Uff! How vividly I remember that summer day – during the start of our summer vacations in class eleventh – when I went to watch this iconic film called QSQT. First day, first show. At the Paras cinema hall in South Delhi. All alone. Because of Juhi Chawla! Yes, only because of her, as I had become a fan of hers ever since she became Miss India! My friends had no such extra love for her and they refused to accompany me! I remember that the hall was as good as empty, with a handful of couples sitting far and wide! And what a film I enjoyed in the emptiness of that hall! For the next seven days, I kept going back to see the same movie with a different set of friends each time (with the last set of friends coming back repeatedly) as the crowds kept swelling. By the time we were watching the movie on the 8th day after buying tickets in ‘black’, QSQT was on its way to become one of the biggest blockbusters ever of Bollywood, and Aamir Khan one of the country’s biggest ever heartthrobs – at least for the next seven years till a certain DDLJ brought in a new Khan! And yes, my friends too had finally realised why I loved Juhi so much! QSQT was a pure love story in its true sense – as pure as the emotions of love could get – conveyed through a clean and beautiful film with great direction, music and acting.

Those indeed were amazing days. They used to more often make films which one could see time and again!

And while getting nostalgic one recent evening reading about QSQT’s 25 year celebrations, I wondered whether a QSQT will work again in today’s times. Coincidentally, after hearing praise aplenty from the student community, I went to see Aashiqui 2 the same evening and got my answer.

Aashiqui 2 is a Mahesh Bhatt film. He necessarily is someone who finds his place in the top 25 all-time influencers from the world of Bollywood. A top intellectual without doubt – even if his films are often nowadays branded on the borderline of soft porn. He started off with some of the greatest art-house films and realised that to survive in Bollywood, one needs commercial success. And since he couldn’t make unrealistic films, he and his extremely bold and talented family members decided to make films largely on some of the most real passions of humanity, and those that sell the most – sex and crime (what every media house of India today thrives on while often hypocritically criticising his films). With a tremendous and rare sense of music – always keeping ahead of its times – he is today the man behind one of the most commercially successful production houses. And someone who can sit back and claim that he never made popcorn movies that looked unreal! So I went to see Aashiqui 2 expecting a lot of passion and realism.

Normally, it is difficult for me to be cynical like media pundits generally are. But after looking at election results in so many states since 2010, the one sad conclusion that I can draw is that the corruption card is being overstated and over-hyped. it appears as if allies and perception management play a bigger role in deciding elections than actual facts related to corruption and plunder.

This should be the biggest lesson that the top BJP leaders must draw from the elections. Compare two states and two parties and see what has actually happened. In Karnataka, the Lokayukta, Justice Santosh Hegde and his office accused the BJP government led by the then Chief Minister B. S. Yeddyurappa of corruption. These charges were related primarily to mining operations in Bellary. Subsequently, Yeddyurappa was forced to step down. At that time, my colleagues told me that senior BJP leaders based in Delhi had a bigger role to play in the ouster of Yeddyurappa than opposition parties! In a significant development, the Karnataka High Court actually absolved Yeddyurappa of some charges slapped against him. Despite this, Yeddyurappa was treated badly by the top leadership of the BJP and he quit the party a bitter and frustrated man to form his own party. Yeddyurappa vowed to ensure that the BJP is given a humiliating defeat in the Karnataka assembly elections. He has ensured that and the BJP has indeed lost very badly. This despite BJP leaders screaming loudly that they have purged the party of corrupt elements. Now look at what happened in Himachal Pradesh last year. Despite serious charges of corruption against him, the Congress made Virbhadra Singh the de facto candidate for the post of Chief Minister. There were loud whispers that this cynical move would prove costly for the Congress party since Indian voters were sick and tired of large scale corruption exemplified by the Commonwealth and 2G scams. What was the actual result? The ‘tainted’ Virbhadra Singh led his Congress party to a very comfortable victory and became Chief Minister!

So what does a surface analysis of the election results of the two states reveal? The BJP loses Karnataka very badly despite showing the door to a Chief Minister who faced charges of corruption. And the Congress wins Himachal Pradesh with a handsome margin despite giving charge to a former Chief Minister who faced serious charges of corruption! Of course, this is a surface analysis and many other factors must have played a role in deciding the elections in Himachal and Karnataka. But you cannot escape the sad conclusion that corruption is overrated as an election issue. And that really is the sad news for India.

Strange as it may seem, despite India’s image of an amiable and polite nation, the country is surrounded by a league of adversaries with their noose always sharp to bait the hinterland and disturb the peace-cord of the nation. Needless to say, Pakistan is a major player in the league; China too is not far behind for all the obvious reasons. But what is most disconcerting is that the entire set of our neighbours, including Bangladesh and Nepal, have left no stone unturned to create political fissures in the border states; thus creating a rift between various ethnic and racial classes. Not only by our immediate neighbours, but India is also attacked with venomous content by and from unlikely quarters including apparently non-interfering Saudi and UAE communities.

