ASHVINI A. writes from Bangalore: Scanning the headlines on the Deccan Herald website on Friday afternoon, I came across a Press Trust of India (PTI) report about Indian parliamentarians attending classes at Yale University on global issues and leadership challenges.
My first reaction was “Wow, good idea, will open their minds.”
But it took just a few seconds for my initial enthusiasm to come crashing down. As I scrolled down the report, the choice of MPs selected for the programme intrigued me, and then began plainly irritating me.
Leader of the pack: Abhishek Manu Singhvi, son of L.M. Singhvi.
The other members of the squad:
# H.D. Kumaraswamy: son of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda.
# Naresh Goyal: son of former prime minister I.K. Gujral.
# Jayant Chaudhary: son of Rashtriya Lok Dal leader, Ajit Singh.
# Shruti Choudhary: daughter of Haryana tourism minister Kiran Choudhary, and grand-daughter of Bansi Lal.
# Priya Dutt, daughter of late Sunil Dutt.
# Mohammad Hamdullah Sayeed, son of the former Union minister P.M. Sayeed.
# Anurag Singh, son of the Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal.
# Mausam Noor: granddaughter of Congress leader A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhary.
In other words, eight of the ten members of the team (there is also Prakash Javadekar, who is just the son of his parents) are from political families. Sons, daughters, relatives of political leaders.
First, their family standing and surname helped most of them get tickets to contest the elections and enter Parliament. Now, they are getting preferential treatment for leadership courses!
Democracy zindabad!
In a house of 543 MPs, were there no other “young MPs” who were found worthy of being chosen for this high honour?
(For the record, the India-Yale Parliamentary Leadership program is aimed at “providing insight and perspective to young leaders by giving them the exposure of different fields and ideas.”)
Who selected the MPs?
The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) or the Indo-US forum of parliamentarians? Does Yale know of the scam? Or is it a party to it?
How did H.D. Kumaraswamy get on the list? Did he serve as chief minister without these leadership skills? Or did his friend Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who headed FICCI till recently, swing it for him?
Off hand, I can think of at least three other MPs from Karnataka who have been elected on the strength of their own steam without any member of their family being in politics, who could have been on this trip: Dhruvanarayana (Chamrajanagar), Navin Kumar Kateel (Dakshina Kannada) and Janardhana Swamy (Chitradurga).
Looking at the number of “children” who were elected to the Lok Sabha, it seemed to me as if “We, the People” had internalised dynastic politics to the extent of becoming a Dynastic Democracy.
Looking at the Yale list, I am convinced.
Questions like whether leadership can be taught if not learnt in a classroom, and whether leadership for an Indian milieu can be taught by an Ivy League University, are evergreen.
But there are other questions bugging me:
# How is it that these “children” did not pick up leadership skills from their father, mother, uncles?
# Should a former chief minister like Kumaraswamy have been included in the list with first time MPs?
# Can an American university, howsoever great, really teach leadership for an Indian context?
# Are these first-time MPs in danger of being brainwashed and indoctrinated in the American way of thinking and learning?
# Should we not send delegations like these to places in India that are poor, disease-stricken so that they know the reality?
# Should not these MPs spend time with farmers, weavers, fishermen etc who face extreme hardships to make a simple livelihood and have little of no support from Goverment?
Going to Yale is good idea, but visiting different towns and villages at home in Bharat that is India will teach them more lasting lessons about leadership and challanges that an Yale can never teach.
Pretty soon, Parliament is going to take up the question of whether “foreign universities” should be allowed to set up shop in India. Is it reasonable to expect at least eight of the ten to have made up their minds?
Journalism, it is said in jest, is basically about letting readers who did not know that a certain somebody was alive that a certain somebody is dead. Even by that morbid yardstick, it can be said that our celebrity-obsessed, hit-and-run media does a pretty bad job of saluting the good and the great who pass into the ages.
The ashtanga yoga legend K. Pattabhi Jois passed away in Mysore on 18 May 2009 at the age of 94.
Yet all he got from the Star of Mysore was a couple of paragraphs and six from the newspaper of record, The Hindu. None of the others fared any better: The Times of India with an “edition” in Mysore and Bangalore ran an AFP screed; Deccan Herald had all of 247 words. Rediff.com had a slideshow.
Possibly because of his long association with the West, possibly because of the Hollywood actors and singers who were disciples, Pattabhi Jois got a fair deal from the foreign papers. The New York Times ran a full obituary as indeed did The Daily Telegraph, London, and there were six paragraphs in The Guardian.
Now, The Economist, whose obituary page is a must-read, has run a obit on Jois, which we publish here in full sans permission, to underline the point that if you do not where you come from, you will never know where to go. Then again, The Economist, despite being a mouthpiece of capitalism, did not run the obituary of P.V. Narasimha Rao.
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One sure sign that yoga has entered the mainstream of Western society, or at least the urbane bits of it, is that its practitioners have splintered into separate and sometimes competitive tribes. In spas, resorts and studios from Byron Bay, Australia to Big Sur, California, and wherever else one might expect Priuses on the roads and organic kale on the tables, the question is less likely to be “Do you do yoga?” than simply “Ashtanga or Iyengar?”
If the answer is Ashtanga, that has everything to do with Pattabhi Jois—“Guruji”, as his disciples called him. The word Ashtanga, “eight limbs”, originally meant the eight stages yogis must traverse to reach enlightenment, only one of which, asana or “postures”, is the sort of thing Westerners associate with yoga. But used in Mr Jois’s way, which is how most Westerners understand it now, Ashtanga meant stretching, balancing and swinging to the relentless rhythm set by a little, smiling, potbellied man in an undershirt and Calvin Klein shorts, crying “Ekam, inhale! dve, exhale! trini, inhale! catavari, exhale!”, until every member of the class was breathing like Darth Vader and running with rivers of sweat.
This was just how Mr Jois liked it. The intense internal heat generated by his sort of yoga was meant to purify and cleanse the body. For him, yoga was “99% practice and 1% theory”, as he liked to say in his squeaky, mischievous voice. Though he was the son of a Brahmin priest, and knew the teachings, anyone asking him for deeper philosophy would get a smirk in reply, or a scrap of his famously broken English. Why, for instance, did he insist that one must enter the Lotus position right leg first? “Practice and all is coming,” Mr Jois would say, and leave it at that.
