Rajiv Gandhi Setu or Worli Bandra Link – What’s in a name?

Rajiv Gandhi: That makes my count to 561. I am coming close to you Gandhiji.

Gandhi: Son, Whatever you do, you will never be able to beat my record. I stand at 1000000.

Veer Savarkar: This is just not fair!! I am still crawling at 201. Rajeev, you should have given this one to me. You or your mother takes all the ones at Delhi and I face tough competition in Mumbai from Shivaji. I thought I had a chance for this one.

B.R.Ambedkar: You guys just wait till Mayawati becomes the Prime Minister of India. I will soon become the new father of the nation.

I guess the politicians of this country think that the great leaders of India must be having this conversation in the heaven (presumably). They would be fighting over and trying to make and break records with relation to how many monuments of them are being made, how many roads, airports, bridges are being named after them etc. I can think of only that as the reason why our politicians behave in such manner.

Shiv Sena is hauling Congress for naming the Bandra Worli Sea Link after Rajiv Gandhi, as they believe that, its construction was started by the BJP – Shiv Sena combine and they should get the credit for it and hence, want it named after Veer Savarkar. Mayawati objects to money being spent on Rajghat and the stature of Mahatma Gandhi in the nation and believes that she and Ambedkar deserve better. Never mind that Ambedkar might be turning in his grave when he sees the dire condition of Dalits in the country even 60 years after independence.

To deal with our over zealous politicians, I propose that we have a separate ministry for the purpose of naming and renaming of public property and places, the ‘What’s in a name’ ministry. Then we can have a commission set up for each property that needs to be named, have proper debate and channelize our public resources for such important activity. After all we don’t want a war to start in the heaven and we should give equal opportunity to each ‘neta’, dead or alive.

Return of Sarkari Naukri and Sarkari Babus

A couple of years when all was hunky dory in our recession free lives, my mother had found a reason to get worried about. To somehow get her only daughter married and according to her friends, a NRI working for an IT firm would be the best match. My mother often told me that how the world has changed topsy turvy since her days. During her marriageable days, getting your daughter married to someone working in a private firm was not opined to be a good watch. Parents were also wary of sending their daughters to a faraway land. Where as public jobs were supposed to be the safest, well paid and ensured a life long guarantee. IAS cadres had the highest rate in the dowry market followed by boys working in PSUs.

And how all that changed three decades later. Most of my school/ college gang, were settled in USA with either green card holders or IT NRI’s. I was the only one left and often asked by dozens that when will I get lucky like my friends. To top that my IT employer didnot even think me worthy enough to be sent on an onsite assignment. So I had to live with those additional queries about why I am not being sent abroad when ever far flung relative of everyone else is. Somehow, I managed to escape the NRI’s or you could say the poor NRI’s were saved from me when I met my husband. (prospective husband then!!) Atleast he was from IT and had been a NRI for 2 years, so I wasn’t that off the track.

Now, when I read about IIM grads going for public sector jobs and fathers looking for PSU working grooms and saying a definitive no - no to IT (and if you are a NRI especially in US – dude you have some serious chances of not finding a bride at all), I wonder that I didn’t even had to wait for my daughter’s marriage for the world to turn topsy turvy again. I read interesting news lately, wherein a man asks the court to reduce the alimony that he has to pay to his wife, as due to the recession he has to take a pay cut. So, even for a healthy divorce you now need a PSU working husband who can ensure a lifelong alimony with assured guarantee.

In a matter of few months, like the Sensex, the dowry market has turned upside down too. Sarkari Babus are back in demand with increased price of their shares and my poor IT brethren have become like penny stocks. The economic cycle had given rise to a new eligible groom cycle and I propose that we should also have a groom index now to track the eligibility of bachelors with respect to changes in economy. How about a Groomex??

Railway Budget 2009-10 or a Boxing match

If you have never seen a boxing ring match between a former champion and a challenger, you can view the recent video of the Railway Budget 2009-10 of India being presented in the Parliament. The former champion was our ever entertaining Lalu Prasad Yadav, erstwhile Railway Minister, and the challenger, our ‘didi’, Mamata Banerjee, the current Railway Minister. I can’t tell you who won which round and the whole match, as I don’t think we have seen the end of it. The match will definitely go on.

Laloo was roaring like the lion who has enjoyed an excellent regime but now has to accept defeat and give way to the new king ( or shall I say Queen) of the jungle. Not to be outdone, the lioness roared back with an equally big roar. At the onset, the Queen challenged her predecessor’s claims of enormous profits and revenues, by stating that she has to reduce the estimated revenues for current fiscal at Rs 8,121.48 crore from Rs 10,876.48 crore as presented in the interim budget, as the Railways had failed to meet the target in 2008-09. She has also stated that ministry would come out with a white paper on the organizational, operational and financial status based on the last five years’ performance. This is seen as a direct challenge to Laloo’s claims of running a good ministry in the past 5 years as Mamata is now trying to verify his claims.

