How do you become an intellectual in India – Simple 10 step process

There used to be a time, not very long back, when true intellectuals were produced in this land. These intellectuals were schooled in the traditional system of education, attained very high spiritual heights and were able to expound great philosophical truths in beautiful verse intelligible to the common man as stories, fables or myths. Of course this happened before the British came but then 200 years is a very short span in a nation which the world believes to be 5000 years old. The British came with their new mechanized system of manufacture which included everything from salt to steam engines. They did not stop with inanimate objects and invented a new system of manufacturing intellectuals. These intellectuals were robotized or to borrow from Asimov ‘lobotomized’ apologies of men/women who were indoctrinated with what the British wanted them to believe and infected with a perennial vocal diarrhea to egest out what the British wanted the world to hear from them.

As the masters had manufactured and subtly accredited these fine young men and women who were British in everything but their colour, the natives paid heed when they spoke. Because when they spoke they combined the white man’s superiority of knowledge and education with the brown man’s inferiority of backwardness, superstition and squalor. The simple folk over awed by the power of the white man believed these charlatans when they spit on their religion and traditions, when they condemned the earth saving practices of the people as blind superstitious ways of the pagans and heathens. With a few notable exceptions like Sri Aurobindo, the vast majority of the English educated followed the same pattern of distance from their roots and yearning to be as English as their unfortunate skin colour would allow.

As with everything else, we inherited the British system of manufacturing intellectuals after what the world believes to be our independence and is continuing till this day. Switch on your TVs, pick up the newspapers and magazines and the intellectuals are all around us. The secret of manufacturing intellectuals is revealed here as the simple 10 step fail proof formula

