Padma Award, not so difficult

No country can be as generous as India when it comes to recognizing individual effort and contribution to/in the field of medicine, arts, sports, trade, industry, literature, education, civil service, journalism, social service and public affairs. Ironically, the country is also known for letting down some of the top class players in these fields and boosting some misfits.

The prestigious Padma Awards bestow a mark of great respect and honor on the awardees and great recognition from Indian public. However, over the last few years, the list of Padma awardees has raised many an eyebrow, in anguish and more precisely, in rude shock.

I was surprised the last time when Vijendra Singh and Sushil Kumar, the Olympic medalists were left out and shocked when the Bachchan bahu and actor Akshay Kumar claimed the Padma Shri honor with equal ease. May be a Bronze medal at Olympics is just not as good a merit as getting married to the Bollywood Biggy’s son or acting in super flops like Singh is King, Welcome & Chandni Chowk to China.

This time too, the list is no less in providing quotients of surprise.

Rekha, for Padma Shri, this erstwhile damsel of the tinsel town, sure needs recognition, but a lifetime achievement award from Film Fare would be more than sufficient.
Saif Ali Khan gets Padma Shri, maybe for his true love towards Kareena. I need not write much about him as already the government is under grill from activists in Jodhpur for this decision. The act of hunting down a black buck, 10 years back is a case still under trial that Saif has as one of the credentials apart from acting in superb blockbusters like Dil Chahtha Hai, Omkara and Parineeta.

At last, Vijendra Singh has found a place in the list leaving behind an equally praiseworthy comrade, Sushil Kumar. Neither does Mallika Sarabhai in the list of Padma Bhushan awardees, nor does Zohra Sehgal in the list of Padma Vibhushan awardees sound a valid selection. Names like Sant Singh Chatwal in the list of Padma Bhushan awardees give a sense of repulsion.

Dr. Ramakant Madanmohan Panda of AIIMS has been awarded the Padma Bhushan for successfully operating upon our dear Prime Minister for 14 hours to complete a difficult bypass surgery. Yes, we respect the act. The doctor has saved OUR Prime Minister’s life. However, Padma awards are not granted to personal favorites or as personal token of thanksgiving. We will not forget how BJP government also granted Padma award to Vajpayee’s doctor from Breach Candy Hospital, so yes, why should Congress government not be equally magnanimous?

There will come a time when Kalam’s words will turn true, each one of us, we youngsters, can aspire to become a Padma Awardee, just dream BIG. Begin dreaming; no matter even if you are tainted. Befriend Hillary Clinton or some American bigwigs, act in at least two dozen movies an year, hit or flop does not matter, get married to an affluent/influential family that has ties with either SP/BSP or some big political party, win an Oscar or else you will have to wait long like Maestro Ilayaraja, if a doctor, then operate upon a big leader, remember to be very careful with his/her life. If the leader is alive post surgery, at least a Padma Bhushan is definitely guaranteed. As for sports, the reasons and the logic is still unclear, get into some controversies like Harbhajan did with Andrew Symonds, more seriously, get a gold Olympic medal and nothing less to affix your place in the list; most importantly, pray to have that stroke of luck which will get you on the list of padma awardees.

To conclude, if you are an engineer, hard luck, you have to toil to the top, become a CEO of your organization, then suddenly quit it all for politics and print unique identification cards with all fervor. So what if there is a driving license, a ration card, a voter's card, a PAN card, a unique ID is truly unique and tamper proof, you may win a PADMA award for this novel idea.

Lalbagh Flower Show

Jan 26, 2010 – we, as a nation, celebrated 60 years of Indian republic. The Lalbagh gardens that adorn Bangalore hosted a flower show; open to public from Jan 19 to Jan 27, 2010 with an entry fee of Rs 40 per adult.

The highlight of the flower show was the floral Qutub Minar set up in the glass house. The usually empty glass house was decorated with heaps of annual flowers, arranged to form small hillocks at the corners. Rows of orchids, periwinkle, celosia wool flower, cockscomb, zinnia, dahlia, daisies, annual chrysanthemum, verbena, phlox, heliotrope and larkspur flowers added color to the glass house interiors.

Standing tall, in the middle of the glass house, was the floral Qutub Minar, crafted carefully and packed tightly with roses of different colors. There were two gateways on either side of the Minar, made completely out of roses. The structure of a lady with a water pot in hand prepared out of roses, at the entrance to the glass house, welcomed visitors. Towards the exit, after the Minar, were some floral/horticultural arrangements depicting some important festivals of India like Christmas, Ramzan, Diwali, Holi, Dassera etc.

