to look away from them and be lost in better thoughts, thoughts of the days when the OMR existed only in newspaper articles and our dreamy articulations. ‘It would have 6 lanes’ declared one minister on one day, ‘It would be completed in several phases’ proclaimed another. As though they were building the Great Wall of China or something like that. And all of us startled at them in awe, little realizing that these buffoons were actually counting on both sides of the road…lol :-) and even lesser realizing what they actually meant by ‘execute the project in phases’. It is only today that I realize the real wickedness of that statement. As you drive by the OMR, one thing that you cannot miss noticing is the phased depreciation in quality and sophistication.

The first 3kms is the most flamboyant with flying trains, over landscaped bushes, over styled bus stops, glorious fountains and other artistic statements. This is phase one for you. As you start making your way into the second phase of it, the bus stops begin to disappear and share autos replace trains. The bushes go dry and the third lane almost disappears into oblivion. Just to remind you, this is only the second phase of the “Super IT expressway” and it almost feels like we are on just another city road. The third phase as you may have guessed is a revelation, but for the little bit of tar blue to its appearance there is nothing really in it to be called a road let alone calling it ‘The OMR’. Perhaps our ‘honorable’ ministers should have taken up the naming of the road in phases as well, or should have simply added a ‘V’ ahead of the name for every subsequent phase of the road after phase 1. So that phase 2 could be called V-OMR or very old mahaballipuram road and the third phase could become VV-OMR or very very old mahaballipuram road and so on… and set the souring expectations of the commuters straight. But expectations are funny things, the more you have them the harder someone somewhere is working to ensure they are never met. :-)

As you drive to the end of the vv-OMR you begin to see some early signs of ‘one of the most dreaded and hated’ structures of the world which is coming your way. If you guessed ‘Auschwitz’ you were probably close but it actually is the ever-so-annoying ‘Toll Plaza’. But unlike the Auschwitz there is no statement of warning engraved on it. Perhaps somebody should take the initiative to put up a suitable statutory warning such as ‘Auto Arbiet Macht not Frei’ meaning “Driving to work is not free!” or something like that so that the un-suspecting motorists trying to drive through it is well aware of its consequences. For the un-exposed readers curious to know what exactly happens in these plazas, here is a brief…

In a country of over a billion people which is shamelessly run on the tax paid by a miniscule of its huge population, the tax paying minority is always appreciated only by being subjected to more tax, taxes in so many different names and forms but all directed towards the same helpless lot and his meagre salary. And this is yet another variant of it where the poor tax-payer is taxed some more so that he could reach his destination where he can earn some more money so that he could pay some more tax. Can’t a road that is meant to cater to a population which has one of the highest proportions of tax-payers in it in the city be built at government cost as an acknowledgement to their tireless service day and night to bring in those billions of dollars into its coffers? It is understandable in the case where some large inter-state highways which need tremendous investment in a nation as large as ours where the government has no option but to toll the users to make ends meet. But is this not a ridiculous extrapolation of that logic?, where people who have just managed to emerge out of their poverty struck roots to spearhead the nation’s growth story are being charged an unreasonable sum, much larger than the daily wages earned by a majority of our nation just to drive to their work place on a daily basis on a road that was built with their own tax money!, Is our government really so cash strapped that it cannot fund road construction even within city limits, a limit that it set all by itself? It would be interesting to see, if the same logic is applied to the construction of the ambitious new assembly complex building and a toll plaza is setup at its gates to tax every single MLA and minister who uses it. That day, I promise to stop complaining.

At the end of all this, the road fails to impress anymore and all you can see in it after this is its flaws and your toll money. But the greatness of the OMR does not confine to just the road, it lies in the eco system that is built around it. It lies in the idea of turning this marshy crocodile and hyenas inhibited land into the hottest selling real estate in the city overnight. Billboards on both sides read “Come live in paradise in the midst of nature” (and get eaten up alive by leopards and crocodiles you may think) But you may be surprised by the sheer magnitude and scale of the construction activity happening here. It’s a concrete jungle draped in glass and steel that is taking shape here.

Another peculiarity of this ecosystem is its dominant species – Software Engineers. You find software engineers on OMR like you find china-men in Chinatown. Hanging around buses, bulging out of share-autos and jumping over meadian walls – they are just all over the place. All geared up in power suits and killer skirts to code the world. Coming a close second to them are the farmers and the villagers from those half a dozen village panchayats still buried behind the glass and steel structures who come out on that occasional stroll and often take position on the medians in groups as though they were Olympic swimmers ready to dive in for the 100 mts butterfly style dash into the road. But it would be more appropriate to call this “frog style” considering what they would look like if they happen to come under one of those large water lorries that ply on this road. As I skillfully dodge these men and navigate my way out, my body’s reflex system reacts quicker than I could realize and gets me to jump on my breaks and brings the car to a screeching halt.

