The coup in paradise and India’s silence

Taking a closer look at the events that have transpired in the Maldivian Archipelago, one has to wonder whether the “world’s largest democracy” has any kind of foreign policy at all. A secular, liberal, democratically-elected pro-India president was forced to resign from the presidency at gun-point by rogue police on a mutiny. All this happens in India’s backyard with the largest navy in the region fast asleep!

The Manmohan Singh government decides to congratulate the new president instead of standing by the democratically-elected Mohammed Anni Nasheed. What’s worse is that this coup is backed by Islamic fundamentalists in the country. The same fanatics vandalized Buddha statues in a museum in Male, the island-nation’s capital.

The impotent Congress-led Indian government is probably waiting for a Taliban-style government in the Maldives. A regime that will give free access to groups like the Lakhshar e Tayaba, so that terrorist attacks can be carried out in southern India!! Bravo Manmohan Singh!

My article about Buryatia and India for the Russia & India Report

In the ocean of robed monks that descend on important Buddhist sites in India, there are increasing numbers of Russian-speakers, who can easily blend in with East Asian members of the monastic order. These Russians are Buryats, an ethnic group closely related to the Mongols and inhabiting the internal Republic of Buryatia, a Trans-Siberian area that is about one and half times the size of Great Britain.

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My article on Indo-Russian friendship on the tennis court

It’s too bad that the Olympics don’t offer shared or joint medals. If that was the case, we could have surely had 3 gold medals in doubles’ tennis for both India and Russia (and given how well Sharapova is playing, a fourth one for Russia).

Read more here

Homosexuality could save India, Mr Health Minister!

Yesterday, India's health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said homosexuality is a "disease" and regretted that despite being "unnatural", it now afflicts a substantial number of people in India.

"The disease of 'Men having Sex with Men', which was found more in the developed world, has now unfortunately come to our country and there is a substantial number of such people in India", Azad was quoted as saying at a conference in Delhi.

I think the poor minister has got it completely wrong. India has a population of 1.2 billion and if current trends continue, we will peak at 1.7 billion in 2070. That would be too many people for too little land in India. What is India supposed to do with so much pressure on land and resources? Send people to the Andaman and Nicobar islands? Colonize Australia? Reach a deal with Messrs Putin and Medvedev to export people to Siberia?

There is a much simpler solution. Let us encourage homosexuality. Let's launch campaigns to encourage gay and lesbian reltionships. If more people turned gay, there would be less child-births and some well-off gay people may even want to adopt. I am not going to make any calculations and claim our population growth will slow down by x or y percent but seriously we have an easy solution here.

And of course, as a bonus, if sexually transmitted diseases spread, our population will fall further. Come on Mr Azad, let's encourage homosexuality!

Hard times for the King of Good Times?

Kingfisher Airlines, India’s only 5-star airline has an excellent fleet of aircraft and a certain class about it that sets it ahead of its nearest rival Jet Airways, at least on domestic flights. All Kingfisher aircraft are new and have individual TV screens with good in-flight entertainment. I’m pretty much used to being pampered when I fly Kingfisher, which is why I was a bit surprised by my Bombay-Delhi flight this morning.

For starters, the cabin crew, which is usually very-well groomed, looked out of sorts and stressed out. Missing were the normal welcoming smiles; I could have as well been on a Novosibirsk-Khabarovsk flight on an Ilyushin aircraft. For the first time ever on Kingfisher, I was told that there was no non-veg meal. Is the airline trying to cut down on costs by not serving non-vegetarian food?

And with the wonderful in-flight entertainment system that I praised, there were just 3 TV channels that worked and the audio channels were also limited. I wonder if there is de-motivation around the ranks of the crew and employees of the organisation. Even the captain didn’t address the “guests” during the flight. The legendary service of Kingfisher is something that all Indians are proud of; it would be a shame, if this became a private Air India!

While doing some research on Kingfisher, I found out that that they are neck-deep in debt, which stands at Rs 6,000 crore or about $1.2 billion. It’s chairman Vijay Mallya was quoted by the Indian media as saying that the airline has been experiencing “unprecedented load factors in the last 6 months.” Somehow I am not convinced that’s the reason why the crew aren’t groomed well enough and seem a tad bit indifferent.

The Dangers in Assam

The elation in India's television media of Mamata Bannerjee and Jayalalitha's thumping election victories took away the attention from a dangerous trend that seems to be shaping in one of India's most beautiful, yet enigmatic states, Assam.

I remember, a few years ago, admiring the wide Brahmaputra River from an aircraft just before my plane landed in Guwahati. The shades of green that I saw on the landscape surrounding the wide river were nothing like I'd ever seen in even the greenest places like Kerala. The Brahmaputra plain is lush and probably even more fertile than the Gangetic Plain. That's the very reason that people from neighbouring (and impoverished) Bangladesh would like to settle in Assam.

While in Guwahati, I read about how a group of 200 illegal Bangladeshi migrants, who were evicted from Arunachal Pradesh, were assisted by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who passionately argued that they were Indian Bengali Muslims. That was my first introduction to the communal and vote-bank politics of the Congress in Assam. A brilliant reporter from the Assam Tribune told me that Bangladeshi settlers now form close to 33 percent of the Assamese population and that even the dreaded separatist group ULFA, which was ironically formed to expel Bangladeshis, wouldn't touch the settlers since the group had its base now across the border.

Assam has had a long troubled with Bengal over the past few centuries. In fact, Assamese proudly talk about how the state resisted the Mughals and other Muslim invaders. There are traces of Hinduism in its pre-Buddhist form in the state. The biggest example being the Kamakhya Temple, where there are regular animal sacrifices.

