A Familiar Story

Disparities between cities and villages are widening. Village land is under the chokehold of government officials, who behave like petty landlords. Agricultural land is being taken away for development projects with no compensation to farmers, because farmers do not have any real rights over their land. The excuse given for denying farmers rights over their land is that if they can freely own and sell their land, the current shortage of arable land will worsen. But in practice, farm land is being given away anyway, so the restriction only means that farmers don’t get anything from the development.

We are of course talking about China.  While agents of China seek to bring about a Maoist revolution and collective farming in India, Chinese peasants are asking for their land to be privatized.

Left Unsaid

“Our agenda is the nuclear deal and not the stability of the government or an early or late election. We are opposed to the deal because we think it is not in the interest of the country,” CPI-M politburo member Sitaram Yechury told media persons in New Delhi. (Rediff)

Mr. Yechury did not clarify which country he was referring to.

The March of Pragati

I forgot to tell my readers that the March 2008 edition of Pragati is out. It contains many excellent articles, including one by Karthik Shashidhar on how Futures contracts benefit farmers. There is also a review by me of Kishore Biyani’s book – It happened in India, which I am sure is pretty horrible. I couldn’t concentrate on it because I was running a cough and cold (and other things to distract me)  and I pretty much wrote it up over 2 hours. I can’t bear to go back and read it now.

Indian IT Clients Are Victims of the Bangalore Bug

Why do Indian websites suck so badly compared to American websites? Not just websites – it is rare to find a software targeted at Indian users that do not suck.
When a country is famous for its exports of “X”, you’d expect that the place to visit to pick up the best and cheapest samples of X is that country. Unfortunately, whether or not you are right in your expectation depends on the nature of X. If X is an agricultural commodity, you may be wrong, because the best examples of X might get exported, leaving behind export-reject stuff. If  X is a manufactured product, you’d probably be right, because there is generally less variation in manufactured products than in products from the farm. Any improvement in quality can be quicky applied across the board, resulting in benefits for all users, including domestic ones.

IT is of course a service. Services vary quite a bit in quality. In this regard, it is more like an agricultural commodity than like a manufactured product. It is interesting to dig a bit into why IT products targeted at India turn out to be of poor quality.

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In Defence of Gandhigiri

Nitin Pai quotes Dr. Ambedkar  to rebut Raj Thackeray’s argument that there is nothing wrong with breaking the law while running political movements.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with Nitin, and also with Dr. Ambedkar.  Indira Gandhi tried to use the same argument against Jayaprakash Narayan during the emergency. She claimed that because India had adopted a legitimate and democratic constitution, there was no longer space or need for civil disobedience, the satyagraha or any of the various instruments that got us our independence. Narayan disagreed, and which is more, he had Gandhiji on his side. Gandhiji himself had stated that satyagraha was a weapon against oppressive governments everywhere, not just against foreign ones.

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Ayyo!

A TV commercial for a life insurance company currently on the airwaves is an example of how a skewed conception of gender roles endures even when we are supposedly becoming a more modern and liberal society.

The commercial in question has been around for a bit but no one seemed to take offence. Until the education secretary of the Delhi government, Rina Ray, took it upon herself to point out that it was objectionable. She has lodged a complaint with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the Delhi Commission for Women and insists that the commercial be withdrawn and an apology issued by the company.

The objectionable commercial features a father saving up to fund his daughter’s education and ends with the tag line: Hai toh pyaari lekin bojh hai bhaari (though she’s loveable, she’s a burden). It spells out the mindset prevalent in this country: a girl, or woman, is a liability. One that changes hands, from one set of guardians, to another. Any investment made in the girl’s well-being, therefore, is often with an eye on making her more eligible in the marriage market. This might sound crude, but reality is often not palatable. This is not to suggest that there are no exceptions but they are too few in a nation of India’s size.  (Times of India)

I think that Hindi speakers ought to protest against the gross distortion of their language by this officious Bengali. In the first place, the jingle says: Khushiyan to hai pyaari, magar thodi bhaari hai.  The “bhaari” term refers, quite clearly, to the happiness and not to the girl. Second, the ad referred to is one in a series. In a different version of the ad, a man who is getting married finds the earth giving way below him when he thinks of the expenses involved. In another, a man is handed his baby (of unspecified gender) by the nurse, and goes through the same experience. In all versions, the same jingle plays.

If we had ads like the ones we used to have ten years back, the man would have been worrying about his daughter’s marriage and his son’s education, and the wedding ad would have had the bride’s father worrying about the wedding expenses. Quite clearly, our ads have progressed quite a bit now. But there is no pleasing some people.

Arresting Raj Thackeray

I have not been able to make up my mind on whether we should have laws against the kind of things Raj Thackeray says. Quite clearly, conspiring to commit violence should be punished. If I were to pick up a phone and ask a hitman to kill someone, I cannot claim free speech protection. I don’t see how anyone can claim free speech protection if he asked a crowd of people to do the same. The problem is that when people “incite violence” they do not use very precise words. A judge has to consider hidden meanings and effects of those words on “reasonable people”, and a person who listens to Raj Thackeray and then goes out to beat up North Indians is, by definition, unreasonable.

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