He disdained the fastidious and perfectionist alignment of postures that some of his rivals practised in chilly yoga studios. He scorned Iyengar, the careful and medicinal branch of the art which, like his, arrived in the West in the 1960s, in which middle-aged ladies spent an eternity studying how to spread their toes properly while standing, before building complex poses with straps, blocks and chairs. His Ashtangis were younger and fitter, more likely to have Om tattoos and rippling shoulder muscles, and to start their exercises with a chant of “Guruji!” to a portrait of him pinned up on the wall.
His yoga poses came in sets and sequences that never varied. Do the same sets again and again, Mr Jois believed, and the body would, over time, supply its own grace. The poses did not change when he taught his daughter’s son, whom he was grooming to carry on the tradition after losing one son to death and growing distant from another. Nor did they vary for new, pale, stiff arrivals from the West at his school in Mysore, in India; nor for the Hollywood celebrities, from Madonna to Sting and Gwyneth Paltrow, who made the pilgrimage to catch Guruji on one of his world tours.
What changed was only how many of the six sequences—in theory, one for each day of the yoga week—the student was able and allowed to do. Each set had a theme, and they got harder and harder. The first, with many forward bends, was cleansing and calming; the second, with lots of back bends, was stimulating, and so on. The later ones were otherworldly in their contortions. It was said that only a handful of people could do all six.
Mr Jois first saw these yoga postures performed in one connected sequence in the 1920s, when he was 12. He was watching a demonstration by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, a charismatic guru who would teach all the principal yogis who later brought yoga to the West. Electrified, he became Krishnamacharya’s student the next day. His teacher made him start at daybreak, with sun salutations towards the east until he was sweaty and hot. Then followed postures, shoulderstands, headstands, deep breathing in the Lotus position and meditative rest. Strong, flexible and easily bored, the boy had found a discipline that challenged him.
After running away from his village with two rupees in his pocket, Mr Jois eventually managed to study at Mysore and then began to pass on what he had learnt. At first he taught in obscurity, in one small room with a grubby carpet, and only other Brahmin men. But from the late 1960s onwards, as the perfume of joss sticks drifted over Western civilisation, yoga caught on there too. A hippie fan brought him to California for a visit in 1975, and his fame spread.
Among his followers, Mr Jois inspired a cultish devotion. But his students were not unaware of their teacher’s contradictions. What had happened, for example, to the yogic principle of ahimsa, non-violence? A good number of Mr Jois’s students seemed constantly to be limping around with injured knees or backs because they had received his “adjustments”, yanking them into Lotus, the splits or a backbend. And what about the yogic principle of brahmacharya, sexual continence? Women followers, it was said, received altogether different adjustments from the men. Most mysteriously, why had Mr Jois himself apparently stopped practising his sort of yoga decades ago? Was that another instance of the wisdom of the East?
Mahatma Gandhi called him a “Raja Rishi” (saintly king). Historians have compared him to emperor Ashoka. He is seen to have ushered in the golden age of carnatic music.
Yoga and Sanskrit learning took flight under him. Sir M. Visveswaraya was diwan under him. Under them, Mysore became the first State in the country to generate hydro-electric power; Bangalore the first City to have streetlights.
Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, or Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV to give his real name, was born 125 years ago on 4 June 1884.
Shyam Sundar Vattam reports in today’s Deccan Herald that a political party which has Lord Rama on its electoral lips hasn’t even bothered to remember the man whose kingdom has been described as Rama Rajya on his 125th anniversary. And this, while the BJP government of B.S. Yediyurappa is splurging untold millions in taking out advertisements on the completion of one year in office.
Shame.
S.M. Krishna’s gutless regime acquiesced to communalists and parochialists who blockaded Tipu Sultan’s 200th death anniversary because he was alleged to be anti-Hindu if not anti-Kannada. What is the excuse of the great Hindu nationalists wearing their religion on their foreheads and fighting their elections with it?
“The Congress party’s claim to be secular does not wash because it has not implemented even one recommendation of the government-appointed Rajinder Sachar committee report which pointed out last year that the plight of Muslims was worse than that of Dalits.
“Indeed, the party brings secularism to the fore only during the polls and forgets it after coming to power. Backwardness of Muslims is a sad commentary on the Congress which has been in power at the Centre and in most states for more than 50 years since independence.”
The latest desktop calculations of the editors of DNA with the two main alliances and the “others” running neck-and-neck.
An opinion poll reportedly conducted for a weekly newsmagazine by a polling agency, but not published due to the Election Commission’s diktat, gives the BJP 144, Congress 143, Left 32, BSP 30, Samajawadi Party 27, AIADMK 24, Telugu Desam 18, NCP 12, Trinamool Congress 13, DMK 13, Rashtriya Janata Dal-Lok Janshakti Party 15, Praja Rajyam Party 2, Biju Janata Dal 9, and Janata Dal Secular 2.
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Swapan Dasgupta, the journalist cum BJP strategist, writes on his blog that the second phase of polling “has been very good for the BJP and its allies, good for BSP, not so good for the Congress, and somewhat diastrous for the so-called Fourth Front.
“In Karnataka the BJP appears to have done as well as in 2004. “But there are non-quantitative reports of the BJP not doing so well in Bangalore.”
“If the BJP becomes the single largest party, you would be surprised by the number of small parties which suddenly discover the virtues of stability at a moment of economic crisis.”
In divorcing itself from any moral compulsions in l’affaireVarun Gandhi, the BJP has taken the same stand that it took in l’affaire Narendra Modi. Namely, in a democracy, the people will decide if they were right or wrong. The Congress, and countless other parties which put up killers, kidnappers, rapists, with gay abandon, has taken the same line in the past. But merely because “the majority” endorses the bestial, does it make it right?
“The BSP’s list of Lok Sabha candidates from Uttar Pradesh includes five persons facing murder charges and two nominees allegedly involved in other crimes. Five wives have been given tickets…. Other parties have also dredged dirt to pick up candidates. At least two Hindu right extremists who have been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons, are seeking court permission to contest the elections.
“Whatever the law, it is morally wrong to release such undertrials on bail to contest elections and, if they perchance win, to claim thereafter that they have been exonerated by the ‘people’s court’ and now stand above the law in their new avatar.”
History, it is said, repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.
In coastal Karnataka, though—in the homeland of the honourable home minister of the State—the self-appointed protectors of “Hindu culture” seem to have obtained a licence to take it into the farcical stage straightaway.
As if attacks on pub-going girls, bans on burkhas on campus, and preventing couples of different communities from holding hands or living together, wasn’t bad enough, some Hindu activists have reportedly objected to a statue of Charlie Chaplin being installed on a beach near a temple in Kundapur taluk for the shooting of a Kannada film.
