LOL for this one!

Turkey's Dy PM Arinc. Doesn't he ever smile?

Raju Korti
Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now. The immediate provocation of this rather profound quote coming from my unemployed mind is Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc who recently decreed that women should not laugh loudly in public.
That Arinc is a co-founder of the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party is less germane to this blog at this juncture. What strikes me in all earnestness is the man himself needs some mirth and laughter given the grimace he sports on his stony face all the time. His statement, a euphemism for an edict, attracted the kind of backlash that was fitting and well earned. Thousands of Turkish women chose to laugh their guts out on a social networking site in protest. I doubt history has heaped ridicule in such measures in a country which swears by its religious identity.
Arinc has since played the predictable tune all political leaders do when caught on the wrong foot, claiming his remarks were twisted out of context and that he was making a general comment on the decline of moral standards in Turkey.While he has been gifting us new theories in Sociology, it doesn't seem to have sunk into the minister that laughter has nothing to do with one's gender and that it is a reflex action of an individual.
Taking a moral high ground comes to all ultra-conservatives by default. So here was our quixotic minister again shooting off with his mouth: "There are women who leave on holiday without their husbands and others who don't have self control and can't stop themselves from climbing up a pole. Anyone can live like this. I can't be angry against you but I can just have pity for you." His new lesson in morality prompted the wife of a prominent Turkish footballer to post a picture of herself pole dancing on Instagram with the slogan "when I see a pole, I just can't resist". The repartee was brilliant for its heavily pregnant innuendo but our granite-faced minister probably only squirmed in his seat.
The heat generated by the minister's indiscrete utterances has a direct relevance to the elections the country is soon slated to go to. The incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing a lot of flak from his detractors who say the country's secular fabric is threatened (Now, isn't that a familiar refrain?). The government's warped ideas about morality and societal structure haven't gone down well in a country where its first president, reformist statesman Kemal Ataturk -- among other things -- gave women equal civil and political rights. General Musharraf who never hid his admiration for the once Turkish military officer, was never really in a position to replicate the latter's efforts in his perennially tumultuous nation.
Abolition of the Caliphate was an important dimension in Ataturk's drive to reform the political system and to promote the national sovereignty but the ruling dispensation has reverse-geared the heels. The Caliphate of the early centuries now seems to be the core concept of Sunni Islam.
Despite his radical secular reforms, Atatürk remained broadly popular in the Muslim world, a balancing act no other Muslim leader looks capable of in the present times.
That's no laughing matter.
 

Its the US definition of renegades!

Raju Korti

PM Modi: Sketch courtesy my DNA friend Bhagvan Das.