The malicious exercise against India has been active since quite a long time and today has enveloped all border-sharing states with its circumference engulfing almost all possible ethnic communities. To get the best desirable impact, these nations exploit the local media to spread hate messages among people and feed them with anti-India sentiments. Initially, the radio was the most potent and sought-after medium of communication; but gradually, television became a more potent medium with fringe channels being used to spread poisonous verbal and visual clips to their target audience. The masterminds are mostly religious extremist groups, government-sponsored organizations and sometimes, sovereign governments themselves.

It’s a spree that has been pervading for a long time but the Indian government seems to be miserably insulated from the reality. Either they are ignorant or are egregiously handicapped by the lack of resources to combat it; or it may even be true that our governments are not bothered by the issue as it affects only a fraction of our population and doesn’t change the overall political dynamics. Despite the warning by our Intelligence Bureau that it has identified as many as 24 TV channels spreading hate messages and spurious information against India, the incumbent Ministry of Home Affairs had been largely unmoved. Unsurprisingly, 14 out of the 24 reported channels are from Pakistan, two are Nepalese TV channels and one each is from Saudi, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives and even UK. Some of these tainted TV channels that are widely viewed in these regions include QTV, ARY TV, PTV (Pakistan’s official broadcaster), Dawn and other Pakistan based stations. Otherwise too, TV stations from various countries have been kicking down the vulnerable section of our population with insidiously motivated messages. The tastefully named Peace TV of UAE, Saudi TV, NTV of Bangladesh and even Nepal TV and Bhutan Broadcasting Service are trampling us underfoot. It was only when the news leaked into our domestic media that our home ministry was forced to act. Thanks to these 24 odd channels, incidences of violence and ethnic rift increased in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, J&K and Maharashtra.

I had been quite upset over the completely politically motivated Oscar award for the Best Picture to a rank ordinary, non thrilling, slow paced, average film called Argo, specially in the year when Lincoln was released, and Django Unchained – with its heart in a similar place and with film making par excellence – was released! So when a friend of mine suggested to me that we watch a slightly older film called Charlie Wilson’s War, saying that it was based on a true CIA operations story, I was least interested. I thought that it was one of those films that had been again made to lobby for American ‘heroism’ at the cost of putting another nation down. I couldn’t have been wronger. After seeing the movie, I wondered how I had missed this gem when it was released! Never too late I guess.

Charlie Wilson was an American Congressman (elected 11 times from Texas to the US House of Representatives, from 1972 till 1996) who became the first civilian to be decorated with the Honored Colleague Award by the CIA. He had achieved no less a feat. Almost single-handedly, this man could be credited with bringing an end to the Cold War era and the breaking down of erstwhile USSR (Yes, he was also unabashedly a party loving, womanising Congressman – but he made no bones about it or about hiding the fact).

The film is about how, in less than a decade – starting early 80s when USSR invaded Afghanistan brutally – Charlie Wilson influenced the CIA budget for covert operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan to support the Mujahideen forces and increased the same from a mere 5 million dollars to 10 million dollars initially, and then subsequently to 20, then to 40, then 100, then again to 250, to 500 and finally to a billion dollars! And that, mind you, is what they officially accepted! And all this money was to be used to paradrop high end arms to the common men and boys of Afghanistan so that they could fight the mighty USSR and defeat them! And they did! By firing down hundreds of Russian fighter jets and blowing off almost as many Russian tanks with handheld bombers and high-end guns! Of course, the rest, as they say, is history! The mighty USSR conceded defeat and pulled out of Afghanistan, the Berlin wall came down and USSR broke down!
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The opening of the first Starbucks outlet in South Mumbai in October last year triggered quite some frenzy among Mumbaikars, with long queues of venti-mocha-frap verve translating into a major rock concert hysteria. And it was all for a coffee shop! Imagine the burst of marketing energy from Starbucks to take advantage of this excitement. Within five months of opening its first outlet, four each were opened in Mumbai and Delhi (taking the footprint of the coffee chain to nine outlets in India). It reminded me of the kind of madness that was witnessed during the launch of Pepsi and the relaunch of Coke in India, way back in the early 1990s. Here’s the simple truth – our craze for foreign brands has never ceased, despite our progress in almost all dimensions of socio-economic parameters. Why? Because as a nation, experience has taught us that our brands have never quite had the gumption of American, British, European or even Japanese brands. The halo was and is missing. This lack of unique proposition in our brands is due to the shoddy products and services offered in the name of Indian brands!

In this new age of globalisation, our brands need to compete globally and not just nationally. In the past, so many Indian brands – from the Ambassadors to the Vimals – were whipped and almost but sent off packing when foreign brands came knocking. These foreign brands piggybacked on their global popularity and our lack of expertise due to substandard innovation. If India has to reverse the ongoing trend of the influx of foreign brands into its market, it has to invest on innovation on a large scale, and frame and implement comprehensive policies to support innovation.