1. Have to be conceptualised in the right womb: No matter what they say about the importance of merit and hard work in the egalitarian world that we live in, hitting the ovarian jackpot is an absolute must if you want to be an intellectual in this country for reasons which will become clearer as we proceed. I know this is not in your hands so if this step is not taken care of, please abandon any attempts to be an intellectual and prepare for the competitive exams. 
2. Attend a highly ranked public school or convent: If we were to rank the steps in terms of their importance, this one would be right on top. Most highly ranked primary and secondary schools in India lay a lot of emphasis on developing literary skills (oratory, drama, essay writing) as also the grounding of English as a primary language of conversation both at school and at home. The charade of IIT IIM authors who write books similar in style and content to random blogs about dogs and puppies lack this very quality. They did not attend the highly ranked schools like Doon or Welhams and can never aspire to be an intellectual so sour grapes it is for the rest (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/special-report/Save-us-from-lerds/articleshow/11151031.cms)
3. Read, read, read, read, read!  Read the classics – Shakespeare, Dante. Read the philosophies – most fashionable are the german philosophers Goethe, Nietzsche. Recommended read the bible but no other religious texts please. Most importantly read Marx and Engels. Added bonus if you read Ayn Rand and puncture holes in her theories
4. Live in the past:  You must have a strong affinity towards history. You should be well versed with European (primarily Greek, Roman and British) history. Even though the scientific temper is extolled, however as an Indian intellectual do not question the bedrock of intellectual activity in the country. This means do not question the Aryan invasion theory, prevalence of caste system, benign-ness of some Mughal kings, historical absurdity of the myths and epics of the land
5. Disown your roots: Your religion should be an embarrassment to you. You should be ashamed of the caste system, the dowry system, the horrific practice of Sati. The millions of people visiting the temples and worshipping are dumb docile idiots who need to be inculcated with the scientific temper. The saffron clad priests are all frauds who are making money out of the misery of common folk. The rites and rituals are legacies of an ancient barbaric race of nature worshippers who came from somewhere in Central Asia, colonizing the country and appointed their chosen Brahmins to be the conduits of spirituality and thus exploited the masses
6. Attend a liberal arts course in a reputed college preferably in Delhi The advantage of this is three-fold. One it is a good way to hide the fact that you are completely useless at doing anything concrete and useful other than to live in your own make-believe world. Play to your strengths and don’t expose yourself to strong technical competition. Just write the board exams well. Secondly it gives you some further buying time before you are old enough to take the plunge into complete intellectualism and for others to take you seriously. Thirdly you will find enough of your own ilk to discuss, argue, deliberate, pontificate, theorize and once done, repeat. All the shining icons of intellectualism Ramchandra Guha, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar have taken this route to discover themselves
7. Apply for masters degree or research work in another reputed institute You are not done thinking yet. You need more time. Perhaps 3 or 5 more years depending on how long you want to remain away from the real world. However it’s very important to use this time to read and assimilate all the gossamers philosophies abounding in the world. Be confused, get confounded. But don’t seek solutions. Make things intractable, wind yourself up in knots. Those who suggest solutions and get things done are called technocrats, you are not one of them. Your job is to confound and distract the discourse. Publish a few research papers mostly intended to raise questions than to answer them. Collaborate with the leading confused academics of the day. You will find scores of them in the capital’s intellectual heartlands. At this stage, a certain mastery of Marxism is expected along with a sympathetic view of the Maoist uprising. Raise the tribal problem and participate in a few rallies against the brutal state machinery. A few trips to Jantar Mantar and you will have your requisite badges of rally participation.
8. An academic stint in a reputed global university: If you have done your masters with sincerity, you would already be wanted by several global universities or think-tanks that specialize in bashing India through research chairs or centres. Scholarship/ Stipend is very easy to get in these universities and you must avail of this opportunity as it will add the last coat of gloss to your shining coat of arms. Some fancy scholarships or titles like “Dr James Burtling Professor of Asiatic studies at University of Newport” will greatly enhance your reputation in the circle of modern day mystics who love to live in a bipolar world. Remember the chances of your getting a scholarship or grant depend almost solely on how well you have assimilated the existing theories and how ready you are to throw in your yoke with the Marxist mainstream.
9. Write and speak for the English speaking junta: Till now you have mainly been moving around in your coterie. Time to up the game, reach the masses. Start writing in newspapers/ magazines (Hindu will lap up anything sympathetic to the Left), blogs or better still write a book. If you are lucky you might even get the Booker prize but make sure you are severely critical of India otherwise you might end up being another Amitava Ghosh – brilliant but uncrowned. Ramachandra Guha, Arundhati Roy, Arvind Adiga would never have hoped to have won their laurels had they not acquiesced and immersed themselves in the mainstream of India/ Hindu bashing
10. Hijack a cause: Finally you are not an intellectual if you are not an activist. This means choosing an environmental, societal, secular or any other agenda which has the potential to distinguish you from 99.99% of your countrymen who are addicted to cricket and Bollywood. Do a scan of major heartburn issues, reach the agitation site and camp there till the media publishes your interview. Come back and write an article on the same. Now search for another cause. This should go on for a few years till you are an acknowledged intellectual whom the TV channels start calling regularly for their dinner time debates.

The truth about darkness

“Where are you going’ asked the boy

“I’m going into the darkness”

“But why are you going into the darkness” asked the boy his curiosity aroused

“To search for the truth”

“But how can you search for anything in the darkness”

“Darkness is the truth. It was there before nothing was illuminated by light and it will be there till the end of time. You cannot fight darkness because it is just not there. And yet it is everywhere. The whole universe is darkness. Everything that is born, everything that has a genesis eventually dies out but darkness was neither born nor sustained nor will ever die. It will remain forever. Isn’t this a magical quality of darkness?”

“You are not making any sense. You were saying something about truth and now you’re blabbering about” The boy was beginning to get irritated

“Is it not quite obvious? Realize that the darkness is the same as truth. It can be hidden temporarily, you might be made to believe that it has gone away because of the bright flash of the material world but it is just there, waiting to come out as soon as the light goes away, as soon as you close your eyes. It is just all around us but we refuse to see it and when we do see it we are sleeping.

