On Indians

The Times of India of March 31st had a column on opinions about Indians from both Indians and non-Indians. I thought it was interesting and am repeating the quotes in italics.

Mumbai  High Court
"Spitting is an inherit character of our people"

In six months in 2011 Mumbaikars had paid the equivalent of Dollars Four Hundred and Fifty thousand in fines. I am surprised that the High Court did not say that  urinating by the road side is also an inherit character of the Indian male. Imagine the revenue which the cities in India would generate if it imposed fines on this activity. However it would also be another source of  revenue for the enforcers.

Markandey Katju
Chairman -Press Council of India

According the Times , Katju has been coming out with gems since he was appointed to this post. His latest "90% of people in India are fools. Their minds are full of superstitions, communalism,and casteism."  .. "people say that the media must provide the customer what it wants. Unfortunately most people in India are of a very low intellectual level,steeped in casteism, communalism,superstitions, and all kinds of feudal and backward ideas"

Ah - the arrogance of self confidence at the extreme. Must have something to do from being from Nehru's hometown of Allahabad !!

Greg Chappell
Australian Cricketer and former Indian coach
"The (Indian) culture is very different. They lack leaders because they are not trained to be leaders. From an early age, their parents make all the decisions. They learn not to take any responsibility"

In effect they are all Mama's boys. No wonder we have more than our proportionate share of women leaders such as  Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Mamta Banerjee, Mayawati, Sheila Dixit, Jayalalitha  and so on. The real successful war which we won hands down was the war for Bangladesh under Indra Gandhi. Perhaps we should have an all women's cricket team against the Australian men. Could teach them a lesson or two.



Gulam Nabi Azad
Union Health Minister and Senior Congress Leader
" If there is electricity in every village, people will watch TV till late night and then fall asleep. They won't get a chance to produce children. When there is no electricity, there is nothing else to do to produce babies" .

Of course people in cities do not produce children. Perhaps the next list of  freebies for the Indian  politicians should include  I phones and I pads which do not require electricity ( except for charging where they can now use solar lights with phone charging extensions). However there is some truth to Azad's comments. A couple of decades ago when New York had a black out for a day or two, the birth rate that year actually shot up.

Shahid Afridi
Pakistani Cricketer
"Indians will never have hearts like Muslims and Pakistanis. I don't think they have the large and clean hearts that Allah has given us. It is a very difficult thing for us to live with them or to have a long term relationship with them"
 
Unless being born in Pakistan gives Afridi or the Pakistani a special  heart cleansing gene, he is perhaps not aware that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. So on a numerical basis we beat Afridi's country men  in terms of the number of people with cleaner hearts . In terms of long term  relationships , perhaps the Americans might have some thing to say about that.

President Nixon
Indians are "a slippery treacherous people"

Henry Kissinger
"Indians are bastards anyway.They're the most aggressive goddam people around "

This coming from tricky Dick and his key lieutenant was a bit rich. No wonder many of his aides ended up on the wrong side of the law, defending their patron. If you haven't I suggest you read Philip Roth's " Our Gang" about President Nixon and his team.

Maureen Chao
US Vice Consul while talking to students in Chennai
" I was on a 24 hour train trip from Delhi to Orrisa.But after 72 hours, the train still did not reach its destination ... and my skin became dark and dirty like the Tamilians"

I believe that Hillary Clinton chose her for  " The diplomat of the year " award and she is now being considered as a possible candidate  to become the next  Dean of The  Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University. I think she boned up on India by reading the matrimonial advertisements where all males are looking for wives with wheatish  or fair complexion.Also by  watching the television advertisements where every second advertisement is for a fairness cream for making not just women " fair and lovely" but also men " fair and handsome" . One even goes to the extreme of assuring you that it will make your under arms fair. I can see Biphasa Basu doing a item number from a  Bollywood version of  Maria from the West Side Story with her arms raised and the spotlight shining on her arm pits and singing "I feel pretty, white and witty  "

The Dalai Lama
"I feel sometimes people in India are lazy .... look at the Chinese,they work hard.  ..Wherever they go, they make China towns.However, nowhere in the world there are any India towns. "

Having seen and read many of his interviews, it is obvious that he has a sense of humor and his remarks are tongue in cheek. But nevertheless maybe his Holiness should ask  his minders to take him to  "Little India"in Singapore, Southall in London, Canal Street in New York and similar such places in Chicago, Toronto and other major cities around the world. 

Pratyush Sinha
India's Outgoing Chief  Vigilance Commissioner
"One third of Indians are corrupt, half are borderline, and that is job was a thankless one".