Plants and flowers were exhibited by BDA, BBMP and Yelahanka rail wheel factory; these plants were ranked in a competition and the toppers were displayed in the glass house. Overall, the flower show at Lalbagh turned out to be a sweet, visual treat to Bangalore! Thanks to the organizers for such a wonderful display and kudos to their efforts!

Eulogy

A speech or a writing in praise of the dead is very common in India, may be world over, not to forget the case of the king of pop, Michael Jackson.

Starting from home where according to Hindu rituals, a laudatory speech is read out by a priest on the 10th day after demise of a person, to the state or country in which we live, bouts of emotions are displayed on event of demise of a political leader, an actor or any person of considerable social prominence.

The person’s age or the cause of death being natural does not mitigate this display of  emotions. We all know how Bangalore came to a standstill for two days with widespread cases of looting and arson when actor Rajkumar died of ill health. This recurred with actor Vishnuvaradhan’s death when South Bangalore faced brief and sporadic violence by mobs.

Even borders of nations, the activities in which the person is actually engaged when alive does not deter one from singing poems of praise in the event of death, remember how Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi lauded the slain LTTE political leader SP Tamilselvan through carefully crafted poems that invited ire from the Indian government. May be the CM was clouded by personal grief, he forgot the quantum of terror unleashed by LTTE for decades in Sri Lanka.

Emotional speeches, visits of prominent leaders from across the border, impeccable state honor have all come to Jyoti Basu, the 95 year old CPM veteran, who succumbed to old age and deteriorating health, to a leader par excellence who managed to reign over West Bengal for 23 years, to a true colossus/legend/patriarch and many more names that the press has bestowed upon him posthumously.

However, an astoundingly different and a crisply true notion is expressed by the article below, published on Times of India, 20th Jan 2010 named “A place time forgot”, written by Ashok Malik
Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/A-Place-Time-Forgot/articleshow/5477570.cms

A Place Time Forgot

Only a hard heart would not have been moved by the idea of a proud, imperious man on a hospital bed, valiantly fighting all that nature threw at him. Jyoti Basu was chief minister of West Bengal for 23 years. In 1996, he almost made it to 7 Racecourse Road. In the eyes of his devotees, he remains the finest prime minister India never had.

In the past few weeks, these devotees were very visible. Some wrote maudlin articles. Others, such as H D Deve Gowda - who got the job Basu's party forced him to turn down in 1996 - made the pilgrimage to Kolkata. Ironically, the most fervent praise came from outsiders. Those who experienced Basu's Bengal, as opposed to those who idealised it from afar, would prefer a more cold-blooded assessment.

Many of these people don't live in Kolkata, or West Bengal, anymore. A contraction of opportunities, educational and economic, and a closing of the Bengali mind have long forced them to relocate. From Bangalore to Boston, about every buzzing city has its share of refugees from Bengal. Perhaps posterity will call them "Basu's children", a once-great state's lost generation(s).

West Bengal is not a location of contemporary relevance; it is the place time forgot. Kolkata is a museum piece; somebody cruel once called it "the world's largest old people's home". You go there if you're a heritage tourist, a nostalgia junkie or have a particularly beloved patriarch to visit one final time. As Basu's health deteriorated, this harsh verity made itself apparent. In his twilight hours, he began to resemble his terrifying legacy.

Sympathetic fellow travellers tend to dismiss criticism of Basu as limited to a small Kolkata elite he disempowered. He is worshipped by millions in Bengal's rural heartland, they argue. How true is this?

Certainly, the worst of the CPM's 'cadre-cracy' was reserved for the city. In the 1970s and 1980s, the world gradually began to turn. The Asian tigers began to embrace technology and trade and move out of misery. They gave a slumbering continent a new economic model. This was precisely the time Basu chose to finally bury the Bengal renaissance. Business was hounded out, computers were resisted. English was abolished in government primary schools, depriving young Bengalis of a massive comparative advantage.

What was the result? As an early industrial state, West Bengal should have led the march into post-industrialisation. With its educational institutions and its middle class, it should have been a services sector natural. The first IT companies and the IT-enabled services boom should have started in Kolkata. Basu didn't allow this. History will never forgive him.