So the man whose office is routinely advertised as the "most prestigious and powerful in the world" was clueless about the storm over the visa ban on Narendra Modi until April this year.
It now transpires, if reports are to be believed, that President Barack Obama had "apparently" no inkling whatsoever that Modi, who expectedly strode to power, was at the center of a raging controversy.
The President "apparently" caught on to the riot act only after several United States lawmakers, on the urging of their Indian-American constituents, over the past few years were writing to then secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her successor John F Kerry, calling on the US State Department to lift the visa ban on the then Gujarat chief minister, while other groups like the Coalition against Genocide convinced yet another group of lawmakers to pressure the State Department not to acquiesce to this request.
If you understand the penchant of the American administration to sauté diplomacy with PR, you will also get the import (!) of its official communiques declaring "US and India as world's greatest democracies." The only hitch in such an unequivocal assertion is a reality check.
To begin with, its is absurd to believe that Obama didn't know or wasn't apprised about a leader who on either sides of the Indian spectrum was either hero-worshipped or rabidly vilified. Surely, the American administration with all its purported intelligence -- in its own country and elsewhere in the world -- knew that a certain Mr Modi was on the verge of tipping scales.
According to reports, some long-time Indian-American fundraisers and major contributors to Obama's presidential campaigns and the Democratic Party met with Obama at a small fundraiser of a select few well-heeled donors. When they brought up Modi's visa ban with Obama and told him that Modi was more than likely to be India's next prime minister and that the controversy would be anathema to a defining partnership with India as he had always professed, Obama had said he had no idea about this visa ban. Even at that juncture, there is  fair ground to believe that the American administration was probably playing the 'wait and watch' game, wanting to see how events unfolded after the Indian elections. The tide changed only after Modi was elected with a thumping margin and it became clear to Washington that despite the former's "tainted Godhra record" it just could not afford to blank him out.
Obama's ignorance of the issue is a classic case of right hand not knowing what the left was up to. That the State Department and the Presidential office were not plugged into each other is incredible and untenable given that the US is as much tuned in to events outside its country all the time. In fact, there is every reason to believe that Obama didn't want to ruffle feathers before Modi arrived on his big moment for the only plausible explanation that it would have been tantamount to interference in India's democratic process.
The stink raised by the visa ban turned out to be worse than what the Americans anticipated. All the right noises that the presidential office sought to make, including extending an invitation to Modi for a meeting in the White House reduced the angst that built up, but only just. To make matters worse, a Congressional hearing on the issue seemed bent on putting the blame in the State Department's basket. The problem had compounded more so because the same ruse had been handed out while denying visa to Modi sometime in 2006 when the man was confronted by "liberal and leftists" from his own country.
The angst was brushed under the carpet on the perceived understanding that if Modi had been denied permission to visit US, it was on the basis of what the situation obtained then and America's policy on the issue before the country's highest court gave him (Modi) a clean chit.
The most surprising dimension to the story is the Coalition against Genocide, a ragtag bunch of leftists and liberals from 40 outfits based in US and Canada. It is interesting to note that the only cause that this organization espouses is that of Godhra when human rights are being blatantly trampled elsewhere in the world. Even if one concedes its right to be wedded to a cause of their choice, it is befuddling that the State Department chose to be led on by the protest of an outfit whose own credentials were under cloud.
If diplomacy and make-shift compulsions demanded that peace had to be made with a dispensation dominated by extreme right-wingers, the American administration could have always exercised a more practical approach in being non committal right through rather than being made to run for cover the way it had to.
When good intentions are not backed up by suitable action, theatrics is all that happens. The face-saving tactics on the grant of visa to Modi is a PR disaster. In the past, Americans have not given a very exemplary account of themselves, shaking hands with despots like Pol Pot in Cambodia and Gen Pinochet in Chile whose record in human right violations makes Modi a pygmy in comparison, and when I say this, I do not hold any brief for Modi in case there is an attempt to perceive me as his sympathizer. To the Americans, South East Asia is a gainful employment and if you zeroed in on that, you understand their proclivities as well. Modi isn't the first and he won't be the last either.

The new American pasture

Obama and Putin: The new face-off

Raju Korti
At the height of strident criticism against the American administration for jumping its gun on Iraq, then president George W Bush (Junior) had famously remarked "I just want you to know that when we talk about war, we are actually talking about peace." If you discount the rhetoric in that twisted justification for what the Americans did in Iraq -- leaving behind a mess of outrageous proportions -- you still can't shut your eyes to their recent propensity to make the world their theatre.
Well aware that its military adventures were unmitigated fiascoes whenever it acted on its own, the world's self-appointed policeman has realized that it helps their cause to rope in its European allies while dealing with potentially war-like situations.
President Barack Obama has gone a step further. He seized on the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet to redouble international pressure on old foe Russia over its support for Ukrainian separatists, calling it a “wake-up call” for Europe.
Obama is not sure who was responsible but is convinced that a missile fired from within territory controlled by Russian separatists brought down the jet. “What we have confidence in saying right now was that a surface-to-air missile was fired and that's what brought the jet down,” he said. “We know that that shot was taken within territory controlled by the Russian separatists but it's very important we don't get out ahead of the facts and at this point.”
Somewhere in this area between truth and subterfuge, Obama decreed that the perpetrators should be brought to justice -- American phrase for legitimacy. Still, the US administration is wary of involving itself directly in the conflict. Although Obama claimed there would be no "military role beyond what we've already been doing," it cannot be taken on its face value. You don't have to delve deep into the doublespeak that the Americans have patented. The US president also claimed the incident coming less than 24 hours after the US announced a third wave of economic sanctions against Russia -- demonstrated the risks of supplying heavy weapons and support to the rebels and how the impact was “not going to be localized”. That begs the question what impact is the president talking about? You know the answer when you know the Pentagon has assured Ukraine military assistance although it would to stop short of providing weaponry. Figure out what that means.
Now there is a world of difference between the Americanspeak and Russianspeak. While Washington was couching its real intentions, Moscow minced no words. "The Americans shouldn't lecture us. There is a deep political aberration of Washington's perception of what is going on in Ukraine," it said, dismissing any culpability on their part.
The Russian deputy foreign minister was direct and scathing. "In the geopolitical frenzy and attempts to apply methods of social and political engineering everywhere, the United States acts like a bad surgeon: to cut deeper at first, and then stitch up sloppily so that it would hurt for a long time."
Just how quick the Americans are in cornering world attention was evident in the way the German chancellor, Angela Merkel reacted. According to her, the tragedy underscored, once again, that Russia should be held responsible for the instability in Ukraine, but at least she responded cautiously to suggestions that Europe should follow Washington’s lead by expanding sanctions. That should be construed as a small but perceptible sign that the world is not a sucker to the American methods of gathering circumstantial evidence any more, having been taken for a massive ride in the Allied operation in Iraq.
While speculations and theories on who and what brought the Malaysian jet down may die their natural death, the proxy war between the old enemies will continue in another dangerously disturbed part of the world.
That should bring us back to George Bush: "When we talk of war, we are actually talking of peace." Maybe he meant it the other way round.  

