Decline

Who was the winner of Maharashtra Assembly elections? Congress-NCP? MNS? The democracy, as is fashionably said after every election in India?

All of them. But there was another winner: fourth pillar of the democracy. Most major Marathi newspapers, allegedly, offered "packages" to candidates for publishing reports of the campaign. Not just favourable reports, but any report. Those who weren't ready to pay, didn't get any coverage. Most candidates paid, says P. Sainath.

On reading Sainath's article, Govind Talwalkar (says Prahar), the legendary former editor of Maharashtra Times, wrote to a friend, saying that CBI needed to probe this.

What would CBI probe, Govindrao? Journalists are spineless, and readers stupid. Not a single senior Marathi journalist (exception: Kumar Ketkar) spoke out against this. (subject to correction.)

Narendra Bodke, a former journalist, recently wrote about how Marathi editors gradually lost their authority. He called it "the decline of the editors". I objected to the title, for I felt that it was over-dramatic.

Now I am tempted to borrow Bodke's title. This is a decline. RIP, Jambhekar, Agarkar, Atre. Marathi journalism has moved on.

Beauty In The Corridor of Power

You can run into beauty in most unexpected ways. I was at the Vidhan-Bhavan (state Assembly building) the other day. Congress MLA were to meet there, to elect the chief minister.

The building sucks. For one, the design is extremely dreary. I guess most buildings of the 60s are like that. There is no beauty, they look like concrete cakes in different geometrical shapes. Vidhan Bhavan also sucks because of the people who inhabit it: legislators and bureaucrats.

I was terribly bored. The meeting was underway, press wasn't allowed inside. What to do? I stepped into the circular outer corridor. And for the first time I took in (I've been to Vidhan Bhavan before this) the wallpapers lining it.

Wallpapers bear photographs of Ajanta - Ellora paintings and sculptures. One sculpture has a god -- Shiva, perhaps -- and his consort. The consort has wonderfully shaped breasts -- bare. God's hand goes around her back, and touches the rim of the breast gently.

Oh the erotic beauty of it! What were those times like when they could celebrate the nude beauty so openly? And do the current tenants of the building ever notice it?

Nightmare Arrives

Today's Loksatta reports:

Chandrapur, October 24: Perturbed by the massacre of 17 of their colleagues by naxalites on October 8, police have taken to thrashing the innocent villagers in the area. Some twenty villagers have been seriously injured in this torture- under- the- guise- of- questioning.

....One day before the massacre, naxalites had camped in the forest near the vilage of Murangal. Presuming that villagers must have been aware of it, police are summoning them to police station one by one, and beating them mercilessly.

....A 17-year-old boy was detained by police on October 17. Since then, nothing is known about his whereabouts.

So now the state, with the best of the intentions, has turned sinner. It is matching the brutality of naxalites. I don't imagine that sympathizers of naxalites among the villagers would be as hardened as professional criminals. It should be possible to get information from them -- if they have any -- through sustained grilling, without resorting to third degree.

But this won't happen. Police would get mad after every massacre of their colleagues. They would be impatient for information. Beating the hell out of a defenceless villager is so easy, and time-saving. Also, police would want to punish villagers, because Naxalites would be hard to get hands on. Someone must pay for killing police. And the victim of interrogation would be tempted to rat on other innocent men, to escape the next kick of jackboots in the guts.

Top officers won't interfere, they wouldn't identify with the 17-year-old boy whose only crime is that he lives in the area where naxalites operate. Top officers do not conduct interrogation themselves. They only want results, information. And do the naxalite leaders understand what villages in the red corridor have in store for them, now that state has vowed to take the battle to enemy's camp? Villagers happen to live in the enemy's camp. I don't think Maoist leadership cares about these villagers; it only cares about its own ideas of the world, of the revolution.

Nightmare, like the one Punjab lived through in the 80s, and Kashmir valley is still living through, has arrived in Dandakaranya.

Dear Rahul

Dear Rahul Gandhi,

I remember reading somewhere that you wanted to promote internal democracy in Congress.

Today, newly elected Cong MLAs of Maharashtra held a meeting. It was off-limits for media.

After half-an-hour, they came out. All they had done was to pass a resolution authorising your mother, alias High Command, to choose the next Chief Minister.

