Keepin (De)m dmb n apy...

In response to the news of the man behind the BBCs Hardtalk coming up with a program focusing on socio-political problems in India on Newslaundry.com and then my ramblings... I've been feeling a little more frustrated than I'm accustomed to with the system and need to vent a bit :)

Moderating? Are we talking about OUR politicians and bureaucrats appearing on this? The only way they can be 'moderated' is if they're cut off the way is done on our live debates, allowed to edit the recorded footage heavily enough for them to sound at least a lot more decent than they are, or handle 15 hours (patiently over possibly months) of footage that's heavily edited into a 10 minute package for mass consumption because they keep repeating the same irrelevant [argument/reason/explanation/excuse/allegation/agitation; take your pick], sometimes even creatively - in 15 different ways.

If he can pull this one off, it's going to be great. It might be hilarious, where all people sit and explain how great our system is and how we're better off than the failing Europe and the faltering oil suckers because our economy is still standing, it's now a question of 'for how long at the current burn rate?'. I figure it might be informative to a point, but I'm wondering what actual information any of these guys might have that would be interesting other than which scams they've been associated with and why.

Sure, money's come back from the Swiss banks in the form of foreign investments... they're eager to bring in FDI - which may be needed in any case, but not really just so they have an easier route to bring their money back. This money was incidentally made more than a little more valuable while the government watched the Rupee slide.

This article about the government supplying mobile phones to all Below Poverty Line (BPL) families on The Indian Express web site is one more possibility for a fresh scam. I'm just wondering whose relative started a company that's going to be one side of a 7000 crore partnership deal for supply of phones and services. Will due diligence happen this time?  Will common knowledge be announced in public at some point and shock us all? Is now the right time to push the diesel hike through to let the Rupee slide just a little more... FDI's not through yet... in the meantime, they've been busy arguing about things (the UPAs 'bastardisation' of the government), some which don't happen all that often like this minor disagreement - that are reminiscent of the divide and conquer tactic that's been used upon us repeatedly to rule us over time, and some which probably do (how long was that pornographic clip those politicians were watching on public time again?) in the house. I can completely understand why they haven't really gotten around to solving too many of that large stack of problems let alone getting around to prosecuting the corrupt or even introducing legislature that allows money KNOWN to be swindled from the public to be returned. No matter... they're VIPs and live by a different set of rules - at the expense of general public is not uncommon; you get stuck in a 3 hour traffic jam because the traffic police stop traffic so that said VIP has a clear route to work - this used to regularly happen on my way to Gurgaon from the south east of Delhi during the CWG fiasco. What is a VIP anyway? Someone we elected who needs the best of the police to protect them from... us??? Real leaders lead from the front and by example - and should not have to fear for their lives by stepping out among the masses without z-level security or whatever they get that allows happy-to-be-violent-ministers to justify kicking people who decide to protest by saying the complaint should be against the accusers for entering a high security zone (too close to their little prince was it?).

How do they get away with all of this while they're showing off that they're better than us with the red lights on the white cars with the "भारत सर्कार" printed on the back in red, or with the fancy 'VIP plates' that you can now officially buy. For some it may just be a statement of your own chosen self worth in the eyes of the general public...

So y r v keepin (De)m dmb n apy?

This is what the corporates try to do to us more often than not when it comes to sales and marketing strategies. Whether it's the promise of many girls being magically, magnetically attracted to a plain looking guy or all the Rajni jokes, we're being pushed in the direction of the marketers choice... and politicians started up with them possibly before the corporates found these marketing geniuses.


I'm not really sure what to make out of the votes-for-phones scheme that was announced today. Have they done enough research to know that this is what will win the elections? Have the greater masses come to a point of knowledge (or lack of) where they can be bribed by cellular phones that would have to be designed to last for days on very little charge - seeing as electricity is a problem in many villages, towns, cities, metropolises and other areas across our nation? Don't worry though - the technology would be simple and cheap enough... we just need to hope that the company tasked with setting this up for all the poor people who can't afford food will let enough money trickle down for them to pay some amount of money after 200 minutes free - will the transparency on charges after this limit be kept high enough for these (Rs.32/day) families to not be held liable to pay large (completely unaffordable) bills after this allowance? Many people in the country are getting smarter - if they're kept in debt, the scope of them affording an education is lowered... then they might vote for the fools providing them with mobile phones or TVs without first providing basic food, shelter, infrastructure or electricity to power the phones they're distributing using 'small' quantities of our money. But hang on... if you can handle the logistics and cost to hand out mobile phones and monthly minutes to families who earn less than Rs.32/day, shouldn't you first see to it that they get something in terms of sustenance that actually reaches them? How about cleaning up some space for a medical facility or two?

