Deadly “pressure-to-perform” claims another life

A 25 year old with technical and business degrees from IIT and IIM, the top Indian colleges and working for McKinsey, the world’s best consulting company. Everyone would say what an amazing guy. The mental pressure around the two statements is in itself unimaginable.

It is generally accepted that at least 3 years of work experience is required to take up an advanced or Master’s degree and in the case of an advanced business degree more experience is preferred. Academic institutions should assess the work experience and the candidate’s exposure and knowledge of the business side of things before granting admission for business degrees. The guy came straight out of IIT at 22 years and landed at IIM. What exposure does someone at 22 have of business and the ones who have will definitely not take up a business degree, not at 22 for sure. Out of IIM and straight into McKinsey. It is nothing less than maniacal.

It is clearly not just the work pressure that drove him to take his life. The deadly “pressure-to-perform” comes from downstream a long way back. Suicides among students preparing for entrance exam to get into the IITs and among students studying at IITs have been rising alarmingly over the years. That is 5 years of academic mental stress with the added stress of cracking the CAT exam to get into the IIMs and then 2 years of even more academic stress during the MBA program. When he joined for work, he had already spent 7 years of his life in the pressure cooker of intense academic stress.

Work pressure and micromanagement are common in most companies now but would depend largely on the ones managing the projects. Companies like McKinsey hire the best graduates from the top colleges and then the pressure to perform and the toxicity in the work culture is thrust upon them. Now the question everyone would have asked is, why didn’t he just quit and move on rather than drown himself in the mire? Because of social and peer pressure. Can’t someone who has gone through the grind of JEE, IIT, CAT and IIM absorb work pressure and continue performing at his peak? No one would have understood, not even his family. The problem with peak performance is, no one can stay at the peak forever and down the peak could become a free fall very easily and quickly. He was way too young to manage work pressure, push back micromanagement and survive office politics and toxicity.

It took me 10 years and enough exposure of working with international clients to understand how a MBA can add value to my profile and MBA from an international college would be the best to prop up my international work experience. With age and experience comes maturity and the ability to work smarter and manage all kinds of stress. Consulting is no easy job and consulting with McKinsey means working with the top companies in the world. It is impossible for anyone to live in sustained mental stress for a long time and the younger one is the more vulnerable they are to capitulating sooner.

From the time I heard the Dire Straits classic “Private Investigations”, a narrative of the daily life of the not so scrupulous private investigators, two lines have stuck with me.

“What have you got, at the end of the day

What have you got, to take away”

What we will all eventually take with us is knowledge and experiences and not the names of academic institutions where we studied, the names of companies where we worked and the expectations of people around us. Our well being is something only we understand the best. The stress and suicides created by pressure to perform will stop when we realize these simple facts.

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.

My tribute to the pink-collar workers

My favorite women can be found working in supermarket and apparel stores across India and I am thankful to my dad for telling me about them from an early age. Born into socially and economically backward families, they neither have the environment nor the motivation to excel in education. Instead they are conditioned to be married and sent packing from their homes as soon as possible. Their vulnerabilities are exposed when they are forced into the lives of wayward patriarchal men who indulge in everything except managing their homes and are forced to look for jobs to earn money. These men, though useless to their families have no hesitation in impregnating their hapless wives without having any thought about how and in what circumstances will those children grow up in. When we see the next generation kids going wayward and crime rates going up, one of the most important reasons is this.

I love talking to them at the supermarket store near my house and they tell me about how they wake up by 4 in the morning, finish off all their household chores, cook food and get their kids ready before travelling to reach the store and inside the store they have to wipe and clean the floor of the store, what they just did in their houses. They have to stand the entire day near their designated areas even when there are no customers and they tell me about how tired their back and legs become by evening. I warn them to be careful about developing varicose vein and they give me rueful smiles. Then they travel back to home, cook again, take care of their kids and end up sleeping by 11:30 pm. That is hardly 5 hours sleep for an entire day’s work. Even worse is, they have to work all days in the week. Every sick day is loss of pay for them. Their callouses filled hands are the best indicators of how hard their lives are. When they put their heads down and bear with borderline abuse from the store managers for even the slightest mistakes it shows how fragile their lives are.

