worrying for a school for my leaders…

The Raffles Institution shows off its produce. This picture I have borrowed without permission.

It occurred to me that if I view our current affairs like I would a movie, then I'd be entertained by these happenings around me, which would otherwise pull me down into depression.

Kumaraswamy helped Sreeramulu win by not fielding a JD(S) candidate. After his victory Sreeramulu is throwing glances at the JD(U) in Karnataka, agreeing with them that he can revive and reinvigorate their party, and we can guess that if he cannot own the whole of that party, then he'd surely purchase all its strings. He has asked to speak to Nitish Kumar on the subject. If Sreeramulu should join the JD (U), and if Kumaraswamy should stay on in support of Sreeramulu, you'd have three men in a centrifuge bed, which when it stops its flight will send the three men flying. Who will bite the dust? Who will land on his feet? The good? The bad? The ugly?

No, the vision of that doesn't lift my spirits.

I need also to deal with the bad press regarding this superpower that has stalled, having to read of it daily, when it is already hurtful enough to experience the tugging from the slowdown. But I've begun to take it rather well, and, in fact, I was thinking only two days ago why economies should grow so much, and if all the developed and developing nations and their alpha achievers shouldn't cool down a bit. No, please don't laugh at me.

I read a report in the papers that our billionaires are “sick and tired” of our leaden government and are shifting base to London or Singapore. I've been thinking ahead of these rich men, pondering that I should do just the same, and I’m annoyed that billionaires stamp their large feet everywhere, including on the plans of others. The papers seem to sympathize with them, but I ask, of what sort is the businessman who will flee his country when it encounters its first potholes on its growth path? Fair weather friend? Does it matter no more where he made his first billions? Ah, let's both laugh at my naïveté, dear reader.

Let me admit it, I have to beat down at least thrice daily the urge to leave this place. Many times during the day the faces of the probables who'll be chief minister flash in my mind—and I shudder at them. Why don’t a few good men and women who came into business in the last decade enter also into politics? At least a few like Mitt Romney in America, said to be worth $200 million, who is fighting among Republicans for the chance to take on Obama? Romney is willingly having his outward existence and all his innards clawed at by the American media, and the media has also examined his height and weight and gait and demeanor to know whether they're each one of a presidential standard. The man is standing tall through it all, even if a little naked.

I have in hand a piece by an English High Master who rues that Britons shy now from having Eton create prime ministers for their nation, for that great institution is considered elitist, but which was Eton's clear task in its historic past. Look at Singapore, the educationist points to the old colony, look at the Raffles Institution, and see how they are working to produce their next prime minister, and the other terrific leaders Singapore needs for its unfaltering forward march. I envy the high master his worry. Our worries here at home are somewhat short of that class.

Wayward thoughts in this cataleptic winter

These winters of no discontent

In December and January I will not leave Bangalore, for I cannot have enough of this gentle chill in a cocktail with the warm sun, capped by this clean blue sky. The dreariness of the daily commute is somewhat muted, and sitting in the back seat of my car I can laugh at the traffic than rage at it, with music in my ears, which this week has been Metallica and Neil Young and Feist.

And so my thoughts regarding the new posters that are splashed on my path to work are more charitable than they'd have been in another month. Sreeramulu is again elected, and his victory is not a matter of who won, but what won. With him, several things have won again, and the things that are defeated are beaten to near-burial. But I am far from Bellary, and those who elected him took what he gave and gave what he wanted, and they are at peace with each other, and these thoughts of someone like me, for whom politics is no more than a piece for conversation, are a bitching waste of time.

Thinking so, on a morning this week, I decided to join the posters, and welcome with them the triumphant hon'ble re-elected Member of the Legislature to Bangalore. And I quickly realized that this man from Bellary owns Bangalore significantly more than I, and I can no more welcome him than he can tolerate me and the category of the electorate I belong to. So now I see the posters in respectful silence, and I am not at all peeved at myself, or at the world, thanks to this lovely December.

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The don's den

With such thoughts regarding the state and strongmen, I watched The Godfather today, Saturday, for the third time in my life. The Godfather died outside in the sun, while playing with his grandson, and with his death Michael was free to take the revenge the Godfather had in a brilliant move put on pause, having pledged with enemy dons that he wouldn't be the first seeker of vengeance. Until the end, in every meeting in his dark study Don Corleone had shown no love for the drugs business, each time he was offered it, whereas he held out a whole lot of love for his family and, among them, the most partial love for Michael. I was moved and inspired by the Godfather, and when he danced with his daughter at her wedding I envied him even, for Don Corleone was so much a man, and such a father, and such a don, and he was so noble in the way he moved and spoke and danced, and in the way he gestured to people with his hands.

