The deeper impact of the Adani meltdown

A critical aspect of the fallout of the Adani group or any similar large business is how its lenders are going to deal with the aftershock and this is something I haven’t seen addressed anywhere. Post covid all big and small lenders are aggressively liquidating assets of borrowers whose loans have turned NPAs. I know this because I proof read ads of possession and sale notices published by banks and other lending financial institutions in newspapers through an advertising company. I have seen sale notice of asset for a measly Rs. 4 lakh loan. Why are banks behaving like extortionists? Because they are unable to recover business loans.

Businesses that borrow monstrously like in the case of Adani Group have fixed assets and very little in the form of liquid assets. They do not have a single lender but a consortium of lenders like in the case of Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines fiasco. When his airline business nosedived and went south he informed the lenders that he is unable to manage it anymore. The lenders got together and decided to invest more into his business hoping he could somehow turn things around. Finally, all that the lenders had were office buildings and airplanes to liquidate. Because of their vast influence over governments and civil administration these business leaders are unaffected by the consequences of NPAs.

So what can banks do to control their losses to some degree and repay investors who have invested with them? Turn to individual borrowers because they are helpless when the SARFAESI Act is enforced on them for forceful recovery of loans. What is worrisome is, if the Adani Group sinks even the recovery of all individual NPAs is not going to help banks overcome the catastrophic aftershock.

Indian opposition parties are up in arms against the Modi-Adani bonhomie. They are 9 years too late. When Modi was the PM candidate in the 2014 elections, he used to travel by helicopter to election rallies all over India from Gujarat and return the same day. The helicopter, pilot and fuel were all provided by Adani. This was in the public domain and everyone knew about it. Adani is a businessman and anyone who thought he was doing this merely out of friendship was being naïve. He was making a massive investment and what was he expecting in return? Now we know. Full and unfettered access to the corridors of power and to public money. The full extent of the financial damage that has been caused may never be revealed. What is required is a Supreme Court monitored fully independent financial audit, of all businesses of the Adani group and of all the financial institutions that are lenders of the Adani group. This is what the opposition parties should vehemently demand for. As long as the BJP is in control of the central government this will remain a fantasy.

History Is Not Going To Be Kind To Modi’s Legacy

There is a delightful and must watch Malayalam social satire movie, Pranchiyettan and the Saint that was released in 2010. Pranchi is the colloquial Malayalam version of the name Francis and ettan means big brother. Superstar Mammootty plays the titular role of Pranchiyettan and the film’s background is set in the market of wholesale dealers of rice in Thrissur in Kerala which incidentally happens to be my hometown. From his grandfather’s time his family was in the wholesale business of rice and he got the nickname of ‘ari (rice) Pranchi from his school days. The movie chronicles the desperation of Pranchiyettan to get rid of the ‘rice’ legacy he carries and how he gets comically duped each time. His desperation reaches the crescendo when he is coaxed into shelling out Rs. 1 crore in return for being bestowed with the Padmashri award (an implicit pointer to the fact that awards are now more bought than genuinely given), gets fooled again and the ensuing ridicule he has to face.

Narendra Modi shares a similar dilemma with Pranchiyettan. He has been unable to shake the stigma of ‘Butcher of Godhra’ off his back even after 2 decades, being absolved off the charges leveled against him by the Supreme Court and even after becoming the Prime Minister of India twice. It was obvious that he was expecting the whole of India and the rest of the world to embrace him and conveniently erase his life before he became the Prime Minister from their collective memory. But the stigma of Godhra, now rekindled by the BBC documentary must have left him sore and infuriated to his bones. One question begs for an answer: If he has been exonerated of any crime in the Godhra incident, why is the government banning the documentary so aggressively in India and why are BJP supporters up in arms on the streets resorting to violence to prevent the screening of the documentary?

There is something of far greater significance that must be nagging him or must worry him. He is India’s first Prime Minister from the time India’s (and the world’s) digital age truly began. The portrayal of him as the true and only leader to lead India into the ‘Golden age’ and equating him with Lord Shiva (NaMo) was spread largely through the digital world. The perception battle was won hands down on social media platforms. But the same social media platforms have turned out be double edged swords, providing his detractors the space to question, deride, ridicule and even abuse him. What is noteworthy here is, none of India’s past Prime Ministers have got treated badly like him, not in the past not in the present. There is the element of respect that India’s past Prime Ministers have received, from within the country and globally that Modi has been unable to garner in spite of all his high pitch speeches, photo op sessions and the effusive bonhomie with global leaders. When he boldly proclaimed in 2014 after becoming the Prime Minister that anyone, even a tea seller’s son can become the most powerful leader of the country, he inadvertently lowered his own stature as well as the dignified qualities required for a Prime Minister to have to be respected by the global leaders. 

