A friend of mine sent me this piece to ponder!
An old parable retold:
The old version ....
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summerlong building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks that the ant is a fool. He laughs and dances and frolicking the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well-fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, he dies in the cold.
The modern (Indian) version...
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool. He laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The world is stunned by the sharp & contrasting images. How can the poor grasshopper be allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's hill.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.
Amnesty International and Kofi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper.
The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven andEverlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .
Opposition MPs stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a judicial enquiry. Mamta Banerjee goes on fast onto death of self or Grasshopper whichever is earlier.
The CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to grasshoppers on all Indian Railway trains, aptly named the 'Grasshopper Rath'.
Finally, a judicial committee drafts the "Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered in style by NDTV.Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice".
Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden'.
Kofi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
US & UK offer support to Governments' war on ento-hunger with free supplies of Ant-hrax powder!
Many years later...
The ant has migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley named "Triumph-Ant Technologies " , while hundreds of grasshoppers die of starvation and foot in mouth disease somewhere in India.
Moral of the story:
Who cares ? the grasshoppers are dead.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Creative Copy Rights
I have been coming across a this Hindi(?) pop song playing almost everywhere last week - malls, ringtones, lifts, you name the place. Although Hindi music is not my cup of tea, this song really caught my (ear's) attention. It had a nice bass , beat and melancholic tone to it and even though I couldn't follow the lyrics, I could make out some words like "yaar", "qurban", "ishq" from the song. Absolutely clueless, with this limited piece of knowledge , I put Google to the test of times, but to no avail. Search engines have to be given something to search for , some keywords like artist, film name or song title....bummer!
With some help from a music shanty in nearby market, I deciphered the song title as "Ya Ali" after trying out "Yaara dil", "Yaara ve", "Mera dil" (all of which are also supposedly in the currency) and that was enough for me to google it. My research findings were quite appalling:
1. This song was from a Bollywood movie Gangster(2006) which is apparently a hit movie. The song is also apparently a hit song
With some help from a music shanty in nearby market, I deciphered the song title as "Ya Ali" after trying out "Yaara dil", "Yaara ve", "Mera dil" (all of which are also supposedly in the currency) and that was enough for me to google it. My research findings were quite appalling:
1. This song was from a Bollywood movie Gangster(2006) which is apparently a hit movie. The song is also apparently a hit song
2.The song "Ya Ali" has been sung by Zubeein, a Bangladeshi debutante to bollywood and written by some unknown lyricists.
3. The music is copied entirely from the original arabic song " Ya Ghali" by Guitara, who by the way, has fabulously rendered the piece with her lilting and contemporary voice.
4. This is not the first "copied" song making it big in the Bollywood chartbusters. Apparently songs of the arabic king of pop Amr Diab have been regular targets in most of Mahesh Bhatt's movies ( sample the hit song "Kaho na kaho" from Murder(2005) ripped off straight from Amr diab's "Tamaly Maa'k")
5. Blogs abound with disgust over the amount of plagiarism in Bollywood, especially from arabic /spanish music. Most of the bloggers only wished that atleast due recognition in the form of "credit" was given to the original artist. Nevertheless, there was unanimity on the fact that Indians did a great job in copying songs and blending the same with excellent hindi lyrics! You can't simply pass off arabic imports in the indipop scene without good beat or lyrics.
Looks like the usual haven for Indian plagiarists - Western & Disco Music is now nome more in demand. Arabic, Spanish, Sufi music with techno blend seem to be ruling the roosts for now. Not far from now Shakira & Amr Diab could be doing a romanic dance number for the upcoming " Copy Cats"!!!!
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Pizza vs.Police????
"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."....Jeff Marder.
Is it not true? Just the other day I ordered for a pizza from a prominent pizza shop and I was told that the same would arrive at my doorstep within 30 minutes ,else, I could have it free. In Mumbai, time flies like arrow while traffic moves like snail. Which is why these delivery guys whiz past you in their customized sleek pizza-mopeds even in the most heavily conjusted roads ! They are forced to ride fast to meet impsossible deadlines or face pay cut on account of customer discount!. Not surprising that their antics feature as one of the prime causes of road accidents in the city.
Even my neighborhood Kiranawala for years offers free home dalivry (sic) but without any guarantee on time. So why these ubiquitous Pizza experts offer such instant deliveries? Is it driven by competition or social service? One such company, a prominent one, has even named its call centre number as "Hunger - Helpline". If only we had more of such helplines across in drought ridden states of India, our hunger problem could be instantly solved, thanks to modern capitalism!
