Uncategorized – Page 4

The Koodankulam Fiasco

I had posted this as a comment to one of my Facebook posts on Koodankulam issue. A friend had posted this comment to my post on Koodankulam where one man got killed in the clash with the police.

The well respected ex president Dr Kalam says its safe. A lot of scientists say its safe. Still some miscreants sponsor such stupid acts, hiring illiterates and the poor along with protein fed GOONDAS. Net result – these deaths !

And I had a chance to watch a news debate in Reporter channel and here is what I wrote in response to my friend. My appeal to you too would be to educate me with your counter arguments against the valid concerns raised by Dr. C R Neelakandan.

I don’t think it is as easy as that. I had followed a debate on Reporter channel and the points raised by Dr. C R Neelakandan, an environmentalist who has worked in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, seemed valid. Following is what he said. I don’t see any valid arguments that stand valid to these concerns. Let me know if you come across any (valid counter arguments instead of the so called “development” war cries).

===============================

Only 2.5% of the total energy needed is being produced by the atomic reactors in India (even after investing so much and given huge subsidies for 50 years) which is far more expensive than the energy from windmills.

After Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima there are no countries that trust atomic energy as a viable soltution. Many countries have backed out of atomic energy. 54 atomic reactors were closed down in Japan in the last 1.5 years. After 1978, no nuclear reactors were granted permission in America. Germany has decided to close down all its atomic reactors in their country by 2020.

Koodankulam has many similarities to Fukushima. It’s in the seashore. Last time the Tsunami had struck this place. It is also a crowded place with Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) districts are nearby. Another issue is environmental because the wastes of the nuclear plant are dumped to the sea. This could affect the daily lives of the fishermen folk who live here.

According to the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill, in case of a tragedy, the maximum amount of money that the responsible country has to pay is Rs. 1500 crore. Note that it is in RUPEES. What you must note here is that only the first phase of the tragedy in Fukushima had cost them 1500 crore DOLLARS. (The central government had decided on Rs. 500 crores and it is only after the Left parties got involved that they raised the amount at least to Rs. 1500 crores).

Koodankulam relies totally on the imported fuel for it’s function. Agreed that we need to import petroleum, but the difference from that one here is that in case if there is a policy change from the country that gives us the fuel, the fuel would stop. We have the example of Tarapur in front of us. We started with that reactor when America gave us the fuel. And when they stopped the export, our function was also stopped.

If you go to Tamil Nadu, you can see 6000 MW is being produced from the wind. If you just increase it by 2000 MW, you can avoid this fiasco. That will be something produced by the windmills made in India, which can be repaired in India, and it doesn’t result in such atrosious after effects even if it fails. So when we have this alternative here, why should we go after such expensive, risky solution? The radiation if it spreads outside would last until 50000 years.

We have been saying from 1980s that we would produce energy using Thorium. I was working at Bhabha atomic research center then. Even after 32 years we are held behind. Which means this is not going to happen. That is why we are importing the fuel. So what is the issue here? Some lobbies in this market cannot sell this in America, France, Japan or Germany. So they sell it here. In India and China. Philippines has a history of shutting down a reactor that has worked only for a day. Some people ask why would they strike against a plant that has been completed the work. There was a plant in America that was shut down after the plant was made functional and the fuel was loaded. Not only that, in America and France, the government is still wondering what to do with the waste of the closed down reactors and they are freezing it.

We have the example of Bhopal in case if something happens. We know that our country gave only Rs. 40000 to the deceased families after 20 years of tragedy. The responsible people are still living scot-free in America.

You know what? No insurance company grants insurance to this. Nuclear reactors don’t get insurance. Nobody gives loans to these. If Fukushima could cause radiation on the other side of Pacific, you can imagine how Koodankulam would effect the coastal areas of Kerala. Chennai is 700 KM away from Koodankulam, but Thiruvananthapuram is just 70 KMs away.

===============================

(Photo courtesy: Antony Kebiston Fernando

Onams of ‘salt carpet’

One more Onam passed by. As usual the television was filled with stories of nostalgia – celebrities talking about Onam of their childhood and how much it has changed over the years. Stories of plucking flowers and playing on the swing etc. In my childhood, we seldom had a traditional floral carpet for Onam. We did not have any flowering plants in the yard and we could not afford to buy flowers from the Onam market. So what we did instead was buying crystal salt and packets of color powder that came cheap.