The stigma of Godhra and his inability to win the respect and acceptance of being the most popular and accepted leader are going to have detrimental effects on his legacy. He should have been mindful of these aspects before elevating himself as the only one worthy of leading the country. History is not going to be kind to him.

Start reforming India with two simple steps

We Indians have cursed and complained about our governments, politicians and civil administration for being corrupt and useless and the judiciary for not being able to deliver justice at least once in our lifetime. I too have, several times. The corporate world requires its employees to talk about solutions and not keep complaining about problems. But the challenge is figuring out where to start solving the problem. Same is the case with our country. We need reforms in every possible way but where do we start from?

Before Independence, India’s literacy rate was very poor and most of the educated people were involved in the Independence movement in one way or the other. Almost all of them became part of India’s administration post Independence. When the legislature, executive and judiciary were defined in the Indian Constitution, the legislature and executive could be elected but how to elect the judiciary? That power was given to the President of India but therein lies the problem. The President is elected by the legislature through vote. We have seen successive Presidents being elected at the behest of the political party that is in majority in the Parliament. This leaves the door open for the executive to exert its influence over the election of Supreme Court judges indirectly. There is another problem that goes hand-in-hand with this situation. Courts in India can only issue and doesn’t have the power to execute its judgements and orders. Be it the police, state and central investigation agencies, all are controlled by the central and respective state governments. The Courts need the state and central governments to execute its judgements and orders. If we look back at the Rafale case and how fingers were pointed at PM Modi, I told my dad nothing was going to come out of it. Even if the court found Modi guilty, who would arrest the PM? It would have had to be himself. Judiciary going against the executive and legislature will break the fabric of the country.

There is another underlying problem here. When corruption started seeping into the administration power hungry politicians started ruling the country and continues to this day. Even the media says Congress/BJP/Left “ruled” state and not “governed” state. The white British raj simply got replaced by the brown Indian raj. Then those politicians started using goons and criminals to exert their power and influence over one another and over the people. Then some of the goons and criminals became smart and thought why work for politicians when they themselves can win elections and become politicians. This is why most elected members to Parliament and state legislature have some association with crime in the past or present. Then these elected members elect the President who in turn elect the Supreme Court judges. So it is quite obvious how crime and criminals have and can exert control over law and justice. This is the primary reason why Indian judiciary has become stale and ineffective.

I believe India can be reformed by two simple steps:-

1) Make the judiciary an independent entity. Judiciary is the guardian of the Constitution so it should be beyond any influence. The Constitution is for the people by the people. So establish a way to elect judges by the people or representatives of people without any affiliation to politics, legislature and executive.

2) Hand over control of central investigation agencies to Supreme Court and state police and state investigation agencies to respective High Courts. Their powers should be vested with the courts and courts should give administrative rights to the police and investigation agencies to the state and central governments.

Arm the courts to execute its orders on anyone in the country irrespective of their status and see how India changes in a day.

The tale of 2 Indias

Yes, Vir Das was absolutely right. There are indeed two Indias.

I came across an article that describes how a star can get reduced into a planetary body. For this to happen, the star will have to come under the influence of a bigger star and a host of other conditions will have to be satisfied. It is written by an award-winning astrophysicist and will not be to everybody’s taste and comprehension. So why am I writing about a mundane article on astronomy here?

In Indian astrology, the Shani God is associated with Saturn and is supposedly the son of the Sun God (Surya Putra). The primary effect of Shani on people’s lives is to control their earthly desires, lead them to a more spiritual life and reduce their worldly needs. In ancient Rome, Saturnalia was a week-long festival celebrated to honour their agricultural God Saturn. So why was Saturn given so much significance and, more importantly, attributed to the Sun? This is where our understanding of ancient texts and beliefs improves as science and technology leaps forward and influences all fields of study. By connecting the above article with the ancient beliefs and significance of Saturn, it can be easily deduced that Saturn was a star and it got reduced to a planet when it came into the influence of the Sun.

So, where did these Gods come in the explanation of a celestial event? Any celestial event that can exert its influence on our planet can have great implications on the planet and on our lives. But describing celestial events to people and passing them on through generations would be impossible. What we need to understand here is there is written history and then there is pre-history. Pre-history is that time when there were no writing methods and events from the past were passed on as stories in the form of poems because it is easier for us to remember songs and poems, recite them and pass them on through the generations. For example, indigenous tribes in Africa and Australia still pass on stories from their distant past through songs. Valmiki was apparently the first one to record the story of Ramayana and Vyasa was the first one to record the story of Mahabharata in written forms. Great wars are mentioned in both the epics but weapons are described in the form of bows and arrows. Mahabharata even mentions mushroom cloud, which we understood only when we exploded the first atom bomb. All of this only means the first people who recorded in the written form only understood weapons as bows and arrows. The same is the case with Sun and Saturn. We will easily remember Gods and festivals, so every celestial event is associated with a God and a festival was attached to it. So for an easy explanation, all the astronomical details were stripped off and it is simply mentioned that Shani is the son of the Sun God.

