THE UNLEARNING AND THE NEW LEARNING

 India is going through another great Renaissance, as ordained by a gentleman whose own educational qualifications are shrouded in doubt and about which RTI questions will never be answered. All our learnings of the past two thousand years have to be discarded and a new learning, as enshrined in the NEP (New Education Policy) and prescribed by the UGC, CBSE and NCERT will re-enlighten this land. I must confess that, having already forgotten most of what I had learned in the last 70 years (which wasn't much to begin with) I am excited at the prospect of being educated again. And I have been making some progress, and as evidence of that, would like to share some of these nuggets with my long suffering readers.

Remember that phrase "carrying coals to Newcastle" coined by John Graunt in 1661 ? It denoted a meaningless action, to take something to a place where it's not needed because there's plenty of that stuff already there. Well, in Amritkaal that phrase has been replaced by "carrying coals to Godda". Godda is the place in Jharkhand where Mr. Adani has set up a 1600 MW thermal power station which exports all its power to Bangladesh (or used to, till Hasina was given a one-way ticket to exile). Now, Jharkhand has the largest coal reserves in the world, so  you would expect that the millions of tonnes of coal required for this power station would be mined in Jharkhand itself, right? Wrong. Here is where the gaps in your education become visible- for Adani does not mine the local coal, instead he imports it from 6000 kms away, from his Carmichael mines in Australia! And still manages to sell the power at four times the usual price to Bangladesh, thanks to getting his plant declared as an SEZ by amending the rules, liberal loans from banks, and environment clearances to bring river waters from 100 kms away. Management schools across the world are still trying to figure out why the coal was not sourced more cheaply locally, how a totally unviable project became so profitable, not realising that the answer to that question lies in politics, not economics. But, in the meanwhile, the English language has been changed forever, and John Graunt banished- "carrying coals to Godda" is the new phrase, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't make a handsome profit by doing something conventional wisdom tells you is stupid.

Most of us will remember the haircut from our childhood days, that monthly visit to the barber when we were cut to size. I now go just once a year, for old times' sake, because the ravages of time and shouldering the brown man's burden for 35 years have ensured that my hair raising days are now firmly behind me. Which is a good thing too, because a haircut is no longer what it used to be. It is now a euphemism for fiduciary castration of banks, which is usually you and me because it is our money, after all. This is how it works in New India:

A haircut, in today's parlance, is the money the banks lose (forego) when a company becomes insolvent by siphoning off the bank loans to Bermuda or St. Kitts, and someone else takes it over by paying the bank a fraction of the money owed, say, 10% or 20%. The apotheosis of rogue Capitalism, an ingenious way to transfer public money to private individuals, isn't it? Especially as the new owner is just a proxy for the original, defaulting owner: he gets to keep both the bank's money and the company! The bank takes what is called a haircut, while the barber gets a facial in Monte Carlo. The country has had Rs. 6 lakh crores worth of haircuts in the 612 cases resolved so far under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. which is why we now have more billionaires than Anupam Khair has hair fallicles on his polished nationalistic pate, or Kangana Ranout can count on her manicured fingers (when she is not pointing them at the farmers, that is). Nowadays fat cats don't laugh all the way to the bank, they laugh on their way back from the bank. Which is why the Indian banking system is now on its knees, waiting for something worse than a haircut.

Most people of my generation grew up priding ourselves on India's policy of Non-alignment. It gave us and the third world moral stature in the company of stalwarts like Sukarno, Nkrumah, Tito and Nasser. No more. For our Prime Minister non-alignment is now a dirty word, to be trashed abroad, its meaning completely changed because history has to be distorted to suit, and justify, his personal predilections and hubris. In a brilliant article for The Wire on 28th August, SN Sahu explains that the essence of Non-alignment was "active engagement with all countries with a spirit of friendship, equality and reciprocity.... and neutrality towards military alliances." Speaking recently in Poland, however, Mr. Modi has deliberately distorted and misconstrued it to mean (in his own words) "to maintain distance from all countries". He went on to boast "Today India's policy is to maintain close ties with all countries. Today India wants to connect with everyone." 

Sure. Ask the Palestinians, Srilanka, Nepal, Ukraine, Iran. By all means, if it's in our national interest to refuse to vote at the UN against the genocide and atrocities by Israel and Russia in Gaza and Ukraine, to continue to bolster the Russians by buying their oil, to keep on the right side of a Zionist state so we can buy Pegasus from them, sell them drones or get lucrative contracts for some cronies- if that benefits us, embroider it in gold in the tatters of our foreign policy. But for God's sake, don't misinterpret the concept of non-alignment or denigrate an enlightened policy India followed right up till the time of Vajpayee. It was because of non-alignment that we were the leader of the South, looked up to by the Muslim nations of the world, a role model for other decolonised nations, secured the independence of Austria first and Bangladesh later, were successful in obtaining the Civil Nuclear Cooperation deal with the USA even while most of our weapons came from Russia. We were much better connected with the world in pre- Modieval times than we are today. In comparison, today we are shunned by the global South, distrusted by the West and considered a bully in our own backyard. Nehru's non-alignment has served this country much better than Modi's neo-alignment has.

