Sachin and the god particle

By : Ajaz Ashraf | December 22, 2012

This article below is more about us mad Indians, than about Sachin ... and how true! - cr

The debate over whether Tendulkar should retire provides us a perspective into our collective psyche. How dare he fail after we have worshipped him for 23 years?

Five months before the English cricket team began its tour of India, triggering a passionate debate on whether Sachin Tendulkar should retire from international cricket, the batting maestro was in Herzogenaurach, Germany, where the Adidas headquarters are located. The Germans were astonished at the reception Tendulkar received: a few hundred Indians gathered at the headquarters, lustily cheered and screamed at his sight, and jostled to touch or have him sign their autograph books. One Adidas executive remarked to a journalist, "Even Lionel Messi did not receive such a reception. " The dwarfing of Messi for a soccer-crazy nation seemed inexplicably mysterious. 

Obviously, the German executive did not know that deification is embedded deep into the Indian psyche. Remember the bewildering pantheon of gods we Indians worship. Recall our propensity to turn the cremation sites and residences of mortals, extraordinary though their achievements are, into monuments and museums. From gods we ultimately become a tad alienated as our supplications do not lead to divine intercession, goading us to shout Jim Morrison style, "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer. " 

From the Invisible we can only turn away, but our disappointment with the flesh-and-blood gods provokes us to acts of vengeance. It is we who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. We mock Jawaharlal Nehru, pummelling him more now than what we did in his life, dismissing him as a woolly-headed idealist who wanted to keep India non-aligned and insisted on the state occupying the commanding heights of economy. We have belatedly begun to herald BR Ambedkar's contribution to the framing of the Indian Constitution but have no qualms in breaking his statues. 

It is this national trait of deification which has turned Tendulkar the cricketing genius into Tendulkar the god of cricket. How dare he fail after we have worshipped him for 23 years, pinned our hope on him for India's redemption on the cricket ground, bought goods he advertised and sent our children to coaching camps! It is galling that his failure has coincided with India's precipitous decline in Test cricket. Aren't gods supposed to magically help us overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, which perhaps are consequences of tamasha cricket aka T20 cricket? 

No doubt, unharnessed popular expectations mounted tremendous pressure on Tendulkar. What else can explain the sudden dip in form as soon as he reached his 99th international century? Till then, he had been in fine fettle, batting with aplomb and scoring centuries as frequently as only he can. Thereafter, in 17 Tests he managed 953 runs, at an average of 31. 76;in ODIs, he managed 473 in 14 outings, at an average of 33. 78. On reaching his 100th international century against Bangladesh, Tendulkar said, "I was not thinking about the milestone, the media started all this, wherever I went, the restaurant, room service, everyone was talking about the 100th hundred. Nobody talked about my 99 hundreds. It became mentally tough for me..." Indeed, there couldn't be a more apt example of how deification unravels gods. 

The debate over whether Tendulkar should retire provides us a perspective into our collective psyche as much as it has diminished his chances of, yet again, rediscovering his old form. What explains our national trait of creating idols of our heroes? In some ways, it is redolent of the feudal mindset, from which we believed we had emerged. The personality of the feudal lord was infused with charisma that made his subjects consider him worthy of unquestioning adulation. It was/is an important factor why many erstwhile royalties were/are elected to Parliament. The subcontinent is the land where charisma reigns - the Nehru-Gandhis are supreme in India, as are the Bhuttos and Sharifs in Pakistan, the Wajeds and Zias in Bangladesh and, to some extent, the Koiralas in Nepal. 

Worship presumes accepting your own inferiority in relation to those who boast of seemingly exalted lineages or, as in the case of Tendulkar, are prodigiously talented. From them, we feel, flow our blessings, whether in politics or cricket. We prescribe a different set of rules for them. We wish to exempt Tendulkar from the mandatory duty on the car he wants to import. We nominate him to the Rajya Sabha, knowing he won't have the time to attend its proceedings. Not for us a culture, say, that of Germany, which incarcerated tennis star Steffi Graf's father for violation of tax laws. Our inferiority stems from the pervasive caste codes which have taught us to accept the inequality inherent in the social system. 

Place the national psychology and Tendulkar's breathtaking talent against the backdrop of political ambience of the 1980s, in which he made his debut, and you will understand why he was turned into a national icon. The 1980s was the decade of pessimism. There had been a succession of grisly communal riots - Moradabad, Bhagalpur, the Nelli massacre etc. In 1984, the assassination of Indira Gandhi sparked off a veritable slaughter of Sikhs, prompting an organisation to print a poster with the photos of Kapil Dev (Hindu), Mohd Azharuddin (Muslim), Roger Binny (Christian) and Maninder Singh (Sikh) with a caption declaring, "If we can play together, we can live together. " In 1989, the Bharatiya Janata Party initiated the Ram Janambhoomi movement, bringing consecrated bricks from different parts of the country to Ayodhya. The nation was pushed to the edge. 