If you want to strengthen democracy within the party, why not start with asking these guys to pick the CM themselves? Barring Praniti Shinde (Chick! Looks like first-year college girl.
I am ready to overlook the foren accent.) and few other greenhorns, most of them are grown-up men and (very few) women. One of them -- S R Patil from Shirol -- is ninety!

What do you say?

Fuhrer In Bandra Bunker

"Maharashtrian minds have deadened": Bal Thackeray's paper says today. Why? Because Maharashtrians ditched Sena, and voted for MNS. I can understand the despair. Even Shivaji Park -- where Thackeray once held Marathi masses in thrall year after year -- is no more a Shiv Sena pocket borough. MNS candidate won there.

But this ranting: you ditched us, your minds are dead -- doesn't it remind one of Hitler's last days in the Berlin bunker? After leading Germany to destruction, he blamed the German people for reverses in the War. They were not dedicated enough, he reportedly said.

Of course, Thackeray, luckily, was not 1/100th as damaging as the Fuhrer. But he shares the mindset, to an extent.

Enjoy your beer, Balasaheb. And shut up.

Raja, Mhetre And We

Do our rulers have any sense of propriety in public life?

CBI yesterday raided the Department of Telecom office(s). It suspects that spectrum was sold cheap in 2008. Allegedly, there was no real competitive bidding; it was sold on "first come first served" basis. Raja was telecom minister then too. (Link to FT report here.)

It's not possible that Raja was not aware of the things happening under his nose. He doesn't claim so, instead he says that nothing hanky-panky happened in the sale.

Let's assume he is speaking the truth. Ministers are, as a rule, corrupt, but let's assume he is a noble exception. I don't expect a minister to resign merely in the face of allegations. Lal Bahadur Shastri once resigned as a railway minister over an accident; but he belonged to a different species of men.

But now CBI had conducted raids. And what is CBI? It is, as foreign papers say, "federal investigation agency". It's an arm of the "federal" government, just as Raja is a "federal" minister.

So an arm of the government, of which he is a part, suspects there was corruption, and still Raja says he need not resign. What do you call it? Irony doesn't describe it adequately. What message this will send out to outside world?

Postscript: This reminds me of Mhetre affair. In 2006, Siddharam Mhetre was minister of state for home in Maharashtra cabinet. (He lost in this election.)

D K Rao, gangster Chhota Rajan's henchman, was kept in Aurthur Road jail then. Police learnt that Rao had a cellphone, and he was in contact with Rajan and others from inside the jail. Instead of seizing the phone, police tapped it for three months.

The transcript of conversations -- several hundred pages of it -- was later produced in the court, as an evidence. It revealed that Rao knew Mhetre. In one chat-session with Rajan, Rao refers to a "meeting" at Mhetre's bungalow.

Under MCOCA, this was enough to chargesheet Mhetre. No such thing happened. In India, we don't expect that. But shouldn't the minister have at least resigned? No, said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister. "Nobody is guilty untill proven in the court," he said.

Hello? I said to myself on reading this. It was your prosecution that had presented this evidence. Did it put it before the court without believing it?

Papers put the story on Mhetre's underworld links on the front page, but no journalist ever put the aforesaid question to Vilasrao. Either they missed the twisted logic of his reply, or they did not want to inconvenience him.

Perhaps our society has lost the sense of propriety. Why blame the rulers?

Thackeray's 13

Venerable Balasaheb Thackeray gave interview to Sudhir Gadgil a few days before the polls. Polls were on 13th, and the old man said: 13 is my lucky number. My grandson was born on 13th. Sena was founded on 13th. So I believe this 13th will bring us good results.

Sure enough. Nephew Raj's party bagged 13 seats.

Results

What was Cong-NCP's biggest achievement in Maharashtra? It was winning `09 assembly election , after five years of doing-nothing, which was preceded by another five years of doing-nothing.

In another five years, it is possible that 1. Cong-NCP will start performing OR 2. They won't, but Raj will eat into Sena's base in such a way that latter will cease to be in the reckoning. So Sena-BJP won't benefit from government's non-performance.

At the centre too, Congress is sitting pretty. The beginning of a new Only-Congress-Can-Rule era?

