Politics

The line of the day, from Uma Bharti:

We are working on the modalities to withdraw the candidates whose names are yet to be announced.

It ain’t easy, but it’s got to be done.

(Via email from BV Harish Kumar.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 13 April, 2007 in India | Politics

Sona Mohapatra, and tristesse

I’m off to lunch in Bandra, which feels almost like an outstation trip given how little I commute, but before I go, let me leave you with the video of a lovely song by Sona Mohapatra, “Abhi Nahin Aana.”

What an unusual love song, a woman telling her lover not to come to her yet because she is enjoying pining for him. (The spoken bit at the end is outrageously sexy.) It reminds me of an email Sanjeev Naik sent me a few days ago, in response to this post, in which he quoted this excerpt from Francoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse:

A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today, it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

Quite the web Sona spins.

(Comments are open.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 13 April, 2007 in Arts and entertainment

“Would beauty transcend?”

If you haven’t already, do read Gene Weingarten’s superb feature in the Washington Post, ”Pearls Before Breakfast,” which details an excellent little experiment the Post carried out. The story begins thus:

He emerged from the metro at the L’Enfant Plaza station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work…

What is extraordinary is that the musician was Joshua Bell, one of the most renowned classical violinists in the world. Playing “some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made” on a 1713 Stradivarius, Bell made $32.17. It’s a fascinating story, wonderfully told, read the full thing.

And also, check out this follow-up story by Weingarten that has much chat between him and readers who reacted to the story, as well as “something enlightening about the nature of government bureaucracy versus private industry”, also neatly excerpted by The Mises Blog.

(First WAPO link via separate emails from Priyanka Joseph and Ravages, the other two via email from Ravages.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 13 April, 2007 in Arts and entertainment | Miscellaneous

Father/husband’s name.

There is much hoo-ha these days about bizarre new government guidelines that make women give details of their menstrual history on appraisal forms. S Mitra Kalita correctly points out in Mint that there is an equally invidious requirement that women in India constantly face on every form that they fill in: Father/husband’s name.

Kalita even spoke to an official in the labour ministry who told her that there is no law that requires such a question to be answered, but that “for 60-80-100 years blindly, we have been asking this question.” Don’t expect that to change. Inertia is a powerful beast.

The one requirement that has irritated me in forms that I’ve had to fill up in Pune and Mumbai is of “Father’s Name.” Why so? Well, in Maharashtra there is a custom of the father’s name being the middle name of a person, and the government here assumes that the custom holds across the country. So, say, if I wrote my father’s name as Cthulhu, my name would automatically go into the records as Amit Cthulhu Varma. Punjus and Bongs—I’m half of each—have no such custom, and I don’t have a middle name, but try explaining that to a ration-card officer.

Or even to Cthulhu.

Posted by Amit Varma on 13 April, 2007 in India | Personal

Scarier than the Gandhis

Much as I had criticised the Nehru-Gandhi family in my column today for the harm it has caused India, it could be worse. Indeed, even if Rahul Gandhi turns out to be exactly like his forefathers, I’d vote for him if the only options were the lunatics on the Hindu right. Much as we talk of a ‘secular mandate’, the Hindu right has a massive constituency in the country, illustrated superbly by a survey from Tehelka that shows that Bal Thackeray is ”Mumbai’s Hero No. 1.”

To top it, we have Swapan Dasgupta arguing: “This poll is a compelling argument for the BJP fighting the next election with [Narendra] Modi at the helm.”

Gandhi vs Modi then, a few years from now? I know who I’ll go with.

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 April, 2007 in India | Politics

“Old age is… like a semicolon”

Well, Kurt Vonnegut’s got his full stop. RIP, and all that.

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 April, 2007 in Arts and entertainment

“Momma, momma, he called me Donkey”

Like babies we are, seriously. Something offends us, and off we run to mommy demanding that punishment be handed out.

First there was the matter of the anthem and the flag. And now, more news keeps flooding in of babies running to momma. First, a gentleman named Vishnu Khandelwal has filed a case against Arun Nayar and Liz Hurley for having a Hindu wedding. He says that they “hurt the sentiments” of Hindus and intended to “malign the spiritual sanctity of Hinduism and Indian mythology.”

