Mard ko dard nahi hota

Boy oh boy! He is a monster when it comes to show of stunts, but is otherwise a softie which makes him adorable. There’s no limit to his daredevilry. My heart does a somersault; every time I see him hop on the TV set placed on a 4-feet tabletop from a 2-feet bed and then dive for the bean bag down on the floor. Like a skilled acrobat, he swiftly tucks his chin in his chest lest he bangs his head on the tiled floor. But, he is not lucky always. One slip and he falls flat. But, is quick to collect himself and sits there with hands folded across his chest, silently. “Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him with my heart in my mouth. “Nope,” comes a stoic reply. I know he is hurt badly, but doesn’t want to show his pain. Oh man, he’s not even four!

“Mard ko dard nahi hota,” rings an old friend’s humorous take on man’s innate behaviour of restraining himself from shedding tears when hurt. He bears the pain to the point of being superhuman -- no matter "how badly he has been beaten or how cruel the torture has been". But, “chot agar dil pe lagi ho to dard hota hai,” says a journo friend, “aur phir dil hi nahi, aankhen bhi zaar-zaar roti hain”. If a heartbroken man says that he is not wounded, he is not bruised and bleeding, then he is lying, he says, citing the case of his close friend, who broke a dozen hearts before meeting the same fate. Tears roll down his cheeks even today while nursing his wounds.
 
Salon terms the year 2010 as the year of tears for men. Citing an attorney, it states how male “machoism dominated early 70's. Men were not supposed to publicly display emotions as it was viewed as a sign of weakness. But stoicism gave way over the years to sensitivity as a desirable male trait, and by 2010, there were few fears for tears left among well-known American men”.

I have seen my father weep at the bidaai of my sister. I understand his crying as it was done at a time and in a particular circumstance that allowed him to lower his guard without the fear of ridicule. I am sure that he wouldn’t be moved enough by a good movie to let a drop out of his tear ducts. Not even by failure or embarrassment. How often we hear moms admonish their little boys, “Stop crying, be a man!” An oft-repeated phrase, ‘be a man’ means to look failure, frailty and fear squarely in the face, and not blink, says a feminist and a writer.
 
But down the years, men have become less inhibited in demonstrating emotions. In fact, we get to see more of this human side of the male now. What was once considered as unmanly, is now being viewed as a quality to have as an asset. The turnaround was ably captured in the Raymond’s ‘complete man’ ad series in 1990's. It broke the stereotypical image of a macho Indian man portrayed in Hindi films. “Raymond actually robbed the man of his mardangi,” says a columnist. And, instead emerged a “sensitive, vulnerable, versatile, caring, intellectual and fun” man. The next decade saw this softer side becoming more pronounced. Images of men crying openly began to fill the small screen space. TV actors left behind the likes of Archana, Tulsi and Parvati in the tear terrain. “It’s cool to cry as it shows that emotions are same for men and women,” says a TV actor. Not only on daily soaps, but also on the reality shows more and more men turned on the waterworks. Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur got so overwhelmed by the performance of a group of physically challenged kids on India’s Got Talent that he couldn’t control his sobbing. Sanjay Dutt -- the icon of macho Bollywood heroes -- wept on the Indian Idol 5 show after hearing the soul stirring AR Rahman’s Sufi number “Khwaja mere khwaja”.

Remember Qutubuddin Ansari! The face that flashed across the world as the face of the Gujarat riots -- eyes welling with tears, face covered with mud and dried blood, and hands folded in a plea for mercy. Or, cricketer Kapil Dev, who broke down on Karan Thapar’s show when asked if he had a role in match-fixing! And, can we ever forget our Men in Blue shedding the tears of joy and jubilation after winning the World Cup? Yes, the man has arrived – mard ko bhi dard hota hai…

The Pillitzer Prize

The Emperor of all maladies? The title clearly belongs to the cancer of politics.

Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for The Emperor of All Maladies, his 'elegant inquiry' into the history and continuing mystique of cancer. Wow. But, while reading about the New Delhi-born, New York-based oncologist's impressive literary achievement, it struck me that our entire news media is about maladies. And the unquestioned emperor of all these is politics.

It wasn't just a coincidence that the biggest headline of not just that day, but the whole week, was about a doctored CD, and the cancer of corruption which has been galloping unchecked across the body politic.