11th

Shekhar Gupta, in today's IE: "Take out Mumbai, and Maharashtra ranks 11th among the states."

Needs no comment. But who all are ahead of us? I am curious.

Of Importance

From Indian Express:
Bollywood actor Salman Khan wonders why the differences between him and Shah Rukh Khan are being given "national importance".
"We do not talk to each other but why make a national issue out of it", asked Salman.
"We are not like India and Pakistan that the issue is given so much importance and priority. There are other things and issues to focus on as well," said Khan.

I totally agree. And both of you are not much of actors. (Though SRK can be called an actor, if juxtaposed with you.) Ever wondered how Bollywood made national superstars out of you two?

Om-lette Ki Pyaasi

Sanjay Srivastav, when asked who is the most popular figure in Indian porn, says:

The woman is often a whisky-drinking, cigarette-smoking, pillion rider with legs astride who loves to eat omelettes—an object of both desire and anxiety. (Courtesy Outlook)

I have yet to see omelet-loving pillion rider in Indian pornowood. Pornowood: n. Porn Films Industry and it's productions. Word coined by yours sincerely as he writes this post. Hope Shakeela doesn't mind -- unlike Amitabh Bachhan, who terribly minds it if you call Hindi film industry Bollywood.

Don't ask who is Shakeela. Not Chhota Shakeel's sister, no.

Bond The Man-eater

Ruskin Bond in Outlook:

And the picture of the ---- carried this line: “Well-known writer Ruskin Bond at work in Mussoorie.” Well-wishers wanted to know if I always worked in a supine position with my jaws hanging open....

A lovely piece.

LakeSide Dog

1. A dog, I saw, sitting by the lake's side,
looking upon waters
The morning was still fresh, cool, and fish
hadn't begun to stir
He sat still, his back to the joggers,
not heeding to the yapping of other dogs,
from the distant street

2. A human expression, I saw, on his face,
contemplative
What was he contemplating?
Or was he just drinking in
the cool silence after the Diwali night
of cracker blasts?

3. Or was he contemplating,
by the lakeside, under the leaning tree,
surrounded by jungle of high-rises,
the thousand-year old memories -- stored in the genes--
of the hunter's life in the human-less wild?

4. Or, he was just not contemplating, not thinking of anything at all,
before another hot day in search of food began?

5. Or, did he sit there, still, his tail not stirring,
his back to the world,
because, he thought, I am special,
among the street-dogs?

When Hindus Don't Need Hinduism

Wendy Doniger (writer of `The Hindus: The Alternative History') says in interview to Outlook:

That’s why Hinduism is such a wonderful religion. It’s because people are allowed to have their own texts: there was no Pope or ulemas to say you may not tell the story that way—until now. You have groups that say Rama would never have sent Sita away so we have the shadow Sita who went to Lanka instead of the real Sita. Then you have other stories that say that in fact Lakshman was really in love with Sita , which of course Tulsidas doesn’t say, and neither does Valmiki. And you have stories in which Sita is the sister of Ravana. Until recently, there was no one who said there was only one way to tell the Ramayana.

She is right, of course. What could have been termed a weakness when foreign invasions began in the 8th century, became our strength after British came. Hindu-majority India didn't go the way of Pakistan, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia -- where religion became tyrant -- precisely because there is no one book, no Vatican who has authority to tell Hindus what's right and what's wrong.

Having an organised religion (one book, one set of rules) might have helped us resist the invaders from the North-West Asia. It might have united all those who lived south of Hindukush to come together, and perceive foreigners as foreigners. But now? Now Hindus have imbibed the idea that they are one nation. And their nation has come into being, is fairly stable, it's boundaries are well-defined, except in Kashmir. .

This is what Hindu nationalists should have got into their heads long back: once we got the nation, and the idea of it, there was no need for the religion to underpin the nationalism. Religion can be allowed to become irrelevant in the public affairs, and in the politics. If you aspire to a `pure, distilled' Hinduism , on the lines of Semitic religions, what you will get is orthodoxy, madness of "going by the book". The madness which makes young men beat up girls because they go to the pub.

Communism In Desert

"What would happen if the desert became communist? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage."

