Deciphering Narendra Modi's win

For a few days there was nothing on TV and in print other than Modi. It was Modi all the way and right fully so.

But the way media went about claiming that it was a win for moditva='hindutva + developement' is glossing over the man's achievement and hiding their laziness in doing their homework.

Political scientists and analysts don't seem to base their comment or interpretation on either facts or a well grounded theory.
why can't you not use the basic notion of science? Finding the relevant facts for a start. How many surveys were quoted in the media report? I am not counting electoral poll related surveys as relevant here.

How many surveys were conducted to rate Narendra Modi's Leadership
qualities with that of Sonia Gandhi?
Here's what a survey could have included

• Leader's commitment-Sonia vs Modi
• Leader's integrity-Sonia vs Modi
• Identifying the leader as one of their own. Sonia vs Modi. In question format- With which one of these leaders do you feel 'apnapan'? A.Sonia B.Modi
• Leader's identifying the leader as representing their interests-
• Leader's Honesty
• Leader's No non sense approach
• Leader's Track record of developement
• Leader's Self above people attitude..Does he or she promote a
  dynasty?
• In the event of a tie which is more important A.Developement with allegations of minority torture B.Developement with allegations of minority appeasement
• How often does this leader push things under the carpet?

I think the media folks don't think. The guy on site can't but the back room guy can.

Some more questions

Democracy means that the majority views have to be articulated. Problems taken by their horns. Even if Modi had said we are better off without sohrabuddin I am sure he was articulating the view of a majority.(This is not to justify the encounter - but to merely state that people's views are not necessarily politically correct.)

what's communal?

Unless you are the media type you will know that there is a simmering distrust of other faiths-riot or not. If BJP says look I would want to solve it this way-What is congress's response?None other than brand BJP as communal.

• Is congress/left even aware of mutual distrust?
• Does congress/left have an agenda for promoting mutual trust?
• Are they willing to bet their last dollar(allright Rupee then) on what they beleive is right?
  

As I said most media gets fail marks on their Modi trail. Times of India gets pass marks courtesy of Mr Swapan Dasgupta.

In my opinion one would have known the results much before had you been there at say Ahmedabad and felt the pulse of the people there.I had told my wife to take Modi's victory for granted.

People prefer originals to fakes, genius to charlatans and leaders to followers. Let a thousand Modis bloom in the BJP,congress and the left.

Devil's paradox

I thought karan thapar was a terror as I generally tended to watch his devil's advocate show.But then it was with a little surprise that I read Friends and opponents by him in Hindustan Times dec 23.

".. Regardless of who loses what will be hard to forget is the distasteful comments exchanged between Sonia Gandhi and Narendra Modi. To be honest, they were more than unnecessary and unbecoming. They were uncouth."I fully agree with his viewsI also fully concur with his assessment that media is playing to the gallery by 'playing up their (politician's) comments'.

So now let's go right ahead and examine the devil's paradox.
P.S. In English the noun phrase devil's paradox is ambiguous between wether 'one devil's paradox' and 'paradox of "devils"'.Take your pick.

A paradox consists of atleast two statements that seem to contradict each other.

statement 1:" MPs are extremely warm and friendly.” -In Parliament
statement 2:"in their speeches and election rallies do MPs forget their friendliness"

Resolutions of the paradox:

• 1.politician's treat political opposition as enmity. Karan Thapar's view
• 2.There are no friends any way-any time -any where.
• 3.People are friends except when their interests are effected.
• 4.Politicians are schizophrenic. They are one persona in parliament and another at election rallies
• ....

We could add some more.

What is probably the most sensible resolution?

That there are multiple relations between any two persons.In the parliament A and B are friends. But in the electoral Arena thay are rivals-for an outsider.But in the electoral Arena they are opponents to be vanquished-for A and B.

Let us consider C and D who are friends as well as boxers who participate in a contest. If the two of them think I shouln't hit a friend they will get boo.. from the audience besides losing points. In the ring they had better be boxers than friends- and no holds barred at that -let the referree take care of the fouls.(Election commission take note).

I can add from personal experience that once in the ring you only at the opponent and not the public. and that you have one goal to defeat him you don't think.You react.

Remember Lord krishna's advice to Arjuna on his reluctance to fight his kith and kin?kill or be killed -take your pick.
In any case let's take a look at so called advanced countries the U.S, France and germany. Tell me when was the last time that a sex scandal was not whipped up in the electoral arena. When was the last time skeletons were not pulled out from the cupboard?
Karan's lament and the punch line?“You were in devastating form,” said tThe boxers routinely do it but only after all the rounds and the winner is declared.

Attitudes, Attidudes, Altitudes and Antidotes

Great to see an article entitled irreverence with a red leading i by Jyoti Sharma in Delhi Times TOI 16th Dec 2007.


