Mumbai Indians show the way

For the benefit of our readers who are not sure who “Mumbai Indians” are, they’re the team from Mumbai playing cricket for the Indian Premier League a.k.a IPL. IPL is a Twenty20 cricket competition (20 overs a side) created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The first season of the Indian Premier League commenced on 18 April 2008, and it will end on 1 June 2008 when the final is played at the DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai.

Anywhere you go in India, people are fiercely protective of their regional sensibilities, a fact very aptly exploited by the likes of Raj Thackeray in condemning North Indians. Fact of the matter is people are more comfortable being labeled a Gujrati or a Marathi or a Bengali, rather than an Indian. The Indian identity was growing weak. Sure when travelling abroad, people introduce themselves as Indians, but that is primarily to refer to their place of birth and not an identity they identify with. The regional identity has been stronger than the national identity.

In the already polarized regional scenario in India, it was not surprising to see people cheering for their state’s team and rejoicing when players from other teams were declared out. Bengalis, regardless of their state of residence supported Kolkata Nightriders. Punjabis supported the Team from Chandigarh. I, being born and brought up in Delhi couldn’t help root for the Delhi Dare Devils, even though I have made Mumbai my home.

When Delhi plays Mumbai, I wouldn’t hate it if the Mumbai team won. Ok, I would be sad for the loss of the Delhi team, but the Indian in me would love to see the Mumbai Indians win. The term “Mumbai Indian” also says a lot about the cosmopolitan nature of Mumbai. Mumbaikars are proud to be from Mumbai and proud to be Indians, hence the name.

For that matter, I would support a legislation to ban the usage of the words Bengali or Gujrati or Marathi and others, unless suffixed by the word Indian.
Kudos to the Mumbai Indians for showing us the way. Raj Thackeray, are you listening?

Email This Article

8 Comments

Maybe Raj Thackeray is Right - Part 1

Raj Thackeray has been in news for his anti-north Indian statements. For the uninitiated, Raj Thackeray is the chief of a political party in Maharashtra called the “Maharashtra Navanirman Sena”. I had written an article a few days back on why I thought Raj Thackeray should be condemned. You can read it here. In the post, I had analyzed the situation and thought I had come up with an objective opinion on the matter.

However after going through a similar discussion on Mutiny.in, reading some of the feedback I recieved both for my article and my comments on Mutiny, and going through a few Orkut communities, I did find a lot of people concurring with Raj’s statements and in many cases found outright supporters who considered him a God. Now these people were not the usual “party workers “that you expect. Rather they were educated engineers, doctors and MBAs, people you expect to have sound judgment and objectivity of thought. This made me wonder if I had been too hasty in jumping to a conclusion on what Raj Thackeray intended to say.

Before analyzing the thoughts of people on the various blogs I’d visited as well as what people had to say on Orkut, I started with first the statements that Raj had made. Raj Thackeray had accused North Indians of encroaching, hawking and essentially ruining the infrastructure of the city of Mumbai. Party workers of the MNS went all around Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Nashik threatening and beating up North Indian hawkers, rickshaw and taxi drivers thus creating a public nuisance.

The inquisitive Indian I am, I decided to verify for myself if there was any truth to the statements made by Raj Thackeray. I started with the area around Andheri station. For the uninitiated, Andheri is a western suburb of Mumbai and probably the most crowded and busiest part of Mumbai. All around the station, encroachers and hawkers line the pavements and there is hardly any space for commuters to move around. Add to it the continuous movement of vehicles in the narrow roads and the honking , make the area around the station no less habitable than a war zone. My intention was to talk to as many of these hawkers that I could.

After being ignored by the hawkers and jostled around by the crowd for thirty minutes, I got around to actually speaking to a few of them. My initial questions on their place of origin made them skeptical, some even looked scared. After I assured them that I was not part of the MNS or for that matter any political party they started talking.

Raj’s claims that North Indians are encroaching and hawking on the streets of Mumbai seem to have some truth.

Most of the people I talked to were from UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Delhi. Out of the fifty two hawkers I talked to both on the west and east side of the station, thirty seven were from North India. Twelve of them were Marathis while three from Karnataka. Given below is a diagrammatic representation of the same. North Indians (represented in blue) refer to people from UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Delhi.

