Oddvani and the eno-effect

The PM to be, L.K.Odd-vani is a great movie buff and like most stereotypical Hindi film characters is a hopeless blusterer. In last many posts I had talked about his and BJP's poll strategy of passing the Indo-Pak friendship lollypop to the minorities and the feel-good lollypop to the majority urban masses. This he hopes can work wonders. So founded is his view that he has started talking about eno-effect to the Ayodhya and Kashmir issue in a single go. Ayodhya he says will be solved in a jiffy after the elections, he feels (and the non-partisan media has fueled this feeling) the cricket-diplomacy will woe the Muslim janata at home to keep mum while they build the Ram temple, exactly where they want to, and the Muslims on the other side of the LOC will gleefully surrender POK to India. If the record of Indian wins in limited over cricket over Pakistan were not dismal he would perhaps have solved the Kashmir Issue on the basis of who wins the rubber.

I wonder what keeps people from reckoning the real facts. Vir Sanghvi said in his recent column that Mian Mussarraf's recurrent Kashmir-is-the-core-issue rhetoric is but natural considering the military-man-at-the core he is. A man trained to fight Indians and the author of Kargil cannot shed his true skin overnight. Kashmir is the issue on which Indian and Paki hukmarans have been carrying their bread and butter on. In the breeze of friendship-series Sanghvi however has been too greedy to predict that the current atmosphere is an indication that the two countries will be bhai-bhai again, if we just neglect the General. I have not an iota of doubt that the atmosphere of disbelief and hatred are born out of the diplomatic measures, this is what politicians want. But it also doesn't mean that Kashmir issue can be solved in 6 seconds. Former Army Chief Gen S Padmanabhan has been belligerent, but much more practical in his book where he predicts only a military solution to the problem.

My clear view on this is: either India goes ahead for a closed-door talk with Pakistan (the very way it is progressing with China, an NDTV report had indicated few months back that China was negotiating a secret deal to lay hands on some portion of Indian territory of Aksai Chin in lieu of Sikkim being regarded as integral part of India), media has ruined many a summits, and decide on the LOC being converted to International border and end this once and for all or put a full stop to this friendship drama and fight it out. The latter would demand guts on part of India to "checkmate the US", as Padmanabhan puts it, which, I am sorry to say, we never had.

Resonating Jibes - 2

Vir Sanghvi must be having a premonition that led him to jot very similar views in his column Indian Muslims and Pakistan that I expressed in this post in my Hindi blog about how BJP strategists think that the lollypop of Indo-Pak friendship can lure Muslim voters. However in his attempt to being non-partisan he brushes-aside Odd-vani's remarks as involuntary, so uncharacteristic of him. Vir says:

At a sub-conscious level, some Indians make the simplistic assumption that because (nearly) all Pakistanis are Muslims, so all (Indian) Muslims must be Pakistanis in their hearts.

Another HT columnist Pankaj Vohra resonates the views I expressed here, in his column Advani's yatra proves BJP has two mascots.

The decision of deputy prime minister L.K. Advani to begin yet another yatra has clearly demonstrated that the BJP is not a "one-man party." While Atal Bihari Vajpayee is being projected by the NDA as its sole leader, the BJP apparently wants to ensure that Advani's status as the undisputed second-in-command doesn't go unnoticed even if it amounts to having two mascots for the party, something which may not be to the liking of the numero uno.

TV and social obligations

Talking of Television there are clearly two divisions in the Indian context. On one side there is the state-owned Doordarshan (DD) and on the other the herd of satellite TV channels. The distinction off course is in the roots. DD have been traditionally serving as the mouth-piece of the ruling party and their filthy purpose. But if you could ignore this motive you can clearly say that there still a lot of programming that DD does which satellite channels cannot even think of leaping into. Can you imagine watching a program for framers like "Krishi Darshan", or "National Program of Dance" on a satellite TV channel. I am precisely talking about the social obligations of mass-media.

For satellite TV channels the compulsions are obvious. In the race for TRP and revenues you have no other option but to run-rerun saas-bahoo tear jerkers and those raunchy remix videos. Doordarshan after all has the luxury of grants and subsidies and what not. Still after the advent of Prasaar Bharti even DD has to earn its bread and you can clearly see the shift in focus as my favorite vrind-gaan and teleplays bite the dust. Thank goodness though, some good ness may still be left in DD.