Few Birds don't make an autumn?(No apologies for misquote?)

Here we are taking a closer look at shobha de's views and her social watching. If she's reading this so much the better for her and if she isn't so much the worse.The subtitle can be recast as a part whole confusion or over generalization ( There are many other recasts). Be that as it may let's see what is the content of the template.

Since according to jyoti Shobha is a social watcher let's begin by asking which society is she watching? The one in the music show video ?show and the fashion show?

My god what a way to watch society!
Let's ask this question--what percentage of the society does she monitor? (the video society.. as
percent of total society) -I am assuming that by society she means Indian society and not the society where stays or of which she is a member.What happens to the rickshaw puller youth, the barber,the maids son and countless such others.Shobha would be better off with a few lessons on how to watch society.I know of several youth (young ladies and gentlemen) well educated,
decent income, fully at home with modernity, who would rather go for arranged marriages ( some want nothing less than their own subcaste e.g A mathur wanting only a mathur-saxena is unacceptable, go to the temples and are repectful of elders.
Some want to join IAS to make their pile on the sly.
So much for the view that the so called gen i beleives in dismantling old views.

What is ATTITUDE-ATTIDUDE?
Attitude is the stance(position or stand) on a given issue/person/organization and is in general of the form Attitude towards X. e.g What is your attitude towards X?For X you can fill in Shobha (Answer = irreverence) For X you can fill in X= live in relation/premarital sex...

Unfortunately the word attitude has been hijacked by the likes of shobha and jyoti to to promote videos, fashions and such like.So much for the ATTIDUDEs/ATTIDUDESSes

Altitudes and Antidotes
I would urge the twosome to pray 'Thodisi to lift kara de' (Does that ring a bell? Too bad if it doesn't) , rise to higher altitudes in their attitudes towards society and take mind deconstruction as an antidote to cliches.


Is irreverence acceptable?
Irreverence as an end in itself and for itself is totally unacceptable. Disgusting to find unqualified advocacy of irreverence ('irreverence is the absolute priority of the young'). Irreverence as pointed out above is an attitude to be adopted in order not to get cowed down by Authority if need be. The focus is the issue not irreverence (so sorry the twosome once again
mislead the youth). In otherwards irreverence for a good cause is totally acceptable. Examples Russell, galileo in the west or shankaracharya/Buddha here in India and countless others.


Why are attempts to break away not successful?
As I often keep repeating , care about it? take it warts and all. If society watching for the twosome is like birdwatching (amorous connotations not excluded) then the following is redundant. If it isn't it would help.
Come on the two of you arise and awake and look below from high altitude.

• How many youth?


• What are their social,financial,educational and personal constraints?


• How many of these can actually think for temeselves?


• Is it irrelevence that is relevant or societal values?


• .....

I do hope and pray the twosome stop patting each other's backs blindly and give better leadership to youth than 'irrelevence(irreverence) is top priority'.

Men and ideas

Well here we are on the subject of men and ideas . Every body understands what the term man or it's plural version men means . I would say there is convergence here. But as to the word idea there is lot of divergence there. And when I say divergence I mean the several different takes on the subject. Kant has his own. Idea cellular have their own and of course our columnist in the Times of India entitled 'Men & Ideas' sure has his own.

Specifically One would have thought that an Idea is something that is useful and new in the context of the column. A factory (albeit mental) production using a template would hardly be worth calling an idea. If a clerk applies a procedure for filing an application he would (and no one else would) hardly lay a claim to having generated an idea. If the template says look for similar solutions and try to use them. I would say that's part of the drill.

The second template look for and tear apart the socialist agenda- here's a sample and I am afraid a recurring theme in Mr Gurcharan Das's column-
"it must ditch the old socialist idiocy of ‘one bus one owner’ - a product of the 'small is beautiful' thinking of the Eighties.

Can't we grow up and ditch the templates. Aren't we well into adulthood as far as reforms and the rest are concerned. Why hark back to legends of yore.

Come on and start looking at things the way they are rather than how they appear through red goggles , green spectacles , blue binoculars..

you might say (or the columnist might say) I am talking about other's ideas not mine. By men and I mean other men and their ideas. Well 'Blueline solution in Indore' might look like Mr Vivek Aggarwal's Idea. But Is that so? If the report is correct it is true indeed that Mr Agarwal has done a commendable job. But then there are several others who do so day in day, day out on several different things. You need to distinguish between competence and novelty. A job well done is just competent( I might add however great the benefits from the job well done).

Criterion I would use to classify an Idea

• novelty
• generality-applies in many different sittuations
• ease of application of the idea
• simplicity

So what kind of ideas are we really talking about? -Well the wheel has turned full circle and I shall take a break.