Gripping and unputdownable!

Dr Sumit Ghoshal. Picture from his Facebook wall.

Raju Korti
Writing a good novel is hard. If it were so easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction. There is no dearth of people out there who can tell you how to write a novel. There are many who will wax eloquent on what goes into the making of good fiction. The benchmarks are any but the best is the one that works for you.
Going by that yardstick, Dr Sumit Ghoshal has pieced together a brilliantly stitched story that, to me, has a heady blende of the pace of James Hadley Chase and Robin Cook's eye for intricate details. That's no mean task because easier reads than written. At a personal level I am not really taken by surprise since I have had the good fortune of working with Sumitbhai in The Indian Express and the DNA and have always marveled at his ability to pack so much sense while being frugal with words.
In my definition, a good writer who handles the kind of genre that Sumitbhai has done, blurs the line between fact and fiction. Or else, has this subtlety to fictionalize facts.
It is difficult to believe that "Unhealthy Practices" is his first attempt at fiction since the flow and the narrative are seasoned enough to give any veteran a run for his/her money. To use a trite phrase, the book is unputdownable from first word to last.
For all those who must wonder why I put my finger on Chase is for two reasons. The dexterity with which the characters have been painted carries the same stamp. There is another finespun with the situations -- anything but synthetic as is the won't with majority Indian writers -- that leave you with a poignant feeling. You almost end up sympathizing with the darker characters.
Although the title says a lot, I believe the book is actually a scathing indictment of the blatant commercialization of Medical Science which, among other things has severely compromised with professional ethics. The medical profession has long subscribed to a body of ethical statements developed primarily for the benefit of the patient. As a member of this profession, a physician must recognize responsibility to patients first and foremost, as well as to society, to other health professionals, and to self.
The story revolves round the affairs of a trustee hospital whose chairman Madhavji Shah is ready to subsidize scruples to jack up institution's dwindling revenue. As part of this mercenary exercise, Shah, who has connections in the ruling party and can pull strings, throws out senior doctors for not bringing in enough patients and therefore more money. A serious patient is taken off the Intensive Care Unit and shunted to another room/ward so high-end rooms can be allotted to those who can cough up more money.
Even as one senior doctor after another is asked to leave, Prashant Kadakia, the youngest member of the Board of Trustees -- whose father is a past chairman -- devolves upon himself to gain control of the institution. The incumbent chairman keeps plumbing newer depths in throwing ethics to winds and goes as far as kidnapping and murder of some NRI's who are ready to pump in money to extricate the hospital from its morass.
Kadakia takes the help of a reporter Yogesh Tripathi, whose has lost his father is the same hospital on what borders on negligence. Yogesh in turn finds a soul mate in Vineeta, a resident doctor who helps him on the sly with information on the happenings in the hospital. Dr Jagdish Choksi, the medical director wields the axe and does all the dirty work of getting rid of doctors who do not bring in revenue.
As the tussle for the control of the hospital intensifies, the story runs through a series of intrigues and manipulations that degenerate to criminal levels. The pitch here is queered by the presence of an adamant union which demands a hefty bonus from the hospital whose finances are on the brink. Unable to negotiate the turn of events, Choksi is forced to resign and is replaced by Dr Ashok Zaveri who handles pressure and sort of assists Kadakia to bring a semblance of sanity to the hospital's administration. Finally, Kadakia manages to overthrow the board of trustees responsible for its downfall and initiates a process to refurbish its image.
There is a Chase-ish twist towards the end when one of the character, Pratibha Jhala -- who loses her husband due to medical negligence and befriends another doctor from the hospital -- contracts HIV and succumbs to it. Turns out that Pratibha is the past wife of Prashant Kadakia.
The first thing that strikes a reader is the ability of the author to connect and relate events with a vivid description. The story unspools before his eyes like a motion film. That coupled with a lucid narrative gives the story a cutting edge. Perhaps, the only minor irritants are a few editing errors here and there which I am sure Sumitbhai would rectify in the next edition. Implicit in this observation is my fervent wish that all copies are briskly sold out.
As a reader, I have always been very exacting and trained to look for flaws but Sumitbhai doesn't give you any to pinpoint. The characterization and description have the deft touches of a seasoned artiste who can toy with a paint brush. Sumitbhai draws from his twin experience as a once-practicing doctor and as a been-there journalist.
Since this is a personal blog, I think apologies are also due in order for, this piece should have been written long back. On a lighter note, I would like to tell Sumitbhai "better late than never."
More power to his pen.