It was also in December 1989 that Sachin Tendulkar, a callow 16-year-old, stepped out on Pakistani soil to make his debut, against the fury of their fast bowlers. In the fourth Test of his life he was struck on the nose. Blood gushed out but he refused to leave the field. The picture of that moment was there in every newspaper;he went on to score 57. A dream had been born, of talent and aspiration. 

It was to take another three-four years for the dream to truly develop wings and soar high. By then, the Babri Masjid had been demolished and Mandal and Mandir politics had bitterly divided the nation. In this gloomy scenario Tendulkar became the symbol of national unity, his majestic wielding of the bat papering, however ephemerally, over all social schisms. He was also our only popular entertainment, as the culture of VCR was gradually squeezing the life out of Bollywood until the multiplex-driven renaissance resuscitated the cinema from its death throes. We made him a national icon because of our own compulsions, and laid out different yardsticks for him. 

Forgetting our own connivance in turning Tendulkar into a god, we have triggered a debate not only graceless but also deeply insulting to our own memory of pure bliss he brought to us. As a people we are notoriously fickle. We hailed Indira Gandhi as an incarnate of Durga and then pelted stones at her, only to vote her back to power three years later. Likewise, we mounted such pressure on Tendulkar at the time he was a century away from his 100th ton that his batting prowess diminished overnight, as if some celestial being wished to punish us for our pathological obsession with milestones. 

Yet a question remains: why didn't the crossing of the 100th-century milestone relieve the pressure on Tendulkar ? Alas, as any psychologist would tell you, it is difficult for a person to rediscover the earlier state of serenity once his mind learns fear and anxiety. Such foibles are habit-forming. This malaise had afflicted him earlier as well. Tendulkar took as many as eight Tests and a string of poor scores - 2, 8, 1, 8, 2, 5, 55, 3, 20, 32* - to equal Sunil Gavaskar's 34 centuries, then the world record. He took eight more innings to reset the record and another 18 innings to score his 36th ton. That malaise has now returned on a more tragic scale. 

Perhaps he now finds difficult to overcome his mind because he lacks the resilience of the young. The biological change is often sudden - for instance, many 40 year olds suddenly discover one day that they need to hold the newspaper closer to their eyes to read it. It's the body's signal to have reading glasses prescribed. Tendulkar's cheap dismissals are time's intimation to him of his ageing body and slower reflexes. 

Perhaps he still believes he has the capacity to adjust to the gradual withering away of his powers. Or perhaps he can't retire because, as some allege, the business model built around him would collapse. But give Tendulkar a few more Tests to know whether or not his form has deserted him permanently. Let Tendulkar bat without the fear that he might be asked to leave without a delectable swansong. Should such an innings prove elusive, he won't potter around, for the structure of sports can't sustain a cricketing equivalent of Dev Anand, who continued to produce films for the love of it even though no one watched them. We owe this much to Tendulkar, for bringing light and warmth in those gloomy years we lived in. 

(The author is a Delhi-based journalist. Email: ashrafajaz3@gmail. com)

---

Baby Falak - Only the nurses remember

FALAK KI YAAD ME

======================

phoolo si komal thi jiski kaya,

jivan me jiske andhera tha chaya,

masumiyat jiske chehre se jati thi jhalak

ha ha us pari ka naam tha baby falak.

usne apne jeevan me kya paya,

na mata pita ka sath

or na apno ka saya

bachpan uske liye ban gaya ek abhishap,

garibi or lachari ka bhugta usne dushparinam.

na ma ka use anchal mila ,

na pita ka mila sahara,

or na hi bhai bahan k sath waqt usne gujara,

jane kin lakiro ne uske hatho me ghar tha banaya,

jane kesi taqdeer ne tha uska matha sajaya,

ese jaal me uljhi vo nanhi pari,

aatma jhakjhor de esi vipda us par padi

masumiyat bhare uske chehre par

kar diye hevaniyat k nishan,

sharir par hazaro jakham diye,

har pal nikalti uski jaan.

karhana usne sikh liya tha ,

kilkariyo ki umar me.

har dard apne naam kiya,

bachpan k khel bhool k.

par hosla tha uska buland ,

ladi thi vo jee jaan se.

begano se bhi apno sa pyar mila,

desh videsh se mili duaae thi.

par ek din wo har gai ,

is jivan jaal se.

hevan rupi insan se ,

or uske kiye kam se.

par jaate jaate wo dikha gai ,

hame buraiyo ki shakal.

de gai ek gehri soch ,

ki kesa hoga hamara ka.

kya yu hi bachpan dam tode ga,

majboori or lalach k jaal me.

kya yu hi bikti rahe gi aaurat,

hevano k hath me.

---

India's Baby Falak

This is Falak, this is India and this is the story of our own inhumane psyche, where nobody is at fault, but a few poverty stricken people living with their own miseries. The people who should be accountable, in the various child welfare agencies, and the government  for paying them salaries, go scott free, as other Falaks and worse brutalities continue to happen... Click link below to read the story. It will be worth it...

