I am proud of our Republic and its Constitution!

Note: Very very long rant follows… Read only when you have loads of time at hand.

Each year on 26th Jan, the Republic Day, there will be a section of Indian press and also the general public who go on to whine about how the ‘system’ is greatly flawed and dysfunctional. They express a feeling that the country is going to the dogs and the constitution doesn’t isn’t really doing much to help the nation or the common man. I am sure that some readers of this blog might be feeling or have felt this way at some point.

Pancham Puriwala

I came to know of the place when a friend of mine recommended it to me. Since I am a fan of almost all cuisines and dishes I made up my mind to give it a try at the earliest opportunity. The opportunity arose rather quickly when I had to go to GPO on Wednesday. The restaurant was rather easy to find as it is literally at a stone’s throw from both the CST station and GPO.

The rather small and dimly lit place was full of activity when I arrived at around 1300 hours and the old wodden tables seemed all taken up by nearby

Live and let live

In 2010, Mukesh Ambani who is usually the less flamboyant of the two Ambani brothers provided a lot of newspaper and news-channel fodder when he and his family of five moved into his newly constructed 27 storey house named ‘Antilia’ that apparently took more than a billion dollars to build. He went on to make some more headlines by inviting almost all of the city’s celebrities to the housewarming party and then paying Mumbai’s largest residential electricity bill of Rs. 70 lakhs (Rs. 7,00,00,00) a month later. Many months later, trivia and rumours about the house and its amenities continue to circulate from email forwards as well as idle chitchat over chai.

While constructing such an extravagant home in the heart of the city was bound to make headlines, what surprised me was the fact that the Ambanis faced heavy criticism for being too extravagant and insensitive. Most of the criticism  revolved around how it is an obscene display of wealth because there are millions who are homeless and many more who cant get a square meal a day in India. This is so absurd that I would not have believed that there exist people who actually believe this ludicrous argument had I not personally heard it being said.

I believe that it is absolutely ok for Mukesh Ambani or anyone else to build for himself a house as extravagant as his heart desires. The rich do not have an obligation to alleviate poverty. Mukesh Ambani should not be held responsible for abject poverty that exists in India or Mumbai today nor should he be expected to give away his wealth towards poverty alleviation efforts. The philanthropists who do so rightly deserve the compliments that they receive but its unreasonable to expect all the wealthy to join their ranks.

Secondly, poverty is a problem more complex than most and money is not always the solution. There is no guarantee of even the slightest change in poverty levels in India, even if Mukesh Ambani gave away all of his wealth.

Any money, earned in whatever way, be it legal or illegal does a lot more good when used for consumption rather than when it is locked away in swiss bank vaults or complex financial instruments. The billion dollars spent on the mansion will now be spread out over all the contractors and workers who toiled to build it. Furthermore, the newspapers report that the 27 storey home is staffed by 600 staff members who have now gained employment and who thus shall definitely benefit. It is a given that most of this household staff will be from the poorer section of the society and not sons or daughters of fellow industrialists. Some of the millions paid in utility bills shall also be used to pay the salaries of the utility’s employees. So the house is infact helping a lot of people earn money.

Lastly, the Ambani’s have money and how they spend it is none of anyone else’s business be it politicians or social workers. While it is true that someone might fell disinclined to work hard knowing that even his entire year’s salary cant get him a home like Antilia, it is just as likely that looking at the Ambanis’ display of opulence might encourage others to work harder and inspire some to take up the daunting mantle of being entrepreneurs.

P.S. – This post does not mean that this is what I would do if one fine day I  have as much money as Mukesh Ambani does. Frankly speaking, I would consider it a massive problem if every morning, I had to select a vehicle to travel to work, from over a hundred cars parked over 4 floors of parking space…

P.P.S. – Happy New Year to all the (very few) readers of this blog!!! Hope you have a great year ahead!

Name change politics for dummies…

A few months ago the Indian government passed a constitutional amendment to rename the state of Orissa to Odisha and its language Oriya to Odisha. It may sound like a profound change but there have been many such name changes in India. It is a popular stunt to gain political mileage. Yesterday I found the secret, yet unpublished edition of “Indian politics for dummies” book and here I present to you an extract on City/State name alteration for dummies:

(If your city name has c in it, simply replace c with k and start from step 3)

STEP 1:

Find an obscure but Indian sounding name which a very small (0.0001%) minority of Indians and no foreigner will be able to properly pronounce.

TIP: Make it sound like the final word on spelling bee show.

Sir Sagar Godbole

“In the grandest ever ceremony held last night, Sagar Godbole  was knighted for his invaluable service to mankind in taking the very noble art of cracking extremely inappropriate and  mistimed lame jokes to far greater heights and shall henceforth be called Sir Sagar Godbole.”

Well, hold your horses, don’t start buying me those expensive congratulatory gifts just yet. This is just a hypothetical scenario as of now because owing to their usual lethargy, Her Majesty’s Government hasn’t yet recognised my valuable services (and also because iPad 2 isn’t in the market yet… hehe)

I began wondering about the issue of titles when I registered for an UCAS id. While most forms have the usual Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr options for “title”, UCAS not only has a dropdown list but also so many options that is scrollable! Take a look at the screenshot below…

Apart from the those visible in the screenshot the list also includes titles like Baron, Baroness, Duke, Duchess, Viscount and various military ranks.

In getting rid of our colonial rulers we also have also gotten rid of this wonderful system of titles and peerages. I am not denying that medieval Dukes and Barons were the 1600s version of today’s Kim Jong Il and that hereditary peerages are extremely unfair because they give you a title because of parents. My point is “who cares about what happened in middle ages?”. Today all the peerages knighthoods (the right to call yourself Sir/Dame Something Something) granted are life-peerages which cannot be inherited and Furthermore, the Queen only symbolically confers the title. The recipients are selected by the democratically elected incumbent government. Hence, today these are no different than civilian honours awarded by other governments, just a lot cooler.

It is incontrovertible that despite whatever alleged negative historical connotations the British honours might have they still sound a lot cooler than the honours awarded by other countries, be it ‘Bharat Ratna’ in India or ‘Order of Temasek’ (Darjah Utama Temasek) in Singapore primarily because these honours do not confer any title.

While these honours do give a monetary award to the recipient, by not conferring a title, they fail in their stated aim of providing recognition for the person for his/her service to the community or nation. Hardly anybody knows that Sunderlal Bahuguna has won the second highest civilian honour in India. It is a telling sign that while most teenagers in India and Singapore do not know who has been conferred national honours in their own countries, they are very well aware that an arrogant scotsman has been knighted for his services to football.

Hence, while I do not advocate returning to the British honours system, I do think that titles should be included with all national honours because only a title and its regular use by the media can bring true “recognition” for the person being honoured. I am sure that medieval India had a lot of titles too. I suggest let us bring out nawab, sardar, mansabdar as life peerages, just without any land grants this time. Nawab Sagar Godbole sounds awesome too, doesn’t it?