They've systematically tried to erode any scope of education in the country by coming up with ridiculous plans, schemes, rules and laws. Politicians decide that cartoons that have been in text books for years should be removed as they're 'disrespectful' of 'leaders' (some of whom have expressed appreciation for the satirical value of these cartoons). Initially, I doubt any of the political folks had any ill intent as far as the growth of the country was concerned - as long as they were growing well, they'd do good by it. It's moved from there to 'I will do good by me even if it causes the country to slide straight to hell'. Some fool decides to waste court time on taking technology companies to court over pictures that have been posted because they're not in 'good taste'... meaning they mock political parties and/or the cartoons (leaders??) that form them.

Education is just one small part of how they're keeping them dumb. If you don't have time to learn anything because you're too busy walking for water or running away from floods, you're not really going to get much smarter. This was an incidental fallout from a suggestion made in the 50s - build a national water network - if designed properly it could have been high on the initial cost, but done at minimal energy cost. A water 'grid' so to speak... this way when one place floods, water can be routed to places that are seeing an acute water shortage. Needless to say, most of what we see right now in agriculture is crop failures because of flooding or drought for lack of balance in vision or process. Heck, if it had been built and was crumbling (much like our electrical network - the crumbling of which some people maintain was because of a coal scam, others think is part of an attempt to sabotage Anna's fast), it'd still be a massive improvement.

In the interest of destruction of our nation in favour of our 'sibalisation', our HRD minister decided to involve the school results in selection at the IITs (our premier engineering institutes which used to have complete autonomy on the entrance examinations). The 'cut-off' scores for most of Delhi university colleges were in the high 90s. Now, many of the folks who are trying to get into IIT will also try getting higher board scores - this is likely to drag the cut-off further up (hang on... where do you go from 100%?). The first list will be a bunch of folks who might not have managed to get into IIT, so will take a course in say physics from a good DU college for a year while they study for their next attempt at IIT. This will reduce the numbers of people who complete their degrees, increase the competition to get into any course at all, waste space in the few colleges we actually have in the country, increase the number of people who'd go to private universities (which usually have pretty heavy political backing and investment), which will make more money while the quality of education imparted to the people goes down again.

It gets worse though. They've gotten us to a point where most of the middle class have resigned themselves to their fates and are not patient enough to go through 4 days of processes when half an hour should have been enough. Bribing the small guys to do their jobs at an only slightly slower than standard pace has become an accepted norm. In their eyes, if you bribe, you're stupid for wasting so much time. If that little guy is helping you, you build a rapport with him... and you don't want him to move from there so that your work can be done through someone you 'know'. In other words, many of us would like to keep people from growth. One of our neighbours  had issues with how much we were paying someone to do some odd jobs for us - we were told that if we paid that much then they'd have to pay that much and the guy would get enough money and skill to move on to better work - and they'd have to find someone else to do their work for them. I find this attitude quite disturbing. As many folks in India do, we've had a maid working with us for a couple of decades now. We've helped her put her kids through school and college and they're able to help out now with the mounting household expenses. While it's a little sad that they've now got less respect for their mother's work than they had before, it's also good that they've been given the tools to carve out a better life for themselves. Isn't this what being human is about? Everyone should have the opportunity to grow and growth should be encouraged.

All these issues that have cropped up run so much deeper than the corruption that caused them. Still, I have hope for the future... if we start hitting the problems one by one, we might just get out of this rut, but in my opinion, we need to clean up the cause one person at a time first...

A De for the black

As I looked at the paper this morning, I couldn't help reading the headlines on the front page and feeling that cold, fuzzy feeling of... well... sadness. A few of the articles in question:

Rupee at all-time low of 52.15, to impact everyday life

Black money offenders may escape prosecution

Govt plans Rs.30,000cr bailout for Air India

Maha govt has spent Rs.16cr on Kasab so far

In the last decade, over 4 died in custody daily

How are these all linked? Well, it all starts with a question... how can I increase the amount and value of the black money I've got?

Before we begin, here's a little background.