Reading the newspapers and watching the television , where there is a new corruption or a scam story  every day, all one can say to his comment is  "Amen".

The Battle of the Inheritors

 In a recent book , India - A Portrait by  Patrick French, the author   estimated that almost forty five percent of the candidates for elections are from dynastic political families.Unlike Pakistan and the Philippines were the seats are held by families who are from the land owning classes, in India it is from families whose main business is politics - or as they say in Hindi  "Netagiri". To quote  Shakespeare completely out of context , in India the inheritors are "born great ,( instead ) of achieving greatness or having greatness thrust upon them".

A few weeks ago , we were glued to the television following the state legislature elections in five of the states in India. In order of importance they are Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttrakhand, Manipur and Goa. The national ruling party  Congress  was in power Manipur and Goa. The main opposition party The Bhartiya Janata Party ruled Uttrakhand and played a supporting role in Punjab. In Uttar Pradesh the ruling party was a lower caste dominated party Bhaujan Samaj Party. The main media focus was on Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. 

In Uttar Pradesh you had Rahul Gandhi -  Rajiv Gandhi's son and Indra Gandhi's grandson , on one side and Akhilesh Yadav , son of  Maulayam Singh Yadav - head of the  Samajwadi Party and a former Chief Minister of the state on the other. In Punjab you had Sukhbir Singh  Badal,son of the Prakash Singh Badal head of the Shiromani Akali Dal, the reigning party, leading the campaign  against the Congress leader Amarinder Singh, the former Maharaja of Patialia, who was the previous  Chief Minister of Punjab.Interestingly Rahul, Akhilesh and Sukhbir received part of their education overseas.

The Samajwadi Pary won in Uttar Pradesh and the Akali Pary in Punjab. Congress had used its big guns in Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest states in India with a population of two hundred million people, but had little to show for it. It retained Manipur and managed to dislodge the BJP in Uttarkhand. It lost in Goa,and Punjab.

In my opinion what won the election for the Yadavs and the Badals , was that they had a better sense of how to capture the votes. Also what was interesting in the campaign in both  Uttar Pradesh and Punjab was the difference in styles of campaigning of the privileged inheritors and the message they put out. 

For the last two years the media was fed images of Rahul Gandhi visiting the lower caste families and sharing their meals in Uttar Pradesh. In the last few months, he appeared increasingly comfortable in giving speeches in Hindi. However he came across as a strident , angry young man with his main target being Mayawati and occasionally the Yadavs. He was ably  supported by his sister Priyanka, who appeared much more at ease mingling with crowds than he was. His brother in law Robert Vadra also joined in the campaign with his group of easy riders. 

Akhilesh on the other hand criss-crossed the state, occasionally seen on a  bicycle ( which was the party's election symbol) or on top of a van, wearing his easily identified  crimson red Gandhi cap. He appeared more of a people's man and appeared more relaxed in his dealings with the common man , compared to Rahul Gandhi who was constantly surrounded by his group of minders. Gandhi focused on the misdeeds of the previous rulers while the Yadavs promised a basket full of goodies, ranging from free laptops to free electricity for farmers.

In Punjab the Badals and the former  Maharaja both  come from extremely privileged backgrounds, but at the end of the day the Badals prevailed, as they had a better sense of how to win the votes. Like the Yadavs, the promise of goodies got them the votes. Where the money is going to come from considering the perilous conditions of both  the states finances, appeared to be of least concern while making the promises.

Historically it is the incumbent party which gets voted out . Here again Amarinder Singh  focused mainly  on the mis-deeds of the ruling party instead of laying out an agenda for the Congress Party.  While generally the media tends to view the rural electorate as being unsophisticated,  what was interesting this time around in Punjab  compared to the previous elections was that the incumbents ( although in Uttar Pradesh , the Yadavs were not,they were in power prior to that ) were not voted out. The rural electorate decided that in terms of mis governance there was not much of a difference  between the Congress or the Akali Dal. So they opted to stay with the Badals and take the freebies. 

What the Congress party strategists  seemed to have overlooked by focusing on the mis-deeds of the opposition, was that almost every day the news papers and the television channels  were headlining some scams, scandals or the other involving the the Congress Party or their coalition parties. While you have many Congress party big wigs who appear regularly on the television debates showing how erudite they are by quoting Yeats and other English poets and Churchill, they seemed to have forgotten that votes of the viewers of the English speaking middle class  in the metropolitan cities do not determine who comes to power.  India now has multiple news channels in almost every language which can now be viewed in most rural areas.In addition they also forgot  the simple rule which applies to good governance as well as to being a good neighbor - people in glass houses should not throw stones .