Defeat is the distance between a bedtime story and a wake-up call. The former starts with ‘Once upon a time...’ and lulls the voter to sleep. The second is an energiser that addresses a fresh dawn.
Three political parties have become victims of their own success: their narrative has run its course, and they have not been able to find a further chapter to their saga
Three political parties have become victims of their own success: their narrative has run its course, and they have not been able to find a further chapter to their saga
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The BJP story is the simplest: the fairies have abandoned its fairy tale. It began as the party of refugees from Pakistan. The robust economic and social resettlement of the dispossessed, evident by the 70s, paradoxically, liberated them from the party which helped them. After the high-drama blip of the Emergency and Janata Party phase, the BJP reinvented itself as a champion of a psychological rather than an economic need.
The temple movement brought great rewards, culminating, albeit through a parabola enhanced by the charisma of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in six years of power at the Centre. But within this time, the Indian mood turned. Economic aspirations took primacy over psychological needs, particularly since the temple movement was made irrelevant by the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. A functioning temple has come up on the site, a fact that seems to escape the attention of those writing the BJP manifesto, which keeps promising to build a temple.
Every political party has colluded in this change; even though self-proclaimed secular parties encourage Muslims to indulge in the self-delusion that a dispute exists. In truth, all that the BJP can offer is to build a bigger temple, which does not quite have the same emotive force as ‘Mandir yahin banayenge!’ The BJP’s cousins, the Senas of Maharashtra, have regional chauvinism to fall back upon. If the BJP wants to reclaim national space, it will have to establish another horizon.
When socialism became passe, Mulayam Singh Yadav resurrected himself brilliantly as the anti-thesis of the BJP, blending it with a distinctive element of Lohia socialism, empowerment of the backward castes. However, when the thesis is faltering, the anti-thesis cannot be robust. That is the Samajwadi Party’s problem vis-a-vis the Muslim vote. As for the Backwards: Mandal has been milked dry. Mandal has delivered for those whose prayers were answered in 1990. A new generation of Backwards needs solutions for the 21st century.
The last time the Left had anything original to say was more than three decades ago; and it had remarkable staying power in Bengal. But Bengali Muslims, critical to any democratic algebra, are now tired of the Left’s soft secularism, a formula in which their lives were secure from communal violence but their livelihood was left to the wolves. The subalterns of Bengal, across the religious divide, have adopted an interesting strategy: they have become, to a great extent, a non-partisan opposition. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is merely expanding its elasticity to contain voter anger to the extent it can.
There are no internal structures, nor is there any serious thinking being done by Mamata on how to fashion an alternative delivery system when she assumes power in the state. It is now a question of when the Left will be driven out, not whether. But in the current turmoil also lies an opportunity for 2016, if there is anyone left with the imagination to think ahead.
Mayawati survives in Uttar Pradesh, despite setbacks, because she is still waking up her support base. The Dalit deliverance is far from over; and her cross-ethnic alliances are still in infancy. Mayawati was out of her depth at the national level because she could not promise stability. In regional waters, she is still an Olympian. Her personality may be her biggest obstacle, but her agenda is intact.
The key to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s future will lie in his ability to unlock the next dimension of Muslim demands, and spearhead it. There is a transparent anger, leavened by confusion, among Muslims which is provoking a drift to the most familiar port, the Congress. But the Congress has nothing new to offer.
What the Muslims of UP are looking for, but have been unable to articulate, is a defined political space within which they can find food-and-faith security. Given the passions that such a demand could arouse, this quest might surface obliquely rather than directly. On the table is Ajit Singh’s dream of a Harit Desh in western UP. Such a state will have a substantive Muslim population, as well as a string of important Muslim educational institutions, from Aligarh to Deoband. It will become a natural socio-economic magnet for Muslims of the north. The idea is still in an embryonic stage. Whoever articulates it, will have rung a wake-up call.
Remember when you first learned that the "honey badger don't care"? Us, too. It, shamefully, was not that long ago. But we were so taken by the entire Randall's Wild Wild World Of Animals series that we couldn't resist reaching out to Randall himself, and asking if would create some videos for us explaining other natural phenomena.
And he answered with vigor! So we are delighted to present to you Randall's animal of the day: the wily and elusive pig of Wall Street.
WATCH:
WATCH:
In politics doing a “brave” things is either doing something stupid or suicidal. Anyway it is done and UMNO can truthfully claim that it was that Soil Leak Chinese guy who did it not UMNO. MCA not UMNO. Anybody but UMNO!