Next Post -> An interview with a hawker
My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian

Email This Article

44 Comments

And finally justice for Nitish Katara

In a not so swift decision, the courts have held Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav guilty of murdering Nitish Katara, son of an IAS officer in 2002 . Vikas Yadav, is the son of politician DP Yadav. Nitish was close to Vikas’s sister Bharati Yadav and the couple was apparently planning on getting married, something that was Vikas could not tolerate. So on the night of Feb 16, 2002, Vikas with his cousin Vishal abducted Nitish from Ghaziabad and brutally murdered him.

Delhi has traditionally been the stronghold of people with power and money. It’s said that people who have power run after money and vice versa. In Delhi, people who have both consider themselves to be above the law. They go around flaunting this clout, are quick to pick up fights, take offence easily and are quick to take out a gun and shoot you if you come in their way, without any fear or remorse. Through this decision and in decisons like the Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Matoo case, the judiciary has sent a tough message to these people, that enough is enough.

The accused Vikas Yadav

Vikas Yadav’s sister Bharati Yadav definitely had a relationship with Nitish Katara, a fact that has been verified in court through phone and SMS records as well as love cards that the couple shared. This was a crucial fact she had denied in court to save her brother. The Yadavs had a simple reason for this, remove the love angle and you remove the motive. Unfortunately this didn’t work and the courts concluded that a love angle was definitely present and hence also a motive. Baharti’s role has not been clear in the whole issue, she is currently in London. If she wanted the case would have been closed long back. But her love for her brother turned out to be more than her love for her lover who she watched being brutally murdered and chose to keep mum about it.

Neelam Katara, Nitish’s mother

Standing rock solid to get justice for her son was Neelam Katara, Nitish’s murder, who refused to give up and ensured that the people who killed her son have been brought to justice. That lady deserves a lot of respect and admiration.

So what does DP Yadav say? He, of course resorts to the usual politician bullshit that his son is being framed for political reasons. He may fret all he wants, but truth is finally after a very long time justice has been served.

The final sentence is due tomorrow and I hope it is an extremely strict sentence. This was not murder in the heat of the moment. This was premeditated cold blooded murder. We need to send a message to these politicians and their goonda sons that they are not above the law and every action they take will have repurcussions.

Today I am a happy Indian and a little less angry.

My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian

Email This Article

Comment

Is cooking gas really subsidized in India?

Email This Article

3 Comments

India needs a leader like Barack Obama

The US Presidential elections have been in the news lately. Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama has been applauded for bringing to the United States revolutionary ideas and ethical practices that the USreally needed. Though his political career has been short (he was elected to the state of Illinois as a senator in 2004) the work he has done throughout his life has been worth mentioning. He has been an advocate of Civil rights ever since he graduated from Harvard Law in 1991 and started practicing as a civil rights lawyer. Fighting all odds, his belief in the ability to unite people around a politics or purpose and a politics that intends to solve challenges of American people has been appreciated all around the world. His campaign for the last one year has drawn tremendous response as people throughout the US have come together to donate towards his campaign. Most of the donations to his campaign fund have come directly from the common American.

Throughout his career, first as a lawyer and then as a US Senator, Obama has been an advocate in various issues related to Civil Rights, Disabilities, the Economy, Education, Environment, Ethics, Religious Faith, Families & Communities , Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Social Security, Homeland Security, Rural development, The Iraq issue, Urban development, Women and even issues related to technology and innovation.

Viewing a candidate such as Obama, one very distinctly gets the impression of a strong intelligent person who wishes to use his intelligence to overcome the challenges that America and the Americans face and not use his intelligence for political gain. Even though I’m sure he has a whole team of people helping him build his image and brand, he comes across as a person who actually thinks about the problems and tries to solve them. I couldn’t help but think how desperately India needs a leader like Obama.

Going back a few days to my post on why are Indians obsessed with Sonia, there was a comment from a visitor that pedigree is important in selection of a leader. Looking at Obama, I couldn’t agree more. If I look at any of our leaders, I couldn’t find a single one. Sure we have elitists like Dr. Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and A.B Vajpayee; then we have the current yuppie crowd Rahul Gandhi, J. Sindhia and Sachin Pilot as well as the rustic sharp brains like Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mayawati. And of course we have Sonia Gandhi, the lady often compared to Durga. But none of them even comes close to the pedigree, experience, achievements that Obama possesses.

