Saturday, August 25, 2012

UPA's Tunnel Vision - By M J Akbar - Editorial Director - INDIA TODAY

In choosing Manmohan Singh, rather than Sonia Gandhi, for his target of warning, MJ Akbar could be forgiven for adhering to political correctness. However, the fact is that Sonia is the prime culprit in sidelining all Congress initiatives as and when they are presented to her. After all she is strictly following Nehru-Gandhi line of keeping Muslims at arms length and destabilize them enough, so that they will have no place to go and seek their peace with Congress. She is not ready to give an inch to Muslims. Under the circumstances, though it is very very late, Muslims should promote their own political parties, however small, however ill-funded, however lead by dubious elements coming from various political parties, Muslims must be prepared to junk Congress and even other so called regional secular political formations, to give preferential support to their own Muslim lead secular parties. Without a strong and multi-regional, multi-state beginning, it will be a colossal mistake to depend on Congress, or Sonia and much less on Manmohan Singh, to do any justice to Muslim cause. Muslims should have realised by now, that it is out of all calculations by deep rooted Nehru Gandhi family belief to give any political role for Muslims except for family retainer-ship. That policy is writ large on the hand that is raised to demand their votes under threat of reprisals. Muslims should brace for the consequences of their new political adventures. However, if the recent experiments in UP is any indication, even if Muslim play the game of spoilers, they will strengthen their bargaining positions. Muslims must play the political games, according to the rules of the game, prevailing at this juncture in their country.

Another corollary: It should be understood that US/Israel are now fairly entrenched in India to play their own role in next regime change exercise in India. Muslims should better be on the correct side of these conspirators. They should attend their Iftars, but insist on take-home packages.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-today-editorial-director-m-j-akbar-on-muslim-voters-losing-faith-in-manmohan-singh/1/214546.html
India Today


M.J. Akbar  August 24, 2012 | UPDATED 17:18 IST

UPA's Tunnel Vision

India Today Editorial Director M J Akbar on Muslim voter's losing faith in Manmohan Singh



MJ Akbar
India Today Editorial Director MJ Akbar
Light is too powerful a concept; it suggests hope. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did promise Indian Muslims some solace at the end of a long and silent tunnel. That will probably be recorded as his biggest political mistake. When you raise expectations of a fragile community and then shatter them without remorse, each shard develops a poison edge.

Indian Muslims believe, with good reason, that it was their massive mobilisation in the 2004 General Elections that made Dr Manmohan Singh the most unexpected Prime Minister in India's electoral history. Those whose eyebrow has already risen may want to note a significant truth about Indian politics. It is expected that non-Congress PMs will be unexpected, which makes every surprise very unsurprising. But when Congress deviates from its well-established ground rules, we have a story.

It took three degrees of surprise to catapult Dr Singh into his present chair: He had to overcome one probability, one certainty and one possibility. First, the probable winner of the 2004 General Elections, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lost. Then, for reasons that still have not been made entirely transparent, his certain successor, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, stepped aside, leaving the Congress dazed and Opposition bemused. Finally, Mrs Gandhi discarded the claims of the senior-most Congress leader, Pranab Mukherjee, and pushed Dr Singh, who would have been content with the finance ministry, forward. That sort of dream triple wins you the lottery of a lifetime.

Dr Singh sent a thank you note to Muslims soon enough. It was called the Sachar Commission. Justice Rajinder Sachar shocked the establishment with his honesty. First, he delivered his report very quickly. He did not linger in order to enjoy the various benefits that came with the appointment, as so many of his peers have done: There are instances that are shocking beyond belief. The Sachar Commission's report was an exercise in depth as well as profound and discerning empathy with its subject. It quickly became embedded within the Muslim political consciousness as a defining document. The Left Front never recovered from its revelation that Narendra Modi's Gujarat had a far higher percentage of Muslims in government employment than Marxist Bengal. Sachar etched a portrait of a community left in neglect by those political parties it had trusted.
The Muslim response was dual: It spurred a momentum that had already been building up, motivating a thrust towards education as the only means to reach out towards economic opportunity. Simultaneously, Muslims began to demand reservations in government jobs to compensate for the gap that had built.

Self-help brought rewards. Education among Muslim girls, for instance, has multiplied at a geometrical pace. But the Congress Government which sired the Sachar Commission did nothing about its recommendations. Instead of job reservations, Muslims got the old and stale retinue of gimmicks. Come elections, and the promise of reservations went into the first paragraph of speeches. Once votes had been counted, this promise went into a dustbin.