NEW DELHI–The story of Baby Falak is a close-up look at the underbelly of Indian society: prostitution, human trafficking, bride selling, and domestic violence.

It also is the story of a small group of ordinary people – a young mother, a rebellious teenager, a taxi driver, a tire repairman, a lonely graduate — trying to escape the tribulations of their daily lives, and of the people who exploited them, the institutions that failed them, and the people who helped them. 

The events that transpired over 10 months, from mid-2011 to early 2012, moved millions, at least briefly, to unprecedented outrage and introspection, as if India were asking itself: “Are we like this only?”

Falak: The Complete True Story of ‘India’s Baby’

---

This govt is taking the country down with it

By : Francois Gautier | (As appeared in DNA on Tuesday, May 8, 2012)

In Tamil Nadu, one of the country’s most industrialised states, there are 10 to 15 hours of power cut a day, workers stand idle, small units are closing down daily by the dozens and business is slow. The rupee is sliding, India is downgraded by many countries as an investment risk and the stock market tumbles. The government allows the best airline, Kingfisher, to go nearly bankrupt, bled dry by extravagant airport charges, huge fuel taxes, while it keeps pouring thousands of crores into Air India.

India is the laughing stock of South Asia: Pakistan sends its terrorists, New Delhi cries murder, but the next moment the pretty Pakistani foreign minister comes and the Indian media goes gaga. China plays the Indian government like a violin. Maoists have a field day, kidnapping officials at random, knowing that ransoms will be paid.

Indians today live in a country where mullahs can preach secession, while Hindu gurus revered by millions of Hindus are the target of ridicule, media attacks and police assaults.

Even the army, India’s last non-politicised, casteless barrier is not safe: since Sonia Gandhi has come to power, it has been targeted, first by attempting to make a census of its Muslim soldiers, then by trying to remove AFSPA, which would be as good as giving away Kashmir to Pakistan, and lastly by the concerted attack on General VK Singh, the man who dared to expose the total disinterest of the Indian government on the army’s preparedness and the rot in defence procurement.

Here we have a government that is racked by scandal after scandal which would have brought down any government in the world. But this government has no shame: it does not care if it brings down the country with it, as long as its ministers can keep their perks and loot the country for another two years. What it is good at, however, is surviving, using lie, deceit, all that with a smile on its face.

For, democracy in India has been hijacked to the point that a government that is basically in minority, which is openly flouting all values of decency and honesty, which has lost the trust of the people, is able to continue damaging India’s fabric, taking advantage of the fact that the majority of Indians, who are Hindus, do not riot and descend in the streets when they are unhappy. The instruments of power have also never been so perverted in India: the CBI blatantly and shamelessly quashed all injunctions against Ottavio Quattrrochi and even allowed him to get away with billions of rupees which he had stolen from India. Yet, without batting an eyelid, and with the Indian media turning a blind eye, it goes ruthlessly after Narendra Modi, chief minister of the most efficiently run state, the most corruption free. Her governors shamelessly hijack democracy by twisting the laws.

It is a fact that Sonia brought discipline, order and cohesion into the Congress party. But the amount of power, that she, a non-Indian, a simple elected MP, like hundreds of others, possesses, is frightening. She is the ultimate arbiter and nothing of importance is decided without her caveat. Because of her immense power, India has now entered an area of semi-dictatorship, where hundreds of thousands of phones are tapped, emails are read, letters opened, gurus arrested, journalists scared to speak aloud…

The going down of India because of the selfishness and petty interests of its politicians, including the BJP, which is terribly disunited and refuses to acknowledge that Modi is its only eligible PM candidate, is a tragedy for the few of us who have dared over the years to defend India in our respective countries, by saying that India, and not China, should be the natural choice of investment for western countries, for it is democratic, liberal, pro-western and friendly people. We have also clamored that the West should realise that India is of an immense strategic geopolitical importance — at the cross roads of many civilisations, a buffer of freedom against the Chinese hegemonic tendencies and an example of integration in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.

Cry O my Beloved India, look at what Thy children are doing to Thee…

Follow Francois Gautier on Twitter@fgautier26
Link : http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_this-govt-is-taking-the-country-down-with-it_1685873

---

Make mistakes but never repeat them!

Harsha Bhogle: "Make mistakes but never repeat them!"

From  : http://www.careers360.com/news/8259-success-journey-against-odds-harsha-bhogle 
Published on: April 13, 2012

The TV anchor and cricket commentator writes about his life, struggles and the reality of learning and perseverance.

AFTER so many years in the profession it might seem unusual to say so - but I should never have been in television. I didn’t have what it took and for a better part of my career I was defined by who I wasn’t rather than by who I was! I wasn’t a test cricketer, I didn’t look like a suiting model (far from it!), I had no sense of fashion or colours. I wore large glasses, I had gaps in my teeth and I spoke too fast. It has been suggested that I had a face for radio and after the first programme of a new series for ESPN, the producer said (though I must admit, not at the time) that there was everything wrong with it, including the anchor.