The first and probably the best artist of the family was my second brother Varghese who is not in this world anymore. It was him who started putting floral carpets for Onam and cribs for Christmas. We all would wake up early in the morning of Onam day to help mixing the color powder with crystal salt while my brother would be drawing the structure on the yard with a string of thread and chalk. We would occasionally put up a real pookkaLam (floral carpet) with Mosantha flowers which were found aplenty in one of the neighborhoods. Ladies of the family would get busy in the kitchen by the time we finished the pookkaLam. Next thing to do would be eating the boiled banana. After that we would head to the neighboring houses to watch TV. There were not many new movies on TV in those days and there was only one Malayalam channel by Doordarshan, but one of the neighbors would play VHS tapes of Malayalam movies that they brought from the gulf. The ‘celebrations’ would mostly end with sadya at noon, though we did not have more than 4 items for sadya.

The ‘salt carpet’ was also a regular in my school, S N Boys High School in Kanimangalam because most of the students there came from ordinary or poor lower middle class families. The kaLam there was much bigger than what we put in our houses. It filled an entire class room bordered with the wooden benches. One kaLam design I remember is of Hanuman bringing the sanjeevani and it was the largest kaLam from my memories. The salt carpet has a disadvantage though. A salt carpet is easier to put the design together than a floral carpet but it would begin to melt after sometime and the colors would merge with each other, But it was a work of art.

Times have changed and I don’t see the salt carpets anymore. The flower market now thrives in the Onam days and there are ‘flower kits’ which is a mixture of all flowers and it costs much less than what you buy in kilos, so nobody prefers the salt carpet anymore I guess. Crystal salt also seems to be a rare thing these days as people have moved on to powder salt. I wish I had a camera or found someone who had one to take a photo of the salt carpet, which I would call the poor man’s pookkaLam.

Blogswaraites have gone mainstream!

Sindhuja Bhaktavatsalam

Divya S Menon

Praveen

Praveen Lakkaraju

Sreenivas Josyula

After TSJ Studio, who have made their entry into Tamil film music recently, few more talented people who have worked with Blogswara earlier have made their debut in the mainstream film music industry. Divya S Menon, though she had lent her voice earlier in the movies, has sung a solo song called “Anuraagam” in the upcoming Malayalam movie “Thattathin Marayathu“. Sindhuja Bhaktavatsalam sang “Vatapi Ganapatim” for the Telugu movie “Hormones” that is set to music by Blogswara artists Praveen Lakkaraju and Sreenivas Josyula. Wishing all the very vest to these artists for a bright musical career!

Blogswara Version 8 – inviting entries!

Blogswara is inviting entries for the 8th online album. Those who are interested may leave a comment in our blog and go through the process page. Even though I was contemplating the relevance of Blogswara among an increased number of platforms available to musicians, I have been convinced that still a lot of people are looking forward to Blogswara to showcase their original work. So the journey started way back in 2006 is still going strong after six years and now on to the eighth album! Welcome aboard.

Satyamev Jayate – too early for critique

Okay, let me put things in it’s place before I start on the topic of the show Satyamev Jayate.

I am not an Aamir Khan fan boy. In fact, I think he has been overrated as an actor with the tag lines such as “Mr. Perfectionist” and all that. Of all his movies I have seen, only one film truly touched my heart and that is “Taare Zameen Par”. Aamir may be a good entertainer but I think Shah Rukh Khan does a great job at that. His so-called ‘serious’ movies are only quirky and populist in nature. Take Rang De Basanti and Mangal Pandey for example. He feeds on the populist notions of patriotism and nationalism and thus has carefully placed himself as an ‘icon’ from the entertainment industry, which is his own PR success I would say and nothing else. But none of these would stop me from praising his latest venture, Satyamev Jayate. Do not take me wrong. I do see the melodrama. I do see the ‘super HD quality 3G video calling service of Airtel. I do see the orcestrated effort of the show. But I do not mind. Really.

Satyamev Jayate has brought a bit of reality in to the flood of reality shows in Indian television and no one can deny this fact. But of course, no such effort is beyond any criticism, so I read this piece by Madhavankutty Pillai in Open Magazine and another one in The Hindu by Farah Naqvi with great interest and wanted to put in my thoughts on the critique.

