HOLY COWS AND LOOSE CANNONS- THE DUFFER ZONE CHRONICLES.

 

I am delighted to convey that my latest book (seventh!) has been released this week by AUTHORS UPFRONT/ PARANJOY. It is a compendium of my writings over the last three years or so and, as the title suggests, the pieces take aim at some of our less than admirable personalities and practices.

                                 

I am of the firm view that life gives us two types of experiences- the serious and the funny. The secret of retaining one's sanity lies in looking at both with the same lens, but bifocal ones. We should look at the comical and ridiculous side of the serious experience, and at the serious side of the funny one. That way you balance out both the experiences and live life on an even keel, not veering off to either extreme (which is the mistake most of us make!). That is what the observations and commentaries in the pieces in this book seek to do, whether they deal with the pomposity of politicians, the mysteries of the judiciary, the inertia of bureaucracy, the prostrating of the media, the intolerance of society, the indifference of celebrities, or the self serving hypocrisy of self-appointed "influencers."

I could tell you more about the book, but will defer to Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar- author, columnist, ex-Union Minister and self-confessed maverick - who has penned a superlative Foreword to the book and has done a much better job of introducing the book than I ever could. So, given below are some extracts from Mani's Foreword: 

Avay Shukla is to Indian writing what James Thurber and Art Buchwald combined were to American funny bone journalism. Another way of describing him might be to say "Bernard Levin meets Private Eye." But perhaps both comparisons are unfair. For Avay stands alone. Neither we nor the world has ever seen anyone like him. He brings wisdom wrapped in wit. Always a delight to read, once you stop laughing, it dawns on you that what he has said is not just hilarious, it is deeply perceptive and hits the issue right in the solar plexus......

He is the master of the putdown. Writing of one of the saffron brigade's "intellectuals", one S. Sanyal, a "historian and alleged economist", Avay Shukla advises Mr. Sanyal to "stick to history, where he cannot do much damage since it all happened long before him!" Of a book on our revered PM as a child, titled Bal Narendra, Avay says "you can find it on Amazon under the category Fairy Tales/Mythology. If you don't want to buy the hard copy, you can read it on Swindle." And referencing the Home Minister's assertion that frying pakodas on street corners is also 'employment', Shukla advises that "he is waiting for some political party to make the pakoda its party symbol." He doesn't spare himself either. After retirement from the IAS, says Shukla, while examining options for a comfortable sinecure, " a ticket to fight elections was also explored through some Shuklas out on bail in various cases. None of it worked for a good reason: why should any political party offer a ticket to a retired joker when there are so many serving ones lining up?"....

He wields the pen like a rapier, his satire is akin to a curved dagger, his parody a hidden claw. He tops off his thrusts with telling quotes from not only Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and others, but also limericks and pop songs to exclaim 'touche' as the point of his (s)word play finds its target. I loved his reciting these lines in a column that mentions Darwin:

"Said Mother Monkey to her little one

As she swung on her tail,

It's just a matter of time

Before you become a Professor at Yale!"

As a resident of Himachal Pradesh, his muse is the new MP and cine-star, Kangana Ranaut:

"My worry is that Ms Ranaut's oomph in such close proximity to the high mountains of Mandi, Manali and Lahoul- Spiti, with their glaciers and snowfields, might hasten their melting.".....

I would commend to the reader Avay's reflections on whether he should become a 'divorce consultant' on retirement although this seems unremunerative in an India where the divorce rate of one percent contrasts with the US divorce rate of 50%. He comforts himself with the thought that "as long as the institution of marriage exists, divorce will continue to flourish, for, as Groucho Marx said, 'The main cause of divorce is marriage!' " Avay's command over the subtleties of the English language and the treasure trove of its literature become tools of gut-wrenching, side-splitting laughter in the footsteps of P. G. Wodehouse. Two excellent examples are his 'Bed and Breakfast (Bail Complementary)' [2022] and, if you are not too prudish, his 2023 masterpiece, 'Of Testaments, Testicles and Telling Times.'

But , unlike Wodehouse whose only purpose as 'the performing flea of English literature' [Evelyn Waugh] was to bring the sunshine of Blandings castle into the lives of his millions of readers, Avay's is a crusade to remind us in the Modi Era of the liberal values we are fast losing, the secularism now abandoned as the PM becomes the 'fifth Shankaracharya', seamlessly "blending politics and religion in one supreme individual", the threats to the institutions of our democracy, the idiocy of economic policies like demonetization. He does this, not by thundering polemics, but by provoking a guffaw......