Harsha feels that making mistakes is not a crime.
Not learning from them, repeating them is criminal.

Worse still I had no one to look up to. Live television was very young in India and Doordarshan was the only channel. I guess you could say that, as a result, I knew what not to do but didn’t always know what was right. And so I had no choice but to learn by making mistakes. I did what I thought was right and if it was wrong, I tried not to do it again.

Big blunders

I made many mistakes. I once ended a presentation ceremony at the end of a high profile tournament halfway through because I thought the director was telling me to move on when in reality he was telling someone else. I had very little idea of how to use the ear-piece through which the presenter gets instructions from the director. So when he said, “After this we will go to an interview” I assumed he was talking only to me and not to the crew so after that particular award had been given, I turned to camera and said “That’s it from the presentation”. WhenI turned there were a million eyes boring holes into me. I crept up to where the producer was, feeling as terrible as anyone could, and said, “Sorry Rik, I promise it will never happen again”. He put me at ease but I knew I had committed a blunder.

He is never afraid of learning.
He learns from everyone around him.

Making mistakes isn’t a crime, repeating them is!

Indeed the year before that, I was first asked to present the telecast and I said, “Yes”, without having a clue about what it meant. So before leaving for Chennai, my wife and I went to buy a couple of jackets. We only knew one store so we went to the Raymond shop and as it turned out they only had double breasted jackets so those were what we bought! One of those was a black and white striped jacket, the kind you should never wear on television because the picture jitters.

But I learnt one thing about mistakes and about failure. It is not a crime to commit them, but it is criminal not to learn from them and ensure they are not repeated. If you make one mistake it tends to be pardoned but if you keep making it, no one is interested in you anymore.

Look, failure is a necessity

And you know, little failures are like potholes on a road. After a while you know where not to drive. Also, you learn what not to do and it was thus that I learnt what I did about television. So if you fail, don’t think it is the end of the world. Ask yourself why you failed and promise yourself that you will never do it again. You will actually emerge tougher. In a programme my wife and I did some years ago, an Australian sports psychologist told us that when they put together elite squadrons in Australia, they don’t pick you if you’ve never failed because if you have never been face-to-face with failure you may not know what to do when confronted by it. If, however, you have looked failure in the eye, vanquished it and returned stronger, you are considered a better candidate.

The one thing we should all try to do in life is to convert a problem into an advantage, into an opportunity. Because I didn’t have much to start with, I tried much harder than anyone else, I was never afraid of learning. I learnt to be professional from the cameramen and the editors on the crew, I learnt what colours are good for television from Navjot Sidhu, I learnt how to knot a tie from my friend whose camera I had to look into, I learnt how to iron a jacket from someone else.

Unfortunately in India we condemn failure too strongly, we attach a social status to it and clothe failures with a stigma. Stay away from such people or better still, try harder to prove them wrong. Failure can sometimes drive you towards getting even better than you would have if you hadn’t failed.

 We fail when we fear failure

But remember, failure can be a friend only if you learn from it and never repeat it. There are hundreds of stories around you of what the human spirit can do. Failure is not an enemy, failure is not fatal so don’t fear it because the more you fear it, the more you attract it. I found that the day I stopped being afraid of failing, I grew much more relaxed. I told myself, ‘what is the worst thing that will happen?’. I would have had to apologise on air, in front of all those viewers but I would only be apologising for a mistake, I wouldn’t be committing a crime.

Very often we fail because we are afraid of failing, because we fear the aftermath of failure. I didn’t do well at all in my first term at IIM Ahmedabad because I spent more time fearing a D or an F than actually studying - which would have saved me in the first place. So relax, if you fear failure, it will encircle you.

If failure, if mistakes, could ruin people, then I would never be in television.

---

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

By GREG SMITH

Appeared in the "The New York Times" in The Opinion Pages - Published: March 14, 2012 

This struck home as something very familiar, something I have lived with. As I read it, I found uncanny similarities to what happened in my own company, GE which I had to leave after 33 years.  I considered GE as my own company for over a quarter of a century after which I went through the same turmoil faced by Greg Smith. I loved every bit of my work there, with wonderful people to work and be friends with. Slowly, I saw the changes overtaking the work and ethic culture. People who were friends, started slowly jockeying into positions for better "visibility and instant rewards" at the cost of colleagues and customers. Well, Greg Smith's article says it all, so, read on. 

For sake of brevity, some details has been editted out. The full version of the article can be read here

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

---

In an ocean of brutishness, there are some islands of decency

By : David Campbell
(Appeared in the National Times, Australia on January 9, 2012)

It seems the rest of society must bear the brunt of the actions of a selfish minority.

Holiday scenes: a middle-aged man finishes a stubby of beer and casually drops it on the beach; radio thumping, a carload of youths races through a seaside village shouting obscenities; a woman driving along a country road flicks her cigarette butt out of the window; a teenage girl stuffs the wrapping paper from her sandwich in between the slats of the wooden bench on which she's sitting.