Jokes like that made the rounds among East Germans during the communist era, and West Germany's intelligence service would collect them, as a way to assess the public mood behind the Iron Curtain but also to amuse its masters in Bonn, the West German capital.

Read the whole article here. (Link courtesy Amit Varma's tweet)

Mughal Mix

मैं था गया बागमें।
काचित् तत्र कुरंगबाळनयना
गुल तोडती थी खडी।
त्वां दृष्टवा नवयौवनाम् शशिमुखी
म्मै मोहमे जा पडा।
नो जीवामि त्वयाविना श्रृणु सखे
तू यार कैसे मिले।

(Sourced from Yashwant Raikar's Lokprabha article. The poem was, suppsedly, presented in Emperor Akbar's court.)

Buttermilk And Tea

My father said: `Urbanisation and education has eroded caste system in a big way. Your generation would have no idea (of how it was).

` In our village, low-caste people would come to our house often in the summer. They would ask for buttermilk. They were so poor, you would find hardly a drop of milk or buttermilk in their houses.'

'Till my parents were alive, these people never set foot in our courtyard. They would stand in the side-yard, slightly high-up. And guess what would we serve the buttermilk in. Empty shells of coconut. Whenever, after scooping flesh from coconuts, we got a clean, big shell, we would be happy. For it could be used to serve buttermilk to these people.'
-----------------------
`In Hedavi branch of Bank Of Maharashtra, the cashier, Mr Jadhav, was a neo-Buddhist. Formerly a Mahar. There was small hotel near the bank, we got our tea from there.'

`Once the hotel-owner came around, bringing us the afternoon tea. He was a Maratha. There were three of us at the bank. I invited the hotel-owner to join us. Jadhav took out four cups, and poured tea. The hotel-owner didn't touch the cup that was offered to him.'

`Later I made a point of asking him -- why didn't you drink the tea? He said -- it might be alright for you, but I won't drink from the cup touched by Mahar.'

(My father was born in 1948. He left his coastal village around 1964, after matriculation. He served in Hedavi, another coastal village, as branch-manager between 1987 and 1990.)

Masters In Karunanidhi

A new career option. Rediff says:

The University of Madras has announced that the institution will offer a masters course in Kalaignar (Karunanidhi )Thoughts.

Wishlist

WishList on/post Oct 22:

1. Sena BJP comes to power. Not that I care for their ideology, but change is needed. As one friend said, one is tired of the names: Deshmukh-Chavan- Patil-WalsePatil. Give us a break. Also, as another friend said, DF has been completely effete. It should go.

Besides, Uddhav Thackeray should have some success. Sena under him is much less violence-prone. He isn't much of a Muslim-basher. This may have to do with his lack of style rather than his convictions. A successful rabble-rouser needs style. But it's a good thing. We don't want another Bal Thackeray. In other words, we don't want Raj Thackeray to take over Shiv Sena. Raj might be able to do that if Shiv Sena remains out of power for long.

2. After winning the election, I want Uddhav to do Sonia: to shun the CM's post. Who should be the CM then? Nitin Gadkari. Or Suresh Prabhu. Why? Because Uddhav is essentially a middle-class good boy. Might make a fool of himself as the CM. And both Gadkari and Prabhu have proven themselves. Either of them would make an impressive CM. Then Modi wouldn't be able to come here and mock us.

After The Polling

It's 6.45. Polling is over. MNS is going to do well. Why?

Because Star Maza exit poll says so? It gives 18 seats to MNS. No. But I got two interesting inputs.

One: My colleague's boyfriend voted for MNS. He is a North Indian, and a journalist, to boot.

Two: The peon in our office said that Congress workers were distributing cash and liquor in the Colaba slum where he lives. He got a thousand rupees and a bottle of RC -- whatever that means. Who did you vote for then, I asked.
"Engine".

Dear Chinese,

dEar Chinese Bhai-log,

You seemed much miffed over Manmohan's visit to Arunachal.

Let me concede first: Arunachal is a disputed province. (Just like Tibet, no?)

Still, you know something called democracy?

I don't think you would find the word in dictionaries sold in Chinese shops. Or on the google that you get in your country.

It means system of governance where people CHOOSE their rulers.