Serious illness means ambulance. Some lawyers are known as ambulance chasers, and there have been whispers that the Bhushan's have been doing just this in the guise of public interest. Their targets make no bones about these two busybodies being a pain in the neck. Some people have an even lower opinion of them. But they have to swallow their bitter PIL.

Like the subject of Dr Mukherjee's book, the Bhushan CD continues to confound the fraternity. Everyone has made it his business to diagnose it, including those who are accused of doctoring it. Pathologist Amar Singh has asked Shanti Bhushan to give a voice sample to establish proof of his paternity. Many suspect that the former SP leader is the one who should be taking the test.

Like allopathic medicos who dismiss any form of alternative medicine as hocus poke-us, the ruling politicos have branded Homeopath Hazare as a dangerous quack who will cause severe, long-term damage to the system. They say we must ignore his bogus white pills, and leave the treatment of corruption to those with a proper MP degree.

However, alarmed by the multiple organ failure caused by this galloping cancer, more and more people are beginning to place their faith in Anna-ji's grassroots prescription. So what if he's not that kind of pharma?

Shanti and Prashant Bhushan are a father and son team. This is common practice in law. As it is in medicine. Politics is even more genetically engineered. Biwi, bahu, beta are all symptoms or side effects. Since even chacha-bhanja causal links are found, the practice of this cancer is sometimes known as Uncology.

The deep-rooted cancers of the body politic have compromised its immunity, and also made it more susceptible to external factors. The very day that Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee was chosen for the Pulitzer, in faraway Ratnagiri, virulent protests against the Jaitapur plant exposed the already ravaged government to the hazards of unclear radiation.

Political maladies manifest themselves differently at different times. Parts of the country are now in the grip of a poll fever. Following textbook epidemiology, it was preceded by a rash of campaigning, blistering allegations, and bouts of violent attacks. Medical opinion differs on the best way to get it to subside or prevent it from assuming a virulent, or even fatal, form. But most agree that the best bet not only for diagnosis, but even treatment is the EC-ji.

Now that it is well established that politics is the emperor of all maladies, it follows that New Delhi's biggest hospital should be headed by a Dr Singh. Several expressers of mock concern have been suggesting that the Prime Medico himself needs a good orthopaedic surgeon to tackle his apparently weak knees and spine. The more aggressive say he needs complete replacement. Hopefully it won't come to that. We might mention that here, as in all hospitals, it's the Matron who actually calls the shots.

What after the Jasmine fades?

Democracy remains a distant goal in the Middle East, with many pitfalls on the way.

Images of democracy in motion make for intoxicating television. The kid next to the soldier with his tank at Tahrir Square, the exhausted rebel in a Libyan desert and women and children out in Bahrain's Pearl Square. Next stop, democracy, the footage suggests as anchors hurtle to keep pace with the compelling images and churn out the two-minute revolution theory.

The painful truth is that the path to Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen emerging as western-style democracies could be torturous and long. And even worse for places like Bahrain and other rich Emirates where civil society has suddenly discovered it has a political mind.

A look at the map of West Asia shows many straight lines drawn across the barren deserts by European powers and civil servants in London to create nations that suited the post-colonial foreign policy needs of colonisers. Little heed was paid to the demographic heterogeneity of the region where an artificial nationality negotiated with the local satrap was imposed on the people. Since then, most countries have lived under autocratic rulers at best and tyrannical at worst. Nasser in Egypt was anti-imperial but not a democrat.

By far the most peaceful and educated civil society in the region is that of Egypt's. But even there, few institutions exist. The heads of state have donned military colours and have exterminated critics and opposition with the help of an all-powerful secret police and perpetrated a regime of fear. Corruption is endemic, made evident by the Baksheesh culture that permeates all layers of officialdom; courts are arranged to favour the powerful and the upper middle class lives in negotiated comfort with the military. Will all this disappear in one fell swoop? Unlikely. Too many vested interests are entrenched, the biggest among them, the politico-military. Egypt is the best place to make the transition, though. It does have a parliament, a body of legislative rules and a set of laws that the courts can use.