The low count of patent applications that is filed in India is some warning. In 2011, only 42,291 patent applications were filed in India. China on the other hand saw 526,412 applications being filed – highest in the world that year, followed by US with 503,582 applications (source: World Intellectual Property Indicators 2012, released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation; December 2012). In the Global Innovation Index (GII) ranking 2012, India stood at a dismal 64th – two spots below where it stood in 2011! Shameful it is that India, in terms of GII ranking is last amongst the BRICs. No wonder, a June 2012 Standard & Poor’s report revised its outlook for the Indian economy and warned that India could become the first amongst all BRIC countries to lose its sheen! [The S&P report was titled, ‘Will India Be The First BRIC Fallen Angel?’] It is disheartening to observe that despite Sam Pitroda’s efforts to pump life into India’s innovation machine, and PM Manmohan Singh’s call to promote India as an “Innovation hub”, the country is still largely seen as a “screwdriver nation”, only capable of assembling together parts of foreign-branded products.
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To me, this latest Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi battle is definitely looking more like a circus with every passing day. And in this circus, a number of Congress and BJP spokespersons are looking like jokers; as are a lot of media personalities who are salivating at the prospect of an American Presidential style election – which this surely isn’t. However, yes, the more this debate is becoming bitterer, aggressive, and cantankerous, the more are the viewers watching it! So American style elections or not, this circus is certainly becoming entertaining! And say what I may, none of us can escape this circus till the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Television channels have in fact started live telecasts of speeches being delivered by Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi.

Like in a Hindi blockbuster, there is this likable guy who was born with many silver, gold and diamond spoons. He is a child of dynasty and privilege and has the power to actually make a difference. Opposing him is a person from a humble, lower caste background who has broken through barriers of caste, privilege and much more. He has had to struggle every inch of the way against all odds to achieve all that he has. And of course, he has got the most loquacious of critics all around and is called the worst of things – from ‘maut ka saudagar’ to ‘Yamraj’! It is truly like a David versus Goliath battle.

While the Congress and the UPA have completely let the nation and the voters down in a disgraceful manner over the last few years, it almost looks as if there really is no hope for India because the opposition parties led by the BJP are so helplessly weak and divided that India might have to actually endure the horror of yet another UPA regime. However, in the middle of all this, I must admit that Narendra Modi is someone that Indian politics has probably never seen. He seems to be keen on destroying the cozy relationship that the Delhi establishment has enjoyed for decades. This Delhi establishment that I allude to includes the media. And this, I feel, calls for a comparative analysis for sure!
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The People’s Republic of China may have initially missed out on industrial revolution that made the western nations what they are today and constrained China to an emerging economy in spite of its mercurial economic growth for the last three-and-a-half decades. But learning from the past, it is all set to become a front-runner in the virtual revolution, and is very ready to leverage maximum possible benefits out of it. In fact, it has gone a step further to set off cyber warfare with other countries in the congested and tightly competitive virtual world. And this time, it won’t settle for being a laggard, for it is heading fast towards its most cherished goal of becoming a global superpower!

Undoubtedly, the modern warfare is no more about the number of casualties or destruction of physical property. The new doctrines of war is all about attacking a nation economically and paralyzing it for years to come. An economically broken nation would not only destroy its human capital in the long run but would be politically fragile too. In order to showcase their supremacies, today, nations are not only stealing information that have high strategic value but also destroying trillions of data bytes in host servers, thus leaving victim nations at perils.

China has unleashed muscleflexing exercises through the cyber world and the focus is straight at its favourite enemy, the United States of America. In the real world though, despite being a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a full-fledged nuclear power, China knows it well that it is still not at par with the western armament technology, especially to that of US, UK, France and Russia. The desperation to bridge the gap forms the cornerstone to China’s cyber warfare rationale. Time and again, it has attacked various military and intelligence websites – what we call espionage – to gain access to data, technologies, blueprints, strategies and geo-strategic coordinates. To a large extent it is successful too, as there are increasing concerns in US and UK establishments regarding the price they might have to pay as a result of this on-going cyber war. However, the cyber battle is not just confined to military espionage. It includes intelligence, economic and social espionage too. Back in 2010, computers at diplomatic posts of around 103 countries were intruded by China’s cyber-spies. Phishing attempts were also made on the American power grid, and its financial records and air traffic control systems.
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The former US president George W. Bush called Hugo Chavez of Venezuela a “devil” and allegedly backed his opposition in the subsequent elections, to the point that there were rumours, confirmed by Chavez, that the Americans had hatched a plot to kill him. Reports alleged that organisations like FBI and CIA were all primed up wanting to get rid of Chavez. There were numerous other assassination attempts, ranging from attempts by Gov. Manuel Rosales (his arch rival in domestic polity belonging to Un Nuevo Tiempo) to those by the Columbian secret police. However, all those attempts were foiled by the mercy of his fate, before he eventually died bravely fighting cancer on March 5, 2013.