The point is Basu should have known better. Even before he became chief minister in 1977, he was a well-travelled man. He knew the global currents. He understood the implications of driving out technology and English, all in the name of anti-elitism. In contrast, his successor had a provincial background. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way, lessons that came easily to Basu. Yet, to be fair to Bhattacharjee, he tried. Basu didn't bother.

How successful was Basu in village Bengal? The state has 18 districts; 14 of these are among India's 100 poorest. Inequality - the gap between supposedly pampered Kolkata and the hungry hinterland - was the Left's war cry. As economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari emphasised in their paper 'A Story of Falling Behind'(2009), "Uttar Dinajpur, which is West Bengal's poorest district, has a per capita SDP that is only 33.6 per cent that of Kolkata [the richest district]. For all its talk about equity and removal of inequalities, the West Bengal government hasn't been able to improve the lot of the people in the worst-off and backward districts."

Basu's biggest failing was lack of conviction. He mocked those he opposed as well as those he led. In the late 1960s, the CPM entered government in alliance with Congress rebels. Basu was deputy chief minister and in-house saboteur. Almost every day, his party would lampoon the governor, Dharma Vira, as a reactionary agent of Delhi. Almost every evening, after the slogans were done, Basu would reportedly turn up at Raj Bhavan for a drink with Dharma Vira and their common friend Ranjit Gupta, former chief secretary and the brother of CPI leader Indrajit Gupta. Was this a careful separation of the personal from the political - or was it plain hypocrisy? How would you describe Basu's visits every summer to London, ostensibly to "seek investment", visits so important that he often missed August 15 in India?

The most illuminating story comes from the day of the funeral of Pramod Dasgupta, CPM strongman, in 1982. According to an eyewitness account, immediately afterwards a tired Basu went to a certain relative's house and, there, he sat down with a book: George Mikes' How to be an Alien. Considering how he looked at Bengal, and what he had reduced it to, that's rather telling.

Five Years ....

Only few days away from the year 2010, here comes a new post on my blog, ushering a new beginning. A new year is waiting to unfold just as rapidly as the year 2009 passed. Come Jan 2010, I complete 5 years of stay in Bangalore, more fondly known as Bengaluru. The city has so far offered me fond memories, multiple things to like, few things to hate as well.

I landed here on a cold morning in Jan 2005 to work as an intern at LSI Logic India Pvt. Ltd. Practically awake throughout the overnight train journey, waiting for Bangalore Cantonment; I left Chennai to get into bustling life of a working woman. Many of my friends from BITS, Pilani worked in Bangalore and a big group was involved in internship (part of our curriculum) too at Bangalore. Within a few days of my stay at Bangalore, I got it all, Cauvery emporium, Brigade Road, Corner House DBC, Sweet Chariot, MTR, Airport Road and Majestic.

Five years have passed, I continue to explore this city, its wide tree lined avenues, narrow streets filled with shops, its many parks and lakes, a city with a persistent charm, superb weather and a calm demeanor that has embraced me for 5 years, provided me work, shelter, food and fun.

Thinking back, I am urged to jot down five things I like about Bangalore. There are many more, but I am going to make an attempt to keep the TOP5 in the list below as a mark of completing 5 years in the city. Here they are –

1) Inner Ring Road – Might seem an absurd choice for the traffic that sprawls on it in the core hours, but I used to travel on it daily in Jan 2005 from Jeevan Bima Nagar to Bannerghatta Road to reach LSI office. Winding like a formula one track, seamless and of course slippery, with sight of airplanes flying so low, you could almost touch it, this road is a lovely artery. I have met with an accident on this road, so that leaves an element of awe mixed with fear in my head but I still give it the top spot. Inner ring road is first thing I liked in Bangalore.

2) Food – I can bet conveniently, there is no state in South India that offers such varied, tasty, yummy vegetarian delicacies as Karnataka does and in particular, Bangalore. Thanks to the city, I have gained many kilos compared to my college days. Be it the chocolate mousse cake of Sweet Chariot, the many juice junctions offering Butter Fruit shake (I hadn’t seen the fruit until I came to Bangalore), the many Sagar restaurants with busy people standing and gobbling Hot Idli Vada with sweetish, red sambar, be it a sumptuous MTR meal, Akki roti and Ragi roti of Halli Mane, Malleshwaram; Coffee at Brindavan, MG Road; Mangalore Buns and many other delicacies at Halli Thindi opposite Bull temple, ghee laden Masala Dosa at Vidyarthi Bhavan ... the list goes on, Bangalore is truly a foodie's paradise. I still cannot forget my first day at Shanti Sagar, Koramangala, when the server asked me – “Sambar aa Separate aa” and I blinked. Food at Bangalore is awesome, great quality and taste in highly affordable price.