Not even the fact that the Udupi district administration has given permission for the film shoot seems to have come in the way of the spoilsports, whose game is revealed by the blanket threat to prevent shooting anywhere in the district, not just near the Someshwara Temple.
The fact that it is a film-maker making the claim and that the intent is to put up a 67-foot statue of a five-foot-nothing comedian should set off some cautionary alarm bells as to whether this might not be a neat publicity stunt.
Then again, looking at the frequency with which these incidents are being reported under the cavernous noses and nostrils of the BJP government, you wonder if the Christian comedian who twirled the globe on his fingertip is The Great Dictator—or the Hindu jokers working overtime to kick the name of their great religion into the mud.
“If women have been at the receiving end of moral policing by Hindutva elements till now, it is now the turn of the Karnataka police to join the party by busting birthday celebrations…. The action has scant defence in law and is an intrusion into the private lives of people.
“Rave parties have been targets of self-proclaimed custodians of morality for long. A few months ago, Rakshana Vedike activists attacked a party and manhandled the participants and even stole some of their belongings. But Sunday’s busted party had nothing rave about it….
“Police should respect people’s rights, but what the police love to do is to use a sledgehammer to persecute people. The revellers of Sunday are said to have been “scantily dressed.” Is it the business of the police or anybody to pass judgment on how people dress at a private party and punish them for it?
“Karnataka’s social life is already under threat from the senseless acts of a cultural mafia which bash up women in pubs, punish girls for talking to boys and do not believe in equal rights for all people. The police have been soft on these retrograde elements, probably because the political environment is conducive to these backward ideas and encourages such elements.
“Now the cops have gone a step forward, and are themselves trying to act as protectors of the false tradition these elements lay claim to. Law and order and culture should not be mixed up wrongly. The police in Bangalore have a lot of other things to worry about. Rather than misspend their energy on youngsters’ parties, they should try to make life safe for the City’s citizens.”
Photographs: “Scantily dressed” girls arrested by the police during a “rave party” at a farm house near Dodda Aladamara in Bangalore on Sunday (Karnataka Photo News)
In the understandable hoo-ha over Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, it is easy to forget that there were others before the kids of Dharavi who set hearts aflame in Hollywood.
Krishna Vattam, the longetime Deccan Herald correspondent in Mysore, remembers one of them from our very soil, who sailed from the foothills of Chamundi to Beverly Hills.
As I was reading about the street children in Bombay, who were cast in leading roles in Slumdog Millionaire, I went down memory lane, recalling a rags-to-riches true story way back in the 1930s, of a Mysore mahout boy set in reel life from real life.
Britain’s reputed documentary maker Robert Flaherty with his wife Frances, were in Mysore with a film team, wanting to do a feature film based on Toomai of the Elephants—a story by Rudyard Kipling.
They were keen on choosing a ‘native’ boy for the lead role of Elephant Boy.
While walking around what was then a small town, the Flaherty couple, saw some children playing football, and others quarrelling among themselves in a friendly manner.
One afternoon they stepped into the Palace elephants’ stable, where elephants were being maintained by the Palace. It was lunch time and the senior mahouts were away, leaving the young boy in charge of the stable.
The little boy was wearing only a lungi and around his head a white turban was wrapped.
On seeing the white skinned visitors, he excitedly performed acrobatic stunts while handling and fondling the gentle giants with much ease. His manner charmed and captivated the Fleherty couple, and they felt that their search was over.
They were convinced that this was the boy they were looking for.
Writing about the couple’s encounter with this lad, Robert’s biographer Paul Roather, recalled:
“My most treasured memory of this day is of Sabu. He made his appearance slowly astride on an elephant, and there they stood in the middle of the very large compound for the world to see. The manner in which he handled the ponderous, lumbering elephant was enough to stir one’s confidence and trust in him.“
“I have found a gold mine,” wired Flaherty to Alexander Korda, the producer of the Elephant Boy, who was in London.
A large part of the film was shot in 1935 and 1936 in the jungles around Mysore, with which Sabu was familiar.
Since there was a delay in the completion of the production of the film, the team was asked to go over to Britain and the rest of the film was shot in the Denham studio in London. The Elephant Boy was a box office hit and the performance of Sabu was universally praised and Sabu became an instant star.
“Sabu, the Indian boy is a sunny faced, manly little youngster. His naturalness beneath the camera’s scrutiny should bring blushes to the faces of precocious wonder children of Hollywood.“
Born in Karapura, the famous site of the khedda of yesteryear in Heggadadevanakote taluk of Mysore district, on 24 January 1924, Sabu was an illiterate boy, who lost his mother when he was in the cradle and his mahout father when he was just seven years old.
He was the youngest stable boy in the Maharaja’s ward.
The Elephant Boy was a big box office hit and Korda signed him up with a long-term contract. Here was an Indian juvenile star, who had earlier not travelled beyond Mysore.From then on, Sabu became the ward of the British government and was given an excellent schooling. With this grooming, Sabu learnt perfect English, which gave him the added confidence to interact with other celebrities in both Britain and America.
His third film The Thief of Baghdad was a smash hit.
When the Kordas moved to America, Sabu also joined them and became an American citizen in 1944 and embraced the Episcopalian faith.
When Hollywood super stars like Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan stepped out of the studio to fight against the Nazis in World War II, Sabu also joined them as a gunner and was honoured for his courage and valour. He married an actress named Marilyn Cooper and had two children—Paul Sabu, who established a Rock band unit while Paul’s sister, Jasmine, owned a horse farm in California.
Sabu died young, at only 39, after a heart attack and his body was interred in the famous Forest Lawn Cemetery among other film personalities. He had achieved name and fame and was a celebrity in his own right.
Sabu returned to his home town, Mysore, in 1952 to shoot a film and this former mahout boy from the Palace elephant stable was the guest of the Maharaja Sri Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar.
His memory is kept alive, thanks to the occasional screening of the 28 films, in which he acted in, especially The Elephant Boy, and other hits like The Thief of Baghdad (1940), Jungle Book (1942), Arabian Nights (1942).
This article originally appeared in Deccan Herald, and is reproduced here with the kind courtesy of the author
Can you count the number of dosas about to be served at one glance?
Those who have migrated out of Bangalore will eternally argue about the merits of the benne dosa as served in Vidyarthi Bhavan over those served at Central Tiffin Room. Others will slurp with nostalgia when speaking about the idli their father got for them from Veena Stores.