The Muslim voter's faith in Dr Singh did not wane easily; in fact it peaked in 2009. But a pinnacle, thanks to its height, offers clarity; illusions melt very quickly. When Congress continued to do nothing even after the substantial endorsement in 2009, Muslims began to slip away from the party, with devastating effect. The consequences of Congress' demolition in UP are still playing out. Assam turned this slippage into a fall.

The politics of Assam is not simple. Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi wore his heart literally on his sleeve during visits to Muslim refugee camps when he chose to flaunt a Bodo scarf. Muslim reaction has also changed. Anger used to be diluted by fear, but fear has evaporated. SMS, and its more sinister cousin MMS, have eliminated the distance between Bodoland, Bangalore and Mumbai. Technology has also opened the market for mischief: Between the photoshop and visual cropping, murder on the Indus can be easily distorted into death on the Brahmaputra. Reality is harsh enough. Malice, exported by certain elements in Pakistan according to the home ministry, gives it a vicious twist.

For our Government, alas, the most volatile problem becomes an opportunity, not for a solution, but for another veil over misdeeds. Officials began to censor tweets critical of the Prime Minister, thereby managing to increase the intensity of criticism from all sides. Technology is community-neutral.

The collapse of hope in Congress has driven various Muslim communities into disparate political camps. Mulayam Singh Yadav was a major beneficiary, but the next question is more worrisome: Where do UP Muslims go if the Yadavs also disappoint? In Assam and Kerala, they have banded around exclusivist flags, which is bound to inspire a reaction, sooner rather than later. Desegregation divides communities with rivulets of suspicion. Instead of controlling this drift towards danger, the UPA Government has disappeared into its own tunnel of silence.

3% Brahmins occupy 44% Corporate Directorships in India

IN THE NEW 'CAPITALIST' AGE USHERED BY WORLD BANK TRAINEE, NOW INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER, THOUGH ONLY NOMINATED AND NOT ELECTED, THE FACT OF THE NEW CORPORATE WORLD DOMINATED BY TWO FORWARD CASTES - BRAHMINS 44% AND VAISHYAS (BANIAS) 46%, SHOULD BE MOST OF THE LESSER CHILDREN OF GOD, WHO WILL NEVER ACHIEVE ANY PARITY WITH THESE MANIPULATORS, UNLESS THEY FIGHT FOR IT. MANMOHAN SINGH'S TRICKLE DOWN EFFECT IS A BIG FRAUD. THE WEALTH IS ALL BEING SUCKED UP BY THE UPPER CASTE AND CLASS, WHO ARE IN NUMERICAL MINORITY. AAKAR PATEL, THE AUTHOR OF THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS BEING VERY POLITE AND POLITICALLY CORRECT BY PRESENTING RESERVATION MERELY AS EDUCATION FOR THE HAVE-NOTS. HE SHOULD HOWEVER BE THANKED BY ALL FOR HIGHLIGHTING THE SKEWED PROGRESS OF INDIAN ECONOMY, NOT ONLY TO THE NATION BUT THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS TOO, WHO WOULD NOT LIKE THEIR INVESTMENTS TO GO AWRY, IF THERE IS A GROUND SWELL OF DISAFFECTION IN INDIA.

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/23214951/Caste-can-turn-a-boardroom-int.html



  • Columns
  • Posted: Fri, Aug 24 2012. 8:09 PM IST

Caste can turn a boardroom into a classroom

Public sector boards can be accused of discrimination with a little less justification, because the IAS cadre already has reservations built into it

Reply To All | Aakar Patel

  
Any attempt to understand India without penetrating caste will hit a wall of data and crumple. The Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) has published a remarkable study on caste in our corporate boardrooms.

The authors, D. Ajit, Han Donker and Ravi Saxena, inspected the boards of India’s top 1,000 companies. These companies represent 80% of the total market capitalization of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in 2010. The study includes public sector companies.

Having accessed the database of their directors’ names, the three writers classified them. They explain how they did this: “In India, the surname normally refers to the caste affiliation. Based on the surnames, we classified the corporate board members into a) forward caste (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas), b) Other Backward Classes (OBCs), c) Scheduled Caste and Schedule Tribe, and d) others (foreign directors). In cases where the corporate board members’ names were caste-neutral (example, K. Ramakrishnan), we had to rely on our social networks to identify the caste category. Such an endeavour was not difficult as these board members occupy an important place in the economic and social fabric of Indian society. Such cases refer to approximately 15% of the board directors of 1,000 companies.”