A while ago, news reports told us that Sonia Gandhi went to the US for an operation. There's been no official statement (to my knowledge at least) as to what operation this was or what it was for. Most folks would rack this up to a personal privacy concern - which I would think of as the right thing to do. Illness in the family is hardly something you want splashed all over every form of media as 'breaking news', however, quoting from an article from Zee News:

Confirming the news, Congress spokesperson Janardan Dwivedi said, “Sonia Gandhi has been unwell for quite some time and the doctors attending her had advised her to undergo a surgery, for which she had flown to the United States recently.”
Briefing the press reporters on her health, Dwivedi said, “The abdominal surgery performed on her has been successful and she had been advised to take full rest.”

I've heard that her trip out of the country was to handle some 'money matters' - this could be related to the operation costs. I've been told that there were reports of Rahul stopping by in Switzerland on his way to the US to visit his mother after her surgery - this would seem a little cold. I'm off to visit my mom - she's just had an operation... heeeeey, wanna stop by in Switzerland on the way? When I tried searching for articles related to this, I only found articles suggesting that neither of them had gone to the US at all and were both in Switzerland. I haven't linked to any of these since they weren't mainstream media sites. Other subsequent reports say she's got some form of skin cancer or something. Maybe she should either tell the media to shut up or set them straight in reporting the truth.

Anyway, it's generally accepted in India that there are lots of people in the country with lots of black money. It's also accepted here that the people with the money are the ones in control. I read an article a while ago which suggested that the government would make it easier to bring back black money without having to pay anything in way of penalty. Just the regular tax would be deducted. It figures that people with large amounts of black money would want to go easy on people with large amounts of black money, and allow them to bring it back without prosecuting them for having that amount of undeclared money.

Which brings us to the first article I've mentioned in the post. Some news papers and channels have suggested that the government could have done something to control the sliding rupee before, but now it's going into freefall - and there's not much that can help prevent that. Heck, if I've got US Dollars and Euros, my cash is now worth 10% more than it was a couple of months ago. If I've got enough that I'm planning on bringing back to India anytime soon, I'd like it if the Rupee slid further. With all this talk about all the black money stashed abroad, if/when it DOES come back, there's a significant drop in the loss to the owner of this cash.

The next article is about how black money offenders may escape prosecution. The Income Tax department, which normally manages to worry even the most well connected people in the country would appear toothless when it comes to larger deviations from the rules. If they haven't paid tax on the money stashed abroad, they should at LEAST be made liable to have that tax deducted - freeze their local bank accounts if necessary. Any 'unexplained' assets should be made property of the country. The ED (Enforcement department) in our country is (to my understanding) only involved when it comes to prosecution. If the details can't be shared between the IT department and ED because of the Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty (DTAT), then handle the prosecution of these people once Germany gives clearance - the country would benefit, in the meantime, from infusion of a huge amount of cash. Our president went to Switzerland and Austria to talk about the issues of the DTAT, but so far the only mainstream media report I could find on this was this one, published before the trip. This would suggest that the trip didn't go well for the Indian public so details weren't published by the media. The BJP has jumped on this with the input that since the people on the list didn't EARN the money abroad, they aren't liable to pay taxes abroad - sounds straightforward enough. 

With all this behind-the-scenes activity, we, the people of the country have to be thrown a bone once every now and then - with all the reports of all the scams, it's getting hard to see what rules/laws/amendments the government is coming up with to protect themselves from prosecution. It's in the interest of most political parties to protect the corrupt. This dance would appear to be for the benefit of the Indian people so that when people finally DO get caught, they get a slap on the wrist, spend 6 months or so incarcerated in luxury, then get out to spend their ill-gotten gains - the rules still don't allow for recovery of any of the money stolen.

So what's up with our national carrier? How does that tie in? As far as I see, it's just one more set of scams. The airline industry in the country's not doing particularly well - and for all the rubbish people have been coming up with like 'they're badly/inefficiently managed', or 'Indigo is doing well', I have this to say to you - inefficiencies can make a difference, but not THIS much of a difference. Indigo (or rather Interglobe) is making profits FROM the other airlines rather than from it's airline service. I understand the owners were smart enough to book a large number of aircraft which are being delivered - and sold/leased out to other airlines since delivery schedules are in terms of years for aircraft manufacturers. The politicians have been known to use the national carrier (Indian) like their own personal charters - the Civil aviation ministers (and lots of other folks apparently) are guaranteed a lifetime of free tickets. Not that the rest of the government pays in any case. Now they're giving them a 30,000cr bailout rather than paying their dues. No wonder they didn't want to give it back to the Tatas to run - they'd have objected to letting so many folks fly everywhere for free.