So those who want to be chosen have to fight ELECTIONS.

And they have to go to the people, to beg for VOTES.

That's why our Prime Minister went to Arunachal. You do that, in democracies.

Got it?

3 Thackerays

Akar Patel writes on Three Thackerays:

Eighty-four in a few months, (Bal) Thackeray has been keeping indifferent health. He hasn’t spoken in public for two years....

This is a loss for those who know Marathi and can enjoy him. He’s a truly great performer: understated in slapstick, always deadpan and with a rapper’s sense of rhyme. His response to why so much was being renamed after Shivaji: ‘Shivaji nahi tar kai Quattrocchi?’

Nobel For Them

Tom Friedman is right: Obama should accept Nobel on behalf of ordinary US soldiers. They won the second world war -- UK and USSR could not have defeated Hitler alone. They kept Stalin's armies away from western Europe. They fought in Bosnia. All these wars were not exactly for protecting US interests. Hitler's Germany was ready to leave US out of the world war.

This is not to say that all wars US fought -- or is fighting -- were right wars; but policy makers are to blame for that. The US soldiers often died on foreign lands, for noble causes. They deserve Nobel for peace.

Lift Kosher

Guess what the devout Jews in New York are debating currently? Whether a certain type of lifts (elevators, in US-speak) are Kosher or Not. In Judaism, certain things are prohibited on Sabbath (weekend). It includes use of electric devices. But then how would one use lifts on Saturdays and Sundays? Because you have to press buttons, if you plan to reach a particular floor.

So somebody came up with the idea of Shabbos elevators. They stop at every floor, automatically, so the faithfuls don't have to indulge in that un-Kosher activity of pressing buttons.

And now a debate is on: because some Jewish rabbi in Israel ruled that Shabbos, alas, were not Kosher.

Ho-hum. Here onwards, I vow not to laugh at Muslims of Saudi Arabia for following Quran to the letter Q. All faiths inspire stupidity equally.

And that's not funny. This aspect of faith -- ability to kill reason -- leads Talibans to burn down girls' schools in Afghanistan.

On Chiddu, HIndi, and English

Apropos P Chidambaram, a friend pointed out recently that he doesn't understand Hindi at all. I, too, had noticed this at a press conference in Mumbai in April. Whenever questions were asked in Hindi, Mundu-clad Chiddu would turn to Congress fellas flanking him, to get the translation.

That is remarkable, because Chiddu is, generally, Delhi-based. A Delhi-based South Indian can have difficulty speaking Hindi fluently: after all southern languages aren't much proximate to Hindi, unlike Marathi or Gujarati. But Chidambaram has not picked up enough Hindi even to understand it.

That leads me to this thought: we should strip Hindi of its national language status. It is not our official language. The language of offices in India is English. Then why Hindi should be on a higher pedestal than other regional languages? Just because Gandhi-Nehru-Azad-Patel spoke it with ease -- being from the North? Just because greatest number of Indians speak it?

Stripping Hindi of its national language status won't take away anything from it. Hindi or Hindustani was the lingua franca of our Bazzars and streets since the Mughals. It would continue to be that for another century. Perhaps Hindi would seep into Queen's tongue in such a big way that English would be transformed. But granting Hindi status of national language is being unfair to other languages of India.

Then what should be our national language? Let's not be hypocritical, and answer the question honestly. English. It might be a colonial legacy, but today the Official-Corporate-Academic India functions in English. More and more kids are going to English medium schools. Laws are drafted in English. So why not give the language its due?

His Nobel

I am weeping for Obama. Poor guy. How would he show his face to the world post-Nobel? Unanimous reaction is What Did He Do To Deserve It. Check your facebook message wall.

I ask different question, using the same words. What Did He Do To Deserve This reaction which is natural and valid? And for which he wasn't really responsible? (Does Nobel committee ask the chosen guy whether he/she is willing to accept the award? In India, they do, before Bharat Ratna and other top awards are announced. Lest the guy publicly rejects it, and embarasses the government. Did they ask Obama before the announcement?)

A thought struck me while writing the above: Not to get a Nobel when you deserve it is thousand times better than to get an undeserved Nobel.