Now if you think that by the above actions or by announcing a popular budget, Round one is won by Mamata, then our Laloo is not far behind. How can you expect him to not provide fodder for entertainment? He has gone on the record of alleging that his successor in the Rail Bhawan was a “complex-ridden” person who was trying to prepare her “Vision 2020’’ for the ministry on the basis of his “achievements.’’ He has also accused her of purposefully ignoring Bihar, as Patna is not on the list of the to-be world class stations, only 4 news trains have been proposed in Bihar and it has been ignored in the non-stop point-to-point Turant list of trains.

I can imagine people of Bihar feeling left out, as they are used to being pampered by the Railway ministers who have been from their state since the past few governments. Also feeling left out are states like Tripura, Karnataka, Chattisgarh, Orissa whose MPs and Chief Ministers have shown their disapproval for the budget as they say that their respective states have been left out. I guess it pays to have the Railway Minister from your state and irrespective of which minister won the round one, the people of West Bengal surely look like the current winners.

Mumbai versus Delhi

The Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils will meet for their IPL match today. While the fate of this match is yet unknown and odds are in favour of Delhi, there is another front on which Delhi has already beaten Mumbai and that too with a shamefully big margin. The front I am talking about is the voting percentage of the 2 cities. While Mumbai set a target of just a measly 41% even after the huge hoophulla, Delhi managed to beat the target by posting a cool 53%. This is supposedly Delhi’s highest voting percentage in the past 20 years and ahead of other Indian metros like Mumbai and Bangalore.

Though am a Mumbaikar, I am no stranger to Delhi too. With almost 90% of my relatives residing in Delhi, my yearly trips to Delhi have made me fairly accustomed to the manners of Delhietes. Right from my childhood I was always a part of the Mumbai versus Delhi fight between me and my cousins and vociferously defended Mumbai and launched offensive attacks at Delhi. I took great pride in the independence and opportunities I enjoy in Mumbai, the great public transport and the spiritful Mumbaikars am surrounded with. Though often I had to cut corners while comparing the 2 cities on grounds of cleanliness, good roads etc, I managed to come out triumphantly from the debate by using my trump card of ‘the great Mumbai spirit’.

But no longer can I do that. Like the failing public transportation, increasing crime against women, poor infrastructure hammered every year by the feisty Mumbai rains, the great Mumbai spirit also looks on its way downhill. I often accused Delhiwallas to be arrogant and brash, always picking up a fight and Mumbaikars as ever accommodating always ready to adjust. Sadly, now my interpretation of these behavioural aspects has started to change. The Mumbai spirit has made us complacent, live with this chalta hai attitude, not striving to bring changes in our crumpling society while the brash Delhietes have gone ahead and raised their voices and brought about changes like the meticulous Delhi Metro, clean and wide Delhi roads. It may have its share of vices like the high crime rate against women, bad traffic sense among people, non systematic way of doing things in almost everything but still it has managed to brought about a change for the better.

And though am still a proud Mumbaikar and can write down a 100 things in which we fare better than the Delhiwallas , I admit that we have lagged behind in that killer instinct of changing things for better. As far as the improvement parameter, am ashamed that Delhi has managed to beat us.

The White Elephants of Uttar Pradesh

Wikipedia describes a white elephant as a valuable possession which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness. In financial terms, maintaining a white elephant is just a cost centre which will never incur any revenue. And in political terms, it means running the current government in Uttar Pradesh by Mayawati.

Our dear Behenji is on a memorial inauguration spree in Lucknow. Even though there is a PIL filed by a lawyer against the alleged misuse of UP government funds on the memorials, 15 memorials were inaugurated last week so that a Supreme Court order would not be able to spoil the Memorial party. I read in article that as per the Lucknow Development Authority, the statues of Mayawati and Kanshi Ram at various places in Lucknow cost an enormous Rs 6.68 crore and marble elephants at Ambedkar Memorial cost Rs 52 crore. Also, an amount of Rs 90 crore was allocated for the beautification of Kanshi Ram Park. I won't be surprised if UP will soon borrow the title 'Land of Elephants' from Thailand or rather it will be the 'Land of White elephants'. For those who came in late, elephant is the symbol of Mayawati's party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

So acute is the egocentric behaviour of Mayawati that she has reportedly pulled down as her statue at a public place as it appears dwarfed by the figure of her political mentor, Kanshi Ram standing alongside. And now she intends to reconstruct it again. So we are basically doling out huge amounts of tax money for feeding the egos of our boisterous politicians. Mayawati argues that Congress has spent a lot of money building roads and memorials after the Gandhis and Nehrus, so why are they making an issue when the poor Dalit wants to do the same? So while the Congress and BSP engage in an competition to dump our nation with gigantic white elephants we can just pay for their maintenance.