They're just small incidents, everyday events, and maybe I'm overreacting, but surely it's worth questioning the thinking behind them. How can these individuals have so little regard for the environment and other people? They represent a subculture in our community, a group that might be called the ''brutes''. That's using the word in the sense of those lacking the ability to reason, to understand consequences; people who simply don't care.

They have no sense of responsibility, no concept of decency or consideration for others. All they're aware of is their own narrow, blinkered self-interest. To accost them and point out the problem is to invite verbal abuse and even physical violence. Somehow, you're the one at fault for bringing it to their attention.

There were undoubtedly quite a few brutes abroad in the English riots last year. Whatever the contributing factors - poverty, community fragmentation, social inequality, parental failure, family breakdown, welfare dependency, political incompetence - there was plenty of evidence of a brutish mentality: I see. I want. I take. But there's nothing exclusively British about brutes, and they're not a new phenomenon.

On October 31, 1923, on the eve of the spring racing carnival, a substantial number of the Victorian police force went on strike. The result was chaos and violence. On the weekend of November 3 and 4, mobs ran riot in the city streets, smashing windows and looting. Three people died. Trams were overturned. Property damage was substantial. Yet most of those who were eventually brought to justice were young men and boys with no previous criminal record. The line between order and anarchy is very thin.

Today they are everywhere, in all walks of life. They're not limited by ethnicity, age, sex, creed or social class. On the domestic front, they do late-night burnouts in suburban streets, gatecrash private events, trash rental properties, and regularly disrupt quiet neighbourhoods with wild parties.

In the financial world, they abuse people's trust by cheating them out of hard-won earnings. They exploit innocence with complete disregard for the suffering caused. It was a widespread brutish attitude to financial probity that led to the GFC.

There are celebrity brutes, sporting brutes and corporate brutes. There are brutes in politics, using their position for purely selfish ends. In the UK a few years ago they were caught rorting their parliamentary allowances. It's not difficult to find similar examples in Australia.

There are many manifestations of these creatures, but they all have one thing in common: a complete empathy bypass. They exhibit an inability to see their own actions in terms of a broader context. They don't regard themselves as part of the general community, but as stand-alone entities in their own little universe. They have an unshakeable sense of entitlement.

This is not an argument for sheep-like conformity. I simply make the point that a society can only function effectively if there is co-operation between its members and respect for others. But there are those who don't seem to understand this concept - and their numbers appear to be increasing.

Maybe I'm the one who's on the wrong track. Perhaps notions of courtesy, compassion and consideration for others are outdated and no longer relevant to our modern society.

Perhaps the message in today's world is that we need to be obsessively self-centred and ruthlessly aggressive to survive the pressures of the 21st century. In other words, it's head down, elbows out, and charge blindly ahead.

But then I read about the kindness of strangers. During last year's natural disasters, there was abundant evidence of a willingness to help in times of adversity, of a generosity of spirit.

So, the positive examples exist. And the more there are, the better the chance that the brutes will see - and learn.

David Campbell is a Melbourne writer.

---

Government, Opposition & Corruption

http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=10453

by Rajinder Puri
January 13, 2012

The most damaging weakness of India’s political class is its lack of credibility. Regardless of the truth, people at large are convinced that the entire political class is corrupt. The government covers up corruption cases. The opposition dares not pursue them even when those in the government are involved. The Scorpene deal, the Koda mining scam, the Raja Spectrum scam, the IPL scam – the list of unresolved cases that do, or will, gather dust seems endless. The highest leadership in both the government and the opposition lacks public credibility. This is because of the curious inertia displayed by these leaders even after circumstances cloud their reputations. The biggest scam currently on the radar is of course the Hassan Ali Khan Hawala scam.

Corruption has become so widespread and brazen that it is destroying the foundations of the Indian Republic. India can stand on the roof and watch its neighbour’s house in flames. Why doesn't it look below its feet to realize that its own house is burning?

Readers will recall this scribe had earlier drawn attention to the Hassan Ali scam and the government’s brazen cover up to bury the truth. Hassan Al is the owner of a Pune stud farm. He has 10 known illegal Swiss bank accounts, probably more in other tax havens. His money stashed abroad is astronomical. According to the government's statement he owed Rs 50,345 crore to the tax department as on 31 March 2009. According to accountants that sum would have escalated to approximately Rs 100,000 crore by when Budget 2010 was presented. On October 20, 2009 this scribe pointed out how according to Swiss authorities while the Indian government publicly sought help in probing Hassan Ali’s Swiss account, privately it sabotaged the probe by submitting “forged” documents asked for by Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice. Swiss authorities wanted to help, but Indian authorities withheld proper documentation. Since April 2007 the Indian government has kept mum on the Swiss request for proper documents.

On March 18 2010 this scribe drew attention to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement to the media that the government had recovered the tax dues from Hassan Ali. But the revised estimates for 2009-10 did not accommodate the Rs 100,000 crore due from Hassan Ali in the Budget figures. Further, the existing Income Tax Act was amended to waive impediments for tax defaulters like Hassan Ali to approach the Settlement Commission for resolving tax disputes. If Hassan Ali Khan approaches the Commission it would enable the government to evade sharing information about Hassan Ali’s undisclosed foreign assets with foreign governments as required by the international tax treaties entered into by the government.