As his coffin, draped in the national flag, was passed through the streets of Caracas, the very sight of swelling crowds flocking in for the last glimpse of their beloved leader spoke volumes of his popularity and larger-than-life image. And why not! He was a socialist leader who had the guts to take US by its horns and who showed the world, along with Cuba, that sustained progress, development and prosperity are also possible with socialistic ideologies. His Bolivarian Revolution had all the ingredients of a socialist movement, yet it reaped a rich harvest of development and poverty reduction. He nationalized a large set of industries, especially those that were essential for economic and social development. In order to destroy cartelisation and illicit hoarding (that have critically adverse effects on the lower strata of society), Chavez strategically nationalized cement companies, steel plants and supermarkets. He then swiftly nationalized the oil and gas sector, leaving a powerful lobby of petro-oligarchs completely dumfounded. So much so, under the Bolivarian Revolution, he draft ed trade policies that promised cheap oil to poor neighbouring countries – something that can never be expected from the so-called elitist capitalist nations. Unlike the West, he also brought education and health under government control and used it as a catalyst for poverty alleviation. The tangible proof of his success is reflected in the UN Economic Commission for Latin America report stating that the poverty rate in Venezuela was sliced from 48.6 per cent in 2002 to 29.5 per cent in 2011.
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The Economist, in an unbelievably futuristic cover story titled Who killed the newspaper, way back in 2006, had written that the last American will throw the last piece of newspaper into the dustbin by the year 2050! I trusted The Economist and its Intelligence Unit’s researches far too much to outrightly reject its forecast, but surely had thought that that would be crazy, since I came from a family where I grew up seeing my father read about a dozen odd newspapers daily; and us reading the leftover pieces – because, after he had finished reading a newspaper, it would be full of holes due to his cutting out various articles. He had a wall-sized cupboard with hundreds of drawers with articles on every possible topic in the world... well-documented and stored alphabetically. So naturally, The Economist piece set me thinking about the ramifications for and of a world without newspapers, echoing the line of thinking of my father that after all, newspapers were where we got our knowledge, and even education from. Newspapers are a significant pointer to the literacy of a nation. After college, intellectual and world-class columnists like Swaminathan and others, from newspapers, contributed to expanding my knowledge pristinely – you can imagine the respect all this embedded in me for the institution called the newspaper! So I was in a state of semi-disbelief and doubt for the past few years, post reading that cover story. But it all changed, slowly...but surely.

It all started changing around 2009 to 2011! As everyone knows, we were one of the country’s biggest ad-spenders till 2012! But interestingly, our returns from newspaper advertising started dropping sharply from 2009-2010. The first year, the admission applications we received from students due to our newspaper advertisements dropped to 40% of the levels we had in 2008-09. The next year, the same was 25% compared to 2008-09 levels. And finally in 2011-12, our applications from advertisements were, hold your breath, just 5% compared to 2008-2009! So basically, in three years, our returns from newspaper advertising came down by a mind numbing 95%! The question you might ask is, did our admissions also come down as much? Thankfully not! Yes, like the economy in general and the education industry in particular, the downturn did affect our business, but that was by a far lesser margin compared to the sharp decline in our returns from advertising! So how did we manage to stay afloat despite the disappearing returns from newspaper advertisements, you might wonder? But before that, let me tell you what we went through as we saw these sudden and massive drops!

The first year, our typical reaction was to straightaway blame the recession and not our advertising strategy. After all, those were newspapers which made us a brand and got us all the students in all those years! So newspapers were never to be questioned! The second year was when we actually started thinking, was there something going wrong with the management education sector? But such a huge drop just due to recession and lack of demand for management education? It was tough to believe! By the third year however, realisation had started to dawn upon us and we realised that newspapers as a means of advertising had not only become a thing of the past in the developed world, but also in India! Especially if you wanted to target the youth, or actually anyone born after 1980 for certain! None of them is reading newspapers anymore! So how will this segment see your ads in the first place and how will they pick up your application form? Yes, that’s the hard fact! Newspapers globally have tried to shift focus from serious content to entertainment and lifestyle in a desperate attempt to cling on to young readers! But alas, naked bodies and titillation are far more easily available and in greater variety on the internet and such a strategy of newspapers has failed worldwide to keep youngsters attracted to them! And India has been no exception, despite the most colourful of peepshow supplements taken out by all newspapers across the country!

With the 2014 general election staring us in the face, the Finance Minister, Mr. P Chidambaram, presented a budget that resembles a financial bulwark for the masses – but where defence, like others, has been a casualty in the bargain. India had always been an important export destination for weaponry and defence equipment, areas which were monopolized by USSR during the greater part of the Cold War. Even after many entry barriers were removed allowing Western nations to penetrate the Indian defence market, the lion’s share of the defence pie continued to be controlled by Russia – a trend that is still as much in vogue as it was yesteryear!

And this budget gave India all the more reason to continue the said trend – a glimpse of which is displayed every year during our Republic Day celebrations where our government showcases the country’s military might as tableaus in front of the entire nation. This year, most of the defence weapons displayed were either imported or were assembled using the parts imported from countries across the world. In short, our tableaux were in fact a virtual display of Russian or Israeli military power!