Don't criticize what you can't understand, said Bob Dylan in his song The Times They Are A-changing. To which one may also add that distorting history or changing its vocabulary is not history, as Ed Koch observed, it's psychiatry, and a bad case of that too.

BEAUTY AMONG THE BEASTS

 Kangana Runout is all over the news these days like a bad rash , there's just no getting away from her interviews, statements and tweets. I find her very refreshing in these morbid days of rapes, lynchings, bridge collapses, encounters, defections and states going bankrupt. What is enlivening in her utterings is the novel perspective she brings to bear on whichever subject she decides to take on. Someone once said that we are all born ignorant, but we have to work hard to be stupid. And no one can accuse the Himachali belle of not working really hard at it. She is a bit like the IAS- an expert on any subject; she has spoken on the US election, history, Manipur, the farmers' protests, the Delhi riots, the 2002 Gujarat carnage, nepotism, Bollywood, sexual exploitation, the caste census, censorship, the freedom movement, among other weighty subjects. And, in keeping with thebest practices in the IAS these days, she is also a lateral entry into Parliament!

She has even started dropping hints about her marriage, and our vacuous media, with no exit polls on the horizon, has started speculating about the wicket keeper who might be responsible for the run-out. It's a bit late for me to throw my hat into the bull ring, having already chucked my towel into another one, but I do have a piece of advice for the gentleman- if you have the Encyclopedia Britannica, sell it to the kabariwallah; you won't be needing it any longer, for your wife knows everything. Ditto for Google Search.

Now, I'm no fan of Ms Ranaut's brand of politics, and I do wish that  she would be less forthcoming with her muddled thoughts on everything under the sun and a little less toxic, but one can't but doff one's hat at her candidness, the courage to call a spade a shovel, and the audacity to call out the power brokers in the world of politics and film making. Among the current crop of female "influencers" she perhaps is the only one of note to say F**K YOU ! in a man's world which is getting more parochial with every successive election. And, sadly, she is paying the price for that.

The hounding of her film Emergency is a case in point, though the malaise it depicts is much larger, for the same thing is happening with the Netflix series IC 814. Taking offence has become a full time, and rewarding, profession in India. It's not something new either- remember Kissa Kursi Ka, Aandhi, Rushdie, A Suitable Boy, Sacred Games, Tandav and the enforced exile of MF Husain? This "hurting of sentiments" is a very dangerous trend in a country with 6 major religions, 3000 castes and 25000 sub-castes, 22 official languages, 121 other languages and 270 mother tongues, 2000 registered political parties and hundreds of millions of morons. Any aspiring or misguided idiot can claim to be offended by anything in a film. In the case of Emergency it is allegedly the "unfavourable" depiction of Sikhs and in IC 814 it is the Hindu names of terrorists and their "humanizing", whatever that means.

Both films are loosely historical, and there are always different perspectives on history, which is the way it should be. In a liberal democracy a writer or director should have the freedom to present his version of any historical event, without any jingoist, communal or political obstructions. If the SGPC does not like the way Sikhs are shown by Ms Ranaut-fine, go and make your own version of it, God knows they have the money to do so. If the fake nationalists have the opposite grouse-whereas the Sikhs are demonised in Emergency, the terrorists are humanised in IC 814- don't watch the film, or ask Vivek Agnihotri to make another film called the Hijack Files.

Lumpen elements one can understand- stupidity is part of our DNA. What one is most shocked at, however, is the way our governments and courts become part of this regressive process. The courts these days will do everything except their jobs, which is to dispense justice in a timely manner. Why, one wonders again and again, do they even admit petitions for banning/ witholding the release of films on grounds of distortion, defamation or hurting of sentiments? Leave it to the Censor Board, and if this august body fails to do its job then haul it over the coals. But why become the court of first resort for any dissatisfied idiot? I am constrained to observe, with great respect and regret, that both the Bombay and Madhya Pradesh High Courts, have not served the cause of free speech by failing to facilitate the scheduled release of Emergency.

The central govt., as is to be expected, has conducted itself with its usual duplicity. Though it found nothing wrong in the dubious representation of facts and tenor with its own propaganda films- Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story-in the case of Ms Ranaut's film it has arm twisted the Censor Board to delay its certification because of the "sensitivity" of the subject- read: possible adverse impact on the BJP in the impending Haryana elections. One would have expected the two High courts to have seen through this dumb charade, but possibly the blindfold over the eyes of  the statue of Justice is tighter than we would have imagined.

Coming on top of the ever increasing restrictions on print and televised media,         social media platforms and OTT channels, the legitimacy now accorded to communities, self appointed "nationalists" and religious groups to block any film, and the reluctance of the judiciary to stop them, is turning India's creative pastures into intellectual deserts. Soon, no one worth his salt will write books or make films except the propagandists of whichever party happens to be in power at the time.

There are two lessons in this for Kangana Ranaut. One, the wheel has come full circle for her, and she has become a victim of the same toxic and intolerant ideology that she supports. Two, she has been betrayed by her own party which has cast her aside for a few seats in Haryana. Her free-roaming and independent spirit does not correspond with the confining and suffocating ethos of the party she belongs to. Time for another battle for the Rani of Jhansi?