So do we need a leader like Obama? I was not sure until I read his speech titled “A More Perfect Union” that I realized how much we did. The speech is more than 5000 words and can be found here.

I have listed down some Excerpts from the speech and their analogy / significance to India:

“I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren”

I wonder if any of our leaders will give an explanation as to why they chose to run for the Prime Minister’s position. If you’re thinking why that’s important, I’ll tell you why. Declaration of intent is important because it tells us where the candidate is coming from. Even if they have a detailed manifesto, most of our national parties will not declare intent because it helps them ally with any other party in a coalition if it suits them. The few leaders who declare their intent, do it for specific communities (like Mayawati) or for invoking specific religious sentiments (like the Sangh Parivar) or for invoking regional sentiments (like Raj Thackeray). The last decent intent I saw was in Rajiv Gandhi, even if his was a simple “garibi hatao” statement. Why I love Obama’s intent is that he wants America to move in the same direction of a better future. How many of our leaders think of a better future for Indians is debatable.

“As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.”

How many of our leaders talk about issues that affect everyone and what they will do to fight the challenges. Obama talks about the economy and healthcare issues and emphasizes that the problems that America faces are not race related. In India, our leaders would rant about race, ethnicity and religious issues and at times even invent them for political gain. Our national problems are many, we have low literacy rates, a huge dependency on the service sector and the American economy, an almost non-existent manufacturing industry, rising food prices, rising cost of other commodities, rising fuel prices. None of our leaders will show concrete intention to solve these problems. We will have people like Raj Thackeray who will say we should protect Marathi women from North Indian abusers. We won’t have people (other than die hard feminists like Renuka Choudhary) who will work towards empowering Indian women.

Obama’s explanation of his opinion on Reverend Wright’s statements also depicts a certain rare quality that our leaders don’t possess. When faced with a tricky situation, they choose to ignore or stonewall (like the current government’s lack of interest in getting foreign bank account details and the subsequent media criticism). Obama on the other hand took it heads on, gave an explanation and treated the citizens of the country as adults. Our leaders will either patronize us or ignore our opinions and in no circumstances will give us an explanation for their actions or beliefs.

“Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.”

This is extremely relevant to the Indian scenario in lieu of the current “reservation issue”. While people from the backward classes (for lack of a better word) have not been discriminated against on the basis of skin color, due to the prevailing caste
system in this country they have not been given the same opportunities as people from the “Upper castes” have been. In India, this discrimination though not legalized by the judiciary, has been legalized by society as a whole and it is the reason why so many people from the backward classes are backward. How our politicians attempt to solve this problem is another matter altogether.

“But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways”

Caste has become a major driving force in Indian society. These feelings of casteism are not only prevalent in the political circles, but also within the common junta. Go to small villages and you’ll see people still discriminating against the backward classes. Go to the cities, a backward class person will continue to demand reservation irrespective of his prosperity. In a swift decision the government decides to make reservation based on caste mandatory. Fact of the matter is that in India, the caste debate is here to stay and will not go away easily.

“A similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”

This is very true if you consider the way a “non-backward” class person feels in India. These people are also referred to as the “General Category”. Most of these people have been deemed a privileged having receive better education and opportunities. However, they’ve had to struggle hard for it often foregoing short term benefits to work towards a better future. When suddenly they are labeled as “privileged”, they get a feeling of resentment that builds up over time. When they are told that the under-privileged have been discriminated against, they cannot come to terms with it, because they haven’t done any of the discriminations themselves. I must say, this was probably the best move that Obama could make by bringing out these feelings of resentment and trying positively to address them. Most other politicians would be sure to let the skeletons rot in the closet. In India, we see politicians right from Mayawati to Rahul Gandhi to Dr. Manmohan Singh talk about the rights of the backward classes. No one has ever made any attempt to talk to the “general category”. Politics in India has never sought to bring people together. Because if people unite, then the issue gets solved and then where’s the vote bank going to go?

“For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news”

We too can make a choice. We can accept the politics that the current breed of leaders glorify or we can vote to power a leader who brings together people and ideas and works towards the betterment of India. If we do not have such a person currently, we can raise our voice to demand such a person. Over a period of time, I think we can get such a leader as Barack Obama in India.

