Bhimsen Joshi: An Obituary by Vinay Hardikar

This is the end of an Era. Truly. No other occasion would deserve the cliched phrase better! Bhimsen Joshi the colossus is no more. The body that sustained a professional career of six decades has finally given way to the laws of mortality; the music which was the food of life for Bhimsen shall live on in the minds of his countless fans; even his critics would be wondering whether such unparalleled achievement will ever be possible in the world of Hindustani Classical Music.

The greatest thing about Bhimsen was that he was a singer by choice; he made the choice at a very tender age and then cut off all options. Born into a lower middle class family at Gadag he understood his parents’ inability to support him and went his own way in search of music and a Guru. He stayed not to buy the railway tickets nor did he stop to seek patronage. Like Shakespeare, he had these lost years when none but he knew that a great musician was in the making. Praised be the coincidence when he met Pt Vinayakrao Patwardhan, a musical missionary groomed by the great Vishnu Digambar Paluskar in what is now Pakistan! It was Vinayakrao who told Bhimsen that he did not have to look for a Guru so far from home—Rambhau Kundgolkar, the great Savai Gandharva whom Bhimsen later immortalized by
the Savai Gandharva Music Festival in Pune was right next door at Kundgol in Dharwad district. Bhimsen wasted no time and came to Kundgol; he had found his mentor.

Who has the cleanest hands in Indian Politics?

A PJ to wash off the Monday morning blues:

Question: Who has the cleanest hands in Indian politics?

Answer: Sharad Pawar, because he washes his hands off every now and then:

1.      On escalating food prices
2.      On his proteges like Lalit Modi 
3.       On the Bt Brinjal row
4.      On farmer suicides
5.      Etc. etc.

Constituencies as family heirloom

I am eagerly waiting for Patrick French’s new book on post-Independence India (and the early reviews are encouraging). From an excerpt in Outlook magazine, it appears that one important theme in the book is the hereditary nature of Indian politics. We’ve seen countless examples in the recent past about how Indian politicians promote their offspring, but this report, compiled by Mr. French and his associates, shows how deep the malaise goes. Some highlights:

•          68% of Indian MPs under the age of forty come from political families
•           28% of Indian MPs come from political families
•           100% of Indian MPs below the age of thirty are from political families
•           70% of women MPs come from political families

It’s worse when it comes to start-ups founded by regional satraps. The Nationalist Congress party, backed by allegedly India’s biggest venture capitalist Sharad Pawar, has seven (out of nice) MPs that have entered politics through family connections. All five MPs of the RLD, promoted by politician-comedian Lalu Prasad, come from political families.

Mr. French and his associates have also provided the dataset that lists every Indian MP (from the Lok Sabha), details like his/her age, sex, political background and notes. The dataset is worth reading and analyzing in its entirety, and we hope to bring you more details/comments in the coming weeks.

Mr. French also had this to say when asked whether Indian politics would become completely hereditary:

“I was quite surprised by the results when I did that survey of the Lok Sabha. I did not expect the data to be so overwhelming—the  fact that, for example, every MP under the age of 30 is hereditary. I don’t think it’s a bad thing having political families in any democracy. The problem really is the scale of what is happening. For instance, the quite inspiring grassroots leaders who came up in the past—certainly in the Congress—would have no chance of winning a ticket for a Lok Sabha seat now. You have this ironic situation where democracy is deeply entrenched and yet, at the same time, for the top reaches of certain parties, you have to be the son or daughter of an existing leader in order to get anywhere.”

Personally, though I am amused by the extent of the rot, I am not shocked. The lines of mafia, business and politics have blurred in the past two decades, and the first two professions run deeply in families, so it’s no surprise that our politicians would emulate the ‘best practices’ from these. A vast majority of Indian politicians have interests in real-estate, which necessitates some allegiance to organized crime.  Most of our successful politicians also run business empires, and it is natural that to protect the interests of the family, the heirlooms like parliamentary constituencies are passed on: it’s part of the family business, and our politicians are at least being good fathers. (For instance, who can fault Karunanidhi for being a bad father? Mr. Karunanidhi has fathered several children from three wives, and has settled for nothing but the best for them: one he made a Union Fertilizers minister, another a deputy CM, yet one another a Rajya Sabha MP. Even distant relatives like grand-nephews get to become cabinet ministers and run large TV networks.)