How is life in the inner coterie of the Bellary brothers? How moving a movie would their life make? But the brothers aren't the silent type like Corleone, if you consider the shouting they've done in the legislature, and the gross abuses they've traded on the floor of the house. They cannot have a Brando or an Al Pacino playing any of them, even in an Anglicized version. Still, I wonder, how deep does a meeting get in the study of Janardhana Reddy? Would it move my heart, watching the play of long loyalties and the alleged honor among men in his business? Would I draw inspiration from some part of it?

Such wild thoughts! But they say that it is normal for the mind to be choppy on a day like this, when the moon is in eclipse.

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End note

On the street before my house, the magnolia are falling. They were a flaming red in November, thick in a canopy over their tree. Now when I step out for a stroll at night they squelch beneath my feet and pull at my soles, like they want me on the ground with them. After I pass the tree the fragrance from my neighbor's sampigé is so sharp, I look to see the smell that has hit my nose. Every day.

The moon has been out and about all week.

Ask of both sides, Annaji

Photo courtesy: Ramesh Lalwani on Flickr

In the mid-nineties, I was once working to win a good-size contract from a public sector company here at home. I hit it off very well with the General Manager in charge of purchase, but I learnt the reason why as we moved close to the deal. “Consider me your partner,” the senior executive said: “Pay me one rupee for every part we buy.” Saying which, he asked me to hang on and closed his files and packed his bag and took me home and gave me fine-tea flavored with cardamom and laced with the precise amount of sugar. After each sip a spicy peppery twang hit the tongue, making that cup the most memorable masala-tea I’ve had. In the executive's estimate the deal had been sealed with that cup of tea.

I extricated our company from such encounters by converting it to a 100% exporter. We began looking for customers who did business honorably, and challenged us in the extreme for the right things: quality and engineering.

In this last week of unusual intense rain and gloomy evenings and rainswept mornings and rising public protest I discovered I have some use for twitter, and I came upon tweetbot, a clever and well-crafted twitter-application. I subscribed to Javed Akhtar, Shekar Kapur, Kiran Bedi, Sadanand Dhume, Rajdeep Sardesai, Chetan Bhagat, and I allowed myself to be distracted by them. Some of them are naysayers, some say aye, but on my part I believe Anna’s protest is welcome, even if his medicine appears suspect and should remain sealed and stored in a cool dry place, while we await a third opinion. Without his protest, would the debates of these weeks have happened? In this intensity? Would Nandan Nilekani have offered to show how technology can check graft? Would the Prime Minister have moved the mention of it up high in priority in his Independence Day speech?

This protest should end in a good measure of success, any kind of success. The youth who are powering it should experience strength over nonchalant rulers. Our parliamentarians should shiver from a fear they’ve not felt before—fear that they may be challenged when they do wrong, when they ignore their constituents, when they commit crimes, and that, if they are sent to jail they may not in future ride out in quick time and be returned in the following election. They should fear those outside the circular building when they make their enactments. The fear should be lasting.

In the meantime I am surprised that Anna Hazare has missed a Gandhian step. Before a satyagraha, Gandhiji called upon every satyagrahi to begin the satyagraha with prayer and fasting. The two served to first purify the self; then they prodded the satyagrahi to contemplate the purpose of the protest, and his role in it. The result was a steeled protestor who had sensed the depth of what he was after.

The crowds before Anna are asked merely to focus on the Lokpal Bill. What about where corruption begins? The BBC asked a young man from Pune: Why have you joined Anna’s movement? To root our corruption. When did you last pay a bribe? Two days ago. Why? I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, the constable asked for the government fine of ₹800, and I settled with him for ₹100. Did you do the right thing?

The young man’s case crumbled in mumbles. As it did with two Chennai youths who said they were in Anna’s campaign because they have paid a huge donation to obtain admission to college.

Corruption begins in us as much as in those who demand to be bribed. Indians pay to overcome the smallest inconvenience besides the big hurdles: to flout building by-laws; to register a home with a black-money component in the transaction; to win business; to jump a line; to escape the charge of being drunk while driving. This is not to say that there aren’t innocent and poor people who suffer harassment unjustly; such payments are decidedly on account of pure coercion and are a humiliating experience. They leave us drained. However, for many of us, it is possible—in more than half the situations we encounter—to refuse to pay. When more and more of us refuse to pay and are ready to forego a benefit, we begin to build a culture of integrity.

When you offer a taxi driver a tip in Germany he is genuinely surprised and he takes what you offer with pleasing courtesies. He wouldn’t have missed it if you hadn’t offered the tip. It is a cultural thing. Anna should constantly call on his admirers who want a clean India to first look unto themselves, to bravely shun every temptation, big or small, to give or to take. Gandhiji would have demanded that of the crowds before him, with the same curt confidence with which he asked them to practice personal hygiene.