Take the case of Libya, where US intervention looks menacingly like George Bush's regime change war in Iraq. Barack Obama has taken care to broaden Nato involvement but the first few rounds of US attacks muddied the waters and gave Muammar Gaddafi international oxygen to breathe fire against 'American Imperialists'. It's hard to sympathise with Gaddafi, but lifting all forms of control, undemocratic as they may be, will push Libya into violent chaos and reopen tribal faultlines. That the anarchy could be taken advantage of by Islamic extremists isn't unlikely, and dismantling the military overnight will remove a bulwark against mushrooming of terror outfits. The removal of the dictator will create a political vacuum in a country where no political elite barring Gaddafi loyalists has been allowed to flourish. Unlike Syria, where thanks to the Ba'ath Party, the political base is a tad wider, Libya has no second-rung of leadership to fall back on barring tribal leaders and military commanders.

In Syria, where tens of thousands are sitting in for Bashir Assad's ouster, the topography is even more complicated. Despite being overwhelmingly Sunni, Syria is a mosaic of competing faiths and cultures that have been papered over by a socialistic-sounding political system represented by the Ba'ath Party. If the order crumbles, it would expose chasms between the Christians, the Alawis, the Druze, the Ismailiyas and even the Greek Orthodox group. Flux in Syria could also lead to regional complications. The Damascus regime is viewed by many as a cat's paw for Iranian interests. Help to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, locked in a protracted war with Israel, also comes from Damascus and the Assads have a fair amount of clout in how the political structure in the fractured neighbour is arranged. It's insane to predict how things would shape up if Assad falls but violence is a fair certainty.

It's a shame that Bashir Assad didn't loosen up the political system fast enough to prevent this. The breakneck pace at which protests seem to be spreading won't leave him room for gradual change. That apart, the worst fear is that these regimes will fall in the hands of Islamic hardliners. That may or may not happen but the ground is fertile for such an outcome. In countries where regimes have been traditionally repressive, the mosques tend to transform into political arenas where dissidents and critics meet. That apart, the separation of the church and state isn't obligatory even in Islamic democracies.

Lastly, where the legitimacy of the existing ruler is destroyed by a public upsurge and there isn't any clear political succession in the works, clerics could assume leadership roles where none existed for them previously. Human societies crave order, and in situations of strife, clerics promising stability, whatever the terms of such an order are, could gain a mass following.

In Indonesia, when the 1997 Asian economic turmoil eroded dictator Suharto's credibility and finally caused his downfall, the leader of the tolerant Muslim country's largest religious movement, the Nahdnatul Ulama, Abdurrahman Wahid, was nominated as the successor. That Gus Dur, as he was popularly known, was a moderate leader with great respect for the minorities, helped Indonesia complete a transition to a modern parliamentary democracy that subsequently elected liberal leaders like Megawati Sukarnoputri as president. But that's not an outcome that's going to follow if in a vacuum, political space is usurped by religious hardliners with a conservative Islamic vision of civil society.

Coaching Classes: A parallel universe of education

It is unregulated, unorganised, and its profits can be the envy of some of the best and the biggest business houses in the country. And though it does not officially bear the tag of an ‘industry’, its growth, even during times of recession, can make the most pampered sectors in the corporate sector see green. There are no official estimates, but insiders say the total revenue in their business is close to Rs 10,000 crore which, incidentally, is only for class room coaching; home and online tutoring is said to be worth another Rs 20,000 crore. This is the world of shadow education in India — a segment that’s emerging stronger and larger with every passing year.

The coaching classes market, or ‘sweat schools’ as they are often referred to, consists largely of private tuitions and entrance test-preparations. But the sector, though huge, is highly fragmented and regional in nature. There are a handful of players (three to four) who are known to have an all-India presence and are worth more than Rs 100 crore.

Another 10-odd can boast of revenues in the range of Rs 10-100 crore. The rest, and the number runs into thousands even if we do not take into consideration the small momand-pop enterprises doing home tutoring, make healthy revenues of several lakhs.

Not surprisingly, even as the existing players are trying to consolidate, international ones - like Educomp - are jumping into the fray, hoping to expand in a big way as they are in a position to make more substantial investments.

UNLISTED, IN THE SHADOWS

Listed players in this segment, however, are still just a handful — Aptech, Career-Point, NIIT and Everonn - and have captured only about two per cent of the private education market. Interestingly, not all players are looking merely at private tutoring or coaching; many of them provide information technologies to schools or build brick-and mortar schools and colleges.

A large part of this sector continues to operate in the shadows. No regulatory restrictions on profitability, low capital intensity and a quick payback period of two-five years are the main growth drivers on the supply side. On the demand side, shortage of jobs, cutthroat competition for higher education, parental aspirations combined with underperforming mainstream educational infrastructure have led to the ever-growing appetite for supplementary education.

