Of Mostly Other Stuff

• Every time I hear the turuturututuru chorus from the Dil toh Paagal Hai music album, I visualise, not Madhuri Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan, but Govinda and Aruna Irani from Haseena Maan Jayegi.
• The reason I love the Jabra fan song so much is because even though the words sound nonsensical, they perfectly sum up everything about fandom.
• For example, if you have been a fan of anyone (jabra or not) you would know how ‘tujhe dekhte hi dil mein dhan te nan ho gaya’ has deep meaning.
• Once a friend thought Benedict Cumberbatch looked like a 16 year old school girl. You bet I got touch-y.
• Also yes, uski aankhon ki garmi mein sar se paon tak tan hona is a thing.
• Epiphany of the week: Marketers have a very high capacity to bullshit. How else do you explain a razor brand calling itself Mach 3 when some of our satellite launch vehicles are unable to (and are not required to) reach those supersonic speeds?
• On VK Singh’s proposal to rename Akbar road to Maharana Pratap Road, I feel like an 80s Bollywood heroine who has been separated from her boyfriend by her parents because he is poor/ off-spring of sworn enemies/a creep who sexually harassed her into dating him. Uska naam signage se toh mita doge, dil se kaise mitaoge?
• Oh wait, the text-book editing may help.
• The Economic Survey says,

Decline in enrolment in government schools and some shift to private schools might be largely related to the poor quality of education offered in government schools, since it is free or offered for a nominal fee [bold italics mine]. 

• I know it’s only half a line of idiocy (in a government document, no less), and I know this is probably a result of poor editing than an insidious intent to privatise all education (since the author mentions the poor learning outcomes in private schools as well), but if I were idealistic and had an active twitter account, I would outrage about it.

Of News and Other Stuff 13

• Taking their philosophy of will-do-anything-for-a-fun-acronym further, the Power ministry has recently rehashed a barely year-old scheme to distribute LED bulbs to the poor. The scheme is called Unnat Jyoti Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA).
• I think allegations that the current PM micro-manages everything are false. Because then he would know that he had just launched the PM Ujjwal Yojana to provide LPG connections to poor women, besides an Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) last year. 
• Giving credit where it’s due, this bureaucratic (or prime ministerial) doggedness in naming schemes has led to a really pretty (for lack of a better word) name for India’s version of GPS--NAVIC or Navigation with Indian Constellation.
• Pratap Bhanu Mehta puts the visadenial issue in perspective. While others have been talking about how it shows up our weaknesses to deny the visa on technical grounds, after first having granted it, he asks whether we should use our visa granting policy as a tool of foreign policy at all. Especially since a visa for a conference is essentially a ‘visa for ideas’ and all ideas should be welcome in a liberal democracy.
• There is sometimes an odd joy in knowing trivia. The word ‘meander’ has become more lyrical to me since I registered that its etymology has to do with the erosional/ depositional action of rivers.
• I know that doesn’t sound too lyrical.
• I am ditching the use of the word ‘bhakt’. I will henceforth call them ‘jabra fan’. Just because.
• I realised recently, how these days we are doing a stellar job of sticking to the fundamental duties given in the Constitution. I wish I could say these were the sole preserve of Jabra fans but political leanings don't determine IQ.

Fundamental Duty	How we see it
Abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions	Demand beef ban, as per the DPSP
Respect the national flag and the national anthem	First heckle and abuse people who don’t stand up during the anthem that plays out before movies. Then initiate Twitter discussions on whether Vande Mataram would not have been a more appropriate choice for the anthem.
Follow the ideals that inspired the freedom struggle	Call for a ban on Bipan Chandra’s India’s Struggle for Independence for #Insultingourfreedomfighters without knowing who Surya Sen was.
Uphold the national sovereignty and integrity of the country	Hate people from JNU/ JU/ HCU
Defend the country and perform national service when called upon to do so	Uninstall the Snapdeal app because Aamir Khan voiced an opinion
Inculcate a spirit of enquiry, scientific temper and humanism	‘I failed because she mixed menstrual blood in my food.’
Promote harmony and spirit of common brotherhood among all people of India disregarding religious, linguistic and regional differences. Preserve India’s composite culture.	LoLz
Renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women	Oppose criminalising marital rape because #marriageisasacrament #whathappensinthebedroomstaysin thebedroom #youthinkwomenhaverightshaha
Protect the environment	Call out the anti-Hindu conspiracy behind people opposing a private party being held on a precarious river-bank
Abjure violence and destruction of public property	Much Lolz
Ensure provision of opportunities for education for 6-14 year olds	Wants RTE to be repealed because “those madrassas” are exempt
Strive towards excellence in individual and collective activity	Yeah, I should probably get back to studying

