Arthshastra

The Indian middle class is famously apathetic to politics. If poll numbers are any indication, we Indians treat Election Day as just another holiday. If the popularity of Wynand papers (reference, Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead) like the Times of India is any indication then we are more interested in Karishma Kapur than politicians that affect our lives the most.

It seems to me that the popularity of blogs might change it all. While a majority of blogs out there don’t contribute anything original and merely serve to link to articles published in mainstream media there are still a lot of blogs that not only point to news items in mainstream media but also provide incisive commentary. And hey – even the blogs that just link to other blogs or news articles serve an invaluable purpose. Not only does it mean that the writers of those blogs are reading more and are more aware of what’s going around them but also that they are talking and writing about it.

I’ve always thought that the Achilles heal of Indian politics has been that the highly educated have always felt that politics as a profession is below them. As a result – right from the college level politics is dominated by people who’re least interested in sitting in classrooms. They are, with some exceptions, the hooligans who’d rather create a ruckus outside the classroom instead of sweating it out in studies or sports or anything worthwhile. The irony of course is that those are the guys who end up in politics and draught laws that affect us all.

Hopefully, with more and more of us gaining interest in what’s happening around us through blogs – this will change and politics will not be left to professional politicians alone.

Doonesbury - in its own unique stype mocks the self importance of bloggers (click on the image to expand).

This one is from the archives of Outlook published in January 2005 but only recently caught my eye. In Congress – all the glory belongs to the Nehru Gandhi clan and very rarely does a non-clan leader gets its due.

Narsimha Rao was the modern day Bhagirath who brought economic reforms to India by giving unflinching political support to his finance minister but he very rarely gets any praise or thanks from the middle class that he helped spawn. This article tries to set the record straight.

Jay Leno reading from a news item:
“A group of Muslim scholars today denounced any form of terrorism.”

Jay Leno reacting to the article
“Thank you folks for nipping it in bud. Thank you for doing something before things could have gotten out of hand and something bad could have happened.”

I finished reading the book “1776” a couple of days ago and it has filled me with a new found sense of awe for the American founding fathers. I’ve been in the US for five years now, and I’ve observed that the Americans treat their founding fathers, especially George Washington with tremendous awe and respect – something that I’ve not seen in India. In fact, some people in India adopt cavalier attitude towards even M.K. Gandhi – one of the greatest Indians ever born on Indian soil.

In any case, After reading this book, I realize that their reverence is totally deserving. From the time the revolutionary war started sometime in 1775 until the December of 1776 – the Americans faced defeat and retreat almost non-stop and yet George Washington, in the face of all the adversity and might of the enemy never thinks of giving up. Yes – he is frustrated and angry at times but he almost never lets the emotions take over his judgment.

It is an astonishing story of a ragtag army of farmers, traders and the like defeating the mightiest empire in the world. What particularly strikes me is the fact that how many times Mother Nature and plain luck seems to have helped the Americans. It happens so many times that one cannot simply shrug it away and attribute it to coincidence. Americans call it Providence with a capital “P”. You can also say that fortune favors the brave. If you believe in God though you might be tempted to say that it seems that God almost willed for the creation of the United States and guided her to victory.