Civic polls in Maharashtra: Mumbai leads the disgusting tamasha!

Raju Korti
If politics were an Olympic sport, the scramble for municipal tickets would qualify as synchronized swimming, except that everyone is drowning, flailing and dragging others down with them. The civic polls, once meant to be about drains, roads and local accountability, have degenerated into a dirty rat race where ideology is negotiable, loyalty is seasonal and principles are strictly optional.

Every party claims to be shocked by rebellion within its ranks. Every party also engineers it. Chest beating loyalists suddenly discover that loyalty is an overrated virtue when the ticket goes to a recent entrant who until last week was abusing the same party on television panels. Grassroots workers who spent years pasting posters and organising ward meetings are politely told to wait their turn, preferably for another lifetime. The defector, meanwhile, is welcomed as a visionary mass leader with deep local connect.

Guess who is the lead culprit here? The BJP, which prides itself on discipline and an iron organisation, Its candidate selection in several civic wards has raised eyebrows even among its own faithful. Old faces are dropped without explanation; new ones are parachuted in without logic and the party then acts surprised when rebels file nominations as independents or quietly cross over. The Congress complains of betrayal while quietly accommodating turncoats where it suits arithmetic. The various Shiv Sena factions accuse each other of ideological treachery while distributing tickets with the same ruthless pragmatism. The NCP factions do not even pretend anymore. Loyalty is measured not by years of work but by immediate utility.

Mumbai offers the most grotesque theatre. The same corporator who swore undying allegiance to one party yesterday appears on posters of a rival today, complete with a fresh smile and recycled promises. Old wine is poured into a new bottle and sold as a bold alternative. Voters are expected to forget the label they read last week. They are also expected to clap.

Who exactly is at fault here. The easy answer is that everyone is. Parties are unable to handle dissent because they have trained their cadres to believe that power is the only reward for loyalty. Once tickets become the sole currency of recognition, rebellion is not an aberration. It is a logical outcome. Leaderships centralize decisions, ignore local feedback and then express outrage when the ignored locals revolt. This cycle repeats every election with remarkable consistency.

It will queer the pitch, fragment votes and turn civic elections into personality contests rather than party battles. Rebels will cut into official candidates’ margins. Independents will mushroom. Alliances will suffer silent sabotage from within. Governance, if it comes at all, will be an afterthought negotiated post results.

And what about the people? The ordinary voter watches this spectacle with a mix of disgust and helpless amusement. Everyone knows that becoming a corporator is widely seen as a sure path to amassing money, influence and leverage. That unspoken truth fuels the mad rush more than any burning desire to serve. Parties shout lofty principles from rooftops while quietly auctioning relevance at street level. Credibility evaporates, cynicism deepens and voter apathy grows.

The greatest tragedy is the absence of rationale. Why this candidate and not that one? What does he or she stand for beyond personal ambition? Is expediency the only criterion? Is one-upmanship the sole ideology? When the same individual oscillates between parties within days, the voter is not choosing between ideas. He is merely asked to endorse a familiar face wearing a different scarf.

Municipal elections are supposed to be the bedrock of democracy. Instead, they have become its most embarrassing mirror. Until parties learn that loyalty cannot be demanded while being constantly betrayed, and that voters are not fools with short memories, this farce will continue. January 15 will come and go. Chairs will be occupied. Money will change hands. And the people will once again be told that this time, truly, it is different.

First Tharoor, now Digvijay: Between admiration and ambiguity!

Raju Korti
I have watched the Congress long enough to know that its deepest anxieties are rarely triggered by open defection. They are provoked by ambiguity. That is precisely why Digvijay Singh’s praise of the RSS’s organisational discipline and his sharing of an old photograph with Narendra Modi caused more discomfort within the party than many overt acts of dissent. The unease is not about ideology alone. It is about the suggestion that there may be lessons to learn from the very adversary the Congress defines itself against.

In that sense, Digvijay's moment has an unmistakable echo from the past. I remember meeting Digvijay Singh in 1985 in Raipur and Bhopal during election coverage, long before he became a two-time chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Then known affectionately as Diggy Raja, the Raja of Raghogarh operated in a Congress ecosystem crowded with heavyweights like Arjun Singh, Kamal Nath and Ajit Jogi. Even at that stage, what stood out was not confrontation but navigation. Digvijay Singh always seemed adept at surviving within undercurrents, maintaining relationships that were neither fully cordial nor openly hostile, but calibrated to political necessity.

Comrades in arms! 