Of News and Other Stuff-12

• Maharashtra is trying to enact a law to ban social boycott of individuals by caste panchayats. Apparently they have previously banned superstition. I am hardly a libertarian, but how are they going to implement this law? Or is that precisely why they are passed? No headache of implementation, with all the positive press.
• Pratap Bhanu Mehta, when willing himself to be comprehensible, is brilliant (yes, I used that word). Here he defends judicial over-reach calling it the ‘jurisprudence of exasperation’. 
• Economic theory, as you know it,may soon be extinct. At least that’s what I am telling the well-meaning relatives/ family friends who insist I do a PhD.
• The problem with being a social science student (and economics at that) is that you assume the worst about people. When I heard about the Yellow Sea to the east of China, my first reaction was to assume that this was an act of racism by the British. Turns out, the sea actually looks yellow (in colour) due to its sand and silt deposition.
• I think I have regressed as a writer. I was reading an answer I wrote in college on the variance in regional experience of human development in India. If I had to describe it in one word, I would call it ‘strident’. Somehow I can never command that much feeling in anything I write now, leave alone an examination answer (not saying it was a good answer-it wasn’t).
• Krugman calls himself an SOB. Student of Bhagwati.
• Have you ever wondered why leftists refer to MNCs as ‘transnational corporations’? Bhagwati explains:

My favourite example [of the importance of the use of suitable phraseology] from economics is the business schools’ preferred use of the word “multinationals, nudging your subconscious in the direction of multilateralism and hence evoking the image of a benign institution, and the radicals’ insistence on calling these international corporations “transnationals”, strongly suggesting transgression.

• Hence Bhagwati does not refer to growth-led poverty alleviation as ‘trickle-down’ but as the strategy of ‘pulling up’ the poor.
• If you read some of Bhagwati’s older scholarly writings (and not his invective filled newspaper columns), it is remarkable how his position sounds so much like Sen’s. Before the 2014 general elections, when the two were having a public spat on the right strategy of poverty alleviation (nerds!), neutral commenters, called it a question of sequencing-i.e. what should come first-growth or redistribution. But Bhagwati is not even that radical (or conservative, depending on your world-view). He insists that growth is the principal instrument of poverty alleviation (as opposed to Sen who says it is important, but not adequate in itself), but also that there need to be institutions to ensure that growth have a pro-poor bias.
• May be I just want the two old men to get along.

Of News and Other Stuff-11

·         I think right wing trolls have a point-Indians are intent on forgetting their (Hindu) roots, sometimes to their detriment. I refer of course to the punar-janam genre of movies. Punar-janam (rebirth) is a belief in Hinduism in which karma (actions) determines what we become in our next life.  Admittedly, there is an icky part to it where they used this as a justification for caste, but shorn of that, it is a fantastic (in every sense of the word) plot device. You would think more film-makers would milk it given that you already have a buy-in from a majority of your audience. Yet it’s been 25 years since Karan Arjun. [There were the shoddy Love Story 2050 and Karzzz in the interim but they don’t count]. A new age punar-janam movie will have to of course star Ranveer Singh. Can’t think of an actress could pull this off with conviction though.

·         A Croatian has developed an electric supercar. That is the second thing I have ever heard about Croatia.

·         In the budget, the FM announced an income tax declaration scheme that allows people to (belatedly) declare their true income and pay a penalty of 7.5% (besides a 30% tax and a 7.5% Krishi Kalyan cess) on this amount. It however excludes those already under the scrutiny of the tax department from availing of the scheme. Important people from 2 of the ‘Big Four’ accounting companies, see this as unnecessarily excluding people with high income who have been picked up for scrutiny mechanically (some proportion of returns are picked up every year for closer scrutiny as a matter of routine). I may be missing something (likely, given how I know nothing about taxation), but this seems like an incredibly stupid thing to say. If I got picked up as a matter of routine, but I have undeclared income, I am obviously going to want to turn my black money, white the legal way. It is the income tax department’s good fortune that they picked up the right person. Why should they let me get away by paying 45% only when they can presumably take me to the cleaners?          

·         Now some devious foreign agents are making films where seditious Indians are shown disrespecting our mahaan currency. What do you do with this bunch? [Answer: ban their films].        

·         I don’t get the bellyaching about the Pragati Maidan building. It was built to serve a purpose-if it doesn’t serve that many more, and the government wants to raze it for a modern, bigger structure, I absolutely see no problem with that. Really, it’s not even that pretty.  Or old.

·         Why are educated, urban, English speaking people working in the print media now resorting to polarising rhetoric? I admit, I never like anything R Jaganathan writes but this seems to make a broadly inoffensive (even welcome) point- a ‘Hinduism Lite’ needs to be developed to engage more people. Yet he decides to raise the bogey of ‘Hinduphobia’ (which is a downright stupid construction in a Hindu majority country) to explain his idea. To him, the environment is an excuse used by the ‘anti-Hindu lobby’ to oppose the AoL Wold Culture Festival. Firstly, that’s not the benign way in which Islamophobia [which inspires the term ‘Hindu-phobia’] plays out. Secondly you don’t have to hate any religion to be wary of self-anointed Godmen or oppose what seems like a misuse of resources (the Army), arbitrary application of rules (with the NGT not staying the festival because it was ‘too late in the day’), and perceived impunity with which rules were flouted (with ‘Sri Sri’ refusing to pay a ‘fine’).