But whatever its name and nature - home tuitions, classroom coaching, study material source or online classes - demand seems to be on the rise for these ‘cram’ shops. No stream is sacred, no area untouched. Name an entrance exam and there is coaching available to help you ‘crack’ it. Engineering, medicine, management and civil services may be the more popular exams for which students undergo training, but think of any possible career, or the most obscure test, and chances are there will be some institute offering ‘training’ for it.

Even creative fields like art, where you would think coaching would be of little use, throw up a proliferation of trainers. Be it the prestigious National School of Design or, for that matter, even fashion designing, you can get coached for it. And it’s not just college and school going students who are the clients, even tiny-tots are in the net, getting ‘coached’ to make the right moves and noises to get admission into nursery classes of reputed schools.

BIG COSTS, LITTLE GUARANTEE

In the race to get ahead, everyone wants to maximise their potential, and this is where the coaching industry steps in. But none of this is easy on the purse; it comes at a substantial investment and with little or no guarantees of a positive outcome. One can even end up paying more in coaching fees than in expenses for the actual course one is preparing for. In fact, the amount spent on coaching and various affiliated needs may be higher than what they have to pay in terms of fees at, say, an IIT, which is about Rs 50,000 a year.

Students start training for engineering and medical entrance examinations from class XI onwards, sometimes earlier at class IX. While some go from bigger cities to training institutes in smaller places like Kota and Pala that have become coaching hubs, there is a parallel trend that sees students from small towns trudge to metros in search of better institutes.

Similarly, private tuitions at the school level are equally prohibitive. And, ironically, this sometimes happens when it is the same teacher holding forth both at the child’s school and tutorial. A number of such teachers double up as tutors after school hours — and going by the accounts of some of the students, teaching skills improve considerably in the latter. What is worrisome, though, is that some teachers penalise students in various ways for not availing of the tuition facility.

Though, in a certain way, coaching centres can be seen as something that helps break the hegemony of elite academic institutions by allowing access to students from humble backgrounds to better course material and training — thus allowing for a level-playing field — the high costs involved can put some of the same students at an immediate disadvantage, leading to further inequity in the system.

HYPER-DEMAND FUELS RACE

In all this, the hyper-demand for better learning ensures there is coaching even to get into some sought after coaching institutes which, in turn, hold their own examinations and screen students before admitting them. Just to give an idea in terms of numbers, the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination, one of the largest such exercises in the world, is taken by about 12 lakh students, 80 per cent of whom take some sort of coaching for it.

After engineering, it is the medical and management streams, along with civil services and tutorials for SAT and GRE (examinations required to study in the US), that garner the most number of students. There are several others forming a smaller part of the pie.

Matching the growing number of students in search of the ‘right’ coaching centre are the institutes, making it difficult for many to home in on the perfect ones. Compounding this are the blatantly false claims doing the rounds; students can never be too sure what they are getting into. In June this year, the battle between two Mumbai based institutes escalated so much that it reached the police. It happened after one of them put out an advertisement saying some students who had failed to clear entrance examinations after enrolling in other institutes (which they named) did so after being trained by them. In another case last year, two competing institutes training MBAs took their differences to the Advertising Council over false claims. Again, this year, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had to intervene and order an inquiry regarding claims made over the success of a 2009 IIT topper.

Students have few avenues for recourse in case anything goes wrong. More often than not they are asked to pay upfront for the entire duration of the session; they cannot change their mind midway and ask for a refund. Many talk about the interesting modus operandi some of these classes adopt. Through internal selection, they pick out the brighter students and form a separate class which is mentored and tutored by their best teachers.

The others, meanwhile, are taught by mediocre teachers who are mere graduates or have failed to clear the very examination they are tutoring others for. Though selective tutoring helps institutes raise their ‘success rate’, bringing in more numbers, the larger group of students suffers.

For teachers, at least a majority of them, it is a win-win situation. Many on an average make up to Rs 2, 000 an hour. The best among them are known to command a staggering Rs 5, 000 an hour. Teaching for 10 hours a day, that’s a neat package of Rs 50, 000 per day. But this pales in comparison to the money the institutes make from every batch that may have anywhere from 35 to 150 students. The market for civil services coaching - an exam in which around 1.5 lakh candidates from all over India appear - in only Delhi is estimated to be about Rs 100 crore with students paying Rs 30, 000-45, 000 for a three to five month course.