3) Weather – Many times, I have thought along these lines – “Ohh, this dress, I wore it twice last week, guess can wear it once more before washing”. Never so hot, never sweaty, pleasant all the time, the city has high quotients of serenity attached to it. I pray, we all work to preserve this precious aspect of the city, for being a Chennai resident, I know how difficult it is when one experiences only hot, hotter, hottest seasons through the year. A long time Chennai resident may perhaps not know how to spell WINTER. Guess I got it right due to my stay @Bangalore. :)

4) Parks, lakes – Every area has many well-maintained parks, thanks to BBMP. I am trying to shed those extra kilos I gained by running in these parks. Beautiful lakes are strewn across the city – I have visited the Hessarghatta Lake, Agara Lake, Hebbal Lake, Ulsoor Lake and Madiwala Lake. I know that the number of lakes is fast diminishing due to ongoing spree of construction activities. Ironically, my office building is atop a lake. This is an open plea, please do not claim land from lakes/fill lakes to create construction plots. To worsen it, after committing the sin, please do not give it a misnomer – “Re-claiming land”.

5) Strong parton to arts and cultural activities - Bharatanatyam, Karnataka’s folk dances, mandolin, violin, Carnatic concerts, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Ghoshal, Shaan, Kailash Kher, many English rock bands, birth place of many renowned Hindustani classical singers, Karnataka has many credentials in the fields of arts, crafts and sports. In the five-year period, I have attended multiple concerts conducted by Times of India, Bengaluru and during Bengaluru Habba. I have seen people of all ages enjoy music in the open at Palace Grounds and such events/crowds remind me of my college days. Chennai has a very formal set up of Carnatic music festival every December, which may not cater to as big an audience. The Bengaluru Habba Crafts Fair held this year at Karnataka Chitra Kala Parishat, Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore was a treat to the city’s residents. The aegis this city provides, to arts and crafts is immense and this is a strong reason why I love Bangalore. Not to leave cricket behind, Karnataka has for long, contributed brilliantly to the Indian Cricket team. I have been lucky to watch a T20 match between Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers of IPL First Edition at Chinnaswamy Stadium.

But what bothers me at large and of late is the exponential phase of construction activities in Bangalore with big, tall buildings covered by glass, aluminium composite panels cropping up everywhere, pushing agriculturists entirely out of scene. There are many railway stations in Bangalore - apart from Majestic, at Yeshwanthpur, Malleshwaram, Hebbal, Yelahanka, Banaswadi, Byapannahalli, Krishnarajapuram, Whitefield, Cantonement, Bangalore East and yet there is no EMU train service. The current metro activities run parallel, onlooking the KR Puram and Byapanahalli stations, yet it is unclear to me how organizations/committees cannot think of running EMU trains on it as an immediate and viable soultion rather than felling trees, cutting roads to half the size and spoiling the beauty of once majestic and wide MG Road, Jayanagar South End circle etc

And how meaningful are these plans to go underground near city market for Metro construction? Why add more to the already existing chaos? There is an immediate need of a bus terminus at City Market but government has not heeded to it at all.

And let us not close the KSRTC bus terminus for the sake of Metro. Well planned and laid out, big terminus like the Kempegowda bus station must not fall an easy prey to the ongoing Metro activities. True, I have resided in Bangalore for only 5 years and I see a whale of change, some definitely not for the good for all of us, inmates of this city from birth will certainly attach more value to their home for long. I look forward to 2010 with a small prayer - let us all preserve the beauty and serenity of this city. I definitely love Bangalore :)

War and Peace and Prize

This post titled “War and Peace and Prize” is no appendix/synopsis to the famous work – War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. After reading several articles in newspapers, Nat Geo and considerable browsing, I have been driven to add a third dimension to WAR and PEACE.