Whatever the debate, at least one thing is certain: those lucky to have eaten in such temples as Brahmins Tiffin Room or Central Tiffin Room know what a good idli is—or for that matter, a dosa, whether plain or masala.
Ratna Rao Shekar, editor of Housecalls, the “longest running magazine for doctors“—and “a connoisseur of the idli just as some are of wine and caviar”—in her quest for the perfect idli and dosa finds her way to Bangalore’s old eateries where idli and dosa have their own geography, chemistry and mathematics.
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By RATNA RAO SHEKAR
Just as we are eternally looking for that approximation of our first love—that girl in pigtails on the bus, or the boy with long eyelashes who sat in the back bench of the class but shone radiantly like a sharp ray of the sun—we, it turns out, will for the rest of our lives be looking for that perfect dosa or idli that we ate when we were children in a small street in Malleswaram or Gandhi Bazaar in Bangalore.
Since this is oftentimes only an ideal, like first love which is more imagination than reality, every idli that you eat later falls short of expectation. Either the idlis are like rocks that could be flung at an enemy, or the dosas are more like the ‘choppaties’ of the north, chewy and rubbery.
After a recent eating binge in Bangalore accompanied by those who know about these things, old-time friends who have grown up and aged in these parts, I am now convinced that the best idli and dosa can be had in the Silicon City. And the surprising thing is that this can be done at no great cost.
At Rs 6 an idli and Rs 20 a dosa, you do feel they would at least save on the paper on which such bills are scribbled.
I would like to call these places restaurants, but restaurants require certain standards to deserve their qualification. Some of the eateries like the old Central Tiffin Room (CTR), now called Sri Sagar, in 7th Cross of Margosa Road in Malleswaram are so dark and dingy that you need a torch to see where you are going.
Vidyarthi Bhavan in Gandhi Bazaar has scaled its lighting in its efforts to modernize, but to bright tubelights. At 6.30 in the morning, when the first acolytes are arranging themselves on the narrow benches in anticipation of that dosa that is to die for, that light is rather harsh on the soul. Even if the dosa and potato sagu is heaven on the tongue.
The seating has simple wooden tables and chairs with marble or formica tops and there is no maître here to usher you to your tables. AT CTR and Vidyarthi, it’s best you make your way to a table as fast as you can, or you will be standing until eternity watching all those dosas flurrying past you.
In fact, courtesies of any kind are to be dispensed with in these places.
At CTR, for instance, we stood near the cashier—who sat with an array of gods in the background and a simple cash book in front of him—and kept a hawk’s eye on those on the verge of finishing their dosa or puri and sagu so we could swoop in on the table even before they finished paying the bill.
Worse, in these eateries that seat no more than 50 people at a go, there are no such things as exclusive tables for a group or family. We were eating our dosa and rava idli silently (there is no room here to conduct conversations on current topics of interest such as terrorist attacks or rising prices) when the head of a family seated his oldest child next to us, while he sidled to an adjacent table loudly ordering a plate of dosa for his daughter and piping hot coffee for himself.
In Vidyarthi Bhavan we were lucky to find a table quickly, and waited anxiously for our dosa. Since the bill of fare itself is just dosa (plain and masala), vada, khara and kesari bhath, coffee and tea, the waiter does not even need to repeat your order after taking it down. He knows that most people come to Vidyarthi for the dosas.
It is practically understood that you have arrived here at this early hour (we were there at 7 a.m.) for the Vidyarthi dosa. And the dosa arrives, after a good 15 minutes, not only for us but for a whole lot of others around us who are salivating by this time.
The waiter, a veshti-clad gentleman who comes with a stack of dosas neatly balancing himself and the plates, flings a dosa each on our plates and on those of others sitting at tables around. The accompaniment is just a liquidy yellow-dal chutney that flows across the plate and submerges the dosa.
The dosa is crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, the potato sagu unobtrusive on the tongue without too much of chillies or garlic. And it is made with ghee (or benne, as Kannadigas call it), not Saffola or any other oil that heart doctors recommend!
I was waiting for sambar as in other restaurants, when my companions, having already eaten half their dosa, urged me to start eating without further delay, as sambar was an alien concept at Vidyarthi and an import from neigbouring Tamil Nadu (with whom they were currently at war over language, water and other issues).
Vidyarthi, as its name suggests was started to cater to students in 1943 by two brothers Venkaramana and Parameshwara Ural from Udupi. In the 1970s it was taken over by Ramakrishna Adiga whose son Arun Kumar now oversees operations.
The who’s who of the country have eaten here, from scientist Sir M. Visvesvaraya, actor Raj Kumar, playwright Girish Karnad to cricket’s leg-spinner B.S. Chandrashekar. It is said that filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt was so impressed with the eatery that he made a two-minute documentary for BBC on the dingy hall called Vidyarthi where at one time, when short of space, they would seat you in the kitchen itself!
How many dosas in a day do you serve, we ask the cashier.He tells us reluctantly (these are matters of some secrecy) that he serves around 1,000 dosas in a day on weekdays, and on weekends it goes up to at least 2,000.
In fact, when I arrived here on a Sunday I was literally told to go home as it was already 12 noon, and didn’t I know that Vidyarthi closes at 12 on weekends (and in fact by 11 on weekdays)? No, I did not, though many others who looked suspiciously like Kannadigas from Santa Clara and Palo Alto seemed to know both timings and the menu, from the satisfied look on their faces at having consumed their Sunday’s worth of dosa and coffee.
The interesting thing about these eateries is their timing, which can even put the precise Germans to shame. They open without fail by 6.30 or 7 in the morning, and by 11 or 12 are ready to go home.
S. Pradeep of Veena Stores on Margosa Road in Malleswaram wants to offer us something when we arrive at 11.30, but is unable to give us anything we ask for, whether idli or mere coffee, as everything has been sold out like tickets of a Karan Johar film. He does finally give us coffee, but says with an apology that it’s only Bru instant.
“Come tomorrow in the morning,” he says, sad that he could not offer any of the items from his famous store that has men in Malleswaram rushing here in the mornings to fill their steel tiffin carriers with idlis and chutney.
“If organisations like the Sri Rama Sene are keen to uphold Indian cultural values, they would do well to draw a lesson or two from the country’s long tradition of cultural tolerance. If they are keen to improve the lot of women in this country, there are any number of issues they could address. They could start with fighting female foeticide, for instance or the practice of dowry. If they find ‘pub culture’ a corrupting influence, they should set an example for youngsters by not frequenting bars themselves. Engaging in rowdyism is not the way to uphold Indian culture.”