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There was once was a fellow named Newt Who gave his first two wives the boot He spoke for the House While he lied to his spouse Seems he just couldn't keep on his suit
Claimed "this country" has caused him to stray (Though his sweetheart was not Fannie Mae) 'Twas his love for our nation!! (Newt, try masturbation) Boehner's thrilled that at least he's not gay
No Georgian would call him a peach (Pair of marital contracts in breach) Against Clinton he railed Contempt blatant, not veiled He don't practice what he likes to preach
To the White House he'd like to ascend Crude behavior he'll have to amend He caused a kerfuffle He's got to reshuffle Has affairs to which he must attend
His committee will start to explore (Were he female, they'd call him a whore) He sure likes to play And now he will pray For a taste of the sweet days of yore
"I worked far too hard!!" he has said Guess his job was to use his (small) head His wife suffered from cancer Divorce was his answer With his mistress he frolicked in bed
But said mistress (soon wife number two) Was just one in a very long queue Good ol' boy didn't stay Yet again went astray As he slipped out, he bid her "Adieu!"
Deftly moved on to wife number three (Over two decades younger than he) Begged God to forgive Let's live and let live! Making proud the gang down on Street "C"
So what, finally, are we to do (Betcha Bill Maher just might have a clue) With a guy who's a pig Wants the President's gig And gets hot for the Red, White, and Blue!
Glenn Beck did an epic retelling of the story of the Three Little Pigs on his Wednesday television show, complete with up-to-date references and Beck-approved lessons.
Beck began by donning a Mister Rogers-style cardigan and sneakers, and pointing out that the original story is rather harsher than the Disney version from 1933. As Beck saw it, the message of the original story was to tell people to "toughen up" and prepare to face the evils of the world. He noted that the first two pigs actually get eaten by the wolf instead of running away to their third brother. That message, he said, has been diluted by progressives.
"We've been lulled to sleep," Beck said. "We're being fattened up in the progressive witches' cottage, simmering over a hearty fire."
He added some flourishes that seemed slightly autobiographical to his telling of the story, though, such as the new detail that the two lazier pigs called the third one a "conspiracy theorist" and "crazy" for building a house of bricks. There were also all-new characters, like Nancy Pelosi, the Goat Woman who told the lazy pigs to stay lazy and focus on their art, and AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka.
"He's actually an ass in my story," Beck said of Trumka. "In fact, I think he's an ass in every story."
Beck then turned to a contemporary reworking of the story, which, he said, changes things so that nobody gets eaten and the pigs work out their issues with the wolf by communicating with him. He added that this story was being used in schools and said this was the reason he home-schooled his own children.
WATCH:
Our Indian response to a scandalous mess is neat and categorised. Cash and sex are the north and south pole of mass interest, each with a sprawling magnetic field. We divide the hemispheres with the equator of logic. Cash and corruption are the preserve of politics. Sex is the province of glamour. We refuse to recognise any cross-over evidence.
No one wants to know how much black money floats in cinema, although the float might be a flood from dubious sources. Film publications are apathetic to finance. Their cover stories are devoted to who is sleeping with whom, or, more likely, pretending to sleep with whom. Lead stars are sometimes required to manufacture an affair as part of a film’s pre-launch publicity even when it is obvious, from body language, that the hero and heroine are heartily sick of each other.
Equally, mainline media shrugs off a politician’s private life. This is in sharp contrast to the Anglo-American press and public, who hold a public figure to standards of probity they do not apply to themselves. It seems odd that societies so liberated on Friday nights should turn so puritan over politicians’ weekends, but there it is. The French are more honest. They vote for lunch hour frisson.
No journalist worth his or her laptop, therefore, would waste a moment on the private life of Madhu Koda, the 38-year-old Jharkhand politician who worked in a mine in the early ’90s but is apparently purchasing Liberian mines today. If CBI leaks are to be believed, then young Koda has enough left over to lubricate the silent wheels of hawala and make a bid for a Rs 4,000 crore SEZ. Think. If this is what Koda can do at 38, what might he have achieved by 76, which is within the age band of our PMs. Think again. If this is the loot from a small state, what could another Koda earn from Maharashtra, Andhra or Karnataka? The BJP government in Bangalore is not coming apart because of a deep and riveting ideological debate on Hindutva. It’s the money, honey. If the figures seem insane, just remember that greed spits at limits.
A relevant measure of Indian democracy is the shift in the scale of scandal. V K Krishna Menon was pilloried because he arranged some 50-odd jeeps for the Congress in the first general election in 1952. At the end of the decade, Feroze Gandhi, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s husband, commandeered the headlines by exposing a couple of businessmen. Their names are unimportant now. Suffice to say that it was all very secular: one was a Hindu and the other a Muslim. The sums involved were a piffle. No inflation-escalation calculation is going to bring them to Liberian levels.
The connivance of major parties in the Koda scam is the icing on the story. They all helped his upward mobility in one form or the other, with Congress support for his chief ministership being a stunning example of cynicism. Local journalists had reported much of this while he was in power. No one bothered.