BASIC EDUCATION GAP

Problems notwithstanding, it is easy to see what drives this phenomenal bazaar - the yawning gap between the learning imparted through our basic education system and the level of entrance examinations. “We operate in the valley that has been formed between academic standards in the mainstream system and the competitive standard of entrance examinations of various professional courses,” says the head of a coaching institute.

Occasionally, there are voices of opposition against this parallel universe of education, protesting the larger principle of it and the way it operates and impacts the mainstream education system. Both government and educationists grumble about it and say things that suggest the monster will be tamed and regulated. But on the ground it remains business as usual.

In 2006, IIT-JEE — the joint entrance examination held for Indian Institutes of Technologies — changed its test pattern after it was felt that students were spending too much time in coaching classes and ignoring their class XI and XII examination, negatively impacting their chances for other avenues. It was also found that almost 70 per cent of students who cleared the IIT-JEE in 2005 had dropped a year or more. Faculty at IIT's added that students who qualified for these institutes were burnt out by the time they entered the class rooms due to the years of preparation, and did not eventually perform well.

Starting next year, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will ring in changes in the civil services exams that will reduce the importance of coaching by introducing an aptitude test instead of a subject-specific test.

But none of this seems to have made much of a dent on the coaching sector. True to its ‘shadowy’ character, it morphs and adapts accordingly, and continues to flourish. In anticipation of the UPSC change, coaching institutes have already started advertising and conducting classes for the aptitude test. They claim they can “bring out” the aptitude in students who don’t know “how to gauge it”. As for the JEE, the government is planning to increase the weightage given to performance of students in class XII. It is even considering an aptitude test for screening purposes before holding intense subject-specific exams.

NEED FOR REGULATION

But there is little else that is being done on the regulation front. Despite its formidable size and expanse, something that can bring the government good revenue, the sector functions mostly in an unregulated manner. The fact that these coaching shops do not qualify as educational institutions means they do not need to register with the government and can operate off the radar, unchecked and unquestioned. The government accepts it is concerned about the impact of this industry, but hasn’t done much.

Till such time that the concern translates into action, the world of shadow education will continue to attract in unending hordes students both desperate and ambitious, hoping for success in a new India that rewards like never before.

Unfriendly persuasion

Even more than our choice of enemies, it's our choice of unfriends which reveals what we are....

Recently I was introduced to a fascinating new word: unfriend. The word, a verb, comes from the social networking site called Facebook and it means turning a Facebook 'friend' - or someone you keep in touch with through the site - into an 'unfriend', someone whom you find so utterly objectionable that you no longer wish to have anything to do with the person. Being computer illiterate I don't do Facebook (or Twitter, or YouTube, or any of those other e-things) and I'd never come across the term 'unfriend' before. But the moment I heard it, it struck me as being a word particularly apt for our times.

Unfriend. The 'un' prefix gives it a unilateralism that brooks no argument or compromise. An 'unfriend' sounds like those 'un-persons' of the Soviet bloc in the days of Stalinism, people deemed to be so beyond any hope of political redemption that their names were deleted from all official records and their faces removed from group photographs. Soviet un-persons were like human black holes; they were literally sucked out of existence. An un-person was not someone who'd once been a person and was no longer such (i.e., someone who'd once been alive and was now dead); an un-person was a no-one who'd never existed. Similarly, an unfriend suggests not just someone who was once your friend but is no longer so - is now in fact your foe, as opposed to friend - but is someone who for you has no existence whatsoever, neither as friend nor foe.

We tend to think in pairs of opposites, with each side of the pair reaffirming the existence of the other. So yin reaffirms its opposite of yang. Light reaffirms dark, and friend reaffirms foe, and vice versa. Your foe, or your enemy, reaffirms your existence - often more than your friends do - even as you reaffirm the existence of your adversary.

A prime example of an interdependent pair of foes is provided by Pakistan and India. Pakistan needs to have India as its adversary, because if it didn't it would lose its own identity which is premised on the fact that it is 'not-India'. Likewise, India needs Pakistan as its arch opponent. Because if we didn't have Pakistan who would we accuse of cross-border terrorism (as distinct from home-grown terrorism represented by Maoists and Abhinav Bharat), play cricket against, and wrangle with over Kashmir? If Pakistan didn't have India and India didn't have Pakistan, whom would Afridi have cussed after the World Cup, and whom would Indian fans have gloated over after beating Sri Lanka in the finals?