A defence budget of Rs 2.03 lac crore is certainly good news for India but not good enough for it to rejoice because the procurement model itself is fraught with enormous opportunity costs. Plus, the factor of corruption that is being uncovered every now and then in various deals adds to its limitations. General V. K. Singh’s deliberations can be only the tip of the iceberg as there can be more than a few skeletons in the closet. The beginning of the long line of defence scams started with the Bofors scam in 1987 that involved an alleged kickback of Rs.64 crores – an astronomical figure in those days – for the purchase of the Swedish 155mm howitzers. The Barak missile scam in 2006 that had a deal amount of $169 million was tainted by the accusation that the government went ahead with it despite opposition from the DRDO. The coffin scam in 1999 was another blot with cases filed against army personnel and American contractors. And finally, the much publicized Tatra truck scam in 2012 where a kickback of Rs.14 crore was offered – as claimed by Gen V.K. Singh – and subsequently rejected.

With another forgettable budget being presented in India, let me show how real commitment for the downtrodden can alter a country’s economic landscape! When the capitalist West won the Cold War against Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, it became an underlined conclusion among political pundits and in fact a common perception that capitalism was the real path for success – rather than socialism, which was made to appear as a sure shot road to economic doom! However, this self-ratified superiority of capitalism and the entire Western chest-thumping exercise that existed during those times and even the succeeding decades are all but gone. United States is grinding it out through an extended recession streak and Europe is literally struggling to keep the eurozone in one piece, with the entire eurozone on the verge of collapsing like a broken jigsaw puzzle. The recession in Europe and North America, which started in 2008, is like a never-ending nightmare with no sight of revival whatsoever! Reports of frequent protests all across Europe with people ransacking and vandalizing public property tell volumes about the distorted economic model of the entire region. One such set of protests – the Occupy Wall Street movement – epitomized the public outrage against the capitalistic style of governance in the United States. What worked for Barack Obama during these times of instability, were perhaps his pseudo-socialistic doctrines, which marked the beginning of a new economic era in a country that was once considered an unrelenting proponent of and for capitalism. In similar lines, the current chaos in developed economies too is speeding a transition towards a new economic pattern... a pattern that is gradually reinstating the very essence of socialism once more!

Spearheading this latent movement forever has been Cuba, which has shown incredible resilience against the American tirade and in many spheres is much better placed than most capitalist countries across the globe. The US trade embargo against Cuba – which the Cubans prefer to call an “economic blockade” – with its entire wherewithal could not destabilize their economy. An example typifying how the United States has continuously bullied Cuba was when America stalled the passage of a Swedish medical equipment consignment on the ground that the filters attached with the instruments were patented under US law. In similar fashion, America has regularly curtailed transactions of Cuba with various countries and corporations – whether it was to do with importing diagnostic instruments from Japan, chemicals from Italy, or X-Ray machines from France. But in spite of such attempts to distort and damage the Cuban economy, the country discovered many avenues to bypass the truant American meddling, by entering into joint ventures with foreign corporations and infusing investment in their home turf. The tie-ups Cuba managed included corporations from Germany, France, Brazil, Canada and even UK. The total project outlay from foreign collaboration in Cuba has surpassed $5 billion and is ever increasing now, involving around 60 different countries in 40 different sectors with the total number of such projects exceeding 240! That’s an incredible feat considering that Cuba has been economically isolated by the United States for decades now, with very few political and economic patronages worth mentioning. They did it on their own and did it with a socialistic approach! They escaped the clutches of recession, which shaped the misery of most Western nations, with their committed socialistic bent; and their economy is now advancing at an astronomical rate of 9.6 per cent per annum.

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“Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.” So wrote Daniel Lyons some years back, in a classic Forbes cover story titled ‘Attack of the Blogs’. As the Senior Editor of Forbes then, Dan was simply expressing his extreme frustration at the utter nastiness of the Internet community, which seemed to have a super-majority of calumnious commentators, who thrived on the faceless protection that the net provided in order to leave shamefully slanderous and defamatory comments left, right and center. Cut to the present, and the situation has sickeningly worsened. Not just globally, but perhaps more so in the Indian perspective. Take a quick ‘surf’ across various pages of the Internet and it would not be hard for one to realise that every fourth or fifth page is filled up with some or the other pejoratively aberrant content against respectable individuals and companies posted by untraceable, incognito and spiteful writers. From four-letter words to bigoted slanders to sexist comments to racist attacks to clearly inflammatory and libelous material, the net is now so completely full of criminally damnable statements that one starts wondering why the authorities haven’t woken up to act on this issue with the greatest speed. In case of profiles of meritorious organisations or individuals, this ratio of deprecating content put up by abusive users often shoots up to almost every second page. Internet hooliganism, as I describe it, is the most contemptible character of the modern technology era, where it doesn’t matter how respectable you are or what your organisation is, or how you sincerely worked throughout the past many decades – irrespective of all that, you will be attacked anonymously with false statements that will make you cringe for a lifetime and with almost no hope for any recourse. As per a 2011 report titled, ‘The Internet and Corporate Reputation: What you need to know’, conducted by law service firm Olswang and social media analytics company WindFall Media, “60% of the companies that had been victims of untrue allegations or rumours on the Internet said the allegations were likely to have an impact on the company’s share price.” As the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Kathleen Parker of Washington Post mentions in one of her articles, “The freedom granted by [Internet] anonymity and a virtual audience may have been a boon to democracy, affording everyone a voice, but it has been a plague on decency.”

