BEING RICH, BEING GOOD

Being rich, being good
Chetan Bhagat
(An article every Indian should read, understand, accept and strive to change in their own way - for the good of everyone. Appeared in the TOI -  Nov 7, 2011)

Recently, Rajat Gupta, ex-CEO of McKinsey and one of the most high-profile corporate figures in America, was arrested on insider trading charges. He is accused of having tipped off Raj Rajaratnam, who once ran a hedge fund worth $7 billion. Rajaratnam, who at his peak had a net worth of $1.8 billion, is already sentenced to 11 years in prison. Thirteen others have been sentenced too. This would seem surprising to many who see America as a nation associated with relentless greed, materialism and consumerism.

When we were growing up, we were often told that `western values` are extremely harmful for society. We Indians were supposed to be more humane, loving, caring, spiritual and genuine. The West was an embodiment of all things wrong - from excess consumption to decline in family values. We were the good ones (or is it G1 these days?).

Yet, it is America that comes down hard on people who break other people`s trust. Punishment for taking more than your fair share - whether through insider trading or corruption - is severe. In Gupta`s case, he may not even have benefited directly - he may have merely tipped off his friend as alleged, unaware how that tip would be used. If proven, that is reason enough for the American system to punish him.

Yes, America is materialistic. It is even greedy to a certain extent. However, Americans have created a system in which wealth is created with hard work, innovation, talent and enterprise. People who display these qualities move up. Every generation in Ame-rica has thrown up several innovators and billion-dollar global corporations, made without government connections. Americans may have a hundred flaws, but they are extremely protective of their system. Anyone who tries to break it to come up in life using unfair means is punished severely. Schools and colleges have a strict honour code against cheating. And no matter how high-profile the person, society doesn`t flinch in teaching the wrongdoer a lesson.

We, on the other hand, don`t even have good laws to prosecute the blatantly corrupt, forget insider trading. Many may not even see insider trading as wrong - we see it as a privilege of being in a position of status or power. Any Dalal Street veteran will tell you, despite regulator SEBI`s commendable efforts, insider trading is rampant among the high and mighty. It is not limited to the stock market. The real estate developer who finds out the zoning master plan of the government beforehand, and pre-emptively buys real estate, is also doing insider trading. However, such people are never punished.

In fact, our government attacks almost every anti-corruption crusader. It is as if the current government has taken a mandate to protect the corrupt. The prime minister, under whom the biggest scams took place, remains in power using every excuse - from `he did not benefit` to `he did not know anything`. In almost any other civilised country, heads would have rolled. Sadly, even our opposition parties have lots of corrupt people. Hence today, even if we want, we can`t vote in an honest government.

What happened? Weren`t we supposed to be the good ones? And yet, it is the greedy, western `baddies` who seem to be doing a better job at being just, truthful and equal. They are not only richer; they seem better too. It is disheartening to face this ugly truth. After all, the poor person is supposed to be the better person - at least that`s what they show in the movies.

Well, we don`t have good leaders because in the past we haven`t cared. We`ve only wanted leaders from our caste or religion. We have been enamoured less by honesty, more by dynasty. We do not have a merit-based system that generates wealth, nor anything in place to protect it. They do. Hence they are richer and, in many cases, better than us. The system we have, in which there are a few kings and lots of common people, cannot generate wealth. It kills innovation and keeps the powerful as rent-seeking controllers of resources. It will eventually turn us into a nation of clerks for the world. Innovators will rule the world; we will be left to serve them. We may not get colonised poli-tically, but will economically.

Can we change this? Of course we can. Society does change, even if slowly. There was a time we used to practise `sati`. We realised it was wrong and now we don`t. To change, first let us accept our shortcomings. We Indians lack some essential, good values. Being part of corrupt society has made us all somewhat corrupt. From copying assignments to faking our children`s ages in railway tickets - we have all done wrong or accepted wrong as part of life. We need to define a set of new values and propagate them in our social circles.