Is it not true? Just the other day I ordered for a pizza from a prominent pizza shop and I was told that the same would arrive at my doorstep within 30 minutes ,else, I could have it free. In Mumbai, time flies like arrow while traffic moves like snail. Which is why these delivery guys whiz past you in their customized sleek pizza-mopeds even in the most heavily conjusted roads ! They are forced to ride fast to meet impsossible deadlines or face pay cut on account of customer discount!. Not surprising that their antics feature as one of the prime causes of road accidents in the city.
Even my neighborhood Kiranawala for years offers free home dalivry (sic) but without any guarantee on time. So why these ubiquitous Pizza experts offer such instant deliveries? Is it driven by competition or social service? One such company, a prominent one, has even named its call centre number as "Hunger - Helpline". If only we had more of such helplines across in drought ridden states of India, our hunger problem could be instantly solved, thanks to modern capitalism!
Even the cops don't reach the spot before a good 45 minutes ( except, maybe on celluloid). In fact during Summer vacation our local police issues notices to societies to keep vigil on the neighborhood / appoint private security to prevent burglaries because they are unable to attend to so many calls. So when in emergency, you can always trust your pizza guy to attend on you within 30 minutes and all that he may expect from you is a tip in the hand and a pat on the back !!!!
Monday, December 11, 2006
Reverse Democracy!
The Prime Minister gave a keynote address at a meeting of the National Development Council in New Delhi on Saturday. It was rare occasion where he made some controversial statements (instead of his usual verbose, vague and threadbare commentary on developmental economics) thereby fuelling widespread and acerbic attacks from the opposition on the substance of the speech. Various leaders from BJP have assailed his speech on the ground that his statement on plans for minorities reeked of "communalism" and gave "undue benefits to minorities". Some have even termed it "gross violation of Constitution"
The controversial lines from the speech are reproduced below:
'I believe our collective priorities are clear: agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the upliftment of SC/STs -, Other Backward Classes -, minorities and women and children.
'The component plans for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability.'
The bone of contention is in the emboldened letters. It is very difficult to comprehend what the PM intends to convey through these paradoxical statements. It is obvious that no person, whether a majority or a minority community member can share the fruits of economic development "equitably" and "lay first claim on the resources" at the same time!
It is quite understandable that the speech was carefully constructed to meet political ends but was sadly not as discreetly executed! The fact that our PM is not a established "politician" only adds to the woe.
The controversial lines from the speech are reproduced below:
'I believe our collective priorities are clear: agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the upliftment of SC/STs -, Other Backward Classes -, minorities and women and children.
'The component plans for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability.'
The bone of contention is in the emboldened letters. It is very difficult to comprehend what the PM intends to convey through these paradoxical statements. It is obvious that no person, whether a majority or a minority community member can share the fruits of economic development "equitably" and "lay first claim on the resources" at the same time!
It is quite understandable that the speech was carefully constructed to meet political ends but was sadly not as discreetly executed! The fact that our PM is not a established "politician" only adds to the woe.
We pride ourself on our strong foundation of democracy. The rule of majority comes with a responsibility to protect the interests of minority. But only in this glorious country we see that a few so called torch bearers of minority communities hold the country's economy at ransom with the politicians dancing to their tune. 5 decades after independence we have no clear statistical data on the minority population in the country. It is not far when a "brahmin" or "jain" will plead for minority status going by sheer percentage of population!
Years of reservation have yeielded no visible results in terms of improvement in literacy or standard of living as the benefit of such regressive policies have been taken by the same families, which are now referred as creamy layer. For that matter the "trickle down" effect of social/human resources expenditure have never reached the desired sector - the poor /farmer! Poverty, Bondage and agriculture have no religion. Child labour and Female infanticide have no religion and so does Battery of women.
Eradication of these social evils do not require any communalistic approach to policies. It needs a total relook at our existing systems with will and committment from politicians & bureaucrats to work for something other than votebanks or bank balances! In fact, every developmental policy must define the target audience in terms of economic background/ age/gender/occupation.
Eradication of these social evils do not require any communalistic approach to policies. It needs a total relook at our existing systems with will and committment from politicians & bureaucrats to work for something other than votebanks or bank balances! In fact, every developmental policy must define the target audience in terms of economic background/ age/gender/occupation.
It is quite possible that in a few years from now we will be a democracy only on paper.The creamy layer will be the "Mafia" controlling politics, power & people and the country will be suffering from a state of reverse democracy!
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