Those undercurrents never really disappeared. Over decades, Digvijay Singh remained a figure who could unsettle his own party without formally stepping out of line. His recent praise of the organisational strength of the RSS, accompanied by an old photograph of Narendra Modi, must be read in that context. It was less an ideological endorsement and more a statement about structure, discipline and political mobility. Yet in today’s hyper-polarised environment, nuance rarely survives first contact with social media.

Shashi Tharoor’s response to this episode is revealing. By supporting Digvijay Singh on the need for organisational discipline while carefully distancing himself from the content of the praise, Tharoor mirrored a path he himself has been walking. Technically within the Congress, intellectually restless, and increasingly vocal about what the party lacks rather than what it opposes. Like Digvijay Singh, Tharoor seems less interested in rebellion and more invested in signalling that the Congress cannot afford institutional complacency.

The Congress leadership’s reaction also fits an old pattern. Public levity combined with private discomfort. Rahul Gandhi’s joking remark to Digvijay Singh at the party headquarters, delivered in Sonia Gandhi’s presence, was telling. It defused tension without resolving it. Humour, in such moments, is often a holding operation rather than a closure.

The larger question, then, is not whether Digvijay Singh or Shashi Tharoor are inching towards the BJP. That would be a simplistic reading. The more pertinent issue is where leaders like them eventually find themselves in a party that struggles to accommodate internal critique without reading it as ideological drift. Digvijay Singh has long been described by critics as a spent force, while allies continue to see him as a strategist with residual influence. Both assessments can coexist. Political relevance today is not only about electoral clout but also about the ability to shape conversations.

Tharoor and Digvijay Singh share a common predicament. They articulate what many in the Congress privately concede but publicly resist acknowledging, that organisation matters, discipline matters, and narratives of ideological purity do not substitute for political machinery. By saying this aloud, they unsettle a party still unsure whether introspection is a strength or a liability.

My sense is that neither is in a hurry to cross over. Their trajectories suggest something subtler. They are testing the elasticity of the Congress, probing how much dissent framed as analysis it can absorb. If the party responds by closing ranks and narrowing space, it risks pushing such leaders further to the margins. If it listens, even grudgingly, it might rediscover a capacity for self-correction.

For now, both men remain inside the tent, but closer to its edges than its centre. And in Indian politics, that is often the most precarious place to stand.

Tolerating an endless headache called Bol Bachchans!

Raju Korti
If there is one species I admire and remain wary of in equal measure, it is the compulsive talker. The dictionary, in its polite moments, calls them garrulous, loquacious or voluble. In real life, they are walking, talking pressure cookers who must release steam daily, preferably on the nearest available ear.

I do not know whether it is my fate or karmic mischief, but I seem to encounter them with alarming regularity. These are people who can talk regardless of time, place, mood or meteorological conditions. Funerals, traffic jams, hospital corridors, lift rides between the third and fifth floor, other people’s lives; nothing is too sacred or too trivial. All other engagements politely step aside because nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important than what they currently find fascinating.

In my limited wisdom as a counsellor and an unwilling audience, I find such people deeply self-centred (not selfish, though that happens too), convinced that the universe is best understood through their anecdotes. Their speech is an endless drag, a never-ending director’s cut of their life story. Friends, relatives, enemies, neighbours’ neighbours, long-forgotten schoolmates, triumphs, traumas and minor inconveniences are all laid out with forensic detail. After a point, the only thought that crosses one’s mind is to flee, preferably to the nearest restroom, to recover from the verbal assault and the resulting headache.

What makes matters worse is that most of this talk has zero bearing on the listener’s life. None. Yet the listener clings on, fuelled by misplaced hope that this monologue will eventually reach a full stop. It never does. Once they begin, they have no idea where to stop, or why they should.

I have had my share of such people. They talk without drawing breath and without leaving the faintest crack for a response. And if you dare to interrupt, even with a polite “hmm” or a hesitant “actually…”, you are waved off, talked over or simply erased from the conversation. Your sentence overlaps with theirs, making you look like a first-class idiot attempting a duet with a train engine.

They talk non-stop, often boasting about their power, influence and achievements, real or imagined. If that runs dry, they shift seamlessly to gossip. The tongue, in their case, is a lethal weapon. “Bol Bachchan” is not an insult here; it is a job description.

I am deeply uncomfortable in the presence of such people, not because I am their target, but because they are spectacularly poor listeners. In their company, I feel introverted, reticent and unfairly mute. The only time I have spoken at length to a passive audience was in a classroom, and that too under compulsion. Even then, I hated the sight of deadpan faces staring back at me as if speech itself were a punishment. If that was justified speech, imagine the torture of listening to hours of unjustified, irrelevant, meandering gibberish.