The other reason is India’s rapid journey towards retracing its roots, such as Feudalism. But more on that later.

Rise of a Salesman and A Manager of Skaters: Two Indian stories

Two extraordinary stories of ordinary Indian villagers whose lives were transformed in the past twenty years:

Story 1:

“Twenty years ago, he was a salesman in Pallapatti village in Salem district, knocking at doors to sell sarees on 10 instalments. Later, he sold radios and tape recorders. Unable to make ends meet, he migrated to Perambalur, where he met AIADMK’s Varathur Arunachalam. This was his stroke of luck, his key to fame and fortune. Arunachalam introduced him to Raja, a small-time DMK politician. Both were ambitious and ready to take risks. It was Raja who told him to venture into real estate. With small investments on both sides, they grew together. Today Batcha’s real estate empire is worth more than Rs. 2,000 crore.”

Story 2:

“He discovered his inferiority at school, noticing that the Jaiswals and Agarwals and Guptas, the children of merchants and shopkeepers, bought 2-rupee ice creams at recess, while his mohalla friends bought the 50-paise kind. He realized that when guest speakers came to the school, the children of daily-wages people were rarely chosen to introduce them. He noticed that at the wedding of a big man in Bhiwapur, he had to wait until the “guests” had eaten. “You come afterward,” he remembered being scolded. He used to watch his classmates roar into the schoolyard on the backs of their parents’ motorcycles. He did not even have the two modes of transportation below motorcycles on the Indian staircase of affluence: the bicycle and shoes. He wore no footwear until ninth grade. “Whenever I saw other people wearing expensive shoes and socks and slippers, I used to get very angry, and I felt very bad,” he said. “Why am I not getting all these things? Why only I don’t have all these things? And at that time I decided that I will earn great money, and I will remove my poverty. I considered poverty as a disease.”

….

I began to see self-invention as a theme of India’s unfolding drama. Misal, the shoeless son of a porter, was the manager of an Indian roller-skating team, was going to Hong Kong, was teaching at six colleges and was building a house.”

The first story is depressingly familiar: in a corrupt society like India, those with access to scum like A Raja (who in turn thrive because of their access to the likes of Kanimozhi or Karunanidhi) are more likely to make it big – you might be a humble saree-salesman in a remote hamlet in India, but with evil on your side, there’s nothing to hold you back – I am sure Sadiq Batcha will only consolidate his empire and one day, take the natural leap from crime/business to politics, and one day be a lawmaker.

The second story fills me with hope: it shows that if you continue to back yourselves and tap the opportunities that a liberalizing India has begun to present, you might rise. You won’t be a business tycoon like Sadiq Batcha, for sure, nor enter lucrative businesses like being a people’s representative, but you could still live a life of dignity and ambition. And own the first motor vehicle in the history of your family.

“On his 21st birthday, in September 2002, he [Misal, the protagonist of the second story] bought a motorcycle. It was the first motorized vehicle owned in the history of his family. He drove it from the showroom to his home and took his mother for a spin around the village. “She didn’t say anything,” he recalled. “She just cried. And she said, ‘Take care of the bike.’ ”

It's our turn to eat

Writer Sanjeev Sanyal states that India’s elite have lost their credibility:

"Almost anyone in a position of power in India, including well-known print and television journalists, is now viewed with suspicion. This is occurring at a time when economic growth is pulling a young and upwardly mobile population into the urban middle class. This new middle class is no longer constrained by the patronage systems of the village, but it also does not enjoy the cozy relationship that links the old middle class with the elite. Could this crisis of the elite trigger India’s own Tiananmen Square moment?"

Mr. Sanyal notes examples from various societies, like Britain in 1880 and US in 1880-1890,  which were characterized by greed and corruption, and wonders whether India is headed for a similar turn-around:

"Even adjusted for purchasing power, India’s middle class today probably totals no more than 70 million (far smaller than is generally assumed). But, in the coming decade, today’s established middle class will be swamped by newcomers working their way up from the country’s slums, small towns, and villages.