Chandana, the Kannada television channel of Doordarshan, created history of sorts by getting three visually challenged persons to anchor news bulletins through the day on Sunday, 4 January 2009.
The heart-warming move was made to mark the bi-centenary of Louis Braille, the man who invented the script for the blind, according to a report in the Kannada daily Vijaya Karnataka.
Accordingly, the anchors Manjunath from Devanahalli, and Srinivasamurthy and Ashok from Chamarajanagar, read a part of the news from their Braille script during the six bulletings from 7 am to 9 pm, with a fullfledged anchor by their side.
The activities of Madhu Singhal of the non-governmental organisation Mithra Jyothi gave Doordarshan director Mahesh Joshi (picture in newspaper tear) the brainwave.
“No TV news channel in the world has so far done this. Visually challenged people have a very sharp brain. We wanted them to show them that the world is with them. This will give them confidence,” Joshi was quoted by the paper as saying.
Manjunath who read the news said: “Society does not take note of us. Therefore such a platform is essential. We believe endeavours like these will spur people to empathise with us better.”
Chandana now plans to make this a monthly event.
For the record, the Bangalore newspaper, Deccan Herald, employs a visually challenged person on the news desk, L. Subramani, that is a signal lesson in corporate social responsibility not aimed at burnishing the brand-name.
Manish Tiwari, the Congress spokesman, on the arrest of Hindu sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and her accomplices, the involvement of the Hindu right wing organisation Abhinav Bharat, and the rumours of the possible arrest of BJP MP Yogi Adityanath, in connection with the recent bomb blasts in Malegaon:
“Earlier it used to be ‘Muh mein Ram Ram, bagal mein churi’.
“What is surprising, however, is the response of the spokesmen of the Parivar. They disown any association with sadhvi Pragya and other civil suspects held for the Malegaon bombing. Yet they take the line that Hindus cannot be terrorists and that the armed forces are a part of Indian society which has been horrified by the pusillanimous and apologetic approach of the UPA government to terror attacks and cannot therefore be blamed for patriotic reactions.
“This apologia comes close to showing sympathy for and indirectly condoning what is undoubtedly a grave dereliction of duty and rank indiscipline. It echoes the chorus from across the border in praise of “freedom fighters” as opposed to terrorists, “our” boys versus the dreadful “other”. Such pernicious double talk is scarcely in keeping with the Parivar’s insistent demand for “strong” action against terror.”
K.S. NIKHIL KUMAR, an intern at CNN-IBN, produces the picture of the day—Sunday, 2 November 2008—when a swarm of photographers crowded around Anil Kumble after he announced his retirement from the game, to provide him the warm afterglow of limelight one last time.
“I grew up in Bangalore’s Basavanagudi locality, very close to where Kumble lived for most of his life (he’s recently shifted to Banashankari, very close to where I have also shifted!), and I’ve been constantly connected to and inspired by his persona in a unique way. As a wicketkeeper, I rarely got to have a bowl at the nets, but whenever I did I would sometimes choose to bowl leg-spin of the Kumble variety – fast flippers that kicked or rushed on to the batsman….”
Photograph: courtesy K.S. Nikhil Kumar/ The Printers (Mysore) Limited
“Dr Manmohan Singh said, on his return from France, that incidents in Orissa had shamed India before the world. That is important, but far less important than the fact that the violence in Orissa has shamed Indians in India….
“The Bajrang Dal’s violence in Orissa shames me because it represents the destruction of the idea of India as shared space for all faiths, with each Indian guaranteed equal rights. This too is a form of terrorism.
“It has been pointed out that some of the conversion literature distributed by missionaries — for instance, a booklet titled Satya Darshini, where remarks have been made about Urvashi, Vashistha and Lord Krishna — is offensive.
“If that is so, there is a democratic way of addressing such issues. Who gave any fundamentalist the right to rape and kill? Governments that have tolerated this will suffer not only the shame of present censure but also the whiplash of public anger in the next elections.”
“You cannot compare today’s Dasara with the one that was conducted by my forefathers. The present Dasara is neither a festival nor an exhibition of military power. It is not held as mentioned in the Puranas, Mahabharata and Ramayana and according to me it is off-track.
“Mysore has a rich history and it is believed that 15 demons were vanquished by Goddess Chamundeshwari. These are mentioned in Kayaka Purana, Markandeya Purana and Padma Purana.
“In West Bengal, according to Bengalis, their region is known as Punya Bhumi and the Mysore region as Karma Bhumi. The only difference between West Bengal and Mysore in regard to celebration of Dasara is that there the celebrations are held as per the Puranas whereas it is not so in Mysore especially after the government took over the responsibility of holding Dasara festival every year.
“The last three days of Dasara is celebrated with pomp and pageantry in Bengal, whereas in Mysore it is a colourful celebration on all the 10 days. While Bengalis immerse the idol of Goddess Kali, in Mysore the idol of Goddess Chamundeshwari is taken out in a colourful procession on elephant.”
The following is the full, unedited text of a quarter-page advertisement issued by a Delhi-based NGO called PATRIOT, that appears on the business page of Deccan Herald today.
Deccan Herald and its holding company The Printers Mysore Limited, in a disclaimer at the bottom of the advertisement, have clarified that they have no interest or input in the content and that they do not take responsibility for the statements made.
***
All India Advertisement
INDUSTRIES FRIGHTENED IN KARNATAKA
(Turning West Bengal/ Bihar way)
Some misguided individuals/organisations becoming stronger in the guise of getting 100% Kannadigas employed in industries under threats, which situation is not prevailing anywhere in India, despite the new chief minister being pro-industrialisation realising well that “industry is a self-generating economy” providing not only massive employment but also generating revenue, earning foreign exchange and raising living standard of the people.
In fact, they have no locus standi under any law to play such destructive role, but are taking the law into their own hands by spreading the dangerous wave of Kannadigas vs non-Kannadigas for the last 4-5 years in the guise of democracy.
Earlier, Karnataka was known as the most peaceful State and its people law abiding and were welcoming industries.
It is expected Government, having strong teeth, will invoke Sections 383/389, 153-B, 291, 441, 503, 146 of IPC and Sections 35, 38, 54, 55 of Karnataka Police Act, 1963 and ban these destructive organisations by throwing their so-called leaders into jail for their anti-development and anti-people activities, in the interest of the people’s prosperity through industrialisation.