And occasionally, as when he writes of 'near-death experiences', and particularly when he addresses environmental issues, he can be very serious indeed. His reminiscences of trekking on Himachal's high Himalayan trails are an evocative encomium to beauty and Nature and the bliss of solitude.

For all those distressed by the current condition of our polity and the abandonment of 'the idea of India' that guided both our Freedom Movement and the first six and a half decades of nation building, with a Constitution that proscribed the state from having any religion and promoted instead compassion towards our minorities as the hallmark of a civilized nation, and the poor and the historically disadvantaged as the focus of national resurgence, Avay Shukla reminds us, as The Reader's Digest once used to do, that 'Laughter is the Best Medicine.' I commend to you this collection of columns that laughs away our problems while restoring to us our sense of common humanity.....

After this Foreword the book certainly needs no further introduction!

Finally, let me wrap this up with what the incomparable Arun Shourie has to say about it:

Avay Shukla is quite the best, by many-a-mile. He teaches us to look. He makes us laugh. One moment he makes us fume at rulers. The next he makes us furious at our own inertness. Commentaries that will be rivalled only by the next collection of Avay's writings.

HOLY COWS AND LOOSE CANNONS- THE DUFFER ZONE CHRONICLES

PUBLISHED BY AUTHORS UPFRONT- PARANJOY

229 PAGES

RS. 595 ( paperback)

PUBLISHED APRIL 2025

ALSO ON AMAZON  at   https://amzn.in/d/gb9sbrr 

TIME TO BOOK YOUR CONDO ON MARS ?

 Elon Musk has just declared that there will be one million humans living on Mars by 2045. Perfect timing, you will agree, because by then Trump would have digested Greenland, Panama, the Gaza Riviera, maybe even Canada, and would, like Alexander the Great, be shedding tears because by then there would  be no new real estate left for him to conquer on Earth. The resort on Mars would be called-what else?- Mars-a-Lago. One is not aware whether the Martians have been consulted on the little matter of forcible occupation of their planet, or whether they would be deported to Saturn, but we shall doubtless get to know shortly the next time Pete Eggshead, the Defence Secretary, leaks their classified chats on Telegram. But this inter stellar land grab raises other important questions.

                                     

 

How would this one million horde be selected ? It has been rumored that DOGE (aka DOUCHE) had considered setting up a Guantanamo Bay type of facility there for deporting illegal migrants. But someone pointed out that with 2.29 million potential Indian deportees, Mars could soon become a Khalistan or Hindu Rashtra, and so the idea was dropped. Instead, since Hamas refuses to play ball or catch-the-grenade in Gaza, the Jared Kushner idea of a new Riviera would be shifted to Mars and the world's billionaires invited to move to its unpolluted, land-mine free, unbombed environs, the fifty-second state of the USA.                        Considering the success of Trump's Gold Card offer (1000 were sold on the first day at one million dollars each, we learn) a similar model could be followed, with a ten million dollar price tag, perhaps. Since only SpaceX rockets would be used, Musk would get half of the revenues, with which he could shore up Tesla's plummeting share prices and pay the alimony to the additional half a dozen wives he would have acquired by then. Going by Space X's current record, about 40% of the space ships would blow up in space along with their occupants but there would be no refunds since space has neither any gravity nor any expiry date.

So, who would comprise this one million ? Not many Americans, I predict, because by then they would all have been reduced to penury under Trump's MABA ("Make America Broke Again") policy and would be unable to pay for the ticket. Putin and Netanyahu may want to go but could face arrest under the ICJ warrants when they land on Mars, so they are unlikely to apply. Many from the South Pacific- Tonga, Vanuatu, Fiji- would be interested since by then their islands would be drowning in the rising sea levels. Unfortunately, they wouldn't have enough sea-shells to pay for the tickets. But by far the biggest catchment area would be India, which by then would have a GDP of 35 trillion dollars, according to our Ministers, and about a thousand billionaires and a million Ultra-HNI's as a consequence of the Viksit Bharat programmes. Since roughly 40 % of our GDP is siphoned off to make these billionaires, and another 25% taken abroad by the thousands of millionaires who take foreign citizenship every year, there should be no shortage of applicants from India. Reason? There would be no ED, CBI, FCRA, Interpol or extradition rules on Mars, the only rule being "what you grab is what you get". There would also be no political parties or judges to "voluntarily" donate money to. I believe certain eminent absconders from Gujarat-where else?- have already sent feelers to Musk to check whether dhokla will be served on the flight. There should be a good chance of that, I should think, since the airport contract on Mars will probably be awarded to the Adani group once all Indian import duties are removed on Tesla in the national interest: Musk can make rockets but not dhokla, you see.