Rs.16cr (Rs.160million) on Kasab. This has gone on food, drink, accommodation and security over the last 3 years. That's on average Rs.1.46L (Rs.146K) per day. I thought he was in jail! Okay, so lets assume he's got prime property in Bombay. Lets peg that at 14K/day on just space and electricity - there are much more expensive hotels, but hey, this guy doesn't get room service does he? Take a few (5 or 6) of the higher pay-scale cops and pay them a little more - that's another 14K/day. Food? What the hell - lets get him 5 star rates - that comes up to (with difficulty) 10K/day. One full rate return trip to Pakistan per month (which I'm sure he doesn't get) - including rental car and security detail - Rs.2L/month (averages at 7K/day). Where's the rest of this money? Court fee/lawyers? 100K/month? We've got pictures of the guy shooting folks up. We've got an admission of guilt. There are enough eye witnesses AND he's been found guilty already... I'm guessing the rest is something to do with someone making a lot of money on the side... like by providing him with food at the price of gold, while 4 people die in custody because they've been mistreated/manhandled/not been cared about enough.

The sad bit is that all this political 'VIP' nonsense is the root of all these headlines.

De multifold coverup

Take this scenario:

A large bunch of (not particularly intimate) criminals have evidence of each others crimes. They'd rather not be prosecuted at all, so in the interest of their own safety do not 'rat out' any of the others.

Now, lets thicken the plot a little - one of these criminals gets caught for one crime in which a few other folks are involved. He's going down... there's no escape for this guy at all... he's in a particularly bad mood because he gets the feeling that someone took him down and doesn't feel like he should take the rap alone. He rats out the other folks involved in this particular crime.

We now have a few folks going down - some of their enemies decide to kick-em-while-they're-down assuming that they don't have proof of any of their own crimes. Things start getting more complicated now because now all of them have started thinking along the lines of 'if I have to take a fall, I'm pulling everyone else in with me.'

Suddenly, there's chaos in parliament. All the thievery, murders, scams, embezzling, laundering, kickbacks and lies have started hitting everyone, but the politicians have started warring... none of the parties are covering their 'friends' let alone their enemies. Some of them think that by starting one more controversy they can lessen the scope of their own prosecution by diverting attention away from their own issue. In most cases, this next controversy involves more people. With any luck, most of them will kill each other (metaphorically if not literally) and we'll be left with the few misfits in our government with some form of ethical standard. I'm just hoping there's not going to be a truce call between the 'dons' before the bloodbath's finished. It's a little sad that the only time the Delhi police have averted a full on terrorist strike, the terrorists were planning on doing us a favour - destruction of the parliament building would have been upsetting, but the place could definitely use a good fumigation.

De-pression before in-De-pendence.

I started this article on the 15th August 2007 (our 60th anniversary of independence) and didn't have the energy to complete it.

Most people (for some reason) don't realise how much I love my country. India is a place filled with people with completely different outlooks, backgrounds, concepts, religious beleifs, sensitivities, intellectual abilities, blah... you're probably sitting there thinking "all countries would have this". There's diversity in geographic topology. There are so many different types of places with so many interesting things to see, but the thing that really builds this place is the people.

Heck if that's not enough of a sales pitch, how about this one:

India is home.

I have the option to live and work abroad (it'd be somewhat easier for me since I don't need a visa/work permit to get a job in the UK since I've got "Right to abode" there). India has spoiled me. I'm lazy. There's a maid who comes in the morning, cooks, cleans, washes the clothes, irons them, answers the phone when there's no one around, handles the house by the day so to speak. Then there's the odd job guy who washes the car, walks and feeds the dogs, takes care of the garden, repairs stuff around the house, cleans the outside area of the house.

Essentially, there's someone to do anything you don't want to and it's usually not too much of a problem to get the stuff done because labour is cheap here. Does this make me a hypocrite though? How independent could I be if all the stuff I've got to get done get done by other people? Am I dependent on them? I'll put it this way. I know the "how's" of getting most things done, but don't ever need to actually implement anything myself as long as they're around. When they go on leave, I don't exactly shrivel up and die, but I DO have a bit more to get done.

That having been said, let me ask this. How can I afford this luxury? Having two people spend quite an amount of time getting my work done for me should be an expensive deal right? The truth is that these people work on a monthly basis for a combined amount that I'd make in a few days. And no - I'm not earning a particularly large amount of money. These are the gaps.