My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian

Email This Article

1 Comment

Why do we obsess about Sonia Gandhi?

It is catastrophic disaster to hand over the reigns of this country to someone who has no Governance skills or Experience. Which is why Sonia Gandhi should not be voted to power. It has nothing to do with her being White or Italian.

Noone has any business hurling personal insults at her or hating her.

My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian

Email This Article

31 Comments

Should we ban books that criticize Gandhi?

On a fellow blogger’s site, I went through a small discussion on why India is obsessed with the Nehru/Gandhi family. The blogger, evidently a big fan of the Nehru/Gandhi,Congress/Sonia, very passionately argued why the “Sangh Parivar” sucks and why everybody was wrongly obsessed with the Nehru/Gandhi family and why they so unjustly criticize Sonia Gandhi. What started as a comment on his article, ended up as this post on angryindian.com

The blogger in concern went on to describe a book he had happened to chance upon. The book was “The Men who Killed Gandhi”. The book apparently had described that Gandhi’s killer was a hero to millions. I am yet to go through the book, will have a post on that as soon as I’m done reading it (Yes, Yes, I’ll buy it today). Our blogger apparently could not take this lying down.

An excerpt from his post:

“I am aghast at how such books do not face censorship in India. Are we taking this tolerant attitude, this freedom of speech thing too far? Are we going to allow a generation of youngsters who do not know the truth to read this crap, and believe that Gandhiji deserved to be shot & that that despicable low-life who shot him was a hero??? Like I’ve said before, History is fair! The likes of fawkes, hitler, booth, oswald & godse will always be remembered as cold-blooded, mentally ill men, but despite that, this book is taking things too far. I’d say give it a miss. The writer doesn’t deserve any reading. May he too be remembered as a traitor!”

While his admiration for Gandhi is admirable…:-) , I would not favor a censor (the word turns me off), simply because it would mean killing freedom of expression. There is nothing called too much freedom. Generation of youngsters I believe are quite intelligent folks and will continue to be. I think we should let them read both sides of the story and figure out the truth for themselves. It need not be drilled into their brain the way it has happened in the last 60 years.

Tragedy is that Fawkes, Booth, Oswald, Hitler and Godse died before their “mental health” could be determined by a doctor. Though I am not a supporter of what these people did - or rather what was told to me that these people did, I believe history was written by human beings and they might have erred in their judgement. I leave open a small window in my head which asks questions like “Maybe historians were biased? Maybe these killers were not as bad as they were made out to be?” There is no definitive answer I get. However I sleep content realizing I am not prejdiced, at least not completely.

I am not in love with Gandhi, I am in love with the philosophy he advocated. Personally, I respect him because of his ideals, but don’t revere him. I am open to the idea that historians might have created a concoction of fallacies and fed it down my throat. Personally I keep that window open because I know for a fact that Godse was denied a public trial. Why was Nehru apprehensive in giving him a trial, where he could speak to the public of this country why he did what he did?

So at the end of the day, the author of the book, Manohar Malgonkar may not be branded as a traitor. For there are people like me who are interested in the non-Congress version of the truth as well. I am glad we live in a country where we are not burning Godse’s effigies as they’re burning Guy Fawkes’s in the west.

My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian

Email This Article

12 Comments

Why is the Indian so patient - Jet Lite Sucks

Patience, this was the word resounding in my head as I calmly waited for my 11 PM flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. At the Cafe Coffee Day outlet inside the Bangalore terminal, the guy blending the coffee was surprisingly cheerful for this time of the night. Maybe happy his shift was coming to an end. Got to ask CCD management what they do to keep their staff motivated.

I grabbed a cold coffee(without ice) and sat down reflecting upon the happenings of the day, or heck even the night before. I had flown down for a customer meeting to Bangalore. Not that it matters, but the customer was the IT head of a privately held $6 billion manufacturing giant (name withheld for no particular reason), and wearing my Business Development hat, I was selling him a solution he didn’t really need. Needless to say the last few days had been super hectic preparing slide decks and having internal tiff-taffs over what should go in what slide and who should present what. To top it all, I had a 6 AM flight, the night before which I was up till One in the morning watching Matt Damon giving Robert Ludlum fans a reason to kill themselves (and not to die for).