When we exhibit such character we can expect probity in the powerful. And we will find what we expect because "a government is merely the reflection of its people." Some will be some left who are errant, corrupt people. Let us wield the Lokpal's powers on them.

a rise from this fall?

B.S. Yeddyurappa

On my morning walk I pass his home on the sidestreet on which it stands. The house has a lofty name: Dhavalagiri, or The White Mountain. There used to be a majesty to the house in the morning air, with the police cars on the hidden end of the short street and a police picket on the end that opens into 80-feet Road. The policemen sprawled on plastic chairs and read the papers, and in the cars plain-clothesmen and uniformed men dozed while they waited. By the white SUV of the master of Dhavalagiri his driver stood about, wearing all whites and shiny black shoes. Like the driver the master wore whites and the master’s companions wore whites also, and as they drove off the colored beacons would begin their roll on top. The sirens were seldom sounded.

Today all that has ended. The master has been brought down, and the policemen are absent before his house, and in today’s breeze on his street a sheet of paper and some dried skins of fruit blew about. The police barricades seemed forlorn without the policemen standing by them.

I will miss the daily sights on this point, I will miss the driver tutoring the policemen on statecraft: “politics means that, saar." I didn’t like the politics of the man, but I respected him for the fight he gave each time his opponents reached out to pull him off his chair. It was always many upon one, and the man fought with the pluck of Jackie Chan. I didn’t like how he went to temples to cure every cold he caught; I liked how he stood up to everyone, eyes blazing, whiskers bristling. But I am happy he is out, even if I am anxious regarding who might take his place, and to where our fate-line has turned.

Time has come when our ruler can be brought down on a corruption charge. The courts have stayed mining at last, and have taken note of the socking dealt to the ecosystem in Bellary. The bosses in Delhi of our man’s political party are struggling to install a man in our state who may be seen and believed as clean. After this, the ruling party in Delhi would be forced in its turn to cleanse itself. The activism of the middle class is working; hopefully, when elections come, the rural vote will match the mood in town.

Hopefully, my nation will be cleaned up in my lifetime.

the thing about money

I was a participant in negotiations for a joint venture between a large American corporation and a tiny Indian one. The key issue was the valuation of the new enterprise. After all the ingrediends for the calculations were poured into the cauldron, a mustard-like factor was added that brought up a thick pungent cloud. WACC, that vital additive is called, and is itself a mix of various factors, one of which is the business-risk attached to a nation.

When the cooking was done the valuation was disappointing for the little Indian company. It tasted not so good for them, and it seemed that a too-small portion had been served. “The WACC is not right,” they complained, and their Mumbai-based counsel agreed. “It is high because our top-management assigns a high risk to India,” the negotiator for the five-member American team argued. The Americans nodded, not looking at anyone. The soft-spoken counsel replied firmly, softly. “The kind of growth that’s going on here, America is the higher risk,” he told them. The Americans looked up from their meal that they’d been eyeing with approval. Their eyes were steady, and they held a dignified silence, and with them everyone fell silent, and I watched all the people in the room, seated round a U-shaped table with a well in the middle, and I felt happy for the Indian and his new-found pride, and respect for the dignity of the Americans. That was some weeks ago: the negotiations are still going on, and as you must have guessed, there isn’t silence between the parties any more. The final monies are being counted and, in the giving and taking, good graces have retreated many miles, but they’re raring to come back, because the two are good parties. They are all very nice people.

It is just that there is this thing about money.

Now I have in hand and in my iPad The Economist of this week, with the fine cartoon on its cover of the elephant that is India. The caparisoned elephant has braked, its brow is bristling, and its eyes are saying a thousand words. Some courtiers are pushing it and one of them is tugging at its trunk, but an elephant is an elephant and it can be terribly Indian. The thing that has come a good distance has refused to move now in mid-journey. There is not in the picture a mahout with the little prod that can shake the tusker, and there is a reason for it: do we have someone young to climb atop this recalcitrant mammoth nation and poke it and get it back to the speed that it has come to know? The old among the rulers cannot shake off their stupor; the old among the opposition are senile in addition to being soporific. The young in both are hopelessly divided, and none among them seems likely to accept the leadership of another in their fold. So I am worrying this weekend if the Americans that I am involved with will read this issue of The Economist, or the other bad press of the recent weeks regarding India, and I am thinking, how dear is this joint venture now to these Americans? Has this small Indian company which I am involved with shrunk further?

And so I am struck by a longing that I’d never imagined would come upon me. My political leaning is opposite to Narender Modi’s, and I’ve liked him less and less since the riots, but there is Gujarat regarding which state articles come to hand in odd respectable magazines round the world, and no one argues about Modi’s incorruptibility, or his competence, and in his vigor the man’s beans may be seen and you can see they are in fine trim. He is not so young but he is not so old. I am veering toward this man. Yes, I am, because there is this thing about money…

Help me, God.