Number 1 in Number Two.

While the presidential "race" is hotting up in New Delhi, the human race seems to have little to look forward to in India.  In fact, it has plenty to look back on, literally.

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article3524150.ece

We are officially the #1 country for doing #2 in the open!  No shit.  Just too much of it.

The government is taking steps to curb open defecation.  Again, no shit.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article3301113.ece

We still have the massive stigma of human excreta removal procedures. 

http://www.thehindu.com/health/policy-and-issues/article3524423.ece

Who the fuck ever said India is a superpower?  Make those fools do this job first.

But we're smart enough to rope in, who else apart from Sachin Tendulkar, for this campaign against shitting in your face: Shah Rukh Khan.  Perhaps from now on, instead of waving his hand with a thumbs up, he will show two fingers.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3329786.ece

He sells fairness cream, so I guess it must be fashionable for him to tell people not to shit in the open.  Maybe he can sell some kind of superglue that will stop people from shitting all together?

Seriously, who are the bums that will listen to Shah Rukh Khan and decide not to shit in the open?  In fact we should be grateful nobody takes a shit while listening to him.

Apparently, Sikkim has become India's first Nirmal state.  I have no idea what this non-English word means, but I reckon it must mean that despite 60% of the world's open air shitters being in India, in Sikkim you can shit indoors most of the time.

We're hoping that Kerala and Himachal Pradesh achieve this status.  A status?  Can we take aim any lower?

There are umpteen reasons we may be lagging behind and setting new standards in the negative with this enormous statistic of sixty percent of the world's open air shitting going on in India.  This is by number, and not by mass or weight, mind you, so there is scope for some optimist to come up and say patriotically, "But we don't take such big shits!"

I think the reason we take shits in the open is because we just don't give a shit.  It is an extension of the same habit of leaning on others in a queue for no reason.  It is the same attitude behind spitting paan and being loud and rude in public.  We don't care about contamination, and we don't care about sickening ourselves or others.  We are not human enough for that.

Building more toilets is only going to solve the problem to some extent.  What do we do to get Indians to use them?  What about keeping them clean?  What about water supply to those toilets, and what about accountability in maintaining them?  If it is profitable to steal the tap and sell it in the market, the Indian will do it.  If it is profitable to pull out the entire toilet and sell it, the Indian will do it.  The only way to curb this menace is to make shit profitable.  If these open air shitters could take a dump in an envelope or a box and bring it to a government office and get paid fifty rupees every day, it might work to some extent.

For sure, shit is manure.  If done in the fields, it can add some value as a fertilizer.  But it adds no bloody value if we shit all over railway tracks, beaches, river banks, and city streets.  People doing this must be punished.  It costs about Rs. 6000 to set up a toilet at home, so every ration card holder must be inspected and given a toilet if there is none at a home.  If not, the community toilet must be built and access provided.  Beyond this point, if anyone still takes a shit in the open, that person's ration card must be voided.  How hard can this be?  Agricultural labour income is now fixed at Rs.500/day, and there are plenty of vacancies, but nobody wants these jobs.  Go figure.  One month work, and toilet guaranteed, but no thanks.  We will do shitty jobs, live without hard work, and shit in the open!

With Indians, it is nothing but attitude, and we refuse to come out of low decency behaviour.  11 million people shitting on railway tracks every single day is just an unbelievable number.  I'm surprised more trains don't trip and fall because of this.

Then the cost of disease control.

There is no bigger disease than Indian attitude.

Hopefully we don't start a new festival of shit.

- BSK.

A Nation of Passive Opportunists.

Anna Hazare has re-written history.  In fact, he has ensured the history of India is being written again.  He did the same thing Mahatma Gandhi did to the British - occupy high moral ground and blackmail the powers to succumb to his demand.  This word "blackmail" has a negative ring to it, doesn't it?  That's only because it conjures up images of cheap, witless psychopaths getting something they do not deserve, through devious means.  There's nothing devious about Anna Hazare's means, so clowns like Karan Thapar should stop acting like they are experts of this word "blackmail".  Long live the blackmailer, for the victim is the villain in this case.  Forty two years to pass a bill that gives us the right to prosecute the corrupt?  Enough of this, indeed, Annaji.

The mediocre always has to be pushed, prodded, woken up, beaten, and thrust into action by the extreme to get it to out of its inertial slumber.  India is a nation of massive mediocrity, dying to get worse, but somehow not allowed to by economic pressures.  We are not a non violent nation at all, as some of us would think.  We just choose the safer option because we're afraid of violence when it could turn against us.  What kind of influence do political parties regularly have on the "hapless" masses?  Any local MLA can call upon the services of murderers, thugs and rowdies to beat up any citizen that dares question any move!  This is why we are passive, not non-violent. 