This leads to even larger questions. What exactly is the churning of the ocean of milk as mentioned in ancient Indian texts? Is it a metaphor for the creation of the Milky Way or is it describing a certain process in which the Milky Way was created? This, in turn, leads to the biggest question of all. First, Brahma is born from the navel of Vishnu, who then proceeds to create the Universe. Again is this a metaphor or the process of creation of the Universe being described? No evidence of the people and events mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata have been found yet, but the technological references in them are too good for the stories to be ignored as myths. In the Mahabharata, the charioteer of the blind king Dhritarashtra was given the ability to “see” the war from the confines of the palace itself and narrate it to the king. Experiments with remote viewing, which is using the ability of our mind to see far off things and events, went on in the U.S. for decades.

Though there are similarities in the descriptions of the Trinity of Gods and creation stories of the world and humans across all ancient civilizations, none of them matches the vivid descriptions mentioned in ancient Indian texts. The detailed technical designs of the vimanas, descriptions of highly advanced and destructive weapons and their after effects, natural treatment methods, what the ancient texts contain are probably keys to unlocking the knowledge of the Universe itself. Then what is holding us back from understanding them?

One, our knowledge about science, technology and our own abilities is still in its infancy. Why is it mentioned that those who wanted to do penance used to go to deep forests and mountain tops? For complete focus and concentration, yes, but why did they go to very specific places? Why did Shankaracharya walk all the way from his village in Kerala to the Himalayas more than 2000 years back? Why did he do penance at obscure places like at the Kodachadri mountain to which accessibility is difficult even now and where a Goddess apparently appeared before him? How did these Gods appear before those who sat in penance to invoke them? Scientists now know that there are wormholes in the Universe that open at certain points and can act as portals between extremely vast distances in the Universe, but they do not know how to keep them open long enough to travel through them. What if penance was done at places where wormholes could open through which Gods could travel and Sankaracharya was searching for such places to do penance?

The second and most important reason, blind belief. Indian society is conditioned not to ask questions, especially the question of why. The Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum has tons of gold inside it sitting idle. Why is it being kept and safeguarded? Ram travelled from north India all the way to south India and to Lanka. Did Ram write Ramayana? No. Did anyone travel with him and chronicle his journey to write in such great detail? No. If the weapons mentioned in the Mahabharata were indeed used at Kurukshetra, the place where the war was supposedly fought, most of the north Indian plains would probably still be uninhabitable because of nuclear radiation. Questions to ask are too many.

What Hindus in India are in possession of are ancient texts, the origins of which are indeterminate. The Vedas and Puranas are treasure troves of knowledge that we largely do not understand. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata contain information about extremely advanced technology that we have just started make sense of with our technological advancements. After Christianity was integrated into Rome, the hundreds of Christian sects existing at that time got together to choose the gospels for the Bible with the sole intention of creating the holy book of Christianity. Similar is the case with Islam and Quran. Were any ancient Indian texts written with the objective of making them holy books of a religion? No. Indian kings such as Ashoka went abroad and spread India’s culture, not a religion, which is why a currency note of Indonesia, the largest Muslim populated country, has the image of Lord Ganesha. If India had a religion from ancient times, it would have had unified the people just like Christianity and Islam did. Foreign invaders would have had found it almost impossible to find a footing on Indian land. Instead, what they found was small and fragmented kingdoms squabbling with one another, which made their conquests of India so much easier. Moreover, Indians have willingly converted to other religions, which would not have happened if there was already an existing religion binding them together.

So yes, there are two Indias. One is unable to use the vast repository of knowledge at its disposal. The other is deep-rooted in the blind belief of a culture that is now being manipulated and used as a religion of 33 million Gods and the exploitation of society in the form of caste system based vote banks. Everything else we see in Indian society today is the manifestation of these two aspects.

The COVID pandemic is unraveling India’s freefall in every possible ways

People in India who have known me well for some time may have noted that I gradually stopped writing about politics after 2019 elections. I have never voted in my life that is how interested I have been in politics and my trust in India’s electoral system. In 2013, a photo started circulating of a supposed bus station in Ahmedabad glorifying the Gujarat Model of development which got called out as fake in a day or two. It sent alarm bells ringing through my head because only a few days back my dad was telling me that India now needs a strong leader like Modi. There was no need to use the photo of a bus station in China and try to pass it off as a bus station in Gujarat if the Gujarat Model of development was true by any measure. That is when I started taking interest in politics and started writing about it. I wrote for 5 years trying to expose all the misinformation and propaganda and hoping that it would help people make a better choices during 2019 elections. I stuck to writing in spite of being ridiculed by my school and college classmates and ex-colleagues and facing a good amount of abuses on social media. But we chose to continue to stay blinded and fooled.