The question is, why is all this not controllable? When a person talks negatively and falsely about you in public, the law provides for such a person to be immediately pulled up by both law enforcement and judicial authorities. Then why cannot the same rules be applied over the Internet, when someone posts flagitious and gutter-worthy comments about you or your corporation? Because of three key reasons, which go hand in hand!

Kasab was a terrorist from across the border – a man who was seen killing innocent Indians, by millions, almost live on TV! He had to be hanged and announcing it in advance could have created international cross-border tension. His secret hanging was understandable though the political calculations in the times of a fast rising pro-Narendra Modi wave and an intention to extract credit was apparent. Although there was euphoria around the Kasab hanging, the fact is that the hanging didn't benefit the government – it at best reduced ammunition in the hands of the BJP to criticize Congress. The government apparently didn't learn lessons from that episode. With the intention of creating another wave of euphoria, this time they executed Afzal Guru in a similar fashion. Guru, however, can by no stretch of imagination be equated with Kasab. In fact, his is a case where the veracity about his very involvement has been questioned by far too many intellectuals, Arundhati Roy included. In the book titled 13 December, a Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament, Praful Bidwai – one of the contributors – makes a most compelling argument. Afzal was tried under POTA, but sentenced under the Indian Penal Code. POTA clearly differentiates between committing a terrorist act resulting in death (punishable by death) and conspiracy in the act (punishable by life imprisonment). While the book finds out endless loopholes in the government theory and charges created on Afzal, the way he was threatened and tortured, at least one thing is very clear – that Guru had at the most conspired to the act; yet, that allegation too, as I just said, is very debatable, despite the Supreme Court’s verdict. And if conspiracy is the main crime, then in that case the death sentence itself is a debatable punishment, though I have to accept that like many others – before I had read enough on the matter and especially this particular book – I too was happy at the death sentence and unhappy at the delay in the hanging, since the media was running its own judgment on who the culprit was and creating a massive villain out of Guru.

But today, upon hearing the news of his hanging, I am shocked! I have three key questions running in my mind:

1. Is the Indian State so weak that it cannot bravely announce the hanging of a terrorist in advance and then hang him, as is normal practice? What kind of utter shameful cowardice is this?

2. In these days of growing human rights and the worldwide humane movement towards abolishment of capital punishment, how can a government commit this inhuman act of not informing the family in advance and not allowing a man to meet his family before his death? What kind of a shameful society are we living in, which first gives a debatable verdict and then denies a man his basic rights before something as extreme as capital punishment?

3. Has the government already conceded defeat to Narendra Modi and started doing illogical and mindlessly inhumane acts, which will in no way give them any extra credit? And is there no one with sound mind to advice the roughshod losers out there looking for cheap, atrocious shortcuts to popularity?

Indian policymakers had been daydreaming all along that the public-private partnership (PPP) model could solve all the infrastructural deficiencies of India – a clear case of vision that had turned into wishful thinking. In reality, the supposedly resounding thrust on PPP has backfired and has even choked the prospects of this model. It is true that there is promise in the model, which had raised the hopes of the nation, especially in the areas of mega-infrastructural development projects. The entire nation had started to envision our metros becoming the equivalents of Shanghai or New York in the years to come. And why not? The drumbeats and glitter associated with the PPP model have been quite profound. If we compare the beaming airports of Delhi or Hyderabad (built through the PPP model) to the shoddy government achievements showcased in the quite ordinary looking Chennai and Kolkata airports, the point does gets proved.

Against India’s poor infrastructural backdrop, PPP had been exponentially scaled up in the last ten years under a blind faith that it would produce nothing short of a miracle. Private participation has been consequently rising in PPPs in sync with government’s mission and policy. In the 11th Five Year Plan for example, the government’s estimation of investment on the country’s infrastructure between 2007 and 2012 was pegged at $320 billion. In this context, the World Bank had earlier assessed that as much as 20 per cent of this could be sourced through PPPs. Astonishingly, the figure rose to 37 per cent with the major contribution coming in the telecom sector.

On hindsight, everything may seem good; but then, a deeper scrutiny reveals how PPP projects are getting stalled and delayed. What get missed in the larger picture are the latent problems that are getting accumulated beneath the surface. No doubt, the PPP model has constructed numerous state-of-the-art infrastructure projects, but they are still inferior in comparison to the output that developed nations have been achieving through the same model. The inherent curse of red-tapism and power struggle between different agencies as well as between the private sector and government are looming threats for the prospects of the Indian PPP model. Add to this, the inevitable scenario of corruption and resultant artificial price hike of the resources that are gradually making PPP an unviable business model.

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For almost a decade, Dr Manmohan Singh has failed to deliver the goods when it comes to decent economic policy making governed by common sense. Given his background and past experience, this has come as an unpleasant surprise to all Indians. This coming budget is perhaps his last opportunity to stamp his authority and secure his place in history. He can still remain silent; but his policies must do the talking for him

“This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.”