But before doing that, let me say that I am quite amused by the attitude of some of the journalists and activists who have been up in arms, not literally but mildly, against the show and Aamir Khan. It seems that they cannot digest the fact that some of them have been doing the work for many years that Aamir is doing now but have never got the attention that the show is getting now. Which makes me wonder whether their interest is in the ‘ownership’ of the issue or the focus on the issue. Some celebrity-colleagues of Aamir have even stooped down to a stage where they got personal about his divorce, his younger brother’s custody case etc (which can be countered of course, but not in this post).

Aamir Khan did not claim that he brought some new issues to attention. In fact, in a recent IBN-Live interview, he has clearly mentioned that he is not doing anything new that some journalists and activists have not done in the past. Like mr. Pillai wrote in his article, “the material [of the show] is being tailored meticulously for the Indian middle class audience that Aamir Khan clearly understands.” But mr. Pillai puts it as a thumbs-down, I see it the perfect way to run this show.

Mr. Pillai (or ms. Naqvi) doesn’t seem to understand that the Indian middle-class is not yet ready for the hard truth. Hitting hard at them, as Pillai observes rightly, would make them turn away from TV. So Aamir does the right thing by giving one dose at a time. India has never seen a TV show like this before, so it cannot be all hard-hitting at it’s first instance. The reach has never been so large. With the advantage of television (this show proves that television is still the most powerful medium in India, even in the era of social media explosion) and the face value of a popular Bollywood star, the issues that the Indian middle-class ignored for long have been brought to the forefront. And remember, with all this limitation of the target audience, he still tried to break some social myths (though while floating on the safe waters – like poverty, urban-rural difference etc) in the show. I think that is a good thing. Melodrama? Tears? Oh, yes. But how else do you reach out to the Saas-Bahu audience?

Pillai’s complaint about not touching the topic of Homosexuality while discussing Harish Iyer’s story is also misplaced. Bringing in homosexuality in that episode and in particular with connection to Harish’s story could end up in the populist notion about homosexuality that it is a result of sexual abuse in the childhood or such mental trauma and can thus be ‘cured’ by a psychologist. But Pillai puts in rightly that the show could have featured fathers molesting their own children. Though Pillai thinks it was because Aamir did not want to alienate his audience, I don’t think how ‘hard-hitting’ it would be than a story of a young boy bleeding his anus from the rape by a relative. That in itself is a big blow to the ‘great Indian family and culture’. There are contrasting views among the critiques as well. Ms. Naqvi says Aamir “missed the point that reproductive decisions are rarely made by women” where as Mr. Pillai says that Aamir did not highlight that “in many cases mothers are a willing party to it“.

I am not saying that the critique from all sides are uncalled for. Moreover, there is no perfect show beyond criticism. But it is a bit early to raise such critique against this show considering that it is only the first season (and I hope there will be more seasons to come). For now, I am looking at the positives. And I like the fact that unlike the so-called demi gods of Hindi cinema who have ventured out on the small screen, Aamir gives more space and face to the issue at hand in every episode. Of course there is melodrama, some truths not completely revealed etc, but that can wait for Reality TV version 2.

As for Aamir Khan’s approach to the show, I am waiting to see if he will ever cover the topics such as homosexuality, caste, religion, atheism, abortion (as ms. Naqvi mentioned) etc in the future episodes. And how he would present them to the middle-class Indians. Now, that will be a real test for him.

(Image courtesy: India Today)

Book review: Bantaism

Bantaism I have a friend who used to text me (and other friends in our local friends group) Sardar jokes. He took great pleasure in sending those texts and we enjoyed reading them. When we met, he always had a few sardar jokes to share. He enjoyed telling each of these sardar jokes and if not us, he had always laughed out aloud on those jokes himself. Rest of us even began to carefully choose other topics to talk about, so we can save ourselves from the sardar jokes. 🙂 But Sardar jokes are just too good to skip. I think what makes them popular is that it has certain amount of innocence to it. Or furthermore, it has a bit of us or our daily life in it. Something that we can relate to. It is this side of Sardar jokes that Niranjan Ramakrishnan is exploring with his book titled, “Bantaism: Philosophy of sardar jokes“.