The Hon’ble Supreme Court in one of its judgments has observed “The greater the percentage of population i industry and lesser in agriculture the more prosperous the country.”
In Karnataka, 80% and in India on average 75% of population depend on agriculture—hence the poverty.
Moreover, we have examples of Japan, Germany and Korea which were almost ruined during second world war but now they top the list of most prosperous nations due to industrialisation only. Similarly, in our own country, look at Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, most prosperous States due to industrialisation. On the contrary, look at Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, starving due to criminalisation and goondaism.
PATRIOT, a well-known NGO, registered in the year 2000 having made extensive research on various complaints of this nature, has cautioned entrepreneurs individually and through FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM, all Chambers of Commerce, Associations & Federations to know the reality before stepping into karnataka so long as these anti-social elements and wave of Kannadigas vs non-Kannadigas are not curbed realsing the consequences of similar mean-thinking in West Bengal during 1968 to 1974—driving away the industries followed by starvation and lawlessness massively.
The aforesaid anti-development groups getting frustrated owing to the intervention of Hon’ble High Court and Hon’ble Supreme Court judgments in other cases, have now changed their direction alleging that the industries are committing atrocities on Kannadigas. By this, they are doing more harm and giving a clear signal that industries are unwanted in Karnataka.
So, it is for the State Government to compare with West Bengal/ Bihar and decide. However, if these groups and leaders have an iota of sense and are real saviours of the poor, innocent and illiterate masses mostly living in villages, they should request/move the Government with close follow up to make it mandatory on all industries to adopt 1 to 100 surrounding villages as per capacity/size and provide basic amenities like potable water, eduction, medicines, jobs, sanitation, hygiene.
In case of failure/violation, such industries as well as the concerned public servants be taught a good lesson instead of harassing and attacking the law abiding, peace-loving and benevolent/respectable people purely in self-interest. This will be the real service to Kannadigas. By this, nobody is loser but all will receive God’s grace.
President, PATRIOT (Regd), 22/12, 1st Floor, Yusuf Sarai, New Delhi 110016
***
Are the claims true? Are the demands correct? Has the perception of the character of Karnataka/ Kannadigas changed in recent years? Is this situation unique to Karnataka? Are we going the way of Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal in terms of criminalisation and goondaism?
Who could be behind this ad? A political party, an aggrieved industrialist? And what is the ad’s intent: to correct the situation, alert the world, or plain mischief?
R. Akhileshwari, Deccan Herald’s veteran Hyderabad correspondent, quotes Andhra Pradesh activists working in Orissa as saying that the empowerment and economic improvement of Dalits is at the core of the Hindu-Christian face-off following the murder of VHP leader Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati:
“The anger against Dalits and tribals, who have been the main targets of Hindu fundamentalist groups and organisations, [is] against the increasing empowerment of the traditionally oppressed people….
“Dalit assertion that is visible in many ways like wearing better clothes and speaking English language is not to the liking of the entrenched merchant-fringe Hindu fundamentalist groups who have aligned themselves to ‘teach a lesson’ to the Dalits.”
As the ruling BJP in Karnataka continues with its breathtaking assault on democracy through its euphemistically titled “Operation Lotus”, wooing defectors and making a mockery of the recent elections while grandstanding on “political morality”, Deccan Herald has an editorial:
“Even conceding that the legislators resigned their seats before joining the BJP, does it not amount to an insult to the voters who elected them in the first place?
“Can a ruling party use the loaves of office at its disposal and make a mockery of the Anti-Defection Act? Can democracy survive if legislators begin to think that they can serve their constituencies only if they are in the ruling party?
“Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa’s assertion that the legislators are queueing up on their own holds no water as three of the defectors have already been made ministers and there are reports that others will also be suitably accommodated either in the cabinet or as chairmen of boards and corporations.
“There was a general feeling of disgust among the people and sympathy for the BJP when it accused the UPA government at the Centre of disbursing cash-for-votes to win the confidence motion in parliament recently, but what the party is doing in Karnataka is equally vulgar and blatant misuse of money power.”
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: If the decision of the Congress party to field former chief election commissioner Manohar Singh Gill as a candidate for the Rajya Sabha in 2004 was bad enough, the move to make him a member of the Manmohan Singh ministry in the last reshuffle was worse.
Not only had a body blow been struck on the notional independence of the Election Commission, by dangling carrots before its high officers, it had handed a blanket licence to the BJP to impudently follow suit for eternity: “After all, didn’t the Congress do so too…?”
However, Gill’s record as a sports buff provided some comfort. As a mountaineer, he had trained with Everest hero Tenzing Norgay. He was a reasonable cricketer. And, at least, he was not as dogmatic as his predecessor Mani Shankar Aiyar on matters of sport.
Yet, three incidents in the last ten days give three good reasons to ponder:
#Amit Varma reports that on the day Abhinav Bindra won India’s first individual gold medal in 117 years at the Olympics, India’s Cambridge-educated sports minister grandly said on NDTV: “I congratulate myself and every other Indian.”
Yes, myself and every other Indian.
# When “The Goldfinger” returned to Delhi, The Times of India reports that Gill, who chaperoned Bindra around in the capital, suggested that while he should call on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, it was not necessary to visit the leader of the opposition, L.K. Advani.
However, it is Gill’s latest boo-boo that takes the breath away.
# When Saina Nehwal, the women’s badminton quarter-finalist at the Beijing Olympics, paid a courtesy visit on the minister, Gill greeted the Hyderabad lass heartily. But the 72-year-old minister failed to recognise her coach who was alongside.
“Who are you?” Gill is reported to have asked the coach pointblank, leaving all those present dumbstruck and embarrassed.
The coach? Pullela Gopichand, one of only two Indians who have won the All-England Open championships.
Hopefully, when he bumps into Deepika Padukone during one of his many social engagements, Mr Gill won’t ask her father, “Who are you?”
“Who can ignore the fact that India’s growth rate was three per cent in the age of melody and is nine per cent in the age of sound?
“The pecking order of the senses has changed along with sensibilities. The ear has surrendered to the foot. You cannot really sing along with most modern Hindi film songs, but you can dance.
“Perhaps the most authentic indicator is the average life of a hit song. Popular music of the sixties and seventies still packs the shelves of shops, and even the fifties get a healthy look-in. Current hits are like floodtides. They swamp the market and then disappear. They are suddenly everywhere, and suddenly nowhere.”