All this in the interest of the innocent water buffalo that has just strayed into my path from its usual position on the medians where it sits all day and feasts on the glorious variety of flowers that are being grown there for it to feed on. I see the face of the man at the toll booth in the eyes of that buffalo. Isn’t this grossly unfair by any standard? To be expected to confront a buffalo on your way to office on a road that you pay for every single day through your nose just to see it built and maintained! If there is a list of the ten biggest atrocities in the world, this must be right up there at the top.

This is not all, any road in India and this being no exception is the urban equivalent of the equatorial forest in terms of the diversity of the species that ply on it. There are cars, buses, autos & lorries and then mini buses, share autos & mini lories and then tractors, bullock carts, tri-cycles & rickshaws and a few more unclassifiable vehicles that look like cycles but are powered like cars and loaded up like container ships! If this was not enough, there are the ever so notorious kids, less notorious but equally annoying grannies and an assortment of wild and domestic animals walking the road in all possible directions. But the king of this jungle is the most interesting and intimidating of them all – The garbage trucks. They stink like how the Beatles sing or Shakespeare writes poetry or the way Nepolean fights his wars! Simply un-beatable. When they drive by in all their glory, buffalos faint on the road and unsuspecting humans run for cover. And the bustling road comes to a complete standstill.

A few minutes later I regain my senses and continue my journey slowly, cautious not to catch up with that beasty creature once again. By now I’m in the final leg of my long and eventful journey from the heart of the city to the middle of nowhere. I can see tiger woods waving his golf club at me at a distance. The billboard reads “Shozhinganallur town panchayat welcomes you!” – One glance at that and my dead spirits are all awakened once again. This place with a name that sounds more like what you would get when somebody makes you type the capital of Kyrgyzstan on a keyboard with your boxing gloves on is actually my destination. The mid point of OMR where I disembark everyday.

I get all excited, step on the gas for that final lap and watch my speedometer go from 40..to 50.. 60.. and beyond and my reflex system acts out of sync yet again and brings the car to screeching halt. Nahh its not the buffalo this time its much worse than that. A notorious set of traffic cops on OMR who have a pretty weird pastime. They have this funny looking instrument that looks like a kaleidoscope through which they keep looking at every passing car hiding behind the bushes all day long awaiting that eureka moment. The moment they see the majic figure of 50 on it, they start jumping around in joy and fall in front of the car like a bunch of high school kids who have just knocked a mango down from the tree on a boring Sunday afternoon. And I’m the bakra of the day as you may have guessed, caught just a few meters ahead of my office and my day is never going to be the same again. “Even if we were to build a Champs Elysee in Chennai someday, somethings just would’t change” I think to myself as I pull over to the side to these men’s absolute ecstasy.

- An$ar Za!nul

A Dream called India !

 

Forward: It is perhaps impossible for someone to have grown up in this nation to not be dazzled by its charm. The only more impossible thing could be to not write about it when you know you can!

Here is my take on India – The ancient , the present and the eternal

 60 yrs ago in the dawn of history, at the stroke of the midnight’s hour when the world went to sleep one man famously proclaimed the awakening of a civilization. As the news of the ‘land where all the castes of the world were once born and are still alive’ breaking free from a 300 yr long colonial rule filled the air, a few hundred million people sprung up to a new dream. A dream called, India.

 Though, it was not all that a dreamy awakening as it is being made to sound. There was more to it. The questions and challenges ahead of infant India were perhaps as profound and glorious as only the rest of her history. The very idea of ‘India’ was too complex to survive. To bring together an ensemble of 500 odd princely states, the people of which worshipped a few million gods in a few thousand different languages under one nation which was also sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic and yet republic was more of a nightmare than a dream. But it was the ingenuity of the men who hatched this grand scheme that turned it from a political nightmare into a dream but yet a near impossible dream.

 At this very moment, history also witnessed the emergence of another infant nation. A nation that was formed as a result of the tremendous cosmic activity that took place at the culmination of a bloody revolution in its parent nation at the verge of independence. A nation, less complicated and more viable than its parent. A group of people with a new found sense of unity and long craved autonomy. People bound by a single language and faith. A fairy tale situation just like when the youngest kid of the house got a room all for herself which she could re order in the way she wished while the rest of her large family struggled for coexistence in the rest of the house. All the great challenges that the parent faced at this hour seemed to be this off spring’s boon. Yet, it was not to be the way it was thought to be.

 Half a century later as one nation goes on to capture the imagination of the world and inches towards super-power-dom the other is still limping towards democracy at the brink of bankruptcy. A baffling anti climax. A strong statement that history makes to mankind, that still  refuses to learn from its mistakes. If you are still unable to reason this remarkable phenomenon that makes history sound like a higher form of science, you are required to get into some analysis.     