Clearly, Finance Minister Mukherjee is covering up the Hassan Ali probe. Why? The answer may have been given in the Maharashtra Assembly. On April 13th a CD showing Hassan Ali was laid on the table of the House by BJP MLA Devendra Phadnavis. The CD contained Ali's statement to police in which he mentioned names of former Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil and Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel. In the CD Ali claimed a meeting involving RR Patil and Ahmed Patel at Juhu Centaur Hotel on 11 August 2008 to approve Hasan Gafoor’s name as Mumbai’s police commissioner. Home Minister Patil vehemently denied any association with Ali. "I have never met Ahmed Patel and never spoken to him face to face. The CID will probe if the motive of the CD was to harm Gafoor, me, Ahmed Patel or anybody else", Patil told the assembly.

The government ordered an inquiry conducted by Additional Director General, Crime Investigative Department (CID) and SP, S. Yadav. The CD was prepared by the use of spy cam by Deputy Police Commissioner Ashok Deshbhratar. Predictably, the politicians named have not been questioned. Their denials have been accepted at face value. Instead the CID charged IPS officer Ashok Deshbhratar who produced the CD with trying to extort money from Hasan Ali! In its 15 page report the CID stated that Hasan Ali’s confession has been selectively edited. The CID had sent the CD to the forensic lab at Chandigarh. Its report said the audio-visual pieces of interrogation were not inter-linked, but joined together in sequence to appear as if they are part of continuous interrogation. Inter-linked or not, the forensic report does not deny that it was Hassan Ali himself speaking the “disjointed” narrative. CID investigations confirmed that one meeting did take place involving Vilasrao Deshmukh and Ahmed Patel at Juhu Centaur on March 15, 2008. But CID comforted itself with the fact it could not have discussed Gafoor’s appointment because by then Gafoor had already been appointed Mumbai Commissioner of Police. Never mind the Police Commissioner’s appointment, how is Hassan Ali’s proximity to Congress politicians including the political secretary of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, to be explained?

Circumstantial evidence reveals therefore that Hassan Ali, the nation’s biggest money launderer, is protected by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. And Hassan Ali has links with senior Congress politicians including Sonia Gandhi’s trusted political secretary, Ahmed Patel. During his interaction with Ali was Ahmed Patel representing himself or his boss, Sonia Gandhi? If he was representing himself why has Sonia Gandhi not sacked him? If he was representing the Congress President how does Sonia Gandhi explain her party’s links with the nation’s biggest money launderer who is being protected by the Finance Minister?

Connect the dots and the picture that emerges is not pretty. Either the Congress is so stupid that it deserves to be removed from power, or it is so corrupt that it deserves to be removed from power. Wittingly or otherwise the BJP until now has served only Hassan Ali’s interests. Publicizing the CD will act as a powerful disincentive for the government to act against Hasan Ali. By not pursuing the matter at the national level the BJP has failed to serve its own interests. Therefore the BJP is either so corrupt that it deserves to perpetually remain out of power. Or it is so stupid that it deserves to perpetually remain out of power.

Corruption has become so widespread and brazen that it is destroying the foundations of the Indian Republic. India can stand on the roof and watch its neighbour’s house in flames. Why doesn't it look below its feet to realize that its own house is burning?

---

Their Sacrifices: A Chapter from Tomorrow's Textbooks

Their Sacrifices: A Chapter from Tomorrow's Textbooks - By Arun Shourie
From the : Asian Age - January 23, 1998

In the beginning was a foreigner. He founded the Congress.

Then, no one did anything till the Nehru-Nehru (Father and Son) Family stepped forth. They firmly stamped the history of India with the twin features that characterise it in the first half of the 20th century: everything they did was a sacrifice, no one else made any sacrifices.

With the passing of the Father, the Son became the Father, and with the coming of the Daughter, the Nehru-Nehru Family came to be known as the Nehru-Gandhi Family. But it continued the noble tradition: everything they did was a sacrifice, no one else made any sacrifices.

Soon enough the country's interest demanded that the secret plans of the new Viceroy and his co-plotters be ferreted out. The Father therefore sacrificed that one thing to which he was so attached -- the sacred memory of his dear wife, who, having joined the Nehru-Nehru Family had already made the Supreme Sacrifice -- and let the Viceroy's wife fall for him.

Time flew yet again, and the cares of office began to weigh Father down. As president of the Congress and because of his own scholarship, he was of course aware of historical precedents of our rulers marrying foreign women to manage the household while they attended to affairs of State. But so as not to further disturb a people that had been so recently devastated, he sacrificed his love of history and its mores, and continued to live alone. That only weighed him down further.