Of course, one can avoid such people if they exist on the fringes of one’s life. A fake phone call here, a sudden appointment there. The real test of character arrives when they are your own. Family. Close friends. The inner circle. They stretch your tolerance to the point where you feel like yanking your own hair out, strand by strand. They remain blissfully unaware. And you, the cursed one, must grin, nod and take it in stride.

I often wonder if these people ever get tired of talking, and where they draw their boundless energy from. Too much talking, I am told, is taxing on the heart and mind. Take it from me, someone with a bypass history. I have come to value measured speech, if not dignified silence. I was never much of a talker anyway.

Can such people be corrected or moderated? I doubt it. The truly loquacious do not believe they have a problem. For them, silence is awkward, listening is anything but optional, and conversation is a solo performance. The rest of us can only practise survival skills, cherish quiet souls, and remind ourselves that sometimes, the most intelligent thing one can say is nothing at all.

Jeffrey Epstein: Made for thriller flicks and text books!

Raju Korti
In the past week, an impression has rapidly gained ground in India that once the (in)famous Jeffrey Epstein Files are placed before the United States House of Representatives, there will be an institutional collapse of global proportions. The narrative here suggests that governments, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s, will be blown away. Apocalypse, earthquake, tsunami. The rhetoric writes itself.

The irony of such hyperventilation is that a significant slice of the files is already in the public domain. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released nineteen photographs last week and followed that with sixty-eight more. From a much larger cache of nearly ninety-five thousand photographs voluntarily handed over by Epstein’s estate.

And those names. Bill Gates. Noam Chomsky. Steve Bannon. Donald Trump. Add Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton from earlier reporting. Each accompanied by the predictable disclaimers that range from selective memory loss to convenient ignorance. The kind of excuse making that has been perfected over centuries. Several photographs even include redacted identification cards of women across continents. Russia, Morocco, Italy, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Ukraine and Lithuania. One batch reportedly features excerpts of sentences from “Lolita” scrawled across a woman’s body. A screenshot of a text exchange references girls being “sent” for someone identified only as j, with a price tag of one thousand dollars mentioned. The fact that committee Democrats describe the material as both graphic and mundane captures the bizarre duality of Epstein’s world. Mundane wealth. Graphic depravity.

What fascinates me is not the moral theatre but the man at the centre of it. Jeffrey Epstein’s journey reads like a fictional protagonist conceived by an ambitious potboiler writer. (I believe, it would have been right up James Hadley Chase's alley to write and portray his character.) A high school teacher of Physics and Mathematics who abandoned chalkboards for Wall Street, building a billionaire’s empire in properties. His Virgin Islands estate in the Caribbean remains the most visually (and infamously) documented, replete with hidden cameras, juvenile girls and a calendar of clandestine, amoral and lecherous activities involving some of the world’s most powerful guests.

His suspicious death only heightened curiosity. Democrats suspected foul play. His associates hoped his silence might bury their own associations. The public trawled through conspiracy theories with the devotion of amateur detectives. I am not here to judge. If anything, I marvel at how many fronts the man handled simultaneously. Networking with presidents and princes. Flying private jets. Managing finances. Ordering girls. Documenting everything. His ability to multitask would have made him a case study in versatility had his pursuits not been criminal and exploitative.

The Files qualify as perfect cinematic material. India has turned the word files into a cultural brand. The Kashmir Files. The Kerala Files. The Bengal Files. It feels inevitable that someone attempts The Epstein Files. In my mind, Akshaye Khanna, the current rage, could play Epstein, just to introduce the Indian flavour. The ensemble cast portraying the who’s who named in the files would make this a multi star project. A Pan American Indian crossover if you will. If Hollywood grabs it first, expect awards. If Bollywood does, expect embellishments. I volunteer to write the script for the Indian flick. A four-hour epic or better, a binge worthy serial with viewership rising episode after episode, for obvious and predictable reasons.

My curiosity also extends to his academic past. As a Physics and Mathematics student myself even beyond my engineering days, I find it amusing to imagine him teaching Newton’s Laws before breaking all social ones. Or juggling calculus and clandestine rendezvous. If nothing else, Epstein deserves a full-fledged chapter in text books on documentation for the painstaking way he archived photos, messages and communication. A man who collected details with methodical obsession and likely shared only with confidantes like Ghislaine Maxwell. Blackmail or insurance. One will never know.

