Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Sense, Sensibility, Sensitivty


With the subject title, I am not referring to Mammootty's famous dialog from an atrocious film 'The King'. I am talking about the NDA government's severe lack of sense and sensibility in almost all the things they have handled so far this term and also their propensity to feign their sensitivities being hurt by the supposed foreign plans to defame India. I am of course referring to the ludicrous reason given in parliament by Venkaiah Naidu for banning the documentary India's Daughter. This is of course taken up by Bhakts to spew their vitriol. I came across this tweet today.
The response to this tweet will almost make you want to vomit. I know it is not fair to make some judgement on a group of people based on their activities on twitter. As John Oliver put it, trudging through the dark, horrific world of Internet comments is the surest way to kill your soul. Still you can't help yourself from making judgments. You just have to take a look at some Economist article with a slight tinge of India criticism-the comments section will be full of morons from India (or NRIs) complaining about imperialism, envy, Vedic science, liberalism etc. One would expect those who read economist to be little more intelligent than this. Maybe it is a case of empty pots making more noise and the sensible ones taking the stand: 'Don't argue with idiots. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'
Today I watched the recently banned Chinese documentary about air pollution, 'Under the Dome'. Surprisingly enough the censors there initially passed it through for upload only to develop cold-feet and ban it when it became a big internet hit. They are indeed paranoid about reaction from its subjects and they have every reason to be so. In my opinion it is only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down. The administration here have got a hard-on about Chinese investment driven growth model . That is evident in its misguided 'Make In India' campaign. Even though nothing substantial have been done in that regard, the government have got the aping of authoritarian aspects and repression down to a T. Recently economist did a major piece on pollution in India cities. When it comes to pollution level of sub PM 2.5 particles, 13 Indian cities are in the top 20. US is setting up an Air-Now facility in Delhi which will publicize its own recordings of the pollution level for the wider world. I was speculating that the government will proclaim it as another foreign tactic to tarnish India. Lo and behold, this article came up in Financial Times:
So the Air Now facility from US is a very welcome move since the government is making efforts to manage its own data to massage country's image. We will be better off if the government puts the same effort to tackle real problems as it does for its PR. There were some rumors about introduction of carbon tax for coal, and if it materializes at a rate that would be substantial, it would be welcome indeed. But I am not that optimistic based on the actions that they took on matters like this, especially their handling of Priya Pillai issue. One of their panel show idiots, Sambit Patra, proclaimed in one channel that they saved the country by not allowing her to travel to London for a meeting there. Do they really takes us for idiots?
In other news, there was a very good article by Kapil Sibal on the coal auction process and the fallout from the supposed scams. It is a must read amidst all the hoopla around the money raised by the auctioning of coal blocks recently, which supposedly validates the claims by CAG auditor Vinod Rai. As Sibal argues, inordinate stress on generating revenue at the auction stage can lead to problems downstream. Especially if the companies have a perception that they can renegotiate deals further down the lane through blackmailing, a problem that plague several PPP projects. As he points out we need to just take a look at the state of 3G services provided by Indian Telecom companies. They paid a huge amount to get the license leaving them not having enough funds to set up necessary infrastructure. How many of us actually opt for 3G services? I tried dongles from several companies including Idea, before going back for BSNL's land-line broadband service. The price that they offer for 3G is not at all competitive or affordable which makes it totally useless for vast percentage of people. The problem with the issue is that it is very nuanced argument which is not something the brain-dead electorates can grasp.
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