The objects that we see, the sounds that we hear, the things that we feel are all imaginary play things in the world to entertain us. In any case they owe their existence to your own perception of them is it not. The eyes merely see what blocks their ray of light, the sensations in your fingers when you touch something are just nerve impulses conveying to your brain that there is something here

The pain, the sorrow, the suffering, the anger, the jealousy are all things that you feel. No body else does it to you, you do it to yourself. However our mind is so programmed that it mistakes all of these as the truth. However the truth is something you cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel. It is hidden inside you and what is inside you is completely dark for you. When you meditate , when you sleep and when you die are the times when you are the closest to the truth. These are the times when you are closest to enlightenment, closest to the light which is actually darkness

Darkness like truth does not have any shades. Either it is dark or there is some light. When there is minimal light you call it dim. Similarly the truth can be corrupted by few falsehoods, more falsehoods, a lot of falsehoods. Falsehood can never have a single shade, it is either dim, bright or blinding. The truth is always a single shade. Black.

Paradoxically we always relate the truth to light and enlightenment. Bible proclaims ‘let there be light’ and there was creation, that was the genesis. But what before that.  There was nothing, but there was darkness”

“So what is the truth”

“Alas my son, I wish I could tell you that. I’m still searching and am in the dark. But I am convinced that the place to search for the truth is darkness not light”

“It again does not make any sense. So darkness is nothing, but truth is something. How can there be something in nothing” The boy said

“Something and nothing are the ultimate versions of the duality of nature. The whole world is made of something and nothing, of matter and anti matter, of particles and waves, of ones and zeros, of love and hate, of creation and destruction.  Something always springs out of nothing. You would have learnt of the big bang. What before that. It came out of nothing. The lord said ‘Let there be light’. What before that. The light came out of darkness.

Do you know what is the shiv linga that you pour milk on once a year. It is an ellipsoid. Whenever something springs out of nothing, it takes the shape of ellipsoid. It is the first shape for any object of creation however large or minute. The whole universe was an ellipsoid once. All the time new universes are being created, universes within universes, all are ellipsoids. The ellipsoid is the only shape which can hold energy for eternity. That is why we have the twelve Jyotirlingas which are still preserved in the country. They hold the divine energy of Shiva and the one in Benaras he had consecrated himself. These lingas are living proof of the fact that something comes out of nothing”

“Oh is it. And I thought Shiva linga was the male body part…” The boy’s voice trailed off

“You are right. It is mostly considered that as when the European conquerors came, they considered us pagans and heathens and likened our forms and idols to the ones they had seen back home. However understand what Shiva means. It means ‘that which is not’ or nothing. Shiva is the ultimate embodiment of truth. For millenniums people have followed the teachings of Shiva or the Adiyogi to attain the ultimate truth. However he gave a very beautiful hint in his name itself. To search for the truth is to search for Shiva is to search for nothing. Nothing signifies nothing more than darkness. And nothing is more dark for you than your inner self. It is absolutely pitch dark and no one can throw a light there .It is in the innermost recesses of the darkness within himself that a man paradoxically finds the greatest light and attains enlightenment.

Hence enlightenment means finding the source of the darkness. The source of the darkness is the divine creator himself sitting inside all of us. To find the truth, the holy grail or the amrit it all means just find the source of the darkness within you.

The tragedy for small business in India

Warning: A useless rant by a frustrated bugger who can’t do anything to improve the situation

Just over a month ago, Walmart in the US came under fire for having spent $25 bn to get into India. Indian government with unusual alacrity spared only for big businesses who have the balls to enter the Indian market launched a probe into it. Bharti Walmart in India suspended links with over a dozen consultants who had helped them procure licenses for launching their operations. Why was I not surprised. Well try getting into any kind of business in India which has to do anything with the real world  and you’ll get the answer

Liberalization in 1991 is heralded as an epoch making event which finished off the licensing/ inspector Raj in the country. Well not quite. It is very much alive and kicking. As an example to set up a retail operation in India, according to the data that I have one needs minimum 32 licenses. I’ll just give you a small summary to make the point clear

Labour: Profession license, Provident fund, 7 days exemption, Shift working, 365 day permission

Municipal commissioner: Trade license, Health trade license, Freezers permit, Food handlers certificate, Meat food products order, Permission for selling non-veg, Frozen non-veg, Freezers permit, Construction

Wait there’s more!