One of the recent programmes that I liked and which has been immensely popular is the award winning thriller Jasoos Vijay that concentrates on AIDS awareness and issues related to gender-discrimination. Funded by BBC and NACO, the producers have roped in Om Puri as the anchor. The format is very interactive, targeted at the rural audience and viewers can even win pries by guessing the criminal. What is I like about the serial is the right mix of entertainment and education. In the backdrop of the adventure and masala the message is conveyed in a candid-local lingo. An interesting aspect of the serial is the central detective character, played by Khandakar Adil, who has been depicted as being HIV+ himself. As the story progresses with his love for Gauri the serial will deal with a touchy issue on the subject, should an HIV+ person given the right to marry. The serial has been dubbed in various regional languages and the recent buzz says that the series would now be shown in Thailand and Cambodia too.

If you like such serials there is another AIDS awareness program called Haath se haath mila, that takes young people on board two special buses that will travel to cities, towns and villages. Their primary aim would be to persuade people to use condoms. Kudos to the producers!

Pre poll deception

Praful Bidwai writes in his column about BJP's poll strategy:

Vajpayee must pave the way for the 2 per cent-rating man to take over. The BJP knows Advani is like Dick Cheney, equally devious, but more rabble-rousing and demagogic, who cannot match Bush’s ratings. Therefore, gullible sections of the public and the BJP’s upper middle-class supporters are being cajoled to vote for Vajpayee, only to install Advani as PM, if not today, then tomorrow.

I had raised this apprehension before in my this post quoting noted writer Kamleshwar's view. In my view not only the "gullible" janata even sections of BJP might be day dreaming about a government under Atalji; look at what the young recruits like Varun Gandhi are thinking. But they will be sorry after the elections, for sure. Facts speak for themselves. Advani has suddenly been touted by a section of media as the new "iron-man", Hindustan Times even profiles him as "the Primer Minister to be". His rath-yatra has been very cleverly renamed to "Bharat-Uday yatra" after Atalji nodded in disagreement to the use of his name in the campaign again (remember his tyre-retire rhetoric resenting Venky Naidu's statement that caused an internal furor when he declared that the next election will be fought with Advani. as focal-point). While I am not contesting on who BJP should make the PM, the strategy actually mocks their own view on declaring a leader before the elections, a fact on which they have been teasing Congress for long. But even in their own case they are still declaring a "mask" PM. For the common man it's like ordering a cockatoo at the pet store and getting a hyena delivered later.

Savings vs consumerism

With my investments I have been hitherto happily content, alike one third of Indian population, keeping the perils of share-bazaar out of the purview. A recent print article by Vishnudutt Nagar provoked me to wonder on the irony of this. People like me who rely on small-saving schemes, saving accounts and term-deposits have been of the opinion that the money is not risked at any point and that banks were pious institutions that encourage the notion of "savings" amongst common janata. Current trends belie this notion. Nagar says that in last 2 years banks have actually reduced interest rates on deposits and saving accounts by as much as 26%. On the contrary the lending rates have been dropped only by 4.2%. Obviously the intention is to ensure that the industries get loans at lower interest rates, but they it seems have been looking at other greener pastures.

Coming bank to the point of the concept of savings that banks were supposed to instill, the institutions are infact doing the very opposite. In the last 4 years interest rates on small saving and term deposit schemes have been slashed by 4%, a fact detrimental for the middle income groups and retired individuals. Instead the banks are now resorting to providing attractive interest rates on loans to purchase luxury items like cars. Besides promoting the interest of the consumerist culture the banks are also participating in share markets inviting unnecessary risk and instability. Is there any safer place left for my investments?

A Nation Betrayed?

Congress has a supposedly fitting reply to the India Shining campaign of BJP, they now have a website called A Nation Betrayed which highlights the antonym; though I wonder what took so long to wake them up. Apparently the site is put up by a youth wing of the party indicating that the top-ripe-brass is still fast asleep and lacks the professional look for apparent reasons. Amongst the prominent columnists on the site are Mani Shankar Aiyar and Salman Khurshid, who else. Wonder again, who would have put the right words in right mouth without these copy-writers.

Meanwhile the migration-game continues and BJP has suddenly emerged as the best reaper in the opportunism-bazaar where all kinds of migratory mix are available, most of them deprived-sidelined in their own flocks and going through the plights of the middle-age-crisis. Feel-good factor working or not BJP is has good deal of mastery on propagating the "deal-good" factor in Indian polity. So apart from Maneka/Varun Gandhis, Nazma Heptullah, Arif Mohammad Khan and Diggi Raja's hitherto non-entity bro you have Arjun Singh's son jumping in. Among others, Prafull Mahanta, Bhupen Hazarika, Bangarappa and Om Prakash Chautala's brother are following suit. Who next? Rahul Gandhi?