All I have cared about is governance and administration largely because I have worked on projects in my jobs and I know how critical management and governance are for the success of every project. Those who are in positions of responsibility and who can influence people can do all the theatrics they want and flirt with propaganda after governance and administration. But ironically, if they focus on governance and administration they would have no time for theatrics and propaganda and all they want to do is to keep distracting and misleading people.

Everything that happened in the last 7 years has converged to the situation created by the pandemic now. India’s economy never really recovered from the devastation caused by the demonetization fiasco in 2016. The pandemic is merely an infected mole on a tumor. What the pandemic has unraveled is the depth of ignorance that exists in our society. There was a report of a political leader claiming that pouring lemon juice into our nostrils will help to protect us from COVID infection and a school teacher who had no other health issues died after trying it. People are getting infected with black fungus after they believed in the misinformation that lying in cow dung and cow urine can protect them from COVID virus. The below comments are just the icing on the “cake”.

India is in dire need of education before vaccination. The virus of ignorance is far more deadly than all the viruses in nature. But education is also complicated in India. Many of the Indians I know who vouched for the Gujarat Model are educated and are living abroad in the some of most developed countries of the world. Almost all of them are maintaining stoic silence now. Education is supposed to create the ability of critical thinking in us. Education helps us to use our rationale and logic and ask questions. But education in India is linked to jobs which in turn is linked to money and social status. An education system that does nothing for the growth of critical thinking is useless and waste of time. The country is learning many hard lessons now and I hope all the miseries people are suffering now will lead to the rise of a stronger and wiser version of India.

Reasons for India’s COVID part deux – Failed governance, irrational people & complete ignorance about nature

The second wave of COVID-19 pandemic is upon India with greater ferocity. The pandemic started in late 2019, had spread from China to Europe and had just touched the shores of the USA. The Government of India was warned and was well aware of the impending crisis but it dithered in closing down international borders. The result was an epidemic like situation which resulted in harsh lockdown of people and millions suffered in the aftermath with unemployment and hunger.

This time around, the reason for the lockdown is even more ridiculous. Restrictions were eased, life seemed to be getting back to normal and the government even boasted that India had beaten back the virus without any supporting evidence. Festivals were allowed to be organized and state assembly elections were announced by the Election Commission. There was massive congregation for Kumbh Mela festival and huge election rallies in 5 states. It is peak summer across most of India at this time and people are vulnerable to falling sick. People tend to eat less food and sleep less when weather becomes hot which results in reduced immunity. So it is no surprise that COVID-19 has reared up its ugly head again.

Lockdowns are essentially government’s way of saying it is incapable of handling an escalating situation, abdicating responsibility and passing the buck on to the people. In simple terms, diseases are conflicts between higher order and lower order organisms in nature and along with the food chain is how nature keeps the population of every living being under control. Microorganisms are constantly mutating and evolving in nature. A disease of any magnitude could break out any time in nature. We have always been living on this ticking time bomb. Even if the government does not understand this, it is its responsibility to constantly improve and ramp up the health infrastructure of the country. In India, in most of the states, education and health are on the lowest side of the government’s priority list. So will the government be ever prepared for a pandemic? This governance failure is passed on to people and people are made to suffer. Locking people up inside their homes has the detrimental effect of lowering their immunity level and making them vulnerable to more diseases but the government is shortsighted enough to focus on winning a battle now and not being able to see a war coming in the future.

Kerala government is coming up with weird rules as it began a state wide lockdown yesterday. Unlike during the last year’s lockdown, when supermarkets were allowed to function, this time supermarkets have been closed down. Supermarkets are the best places to manage crowds and enforce social distancing. Now, people are rushing to the local stores where crowd control and social distancing is impossible. Opening supermarket stores will distribute the people among the supermarkets and local shops and reduce the possibility of transmission. In a nearby local store, two customers were apparently squabbling over one remaining packet of bread. I wrote to the district collector to consider opening supermarkets and received no response. Now, the government has come up with a website portal for generating e-pass for emergency travel within respective cities and towns. The instructions state that even for medical emergencies, people have to apply for the e-pass, wait for approval, then print it and carry with them. The irony here is, the government seems to be expecting everyone who has internet access at home to also own printers. Printing is usually done at local internet browsing centers which are all shut down now. Upon enquiry, I was told two things. 1) To call the local councilor and he/she will make all arrangements 2) A self written affidavit is enough for medical emergencies. They are expecting someone to sit and write an affidavit or call the councilor and wait when their father/mother/sibling needs emergency medical care. This is the level of incompetence and complete lack of rationale that plagues India’s civil administration.