This is the thirteenth time in 13 years that I am starting the presentation of my Alternative Budget. Yes, my friends and dear readers, it has been 13 years since I first presented a set of suggestions to the then Union finance minister and branded it as an Alternative Budget (of course Dr. Malay Chaudhuri – the Founder Director of IIPM – had been writing budget alternatives for many years before that and our jointly authored book, The Great Indian Dream, also deals with the same in a great detail). There have been a few, rare occasions when finance ministers have unveiled proposals that have made me hopeful about the future of India. On most occasions, the budgets have been a series of fatuous statements and flogged-to-death proposals that have done virtually nothing to make a difference to the fundamental problems that confront India. But I don’t need to repeat and rehash a list of those proposals since every Indian with some knowledge of economics and some common sense knows that budgets have been a spectacular and persistent failure when it comes to solving India’s problems.

On January 8, 2013, Pakistani soldiers illegally entered Indian territory through the Poonch sector of Jammu & Kashmir, attacked an Indian patrol team and eventually killed two soldiers. They went ahead and beheaded one of the soldiers too. This cold-blooded murder is not only inhuman but is also against the international conventions on armed conflicts. A few days thereafter, Pakistani troops attacked two Indian army posts in the Mendhar sector of Jammu & Kashmir, followed subsequently by another series of attacks in the Krishna Ghati sector. In spite of a flag meeting between the defence personnel of both these nations, Pakistan violated the ceasefire agreement and entered the Indian side of the LOC, not once but five times! Against this backdrop, our Prime Minister continued to have an obsequiously soft approach and announced restrictions on the visa-on-arrival facility for Pakistani citizens. Furthermore, Dr Singh found it “tough to conduct business as usual with Pakistan” and also managed to send some nine Pakistani hockey players back to their nation!

Hilariously, every time we have been attacked by our finagling neighbour in the past, Indian PMs have been seen taking soft and abject approaches of suspending bus-services or train services or business-ties or hockey/cricket matches with the attacking nation. The animosity between India and Pakistan is not new and the recent incident is an example of the incorrigible attitude of the latter. Going by any notion, the recent attack cannot be swept under the carpet by terming it as a mere “ceasefire violation”; by all decrees of humanity and national sovereignty, it qualifies as an act of terrorism. In a parallel timeframe, even Algeria was under terrorist attack when 30 militants illegally entered Algerian territory, and killed around 40 people. But unlike India, the aggressive Algerian government decided not to negotiate with the terrorists and executed a counterstrike, subsequently killing most of the militants! Today, most nations have decided not to let terrorists and militants take them to ransom and have adopted a no-negotiation policy with terrorists.

Negotiating with terrorists invariably means the government giving in to violence and terrorists being rewarded for activities for which they should have been incarcerated instead. Negotiating unfortunately not only provides legitimacy to terrorists and their extortionist methods but also undermines the efforts of those who seek political change or solutions to a particular problem in a rather peaceful way. Such servile negotiations have the ability to destabilize the political system of the nation, and above all, dilute the hard work put in by international committees and nations cooperating in countering terrorism at large. Moreover, this subservience provides incentives for the terrorists to repeat the same course of action at a later stage and thus sets a dangerous precedent for the society and the citizens of the nation.

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The volatile situation sweeping across nations because of the devastating effect of storms, tsunamis, floods and other catastrophes is predominantly a consequence of the rising sea levels – a direct impact of global warming. The last few years have seen the consequences of global warming like perhaps never before. More than 110 people were killed in the US alone by Sandy, apart from 67 casualties in the Caribbean and 2 in Canada. In Philippines, the biggest and the deadliest typhoon, Bopha, killed at least 540 people, injuring another 1100. Topping the misery chart in recent times is Japan’s tsunami, which claimed a jaw dropping 15,700 lives – a toll that created a shock wave not only in Japan, but also across the world. All these calamities, and – as the scientists claim – many more that are queuing up against the backdrop of climate change and global warming, are posing an impending danger to human lives. This year itself has begun with a scary chill across the world with temperatures falling to new lows, pollution smogs hitting new highs, and examples like Delhi, where the shivers of winter were felt like never before in the past half a century almost!

Given the fragility of human civilization, this rapidly changing climate and deteriorating ecosystem has induced fear and panic among mankind across the globe. Yes, there is no clear evidence that can pinpoint that global warming would be the reason for the end of the world; but then, there is no denial to the fact that human activities have made life worse in many parts of the world. Increasing pollution and use of toxic products have endowed diseases (both new and old) with an environment to incubate and flourish. The fear and panic has also gifted developed nations a reason to meet every year and make policies that seem pro-environment but in reality are pro-rich countries and anti-poor nations!