And now, a question for our Indian doomsayers. No Indian name has surfaced. Anyway, not until the time of writing this blog. Are we witnessing evidentiary anticipation or political kite flying? If the latter, the winds are not exactly supportive. 

Yet even if half of what appears in the Files or on Wikipedia is accurate, Epstein secures his place under the sun. Not for greatness. Not for morality. But for the chilling combination of power, manipulation, exploitation and networking that allowed him to straddle elite circles and criminality with breathtaking ease. Posthumously though.

Even devils deserve credit where due.

The curious case of Lifetime Everything!

Raju Korti
I have always been fascinated by humanity’s incurable obsession with the word “lifetime”. Lifetime achievement, lifetime immunity, lifetime appointment, lifetime access, lifetime this and lifetime that. Say it slowly and it sounds less like a concept and more like a lucky charm sold at a traffic signal. Wear it, wave it, and hope mortality looks the other way.

The latest reminder comes from Pakistan’s 27th Constitutional Amendment of 2025. In one masterstroke, power is centralised, the Supreme Court is brusquely nudged aside, and the Army Chief is elevated to a position that comes with lifetime status, immunity and sweeping control over all armed services. It is as if the nation collectively decided that if something must be permanent, it should be authority. Democracy, accountability and judicial independence can manage with a renewable plan.

It is amusing how eagerly we distribute permanence in a world that refuses to guarantee tomorrow morning. Life itself has a shelf life, strictly non-negotiable, yet we behave as if a constitutional clause or a citation can outwit biology.

Centurion for a lifetime: Yours Truly!

The value of these lifetime honours is worth examining. A lifetime achievement award, for instance, often arrives at a stage when the recipient’s knees creak louder than their accomplishments are remembered. It is less a celebration and more a ceremonial closing time announcement. Thank you for your services, please collect your plaque, and kindly vacate the stage before memory does it for you.

Lifetime immunity is even more entertaining. It assumes that power, once granted, will be exercised with monk like restraint forever. History suggests otherwise. Immunity does not improve character; it merely removes consequences. It emboldens the worst instincts while politely informing accountability to wait outside.

Then there are lifetime appointments. These rest on the touching belief that wisdom, integrity and relevance age like fine wine. In reality, some age like milk left out in the sun. Institutions stagnate, fresh thinking is locked out, and loyalty to the chair replaces loyalty to the Constitution or the organisation.

What fascinates me most is the psychological comfort these lifetime labels provide. They are talismans against insecurity. When leaders fear the uncertainty of public approval or legal scrutiny, they reach for permanence. Lifetime is not about honour; it is about insulation. It is a padded cell for power.

In Pakistan’s case, the lifetime elevation of the Army Chief into a supreme military role is less about efficiency and more about entrenchment. It sends out a clear message. Power is not to be questioned, rotated or reviewed. It is to be preserved, preferably forever, or at least until nature intervenes.

The irony is brutal. No amendment, award or immunity clause has ever stopped time. Empires crumble, statues are pulled down, and lifetime honours end up as footnotes, sometimes embarrassing ones, in history books. What survives is not the duration of power but the quality of its use.

Perhaps we should retire the word “lifetime” altogether. Replace it with something more honest, like “for as long as it works” or “until reality kicks in”. Life, after all, is the only entity that truly understands the concept of lifetime. And it has never offered immunity to anyone.

Anna Hazare and the diminishing returns of moral protest

Raju Korti
At his ripe age, Anna Hazare must be wondering what more he needs to do to see his life’s mission reach fruition. For all his benign intent and unimpeachable personal integrity, his most potent weapon, the fast unto death, has begun to lose its sting. What once shook governments now elicits assurances, committees and carefully worded promises. The moral pressure remains, but the political response has grown anaemic.

The Lokayukta Act, which is at the centre of his latest agitation, captures this malaise perfectly. On paper, it promises an independent anti-corruption ombudsman empowered to inquire into complaints against public servants, ministers and even the chief minister. In practice, it remains a law without teeth. Enforcement mechanisms are vague, appointments are delayed and operational clarity is missing. Between presidential assent, legislative amendments and executive intent lies an inordinate gap that has reduced the Act to a well-meaning document waiting for life.

Hazare’s frustration is understandable. Announcements are made with ceremony; timelines are offered with confidence and yet implementation slips quietly into the future. One hopes, not without irony, that he gets to see the law function meaningfully in his lifetime.

His isolation today contrasts sharply with the mass movement he once led. The 2011 anti-corruption stir was anything but a solo act. Students, professionals, celebrities and ordinary citizens rallied behind him, united by a shared anger against systemic corruption. Politicians were kept at arm’s length during the fasts, preserving the movement’s moral high ground. Yet that unity proved fragile.