Today, we have four US presidents in the list of the Nobel Peace Prize winners, starting with Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1919), Jimmy Carter (2002) and Barack Obama (2009). I remember a one-line mention of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the founder of League of Nations while studying for a test on United Nations at school. Though the LoN was a failure, it served as a brainchild for the United Nations and brought some order post First World War. Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Israel-Egypt conflict over Sinai Peninsula in the year 1979 through a peace agreement. Years later in 2002, he received the honors for brokering the peace agreement. May be the committee took time to circumspect. Though good number of articles tell me how influential a president Theodore Roosevelt was, it is not very clear why he received the Nobel Peace Prize. His career was dotted with the war on Cuba but he was known more for ending the Russo-Japanese war. May be the committee then granted him the Nobel Peace Prize for not hunting a bear when in Mississippi, an act that gave birth to “Teddy’s Bear – Theodore(Teddy) Roosevelt’s bears or teddy bear” in toy shops, first in USA and now world over.

An overpowering sense of astonishment still lingers in case of Barack Obama. Just close to finishing an year as US President, the African American President has created history of unprecedented scale. He has sent an additional troop of 30,000 US soldiers to Afghanistan on a war to curb Taliban, then was present at Oslo to receive the honors. He neatly completes the three dimensions – War and Peace and Prize and that he has managed it in the shortest time frame speaks of his potential, his skill with words and his tact to reign over the world. If Guzton Borglum were alive today, he would definitely have sculpted Obama’s face on Mt.Rushmore.

Right from Indonesia, where a statue of a 10 year old Obama with a butterfly in hand has been unveiled to inspire youngsters, to China where Wen Jiabo is yearning to get the green signal to boss over Asia and its affairs, to India where the PM’s highest personal achievement is an invitation to the black tie dinner hosted at White House, to Israel’s Benjamin Nitanyahu temporarily suspending the expansion of settlements in West Bank fearing a US crackdown, to Copenhagen where officials are accused of working more behind closed doors to allow USA circumvent awkward legal binding on emission cuts, to Oslo-Norwegian Nobel Committee for granting peace prize, the world largely, has fallen flat in salutation to the USA and to Barack Obama.

They not only accept the United States as the omnipotent power but have also acknowledged it openly, some very charismatically and some sheepishly. May be for the first time, an award has been provided even before the results were achieved.

I seriously pity the Nobel Prize winners in the science and medicine category who do not live long enough to receive the honor. They research for years with meticulous care to pave way for a better understanding of some deep mysteries in science and medicine. However, Barack Obama has clinched the honor effortlessly.

The honor, it seems, is not for the work done but an advance extended for work to happen, more precisely, for duties expected of the United States and from Obama who leads it. However, Obama was not moved by this cosseting act. He clearly said that a nation cannot be run, only on ideals preached by King and Gandhi, every nation has the right to defend itself. Though his words are pragmatic, the intentions and outcome are thoroughly myopic. This “every nation” is restricted to only USA. Every nation has the right to progress – but emission cuts are legally binding only on developing nations. And US as a nation, has the right to progress, that is why it has until now evaded the Kyoto protocol.

Obama has talked of leaving a beautiful earth for children and grandchildren of tomorrow. Where and how will that happen with US mining corporations minting money over gold and diamond mining activities? The vulnerable victims are poorer and ignorant nations of Africa and Asia who for a considerable and never seen before urban development sacrifice their natural habitats. They are caught in problems like destruction of rain forests, greater soil erosion, vulnerability to either droughts or flash floods and nasty civil wars.

USA has not even spared its neighbor, Canada. It imports billions of barrels of crude oil from the state of Alberta in Canada. The oil sands in the Athabasca basin are churned in heavy machines fuelled by natural gas, heat and steam run over under high temperature and pressure to separate bitumen from oil so that the final product is neatly transported. Tons and tons of natural gas (a non-renewable energy source) are burnt in these behemoth machines in Canada to generate barrels of crude oil (another non-renewable energy source) and tailings/end materials of the process are left carelessly at the river basin choking aquatic life and stifling migratory birds to death.

What made the world infer that United States is a responsible power, clairvoyant enough to preserve the world as is for future generations? Yes, I accept, USA is a power, a supreme power that can impose sanctions on Iran, toughen its stand on Afghanistan and Taliban, indefinitely carry on war in Iraq. Is it a responsible power to take the lead in cutting green house gas emissions, providing relief to hunger infested African nations, take onus and not trample upon other nations’ valuable resources for its benefits in the name of globalization?

If the Nobel Committee expected all good work to be done by USA with Obama leading from the front, I feel it is too wild and big an expectation. Many have believed and still believe that Obama will harness change, but to reward him even before he proves his mettle will only lead to dejection and dismay. When the world realizes that time has flown by, another presidential term has come to an end, yet nothing has changed, it will be too late.