The book is a collection of sardar jokes with comments from the author on every single joke. Apart from the interesting and funny titles for each story (which are coined by the author himself), I found most of the ‘philosophical’ comments uninteresting and sometimes boring. The reason is obvious. You wouldn’t look for philosophy in time-pass jokes such as sardar jokes. But not all comments are boring and a couple of them does give you some philosophical insights. For example, look at the joke where one sardar in a lion’s costume meets another sardar in a tiger costume. The author draws a parallel to the BPO, call center jobs with this story which makes a lot of sense. Or the lesson on irreversibility with the story of ‘chicken vending machine’. And another one about the sardar who throws himself off the balcony thinking that his wife cheated on him. But considering the whole book, these are very few. Still, you could read the jokes alone if you wanted to skip the comments. If you are fond of sardar jokes and wanted to collect some in printed format, this one is just for you.

In a way, sardar jokes have reflected badly on Sikh community. The jokes have made us, the rest of the Indians, believe that all sardars are idiots or it is easy to trick sardars. But it also sheds some positive light that (though as a variant of idiocy) sardars are pure-hearted, innocent people. Our movies, especially Hindi movies, have always featured them on a positive light. The righteous, happy, pure and open group of people. The author in his introduction to the book treads on the same lines. Little does he mention (perhaps he didn’t want to ruin the mood-setting for the book) about the ‘other’ side of ‘sardarsphere’ that is totally in contrast to the image created by sardar jokes and Hindi movies. Prevalent practices of bonded labour, caste-ism etc in Punjab that Annie Zaidi had explored in her book, Known Turf.

One of the biggest advantage of sardar jokes is that it is crowd-sourced humor. You can tout one of your personal jokes as a sardar joke, just that you would change the main character to a sardar. The scope of sardar jokes is thus limitless. Most recent example of this would be Tintu Mon jokes from Kerala (the difference is that Tintu Mon makes fun of others whereas a sardar is made fool of himself).

Final word is that if you like sardar jokes, you would like this one because it has many popular sardar jokes in collection. But if you were curious to see what philosophy sardar jokes have to offer, well.. there isn’t much. Just enjoy the jokes and keep the book closed.

Title: Bantaism: The Philosophy Of Sardar Jokes
Author: Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Price: Rs. 129

Things that pop on your face

Last week the social media was abuzz with the allegations of an advertisement video being racist. The advertisement is of Popchips snack that has Ashton Kutcher in four different get-ups. One of them has an Indian identity called Raj and he is a Bollywood producer. This has called for a racist allegation by an American of Indian origin Anil Dash and it ended up cooking up a controversy and the company finally pulled off the ad.

The whole drama has so much what-the-fuck-ness to it. I mean, advertisements always project stereotypes to sell the product and we do not always have a problem with it. Stereotypes are everywhere in the pop culture; be it commercials, cinema or music. Only when it goes over the top than usual that people notice and voice against it.

Anil Dash accused the video of being racist because the Indian character Raj is brownfaced and has a thick Indian accent(!). First of all, you would not take an advertisement such as this seriously. There are worse advertisements than this which project stereotypes in the worst manner. Second, there are other people being parodied in the ad, like a British youth or a Southern American hippie or a French fashionista. Southern Americans would have a better reason to complain because in American pop culture and Hollywood, they are always featured as homeless gypsies with a hippie lifestyle who live in mobile home parks. Or even Darl, the man with a fake French(?) accent have a good reason to complain because that is also a highly stereotyped version of men working in the fashion industry. Third, it is not wrong to feature an Indian brownfaced (a color which is generally associated with Asians) and with an Indian accent. So why would a techie like Anil Dash cook up such a controversy over such an ad? This guy is no dumb for sure, so what exactly could have happened?

Just after the launch of this ad series, the CEO of Popchips seems to have said “As a social brand, we’ve had a lot of social engagement. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level with an ad campaign that would provide more reach. [via]” Clearly, like with every commercial, they were looking for more reach. Shortly thereafter, Anil Dash popped up with his allegation that had supportive voices from an Indian origian rap group. Let us look at what Mr. Dash said about the company and it’s people.