We get the government we deserve

Long protest marches for the 26/11 victims, diatribes on national television against politicians, awareness campaigns by celebrities and yet one of the lowest turnouts in city of Mumbai. I thought it would be just the opposite. But Mumbaikars have definitely sprung a surprise for everyone by churning a voter turnout of just 49%.

I have never seen any election with such a wide campaign, urging people to come out and vote and yet we failed. No one knows what went wrong. I see a lot of articles saying that people are so disillusioned by the government that they have lost faith in governance and politicians. All hogwash I would say. I feel the root cause of this is the great Mumbai spirit that we all are so proud of. This chalta hai attitude which makes us think that how does one vote of mine matter? Let anyone come nothing is going to change. I am happy with the way my life is, so let it go on. Another root cause is clubbing the election day with a long weekend. Now if our smart election commissioners thought that people would deliver their constitutional duties before going on their weekend holidays, then they were obviously proven wrong. Knowing how we Indians feel about voting and how motivated we are about casting our ballot rights, I don’t understand what made our EC to club the election holiday with a long weekend.

I don’t know who said it but he obviously hit the nail on head when he/she said that the society deserves the government they get. And this is so true in a democratic nation like ours. How many politicians are fighting the elections raising issues like economic, rural development etc? The political parties have released their manifestos. However good or bad they maybe, how many of us have actually gone through them? We can only curse the government but when it comes to doing something about it we so easily chicken out saying that all politicians are bad, whom do we vote for? This time there were some prominent personalities like Meera Sanyal standing for elections in Mumbai. Are they going a chance to prove themselves or given a chance to prove things if we chicken out this way?

I read that battle in Rajasthan is mainly about the castes there with great divide between Meena and Gujjars and with upper castes with BJP and lower castes and Muslim votes with Congress. Why blame the parties for proliferating caste divide when the society themselves is ready to lap it all up. We need real leaders who make these people understand that we have to rise above these caste and religion issues and vote for development rather than just becoming a guinea pig for the power hungry. Else we will keep getting the kind of politicians we deserve and as the present lot shows they aren’t that great.

It’s election time once again !!

Will Mayawati succeed in becoming the Prime Minister of India or would Sharad Pawar manage to pull a coup? That’s the million dollar question doing rounds on the dinner table of most of us Indians. Unlike earlier, elections are no longer about Congress versus BJP, they are more about coalitions versus coalitions. Mergers and Acquisitions are what the political doctors have ordered for the aspirant PMs of the country.

So you have the BJP-BJD marriage breaking up in Orissa, Shiv Sena getting back together with BJP after threatening to file for divorce while it still continues to flirt with NCP. NCP acting like the Casanova, that has reserved Congress as its back up, but still has a roving eye and is eyeing all the possible political permutations and combinations. BSP is of course playing the hard to get temptress whom everyone is trying to woo. CPM is like the dumped spouse who is trying to take revenge from its former spouse (Congress) by forming a third front and trying to steal any possible mates that Congress is looking for. Trinamool Congress is looking like the cat that has whisked the milk as it has managed to make Congress bow down to its charm. And of course grand daddy Amar Singh is still making schemes to get Mulayam Singh somehow closer to the throne.

Poor BJP and Congress look like the grand old Patriarch who in their old age are trying to ward off attempts by the new kids to send them to old age homes. What with their own homes on fire with a lot of infighting going on. Election Commission, the Sarpanch (Village leader) is trying to get the whole house in order. No wonder saas bahu serials are taking a major hit on prime time. Even Ekta Kapoor’s team of writers cannot compete with such heavy duty real life political drama and are nowadays seen watching news to draw inspiration.

Anyways experts are now looking at the elections to boost the Indian economy as more money will be circulated (read buying votes, giving money to goons for booth capturing….etc). Hopefully, they will keep providing food and fodder to the news channels and keep the fire burning in their kitchen and set the ad revenues on fire. Many unemployed youth will get temporary jobs of filling as crowds during electoral speeches. Sale of SUVs, Bikes etc will be on rise as our public servants make their once in 5 year rounds to their constituencies. And so hopefully elections will help us beat China in the last quarter as the country with fastest growing GDP. So, three cheers to the political landscape of India that will provide some excitement in our dull lives!!