Shop and Establishment clearance, Food court license, Fire NOC, Music license, Police clearance, Sales Tax, APMC (Agriculture produce marketing committee), Cold storage, Weights and Measures, Pollution

These are authorities who issue 2-3 licenses at the least

Whew you get the jist.

And the issuing authorities are hideously corrupt. They sit in their chairs like erstwhile maharajas and between sips of tea and bites of samosas laced with gossip about colleagues and their wives, sign one or two files in a single day amidst the stack of files (mostly unread) in their offices which will make a scrap dealer (kabadiwala) salivate.

And despite all these controls, India has one of the worst rates of adulteration and food poisoning due to consumption of expired food. We have one of the worst fire safety records. The least said about weights and measures the better it is. How is that possible? Simply because inspection and sincerity to duty is non-existent. To get your file passed, just go abegging to the mighty officialdom with ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ and gifts tucked up and you have your license ready. Even if you have all the documents stipulated in the government website, there are ten different ways to find out a glitch. Be it the neighbourhood shopkeeper or the mighty Walmart, nobody can dare take on the officialdom

In most cases, small entrepreneurs just bite the bullet and plunge in not knowing when a Dhoblesque inspector might come in with his misplaced sense of duty and shut his shop due to lack of licenses. When you are operating in such uncertainty, who cares about regulatory tax filing. And the vast wealth of the country just keeps going into the Black hole.

Now I hear new regulators and authorities are coming up. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has recently been given a lot of teeth. So there you have another set of leeches to feed.

This is before the operations start. Once your business is up and running, all the small authorities make a point to give you the opportunity to extend your hospitality to them. They come either as small facilitation money takers or as officials who are feted and treated.

The Indian entrepreneur has always been “creative” and finds his way out of this melee of nonsense with his traditional “jugaad”. But who suffers in the end. The End customer which is the babu himself sometimes. The practice is so prevalent that some financially literate firms add a line called “Environment Management cost” to their Profit and Loss Account. This Environment Management cost is fast becoming a major cost component as is expected.

Who is to blame? The policy creators of course who mostly are the overeducated but underliterate IAS officials who in their quest to create an ideal and comprehensive system end up undermining the whole purpose of value creation.  If only it was mandatory for those deciding the policies to have come from a background of operations in those areas, the situation wouldn’t have been so desperate that all new entrepreneurs want simply to open up a business in sectors which have minimal government control ignoring the fabulous returns on traditional sectors like agriculture now being witnessed.

A view from the other side

Final placement season is approaching and understandably a lot of B-schoolers are apprehensive given that the first few hours of Day Zero can have a big impact on the kind of life one leads post MBA. Chances are that 99 out of 100 final year MBAs will not have a clue as to what to do for the rest of their lives (Ok I know most will immediately raise up their hands and say “Hey! I will set up my own Bizness you’ll see and beg to be hired”) and there’s rarely anyone who has a well-laid out path to what they want to do. The well-laid out paths hence are the ones which the suits who turn out to interview us lay down and there’s usually a scramble to tread on those paths. Oops just noticed that I digressed and this blog post was supposed to help those who were making their resumes tailor it better for the firms they desire. So back to the same.

Well I’ve only been behind the scenes of the recruitment process at a consulting firm so finance guys pls note that mortal harm may be done to your cv by taking this advice seriously. Fin never seemed as glamorous as pre-Bschool after my lifelong understanding of Debit/Credit was reversed dramatically in the first session on Fin 101. It took me one term to understand why is debit/credit different for banks than other people and five more terms passed before I could still not understand how to balance the bloody sheet. The “Unbalanced sheet” is one of those things which gives a “still-incomplete” feeling to life and makes me want to go back and balance at least one sheet properly in the Fin 101 exam in term 1. Aahh..Such Bliss just thinking of how fulfilling it will be to vanquish that great enemy!