But one problem still has to be sorted out by the new Sheriff in town: who will Mars belong to? There exists an international treaty on the sharing of the Antarctic for research purposes, I learn, but none for Mars. So the USA will lay claim to it based on the oldest covenant of all: "Finder's Keepers." Plus, Trump is likely to demand the planet as compensation for America having been left out of the first wave of global colonisation in the 18th and 19th centuries when England, France, Portugal, Spain and Belgium had carved out the world amongst themselves like a Thanksgiving turkey. Well, that particular chicken has now come home to roost- on Mars. It's COLAnisation time again, folks!

Advance bookings for the condos, I believe, will begin on the day that Mr. Drumpf is sworn in as President for the third time, with Vice President Musketeer looking on. Looks like Gurgaon and DLF will finally get some competition.

BEYOND THE DIPLOMATESE - DARWIN WAS RIGHT , IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE.

 The generally received wisdom is that international affairs is so arcane a subject that it should be left to experts and diplomats to interpret. Which they usually do in language that no one understands. But even that is fine so long as we can make sense of the moves on the global chessboard. That is not, however, the case today, post-Trump, as we see the global order unravelling before our eyes, open licence being granted for slaughter of innocents, the legitimisation of a new era of colonisation and genocide. We would, therefore, be justified in feeling that the future of billions cannot be left to the mercy of diplomats, just as war cannot be left only to Generals for, as Shylock asked: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" The world is bleeding now, and we, the common citizen, have every right to ask: What the hell is happening?

The world is now dominated, and dictated to, by three unscrupulous leaders; one has been convicted on 34 counts of felony and would have been in jail if only the American Democrats had played their cards better, the other two are alleged war criminals, accused of  crimes against humanity for whom arrest warrants have been issued by the ICC. They have now joined forces to carve out the world amongst themselves, in a macabre replay of the Yalta Conference of February 1945. But whereas Yalta marked the end of a period of violence and killing, this new meeting of minds marks the beginning of a period of renewed killings and oppression.

These three have completely upended the rules-based international order (RBO), which has more or less governed international relations since the UN came  into existence on 24th October, 1945. The use of the veto and military power has ensured that the RBO has been replaced by the law of the jungle- open annexation of sovereign territories, blatant genocide, forcible grabbing of mineral resources. Putin will be gifted Ukraine as the main course and can help himself to Eastern Europe and the Baltics as dessert, while Trump gets his Akhand America and Netanyahu swallows up most of the Middle-east. China will probably pocket Taiwan and all the islands within the nine dash line.

International cooperation, and the organisations meant to ensure this, are as good as dead. The United Nations has been put in moth-balls, for all the influence it has on the world now. It's just a debating club now, and not even in the same league as the Oxford Union Debating Society. It's impotence has been underlined by the fact that Israel- a member state- has banned the entry of the Secretary-General into the country, killed more than 200 of its staff, disallowed the functioning of its aid organisations like UNRWA in Gaza, attacked its schools, hospitals and refugee camps, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Working for UNRWA can now get one arrested and deported in the USA. The ICC arrest warrants and orders to end genocide in Gaza are not worth the paper they are written on- in fact, Netanyahu has now extended the genocide to the West Bank and the USA is issuing sanctions against the judges of the ICJ! The WTO is in a shambles with Trump imposing unilateral tariffs and other countries retaliating in similar fashion. The WHO is facing collapse with the USA backing out, ditto for any effective climate Accord as the world's largest polluter disassociates itself from climate change agreements and expands its fossil fuel extraction.. A huge sink hole has just opened up under the edifice of global cooperation.

Other portents are even more worrying for the future of mankind. We were all aware of a creeping right-wing, intolerant and authoritarian wave moving across nations, but now the Italian Prime Minister has proposed a confederation or alliance of right-wing rulers: Trump, Modi, the Argentinian President, Netanyahu and herself to begin with; no doubt the likes of Erdogan, Viktor Orban of Hungary, and other wanna-be strongmen will also be lining up to join this unholy gang. This can only spell more danger for a world where democracy has been in retreat since the late 1990's.