The virulence of COVID-19 virus is of very small magnitude when compared to the virus that caused small pox. Millions have died because of small pox and my granny used to say that wailing could be heard from every other house because death was everywhere. When a foreign substance of any form enters our body, our immune system immediately mobilizes itself to fight and destroy it. Our body is a sophisticated system and our immune system is designed in such a way as to aggressively restore the balance of the body when something causes an imbalance. The first step is to isolate the foreign substance and prevent it from multiplying and spreading through the blood. Once this is done, the immune system will eliminate the foreign substance. In the case of COVID-19, the first step is failing so the immune system tries more aggressively to attack the virus. This is resulting in the immune system losing focus from other diseases people are suffering from and the subsequent complications led to most number of deaths in the first wave.

After the second wave has started, I am hearing about younger people and people without comorbidities getting
affected. There seems to be only one reason for this. Rapid urbanization has revamped people’s food habits and lifestyle completely which has alienated people even further from nature. Our immune system stays efficient only when it comes into contact with different types of microorganisms constantly, fights them and adapts itself to new diseases. This is all about information, so the greater information our immune system has about microorganisms the better it will be able to protect us. When a boxer quits fighting he invariably gains weight and becomes sluggish. The same happens with the immune system when we spend our entire time holed up in A/c rooms and travel in A/c vehicles. Then, when our junk food and “eating-at-whatever-time” lifestyle leads to diseases like cholesterol, diabetes, high BP and cardiac issues, the immune system is in no state to fight them. On top of all this, when a new virus attacks us for which the immune system needs time to fight, we can only expect the worse to happen to us.

The entire Indian system is at fault for this second wave. The Election Commission should not have gone ahead with the state assembly elections without a clear green signal from the medical fraternity. Even when the elections were declared, no political party showed any inclination to oppose the decision knowing fully well that election rallies are inevitable in the electoral process in India which always leads to massive uncontrolled crowds. Every political party is hungry to win elections and grab people’s power no matter what the situation is. Even the Supreme Court did not choose to step in, cancel the elections and order incumbent state governments to continue as caretaker governments. We, the people did not bother either. We knew what happened last year yet we chose to go for election rallies and on election day to vote in large numbers. Add to this, Indians are addicted to festivals and festivities. Even pandemics don’t matter because Gods will protect us.

The disaster the world is witnessing now has been in the making from the time of India’s independence from colonial rule. India is a democracy only by it’s Constitution. “Rule” is still the word used instead of “govern”, especially by the media. India is “ruled” by central & respective state governments. People’s representatives become people’s rulers & become inaccessible & unaccountable after they win elections. Corruption has become an incurable disease. Religions driven by blind belief take precedence over law & order. Orders passed by courts are imposed by civil administration which is controlled by the government so courts do not have the power to punish lapses in governance. So warnings of a second wave of the pandemic were conveniently ignored for conducting elections & festivals and the entire country is suffering again. Calls for Modi to resign are insensible because replacing leaders without reforming the system is not going to change anything.

Finally, what is incomprehensible is the fear of death among people which the media is amplifying and driving into everybody’s minds. Death is a natural conclusion to life in the entire universe. Our Sun will burn out and die in a few billion years. The Universe itself is supposed to come to an end. Millions of animals and human beings are dying every day because of a variety of reasons. Diseases are one way of population control in nature. This may not be to everybody’s taste but this is how nature works. I say this knowing fully well that my parents and I could also get infected with COVID-19. Nature follows the golden rule of “Survival of the fittest”. Only the strongest will survive in nature. We moved away from nature and forgot the golden rule and to keep ourselves healthy at all times. I hope this pandemic will be a reminder for everyone to return to nature, understand nature better and improve our lifestyle drastically. Our lives hinge on abiding and living by nature’s rules and flouting them will only lead to our own destruction.

Rihanna’s tweet about farmer protests in India and it’s colossal after effects

On the intervening night of 2nd February, when most of India was fast asleep, international pop icon Rihanna detonated the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on Twitter. Nearly half of 1.25 billion Indians woke up to her tweet on the 3rd and what followed was mayhem the equivalent of the Great Flood in conjunction with an asteroid strike.

The Indian farmers have been protesting against three farm laws that were implemented by the government of India in September 2020. As part of the initiative to reform India’s agriculture sector, the government has passed 3 laws – the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. While the government has maintained that the laws are aimed at shifting the terms of selling farm produce in favor of farmers by getting rid of unscrupulous middlemen and vested interests that distort the markets, farmers are apprehensive about them landing at the mercy of private sector players and their apprehension is not unfounded.