Doctor's Dilemma?

Our media is busy berating DrSingh (Honourable P.M) . See Mr Swapan Dasgupta's 'breach of trust'. Interesting under specification in the frame' who trusts whom for what?' Here are some ways the three slots can be filled.
The media and U.S-'We trusted Dr Singh to steam roller the deal'
The Left-'We trusted Dr Singh to implement the cmp and nothing but the mp'
Lalu ,karunanidhi and others-'We trusted Dr Singh to last five years deal or no deal'
Me and such like 'We trusted Dr Singh to keep the onion prices in check'
Dilemma there for Dr Singh 'Kis ka dil dukhana hai?'

How much of a liberal democrat is Indian Media ?

To start with let me take a look at what the term 'liberal democrat' means to me . To me it means in the Indian tradition 'Aa no bhadra'h kranto yantu viswatah' (excuse for misquote if any . It just means let noble thoughts come from all sides) . It means we should welcome all that is good irrespective of source. We shouldn't be worrying about wether BJP said it , the congress said it or George Bush said it etc.
Second to me the term means beleiving in reason in the context of conducting our affairs in society. Faith is a personal matter and a matter of choice. As far as I can tell that is how Indian Constitution was meant to be as indeed are those of many other countries like U.S.
I am not too clear what exactly is democratic. 'Majority views' or the 'Interests of Majority' in the view of a minority. I will side step that issue (perhaps the domain of political science) and insist that all views have a right to be heard the good bad and the ugly.

Now let's take a look at how the criteria are to be actually used and How our media fares as per these criteria. I borrow on these additional bits of contemporary wisdom (include folk lore). Need I add that these are additional criteria for being a 'Liberal Democrat'

• Critique Ideas not persons.
• Name calling shouting and crying foul is what you do when you run out of ideas. Avoid this and just say 'I beleive' (you declare that the propositon is now an article of faith) or just say 'I disagree'.
• Reasoning should follow good practices like using sound inference patterns. (As logical as you can get) The least expectation is that the arguments are coherent. (To me it includes listing all the premises so there is no disconnect and special semantics of words if any).

So much for critera.

At the outset let me mention that I have nothing to do with any of the political parties and would be willing to listen to all sensible arguments. I would include Sonia Gandhi's "Enemies of nule deal are Enemies of developement" as name calling. She may have her so called compulsions. But surely there are better ways. My reason for asking for avoidance of name calling in all forms is not because of moral compulsions but to avoid the rounds of name calling and attendent obfuscation of the actual issue. (If Obfuscation is the goal then I am sorry I regard it as not democratic).

I have closely monitored the times of india and the T.V channels for some time. The discourse is full of Name calling 'Chineese agent' ,'22-karat imperialism'. 'nuclear weapons hawk's' (the BJP),'peaceniks' (Cant that be kept neutral and refer to the intended group- may not sound pejorative off the context but definitely derogatory in context). I think the problem perhaps is that it is the established journalistic practice--Sensationalize.

As to unreasonable inferences there are a plenty. Here is an example ."Exercising power without responsibility was what the Left established, with remarkable success, as its style of doing its best for India. It first used a piece of paper called the ‘common minimum programme’ as a sacred text to virtually halt all attempts at implementing progressive economic reforms. And now, it has stopped the government from pursuing an independent foreign policy."(TOI editorial 14th oct)

The author implies two things that

1. Exercising power without responsibility is bad. (note the sarcastic "doing its best for India" ).So did The father of the nation, Jayaprakash Narain Vinoba bhave and so does the electorate,and the media . Others claim that Minority is holding the majority to ransom.To claim that it is bad you have to add at least one consequence of Exercising power without responsibility that is actually or potentially bad for people. Style perhaps but the satire and the disconnect don't help. Besides the left could as easily have threatened to quit even if it was in the coalition government. (counter argument) This has happened often enough in state governments.
2. ‘common minimum programme’ has stopped the government from pursuing an independent foreign policy. Note the disconnect and underspecification 'independent foreign policy' ( independent foreign policy statement in what context? Actually I suspect the author intended Nuke deal-an issue rather than policy). 'common minimum programme’ is what the left said it's support is meant for as per yechury's T.V interview. If that is so then it acts as a constraint on the Government's Law making capabilities domestic or foreign. That is part of the baggage that comes with coalition. Should the minority view be stifled by name calling, hoodwinking and hijacking the actual issue.

The Media style is perhaps to obfuscate and sensationalize rather than enlighten -hardly anywhere near liberal democratic. I thought only the politicians obfuscate to further their ends. Sadly I guess I have to add the Media in that category. Exercising power without responsibility is bad is well illustrated by the case of uma khurana who was hounded by the police based on media reports.