The world is in a more dangerous place today than it has ever been since 1948, with this powerful troika abandoning all principles of international law and the sovereignty of nations, crushing underfoot the hard fought-for values of human rights, negating agreements built over decades by  painstakingly achieved consensus, withdrawing from international organisations established to bring about cohesion and equal development, repudiating global covenants such as the Climate accords, intimidating other nations by the use of their military prowess. Even more alarming, their lawlessness and unpredictability  is forcing other countries like Japan, South Korea and Poland to consider acquiring nuclear capabilities to hedge their safety bets.

And where does India stand amidst all this chaos, I wonder? It appears to me that we stand for nothing- we are not what we are, we are what we are not. The traditional bedrocks of our foreign policy-the "Panchsheel" principles, support for the Palestinians, anti-colonialism, a nuanced neutrality, the values of liberal democracy- have all been jettisoned in favour of cronyism inspired GDP, the image of one man, and the desperate desire to sit at the high table of global politics. This is sought to be achieved by a supine surrender to the new Satan on the block, shameful abstentions in the United Nations, silence when our own citizens are shackled and humiliated, putting money over morals. This is all disguised as "neutrality" but is just strategic cowardice. And it's not working either: we have zero influence today over global affairs, we can no longer claim any leadership of the global South, we are isolated within BRICS, Trump doesn't give a tinker's curse for us, nobody knows what we stand for anymore notwithstanding a pulpit-thumping External Affairs Minister who sounds more and more like Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep combined from the Dickens novels every day.

The "experts" will probably say that all this is very naive and simplistic, that what we are witnessing is unilateralism vs multilateralism, or a battle between liberal humanism and evolutionary humanism, or a tussle between Marxist socialism and neo-capitalism. But the truth is far more simple, as all great truths are. And the truth is that the blood thirsty phenomenon we are observing today is pure and simple Darwinism- the survival of the fittest. Which may have been acceptable 200,000 years ago when homo sapiens was still at the hunter-gatherer stage of our evolution, but not today after millenia of progress. Today it is evil, a threat to humanity itself which cannot be removed by armies or the law but only by the people themselves, the people who have birthed these mutants in the first place.

These are, as I said, dangerous times for all nations, but do we have the leadership that can navigate the country safely through these troubled waters? I don't know because right now it is busy in trashing a stand-up comic, demolishing houses, demonising live-in relationships, digging up mosques, figuring out more novel ways of winning elections, taking over Waqf boards and declaring more meat- free zones. World affairs can wait.

 

DOG- WALKERS AND THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT

 

                      DOG-WALKERS AND THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT

 

Sometime back the Union Minister for Labour and Employment, Shobha Karandjale, blamed the spread of education in the country for the high unemployment rate: we have far too many graduates, she added, in case you missed it the first time. This immediately caused a huge uproar on social media and various liberal groups, with someone even suggesting that we should now have an UNEDUCATION policy. Come to think of it, however, she was not far off the truth.

In India, everyone who cannot migrate illegally to Trumpland wants to become a graduate: the country produces ten million grads every year, most of whom (according to India Inc.) are unemployable. This is further borne out by a recent report that of 263 applicants (all lawyers and civil judges) who appeared for an exam for the post of District judges in Odisha, not one passed the qualifying test! Adding to the problem is that there are just not enough new jobs being created every year, even if we accept the govt’s cooked-up figures. Which is why, according to the ILO Report (2024) the rate of unemployment among graduates is ten times that of the uneducated: in India, the more educated you are the lesser the chances of your finding a job!

We refuse to accept the laws of either economics or mathematics, everyone wants a job as a babu in an office (hence the need to be a graduate), hands-on skills are looked down as undignified “labour”: the “knowledge worker” is placed high above the “skill worker.” Even though, while the former spend their days idling at home or attending political rallies, it is almost impossible to get hold of one of the latter when you need one- an electrician, carpenter, plumber, para-medic, driver, to mention just a few. Our cook, a smart young girl who chose to drop out after Plus Two and earn a respectable living rather than go to college and join the ranks of the unemployed, comes for two hours every day and charges Rs. 8000 per month. She works in four to five houses and makes Rs. 30000 to Rs. 40000 per month, something which even IIT grads are happy to receive these days! A mason in my village charges Rs. 1000 per day, if you can get hold of one, that is!