Chopper & Grasshopper

1. Go To Jamner, Bai is coming, I am told.

For election rally, and I am willing to go, but where is Jamner?

2. I find Jamner, reach there and sit on the patch of earth, before me a solitary hill.

Around me endless fields, of cotton mostly,

and banana. Young boys stand in the fields, to pee,

one hand resting on waist, they remind me of

the dancer's figurine from Mohenjo-daro.

The earth beneath my ass is empty, but for naked roots of grass. Has it been

emptied of whatever grew on it

because the lady is coming? A farm cut down so that

farmers could sit upon it to watch her speak

in the tongue alien to them and alien to herself?

Is that sweet smell in the air that of freshly-cut grass?

3. I think of this, as I sit, amongst the farmers.

The square of hankie covers my head,

taking care of benign October sun. People standing in the front

spit, and search the sky for her helicopter.

On the tree-less hill, few policemen

stand, dwarfed by pylons.

4. Bored, I take a twig and scratch a circle

around tiny clod of soil near my feet.

This is my castle and this -- the moat around it.

Then a tiny beetle crawls up from under the soil,

and marches towards my fort. Halfway through,

it dives back into soil. A grasshopper climbs on my sleeve,

I flick it off, twice. Then it disappears.

5. The lady comes: in helicopter, which descends

in front of the hill. I have memories of helicopter:

from another reporting assignment, when gunmen

slithered down a rope from helicopter,

to land on a rooftop in my city,

to kill gunmen on the floors beneath.

But that memory is from another era.

6. Farmers stand to watch, I too,

and I raise my hand holding cellphone,

its camera switched on, and click the chopper.

The lady climbs on high, narrow stage.

"As white as gecko", a comment I remember somebody making

at last year's rally when she descended down

in another village of my state, during another election.

7. She speaks for fourteen minutes, my voice recorder

lies on the earth, recording her,

while I make notes. Farmer beside me is curious.

Then she stops, and climbs back into her helicopter,

and it soars in the sky. People wave, a child in her mother's arms

is excited, as is the mother. Before vanishing in the sky,

the chopper circles over the people once.

8. I check my cellphone camera, in the frame I clicked,

only farmers -- I have missed the chopper. Later on,

having left behind the fields of cotton and banana behind me,

I think: should have clicked that grasshopper.

Kapil, October 8, 2009, On returning after covering Sonia Gandhi's rally near Jalgaon

Remote Control At Matoshree

Balasaheb Thackeray said, in his interview published in Samana on Sunday, that building Shivaji's statue in the sea (off Mumbai) was "stupidity". Bravo. For once I am with you, Balasaheb. I worship Shivaji, but a Rs 350 crore spend for statue? Ours is a state where power-cuts last 16 hours a day, and farmers commit suicide. So Rs 350 crore can be spent in a better way.

Nobody has spoken out against the proposed statue; barring Kumar Ketkar, who nearly got lynched by mob controlled by Sharad Pawar's supporter.

So we should congratulate Balasaheb. He dared to speak his mind just before the elections.
But wait, today Uddhav had promptly denied that the old man was opposed to the statue. "His statement is being distorted", says the son.

Hmm. In the same interview, Balasaheb had also assured that he would retain the remote control if Sena-BJP comes to power.

And now we know who is holding the remote control at Matoshree, no?

Elephant That Flies, And Eats Rupees

Tracing the decline of Air India, Vir Sanghvi says:

Being Morarji Desai — by which I mean, a bit of a crank and a nutcase — he chose not just to punish JRD but also to punish Air India. So, he sacked JRD as Chairman of Air India.

Vir, and many others, have made a case for selling off Air India. Makes sense. I know zilch about aviation industry. Or about any industry for that matter. (That hardly deters a blogger.) But, the thing is, why should government run an airline?

I understand government running the good old ST (State Transport) bus service. ST goes where private operators would never go. Ask trekkers who roam the Sahyadris. It is a lot safer, and it doesn't cheat/fleece you. If an ST bus breaks down, another ST bus picks you up. I write from personal experience.

But, an airline is no ST. Majority of people in our country never fly in their whole life. So why government is in the airline business? Why do we need a `national carrier' that loses money?