The danger with the latest election result seems to be the fact that the Muslim minority voted en masse for a Deobandi party that follows a rigid form of Islam. Education across religious barriers is a problem in Assam but the fact that there is an assertive group of people, who are essentially Bangladeshis but with questionably acquired Indian citizenship, is a serious danger for India.

I remember having a debate with a close family-friend, who was an Executive Director with the Reserve Bank of India, who told me that he realised that he had to be communal to save all of India from turning into another Kashmir. He was implying that a Muslim majority area in India would never accept Indian rule. I do believe that the particular gentleman was misinformed but I can sense a real danger in Assam.

The blatantly communal Congress Party created many monsters that they couldn't control, like Bhindranwale and Prabhakaran. If education and development aren't given priority in Assam, we are sitting on our next communal flash point.

Sarkari Bhavan

It's 4 pm on an absolutely gorgeous spring day in New Delhi. The setting is the reception of a sarkari bhavan or government house.  People wait for a special pass to enter the building that houses a high-profile ministry. Security is super tight and the trigger-happy CPRF is manning the building.

Some people walk in and bump others off the queue. The receptionist gives the aggresive queue-bumpers a dirty look but is forced to issue them a pass. In the same office, an irate Punjabi woman tries to convince a clerk that there is no such thing as a ration card in Australia.

We get our elusive passes to enter the building and then the CPRF stops us and tells us that we can't take our cameras inside. Back to the reception: The lady asks for someone to come down with a letter authorising us to enter with the cameras. Of course that person doesn't turn up.

As we wait outside, the firm but polite CPRF officer starts getting uneasy and criticises the ministry's clerks. Finally the minister's media officer comes in her not-so-VIP car and talks to the officer, who says he can't let us in: Rules are Rules! We reach a compromise and are let in on the condition that the gun-totting CRPF man following us into the building is sent back with the letter.

Inside the building, there is an army of clerks (probably all getting overpaid thanks to the 6th Pay Commission). We enter an office of a bureaucrat, well lit, insulated and full of lovely art work. The official is oblivious to the world surrounding him. A "peon" with the traditional hat dating back from colonial times brings him evening tea.

Minutes later, we meet the minister, who gives us a good interview with all sorts of talks on reforms. I guess it's a lot easier to reform from the outside in. Mera Bharat Mahan!

The rise of Young India in Bangalore

From what I have seen in the so-called Silicon Valley of India, there is an increasing number of young people with an entrepreneurial spirit and great ideas. I met a 24-year old CEO of a company that provides web solutions to small and medium size companies in Europe and North America. He started at the age of 14 from a cyber cafe and is now on the World Bank's advisory board as well as a regular on the World Economic Forum circuit.

The same day, I met the co-founder of Flipkart. This is a young man, who was educated in IIT Delhi and instead of running off to America, moved down to Bangalore and set up a company that is essentially India's own Amazon.com. Books on Flipkart are sold at a discount that retailers can't match and with 10 million titles in stock, it would be tough to not find a book there.

I also met people who are actively involved in tele-medicine and the use of technology that ensures that the rural population has access to the best of doctors. Others involved in making sure that cell phones have perfect Indian language settings and enable us, Indians, to learn each other's languages.

The "ecosystem" in Bangalore is conducive to entrepreneurship and new ideas. The city is full of angel investors and the Karnataka government helps those with ideas. This is a sea of change from the days when the city was nothing but the world's back office. Start-ups in the city employ many enthusiastic youth who don't just want to slave for a big multi-national until retirement age.

The change is happening and is being driven by technocrats.

Back to my first love

When I rid my body of this viral fever, cold, assorted pains and weakness, I am going back to my first love: basketball. I love hoops. I can play basketball for hours without feeling even slightly tired and I am lucky enough to have a decent court at the Andheri YMCA.

Growing up in Queens, New York, in the late 1980s, I used to spend my entire Saturday at a basketball court pretending to be John Starks or Patrick Ewing. I definitely had more of a John Starks kind of game and loved playing tenacious defense.

The Andheri YMCA is a wonderful place to play and I love looking up at the trees after posting a lay-up. The 3 on 3 games that go on there are as brutal and warlike as my games with the homies in Flushing. I can get in a good  two hours of hoops everyday as soon as I am fit. That might keep the weight off my body over the next few months.

Here's a wonderful tribute to John Starks, my childhood idol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRVr10i28Kw

High Food Prices? Congress still has charisma

I have all the sympathy for the आम आदमी and the poor people of this city. Food is getting to become ridiculously expensive. Rs 80 for a kilo of onions is the icing on the cake. Everything from food grains to pulses to sugar has gotten more expensive since the Congress-led UPA government was reelected in 2009.

The Congress has always been a party that supports hoarders, black-marketers and other criminals and they get reelected because of "charisma." The poor and middle classes are infatuated by the appearances of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and swear by them to the grave. This slavery is a product of decades of brain-washing in schools, television, radio and to an extent the print media.

So if an educated middle class person who spends Rs 150 for a bottle of beer in a pub has a problem with petrol costing Rs 55 a litre or someone who spends Rs 2000 in a restaurant cringes about onions costing Rs 80 a kilo, all I can say is tough luck. You are the people responsible for voting these charismatic criminals into power. India is a backward, third world country with the largest amount of poor people on earth because the Congress keeps getting elected into power unopposed.

There will be a day in the near future when milk costs Rs 100 a litre. But why should the Middle Class care? They can be proud of their half-Italian prime minister and all his charisma!