And things are about to get much worse for the grads and white collar workers with the advent of AI. The founder of Atomberg, Arindam Paul, predicts that 50-60 percent of white collar jobs could be lost to AI in the coming years in India and there would be no middle- class left. The infotech and hitech firms have already fired tens of thousands of their employees as a precursor to a much bigger bloodbath : the knowledge worker can be easily replaced by AI, whether he or she is a doctor, engineer, coder, data analyst, copy writer, advertising executive etc. AI softwares like Grok are making even doctors redundant. The skill or blue collar worker, on the other hand, is irreplaceable, whether on the factory floor, a mechanic's shop, your flat or selling momos on the street. These are the jobs and professions which will survive, as evidenced by the the innovative start-ups being launched every day. We have arrived in the era of innovative and niche-based job creations, and those who possess the entrepreneurial  spirit of exploring these options will be the winners. My housing society now provides well paying occupations which were unheard of even a decade ago- Dog Walkers (Rs.4000/ per house X 5 houses a day), Dog Groomers (Rs. 1000-1500 per doggie, almost the same Neerja pays for her monthly visits to Barbara's or Trois Ne), the Pigeon Net maker (Rs. 12000 for three balconies), and so on.

The smart guy will ferret out where demand for a product or service exists-and provide it, just like Swiggy, Amazon and Blinkit have done on a much larger scale.I came across a couple of unlikely occupations during the course of my readings, which I must share to prove how the job market is changing:

Sumadi Ibrahim served for 22 years as a Navy diver in Malaysia; since his retirement 10 years ago he has carved out a most unusual niche for himself: he retrieves lost golf balls from the water hazards of  golf courses outside Kuala Lumpur. He works three days a week, collects about 500 balls, and sells them to the same guys who lost them! He makes RM 8000 ringgit each month ( Rs. 1.60 lakhs), which is three times what a worker in the formal sector gets. Jim Best, an ex US Navy frogman, does the same on the Florida golf courses: he estimates that there are 70000 golf balls waiting to be found- a small fortune for entrepreneurs like him!

Demand has created a new breed of workers in China- "pei pas" or "climbing buddies", fit and athletic young men who assist outdoor tourists and enthusiasts in climbing or trekking up mountains, acting as guides and providing logistical and physical support. With millions of tourists opting for outdoor adventure, demand is booming. A climbing buddy charges between USD 50-70 per trip and can make upto USD 2000-3000 per month, far more than the average monthly wage for office workers. Good looking buddies can demand a higher price from single ladies or ladies' groups!

Another new class of professionals has now emerged- consulting declutterers. The inter-generational passing down of possessions- furniture, cluttery, mementos, clothes, books, photos- has become an issue: the younger generation now has smaller flats, believes in minimalist life styles, moves from place to place, and has no desire to clutter their lives. The "handing-down" older generation, on the other hand, values much of this stuff as family heirlooms and would like them to be retained for pure sentimental reasons. How to balance the two desires/needs? Enter the professional declutterer (at USD 125 per hour), who will talk to everyone, assess their emotional and physical needs, put a price on the items, advise on their disposal. He/ she is both a valuer and a psychological consultant.

As lifestyles change, as technology alters the way we once lived, and as new needs emerge, new areas for jobs are being created to replace the traditional white collar office jobs. Those who are innovative, possess unconventional skills and dare to be different are the ones who will prosper. As the Florida frogman told a reporter: " There's a job somewhere for everyone." He may as well have added: "Provided they're willing to shed their white collars."

19.03.2025

 

A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN.

 " There's a new Sheriff in town," was what the newly minted TD Vance, Vice President of the USA, informed Europe in his typical hillbilly way on his first visit there. He was, presumably, referring to Trump and not to the federal marshal, Musk, who appears to be riding shotgun for the former as the American prairie schooner rides rough-shod over what's left of the rules-based global order. But this piece is not about American sheriffs- it's about the new sheriff that has just arrived in India.

It's name is Grok, Grok 3 to be precise, which has just been released by Elon Musk and  is instilling more fear among India's powerful than Wyatt Earp and Doc Halliday ever did in the Wild West, to continue with the frontier imagery. In just a week of its launch it has had the hombres and rats running for cover, and forced Amit Malviya to observe a "maun vrat" while he tries to figure out how to make his untruths Grok- proof. It's not hard to figure out why.