The amendment to the Essential Commodities Act the government undertook in 2020 now allows it to regulate the supply of essential food items such as food grains, pulses, edible oils and onion only under extraordinary circumstances (such as war and famine). The three laws intend to increase the number of buyers for farmers’ produce by allowing them to trade freely without any license or stock limit which the government claims can result in farmers getting better prices for their produce. The laws also create a framework for contract farming through an agreement between a farmer and a buyer prior to the production or rearing of any farm produce. It provides for a three-level dispute settlement mechanism as well: the conciliation board, Sub-Divisional Magistrate and Appellate Authority.

Free trade for farmers’ produce will automatically eliminate any barriers for private companies from stepping into the agriculture sector. Allowing private companies to buy essential food items without any limitations can lead to potential food inflation and unprecedented price rise as private companies will have maximum control over the availability of those food items in the market. The Adani Group has been accused of setting up silos in Punjab as soon as the farm laws were implemented. Though they have categorically denied the accusation, it is hard to ignore the facts that the group is a major funder of BJP, the political party that has formed government in India and Gautam Adani’s (Founder of Adani Group) proximity to PM Modi who was ferried around for election rallies all over India in Adani’s private helicopter even before he became PM in 2014. Private players entering into contract farming is another contentious issue. Most important here is the dispute settlement mechanism. Dispute settlements can take a long time and the process is susceptible to being influenced by the powerful private companies.

To fan the suspicions even further about the laws, the government drafted the laws without consulting with the farming community. No democratic government would create laws for an industry without involving the stakeholders from the industry and try to impose the laws on the industry. Add to this, the laws were passed as ordinances through voice vote in the Parliament without any discussion and reaching consensus with the opposition parties.

The farmers from the state of Punjab were the ones who started the protest against the farm laws. The media, largely subservient to the government and the government’s propaganda IT cell went to work, branding the farmers as Khalistan terrorists. But the protest soon spread to the nearby states of Haryana and UP and soon enough the protestors reached the border of Delhi. After the disastrous tractor rally in Delhi during the Republic Day celebrations on 26th January, the government has tried to break the resistance of the farmers by erecting concrete barricades at Delhi border and by cutting off water, toilet access and internet services.

It is at this point that Rihanna exploded her Twitter bomb. As her tweet quickly grabbed global attention, support for farmers started pouring in. Even child activists Greta Thunberg and Licypriya Kangujam weighed in with their support. Then the government propaganda machine went into overdrive. On one side, the government issued statements denying any wrongdoing on it’s part. On another it mobilized prominent sports and film personalities who tweeted in identical fashion to “protect” India from “external influences”.

The irony of this is, during his last visit to US, Modi had openly endorsed President Trump for a second term and no American citizen had outraged over it. In democracy, everyone has a voice. The oldest democracy can have an opinion about the largest democracy and vice versa. This is what makes democracies mature and vibrant. Having democracy written into a country’s Constitution without people understanding the true meaning of it is simply useless.

But it is the venom of hatred and abuse on social media that the IT cell run by BJP has unleashed on Rihanna, Greta, Licypriya and even on Meena Harris, niece of US VP Kamala Harris that has left the world stunned.

The simple fact is, when someone is abused and threatened for no fault or for taking a stand on an issue, the fault is mostly on the side of the abusers.

The state police of Delhi has even lodged an FIR on Greta prompting users on Twitter to mock the government to ask the help of Interpol to arrest her.

 

Rihanna has even been accused of taking payment for making her tweet.

This is when ironically, the farmers are protesting against the government’s alleged attempt to put agriculture sector under the control of select corporate companies. I do not have a view on whether Rihanna was paid or not but when the government is playing an unfair game it should not expect the farmers to play it fair and square.

What has been exposed though is that for the hatemongers who are sending vitriol laden messages and abusive threats to supporters of the protest, this is far more than the protest itself. By openly abusing women and even girl children, they have exposed their patriarchal upbringing and mindset before the world.

This is how a friend of mine who supports the government and BJP responded to me when I told him that Rihanna may not have taken any money for her tweet.

The article Rihanna had shared in her tweet is about government restricting internet access to farmers and not about the farm laws. What most people in India do not know is about the concept of Maslow’s hierarchy and the fact that internet is considered as part of our physiological needs in developed countries.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a scalable vector illustration on white background

She may or may not know about the farm laws, why the farmers are protesting and she definitely doesn’t need to know where Punjab is. The protest has become pan India now. The right wing ecosystem that thrives on the patriarchal upbringing and mindset of the people in it cannot accept any free thinking woman especially when she takes a stand on an issue. They will readily stoop to even physical assault to gain control over women.