“The people behind this ad are not racist. They just made a racist ad.” If that is not enough W-T-F-ness, there is more. Mr. Dash spoke to the CEO whom he calls “sincere and contrite”. He also made a generous gesture that the comapny doesn’t have to pull down the ad but give an explanation of how the process failed. But Mr. Dash who lets the company go scotfree doesn’t forgive the person who acted in it. He said Ashton Kutcher should “personally apologise”.

So what does this drama tell us? The company wanted to get people talking about them and it seems that some people like Anil Dash helped them ahieve the goal of getting enough publicity. That is how people down here in India also got to know about Popchips. Without spending a penny on advertisements outside the U.S., Popchips is now a known name. They can launch any time in India now. Thanks to the social media.

By the way, before alleging the foreigners of being racist, Indians should have a look at their own racist/regional/casteist attitude.

And even more, by the way, why is Ashton’s video is called racist and Shahrukh Khan’s is not?

Adapting to the Indulekha model

Indulekha is a brand that has been churning out so many TVCs recently for their product range. The first series of their advertisements featured popular mini and big screen actors, which was followed up by another series that had ‘reality TV’ sort of feel to it. Their latest series even has a theme and name – uLkkarutthu – and contrary to the direct selling strategy, they have adopted a model that is ‘seemingly’ progressive and feminist in the outset but is pushing certain politics which seems to be the trick of new age marketers and advertising gurus to keep them in business. More on this advt in Kafila and Nalamidam. And do watch the first video of their series here before you read further.

I was thinking what would happen if other businesses have started adopting the Indulekha model. Imagine a barber who cannot afford to have men who do not cut their hair. This will certainly threaten his regular business. So what he really needs to ask for is business but in the new age, he cannot be too direct with it so he has to push certain politics to market his service. And here is what happens when he adopts the Indulekha model.

Nel nome di Cristo

Everything is powerful as long as it is in the powerful hands. The powerless are deluded by the powerful to think they have the power when they actually don’t. That is why we remain happy with our version of democracy or the predictions of India becoming a super power in 20xx. That is also why when the clergy teaches us of the greatness and acceptance of our version of religion makes us happy that we are part of something great, while we actually do not have any role in it. The powerful plays it all – politics, religion, race, caste and what not. And the powerless are only meant to nod their heads and fooled to believe that by doing so, they are playing a larger role. The powerful knows how to work their way though and that is what this news tells us of the fishermen, whose husband/brother were killed in cold blood by the Italian marines, forgiving the accused ‘in the name of Christ’.

There seems to have been a concentrated effort from day 1 to save the Italians of the murder charge. First it was Mar. George Alanchery, the newly crowned Cardinal of Syro Malabar Church, who told the Catholic news agency in Italy that he has instructed the Catholic ministers in Kerala to intervene in the matter. Then came two Italian priests to visit the families of the deceased, which the Church calls ‘a spiritual exercise‘ but believed by everyone else that it was for an out-of-court settlement (why else would two Italian priests come all the way from Italy to pray for the deceased, which doesn’t happen usually unless the deceased are rich and powerful, I wonder). Two Italian ministers followed with their visit to India to find a settlement. Later, the Central government claimed in Supreme Court that the Kerala police doesn’t have jurisdiction to probe the killing, which was slammed by the honorable court.

When all these ‘diplomacy’ through religion and state did not work, the Italians made an offer that the families of deceased could not deny. Even there the religion and faith had to be involved to work the powerful’s way through, so they worked with a couple of influential priests (good work, Fr. Churchill and Fr. Wilfred!) to come to an out-of-court settlement. So the settlement was that the families would state their forgiveness ‘in the name of Christ’ duly signed in a stamp paper and in return they would get Rs. 1 crore each. One of the families’ counsel Jestin Poulose said they had no faith in the government, so the “next best available option” was to at least secure the compensation. Though it is said that the murder case would continue, it wouldn’t be difficult to guess what will happen to the case now with the families have applied to withdraw the petition.

At the end of it all, it seems that in Catholicism, some Christians – especially the white and Italian Christians – are holier than their Indian counterparts. I don’t see why otherwise would the Catholic clergy in Kerala work so hard to secure the two foreign marines accused of murdering their own community members. All these while Sr. Abhaya is still seeking justice.

(Photo courtesy: India Today)