[Unhealthy Practices, printed by notionpress.com, authored by Dr Sumit Ghoshal, pages 287, price Rs 299.] 

Sleep on the House!

Deve Gowda: Introspecting?

Raju Korti
Gaffes and bloopers apart, I must admit that I am developing a soft corner for Rahul Gandhi these days. Nothing seems to be going right for the young man who seems to have struck a lean patch.
After his party’s disastrous showing in the recent elections, he was caught (apparently) snoozing in the Lok Sabha during a fierce debate on price rise. The rival BJP was quick on the uptake to point out that this was perfectly in sync with what his party had been doing on the issue for the past few decades. Political sparring aside, I am prepared to give Rahul the much needed benefit of doubt for several reasons.
First, he is not the only elected representative to have been stealing those forty winks in the august House, although that is not an argument on which I will plead his case. But then, what is good for the goose is good for the gander as well.
I am also pliable to the view that at his impressionable age, Rahul was actually reflecting or introspecting – as is usually the line of defence -- on what was happening around him though he had nothing substantive to say on the issue. This is, of course, given that Rahul can actually reflect or introspect.
There is also considerable beef in the belief that Rahul’s diffidence could also stem from the basic fact that things like price rise don’t affect him at all. Price rise doesn’t hit the very rich or very poor. The country’s famed middle class is the sole claimant to that misfortune.
Those who poke fun at his penchant for foot-in-the-mouth, forget that they are actually belittling their own contention that it is better he keeps mum than make a laughing stock of himself. Rahul has regaled the countrymen for a long time and if it has occurred to his occasional good sense that he must give politics-weary people some respite, you cannot fault him there. If one is kind enough to give Devil his due, why deprive poor Rahul of that largesse?
I see an unassailable logic in the Congressmen’s cantilevered support of Rahul that a person of the integrity of Atal Behari Vajpayee – no less – was found catnapping often in the Parliament. “When Vajpayee does that, it is introspection, if Rahul does it, it is sleeping. How fair is that?” Somebody should have reminded the wailing partymen of Sohrab Modi’s evergreen dialogue from Dilip Kumar’s Yehudi “Tumhara khoon khoon, hamara khoon paani?”  (Your blood is blood and ours water?), a satirical way of protesting discrimination.
The man who actually institutionalized sleeping inside the Parliament and gave it a cult status was former Prime Minister Deve Gowda. In fact, so sleep-deprived did he look that you would find it hard to believe that the man could ever be awake. All those Raagi (millet) balls that he ate to keep himself fit and active seemed to add up to nothing though he mentioned this to reporters in his sleep- induced heavy voice in (then) Bangalore during his PM stint. The only time that one saw him very animated and charged was when he stood up to reply to the no-confidence motion against his poorly stitched coalition government. Gowda lost the debate and his government fell – the same way his head flopped and fell during the parliamentary sessions. Gowda will go down in the country’s history as probably the only leader who forty-winked his way through his tenure with the aplomb that he was known to.
From time to time elected representatives cutting across party lines have been caught by candid (and insensitive!) cameras sleeping their way through parliamentary debates. It has reached a stage where nobody gives a damn about it anymore. The issue was never a big deal before the sessions of the Parliament were televised since the only pictures that people got to see were of unruly members creating a ruckus inside or the Prime Minister or Speaker making a point. It didn’t occur to the lens men then that an elected representative caught napping made for a newsworthy picture.
It is hard to believe that elected representatives kept their eyes and ears open all through their tenure in the period between 1950 and1990. Remember the China war fiasco in 1962 when the entire government was caught napping and day-dreaming of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai even as the Chinese almost trampled our territory in Arunachal. Perhaps the then Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon mistook it for Hindi-Chini Bye Bye.
All the hue and cry about the ministers in the Narendra Modi Cabinet looking bleary-eyed because of lack of sufficient sleep may be making headlines for right or wrong reasons but what happened during the earlier years when parliamentary reporting was straight-jacketed and never went beyond its accepted realms? Although I have cited just one but concrete example, one still needs to close eyes and reflect!    