But it won’t be mine, I know. So before I drive the rest of you away apprehensive about taking advice from a complete loser who’s sole motto in life is to balance a sheet, here goes my invaluable advice in bullet points.(One final Digression: I’m assuming all people reading this make a one pager CV in bullet points, if you don’t pls do so. Two-page CV makers in Indian Bschools are of two kinds

a. Those who want to dump in all their achievements starting from their first grade rhyming contest and also think that it’s cool to write a short story about what they did at work (Oh yeah I fixed bugs and exceeded the bug-fixing target by 300%. Those bugs were a particularly creepy kind and would’ve put Dan Brown’s “Deception Point” to shame. Was commended by my manager for the same ..blah blah..You got it rite?)

b. Those who don’t have that big a dump but still want to do it seeing other folks (Yuck!)

Hmmm..Thats not MECE(you better know what that means if you’re sitting for consulting firms!) but will hopefully convey the message to make a one-pager CV )

1. Your shortlist will be decided by around 10-15 points on your CV. I mean points and not lines. So a single point about you winning some major competition can come in two lines where you mention the competition in one line and the associated goodies (prize money, tv/print appearance, Pappus/pappis/lappus/jhappis all ) in other line. So spend time in bolstering the major points which you think boster your CV

2. Associated to the first point, we all know there’re 42 lines in a one-pager CV. Now pls don’t scratch your head searching for that last line. While perusing CVs, you won’t even know whether there’re 38 or 42 lines in the CV you read so chill if you’ve 38 or ever 36 lines

3. Associated to the first point again, try to bring those 10-15 points as upfront as possible. So if you have the academic section at top, you can club your major projects and competitions with academics of course massaging the right words

4. I remember my seniors consistently asking me to make my CV less cluttered and I consistently used to ignore them thinking the more filled up the CV looks, the better it is. Well that partly explains why I consistently got lesser shortlists. Naah, Don’t worry its not as serious as it sounds. Just don’t make it too texty or in other words don’t remove all line spacings/ borders to fit in your points. Take a printout on a normal paper or open in normal pdf without zooming to 200% and see how it looks. If its ok to read, things should be fine.

5. It’s better to be cautious as far as grammatical mistakes are concerned because there might be someone in the reviewing team who gets pissed off thinking “OMG! How can one have such silly mistakes in so important a document”. However its not that big a deal for most who’ve been on the other side not too long back

6. You might be done with your past but your past will never be done with you. It will come back to haunt you unless you’re among the lucky few who’ve topped in all exams Kindergarten onwards as the guys from the well-known institute of management down south claim themselves to be. So understand that the consultants have weightage for all parameters and academics occupy a high weightage and hence no matter how much effort you put in your CV it might just come up short on the screening radar. And to be honest, it also makes a little sense because the environment inside requires you to be on your toes most of the time which a lot of us obviously don’t do in academics thus making it easy for the faceless shortlister. Hopefully realizing this will save much heartburn for later on

7. But yeah, please do apply. It makes the recruiter feel good about himself \m/

8. Once done with your CV, don’t be afraid to flaunt it. Catch hold of any random senior (who’s got a PPO from a day zero firm) and ask him to review it. Repeat the process till they shut their hostel doors and flee the adda leaving their belongings upon hearing the thump of your feet. Strike fear into their hearts, make them shiver and give you respect! Ok, thoda jyada ho gaya, just make people review your CV

9. As an addendum to the above, stop reviews when one guy asks you to reverse a point which another guy has just changed. When that happens a few times ,it means that your CV in terms of form is near perfection and the reviewers are mouthing gobbledook to show their value addition and gyaan quotient.

10. Finally as the last point to all the awesome insights given above which I’m sure none of the gazillion websites giving gyaan on CV-making have been able to give you, Know that your job will only be as good as the best CV that you can make but realize that the best jobs in the world don’t require any CV. Understand what I mean? No? I’ll give you a hint. Think the Gan….(The following line has been Sibbalized owing to the new Indian social media policy) Hey! I was just giving a hint! #idiot^&*%^$##$*&

If Chanakya were alive today....