It seems that in the 50s government took a strategic decision that all public means of transport should be owned and controlled by the government. Tatas were doing a good job of running Air India; government nationalised it, alongwith six other private airlines.

We ended up with a huge white elephant. It flies, and polishes off huge chunks of taxpayers' money in return.

Bra For Two

And this year's Ig Nobel goes to...

1. Elena Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois, for patenting a bra that, in an emergency, can be converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the owner and one for a needy bystander.

2. Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson at Newcastle University's school of agriculture share the award for the groundbreaking discovery that giving cows names such as Daisy increases their milk yield.

3....here is the whole list.

Gandhi Corruption Scheme

Apropos NREGS, now named after Gandhi, Kumar Ketkar writes in his editorial in Loksatta:

...In 2005, government records claimed to have given jobs to about one lakh people through employment guarantee scheme in Solapur.

It was found that in reality many beneficiaries of the scheme had not been employed anywhere. Thousands of names on the payroll were bogus.

Then, Manisha Varma, the district collector, started taking a public roll-call at the actual work-sites. The labourers (genuine) were clueless as to the identities of the men on the payroll. We (Express Group) exposed this scam.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh ordered that public roll-call be stopped. It was an oral order, obviously. When Varma went to police station to lodge complaint against the culprits, police refused to register it.

...Till date it is not known what happened to the probe into the scam.

Welfare schemes invariably lead to corruption. Corruption is inbuilt in them, one can say. Reason? The people who are supposed to benefit are often non-literate, so they don't realise that scam is taking place. Even if they do, they are powerless to stop it. And the people who fund the scheme -- the taxpayers -- do not control execution of the scheme. Tax-payers aren't often aware of the scheme, and the scam. People who execute it -- babus -- don't care. After all, it's not their own money, and they get their cuts.

Therefore the best way to prevent corruption is to avoid welfare schemes. NREGS will live on, mind you. It got Congress votes in the Lok Sabha elections, pundits say. So, to an extent it has succeeded in reaching benefits to the poor. But the price for it is the money lost in corruption. A kind of collateral cost.

Wives

This is what Shiney's wife said, according to HT, after he got bail: `Next to God, I only trust Shiney'.

WTF, I would have called it otherwise. But this lady probably means what she said. On Wednesday and Thursday she was present in the court throughout the hearing on bail plea. When Shiney was arrested in June, she tried to defend him, instead of disowning him or hiding at home. Its another thing that that defence looked unconvincing and stupid.

Three months on, she is still by his (notional) side. I don't think her presence in High Court was a mere posture for the media's benefit: she is no celebrity herself, and Shiney is not much of a story now.

She reminded me of another woman whose husband is in jail: Sarangi Mahajan. She would be present in the court on every date of Pravin's trial. I don't think she was craving media attention, she hardly gave any interviews. But she would be there. She is a pretty lady, and there was a theory that Pramod Mahajan's murder had something to do with her. But her presence in the court on every date, her being on Pravin's side throughout, belies this theory.

Still, Anupam Ahuja (Mrs Shiney) is a greater conundrum. It is apparent that Shiney did have sex with the maidservant. It may or may not be a rape; his lawyers say it was consensual. But Anupam has evidently forgiven him.

Or, she is completely in denial.

Surrender

On October 2, Mr Karan Johar apologises to Raj Thackeray. What for? For mistakenly using the word Bombay, instead of Mumbai, in his new film.

Of course, he has invested in the film, and he can't afford to let MNS drive it out of theatres in Mumbai. Still, since Mr Johar calls himself artist, I expected him to have ego, and some inclination to fight.

We call Mumbai Mumbai. That name isn't a Thackeray family invention, it has co-existed with Bombay since the city's birth. But I hate those who take away other's freedom to call Mumbai by other name. And I hate Johar for his surrender, notwithstanding his business interests.

Hu's Human Moment

China is celebrating 60th anniversary of Communist Party's rule. A grand military parade was a part of the celebrations.

Apropos the parade, NYT quotes one onlooker: "There was a moment when Hu broke into a nearly human-like expression, when he saw girls in the miniskirts".

For the ignoramuses amongst u, Hu being Hu Jintao, their prime minister. Or is he the president? Hu cares!

By the way, this is my 500th post. I congratulate myself.