My parents and I are very particular that we engage with them to the minimum. In apparel shops we tell them to stay back, do not touch any clothes on the racks and ask them to show us only what we want to see. In supermarket stores I forbid them from bending to put anything in my basket. Bending forward without breathing in and without bending the knees is why most people suffer from back pain. I warn them to be careful about their back, I get their rueful smiles again and I understand why. When the soul is broken what will anyone care about their body?

Every day they go to work in the fear of losing their jobs and not knowing where their next meal will come and what will happen to their kids if they lose their jobs. Women empowerment is just a fancy word for me when there are thousands and more of such women out there who are forced to face the harsh realities of life and are wearing down their body and mind every day just to survive. The best customers can do for them is to smile at them, be warm and nice to them, talk to them and show our gratitude for making our lives easier with shopping. All they might need is someone to hold their hands and tell them “I understand you and I am with you”.

The picture I have put here is one I found on the internet. I will never take their pictures and objectify them. Already deprived of warmth and appreciation they need not be burdened with unwanted sympathy and publicity.

A Year On After Her Suicide Toxic Work Culture Continues To Haunt Swapna

Swapna was an alumnus of the engineering college where I studied. She was forced to take her own life last year after she was unable to bear the work pressure she had to endure at Canara Bank where she was working. A friend and another alumnus of the college informed me of her demise and after almost a month I got to know that she was the elder sister of the wife of a doctor whom I befriended during my morning walk and is a good friend now.  

Indian banks set unrealistic expectations about their yearly revenue generation and the entire hierarchy of employees is under constant pressure to meet and exceed the targets given to them. But branch managers are the ones that suffer the most. It is the employees of the branches that deal with customers every day so they are the ones expected to generate revenue by selling insurance etc. Loans are also disbursed from the branches so branch managers are responsible for repayment and NPAs pile on more pressure on them. The catch here is, authorization for large business loans comes from higher management of the banks and when business owners stall and evade payment due to bad investments or market downturns those loans become NPAs. Banks mostly run into losses because large sums of money gets stuck in business loans. Then the pressure is on the branch managers to close NPAs of as many loans of individuals as they can regardless of whether they are unable to repay due to genuine reasons.  

Swapna’s husband passed away 3 years back and she was a single parent raising up her two kids. No mother will take her own life knowing fully well that her kids will be orphaned and they will become the responsibility of her immediate family. So it is amply clear that what she was being made to endure at her work place was insufferable.   Swapna had taken a housing loan from the bank for building a house. Her immediate family has rightly put the blame on the bank for her suicide because it is the toxic work culture of the bank that has claimed her life. All they have asked is that the bank take responsibility of the loan and close it. The bank is still considering this largely because of the fear that if more such incidents happen they will have to close more such loans. Ironically taking responsibility of such loans seems to be more important to the bank than improving its toxic work culture and preventing more suicides of its employees.

Swapna’s death should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet and should serve as a deterrent and warning to all banks to treat their employees as human beings and not revenue generating robots.  

Couple of weeks back, the bank sent a recovery notice to her family and they approached the print media. That the bank is continuing to haunt her a year after her death was published as news item in all leading Malayalam newspapers. The Kerala GM of Canara Bank subsequently called her family to apologize for sending the recovery notice and blamed it as human error when it is abundantly clear that the bank was testing the water to see if her family’s wrath has mellowed with time. 

There has been national outrage over her suicide all over the media and whatever the bank does to avoid taking responsibility of her death will only dent their image further in the public’s eye. Their sole way of redemption is to take responsibility of the loan and go to her family with the offer to assist her children in every possible way till they finish their education. This will go a long way in regaining at least some of the credibility they have lost in the last one year.