We also need to support positive initiatives, like the Lokpal Bill. Individuals don`t matter in Anna`s team; it is their cause that makes sense and needs support. The media and everyone should startcalling Parliament`s winter session the `Lokpal session`, just so our rulers are reminded of what they are supposed to do. The new Indian quest has begun. It is to be rich, and to be good.

(The writer is a best-selling novelist)

---

Democracy without dissent?

Once in a while we get some sensible voice speaking on a contentious issue, in a very balanced way. Here Santosh Desai gives a much needed advice to our media and press, who clamor to a sound bite from the Diggy idiot.

Democracy without dissent?

Santhosh Desai - 30th October, 2011

If the RSS supports vegetarianism, will all vegetables become communal? Absurd as that might sound, it is pretty much the argument some critics of the Anna Hazare-led movement are making when they seek to tar it with the RSS brush. The notion that since the RSS is a communal organisation, anything it touches becomes communal is not an argument that rests on logic but superstition built on an idea of sympathetic magic. Nothing in the Jan Lokpal bill suggests an agenda with a communal element; there has admittedly been a visible presence of religious leaders around the movement but this has in no way influenced the draft of the bill itself. The argument is nothing but an exercise in name calling, and uses voodoo logic to make its case.

The lack of logical rigour is a running feature of the UPA's effort to attack the Jan Lokpal movement. For instance, if one were to accept that the RSS was backing the cause, would it not imply that it was more serious about getting rid of corruption than the Government, which is doing everything in its power to discredit the protest? Or for that matter, if we were, for the sake of argument, to accept that all members of Team Anna are corrupt in one way or another, does their version of the bill become flawed as a result? Does it mean that we don't need to do anything about corruption, given that even the anti-corruption activists are not completely clean themselves? It is striking that we are seeing little debate on the bill itself, but only a sustained campaign of superficial name calling that has virtually no implications on any core issue at stake. The issue is no longer the Jan Lokpal bill; Team Anna is being taught a lesson for having the temerity to rise against the political establishment

Troubling as this is, the real problem lies much deeper. The fact that the state is able to use its vast powers to single out each member of Team Anna and do so as deliberately and openly as it has tells us that any form of dissent is likely to attract fierce retribution. And the media, far from protecting us against such attacks might well become an instrument in the hands of the powerful, both deliberately in some cases and unwittingly in others.

This pattern is not restricted to this case alone. We saw it at work in as naked a form when the Vajpayee government went after Tehelka and everyone it could associate with it in the aftermath of the sting operation. We see it when a Narendra Modi repeatedly goes after dissenters who are inconvenient. We see it in the way the Congress turned the CBI loose on Jagan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh when he became troublesome. Indeed, it has become standard practice to use the machinery of the government to attack dissenters in unrelated cases so as to undermine them personally instead of trying to rebut the argument they make. The brazenness of the actions taken by the state is what is deeply troubling for it suggests that tomorrow anyone in a position to challenge the state will face all-out attacks of similar ferocity.

This is where the role media plays needs to come under greater scrutiny. When it allows itself to be diverted every time a Digvijay Singh says something outrageously provocative or when an IT case against Arvind Kejriwal is dug up, it is following a baser instinct and sacrificing a larger principle. It can be nobody's case that media should not have reported or commented on the Kiran Bedi episode, for instance. Of course, the fact that she was presenting bills of a higher amount than what she spent was newsworthy given that she is such an impassioned anti-corruption crusader, but it is equally important to acknowledge that in the overall context of corruption in India, this can only be a minor footnote, an interesting sidelight if you will. Padding travel bills is not the same as the CWG scam, and Kiran Bedi, however visible she might be as a person is not accountable to the public in the same way as an elected representative or a minster is; these are false equivalences that must be exposed. There is a difference between the interesting and the important, the distracting and the dangerous and a key role of media is to accord differential priorities to events rather than paint them all with a uniform brush. The revelation that a self-righteous crusader is less than transparent in her personal dealings is interesting, but not earth-shakingly important. But the manner in which she and others have been targeted is not only important but dangerous in a way that goes way beyond this specific case.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the price that is being extracted for dissent is the absence of an independent voice that rises above ideological considerations and works towards upholding the key principles that every democracy must cherish. In this case, for instance, those opposed to Team Anna's methods tend to make light of the state's deliberate and unprincipled targeting of key individuals just as in the case of Sanjiv Bhatt and other dissenters in Gujarat, the supporters of Narendra Modi justify the need for the state action. Increasingly, ideology tends to overwhelm principle; the desire to support any action, however unsavoury if it happens to be aligned to one's own views, is visible on both sides. The result is that the political system feels free to take revenge for any act of dissent, secure in the knowledge that it will receive some support for its actions.