Infallible Indian journalists have been spooked by a delightful Da Vinci Code style hoax played on them.
On Sunday, almost every newspaper reported the arrest of Johann Bach, an 88-year-old Nazi war criminal, in the jungles of Khanapur, close to Goa, on Saturday.
A classified advertisement inserted by the “Waffen SS” fugitive to sell an 18th century piano was supposed to have led Perus Narkp detectives to the “senior adjutant” who reportedly had a role in the “extermination” of 12,000 Jews at the Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp in East Berlin.
Bangalore based newspapers went to town with the news:
# “Hitler’s stormtrooper held in Karnataka,” headlined Deccan Herald.
# “World War II criminal arrested?” asked The Hindu
# “Antique piano ad leads police to Nazi colonel near Belgaum,” said the New Indian Express.
On Monday, the up-country papers went a step further.
# “Traced to Goa, Nazi war criminal tried to enter Karnataka, arrested on way and flown to Berlin,” said The Indian Express, Delhi
# “Goa piano ‘thief’ found to be Nazi war fugitive,” said The Telegraph, Calcutta, with a helpful graphic (above) of the flight of the Nazi criminal.
Wanted by Interpol, octagenarian Bach, it was reported, had escaped the Nuremberg trials and evaded justice for over half a century. On the German government’s “Most wanted list” since the end of WW II, he had spent time in Argentina, Bulgaria, Yemen and Canada.
Apparently, the Israeli media had reported his sighting in Calungute, Goa, though V.S. Acharya, Karnataka’s home minister, denied any knowledge. Hemant Nimbalkar, Belgaum superintendent of police, said he was unaware of the incident.
But the papers said Bach had been picked up by detectives of Perus Narkp who are part of the German chancellor’s “Core” team in collaboration with Indian intelligence.
Anil Budur Lulla of The Telegraph “exclusively” reported that “Berlin also had information from Tel Aviv that an old German had bragged about overseeing the genocide of Jews to an Israeli tourist couple in Goa during a rave party a few months ago.”
Deccan Herald quoted a press release issued by “Perus Narkp”. Times of India said the press note was circulated by email. DH had this telling line: “A brilliant musician like his illustrious 18th Century namesake, this eccentric Bach later rose high in the Nazi SS hierarchy.”
The Telegraph, quoting “sources”, said that “after further investigations in Goa, proceedings would begin to take Bach to Germany, with whom India signed an extradition treaty in 2004.” Deccan Herald said he would “be facing trial at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.”
And on and on it went.
Well, it turns out, it was all a super prank, obviously played by someone with some taste in western classical music.
churumuri bravely deduces that it was played/devised by someone called Bhawana Shakti Sharma or by someone who knows someone called Bhawana Shakti Sharma, because it is an anagram of “Marsha Tikashi Whanaab”. “Bach” is obviously a bastardisation of Johann Sebastian Bach, with the piano thrown in for good measure. “Perus Narkp” is an anagram of “Super Prank“.
Considering that the story has Goa as its epicentre, churumuri also sticks its neck out to declare that the “super prank” was played by a Goan/ Goans who have had their axe for their local media for some time now. Indeed, one Goan blog says “The Truth Behind Perus Narkp” will be revealed tomorrow with the teasing tagline: “One of the most telling stories on the Goan as well as Indian media.”
Why the prank was played, is a long story.
Maybe to show how gullible journalists have become in this age of instant news and even more instant analysis. Maybe to show how little research and background checking goes into modern-day reporting populated by greenhorns barely out of their teens. Maybe to show what a bunch of cultural ignoramuses we are, with scarcely any knowledge of music, Indian or western.
Or maybe to show how smart the prankster is.
Whatever the reason, it’s a lovely prank for which all of us fell. We have been had. Lie back and enjoy—and spare a thought for those stung by us.
A. NARAYANA writes from London: Enough and more has been said about the media’s overzealousness in the Padmapriya Bhat case. Maybe for the right reasons.
More than the overreach what also stood exposed was the regressive thinking—and the immaturity of men and women in the media—in their understanding of human lives and relationships.
In some cases, it was not just the media’s drive to sell more copies or clock up more TRPs which seemed to have prompted them to put out what they did.
In question is their very motive.
Consider these:
# “He has got an MA in sociology but what has he chosen to do?” questioned a headline in the Manipal edition of Udayavani, referring to Atul Rao, the aide of Udupi MLA Raghupati Bhat, even when no one knew the facts behind his role in her death.
And Udayavani wrote as if it was an established case of ‘Kidnap’ even after home minister V.S. Acharya’s own admission that it was a ‘half-kidnap’ case. He is yet to clarify what that ‘half’ really is. What was Udayavani’s source or motive in pronouncing prematurely that it was a case of kidnap?
# A Kannada Prabha report summarily suggested that it was a murder. On what basis?
#Vijaya Karnataka’s reporter questioned Padmapriya’s decision to discard “a life in which she had wealth and prestige”. “Idella bekitte (was all this required?)” he asks. How did the reporter know that the woman was happy in her marriage?
# The Hindu, of all the newspapers, found it fit to publish every word that Padmapriya’s mother uttered while grieving in front of her young daughter’s body, that too with the wrong translation from Tulu. These are the words every bereaved parent in such a situation would utter. Should they be published verbatim? Et tu, Hindu?
#Deccan Herald and Praja Vani are sister publications produced in the same building but while the English paper said Atul was an engineering diploma holder who resigned from his government job and did civil contracts, the Kannada paper report said Atul did his MA, continued in his government job and did contracts in his wife’s name. (However, it is also a fact the best matter-of-fact reports were filed by the Delhi bureau of these two newspapers.)
# All Kannada newspapers in their esteemed judgment started addressing Atul in the singular from day one while the police still maintained that he was only a witness and not an accused.
There are many more things that could be said about the media coverage of Padmapriya, its ethics, its calibre and its self-righteousness. But, more importantly, there is something to be said about the role of the State.
From the statements of the police and the home minister, it becomes amply clear that they came to know from the second day, if not the first day itself, that it was a case of strained personal relationships and Padmapriya chose to go to Delhi on her on volition.
If this was the case (and there is nothing on record to suggest otherwise so far), the State had absolutely no role to play except making it clear to the public what it came to know.
Going by the facts of the case known as of today, it is also a case of the State exceeding its limits to save an MLA of the ruling party from what would have been considered in our society a loss of face for him.