Exposing the blatant misuse of inspirational quotes

Inspirational quotes are being increasingly short sold and aspiring professionals are getting misguided by the interpretations of the self proclaimed experts, motivational speakers and career coaches. Below are two I have come across.

Confucius said choose a job we would love doing and not to make our passion our profession which clearly do not mean the same. We do jobs for money which helps us to meet our physical needs. Doing what we are passionate about leads to our mental and emotional fulfilment. Because we have to barter more of our time to earn more money we are fooling ourselves by finding mental and emotional fulfilment in the objects we buy for our physical needs. Monetizing our passion is never a good idea because passion releases our mind from the stress of meeting our physical needs and money suppresses our emotional quotient which means we stop getting emotional fulfilment from our passion. Moreover money creates competition and that is where value for money trumps our emotional needs.

Someone told me about a motivational speaker who tells his audience “work like a dog live like a king”. For one, animals do not “work” like us. The only time they work is for food and there is a better word for it. Hunt. If work like a dog means tire ourselves out to complete exhaustion then there is no time and nothing left in us to live like a king. Commonsense and human anatomy goes out of the window. Its hilarious. Constantin Brancusi said work like a slave, command like a king which means when we work, work hard and when we become a leader be a strong one. Also, command like a king is not the same as live like a king.

English is a quirky language so it is being shamelessly arm twisted and maligned by some among us for their own benefits with scant regard for the negative impact they are creating on the people who look up to them.

How Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can help us understand patriarchy

I was explaining Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to a good friend and that is when I realized how it can be used to understand patriarchy. We have come across patriarchy being interpreted and described in a variety of ways but we still do not have a good understanding of its evolutionary aspects. For those who are new to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is a simple illustration of our needs in life and has to be analyzed from bottom to top. There are new and hilarious versions of the model now, with internet and mobile battery being the most important of our needs.

Our needs in life begins with the most basic ones which is why they are at the foundation of this model. According to priority our physiological needs can be further subdivided into

Air and water
Food
Sleep

These are our most fundamental needs for survival.

Then comes shelter which offers us protection and that is when we step into reproduction.

I will go no further than what Morgan Freeman’s character Professor Norman says here in the stunning and eye opening movie Lucy. When the habitat of a living being is not conducive enough for life it will choose self preservation and when the habitat is conducive enough it will choose reproduction. It is an evolutionary fact in all animals that a major portion of their energy is meant for reproduction because for the survival of their species reproducing as many as they can is critical since nature controls population of all animals primarily through predator-prey relationships and diseases. So in difficult environment animals choose their own survival over reproduction because even if they reproduce their offspring will not be able to survive. This is evidently how Turtles and Crocodiles survived the asteroid strike that made dinosaurs extinct.

Reproduction leads to security in Safety needs because we need to protect our family. Then, to work and take care of our family, we need health and work to do. For the longest time in our evolution, being able to meet the physiological and safety needs led to directly to Esteem. Being physically stronger it was the men who went out, faced the dangers in nature and weathered the different climates to hunt for food and find wood to burn. So men who were able to meet all or most of the physiological and safety needs were recognized and respected within the families and community which lead to attaining higher social status and being considered as a community leader.

Love and belonging are not characteristics in nature, in fact what we get to see in animals during their courtship is different aspects of the process involved in mating and breeding. There is no place for love and belonging in the harsh and uncertain nature where life expectancy is very low. It was only after we became more intelligent beings we became civilized and started leading societal life did our emotional aspects evolve. In those times when we had to brave nature’s extremes there was only the need to work together to hunt, fish and cut wood. Friendship and camaraderie are products of our evolution into the societal life we live now. Life was all about survival so intimacy was not even known or required and the only form of love required was affection for the children when they were growing up.