·         The Tea Board of India is targeting some specific export markets encapsulated by the term ‘KRUCIAL’-Kazakhastan, Russia, US, China, Iran, Arab Republic of Egypt and Latin America. Is anyone else worried that they might just be targeting the wrong markets, in pursuit of the fun acronym? [The laborious use of ‘Arab Republic’ is a source of comfort].

S. Chandrashekhar on Patriotism

From an interview with the American Institute of Physics:

Oh, I knew him [CV Raman] moderately well, but not really as well as one would think. His role essentially was to bring my attention to science. Of course, you see, the general sentiment in India at that time was quite curious. I mean, of course, it was the time when Nehru and Gandhi and others were active in politics; and like all young men, I was also very involved in that. And it was also a time when India was very proud of its men. For example, I knew about (Srinivasa) Ramanujan and his life, and that he became the first Indian to become a Fellow of the Royal Society (in 1918).  

It was all very much in the air, and of course, we were - i.e., all young students - all very proud of men like Nehru and Gandhi. It was a part of the patriotism of those times to try and see what Indians could accomplish with respect to the external world. Accomplishment in science was one way of expressing what Indians could do, you see. And I would say that this motive was present. Patriotism is a word which is not a very popular one to use these days; but Patriotism, as it was understood in India in the twenties, was one in which it was a part of everyone's wish to show that Indians could be accomplished, in a way which the outside world can recognize. To accomplish in science, to show what one could do in science, was a part of my feeling. And certainly that was one of the early motives that I had. But of course, motives in science change as you grow older. I mean, that attitude towards science is not present in me at the present time, but it was present in those days. [Bold italics mine].

S Chandrashekhar became a naturalised US citizen, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his work on the Chandrashekhar Limit. One of NASA's four Great Observatories [the Chandra X Ray Observatory] is named after him.

Tagore on Nationalism

Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Link

The Sunset of the Century

The Last Sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred.

The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is

dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance.

The hungry self of the Nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its own shameless feeding.

For it has made the world its food,

And licking it, crunching it, and swallowing it in big morsels,

It swells and swells

Till in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden heaven piercing its

heart of grossness.

The crimson glow of light on the horizon is not the light of thy dawn of peace,

my Motherland.

It is the glimmer of the funeral pyre burning to ashes the vast flesh, - the self-love of the Nation, - dead under its own excess.

Thy morning waits behind the patient dark of the East,

Meek and silent.

Keep watch, India.

Bring your offerings of worship for that sacred sunrise.

Let the first hymn of its welcome sound in your voice, and sing,

'Come, Peace, thou daughter of God's own great suffering.

Come with thy treasure of contentment, the sword of fortitude,

And meekness crowning thy forehead.'

Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful

With your white robe of simpleness.

Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul.

Build God's throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty

And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.

Link

Of News and Other Stuff-22*

• Economics reporting in India (at least in the generalist newspapers) is quite poor. I am not still talking about the lack of op-eds here. I am talking about vanilla reporting. For example the Indian Express and the Hindu both reported that Raghuram Rajan expressed skepticism about the new GDP series. What he said was, that if two mothers baby sit each others' kids, and pay each other, their wage gets added to the GDP. If they cared for their respective kids, the same activity would not be considered as a 'market good' and would be excluded from the GDP numbers. This is, quite obviously, a problem with the concept of GDP calculation itself, not a criticism of a particular methodology to get there. Similarly, Rajan has reportedly said that having a state backed Asset Recovery Company would cause moral hazard. The Indian Express in its edit on 2 Feb, explains this as the unfairness of taxpayers taking the hit for corporate wrongdoing and lack of banking sector due diligence. But more precisely, moral hazard is the situation where the corporate/ banking sector, expecting to be bailed out when in trouble, does not take adequate action to avert the trouble.
• KN Raj was 26 years old when he co-authored the first Five Year Plan. How does that make you feel, you bunch of millenials?
• I am generally quite proud of the lack of extreme religiosity in my family, and most of the Bengali community I know. But even I am uncomfortable about how my mom's philosophy of performing Saraswati Puja is to wing it. 
• Amartya Sen is an almost disappointing public speaker. But maybe I would be really disinterested too if my all-adult audience did not know that it was polite to keep their phones on silent during lectures. [I also want to snark about the not-too bright person who introduced him, but since I don't even know his name, I will leave him alone]. 
• You could be a Bharat Ratna and a Nobel laureate, the writer of multiple books, and really, really smart, but you will still fail in the Bengali popularity sweepstakes to Sourav Ganguly and Subhas Bose. Because you and your Bengali wife got a divorce and then you moved on. 
• No I did not forget to mention Tagore. Just that nobody beats Gurudev at anything. (Incidentally Tagore christened Sen).
• Did you know there many Bengalis keep a photo of Tagore hanging on the wall? Like the Gandhi picture in government offices. I think I spotted in Piku's sets as well, though I am not completely certain.

*Because I figured you are not keeping track of the post numbers anyway.