Elsewhere, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee has lashed out at Mandira Bedi for “dancing on the ramp wearing a tattoo of Eik Omkar Sikh’s religious symbol on her back [sic].” The secretary of this formidable organisation has apparently said that “the religious sentiments were severely hurt due to her act.”

My sentiments are routinely hurt by watching Bedi make a mockery of cricket, especially when she makes fun of the Duckworth-Lewis system without having the slightest knowledge of how it works, or an alternative to present. I don’t go running to momma, though, because that’s not what adults do. Anything anyone says holds the possibility of offending someone or the other, and the only way to stop all offence would be to stop free speech altogether. (That’s not an unlikely trend: 1, 2.) Even if Momma is drunk on power—hell, especially if momma is drunk on power—we children really should behave.

Damn, I hope you aren’t offended by this post!

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 April, 2007 in Freedom | India

Compassion doesn’t scale

That’s the conclusion of a new study that explains just why the story of one dying child may move us to tears, but the news of a genocide where a million people died hardly affects us. Paul Slovic, a researcher, is quoted as saying:

We go all out to save a single identified victim, be it a person or an animal, but as the numbers increase, we level off. We don’t feel any different to say 88 people dying than we do to 87. This is a disturbing model, because it means that lives are not equal, and that as problems become bigger we become insensitive to the prospect of additional deaths.

There is a lesson in this for journalists. When we cover events that have caused many deaths, the most effective way to convey the effect of the carnage is to focus on stories about individuals. When I was travelling through Tamil Nadu after the tsunami, for example, I ignored the bigger numbers and just tried to blog about the small stories, hoping that they would be more evocative. (Examples: 1, 2.) A better example: The Gujarat riots of 2002, which can either be represented by a list of casualties, which would mean nothing to most people, or a single photograph like the one below, of Qutubuddin Ansari by Arko Datta.

If there were five such people in that picture, our attention would be diffused and the impact, I suspect, would be far less.

(Link via email from Sanjeev Naik.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 April, 2007 in Journalism

The Nehru-Gandhi legacy of shame

This is the ninth installment of my weekly column for Mint, Thinking it Through.

Last week I caught an episode of the charming show, Koffee with Karan, in which Karan Johar was chatting with Shobha De and Vijay Mallya. I enjoy the rapid-fire round on this show, because it reveals much about the celebrity-culture of our times, as well as about our celebrities. One question Johar asked De and Mallya on the show stood out: “Rahul or Priyanka?”

Now, Johar wasn’t asking De and Mallya which of the two Gandhis was better looking or suchlike. He wanted to know who they preferred as a politician. There was an implicit assumption that one of them is certain to be a future prime minister. This has nothing to do with with their political skills or leanings, of which little is known. It is all about their last name, which is the most powerful brand in the biggest market of India: our democracy.

Rahul understandably wants to exploit this, and build the brand: a few days ago, while campaigning in UP, he spoke of how the Babri Masjid would never have been demolished had the Gandhi family been active in politics. It’s natural for Rahul to invoke the Gandhi brand, given the resonance it carries in this country. But it’s also somewhat ironic. Despite their iconic status among our economically illiterate masses, the Nehru-Gandhi family has been nothing but disastrous for our country. 

Read more...

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 April, 2007 in Economics | Essays and Op-Eds | Freedom | India | Politics | Thinking it Through

Don’t squeeze when you can stroke and caress

If you are a man, this is essential reading for you: ”40 Mistakes Men Make While Having Sex With Women.”

I have pondered deeply over many of these points in the past, and am glad that some of my beliefs have been validated. And, if I may, allow me to add a 41st mistake to this list:

Carrying a list of dos and don’ts into bed with you.

And also, please put that damn Blackberry away. She’s already in bed with you, so there’s no further need to signal your affluence. Thank you.

(Link via email from Prabhu.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 April, 2007 in Miscellaneous