My meeting got over at 2 PM and I immediately got busy with work related stuff and waited for an airport drop at 6:30 PM (My flight was scheduled at 8:40 on Jet Lite, Air Sahara’s new avatar, after Jet Airways took over) I was feeling happy I’d get home by 11, blog till midnight….and then poof!!

Braving the Bangalore traffic, which is not much better than the Mumbai one, I arrived at the airport on schedule at 7:30 PM. Was handed over my boarding pass by an unsmiling attendant who informed me casually that my flight was an hour late. Used to traveling in low cost flights, I took the information in good spirit and proceeded towards a small bookstore looking to pass my time.

About 15 minutes later, my literary endeavor was rudely interrupted by an employee of Jet Lite who informed me that the flight was canceled, due to a technical difficulty. She took my boarding pass from me and to my disbelief, proceeded to rip it into pieces as if eliminating damning evidence. I couldn’t help notice a crooked smile on her face and a little shot of blood (is there such a term?) in her eyes. My imagination maybe. I was told, I would be sent on a Jet airways flight at 9:30. I admit that made me a bit happy, being the Indian I am, like the lunatic rush hour motorist who zips through traffic breaking all rules, saving 10 minutes seemed like heaven to me. I was told that I was to collect my “new” boarding pass at 9 PM.

When I went to collect my pass at 9 PM, I was told there was no more space left in the Jet Airways flight as they were accomodating international passengers first, and I would have to take the 11 PM flight. That’s when my world came crashing down and 2 hours and 20 cigarettes later, I boarded the flight and started writing this article. Sounds frustrating right? Let me point out what all was strange in this episode.

1. There were hardly 15 people waiting with me in front of the counter when the cancellation was announced by Jet Lite. Apparently only 15 people had bought tickets for this particular flight. So maybe the flight getting canceled had less to do with technical and more with commercial viability.

2. I was handed a boarding pass and then denied boarding. Lawsuit candidate? Maybe that’s why the nice lady from Jet Lite ripped it from my hand and tore it to bits?

3. International Passengers - I understand their problem, being in their shoes on many a occasion. They could be waiting to get onto a connected flight and a cancellation / reschedule could make the entire itinerary go haywire. But for heaven’s sake have some concern for the poor domestic traveler (read me) who arrived 1 hr 15 minutes before his departure (uncommon in India, people still have the train mentality)

4. The strangest part was that amongst all this frustration, I was still not angry. I was actually in good spirit (though incredibly tired). Even remember making a joke on “not loosing my sense of humor”. None of my fellow passengers were angry either. Everyone was appeasing the jet Airways lady to give them a pass for the 9:30 flight. I guess maybe Air Deccan had lowered our overall expectations.

Right then it struck me! We were so used to our boasting about how patient and persistent we as a people are that we’ve actually become weak. We’ve started hiding our cowardice behind attributes like “level-headed”, “mature” etc.There is clearly a need to let go of this submissive behavior and move towards a more Assertive behavior. Assertive, not aggressive. My behavior in this case was truly submissive.

Here’s how I could have been more assertive:

1. Know the power you possess: The boarding pass was my authorization to board the flight. It allowed me right to board the flight and only a catastrophic failure with the flight or bad weather could have stopped me. I had the power, but chose not to exercise it, consciously? No. It was my submissive reflex at it’s best when I handed over the pass to the “lady ripper”

2. Challenge the Status Quo: I should have challenged the authenticity of the claim that there was a technical difficulty. I should have asked to speak to the duty manager and demanded an apology if nothing else.

3. Give Feedback and Follow up: I Should have filled out a feedback form. This is my major motivator to write this article. I intend to send an email to the Jet Lite raising my concerns and keep following up till I get a reply. I will read their explanations with an open mind.

Patience and Persistence are great virtues, but without assertiveness they’re useless. Assertiveness is a key ingredient in making strong leaders and that’s what we lack and because we don’t exhibit thoe characteristics ourselves, we don’t choose leaders who possess them

My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian

Email This Article

3 Comments

Bhaiyya Saves Marathi from Death

Email This Article

13 Comments

Bhaiyya to Raj Thackeray - Is your festival more pious than mine?

Email This Article

13 Comments