But, we're opportunistic!  Anna Hazare gave us the opportunity, and we pounced on it.  This was our opportunity, not to clean up the nation, but to let our frustrations out.  We might get something out of it, but we might also forget all about it by the time the final draft of the Lokpal Bill comes out around the 30th of June this year.  It is a good thing indeed, but the movement that Hazare talks about is yet to happen.  It takes a fair amount of stamina to fight the system, especially when every moron around us has subscribed to a corrupt system.  Easier to pay the bribe, and get things done smooth and quiet - can this attitude change because of a Bill?  Most definitely not.  It still takes the citizen to approach the Lokpal and complain!  This takes work!  How can we Indians be expected to do work that doesn't pay?

Given the opportunity to get rich through corrupt means, without a major risk of being punished, most Indians would not hesitate for a second to jump into the cesspool.  How is the Lokpal bill going to address this mindset?  It will not, and it is indeed not the aim of the bill.  Given the opportunity to get "ahead" through corrupt means, short circuiting fair competition, most Indians would indeed do exactly this.  How else would we have fake pilots flying our aeroplanes?  We are cowards and we feel sick about it sometimes, but we convince ourselves we are being smart about it.  This is what our intelligence is used for.  Centuries of training in survival have taught us to flourish by staying out of the way, like germs.  Germs don't threaten enough to invite extermination, but are dangerous enough to keep us sick and unproductive - exactly what India is today.

How is the Lokpal Bill going to work, when it becomes the duty of the germs to inform the body of the invading disease?  We love the dis-ease.  We thrive in it, we thrive because of it, and we love the calmness of the sick patient, who has given up all hopes of fighting back.  In other words, this Anna Hazare character is a pest who is making us come out of our slumber and telling us we don't have to be germs anymore, because the patient is willing to let us lead a healthy existence within her body.  God bless Mother India, but how will the sheer masses of incompetence cope with an India that wants to throw out corruption?  Corruption is what keeps our masses lazy, well fed, and uncomplaining.  What can replace this incredible fuel?

We want opportunities.  Opportunities to further our laziness, opportunities to further our economic goals, and our sense of entitlement and power.  These have always existed.  Now, we also want opportunities to "feel good" about ourselves.  This is a new want, a new addiction in new age India.  We didn't want our boys to win the world cup because they played the best cricket and were truly deserving of the honour.  We wanted them to win so that we as "Indians" could wave the flag and yell at the world.  This is very sophomoric and idiotic of course, but it is also very American.  The USA is the country for us to look up to, for some reason.  No wonder a lot of our idiots have started putting their hands on their unfit chests when OUR national anthem is playing.  This again is nothing but an "opportunity" to showcase our patriotism just like Americans, but it has indeed become the opportunity for us to show how stupid we are, since even the Americans are supposed to do it not for their national anthem but for the Pledge of Allegiance!

There is nothing wrong in wanting to be Number One.  So, the pride we feel in our cricket team is natural.  How about doing something about the #119 we have in the Human Development Index?  See, we do not have the shining, sexy, fashionable opportunity for doing this.  It is not going to be quick, it is not going to be jingoistic, and it is not going to be vocal, so this process is going to be dull, unattractive, grinding, and horrendously time consuming.  We may not even be around when we get within #100 of this pesky index!  So, indeed we are not going to even try!

Anna Hazare didn't just provide the platform.  In this age of media glare, he provided the stage for many of our clowns to show up and perform.  The government yielded, not because it was morally forced to, but because it did not want to look like a failure on this stage!  It is all about perception, and performance on the stage!  No wonder Bollywood is completely in support of Anna Hazare although it produces movies with underworld money, has actors who shoot down wildlife, and even those who buy machine guns from terrorist outfits!  Was India outraged when Sanjay Dutt came on TV feeling bad about the terrorist attacks of 26th November?  Of course not!  We forgot that he had immersed himself in criminal anti-national activity but remembered him for his role in Munna Bhai or whatever crap.

We have become a nation of simplistic, easily manipulated fools.  We are no longer capable of critical thinking.  We go with what we like or dislike.  Anna Hazare is rather hard to dislike.  He is also not in the grey area, where critical thinking becomes immensely necessary.  He is out there in the white area, which is easy to sign up for!  That is why we chose to support him, not because we understood the full import of this Lokpal Bill and his blackmail tactic.  It takes the threat of calamity to force India to act in any haste to do ANY good.  We Indians love the foreboding threat of anything larger than life.  That is why we love our movie heroes to beat up fifty villains.  If he was human, it would require fifty of us to help him, and that won't be so interesting would it?