Hallowed or Hollowed?

Raju Korti

Pune University: A grab from its website.

It is not hard to marginalize people when they've already done it all by themselves. The Government of Maharashtra has only lent its mite to the cause with a belated show of conscience whose timing is highly suspect.
With an existence teetering on the brink of almost oblivion in the present political situation, the incumbent coalition in Maharashtra now wants to stoop and conquer. Desperation has driven it to play a beaten rhetoric that makes it believe it will turn a new page in the history of Education. More than a century later after her pioneering efforts in fighting totalitarianism in caste and other social evils, it has decided to rename the University of Pune after social reformer Savitribai Phule.
For the moment, let us keep aside the quintessential Punekar, notorious for his exaggerated sense of edification and holier than thou approach to everything that is even remotely cultural. With due regards to them, I have many friends and relatives there who sincerely believe that the city they were privileged to be born in is the sole repository of quality education and exemplary culture. Some of that conviction, you need to grudgingly admit, is well placed though.
By all accounts, renaming the University of Pune after Savitribai Phule, apparently justifiable though, is meant to serve and subsidize the minds of certain classes that I need not name. That the move was supported by the likes of Chhagan Bhujbal, the self-proclaimed champion of the downtrodden, does not come as a surprise. As someone who owns a well known educational institution in the upscale western suburb of Bandra in Mumbai, he could have showed that Education, like Charity, begins at home.
The thumb rule is simple. For all populist schemes we have the Gandhis. The lesser ones can keep all the Ambedkars and Phules. Deprivation spawns a privilege of another kind!
Among India's greatest ironies is all those who have been lamenting ill-treatment because of their caste are now bending backwards in keeping casteism alive and throbbing. If someone believes that this is a social quid pro quo of sorts, there cannot be anything more counter-productive. While the Congress has crossed all limits of propriety on the issue of castes and reservation, other parties haven't given a great account of themselves, either choosing to be silent or accepting the fait accompli as political expediency. Who will want to rub a major constituency the wrong way? More so when it has the potential to be a game changer in electoral fortunes?
There is nothing wrong in naming institutions after great personalities but when it has political overtones and reeks of shady electoral motives, such moves only intensify the divide.
Recall the violence that preceded the renaming of Marathwada University after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. In the dirty game politicians played to nurture a vote bank, scores of people lost their lives fighting a cause that was of no tangible help to them anywhichways. The renaming served no purpose and has made no material difference to the university's status.
A friend who has done considerable research on the issue points out that this is a post 70s phenomenon. Something like this would have been unimaginable in the erstwhile (bilingual) Bombay State when Morarji Desai, an ardent advocate of Shivambu, was the chief minister. Times have changed but mindsets refuse to. Caste will remain a milch cow for self-seeking politicians in a country where photos of Ambedkar, Phule, Indira Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi (not necessarily in that order) are an established norm in all government offices.
Mere renaming of the universities cannot bring about a change in the education system. What these institutions need are proper infrastructure, adequate finances and good faculties. Universities should ideally become the hub of academic research. Instead, we have vice chancellors who are political appointees.
Renaming may be the name of the game but it is like applying butter to a stale bread. Whether the new label head for Pune University works -- if it at all does -- is anybody's guess.

PS: An interesting link:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/universities-ours-and-theirs/article3743238.ece