 To start with, the very idea of ‘Pakistan’ was wrong. An idea, that was sowed at the very beginning of the colonial era as the heart of their partisan politics and from then on brewed by several groups of men at different times to meet their own individualistic goals. The lack of a well defined idea laid the foundation for the absolute lack of inspiring leadership, the key to prosperity in a political system. This vacuum paved the path for some opportunistic leaders who made hey when the sun shone but soon died leaving behind a nation without any fundamentals. It is this lack of fundamentals that eventually lead to a nation full of helpless people whose aspirations were deceived by the dreams they were shown and a leadership whose dreams forever deceived the aspirations of its people. Both of these are held together by destiny as a ticking time bomb. But what needs to be understood here is that, the failure of Pakistan is a political one and not a failure of a religion as it is perceived. Pakistan is the consequence of a larger political fallacy in history where Islam was just the pretext.    

 The building of a great nation could only begin with a dream and visionary leaders and not end there. It required the leaders of independent India to take some difficult decisions and decisive steps that would decide the fate of a little under a billion people for centuries to come.

 It required them to be categorical about the orientating of the growth trajectory this civilization turned nation would take. Which way would India go? What India have they imagined and how are they going to get there? If it was going to be a democracy, how would that be squared with the injustice of the caste system, the oppression of the landlords and the in-equality of women?  Were the questions that haunted their dream. Even a semblance of inefficiency or lack of sincerity in these men would have catastrophic repercussions for the whole of mankind, not just India. And India was truly fortunate in this respect to have been blessed with ‘a league of extraordinary men’ to accomplish this gargantuan task.

 It was truly a remarkable ensemble of great statesmen, exceptional leaders and good men. Jawaharlal Nehru was a prime minister par excellence, if India was a dream, he was the dreamer. A vivacious orator no other leader of independent India has ever since been able to match up to. Sardar Patel, the man who single handedly accomplished the draconian task of turning 500 unruly princely states into one nation and in the process was rechristened as “the iron man of India”. The legendary first home minister of India also set up the administrative back bone of India. The structure that has ever since been holding together this near impossible dream through her unending quest filled with the grandeur of her success and failure and her strive through the good and bad times alike. Dr Ambedkar, the master craftsmen who built into the system of India the most sophisticated judicial mechanism of our times. A mechanism as robust and exhaustive as the system it was built for. The author of the world’s longest constitution, written for the world’s largest democracy. The rebellious law minister of independent India. And to top it all off, the reclusive Maulana Azad. Who symbolized the new democracy’s guarantee that his co-religionists could remain in their homeland in security and dignity. A man who was a far more representative leader of the minorities than the beacon and sausage eating westerner Jinnah, he dismissed the Muslim league’s policy of political division based on religion as manipulative opportunism. The man who went on from being the president of the Indian National Congress during the decisive years before independence to become the first education minister of independent India in the most impressive cabinet ever assembled in Delhi at a time when the nation’s literacy rate was a paltry 18% !

 It was in the hands of these men that the orphaned people of India felt safe at a moment they had just lost their father to rightist fanatics. At a time when the resurgent rightist fundamentalism threatened to throw India’s new found democracy out of its guard instable leadership would have spelled doom and might have turned this nation into another lost cause. But, that was not to be.

 The tale of the last 60 yrs has been a triumph of this democracy that these men painstakingly installed. It is the hallmark of the institutions these men established. From a sovereign Army to the judiciary, from the not so efficient but effective PSUs to some world renowned educational and research institutes, these are institutions that have stood the test of time. Even more remarkably, institutions that with hold the value system that has been a part of the 10,000 yr epic called India. A civilization with the unique distinction of never invading into a foreign territory in its 10,000 year history and at the same time has been constantly renewing its gene pool by being receptive to new ideas and yet tenaciously holding on to that essential vision, that has been the soul of India.

 In these 60 yrs we have grown from being a single party state to a bi-party state politically, have transformed from an under productive granary into the super productive back-office of the world economically and have come a long way from the ages of the doordarshan into being at the epicenter of the information age technologically.

Each of these would have a profound influence on the way “the dream” is weaved in the 21^st century and beyond.