As the government continues to rebuff repeated calls to repeal the farm laws and end the protest, it is finding itself being increasingly cornered by the tenacity and will of the protesting farmers. Modi has the mindset of an authoritarian ruler and he seems to know the below fact clearly.

What Rihanna’s tweet and the global outrage that followed it has done is to make it untenable for the Indian government to impose authoritarianism on the people under the garb of democracy. Modi’s inflated ego will suffer a massive dent if he is forced to repeal the farm laws. It would be wise for him to repeal the laws, end the impasse and do not let the protest descend into a civil unrest against the government. After all, BJP and it’s allies got only 39% vote share in the 2019 elections which means 61% Indians rejected BJP and do not consider Modi as their leader.

 

The black blot on democracy

The year 2020, for me, ended on January 6, 2021, the day the world bore witness to a spectacle that was unimaginable till it happened. An insurrection bid in the oldest democracy of the world. The sitting President of the USA trying to overturn his electoral loss through a coup in a desperate last ditch attempt to hold on to the Presidency. The Capitol building being raided and under siege by Donald Trump’s supporters in response to his call to help him cancel the results of what he called a rigged election. But the seeds of the chaotic day were sown much in advance.

In the months leading to the Presidential election, Donald Trump had started spreading the wild conspiracy theory that the election would be rigged for him to lose. Maybe he knew after all that he would lose. Anyways, taking this as a cue, all his supporters voted en masse for him. When he still lost after garnering a whopping 75 million votes, he claimed that no one can get more votes than this and used it as the premise to establish that the election was indeed rigged. When a lie is repeated consistently over a period of time, people start believing & buying into it. Trump has clearly exploited this gullibility among his supporters. Every time he stood his ground on his lies when his claims were dismissed it strengthened the belief among his supporters that he has won the election. He only exhorted his supporters to assemble at the Capitol building, gave them no instructions & left it to them to decide further course of action. Since he kept saying to save America he has to remain President, people decided to take things into their own hands. Simply put, he tried to engineer a coup without explicitly inciting it.

A fluttering Indian flag in the midst of the protestors raised intrigue and consternation among Indians the world over, the fallout of which continues on social media. Among the group of Indian migrants who are Trump supporters and affiliated with the Republican party and were part of the protest was one person from my home state and an alumnus of the engineering college where I had studied who brought the flag to the protest. Once it was determined that he is a Christian there was even more confusion. After India’s PM had openly endorsed Trump in his reelection bid, doubts had creeped up about the involvement of Hindu migrants who support Hindu nationalism in the protests. Indian flag amongst the protest can be easily construed as India’s participation in the coup attempt. Moreover Indian migrants who are now US citizens carrying Indian flags into a politically charged situation internal to the US is atrocious and can have consequences. As the FBI identifies the protesters and especially the ones who barged into and pillaged the Capitol building, there will be more clarity on whether there were any sinister motives in breaking into the building and if the lives of the senators assembled inside were under threat.

After 4 years of allowing Trump to post his whims and fancies and brainwash his supporters with his narratives and rhetoric on social media, Facebook and Instagram have finally suspended his profiles till his Presidential term ends and Twitter has suspended his personal account permanently. He has actively used social media to propagate his Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology and to brainwash his supporters into believing that him being President is the only way to save American democracy and regain America’s lost glory. This mirrors exactly how the Indian PM has won two terms in office in the name of protecting Hindu religion and regaining the lost glory of Hindu culture. Trump is an authoritative billionaire businessman who wound his way into the President’s chair. Antagonizing the most powerful world leader who doubles as a billionaire businessman would have been literally impossible for the social media companies.

As the US Senate contemplates impeachment proceedings against Trump to remove him from office immediately especially in the light of him still having access to America’s nuclear codes and barring him from holding a public office in future, I believe any action taken against him now will only bolster the belief in his supporters that he really won. Letting him go without repercussions will be as dangerous as shutting down his voice & jailing him for sedition. Add to this his white supremacist support base & the long standing gun control issue in the US. Looks like the country is descending into dark & dangerous times. Biden’s call for the country to heal may not be heeded after all.

US Presidential Election from an Indian perspective

Democracy is a concept born from thousands of years of monarchy and kingship to free ourselves from the shackles of being ruled and progress towards governance. Constitution contains guidelines on how to set up a democratic system. But it is the practices we follow that creates the environment of democracy. In a way, democracy is like religions. Having holy books has never resulted in the creation of religions. It is the practices followed that has created religions and set apart one religion from another. Though a democratic system ensures that monarchy does not take roots again, it leaves the door open for authoritarian rule to take hold of countries. The fact that the world’s oldest democracy has been in the clutches of an authoritarian leader for the past 4 years and the world’s largest democracy has been under the sway of an authoritarian leader for more than 6 years bears testimony to this.