This divide isn't terribly healthy. The people who work in junior positions in government jobs - the paper pushers or gate keepers (depending on what your work in that department is) get salaries that would allow them to buy a small TV in a month if they didn't spend anything on anything else. Add a wife and a couple of kids to that equation and you get a materialistically challenged family who look around and see all these rich kids in their designer clothes, driving flashy cars discussing how much they spent last night at that nightclub.

What do these guys do then? How about making life a little miserable for all these rich kids. If he comes here to get some work done, let me pull all stops to irritate him to even things out just a little bit. And what's the response? Rich kid pulls out a few notes and passes them to the guy to "smoothen" things out a little. (newly) Corrupt government man decides this isn't a bad way to make a little extra money, so winds up hassling anyone who comes through the door expecting money and when he doesn't get any starts demanding it.

A cousin is registering his company here. He'd given our house address as his correspondence address, so when his registration letter arrived by registered post (recorded delivery), the post man came home to deliver it. Registered post requires a signature, so it wasn't just dropped in the post box. The maid didn't know my cousins name or the name of his company, but offered to sign for it. The postman gave her a phone number and left with the letter. My mother called in the afternoon and offered to pick up the letter, but was told that my cousin would have to make a personal visit to the post office as it must be some paise ka mamla (money matter). My cousin was in town the next day for a few hours, so had planned on picking up the letter in the morning, running to interview someone and leaving. At 10 am when we called the post office, we were told gyarah baje tak aajao (come by 11 o'clock). It was 10 so Ma offered to reach there in 5 mintues and was told nahin gyarah tak aajao (no come by 11). I'm not sure why, but this went up and down a few times before Ma finally said "We'll be there at 11" and put the phone down. At 11 we went to the post office, expecting to pick up the letter, feel a little happy and leave. We were called into the office where one man took the letter, held onto it and sat down at a table telling us (I couldn't continue writing after this, so I took a short 9 month break) that he needed to see the letter of registration of the company before he could give us the letter (which incidentally was the tax registration letter a requirement for registration of the company).

An hour before my cousin had to catch a flight we were slightly pressed for time so my cousin pulled him to the side and asked him exactly why he was doing this, to which the blatant response was "300 rupees". There are two options at this point. Pay and get it done with or leave, let the process get delayed by another few weeks and pray that you have the contacts to squash this bug - who'll land up in another post office and do exactly the same thing there.

Look at it this way. You have a company to register where the registration process gets stopped at a few thousand different places where each person demands x amount of money - all the amounts are individually very small, but they sort of add up when there are so many people to "handle". What solutions have been devised to get around this?

Enter the tout! You can actually HIRE people to do the running around (read bribery) for you. They will give you a "99% assurance" that all your work will get done for an amount that would be a little higher than the amount you'd have to bribe people with. Why is it only a little higher? Because it's like a nexus. The tout would be running a "revenue-share" concept with the officials (and their office boys) he's dealing with.

So now you're sitting there with the concept of the services industry and corruption being tightly linked, the plot gets thicker...

It's possible here (and on many occasions necessary) to have someone NOT hassle you for a fee. There are a massive number of cabs operating between Delhi, NOIDA and Gurgaon.
A friend struck up a conversation with a cab owner and got the dope on why they drive as badly as they do (that's not exactly how the guy put it, but it's quite evidently the reason).

For each cab owned by the cab company plying on a regular route, the company has to pay the DELHI POLICE a particular amount per intersection to "look the other way" for all traffic offenses. Most cabs tend to jump red lights, stop in the middle of the road to pick up and drop passengers, jump lanes at will (is there a car in that lane? Too bad... he's going to have to move away), tamper with the speed governors (they're supposed to be limited to 50KMPH) and generally increase the chaos on the already chaotic roads. They've got amnesty. They'll do what they want, but when they start killing people I'm almost certain the price goes up... price? PRICE? There have been instances where actors/influential people/wealthy individuals and/or their children/relatives have been involved in well publicised manslaughter/homicide (driving, shooting, blah...). They've been all over the national papers (gossip rags). They've gone to court. They've come back out of court. They're resting at home happy to be free having (possibly by mistake, but never the less) killed someone.

Is this independence?

As long as people HAVE to pay someone to get basic work done we're not free.
As long as the government votes itself to power (by buying polling booths and peoples identities) we're not free.
As long as the people responsible for removal of corruption are the ones ASKING for bribes WE ARE NOT FREE!