..

It is impossible to predict when the shift will happen or what form it will take. Given India’s democratic traditions, it is likely that the change will be peaceful. One possibility is that it will take place province by province – the previously ungovernable state of Bihar being a prime example."

While I hope this happens, I am not so sure: the Indian elite have already changed, and barring notable exceptions, the successors have been worse. The politicians gaining center stage post the Mandal reforms of the early 1990s, such as Lalu Prasad Yadav and the tainted chief minister of Karanakata, BS Yeddyurappa , have further muddled the waters. The corporates gaining prominence post the economic reforms of 1991 have crony capitalization to thank for their rise. Moreover, the Reddy mafia in Karnataka have demonstrated how easy it is to blend New Money with a new style of electoral politics. And the celebration of having a Dalit as the Chief Justice of India for the first time  (Balakrishnan) has been replaced by dismay over corruption allegations that stagger the mind.

India’s elite might thus be democratized: social groups previously kept away from power, money and prestige now assert their rights, but in doing so, seem to be eager to outdo the excesses and crimes of the previous generation. We are thus close to enacting the scenario described by Michela Wrong in her book It’s Our Turn To Eat, where the three major Kenyan tribes take their turns to ravage whatever little has been left of the Kenyan economy: India seems to be producing an assembly line of elite that are corrupt, discredited and unreliable.

Wikibribes

One reason for the astonishing success of Wikileaks has been its reliance on (mostly anonymous) sources for its content: anyone can upload a discriminating document/evidence. The document, if it passes the scrutiny of a group of reviewers, is posted at the website. The site, like other social media outlets, thus relies on crowdsourcing: its fundamental task (of reporting) is outsourced to a task.

The crowdsourcing model, despite having attracted formidable criticism, has seen other notable successes, the obvious and well-known examples being Wikipedia and the Linux operating system. The ‘wiki’ concept can thus be successfully be applied to various fields (Wikileaks has already seen several spin-offs). It was therefore only a matter of time before a ‘Wikibribes’ appeared, and given that corruption is India’s national sport, it was logical that such a site appeared out of India. It’s also fitting that the site would originate from Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka, which the Outlook magazine called ‘India’s most corrupt state’.

We are therefore pleased to welcome India’s own ‘Wikibribes’, at ipaidabribe.com, a website created by T. Raghunandan, a retired IAS officer, where we can post incidents where we were forced to pay bribes. The site has already seen more than 2600 bribery reports – some as high as 50 lakh rupees, some as low as five rupees. The bribery reports, created by ordinary people, make for disgusting reading, and confirm how deep the rots of corruption have seeped in.

While I am skeptical about whether the site could achieve anything, given how entrenched corruption is in our DNA, I laud the intent of its founder and wish the project good luck. Don’t hope for citing of scum like A Raja or Suresh Kalmadi, but do visit the site.

(ipaidabribe reference from Jason Burke).

RTI Deaths

Jason Burke pays tribute to RTI Martyrs: social activists murdered by mafia exposed by these activists. Last year alone, there have been ten recorded RTI deaths, an occurrence India’s Law minister Veerappa Moliy brushed aside by terming them “isolated cases.”

Given the apathy, no wonder this happened.

India’s best investigative journalist…

…is CAG, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, as per this incisive essay by Vinod K. Jose on the state of India’s journalism. Mr. Jose writes:

“With television leading the way, style has definitively vanquished substance—and journalism has acquired the trappings of a glamourous profession, one that trades in images, sensationalism and sound bytes instead of analysis or investigation. Newspapers and magazines now compete to be as shallow and superficial as their TV counterparts, while young journalists angle for jobs in front of the camera. Journalism schools devote more and more time to training students on the technical business of television production at the cost of foundational courses in political science and history. Television’s emergence as the dominant news medium has transformed print media as well: reporters spent less time reporting each story, while the stories themselves get shorter and shorter. All one needs today to be a ‘success’ in print journalism is the basic capacity to write a sentence in English and a handful of contacts and official sources.

As a result, the best investigative journalist in the country today is the CAG—the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.”

The entire essay is here.