In a court of law in the US, illegally obtained evidence, what ever it might be, is generally not admissible on grounds of being the 'fruit of a poisonous tree'; the idea being that the individual must be protected against acts of bad faith. When the state dredges up unrelated cases against a dissenting individual, it is acting in bad faith. By engaging in a discussion about what it finds as a result of its fishing expeditions, we end up legitimising its actions. And the consequences of that are far more severe than a mere bill, no matter where one stands on its merits.

---

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Citycitybangbang/entry/democracy-without-dissent

India’s Parliament Agrees to Anna Demands

By JIM YARDLEY || Published: August 27, 2011 (New York Times)

NEW DELHI — India’s Parliament capitulated on Saturday to the anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare and the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to support his cause in a standoff that lasted nearly two weeks.

Anna Hazare, center, in New Delhi on Saturday. He sought the
 creation of an antigraft agency, and went on a hunger strike.

After a day of wrangling and speechifying, Parliament adopted a resolution endorsing Mr. Hazare’s central demands for shaping legislation to create an independent anticorruption agency empowered to scrutinize public officials and bureaucrats in India.

Mr. Hazare, 74, has been waging a hunger strike for 12 days, refusing to call it off unless Parliament adopted his proposed legislation to fight graft rather than a bill put forward by the government. Huge crowds of supporters have participated in peaceful protests and rallies across India in what became an outpouring of public disgust over corruption.

Mr. Hazare’s aides told the Indian news media that he would now probably end his fast on Sunday morning at Ramlila Maidan, the public grounds in New Delhi where thousands of supporters had already started rejoicing on Saturday night, even as lawmakers were finishing their speeches in Parliament.

“There is a need of a change in the system,” said Pranab Mukherjee, the powerful minister who introduced the resolution into the Lok Sabha, the lower house. “And we are doing so.”

Parliament must still take several steps before final passage of a law to create the anticorruption agency, known as the Lokpal, before the end of the session. Saturday’s resolution also was marked by a touch of legislative sleight-of-hand. Mr. Hazare’s team had wanted a public vote in order to identify lawmakers who opposed the measure. Instead, the measure was read aloud in both houses and given approval without a vote.

“It was unanimous,” said R. P. N. Singh, a lawmaker and government minister, when asked on NDTV, a news channel, about the lack of a vote. “Both the houses have stepped up their resolve to fight corruption.”

Mr. Hazare’s hunger strike dominated public life in India and exposed a visceral public revulsion at the depth of corruption here, large and small. Hundreds of thousands of people had poured into the streets across the country to support his campaign for a tough anticorruption agency. Movie stars, gurus, politicians, singers and others flocked to his side at Ramlila Maidan, which served as his fasting site. Crowds filled the grounds despite heat and rain.

In recent days, the impasse has been centered on three demands by Mr. Hazare: that Parliament pass a Lokpal law during its current session; that similar agencies to fight corruption be established at the state level; and that a transparent process be established for public grievances. Those demands were endorsed in Saturday’s resolution, though the final details will be codified when the legislation moves to a special parliamentary committee.

“Parliament has spoken,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the Indian news media on Saturday. “The will of Parliament is the will of the people.”

If anything, though, the Hazare movement exposed the depth of disillusionment with India’s politics. Mr. Hazare’s hunger strike became a platform to articulate broader public frustrations.

He has lost more than 15 pounds, and refused medical advice to take glucose.