If we had to vote for a Supremo, a dictator or a king, (called "President" in some countries), we would gladly switch to that system.  We have grown up for centuries with kings as our benevolent dictators.  We even fondly recollect those times as the golden past of India.  The BJP even has a king Ram as their idol, so I wonder why nobody has asked them what the heck they are doing in a democracy while talking about a king all the time!  We do not like democracy really, because it puts responsibility on us.  If we could be slaves, we would.  That is why we make kings out of our elected leaders, and they gladly accept!  That is why they loot, and we applaud.  Look at those statues Mayawati has built of herself, and we know exactly what "opportunity" means for an Indian.

So, how to we function in the collective?  We do not!  We did not choose democracy.  It was chosen for us.  And now it may be too late to switch to a benevolent dictatorship, because too many of us would want to be the dictator.  So, we have this farce of a system where we elect people who don't have to listen to us or serve our interests as soon as they are elected.  Now, we're going to have the means to throw them in jail for corruption.  What about our own apathy, our incompetence, and our complete acceptance, even sympathy, for the crooked?  After all, we're the nation of really passive germs, who totally understand the need for survival.  How do we switch to intolerance?  We should suddenly thrash the peon who wants ten rupees for his "coffee"?  Or refuse to pay a donation that will ensure our unfit kid's a seat in that engineering college?  How are we going to change ourselves?

Our media has played a massive role in popularizing Anna Hazare and his campaign.  But this is not a service it embarked upon performing.  This was a big enough story to carry at the top.  Viewership!  Numbers!  Money!  Opportunity indeed!  From the World Cup to the IPL, the news channels were forced to fight for scraps.  Now Anna Hazare has provided them with phenomenal gravity.  It's a good thing this did not happen during the India-Pakistan match!  Very clever of you, Annaji!  Perfect timing!

Now, whatever happened to our sailors captured by Somali pirates, the Adarsh building scam, the 2G scam, the Commonwealth Games scam, and the thousand of other scams?  None of them are worth our attention now?  Eerily, it is time for something to come crashing down.  People must die for us to pay attention.  That is what Indian lives are worth - to bring viewership to our TV channels.  Aha!  Now, there's an opportunity!

- BSK.

Who the hell are we, Indians?

Years ago, in 1947, we bought into this idea of a democratic India.  Democracy was still an experiment then, of course, and it still is, and one that has yielded varying results across various countries.  So, it cannot be the "system" that is good or bad, it comes down to us, We, the people of India.

We bought into this experimental idea because not many of us had a say in what we buy into, and a few intelligent people who were in the right place at the right time said it was a good idea to build a nation that was based on democratic values - fairness, equality, equitable distribution of resources, freedom of movement, a right to speak, congregate, express ourselves, protest, show dissent, and find representation in the political process that would run this country.  We didn't agree, but we didn't disagree either.  And somehow, by default, we got shoved into this experiment called democracy.

The great gift we got was the spirit of secularism.  Again, just an idea, but one that has somehow grown upon us.  It would be too confusing to have discrimination amongst us based on religion, caste or any other separator, so we ran with this too.  This part has worked out well, despite all the religious fanatics that still don't get it, and the myriad ways in which dogma still affects our thinking.  No political party is completely agnostic to faith, and we remain in the stone ages when it comes to pure spiritualism.  Even the Indian tourism industry somehow thinks "spiritual" means "religious"!  Stupid, but for most part, not without hope.

The other gifts we got as part of the new idea of India are the wide usage of the English language, a legal framework that roughly resembles that of the UK, a mechanism called "government", a free press, and a military that doesn't interfere with everyday life.  These are gifts, because without any of these, we'd have sunk even further into anarchy.

What we didn't bargain for, however, is the need for us to constantly work to keep the above working.  For that, it takes effort, above and outside of our personal jobs and duties, and it takes involvement and awareness.  In other words, to make India work, we cannot be sitting on our asses and expect the "others" to do their jobs.  It is our job to make the country work.  This part, we don't get.  We are an essentially selfish people, and those amongst us who have some civic sense are likely to appear like activists.

Life in India today is about screwing and not getting screwed.  The country be damned, as long as we can make a few bucks and get the life we want.  Money can buy us anything, but alas, it cannot buy us a quality country.  For that, we need to make some sacrifices and recognize what we need to do.  We never took into account the essential nature of the Indian person, while we decided what system we wanted.  The essential Indian is corrupt, or corruptible, or accepting of corruption as a way of life.  Why would so many millions amongst us pay bribes to get things done that we are legally entitled to?  Because we are sheep, and sheep get fleeced.

