Country Men Now Enemies

In the summer of 2009 my family was in Boston attending my daughter's graduation from Law School. One day we were taking a cab from her apartment to the hotel and started chatting with the driver who looked like he was from the sub-continent. I told him that we were from India . His response was "I am your enemy". This took us completely by surprise.

This was the first time ever  that we got  such a response from someone from Pakistan and it shocked me. My family are Sikhs originally from Gujarkhan near Rawalpindi in Pakistan. I have had friends, colleagues at school and work from Pakistan and have encountered nothing but warmth and support . I visited Pakistan on business  and there again was welcomed by my colleagues. I regarded this was a one off thing and I forgot about it.

In the last few years since the 26/11 incident  there has been a lot of hostility between India and Pakistan  which saddens most of the population except those with vested interests, as to how one country with the same culture , same history, same food, common  languages, have fought a number of wars and spend billions of dollars which could be better spent on alleviating poverty and improving education.

India and Pakistan are not the only such examples.Sudan is now the latest example of a country being split into two .

In a lot of cases it is the colonial masters who  are to blame, as they encouraged divisiveness and created a elite class of the minorities who were resented by the majority of the population and when the time came , wreaked vengeance  eventually leading  to civil war or to countries being split up.

The separation of India into two countries was encouraged by the British and the arbitrary borders which affected the lives of millions of people was drawn up in a matter of weeks. The state of  Pakistan was unviable from the start when they were separated not just by thousands of miles, but culturally and linguistically. This eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh.

In Rwanda the German and the Belgian colonial masters favored the minority Tutsis over the majority Hutus and lead to one of the worst massacres in history, when between half to a million  people were killed in the space of a hundred  days.

Similarly on the Korean Peninsula you have North and  South Korea separated initially by political ideology but now by a family with dynastic ambitions , refusing to give up control in the North.Once the "wall"comes down which in my opinion is a matter of time, we will see one Korea which will be a world economic powerhouse.

On the positive side look at Germany which after the war was separated by the Allies and the Russians  and now re-united and living peacefully . The separation will eventually be a tiny  footnote in history. Since the mid nineties Rwanda has enjoyed social and political stability.

One hopes that this will also be the case with India and  Pakistan but that is  wishful thinking . The country would be unmanageable and we will eventually see the balkanization into smaller states. If we could just live peacefully as neighbors and divert the funding used for the army to increasing interaction in the form of trade and culture  between the two countries it would be a dream come true for the majority of the population on both sides.

Are Men Bettter At Appreciating The Finer Things In Life Than Women ?

This thought was triggered while reading an article in the Wall Street Journal dated January 5th,2011 " To Dress Well a Woman Should Shop Like a Man " by  Christine Binkley. Her point was that men were practical and bought clothes which fitted well and are comfortable . Women place a priority on trendiness rather than comfort.

I had always thought that men in general  appreciated the better  things in life such as design, whether is is architecture, design, food or other things such as wine or art . And here was a third party and a woman  confirming that. I could not let this opportunity go without writing about it .I  recognize that I am treading on dangerous grounds  and will shortly be getting a earful from my wife and daughter.

If you look around whether it is chefs, architects, artists, designers, tailors,they are predominantly men. Some of you will  point out that  Zaha Hadid the well known architect  and Jancis Robinson the well know writer on wine are women and so on, but for every one Zaha Hadid there are ten men. Since 1926 there have been only four women chef's who have been granted a three star ranking in France. Doesn't that say something ? Perhaps the judges at Michelin are all men ? In the fashion field you see more women than perhaps twenty years ago, but in the other fields they are still a tiny minority.

Why is this the case ? Is it because until recently men made all the buying decisions and men had a better appreciation of what other men wanted ? With things beginning to change, will we now  see the emergence of women in these categories ? After all you are know seeing a gradual increase of professional  women CEO's ( not those who inherited it because of family reasons).Also the increasing number of working women professionals and  entrepreneurs who now have the spending power. I am not sure . I think men wear clothes for themselves. Women choose clothes  for others reasons  - to attract attention and  to be appreciated by members of the opposite sex or to be one up on their  friends and "competitors" .