(A. Narayana is a scholar at the Institute of Development Studies, UK)
1)Padmapriya Bhat, the wife of Udupi BJP MLA Raghupati Bhat, went missing on June 10 (June 11 according to some other reports). Why did it take three days for Bhat to report her disappearance? From the video above, it appears he told the police she was missing only when they contacted him about the abandoned car. Did he already know where she had gone, and why?
2) The distance from Udupi to Mulki is 32 km. The car was found 12 km from her parents’ place. Even if her husband or her family did not notice her disappearance, how come the abandoned car was not noticed, or reported to the police for three days? How come Bhat’s children were staying with his parents in Udupi?
3) Padmapriya’s mother’s house was just 32 km away from Udupi. She had a car and she knew how to drive. Why would she take Bhat’s permission to go there for a pooja, as Bhat claims?
4) Bhat claims the land line of his in-laws was dead, which is why he couldn’t reach them even when Padmapriya was not answering her mobile phone. Was the dead landline reported to the telephone authorities? If so, when?
5) On what basis did home minister V.S. Acharya claim in a newspaper interview it was a “half-kidnap”? And what exactly is a “half-kidnap”?
6) If there was a compelling reason for Padmapriya to take her life so suddenly, why would she do it in faraway Delhi, and in an apartment she had rented just three days ago, so far away from her parents and her children? Why would she not do it in Udupi or someplace close?
7) If Padmapriya wanted to flee to Delhi to stay away from her husband or to start a new life, why would she have left the cash she was carrying (estimates range from Rs 8,000 to Rs 70,000) and jewellery in the abandoned car?
8) Having moved to Delhi, was she shamed or scared into taking her life after her whereabouts had been detected by the police and the reasons were being speculated upon by television channels? Who is the “Sunil” to whom she made her last telephone call, according to television reports?
9) If Raghupati Bhat and Padmapriya had a strained relationship and were on the verge of divorce, how come neither her father nor her brothers seemed to catch any whiff of it, especially when news reports suggest that a divorce was in the offing for quite some time?
10) If Bhat and PP had a strained relationship, as is being alleged, and were only carrying on the charade of living together so as not to hamper Bhat’s electoral chances, just what changed after his victory that made it impossible for the couple to separate amicably?
11) Unnamed police officials claimed on June 14 that PP was in a resort in Malur (Kolar) and that she would be brought to Udupi on June 15. Home minister V.S. Acharya was “all right she was alive and she would be re-united with her family in matter of hours”. Was she really in Malur or was it a red herring thrown by the police to keep the media off the tracks and to buy time without indicating to Padmapriya that they knew where she was? How come Malur police did not know PP was in their jurisdiction while Mangalore police did?
12) Home minister Acharya claims that “Our police had established that she was in Delhi three days ago“. If true, did the Karnataka government make any effort to keep a watch on her movements for three days? Acharya says Karnataka police was in Delhi by 10.30 am. Why did it take them four hours to get in?
13) Did Padmapriya return to Bangalore from Delhi with Raghupati Bhat’s close aide Atul Kumar on June 12, and was she taken back to Delhi from Malur on Saturday evening or Sunday morning after the home minister’s statement?
14) On what basis does home minister Acharya, a trained medical doctor, claim that Padmapriya was suffering from “temporary depression”? Did he speak with her after she went missing and before she killed herself? Did trained psychologists try to engage her and get her out of her “temporary depression”?
16)Who is Prem in whose name a Maruti Wagon R car (DL 8, CD 6949) had been bought from Manjit Motors in Delhi on June 12, just a day after she had reached Delhi? If Padmapriya went missing on June 10/11, can a car be booked, bought, delivered and registered in just 24 hours? Or was it booked much earlier?
17) TV9 reports, quoting security records, that Atul Kumar, the close aide of Raghupati Bhat, had visited the Delhi apartment earlier in the month. So was her decision to flee Udupi and stay in Delhi planned in advance? Had she gone missing earlier than is being claimed?
18) If Padmapriya had intended to settle down in Delhi for good, as evidenced by the renting of a three-bedroom, fully-furnished apartment and the purchase of a new car, why would she suddenly decide to kill herself? Who paid the advance deposit for the apartment?
19)B.S. Yediyurappa, M.P. Renukacharya, and now Raghupati Bhat. Why are so many BJP leaders increasingly finding it so difficult to handle their personal lives? Or are Congress leaders more adept at hiding their warts because of “60 years of experience”?
20) And this bonus question: in 21st century India, is a strained marriage such a terrible thing and the possibility of divorce such an anathema for a politician that death is the only way out?
With crude oil prices scraping the bottom of stratosphere, the Manmohan Singh government has finally increased petrol prices by Rs 5 a litre and diesel by Rs 3, and a cylinder of cooking gas by Rs 50, so that the oil companies do not go under.
Bhamy V. Shenoy, who has for long been asking why discussing oil prices or corruption in oil sector is not as glamorous a subject as IT and BT, argued in Deccan Heraldlast week this was the correct course to take even at the risk of inflation and a political backlash.
Petroleum product prices, he says, have been frozen at the level of $70 a barrel while international oil prices have climbed to $135 per barrel.
“Actually by not allowing the oil price increase to flow through to the final consumers of petrol, diesel and LPG, the government is helping mostly those who could easily afford. The revenues which government has lost by this misguided policy could have been used to support the poor by subsidising the galloping price of food items and for many other welfare projects.
“At crude oil price of $120 per barrel, the government will lose as much as Rs 193,000 crore per year. I have intentionally used a lower oil price to reflect the possibility of prices coming down. Kerosene and LPG subsidies account for Rs 55,000 crores which is almost equal to the loan write off to farmers in this year’s budget.
“Unfortunately while PDS kerosene is diverted to blend with petrol and diesel, LPG subsidies help mostly those who could afford to pay higher prices. In addition, residential LPG is diverted to commercial and auto sector where prices are considerably higher. This results in black money generation to the tune of Rs 13,450 crores.
“It is true that if diesel prices were allowed to increase with international oil prices, it would have increased prices in general. But the impact of such a price increase on economy is considerably lower than the loss of Rs 1,10,000 crore to the government.
“In the short term consumers may welcome such a price relief. We should not forget that there is never a free lunch. Some one has to pay for higher import cost of oil directly or indirectly. In the medium term because of increased deficit financing it will affect every one. But as is well known, the poor will lose more than the rich and the middle class. Thus the very class that the government claims to help will end up losing the most.”