Therefore, while her dear husband was busy in various adventures in Lucknow and Allahabad, the Daughter, Indira Gandhi, chose to stay in Delhi. Soon, she too sacrificed her marriage to devote herself to the one thing that was so necessary for our poor country -- the well-being of Father.

Then, as Father aged (as the original Father had before him), she sacrificed her devotion to housework and his care, and agreed to take over the presidentship of the Congress.

And then, she sacrificed her deep devotion to this hoary party, split it and threw out the blackguards -- all so as to free it, and therefore the country, from the clutches of The Syndicate.

And then, she sacrificed her respect for the elderly, and threw Morarji out -- so as to save the country from The Return of Reaction.

And then, out of her infinite love for the poor, and because of her exemplary fealty to the memory and inclinations of her father, she sacrificed her own pragmatism, and embraced socialism.

And then, seeing how those old stuck-in-the-muds, the judges, were going to impede the great things which were being done for the poor, she sacrificed her deep love for propriety, superseded three of them, and made yet another original, sterling contribution to world thought, the concept of a Committed Judiciary.

And then, as the wretches had still not stopped howling, she sacrificed her new love -- socialism -- for pragmatism; and thus we got the justly fabled "Twenty Point Programme" which, as everyone knows, catapulted our country to the very limits of prosperity.

And then, as she was being attacked from all sides and being asked to resign just because some high court judge had found her guilty of electoral fraud, her devoted son, Sanjay sacrificed his love of automobiles, and stepped forth to protect her from these evil machinations and conspiracies. And then, as misguided students, and their misguides -- JP and the rest started demanding that corruption and inefficiency be checked, she and Sanjay standing together sacrificed their deep attachment to probity and excellence, stood firm, refused to mend matters under duress, and thereby saved the country from extra-constitutional anarchy.

And then, as the bureaucratic machinery had become moribund, as the political leaders had become limp, she sacrificed her deep aesthetic love for consistency, and allowed Sanjay to station himself as The Unconstitutional Authority par excellence so as to kick-start the merely constitutional authorities.

And then, as the senile fools still did not abandon their unconstitutional ways, she sacrificed her deep commitment to democracy, and with the utmost reluctance so touching a characteristic of The Family -- and only to save the country from The Foreign Hand -- threw the entire oppositions as well as over a lakh of people into jail, and suspended the Constitution.

And then, so as to create an example that would inspire all budding entrepreneurs and thereby lift the country to ever greater heights, she sacrificed her own good name and ensured all official and non-official encouragement to Sanjay's dream project, the Maruti.

And then, precisely when she had acquired complete mastery over the entire country and everyone was ever so full of joy at the trains running on time, precisely when a great scholar, the then Congress president, had proclaimed, "Indira is India, India is Indira", she sacrificed her unrivaled, unquestioned position. and announced elections.

And then, just because the people had wiped her out and her party, she sacrificed even her prime ministership and agreed to go along with the verdict of the ignorant people -- a verdict she knew the blockheads would soon rue.

And then, as the Janata government floundered, she sacrificed the well-deserved peace and quiet she had at last got after so many years of travail, and agreed to take on the bother of once again ruling this wretched country.

And then, because his dear brother had sacrificed his very life for that ancient love of the Nehrus -- aviation, Rajiv sacrificed his quiet family life, his love of the skies, his blossoming career in aviation and stepped forth to help Mummy -- so beleaguered and alone at the pinnacle.

And then, to save her beloved Punjab from the communal Akalis, she sacrificed her unshakable commitment to secularism, and put up Bhindranwale.

And then, when those foolish young students in Assam began demanding that foreigners not be smuggled on to electoral lists -- as the local Congress leaders were doing so as to enrich our culture through cross-fertilisation she sacrificed her deep love and compassion for all living beings; and let the forces shoot down 800 of them.

And then, when the damned students still did not listen, she sacrificed her undying love and commitment to the country's unity, and directed her minions to encourage the Bodo militants after all, how could mere students be allowed to decide what was good for the country; after all, how could mere students be allowed to challenge the decisions of Delhi?

And then, when Farooq and NTR would not see reason and submit to her, she sacrificed her unshakable commitment to the Constitution and, with the same pain and reluctance that we have encountered earlier, dismissed their elected governments -- she had nothing to gain from the step, she had everything to lose, but she knew that the country had to be made safe for the Constitution.

And then, as courts, legislatures, civil services with their interminable forms and procedures, were all standing in the way of the poor, she sacrificed her devotion to everything her father had helped construct, and, by skillful undermining, she put all institutions out of harm's way.

Unfortunately -- and this tragic thing happens so often in the case of the Nehru-Gandhi Family -- the followers of Bhindranwale did not see that Bhindranwale did not see that Bhindranwale would have never attained the heights he did it not been for her. They, therefore, sacrificed her life to their ingratitude.

And then, though the Mummy he had stepped forth to help had been taken away, Rajiv, disregarding the entreaties of his wife, sacrificed the easy-relaxed life of a mere MP, and became PM: for the earth which was quaking as the giant tree had fallen had to be calmed.