The news from the south pole is actually far better. The filmstar scandals of the ’50s were often tainted by the communal acrimony of the post-Partition decade. A film paper like ‘Mother India’ used to go apoplectic when Nargis and Raj Kapoor practised in real life what they preached on-screen. Today, Raj Kapoor’s granddaughter lives with a man born a Muslim and no Indian owl cares two hoots. Nor is box office affected. Indians have shed much of the compulsive bitterness in Hindu-Muslim relations.
The north pole, however, is in meltdown, the body politic ravaged by venality beyond the voter’s comprehension. What was a nick in Nehru’s time, needing a mere Band-Aid, has spread into an incurable cancer.
Patriotism, goes the proverb, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The first refuge of a man charged with swindling thousands of crores of public wealth is clearly a stomach-ache. The second refuge is high blood pressure. Between the two, you can always smuggle yourself out of the dreary confines of custody, with mere mosquitoes for company, to the more salubrious environment of a hospital, which is where Koda reached at a brisk pace. The stomach-ache is key to this life-enhancing, if not quite life-saving, switch. High blood pressure, regretfully, can be measured and lowered. A stomach can always ache at will, swerving away from the locational probes of a doctor, particularly in a well-nourished stomach.
No one wants to know how much black money floats in cinema, although the float might be a flood from dubious sources. Film publications are apathetic to finance. Their cover stories are devoted to who is sleeping with whom, or, more likely, pretending to sleep with whom. Lead stars are sometimes required to manufacture an affair as part of a film’s pre-launch publicity even when it is obvious, from body language, that the hero and heroine are heartily sick of each other.
Equally, mainline media shrugs off a politician’s private life. This is in sharp contrast to the Anglo-American press and public, who hold a public figure to standards of probity they do not apply to themselves. It seems odd that societies so liberated on Friday nights should turn so puritan over politicians’ weekends, but there it is. The French are more honest. They vote for lunch hour frisson.
No journalist worth his or her laptop, therefore, would waste a moment on the private life of Madhu Koda, the 38-year-old Jharkhand politician who worked in a mine in the early ’90s but is apparently purchasing Liberian mines today. If CBI leaks are to be believed, then young Koda has enough left over to lubricate the silent wheels of hawala and make a bid for a Rs 4,000 crore SEZ. Think. If this is what Koda can do at 38, what might he have achieved by 76, which is within the age band of our PMs. Think again. If this is the loot from a small state, what could another Koda earn from Maharashtra, Andhra or Karnataka? The BJP government in Bangalore is not coming apart because of a deep and riveting ideological debate on Hindutva. It’s the money, honey. If the figures seem insane, just remember that greed spits at limits.
A relevant measure of Indian democracy is the shift in the scale of scandal. V K Krishna Menon was pilloried because he arranged some 50-odd jeeps for the Congress in the first general election in 1952. At the end of the decade, Feroze Gandhi, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s husband, commandeered the headlines by exposing a couple of businessmen. Their names are unimportant now. Suffice to say that it was all very secular: one was a Hindu and the other a Muslim. The sums involved were a piffle. No inflation-escalation calculation is going to bring them to Liberian levels.
The connivance of major parties in the Koda scam is the icing on the story. They all helped his upward mobility in one form or the other, with Congress support for his chief ministership being a stunning example of cynicism. Local journalists had reported much of this while he was in power. No one bothered.
The news from the south pole is actually far better. The filmstar scandals of the ’50s were often tainted by the communal acrimony of the post-Partition decade. A film paper like ‘Mother India’ used to go apoplectic when Nargis and Raj Kapoor practised in real life what they preached on-screen. Today, Raj Kapoor’s granddaughter lives with a man born a Muslim and no Indian owl cares two hoots. Nor is box office affected. Indians have shed much of the compulsive bitterness in Hindu-Muslim relations.
The north pole, however, is in meltdown, the body politic ravaged by venality beyond the voter’s comprehension. What was a nick in Nehru’s time, needing a mere Band-Aid, has spread into an incurable cancer.
Patriotism, goes the proverb, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The first refuge of a man charged with swindling thousands of crores of public wealth is clearly a stomach-ache. The second refuge is high blood pressure. Between the two, you can always smuggle yourself out of the dreary confines of custody, with mere mosquitoes for company, to the more salubrious environment of a hospital, which is where Koda reached at a brisk pace. The stomach-ache is key to this life-enhancing, if not quite life-saving, switch. High blood pressure, regretfully, can be measured and lowered. A stomach can always ache at will, swerving away from the locational probes of a doctor, particularly in a well-nourished stomach.
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In any case, time, and a generous bank balance, tends to soften the discomforts of incarceration. If the cash flow is supportive, a prison can even become a health ashram, with badminton thrown in as an optional extra. You never know: with diet control and regular morning walks that stomach might never need to ache again. It is not the health of a robust Koda that should be our concern, but that of a more fragile entity called democracy.
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Koda has a stomach-ache. Democracy has cancer.
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