The authors are being modest. I know how difficult this would have been to do. Most Indians cannot place a last name unless it is from their own state and even then many cannot. Few Indians will know that Gautam Adani is Jain Baniya.

Secondly, names can be misleading in India and someone with the last name Modi could be Vaishya (Lalit Modi) or OBC (Narendra Modi). Parmar could be Kshatriya or Dalit. Singh could mean anything from Khatri to Jat to Rajput to Dalit. Rajput itself could mean forward in one state and backward in another (Gujarat).
It would be nice if the authors were to open up their raw data for interested outsiders to have a look.

Anyway, the findings of the writers are that over 90% of the boards are made of two castes, 46.6% Vaishya and 44% Brahmin. To this the authors add another 2% from Kshatriyas and the “forward castes (like Syrian Christians)”. I’m assuming this includes Muslim converts from upper castes like Memons, Khojas, Bohras and wealthy communities that are casteless, like Parsis.


Almost emperor: The shopkeeper Hemu.

Almost emperor: The shopkeeper Hemu.
 
That leaves 7.4% for all other castes, which are over 90% of
India’s population.

Out of 9,052 board directors, 8,204 are Vaishya or Brahmin.
What explains this sort of dominance? The authors think it is discrimination. “It is difficult to fathom the argument that merit is the cause of under-representation,” they say.

My view has long been that these are our only two capable castes. It is largely from merit that they dominate. However, there is discrimination of a sort. For instance, the core of the private sector company’s board is composed of family, which picks one another. But the question that then arises is: Why are these Vaishya families on the boards? The answer is that they are the ones who create wealth.

Public sector boards can be accused of discrimination with a little less justification, because the IAS cadre already has reservations built into it. My guess is that a large proportion of the 7.4% lower-caste directors are in the public sector.

Setting aside family directors, the total dominance of Vaishyas and Brahmins must come from the independent directors and non-family board members. Here the strongest case for discrimination can be made.

This is where another argument may be introduced. There is a different way of looking at merit, and that is through the culture. I have written about this often before in Lounge.

The attributes that we pick up through culture to a large extent define our behaviour, because Indians are low on individualism. Caste is the finest predictor of which Indians become billionaires, become nurses, do honour killing, do female infanticide and participate in communal violence. Because of this, Indians see merit in caste. The Vaishya and the Brahmin see shared values in others of their type that they do not see in other castes.

Other castes also see the values in these two communities and Vaishyas and Brahmins have always dominated decision making in India. Shivaji’s Council of Eight (Ashta Pradhan) contained seven Brahmins. Only the senapati was Maratha. Was Shivaji driven by discrimination? I would say no.

The brilliant warrior-administrators, the Chitpavan Brahmin Peshwas, were only 20 (Bajirao), 19 (Balajirao) and 17 (Madhavrao) when they were put in charge by Shivaji’s heirs. Their primary qualification was their caste.

There is something about the values and culture they were raised in that made them successful. Another example: Starting with absolutely nothing, the shopkeeper Hemu may have founded a Great Baniya dynasty instead of the Great Mughal dynasty, had he not been accidentally struck by an arrow at Panipat in 1556.

The Mughals took all the wrong lessons from Vaishya values.
 
Aurangzeb’s sons Azam and Muazzam fought after the emperor’s death. Azam crowned himself and went off to attack Muazzam, who was older by 10 years, but the Mughals did not recognize primogeniture. The court writer Iradat Khan said Azam was quite macho. He would roll his eyes about angrily and, standing up, pull up his sleeves when messengers read letters from rivals.

Muazzam was the opposite, cautious, unemotional and pragmatic his whole life. Azam’s nickname for Muazzam was “Baniya”.
 
Battle was joined between the two armies. The macho man, when told that the enemy was in sight, pulled up his sleeves and flourished a stick (which was all that was needed to chastise the “Baniya”). Muazzam came prepared and coolly crushed his brother, and the Baniya won over the warrior.

The EPW findings make a strong case for reservation in boardrooms, and I am in favour of this. Those directors from outside will learn something about negotiation, compromise and, above all, sobriety that is the cultural inheritance of Vaishyas and Brahmins.

Aakar Patel is a writer and a columnist.

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