1. He stole from the official Magadha treasury to finance his exploits. How can he talk about corruption in Magadha

2. He used Alexander, the Great to destroy the power of the smaller kings so that Chandragupta could be the unchallenged emperor of Bharat. How can we trust someone like him to protect us from foreign powers


3. He used funds raised from businessmen to finance the education of his protégé Chrandragupta in Taxila. The businessmen did not know to what end their funds were being used. And he talks about money being siphoned away for personal purpose. Ha!


4. He used “Poison-girls” or “Vish Kanyas” to kill enemies including the illustrious Paurus. What the hell. Ethics anyone?


5. He used concubines to lay sex traps for politicians and blackmailed them. Talks about renunciation and celibacy. Bloody Hypocrite


6. Chandragupta seduced Cornelia, the daughter of Seleucus (Vassal of Alexander the Great) to further several aims including inciting the revolt of the tribesmen of Afghanistan against Seleucus. How can one play with someone’s feelings?


7. His expenditures are obscure and he has lot of fictitious accounts. He’s supposedly poor but travels in caravans with dozens of escorts. Must be investigated.


8. How can an ascetic get involved in politics? He should stick to what he does and knows best


9. He’s avenging the death of his father and has a personal agenda. Love of the country is but a façade. Don’t fall for this charlatan guys.


10. Why only Magadha? Can’t he see the corruption and decadence of other kingdoms like Kalinga, Kaikeyi, Gandhar? Why doesn’t he fight for the citizens there?


11. He’s a good man but his lieutenants are greedy power mongers. He should stay away from them


12. Chandragupta issued a statement supporting the right of Kalinga for self-determination. Down with his head! Team Chanakya wants to partition Magadha.


13. As a child he took a loan of 5 bronze shillings to pay for his father’s cremation. He paid back the loan after a year but without interest which now amounts to 100 silver shillings. He must pay that back!


14. I have credible information he’s a face for the extremist Brahmans and has their support. In fact I have a letter to prove the same

15. This Brahman will wipe out the Shudras who’ve borne the brunt of Brahman domination for centuries. He should install a Shudra king to show he’s clean

Does that ring a bell somewhere?

21st century India, 19th century governance

Few days back an incident on a train jolted my “air-conditioned” consciousness back to reality. I had booked a ticket from Jhansi to New Delhi on the Bangalore Rajdhani express. The train was to arrive around midnight in Jhansi. I had not bothered taking a print-out of the ticket as the large banner on the IRCTC website exhorted us to carry the e-ticket on laptop or mobile rather than waste precious paper, ironical given the paperwork the government is famous for. As the train arrived on the station, I realized that I did not remember my ticket berth and deciding to check my berth through the railways IVRS but I boarded the train nevertheless. Soon a TTE came up and asked me to show my ticket. As luck would have it, the IVRS system was not working. I called up my brother and asked him to tell my berth from the IRCTC website and found that in the confusion of the midnight train, I had messed up my dates and had booked for the train journey a day before.

So I was now a ticketless traveller and the nightmare began. The TTE initially appeared to empathize with my plight and said this happens quite often. However I have to pay the full penalty which after some show of calculation he announced as Rs. 4150. I said that I did not have the money. He was joined by the Train Superintendent who asked how can they make a bill without the money. I felt the blood rise to my ears. “Of course dude when I don’t have the money and the train does not stop anywhere between Jhansi and Delhi It’s you rather than I who will suggest a solution short of throwing me out of the running train” I thought. Anyway I kept silent and waited for them to suggest something. They asked me if I can get money in New Delhi, I replied in the affirmative. They asked me to write a letter addressed to the train superintendent which made me apologize for travelling in the premier train (funny to see the egos of these guys just because it’s a Rajdhani. Wonder what they’ll do when the bullet train comes somewhere around 2030) as a ticketless traveller and promise to pay the fine on embarking in New Delhi Station.

As I set down to write the letter muttering to myself that I’m not going to ask these people to “ le-de ke mamla khatam karo” influenced as I was by the Anna movement, I was surprised at the fine amount since the ticket costs around 700 and they were talking almost 6 times the amount. I asked the same and they told in a Rajdhani it’s a rule to take the amount of the full train journey regardless of where you board. Now all this “It’s a Rajdhani!” I knew was total hogwash as I was somewhat acquainted with the procedure of ticketless travel and hence asked them to show me the rule where it was written. This triggered off stage 2 of the nightmare.