Of course it was Sri Lanka we beat to take the World Cup. But gloat over Sri Lanka? Where's the fun in that? No, instead we'll gloat over Pakistan, which has always been our favourite scape-gloat.

A nation is known by the enemies it keeps. So too are people. Those whom we oppose, and who oppose us in turn, help us to identify us to ourselves, even more so perhaps than our allies might do. There's no getting away from them; we need our enemies, as much as they need us. Reliable enemies - like India and Pakistan - are hard to find and it would be not just foolish but detrimental to self-preservation to unfriend our best foes.

So whom should we unfriend? Whom should I unfriend? Who is so undesirable in every way, so detrimental to my existence from day to day? The answer to that in 2011 Anna Domini is obvious: the scamsters and swindlers who've pushed this country into the abyss of moral bankruptcy. Yep. I can safely unfriend the corrupt. Press the 'Delete' button on them. Whom to start with? Who do I know firsthand, and not through hearsay or media reports to be involved in graft, who's certainly given bribes though he mightn't have received any? Delete the person? Unfriend him? Done. Deleted.

Yikes. I think i've just unfriended myself.

On secular fatwas

Human rights activists are not shy about bringing their own prejudices to the table.

The disdain with which leading lights of the Anti-Corruption movement - Mallika Sarabhai, Medha Patkar, Kavita Srivastava et al - are publicly threatening to dislodge Anna Hazare from the leadership role because he praised Narendra Modi's rural development work in Gujarat indicates that the poor man was only being used as a convenient symbol that can be discarded as arbitrarily as he was chosen to lead the 'movement'.

Human rights activists can retain their credibility only as long as they remain steadfastly non-partisan. To the person killed, it matters little whether the murderous mob was shouting 'Lal Salaam', 'Har Har Mahadev' or 'National Unity' as did the mobs that massacred over 10,000 Sikhs in north India following Indira Gandhi's assassination. However, the secular brigade shows a consistent soft corner for those who kill under the Maoist or Communist banner as well as those who verbally profess secularism.

Narendra Modi's acts of commission and omission during the 2002 riots deserve the strongest of condemnations. Those crimes need to be impartially investigated and the guilty punished. Just as we are proud that our democratic system ensured a fair trial even for a publicly identified ISI-associated terrorist like Kasab, so also we should let the courts take the Gujarat trials to their logical conclusions.

Those who ask for Modi's head would do well to remember that hordes of Congressmen in Gujarat gleefully joined the BJP and RSS goons who went around massacring innocent people.

The overall track record of the Congress in this matter is no better, if not much worse, than that of the BJP. In addition to the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in north India, it masterminded numerous other riots through the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. None of the killers of politically engineered riots in Meerut, Malliana, Bhiwandi, Bhagalpur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat and scores of others were ever punished. The Congress also injected terrorism into Punjab by its covert support of Bhindranwale's Khalistani brigades in order to wrest control of the SGPC that presides over well-endowed gurdwaras. It did incalculable harm to the Sri Lankan Tamils by creating a Frankenstein's monster like the LTTE. The secessionist movement in Kashmir owes its origins and draws sustenance from the Congress party's penchant for rigging elections to install puppet chief ministers.

And yet, even those of us who genuinely want to see the guilty among Congress leaders pay for their crimes do recognise that there is a lot more to this premier national party than a legacy of mayhem and massacres. There are times when the Congress party has actually lived up to the highest values of Indian democracy and some of our best contemporary politicians have emerged from the Congress fold.

Due to their ideological predilections and cosy relationship with the Congress high command, most of those attacking Hazare have a history of acting as the fighting arm of the Congress against Modi and the BJP. But to declare Hazare a political untouchable because he is not as ideologically committed to their brand of secularism is to display deadly arrogance. One earns the moral right to criticise only when one has the moral courage to acknowledge the positive aspects or good deeds of those we condemn for specific evil actions. One should be able to condemn Modi for his role in the 2002 massacre and point to his many other blind spots and lapses, without feeling the need to deny his positive role in Gujarat leading the country in many vital areas such as assured power supply to all villages, measures for bringing down the maternal mortality rate by providing financial and other support for safe deliveries to poor women, and a 9.8% growth rate in agriculture while the rest of the country remains stuck at 2-3% growth. It is one of the few states where farmers at large are not at war with industry, where delivery mechanisms for government services have improved dramatically.