Patriarchy is essentially men taking care of physiological and safety needs and expecting esteem in return from their families. Nothing exemplifies this better than a particular scene in the biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag of celebrated Indian athlete Milkha Singh. The young Milkha and his older married sister had managed to cross over into India from Pakistan during the bloody partition of India in 1947. They were in a refugee camp and his sister is shown in a makeshift tent cooking food when her husband arrives. There is no emotional reunion, he ignores Milkha and heads straight for the tent, enters, sees his wife and closes the entrance. This is how men were from the cave dwelling times. All the male testosterone and adrenaline rush from hunting and fishing and bringing home food and wood is further bolstered by the exhilaration of returning home alive. They had no time to understand women and their needs. Women were simply meant to satisfy them in whatever ways that made them happy and put them to sleep after a long day outside. This patriarchy is clearly visible in the epic Ramayan followed in India. Ram, the protagonist travels all the way from the north to southern tip of India and crosses over to Lanka in search of his wife who was kidnapped by the demon king of Lanka. After slaying the demon king and rescuing her, patriarchy overpowers his love for her and she is asked to walk through fire to prove her “purity” for him.

We have evolved in all aspects of life but we are still holding on to some remnants from our past, notably religion and patriarchy because their effectiveness in controlling us hasn’t waned. A lot hasn’t really changed from our ancient cave dwelling past, hunting first got replaced by agriculture, livestock and barter system and now there is the additional factor called money. We have created a new world that stands on the foundation of money and with money we can buy all the utilities and services we have created to meet our needs. There is a simple tradeoff though, there is a barter system between time and money now. We get more money in return for giving up more of our time. The ancient patriarchal mindset has simply shifted to earning more money, buying utilities and services with money and expecting esteem and stature in return.

Our patriarchal mindset is blinding us to the simple fact that what we build physically is a house and the house becomes our home only with love, togetherness, sense of belonging and emotional contentment. Ancient Indian texts have a very sensible classification of human lives. Till 23 years it is time for education, attaining knowledge and becoming wise of the world. Then from 24-48 it is family time. From 48-72 it is time to step out of the family and serve the community and after 72 renounce all earthly needs and attachments to make our death and journey to the afterlife easier. The hidden secret here is the population control aspect. By the time we become 48 our children have to be old enough to live on their own only then we can step into community service. So what we have is 24 years to raise our children with the right balance of physical and emotional health and contentment. Patriarchy and patriarchal mindset ignores these simple things which is why without emotional understanding and bonding we have lost the connection between our souls and are increasingly becoming individual isolated beings searching in the virtual world for what we have lost in the physical world.

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 dowry demon continues to prey on Indian women