For any near-totalitarian state the main tool to control the population is not the police, it's disinformation- fake news, witholding of information and official data, capturing the media to disseminate only propaganda, build narratives based on lies, distort history. This has worked very well for the ruling party in India so far, for there are now very few channels of authentic news left, and the govt's official data (unemployment, household consumption, census, deforestation, inequality, poverty, electoral data) is either suppressed, distorted or outright denied. The voter has no choice but to rely on whatever is manufactured by govt. agencies.

Not any more, for the new sheriff in town is changing the rules of the game, albeit in a much more democratic and kosher way than Sheriff Trump. In just a few days, in response to questions put to it, Grok has thoroughly exposed and contradicted the narratives we have been fed on for the last ten years. It has told us, for example, that there is no evidence that Mr. Modi (or Mrs. Irani) have a degree, that it was Muslims and not the RSS that participated in our freedom struggle, that Mrs. Sonia Gandhi was never a bar dancer, that Arnab Goswami and Sudhir Choudhry are the top sycophants among the godi media anchors, that Rahul Gandhi has held 43 press conferences compared to Mr. Modi's 1, that Nehru donated Rs. 196 crores of his personal wealth (current value Rs. 49000 crore) to the country in 1946, that when he became UP Chief Minister in 2017 Yogi Adithyanath had 28 criminal cases registered against him, all of which he withdrew. The country's sold-out media would never have shared these gems with us.

No wonder the rats are bolting into their holes. For the credibility of Grok cannot be questioned: its responses are based on archival data from across a multitude of sources-left, right and center-, it has no ideology, its algorithms have no political leanings, it relies on hard data and not presumptions or manufactured  narratives. The ruling party and its right wing acolytes cannot even accuse it of bias, for does it not belong to the friend of our Prime Minister's buddy Doland? Irony just died a thousand deaths here.

As access to Grok multiplies, and as social media and Youtubers become more aware of the possibilities, expect a torrent of authentic, hitherto concealed information and data to flood our information universe, with more and more exposures of the disinformation blanket thrown over the country these last few years. This can only make for a more open society, a better informed citizenry, and a more responsive government. But I am more excited than the average Joe (it takes a lot to excite me these days) for I visualise a limitless potential for this magical AI tool.

Take, for instance, the RTI apparatus which has been almost completely disembowelled by the govt. Grok has the potential to replace our RTI Commissions to some extent because it will unearth and mine information from millions of disparate sources on any subject/ question in a nano second, which your PIO cannot or does not want to do. Even better, can we hope that some day Grok will replace our lumbering courts with their 50 million pending cases, their judgments increasingly based on preferential expectations and majoritarian ideology, their benches staffed by indifferent practitioners of law, accused waiting for years for a judge's pleasure just to get bail, forget about a trial ? Can you imagine a judicial system where there are no lawyers, no judges, no pendency? Just feed the facts of a case (civil or criminal), the evidence, the pleadings, previous case law into the algorithms of Grok- and hey Presto!- you have a judgment in minutes! Based on law and merits, which is becoming a rarity these days. I don't know about Donald Trump or Mr. Modi or Justice Chandrachud, but Solomon would certainly have approved of this. And oh! Umar Khalid too.

[Also published in The Tribune of 23rd March 2025]

ARE BANKERS DRIVING YOU BONKERS?

                             ARE  BANKERS  DRIVING  YOU  BONKERS ?

Unlike our Prime Minister or Mr. Narayan Murthy, I do not labour for 18 hours a day; in fact, I don't labour at all- having toiled for 35 years I have now left it to others to clear out the mess I've created during that period. But this doesn't mean I don't put in many productive hours every day- for, as the L+T Chairman never said: "they also serve who only stand and stare." Deleting the hours I spend in sleeping, and staring at Neerja, I do work for about four hours every day at my office table which I picked up at a Delhi "chor bazaar" just before someone nicked my wallet. But- and here's my grouse and the trigger for this piece- about 2 of these hours is spent sorting out issues with my banks.

This constitutes my daily nightmare, of the digital kind. All banks have now gone online and that has its advantages, especially in the matter of withdrawing cash through ATMs, making payments, opening FDs etc. through net-banking. Beyond these, however, if you have an issue like change of phone number or address, or a suspect credit or debit, or closing an account, and need to contact the bank or its manager, or do a KYC, then you need to gird up your loins, prepare for a few frustrating weeks and long for the old days when you could drop it at the branch to have a cup of tea with the BM while your issue was sorted out in a cordial manner. Not any more. These days you have to deal with an anonymous, faceless, algorithmic monster called Customer Service, a legal fiction which you are led to believe exists (like God) but actually doesn't (again, like God).