And then, to safeguard the country, he sacrificed his commitment and that of Olof Palme to the cause they had met to discuss, disarmament, and swiftly concluded the Bofors deal.

And then, he sacrificed his longing to spend time in India, and travelled incessantly all over the world to solve the problems which were buffeting it from all sides.

And then, on his visits to his beloved India, he sacrificed all his waking hours to solve its myriad difficulties.

And then, though he had not had anything to do with any of those things -- Bofors, the Airbus purchases, the settling of the HDW matter -- he sacrificed the good name of generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and, Shiva-like, took and held the entire poison of calumny himself: for, steeped as he was in the Nehru-Gandhi Family tradition, he saw that justice had to be done, and the middlemen, who after being abolished had only taken fees for "genuine industrial espionage," had to be protected from the hounds out to destabilise the country.

And then, moved to compassion by the plight of Tamils across the seas, he sacrificed his natural attachment to the principle which was a family heirloom, his own grandfather having invented it -- that of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries -- and opened training camps for Prabhakaran and his LTTE.

And then, as those unthinking judges gave a judgment which hurt the sentiments of the Muslims, he sacrificed his dedication to another of the Family's principles, secularism -- a principle which would not even have been in the Constitution but for his mother -- and passed a law to overturn the judgment.

And then, the effect this had on the sentiments of the Hindus moved him once again to compassion, and so he sacrificed his and the Nehru-Gandhi family's' unyielding devotion to the sentiments of Muslims, and had the locks to the Ram temple opened.

And then, his wife learnt that the Father (originally the Son) had been sacrificing his sleep to write every night to the Viceroy's wife. So as to spare the simple people of our country any trauma, and so as to protect the one institution which held the country together -- namely, the Nehru-Gandhi Family -- she sacrificed the pile of royalties she could have made, and, having kept them in her personal custody for long, refused to allow their publication.

And then, as Prabhakaran's followers turned out to be as ungrateful as those of Lt Bhindranwale, they too sacrificed his life to ingratitude.

And then, his wife, so as to prevent the rich of the country from squandering their money on worthless pursuits and so as to do good to which the Nehru-Gandhi Family has always been committed, sacrificed the good name of the Family once again, she sacrificed her own peace and quiet, and established The Foundation.

Today it is this noble lady, who has sacrificed the comforts of foreign climes, who continues the noble tradition of The Family. As she has said again and again, as she has shown again and again Shrimati Soniaji Gandhi is not interested in any post -- nor should too much be read into the "for now" she has used of late: she is just sacrificing her natural dislike for office to keep up our hopes by keeping alive the prospect of her taking on the reins.

She has stepped forth with the same great reluctance which has been a mark of the Nehru-Gandhi family as much as aviation. She has, like Rajiv before her, who had like his mother before him, done so only to save the country. And what reassurance she provides, the reassurance of things continuing: "The time has come," she told the people in her opening speech, "when I feel compelled to put aside my own inclinations and step forward. I am here not to seek political office or position but to share my concern over the country's future. We do not want our society to be broken into fragments" -- the same touching reluctance of the Nehru-Gandhi Family, the same putting aside of personal interest, the same disregarding of ones own inclination, the same devotion to our poor country. Reading it, citizens were thrilled, they felt 30 years younger, back in 1969 -- Mrs Gandhi, the Daughter, was alive and back in Mrs Gandhi, the Daughter-in-Law, and the entire reign lay before us again.

The first and second halves of the 20th century hold three lessons. These are: all the sacrifices made were made by the Nehru-Gandhi Family, and it is because of those sacrifices that the country has risen to the heights it has, second, that no one else has made or makes sacrifices, and that is why the country is on the verge of breaking into fragments. Third, and most important for the future, that everything the Nehru-Gandhi Family does is a sacrifice. If they do not accept the prime ministership, they are sacrificing the comforts, the pomp and show that go with the highest office. If they do accept it, they are sacrificing their own inclinations, they are sacrificing their personal interests and promising careers. If they accept security, they are sacrificing their privacy. If they do not, they are sacrificing their lives. If they keep rotten, minority governments in place, they are sacrificing what no one else ever sacrifices, power and its pelf. If they bring them down, they are sacrificing the comforts of back-seat driving. If they eat European food, they are sacrificing the food of the country they love so that our hungry millions may have more. If they eat Indian food, they are sacrificing the joys of their childhood. If they eat at all, they are sacrificing their vow to fast. If they fast, they are sacrificing food...

Question in BA Exam: Resolve the following paradox -- as The Foreign Hand has been so vital to our survival, the Congress having been founded by and then brought back to life by it, why did Indira Gandhiji accustom the country to looking upon The Foreign Hand with suspicion?

Model answer in Key: As Comrade Surjeet will soon explain, "Arey bhai, had not Comrade Lenin explained long ago? "There is Foreign Hand and there is Foreign Hand" The Italian Hand is very different from the American Hand The Italian Hand when it installs a government that might be in my hand is very different from the Italian Hand that removes a government that was in my hand."

---