Slighted as they were by my refusal to pay a bribe and to lick up their ego, they unleashed a tirade of threats. They began taunting me that you are showing yourself as very educated and talk about rules, we’ll show you what the rules are. The train superintendent came with a 19th century walkie-talkie and said if I put in a word, the train will stop right here and you’ll be left in the jungle. He said I can call up the railway police and tell them that this guy has boarded from somewhere in the middle and is a security threat. You will have to make several rounds to the magistrate and pay many more fines just for turning up besides spending 6 months in jail for ticketless travel. Your career will be put on the line because a FIR will be registered against you. They even threatened to put false charges of me having assaulted the TTE and put in custody immediately. There were some pantry car workers there and they said we’ll be witnesses to the same.

This was about the substance of their diatribe, the less said about the form the better it is. Now when I look back at it, most of it was empty threat but at the spur of the moment a guy looks to err on the side of the caution. I told them that Rs 1000 was all I had and if that’s fine with you then take it otherwise you can do whatever you want. They said 1000 is not enough and I’ve to pay the full amount right now otherwise face the music. Ultimately I sat down and waited for their tongue-lashing to finish. After about an hour, they called me up and in an extraordinary act of generosity laced with a holier-than-thou attitude let me off for Rs 500 only. They concluded their ego-opera by giving sermons about how as a young man I should respect elders and officials and keep this lesson in mind all my life.

So here I was, another Aam-Aadmi who made a genuine mistake and tried to rectify it honestly but was brow-beaten to meekness and made to accept the over lordship of the government official. It reminded me of the scene in Matrix Revolutions where Neo tries to fight the trainman in the station and is knocked down by the latter who asserts “You don’t realize! I’m the Trainman and over here I’m God”. All those who say to eliminate corruption we must stop paying bribes, do you realize the trouble is much greater if you decide not to pay bribe. Try saying to a policeman who has caught you for parking violation and is demanding a bribe that you are ready to pay the challan and see how the next one hour becomes a complete hell. Should we keep fighting like this each and every time a petty officer decides to overstep his mandate

The problem lies in the way the system has been designed to grant over-reaching powers to the petty government functionary. It gives incredible discretionary powers to those who do not even know how to do their job properly and puts the common man (one without a lal batti, politico or their acolytes) totally at their mercy. This is nothing but a vestige of the colonial system something which team Anna Hazare is trying to battle through the Lokpal which will give a grievance redressal system to us (I would surely have complained to the Lokpal had it existed no matter if any action was taken). It creates a psychological pressure on the functionaries to do their duty properly even if action is taken on one of them. Indians by nature are a fearful and law abiding lot and no matter whatever the odds of them being punished, they won’t take the risk. Problem is right now the odds are absolutely zero (or somewhere nearby). It is also the reason why most of those who oppose the Lokpal are either those whose cash flow will be impacted by it (politicos, bureaucrats) or those who haven’t had an interface with the government empowered by its myriad rules and its veil of secrecy. All those who say ‘Aal is well’ with the current governance system should have at least one such encounter with the government and it is sure to change their positions as surely as Narayan Murthy’s mind was changed about socialism when he was arrested for frivolous reasons in Bulgaria.

An open letter to Shri Kejriwalji

Shri Arvind Kejriwalji

This letter is occasioned by a comparison I saw of you and Rahul Gandhi with your respective qualifications followed by the thought-provoking caption "Who is the leader of young India?" It set off a chain of thought in my mind about the point-by-point comparison between your movement and the Congress. Both have a Gandhi at the helm. One is led by a new-age Gandhian who has galvanized the country by his sheer moral force while the other is an Italian import who is using the Gandhi surname to make a mockery of our country. Both the leaders are surrounded by close aides. One set of aides are internationally renowned soldiers of modern India having won Ramon Magasasay awards and true epitomes of new-India aspirations while the others are a set of yes-men who've risen to the top by sheer sycophancy. Both claim to be secular while one is truly secular the other is pseudo as evidenced by the innumerable times they've attempted to divide our country on religious and caste lines and even led a major pogrom against the sikh community. Yet the former today is sitting on the streets, hungry, disillusioned and fighting for basic rights (as the right to live righteously) while the latter is making the most of their remaining time in office by filling their coffers and swiss accounts. Doesn't the irony hit you as hard as it hits most of us?