It will be interesting to see whether the trends change over the next couple of decades

Short Notes On The Education System In India

The Mint newspaper dated December 30th, 2010 had a column by Anurag Behar (Co-CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation) .  I quote him ..."because by 2006, 98% of habitants in India had a primary ( up to Class V) school within 1 km, and 86% had an upper primary ( up to Class VII) school within 3 km....
That means a a staggering increase of schools. At the time of Independence ,India had about 130,000 schools. Today we have about 1.4 million. About 7.0 million work in our school education system.This is by far the largest education system in the world" 

On the other hand  I have seen a presentation titled India's Future dated November 12th,2009 by  Gurcharan Das, the former head of Proctor & Gamble in India .I think it  is  a well balanced presentation and talks about both the positive's and negatives of India. In one of the slides he mentions that 1 out 4 teachers  in government schools are  normally absent. 


Perhaps Anurag Behar's above sentence should read " About 7.0 million are employed ( but not necessarily work)  in our school education system. 

Assuming that both are right, then the solution is not to build more schools, but to make sure that teachers show up and do what they are paid to do. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.....

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way." - A Tale of Two Cities -  Charles Dickens


Now that the year 2010 has come  to an end, one is reminded of the above quote.This best describes India in its present state. As I have said before India is going through the phase which Britain went through during the Dickensian era  and the United States in the early 1900's. 


At the risk of  repeating myself , India is in the sweet spot which comes not just in a lifetime, but probably in a millennium. Partly because of luck in the form of demographics which a few decades ago the doomsayers were saying would condemn India to  perpetual poverty and starvation, as predicted by Malthus a few centuries ago, but the young population  is now turning into a trump card for India

However not only did we overcome the food production ( with some help from the United States ) we are now in a position of exporting certain food grains. The rise in population instead of being  a ball and chain is being seen as boosters ( provided we can keep creating jobs) for our economic growth. 


This year has been the most eventful ( at least for the last five years since our return). On the positive side , the economy is predicted to grow at 9%. We hosted a successful Commonwealth Games . Indian athletes performed  well in the Commonwealth and Asian Games. All the major head of states Cameron, Obama, Sarkozy, Wen, Medvedev and others all visited India during the second half. With the exception of Wen, all of them said appropriately flattering things which made all of us feel good. 


On the negative side, the headlines also talked about the corrupt bureaucrats who organized the Commonwealth Games and reportedly diverted money to their own pockets, the Adarsh prime land scam in Mumbai, the 2G auction which apparently deprived the government of potential revenue of approximately $40.0 billion.. The Armed Forces which until recently had a relatively  clean image was also dragged into the mud because of the shenanigans of a former Army Chief. The Judiciary which is supposed to keep the rest of us honest found accusations being made against senior judges. Finally the media which prides itself on being unbiased was found to have feet of clay. Two of its  most prominent members had to defend themselves.Delhi  the capital of the country is becoming an increasingly unsafe place for girls at night. A recent newspaper item mentioned that four or five children go missing everyday from Delhi.  


I could go on and on about the positives and the negatives, but looking at the glass half full, I feel that perhaps we are reaching a point where thing will start to change. The very fact that all these issues are out in the open and being discussed is a positive sign. However what will convince me that the tipping  point has been reached  is when some of these scoundrels, politicians, bureaucrats etc who are accused are actually convicted and put behind bars without being granted any special privileges or allowed out for  frequent outings or supposedly  for medical reasons or on compassionate grounds. 

The Central Government should do what Nitish Kumar has just done in Bihar. He has passed a law where any government servant who is convicted has his ill gotten gains seized by the state and has started implementing it. Now if only other states could follow his example !!!