“You have done wonders,” Mr. Hazare told the crowd at Ramlila Maidan on Saturday morning, before Parliament approved the resolution. “Today the Parliament is discussing the issues you have raised. It is the people’s parliament that is supreme.”

P. J. Anthony and Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

---

TI-India condemns Anna arrest

Transparency International India condemns the arrest of Anna Hazare
Delhi, 16 August 2011

Anti Corruption watchdog, Transparency International India (TII) , has condemned the arrest of Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and other members of India Against Corruption, this morning.

Terming the arrest, unconstitutional and violation of civil liberties of ordinary citizen of this country, TII Executive Director, Anupama Jha said, “Government has not been able to check rising corruption in the country and is trying to muzzle the voice of those who raise their voice against corruption. This is undemocratic and injustice to the people of this nation”, she said.

Chair of TII, P. S. Bawa said, “Government should not ignore the criticisms being levelled against them with regard to the Lokpal Bill. Rather they should consider some valid points being raised by the Anna team.” Mr Bawa pointed out that certain clauses including action against the Ministers and MPs and procedure with regard to enquiry and investigation in the Government Lokpal Bill was too vague.

“We very strongly feel that the Government should attempt a reconciliatory talks with the civil society leaders , instead of stifling the voice of the people who are in no mood to tolerate corruption any more. We also feel that since the monsoon session of the Parliament is going on, the Government should reconsider its draft bill and include the points raised by the civil society leaders”, spokesperson from TII said.

Media contact(s):
Transparency International India

---

A friend writes to Dr Manmohan Singh

E.A.S.Sarma
14-40-4/1 Gokhale Road
Maharanipeta
Visakhapatnam 530002
Tel. Nos. 0891-6619858/ 9866021646

To


Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister


Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,

From what I have gathered from the news reports and TV broadcasts during the last couple of days, you issued a “terse” reply to a letter addressed to you by Shri Anna Hazare to intervene in the ongoing face-off between him and the government. You have evidently adopted a righteous approach by advising Anna Hazare to approach the police.

These reports also indicate that some of your responsible Cabinet colleagues and equally responsible UPA colleagues have cast serious aspersions on Anna Hazare’s personal integrity.

If these reports are accurate, I think it marks a very sad day for India’s democracy.

In today’s scam ridden environment, Anna Hazare has emerged as the civil society’s undeclared leader to symbolize the public anger and anguish against corruption. The people of this country have helplessly watched in dismay and disgust one scandal after another unfolding ad nauseam, not because that the executive that you head is over anxious to unravel it but more as a result of the fearless investigations carried out by the media, the objective analyses conducted by C&AG and the timely interventions made by the judiciary. At every stage, you and your esteemed colleagues, frowned upon the actions of each of theseinstitutions.

The people at large have read about these scams in the vernacular news papers, heard about them on the radio and viewed them on the TV channels. These scams stand out clearly because they are ugly, exploitative and are in the nature of plundering the country’s resources. Their dimensions are truly mind boggling. To think that the people of this country are not moved by what Anna Hazare has done during the last few months is like the proverbial ostrich hiding its head, unwilling to face the harsh reality!

Let us see why this diminutive man, leading a simple life, incurred the Prime Minister's displeasure.

Has he asked you for thousands of hectares of land as some industrialists nurtured by post-1991 reform have done? Has he approached you to give him a mining franchise in violation of the law of the land, as the mining lobby that permeates the political system today has often done? He has not asked for captive mineral blocks as Poscoe has done. Has he requested you to allot 2-G spectrum against all cannons of ethics as some of your own former Cabinet colleagues had allowed the influential industrial houses to do? Has he arm-twisted you for a remunerative berth in your Cabinet, as some of your coalition partners have done? Nor has he ever tried to stay in a 5-Star hotel as some of your Cabinet colleagues did!

You are an extraordinarily courteous person, as I have known you. I am sure you have not been terse to any of these influential persons anytime. I am therefore particularly surprised and distressed at the “terseness” that you have reportedly displayed to a physically fragile but morally strong person like Anna Hazare!