One such global event that is organized under the pretext of addressing global warming is the UN Climate Change Conference. The latest conference, better known as COP 18 (Conference of Parties; session 18), which concluded in Doha last month is a case in point. Nothing can be more paradoxical than the COP 18 gathering, at a time when we really need fast and serious action. A summit on protecting the environment was held in a city (and a country) that in all probability is the largest contributor to global warming. Surprisingly, no renewable sources of energy are used in Doha, which has a per capita annual carbon emission of 50 tonnes that is three times that of US, eight times that of China and 33 times that of India! Moreover, this so-called Climate Change Conference, year after year, witnesses delegates flying down in their fuel-guzzling private jets from all corners of the world, parades of motorcycles plying through the streets for security checks, water supplied from state-of-the-art power consuming desalination plants (in a country where water is the most scarce resource), exotic food items being mobilized from various regions and delegates commuting in sedans and SUVs that guzzle tonnes of fossil fuel. For around 17,000 delegates for the last conference, more than 21,000 rooms at 87 hotels and residences were blocked, which additionally wasted monumental energy while providing the most luxurious service. The amount of environment destruction can be gauged by the fact that a similar conference back in 2009 released around 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent!
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My brother-in-law and friend, Prashanto’s mother couldn’t make it, after the burn injuries she suffered during Diwali (refer to my December 13, 2012 editorial http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/how-patents-are-anti-poor-and-are-harming-essentials-like-healthcare-worldwide/44915/). At 74, her body gave up after a fight of more than 50 days. And it was a life well lived. Yes, we always have a slightly better view of life on hindsight. I got to think of three key things today that I want to share.

The first being about the goodness of doctors. Yes, I still believe doctors in general have fallen down to almost being merchants of death (refer to one of my past editorials http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/run-the-merchants-of-death-are-angry/36061/) and I also have had pharmaceutical company heads telling me stories about the doctor junkets they propagate in the garb of ‘seminars’, about how crudely doctors behave after getting sloshed over drinks and how each one is there seemingly only to make money. And yet, at the same time, the fact is that for all such doctors, we also have a set of amazing human beings who choose this profession selflessly to make a difference to the lives of fellow human beings; who are pillars of positivity and who day after day bring in the same passion selflessly to cure unknown human beings, as if they were of their own blood. Having seen the destruction of mega-killers like plague, my grandmother wanted my father to become a doctor so that he could save many a life. My father chose economics but always explained to me how tough it was to be a good doctor. He once said, “If a patient needs you at 2 am in the night and you don’t go, you are a bad doctor. And if you go, you are such a good doctor that everybody will remember you at 2 am and you will never be able to have a family life.” The fact is that there is no dearth of good doctors in this world, even in India, who work selflessly day and night (keeping themselves genuinely up to date with the latest research as well) at the cost of personal joys and family life – and not just to make money, but to spread happiness. And it was amazing to see some such doctors during Prashanto’s mother’s hospitalisation, keeping our faith in the profession alive.

Massive scams, election booth rigging through muscle power, murders in broad daylight and rapes of women on streets, in complete disregard of law and almost daring it... each of these is possible continuously and blatantly only due to one reason – the paralyzed judiciary of our country. It’s not the dearth of law but the dearth of the hand of law reaching the criminal, goon, politician, scamster and rapist. Who is scared of the law of the land? Not any of them. It’s the simple man – whose daughter is being raped and money being eaten away by corrupt politicians and other scamsters – who is afraid of the law and lives under an illusion that law exists in this country... till his daughter is shot dead in public and he dies running from pillar to post being squashed under the mesh of dates that have kept the judiciary in India dysfunctional and paralyzed. The average case takes about two decades to be solved and the person fighting for his rights is killed by our judicial system in any case unless he dies in reality as well.

As a media house, from the very beginning, we have been extremely vocal about the Indian judiciary – and that’s why we have also started our bimonthly supplement of Governance Watch with a special focus on the judiciary. We strongly believe that a poor justice delivery mechanism has been the root cause of most of our problems. It goes without saying that India has a weak, or rather a limping justice delivery system, which makes sure that justice is denied in most cases; and even if delivered, it does not hold any value, thanks to the time (read lifetime) it takes to be delivered. By the Centre’s own admission, there is a staggering number of nearly three crore court cases pending at several stages in different courts of India. This situation is a deliberate creation of our successive governments. But if criminals were to be punished, how would they be able to rule? Thus, to make the rule of criminals, the corrupt and the rapists of all other varieties easy, the governments in India over the years have deliberately kept the judicial system in our country dysfunctional.

This serves the purpose of the legal fraternity as well. Thanks to the years or decades that it takes to execute a case and to take it to its culmination, the legal fraternity invariably ends up making a windfall profit. And as I just said, thanks to the absence of a time-bound justice delivery mechanism, making moolah is not at all a challenge for our legal fraternity, as they are quite adept at purposefully making cases hang on for years. The only thing that we nowadays talk about is corruption. And the one and only solution for solving this issue of corruption as well as one that reduces all kinds of crime by a massive extent, is a functional judicial system. Criminals, rapists, greedy and corrupt people are globally prevalent; yet, they touch far lesser lives in USA than in India simply because the American judicial system is functional, while ours is dysfunctional. In America, they have ten times more judges per million people than in India; so there is a fear of immediate punishment – while in India, there is no such fear of punishment.