I have accounts in four banks, having decided to spread the risks when they start collapsing whenever Mr. Adani decides to buy Cyprus or St. Kitts and move there with his trillions. But, since it's now quite clear that he is happy to stay in India and buy this country instead, I decided to close two of these accounts before dementia catches up with me and I forget about all of them. I've been waging a battle with one of these banks for the last month to close one account. A Speed post letter to the Branch Manager has elicited no acknowledgement-I suspect he is also a legal fiction and doesn't exist. Six emails to Customer Service ("we value our relationship with you") have elicited six identical responses saying it can't be done online and that I should visit the branch with as many papers as I carried to my UPSC interview 50 years ago. I pointed out that I am a senior citizen and should not be expected to physically go to the Branch which is twenty kilometers away: no response from the bot at the other end, but I thought I could hear a snicker from the Bank's URL. The account is still not closed: I think I shall bequeath it in my Will to someone I detest, preferably a "bhakt" or some dandy from St. Stephens College (do I need to tell you that I'm from Hindu College?)

There are other missiles in the armoury of Customer Service which they unleash in the whee! hours of the night. One morning you'll be suddenly informed that your basic savings account has been upgraded to Burgundy or Platinum or Super Value, which requires you to maintain a few lakhs in your account at all times, on pain of penalty charges. In return, you will get your own Relationship Manager, free access to an Indigo airport lounge and a discount on meals at a five star restaurant. I've tried telling them that Neerja manages my  relationships, and does a pretty good job at nurturing and terminating them too, if she is so inclined; that I wouldn't fly even if God gave me wings and the rank of Air Chief Marshal; that it makes no sense to have a biryani in a hotel where Ms Sitharaman takes 28% of the food off the plate even before I've had the first bite and Service Charge takes 15% of what's left. But he algorithms are designed not to take NO for an answer and I didn't get far with this line of reasoning.

And then there is the bane of our digital lives- the KYC. Every once in a while we are asked to re-verify our mug shots, finger prints, addresses and telephone numbers. The public sector banks, those remnants of the dinosaurs, insist that you physically visit their branches to do so, even if you are on the International Space Station with Sunita Williams. (Incidentally, you now have to do this also for your FastTag, gas connection, insurance policies, mutual funds, land holdings, electricity connection, etc.) It doesn't matter a whit that you've had an account with the bank for 40 years, or that it's a pension account verified by the AG himself, or that you've never, ever, defaulted on a loan or a credit card payment, or ever had any dealings with Suresh the Con-man, or Mallya or Choksi or Nirav Modi. While people like these gentlemen are siphoning off thousands of crores from the banks, we cannot touch our own moneys. KYC it has to be, or start begging at the Khan Market red light for your daily bread.

One can't help but feel that we are rushing too fast into wholesale digitalisation without adequately preparing our personnel, processes and culture for it, just like Mr. Gadkari with his express-ways and Ms Sitharaman with her GST. Sometimes one longs for the older ways. I recollect my dad, after retirement in Kanpur, used to visit his bank branch  two or three times every week, have a gossip session with the BM, get tips on investments, cash a cheque or two over tea and aloo ki tikkis and return home a satisfied customer. He died of old age, not the effects of dealing with Customer Service and Digital India. Me, I'll probably die of an embolism caused by a Customer Service algorithm.

I'm considering closing all my bank accounts, withdrawing the funds and going into partnership with my village money lender; he's promised me an annual return of 8% (no TDS, of course), which is more than what these banks give. Problem is, he wants me to do a KYC too!

[ This blog was published by the TRIBUNE]

THE DISNEYFICATION OF RELIGION

 

THE DISNEYFICATION OF RELIGION

 

Marx missed the full picture when he described religion as an opiate of the masses. so did George Carlin when he  claimed that God was a fiction. For today Neo-Capitalism and right-wing fundamentalism have assigned God a new role and turned Him into an FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Good): far from being an opiate He is now a stimulant for consumption on a gigantic scale, the driver for GDP and GST growth. If, along the Laffer curve, a few consumers die in a stampede or fire, that is acceptable collateral damage, a tax write-off where the public picks up the bill while the high priests of Mammon go chuckling to the Bank. The on-going Maha Kumbh, which the U.P. government claims will add Rs. 2 lakh crores to the state's GDP, is the apotheosis of this new divine role.