On behalf of the civil society, may I appeal to you, Mr. Prime Minister, to treat Anna Hazare with the respect that is due to him as an important member of the civil society and as a highly liked person among the youth of this country? You should remember that Shri Hazare has single-handedly woken up the nation to rise as one entity against the scourge of corruption. While I appreciate that the Constitution has bequeathed us an elaborate legislative machinery in the name of democracy, you should realize that the people of this country who are sovereign in their own right have no patience to wait for the machinery to go through the procedure of processing a draft law that ab initio falls short of their basic expectations. This is particularly true in the present context in which the UPA government is getting surrounded by scams and scandals galore, as never before.

On behalf of the civil society, I appeal to you to treat Shri Hazare as our representative and invite him for an interaction as such an interaction is what the public wants. I would welcome the government inviting for a similar interaction, the rights activists working in different parts of the country, the various NGOs known for their work, eminent concerned citizens and so on. In a democracy like ours, consultation is the essence and despotic methods of law making, the anathema. I hope good sense will prevail on the government and the ongoing face-off is resolved at the earliest without leaving a sense of bitterness among the people.

I write this letter on the eve of the 64th Independence Day. Sixty four years have gone by but the freedom we gained in 1947 at the national level is yet to percolate down fully to the disadvantaged sections of the people. To them, governance has become synonymous with corruption and harassment. I hope there is all round realization of this bitter truth.

Regards,




Yours sincerely




E.A.S.Sarma
Former Secretary to GOI
Visakhapatnam

---

These kids think stealing is OK.

No wonder these kids think stealing trainers is OK. Everyone makes excuses for them – Telegraph Blogs

Katharine Birbalsingh

Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine's doing now. Katharine's personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.

---

The reason your house is not regularly robbed is not because you lock your doors. It is because most people don’t steal. Sure, locking is a deterrent used to deter those on the fringes of society, but the main reason you are not attacked on the street, shops are not constantly looted and burnt down, and we all don’t take things that don’t belong to us is because someone, when we were little, taught us the difference between right and wrong.

Put a child in front of an insect and he will take great delight in making it suffer until his mother or father tells him that causing pain is wrong. Children need to be brought up properly with parents who care enough about them to say no, with a school system that cares enough to admit when behaviour is out of control, with a community that recognises that we are ALL responsible for our children.

Many of these mindless thugs involved in the riots don’t think more than 10 minutes into the future. They think that stealing trainers is ‘fun’, not even considering that it might be wrong. Many of them are, quite literally, unable to read and write: 17 percent of 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate. If you de-educate an entire generation, if you constantly make excuses for their behaviour, if you never teach them the difference between right and wrong, then chaos is what you reap. These young people are just implementing what they’ve learnt at school!

Teachers can only keep the peace in the classroom because they have established authority. Where there is order in classrooms, children show respect because they have been taught to respect teachers. ONE teacher can therefore command the respect of hundreds of children. It is the same with the police and order in society. The police cannot hope to outnumber the rioters. As a civilised society, we rely on a sense of morality in our people to keep the order. How did the Japanese survive their recent nuclear disaster? They queued quietly for food and help, and waited. They didn’t say ‘ME ME ME’! Do young people wear hoodies in Japan? Do Japanese children question their teacher’s authority? Do Japanese adults defend the appalling behaviour of their youth? NO.

We are an international disgrace. What would happen if the teacher left her classroom and said that she was ‘keeping a close eye on things from her holiday home’? Theresa May, Home Secretary, was the only one of our leaders, whether Conservative or Labour, who returned from holiday immediately when Tottenham exploded. Where were all of our leaders? If even our politicians refuse to take responsibility for their ‘classrooms’, then how can we expect the children to remain in their chairs?

Ken Livingstone blames everything from Thatcher to the Conservatives to lack of youth clubs. Darcus Howe is comparing our riots to Syria’s! I look on in horror at our BBC reporters, as well as ordinary people being interviewed on TV, as they all chant the usual mantra without even thinking: cuts, cuts, cuts. A man whose shop had been looted met Nick Clegg on the street, clearly distressed, and rather than blame the looters, he attacked the Deputy Prime Minister over the cuts. What is wrong with everyone? Have we been brainwashed by aliens?