For some reason, most Indians are really annoyed when I tell them that "Indianness" is about being corrupt, inefficient, dogmatic, AND having a sense of righteousness that the devil himself would be afraid of.  Our relationship with God is the one we respect, and hence, if a puja routine is prescribed to an Indian family, they will carry it out religiously, perfectly.  If they are told not to dump plastic waste, they might do it to some extent.  If they are told to file a case against that official who demanded a bribe to okay their water connection, they won't.  They will actually pay the bribe to maintain "the good energy" of their lives - smooth and easy.

This fear of questioning, the fear of reprisals, the fear of showing dissent itself rules over us.  And then, for every damn thing, there is God.  Somehow, our God is most fierce in folklore and mythology, but very benign when it comes to inciting us to question and fight  for what is right.  Our righteousness flies directly in the face of our religiousness.  Somehow, there is never a discourse on this - on the essential lie of being an Indian in spirit.

The most corrupt rascals in this country dump much money in temples like Tirupathi.  Somehow, we cunningly shift the onus of accountability for such ill gotten wealth onto the Lord!  Look God, I gave you a crap load of money, now all you need to do is protect me!  The Lord has already protected you by making you Indian - not just unlikely to be caught in your act of thievery, but even more likely to make you feel good about stealing and donating to a temple!

For some reason, we frown upon Godmen who have been found having sex with a multitude of women or in the throes of drug induced ecstasy, but we're perfectly all right with elected officials stealing from our coffers to build their personal wealth.  I'm not sure what can be more askew!  But, this is what is happening - We are angered by being made fools out of - that is the problem here!  We fully expect elected officials to steal, but Godmen had to be holy!  That's why we get mad at them for having a romp!

Heck, we could also be jealous.  Having a sexual romp isn't that available to most of us Indians because we're not that enterprising.  That is why we have moral boundaries defined by the boundaries of what we dare to do.  It is the exact same reason for the BJP to get mad at Shashi Tharoor - he is not only smooth and articulate, but - hold your breath - has an attractive female friend who is not his wife!  That is why the BJP spokesperson, the cunning hypocritical bastard, said "who his girlfriend is, who he is married to, who he divorces, is not our business".  Then why mention all that?  It is the power of allusion, that most Indians fall flat for.  We can raise a scandal on mere speculation and allusion, and without a single fact, splash around so much that muddy water hits everyone!

For some reason, we forget that we are supposed to bow only to the truth.  Sathyameva Jayathe, not God.  Even God has to be truthful to win.  Lord Krishna may be the delightful exception, but then, he is a super being anyway, who is not cluttered in any way.  He must be exasperated, because India is cluttered in every way.  We don't have a clue how to do anything with elegance, no matter how many resources we have.  We need to seriously examine our "Indianness", if we are to get a clue on where we belong, if at all.

If India vanished from the face of the earth today, the rest of the world would not be that adversely impacted.  Isn't that such a stunning revelation for the 2nd largest population in the world?  The rest of the world might actually heave a sigh of relief.  Strangely, the USA, with the much greater wear and tear it imparts to the world, would terrify the world if it pulled a vanishing act!  Where would all the computers come from, where would all the Boeing planes come from, and the spares for so many of them flying all over the world, where would arms and ammunition come from, where would the best porn come from, and where would all the great movies come from!???  Who would we sell billions of dollars worth of stuff to?  There is no substituting the USA, but India can be forgotten in a jiffy or two at the most.  Guess what?  They're a democracy too!

So, before we trumpet becoming a superpower, before we get pompous about our incredible place in the world and the role we are here to play, let's look at ourselves and get our basic shit together.  Let's give as much importance to rational thinking as we do to moral and religious nonsense.  There is no God concept in our Constitution!  We aren't fundamentally subscribed to a religious idea of a country.  God is a very personal thing, even though we do a puja before launching our spacecraft.  For some reason our latest GSLV plunged into the sea.  Could it be the wrong brand of incense sticks?  No serious investigation into the failure of our first cryogenic engine is likely to result in a finding that blames the pujari.

So, let's learn to blame ourselves first, whenever things go wrong.  It is a very good habit to get into.  If I call 139 and get wrong information about my train's arrival time, it is upto me to fill out in triplicate, the complaint form at the railway station, and make my grievance known.  It is upto us to bitch, and moan, and complain, and sue - till the garbage gets cleared on time, till the road gets relaid, till the sewers stop dumping into our rivers, and till we get every single thing we need to feel like humans again.  Indianness cannot be the answer to the questions we are afraid to ask.

BSK.