Vismaya’s brutal death must have become national news by now. One of the most notorious evils in society has claimed her life. Dowry. In order to start their own family, men and women have to go through the rituals and abide by the rules of the social institution called marriage. Exchanging gifts between families is customary in marriages then what is role of dowry? Indian women did not have access to education till recent times. They were and are still expected to leave their homes and live the rest of their lives with their husbands after marriage. So when a parent is giving away their girl child, why are they giving money, gold, property, etc to the boy? Dowry is a tradition used to be followed by affluent families in the past with a specific intent. Dowry is an indicator of how the family of the bride has brought her up and is given to the bridegroom and his family so that they can provide the same lifestyle she is used to at her home. With time, dowry started to have varied interpretations. For example, when educated men were far and few, it became a norm to give hefty dowry to them for marrying daughters of rich and influential people. As the system of giving dowry spread to all sections of society, it became a status symbol. When a girl/boy is getting married, it is customary to ask their parents how much dowry are they giving/getting. In some communities families of boys clearly state their expectations of dowry to the families of girls and in some communities families of girls are expected to give what they can. Another way of looking at dowry is giving the girl her inheritance from her family during the marriage as she would no longer be living in her house. There was a time when girls were not allowed to go out of their houses. Families of boys and girls decide when they should get married. They would speak to one another and take all the decisions. Boy and girl would see each other’s faces only during the night after marriage. Those were not marriages, they were alliance between families because all that mattered was compatibility between families, in terms of wealth, influence and social status. One of the reasons why parents oppose love marriages even now stems from this. They are looking for alliances that will bolster their social status and when a boy and girl chooses each other families, wealth and social status becomes irrelevant. But marriages in India are far too complicated. Hindus have a caste based society and there are sub castes within each caste. Alliances are first looked for within the sub caste and then within the caste. Then astrological compatibility kicks in. Then compatibility between families, their social status, all of these act as filters that help to zero in on that one perfect profile. There is another layer of complication also. When a girl turns 21, conversations start about her marriage. Then society takes over. Information about the girl and her family travels far and wide within her community and proposals start coming. In a year or two, her marriage gets over. So essentially most girls get married through alliances found in this way or through love marriage. When my parents started looking for girls for me, they put up my profile on all matrimony sites and even in newspapers. What they came across were profiles of girls who were not compatible with me astrologically and the ones that were did not have physical compatibility with me. A few proposals that came through contacts fell through because of astrological incompatibility. My parents also got calls from parents of girls asking what were our demands. They didn’t know how to respond. Most of these calls were from the southern side of Kerala and there it is customary to give dowry and literally buy men. In one of the calls, the parent of a girl even said that their daughter would continue staying with them after marriage so I will have to shift to their house. Now to Vismaya’s case. She was studying a professional course to become an Ayurvedic doctor and was 23 years old when she was married off. 23 is borderline late for girls for marriage according to society. It is generally believed that till 23 girls will be flexible and will adapt easily to a new life at their husband’s home. From 24 and onwards they start forming their own opinions which decreases their adaptability. So it didn’t matter to her parents that she was studying. She was 23 and getting her married off was more important. She was from South Kerala so everything her parents gave as dowry isn’t surprising. What is amazing is how traditions endure in India with time. There was a time when boys used to get dowry for marrying uneducated girls. Now girls are as educated or more educated than boys but still the tradition of dowry remains intact. Why? Social status. Society expected her family to conduct her marriage in all the grandeur. What was given as dowry should be acceptable to the society. According to reports, she went to her parents after she was beaten and abused by her husband and when he came to pick her up, she went with him because that is what society expected her to do. Her life after marriage is at her husband’s house so her parents will be looked down by the society if she has issues with her husband and comes to stay with them. Society would always blame the girls for not having patience and tolerance and not “winning over their husbands” with love and by doing whatever they are asked to. So where does the blame lie for what happened to her? The astrologers who matched Vismaya’s and her husband’s horoscopes and found perfect compatibility? Astrology is all about mathematics and calculation errors can happen to anyone. I have heard about one astrologer for whom 32+2 was 36 and he was adamantly standing his ground that the horoscopes did not match. Why couldn’t her family wait till she completed her education and started working? Why the hurry? Was it the fear that a job would empower her to make her own choices and they would not be able to impose their will on her? As a doctor she could have had earned far more in her lifetime than what they gave as dowry. Then why? All because for her parents, social status was way too important than their daughter and her life. In umpteen Indian movies fathers are shown to talk about the fire that ignites in their bellies when their daughter becomes mature and the fire increases with each passing day as he worries about his daughter’s marriage. Parents see daughters as social burden that needs to be unloaded from their shoulders and sent away from home as soon as possible. I am writing this to call out for the arrest of her parents because more than anyone else, they are responsible for her fate. Moreover giving dowry is equally culpable as taking/asking for it. This constant craving for social status and endorsement from society can be handled only with social shaming. More importantly their arrest will act as deterrent and prevent parents of girls from choosing society over their daughters. To all future bridegrooms and their families sthreedhan (dowry in Indian languages) where sthree means woman and dhan means wealth does not mean the amount of wealth your brides are bringing to your homes. It means woman is the wealth. She is the one who is going to take care of all of you and nurture and raise the next generation. Understand and remember this before you abuse a woman again.

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.