Even the sensible people (and there have been a few) refuse to denounce ALL of the violence. Brixton, Croydon, Birmingham are bad, but Tottenham somehow was ‘understandable’. Come again? You mean sometimes looting and violence are acceptable? Apparently, the Tottenham riots are understandable because the police shot Mark Duggan (father of four, according to the Guardian). Do we really think that the police went out and killed a random innocent man? Or rather, as the local residents say, was he not a ‘major player’ in the Tottenham criminal underworld? They say he ‘lived by the gun’, and caused ‘grief’ to local people. Some say he was a crack cocaine dealer. His fiancée says he was determined not to go back to jail (so he has been in jail) and he has a child with her and another woman. She also has another 2 children from another man. Yet what do Mark Duggan’s parents say? That he was a good father and a respected member of the local community. How can someone with that reputation be considered a respected member of the local community?

Was Mark Duggan a good father? Who knows! Certainly, Jens Breivik, father of the Norway bomber, was absent during his son’s childhood. He refused to see his 16-year-old son because he ‘wasn’t ready’ (whatever that means). Jens Breivik, rather than feeling remorse for having failed as a father, was only interested in his own reputation when the appalling Norway killings took place. But when I criticised him, I was shot down by ordinary readers of this blog. How dare I criticise parents when I am not a parent myself! White readers say that they are unable to speak about black absent fathers because they’re white. Fine. But is Jens Breivik black? Yet no one was willing to be critical of his questionable parenting. Parents teach their children the difference between right and wrong. If they are absent, then the child grows up without a moral compass.

These criminals are responsible for their behaviour but so are their parents who sit at home, knowing their children are out there, looking forward to the goodies their children will bring home. I am so angry, so ashamed, so utterly dismayed. The vast majority of these criminals are black. No one will say it. I hang my head in shame, both as a black person and as a teacher. I naively thought if I could tell people what was happening in our schools that we would change things. I wrote a book, thinking that this would stop the liberals from the excuse-making. But instead, I was told I had made it all up. Our great capital city is on fire and even this isn’t enough to convince people that the excuse-making must stop!

What does the Socialist Workers Party say? “These riots are a bitter reaction to racist policing and a Tory Government destroying people’s lives.” It beggars belief. Our reaction to these riots is the greatest worry. What will defeat us is not the rioters. Scary as they are, they are a minority of yobs. What will defeat us is the power of bad ideas. Given our refusal to change, the worst is yet to come.

---

World's Tallest Building

World's Tallest Building

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has just announced plans to build the Kingdom Tower, a more than 3,280-foot structure that will eclipse Dubai’s Burj Khalifa as the world’s tallest building.

With an investment of 1.23 billion dollars and stretching two-thirds of a mile high, the skyscraper will serve as the flagship of a $20 billion development project known as Kingdom City. By the time it’s completed in 2013, the tower will feature a Four Seasons hotel, apartments, Class A office space, luxury condominiums and the world’s highest observatory. The designers, Chicago-based architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, says development is already underway at a site just outside Jeddah, a city located near the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.

For the sake of comparison, Burj Khalifa, the current record-holder, is shorter by nearly 600 feet. And it’s already more than twice the height of America’s tallest structure, the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago, which stands at 1,451 feet.

Beyond the tower’s impressive size is a design that features a host of smart technological advancements. For instance, the building’s tapered wings allow for an aerodynamic shape that reduce structural loading due to wind vortex shedding. And a high-performance exterior wall system minimizes energy consumption by reducing thermal loads.

Here are a few other notable innovations:

• A three-petal footprint that is ideal for residential units.

• Each of Kingdom Tower’s three sides features a series of notches that create pockets of shade to shield areas of the building from the sun while providing outdoor terraces with stunning views of Jeddah and the Red Sea.

• A sleek, streamlined design that was inspired by the “folded fronds of young desert plant growth

• 59 elevators, 12 escalators and a 98-foot sky terrace at level 157 that’s available for penthouse occupants

---