 To begin with politics, the first 50 yrs of a single party rule was one of the biggest stabilizing factors Independent India had, an asset not many infant nations enjoy. Sparing a few stray events now and then the political history of independent India has been largely devoid of any massive power struggles or political tug-a-wars and this contributed immensely in keeping the focus on the one point agenda of nation building. But 50 yrs of political autonomy could easily deter the efficiency of the most idealistic of systems and so it did. That was the time for the political makeover. And at the turn of this century the history of India took another decisive step towards prosperity by turning into a two party state. Having said that, the nature and political agenda of the second front is also of great significance. A booming capitalistic economy or a teeming cultural democracy cannot be lead by the outdated leftists or the divisive rightist fundamentalists who for some strange reasons have always looked at every national crisis as great political opportunities. And thus was lost the hard earned political change that did not last too long and India soon returned to its political monopoly, but this time with a renewed sense of insecurity which has been the only net gain from all this circus. This is significant in order to keep these political sacred cows on their heels and the foxes away from the ring until a more resilient white tiger arrived.

 Economically, we have finally managed to breakout of the communist cocoon and march towards capitalism. But in this process the significance of our communist ways on the slow but definitive growth during our early years cannot be undermined. Especially after just breaking out of the imperial bandwagon to keep the doors wide open for capitalistic intrusions would have been suicidal. And by doing that all that we could have aspired to achieve is some more economic disparity in between our already far apart masses and classes. Yet again India’s strange share of luck steered her away from this catastrophe and we remained a closed self sufficient economy for most of our independent years. But at the end of the cold war years as most nations of the world switched from the ageing communism to the surging capitalism change was inevitable and the only way to move forward.

 Like all great civilizations, India has always been conducive to change and growth. This time, it changed from being a predominantly agriculture driven economy to a technology and services driven economy. While this was party time for the treasury which was ticking by a billion every other day and the stock market which was riding on the raging bull it was not exactly the same for the rest of India. This was because, as India moved on from being a 60% agriculture driven economy to the more lucrative services driven economy it failed to carry along with it the over 60% population that was still fundamentally dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. And this is recipe for disaster. Specially given that the rampant corruption and the sieved distribution mechanism would ensure that only a big fat NOTHING reaches these people through the much hyped trickle down approach. Any growth that is non-inclusive is not sustainable, and so is ours. To fix which, we would require to re-visit our ideals and re-think our agendas. We need to start looking for the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid while we are still building on to its top.  And the one factor that could drive this is Entrepreneurship.

 We need to understand that the current economic buoyancy that we enjoy is completely driven from the outside. It is the FIIs and entry of MNCs that is driving it. While the increased cash inflow has finally managed to turn us into a consumer economy and make us feel seemingly rich, the lion’s share is still enjoyed by our external drivers. Tomorrow in the unlikely event of the Chinese finally managing to learn English or the Filipinos learning to code we would be faithfully returned to our good olden days. This cannot be resolved until there is a truly pan Indian entrepreneurial revolution happening amongst us. Great Indian MNCs need to emerge from fields beyond the IT space. Indian manufacturing, FMCG, retail and financial companies should also go on to capture the world. And at the same time well thought of social entrepreneurship ventures must emerge that could effectively catapult the great Indian lower class to its moment of glory.

This is immensely critical because, as we toil every living day to build larger pyramids we tend to forget the mathematics behind it. You don’t have to be Pythagoras to know that as the pyramid gets bigger the larger gets the base and further away goes the apex. In simple terms, more growth means more disparity and bridging this disparity would be the next big challenge for every nation in this new century. Therefore if Globalization and drilling across was the mood of the last century, “Inclusionization” and drilling down is the need of this century.  And we in India have the greatest opportunity to lead the way for this cause.

 Lastly, coming to the technology and information revolution. We have for long basked in the glory of the technological advancements made by our ancient fore-fathers. This could only be an inspiration and not a pretext to lazy around in its glory. The need to nurture indigenous innovation has never been as pressing as it is today. Our famed knowledge power houses such as the IITs and IISc have to graduate from their lesser mortal roles of being feeder schools for research institutions abroad to becoming the true home of thought leadership and fundamental research. On the downside of the IT revolution, a generation of engineers have been enticed away from the greater cause they were built for into being self satisfied cronies driven by easy money and opportunity. All this casts a cloud of suspicion on our credentials to claim super-power-dom in the near future. We cannot climb to the apex piggy-backing on opportunities that are ‘offered’ to us by the power houses of today simply because they always have the option to not offer(as Mr Obama keeps reminding us :-). It instead has to be seized from them by redeeming and reinventing ourselves as true mascots of change. Remember, the 19^th century Europe and 20^th century America seized the world by staying ahead of the curve and not by just managing to drift along with it. We need to redesign the wheel if not re-invent it!

 The Europeans expanded the world and its glorious possibilities, the Americans flattened it and it is our turn now to inclusionize and stabilize it. We have with us the unique opportunity to pioneer the science of drilling down the fruits of today into the roots of tomorrow for a less disparate and more inclusive world. And only by doing this will the dream called India reach its pinnacle where the aspirations of its people would determine the mood of the world !!

 -         An$ar Za!nul