The manner in which Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, the vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom of Deoband, was humiliated and asked to resign for stating that the development agenda of Modi is benefiting Muslims in equal measure shows that the 'secular' gang has acquired a vested interest in promoting a siege mentality among Muslims. The man they condemn as the 'maut ka saudagar' seems to have recognised the folly of promoting communal polarisation. He has not let another riot take place in Gujarat, a state which witnessed numerous caste and communal riots under Congress rule. In recent years, hundreds of Muslims have won municipal elections on BJP tickets. Democracy with its one-person, one-vote principle has tamed Narendra Modi. But those who don't need to get endorsement for their political posturing from citizens on whose behalf they speak, are not amenable to such self-correcting mechanisms.

The task of cleansing our polity of crime and corruption is not a battle between demons and angels. It requires taking the entire spectrum of political opinion on board including those who support Maoists or vote for Modi. Such a task cannot be done by those who harbour blind prejudice, and partisan agendas. It is best done by people of compassion, and humility; people who remain fair and non-partisan even when dealing with those they hate.

School for scamdal

Is Pakistan smarter than India? It would appear so. Compare the export initiative shown by the two countries. Over the years, Pakistan has become extremely proficient at exporting its biggest product. Indeed, Pakistan has become the world's leading exporter of this product, having some time ago overtaken Saudi Arabia, which previously occupied the top slot in this export category that constitutes one of the fastest growing industries in the world today: TERRORISM.

Pakistan is widely acknowledged to be the world's biggest and most efficient exporter of terrorism, a fact known only too well by India which constitutes one of the largest captive markets for Islamabad's main product line. Through aggressive marketing, aimed mainly at the US, Pakistan has turned a dangerous liability into a lucrative asset which helps to keep an otherwise bankrupt economy afloat. By supposedly being America's chief frontline ally in Washington's `war on terror' and its so-called AfPak policy, Islamabad annually extracts billions of dollars from the US. This money, which is meant to be earmarked for anti-terrorist operations is in fact diverted into acquiring more arms for use against India and in setting up more terrorist training camps in Pakistan, the alumni of which will be Islamabad's pawns in its 'proxy war' against New Delhi.

Few marketing experts could have devised a better business model than Pakistan's ISI has done. True, of late there have been a few problems relating to production and distribution systems that have gone awry. Like those `export-reject' garments that turn up in cut-price domestic markets, some of Pakistan's terrorist consignments seem to be boomeranging right back where they came from. Among the notable victims of such `export-reject' terror coming home to roost have been Benazir Bhutto, Punjab governor Salman Taseer and Pakistan's minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, the latter two having been targeted for their vocal opposition to the country's anti-blasphemy laws by which those who renounce Islam can be awarded the death penalty.

However, barring such incidents of collateral damage, Pakistan seems to have done well for itself through its terror industry. How does India shape up in comparison? The answer is: not well at all. Though India has enormous potential, it has failed to tap foreign markets for its own special product. Though many people, including the prime minister, have described the Maoists as the biggest single security threat to the country, and despite secessionist organisations like ULFA and the rise of the so-called `saffron terror', gun-toting terrorism is not the product India specialises in. We specialise in another kind of terrorism: financial terrorism. Except that we don't call it by that name. We call it SCAMS.

Is there any country in the world which produces scams - hawala, fodder, stamp paper, CWG, Adarsh, 2G, Isro - at the rate India seems to? As a nation, we should demand inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records as the country with the highest scam count in the world. You name it, we'll scam it, seems to be our motto. There appears to be no end to our ingenuity for scamming. Why, then, haven't we done what Pakistan has done with terror? Why haven't we exported our scams - and our scamsters - to foreign countries?

The export ministry needs to see how best to incentivise scamming. For instance, indicted scamsters might be granted amnesty if they undertake to relocate to any other country which will have them. Further, like Islamabad which extracts protection money from Washington using the threat of terror, New Delhi could extract similar hafta from the international community using the threat of exported scams. Indeed, as suggested by the case of Rajat Gupta, the Indian-American financial wizard who has been accused of insider trading by the US authorities, the Indian school of scamdal might have already scored its first success.