When an Islamic nation was carved out of India during it’s partition in 1947, even though India adopted democracy and secularism as the pillars of it’s Constitution, the angst that India was not declared as a religion based majoritarian country formed and remained smoldering and deep rooted in the society for decades. Similarly, liberating black people from the horrors of slavery did not automatically create acceptance for them in the American society. The fact that a 4 year war had to be fought to end slavery bears testimony to the white people’s perspective about people of color. That perspective has endured to present times which is reflected even in Hollywood and in the fact that USA never had a president of color till 2008.

Be it based on religion or race or color, they created cracks in India and the USA for authoritarian leaders to exploit the opportunities and it was only a matter of time and circumstances before they got control over their respective countries. The primary difference between the two countries is, while Hindu nationalists have been scheming to restore upper caste hegemony and patriarchy and create Islamophobia for decades, Trump, by openly endorsing racism, white supremacy and Islamophobia has completely redefined what the Republican party stands for.

While it is not surprising that Trump became the Republican presidential candidate by pushing through his convictions and beliefs to the people, what is astounding is that after 4 years of him at the helm of governance and everything that has come to pass, he has still managed to garner more than 70 million votes. Never has a victorious presidential candidate managed to get so many votes, so getting 70 million votes and still getting beaten by 5 million votes is mind boggling. In no state has either Trump or Biden won convincingly or have trounced one another. The country has seen the highest voter turnout in 120 years. What is incomparable is the voter age population size 120 years back and now. It does look like there were no fence sitters and not many reluctant voters. Almost everyone seems to have taken one side or the other.

No wonder Biden has appealed to people to come together and heal. But Trump-ism, everything Trump has espoused and stood for is going to hold sway in American society at least in the foreseeable future. 70 million votes clearly shows how popular Trump is among the core Republican voters and they are not going to let go off Trump’s legacy so easily. This is why Trump is staunchly refusing to accept defeat in the election. All his accusations about voting fraud looks largely baseless but he has to fight to placate the millions who believed in him and voted for him. Biden seems to be focused on reverting many of Trump’s policies and restoring the ones from Obama’s time, but his most arduous task is going to be to play the balancing act, to position himself in such a way that his governance and policies appeals to both Democrats and Republicans.

Unlike India which is a relatively young democracy and looks likely to be under the throes of the current authoritarian onslaught and its after effects for decades, American society is far more mature, having embraced democratic principles for more than 200 years. This gives enough reason to hope that it’s people will reconcile and move forward. The first step towards it, though, would be Trump shedding all the acrimony over his defeat and exiting the White House graciously. I hope, for once, he would be able to keep aside his business tycoon mindset and think as a leader.

Presidential elections in the US used to have only lukewarm interest in India because no matter who becomes the US President and which party is in majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, American policies towards other countries hardly change. But what has changed in the recent past is Indian PM Modi overtly trying to establish more than official relationships with Obama and Trump, culminating in an Indian PM officially endorsing an American presidential candidate for the first time which was embarrassingly contradicted by the Hindu-American community in the US which chose to vote for Biden citing that Trump has failed as a leader. But now, all the attention is on Kamala Harris and her maternal family in India with the hope that it would probably help Modi foster relationship with Biden. Hindu nationalists would do well to remember that it was Biden who had stoutly refused to let Modi enter US till he became the PM of India.

COVID-19 summary report (till now)

1. COVID-19 is the only disease in the world now. People suffering from existing life threatening diseases are being made to undergo COVID-19 tests before giving the treatment they have been getting till now.
2. No information about healthy people dying due to COVID-19 has been made available. People suffering from existing life threatening diseases are highly vulnerable to COVID-19. Yet their deaths due to existing diseases are being attributed to COVID-19 which is why high mortality is getting reported.
3. By invoking full lock down, our immune system has been officially declared as useless. We can no longer survive without vaccines and medicines.
4. The entire world’s population can be locked down and made to live on bare essentials for an extended period of time. Dictatorship is no longer the hegemony of Hitlers and Mussolinis.
5. Our total lack of discipline has got exposed because we need to self isolate when we are sick which we never do and governments have had to quarantine affected people to prevent community transmission of COVID-19.
6. All it takes is an app on our mobile phones for governments to start surveillance on it’s citizens and which people will happily install because of the fear created in the name of a virus.
7. Lock downs will continue in some parts all over the world till a vaccine is found for COVID-19. The vaccine will be introduced to the world with the offer that there will be no need for lock downs once everyone has been vaccinated. There is a windfall waiting to be made and it’s going to be the biggest scam in the history of mankind till now.