I'm sure it does. And i'm sure you feel the same anguish as most of us do ruled by a government which is secure in the knowledge that their alternatives are so vastly inferior that come-what-may they're going to be voted back. The fact of the matter is even if your recommendations are accepted, the implementation will be shoddy and will render the lokpal useless. The funding will be under control of finance ministry. The congress will continue their dirty games till people just give up in frustation. Not if you decide to do something which many people have been urging you to. Enter politics yourself, not in individual capacity but as an organization. The incredible support you're getting where people are taking leaves from their jobs, leaving their work on their farms to support you is definitely transferable into votes. Here's a 5-point plan of action for the same

1. Agenda and name: The party should have a single point agenda of removing corruption. It is a much larger issue than eradicating the bribe taken by the RTO clerk for giving your license. It will improve each and every aspect of our lives from government schemes reaching the BPL families to improving our security apparatus as our political leaders will be prevented from being on the rolls of foreign intelligence agencies. As they say, money is the root of all evil. Remove corrupt money as the raison'd'etre of the political system and everything will change for the better. Let the name be JanLokpal party as the rallying call for millions of people who came out on the streets.
   
2. People: Select 500 people through a committee chaired by Anna,Ms Bedi and yourself. I refuse to believe that out of the millions of your supporters, you won't be able to find 500 worthy people to contest elections. Wherever possible, the candidates should be selected who know the local language of the constituency and belong there.
3. Funding: Don't be fooled by the gargantuan sums being spent by the political parties to win elections. They have to do that because liquor flows like water, cash is distributed like mandir prasad, people have to be paid even to attend the rallies of so-called leaders like Sonia Gandhi. They spend so much because the autos carry loudspeakers beseeching people to vote in their favor, they've to put up huge hoardings and distribute pamphlets. Your party does not have to do any of that because it will have the moral force of Anna backing you. Just go and tell the people that the party will remove corruption come what may and see how the people respond. One only needs a few lakhs to do the basic stuff and win in a constituency
   
4. Organization: Bring under your umbrella all the NGOs and civil society activists who have a lot of credibility associated with them. NGOs are unparalled in their reach and will take your message where the arrogant snots of the congress party will not dare to venture. Importantly bring Baba Ramdev on board and leverage his organization which is spread in every nook-and-corner of the country. Ramdev's primary problem was he did not have the benefit of master strategists like you and took a lot of decisions which were taken from the heart and went down wrong with the people.
   
5. Media: Well what can i say here. You are the darling of the media with some exceptions. Witness the coverage the media gives to some unconventional aspiring politicians like they gave to Meera Sanyal (one of India's top banking professionals). Rest assured you'll be hogging as much of the limelight as you're doing now and will not need any of the full-page advertisements by political parties which they recover once they come to power.

In conclusion, the people coming to the rally (myself included) are not coming for a single bill. They're disgusted with the current political system. But they see no way out of it. Come the next election, we'll be saddled with the devil's alternative between thief and robber. And most of us will stay indoors and give the familiar reason for not voting. You owe it on us and the nation to bring this movement to its logical end. Make no mistake, the politicos will only listen to their ilk. The congress will not dare to do to the BJP what they did to Ramdev and you. Win 60 seats in LS and see how the tables turn with the congress beseeching you for support. Even if Anna tours 100 constituencies, you're sure to win atleast 50. In fact the close aides will win from any constituency even from Amethi and Bellary. Mahatma Gandhi was powerful largely because he headed a political organization which could wreck the legislature from within. Your true place is in the law-making body of the nation and in our hearts and not as destitutes on streets and maidans