The fallout with key associates was inevitable once politics entered the frame. Arvind Kejriwal chose the electoral route, arguing that power was essential to cleanse the system from within. Hazare strongly disagreed, insisting that his movement remain apolitical. Others like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav too drifted away as ideological and strategic differences sharpened. What began as a collective moral uprising gradually splintered into competing interpretations of change.

In hindsight, some supporters felt disillusioned, even used, as the movement was politically co-opted and redirected. Hazare stayed put, steadfast but increasingly alone, holding on to an idea of activism rooted in personal sacrifice rather than political negotiation.

This raises an uncomfortable question. Has Anna Hazare been isolated on the very issue he brought to national consciousness? Corruption remains pervasive, but public outrage now competes with fatigue, cynicism and more immediate anxieties. The fast, once a rallying cry, now risks being seen as ritual rather than rupture.

Hazare’s hold over the anti-corruption discourse has weakened, not because the issue has lost relevance, but because the methods have. Moral authority still commands respect, but it no longer guarantees outcomes. In today’s India, intent must be matched by institutional pressure and sustained public engagement. Without that, even the most austere protest risks becoming a footnote to its own history.

A visitor from space with mood swings!

Raju Korti
For months now, this mysterious interstellar object has behaved like that one relative who changes personality depending on who is watching. First it was described as a hostile outsider armed with nuclear ambitions. Some theories even suggested it was spying on planets, making gravity defying turns and pointing its tail in the wrong direction. The object seemed determined to play the villain straight out of a sci fi potboiler.

31/Atlas: Pic representational

Cut to the latest twist. The same object is suddenly being repackaged as friendly. Harvard professor, Loeb, has floated the idea that it may be sprinkling life giving chemicals across planets it has flown close to. In Indian terms, it is as if the guest who arrived with threatening body language is now offering homemade sweets.

So, what is really going on? A couple of scientific clues have come from what the object is believed to be releasing into space. If that’s true, two substances stand out. Methanol and hydrogen cyanide. The names sound intimidating, but their behaviour is surprisingly down to earth.

Methanol is basically a simple alcohol. In space, it is found near new stars. On Earth, tiny organisms like bacteria happily treat it as food. Plants manufacture it as part of their daily life. Methanol in space can transform into sugars and amino acids, which are the basic bricks from which life is built.

Hydrogen cyanide on the other hand is the classic villain of detective novels. Deadly in high doses. Extremely useful in tiny amounts. Plants and bacteria actually produce it to defend themselves or to help seeds germinate. In chemistry, hydrogen cyanide can join other molecules to form the bases of DNA and amino acids. These are the tools that make life tick.

Now here is the curious part. Observations show that this interstellar object is releasing more than a hundred times more methanol than hydrogen cyanide. That is the highest ratio seen since only one other oddball comet in our own solar system. If chemicals had personalities, this one would be leaning heavily towards the life friendly side. The cyanide is present, but in a defensive whisper, not an attacking shout.All this naturally leads to the buzzword ‘panspermia’. The idea is simple. Comets or space rocks can carry these basic life building chemicals to planets. When they crash or even graze a planet’s atmosphere, some of these chemicals settle down and kickstart life. Think of it as cosmic courier service. Long before e commerce deliveries, the universe was perhaps sending parcels of methanol and hydrogen cyanide to young planets.

Does this make a material difference to what we know?. Not yet. Scientists still know very little about this object’s origin and purpose. Its tail pointing in the wrong direction, its colour changing to blue near the sun and its gravity defying lane-swerving behaviour remain unsolved mysteries. Some argue it is a normal comet formed under unusual conditions in a faraway system. Others wonder if it is something artificial. But until there is proof, everything remains speculation.

What does it mean for Earth? Practically nothing at the moment. The object will not come anywhere close to us. It might casually gift wrap some life friendly chemicals for planets like Mars or moons like Europa, but nothing more. If these chemicals do find their way onto such worlds, they may help us understand how life begins elsewhere. For now, Earth is safe, and all theories about danger seem to have taken a coffee break.

So we are left with a cosmic visitor that entered the solar system with a dramatic reputation. It has danced around planets, confused astronomers, and sprinkled chemicals associated with life. It has also given rise to wild theories that range from apocalypse to universal gardening. As of now, the object is not the interstellar villain it was feared to be. If anything, it behaves like a confused tourist on a long space yatra. Friendly, unpredictable and utterly mysterious.