The Hindu religion being one of the main pillars of the BJP's very existence and power-play, it has to be constantly glorified, burnished and made larger than life. As Yuval Noah Harari asserts, a religion is not just its deities but also the social functions it performs. The BJP's aim is to ensure that one of these "social functions" is the legitimising and consolidation of its power and narrow world-view. Given these high stakes, Hinduism can no longer be left to the tender mercies of the Shankaracharyas, Mahamandeleshwars, priests, purohits or the humble devotee and pilgrim in the villages. It must be ornamentalised, over hyped and aggrandised, made a television spectacle, a platform for projecting the party and the Prime Minister as its prime custodian. This is a continuation of a medieval mindset we thought the modern world had left behind: did not the emperors and kings of that time build cathedrals, pyramids, gigantic statues, temples and monuments to perpetuate their own myths, dogmas and personalities, to remain in the public eye and memory? Were kings and Pharohs not considered embodiments of the divine power? Religion may be a fiction, so it has to be dressed up, for the grander the fiction the easier it is to get the public to swallow it.

It is in this backdrop that we must understand this government's hostile takeover of the religion, and its obsession with the Disneyfication of our religious places and the conversion of all major Hindu festivals into  Cecil de Mille type of Hollywood productions. A few recent instances will help to establish this point:

* The inauguration of the new Parliament building on 28th May 2023 was done with all the splendour of a Roman coronation, complete with the sengol substituting for a scepter and procession of high priests. A secular political function was transformed into a religious one.

* The consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, built at a reported cost of Rs. 1800, crore was an even grander event, the tempo having been built up for weeks before, like some gladiatorial show at the Colosseum.

* The Kashi Vishwanath corridor, which will cost Rs. 800 crores when all its phases are complete, was hyped up as the rebirth of Varanasi, another re-affirmation of a resurgent Hinduism; the destruction of hundred of houses and private temples to make way for the corridors was, of course, acceptable collateral damage.

* The Char Dham Highway, ripping through the heart of the Himalayas and built against all environmental considerations, is again an emblem of religious revivalism, even though it is rationalised on strategic defence grounds. It will cost about Rs. 12000 crores and is already causing irreversible damage to the mountains.

* A dedicated and wholly unnecessary highway is being built for the Kanwariyas in U.P. at a cost of Rs. 650  crores and a reported 33000 trees, once again to project the religion in a larger than life format and to milk religious sentiments.

* The exaggerated claims of the Mahakumbh, its deafening publicity and non-stop 24X7 media coverage, the Guinness scale of infrastructure created at a reported cost of Rs. 7000 crore (and Rs. 5000 crore by the Railways) is again meant to amplify the same message.

It's the same with festivals. The Kumbh has been celebrated since time immemorial, every decade or so, but the frenzy created around it this year is unprecedented, with even Blinkit home- delivering sangam water, virtual dips being offered online, and someone else taking a dip on your behalf at the sangam for a nominal charge! I have lived in Delhi for fifty years but have never witnessed things like Ganesh Chaturthi, the Chhat Pooja or the Kanwariya Yatras being magnified to the kind of spectacles we witness nowadays. This resurgence of a placid faith is clearly contrived, funded and Disneyfied with a purpose.

Somewhere along the way, the spiritual and ascetic in Hinduism has been replaced with the commercial and extravagant, to serve the "function" of a political party. Which should not surprise anyone, because religion has always been a business and tool for power. As Prof. Paul Seabright says in his extraordinary book, The Divine Economy, the divine science (religion) has always had a large element of the dismal science (economics) mixed with it. It offers a product (salvation), has a network of providers (priests) and well established distribution channels. There are many "products" in the market (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc.) and they all compete with each other for market share.

It should not surprise anyone, therefore, that the corporatisation of Hinduism now has a righteous , if not liturgical, angle to it, to serve a political purpose. It has become a bustling share market where the common investor gets his returns in divine indulgence, and the new corporates get theirs in votes. And those who do not buy into this stock market are the new kafirs. Nietzsche had famously said that God is dead. He was wrong- God has now been repositioned as a marketable product.

[ This blog was published in the TRIBUNE on 2.3.2025 under the title REPOSITIONING GOD AS A MARKETABLE PRODUCT.]