India

Beauty contests in rural India

PTI informs us:

Homegrown major Dabur India Ltd is planning to host beauty pageants – Dabur Amla Sundar, Susheel, Yogya Pratiyogita – across rural India. The competition for finding beautiful, good-natured and capable women from villages as part of its strategy to relaunch the firm’s flagship hair oil- Dabur Amla.

I wonder what will happen when these contests are held in rural Bihar and UP. Will you have local mafia dons demanding to be judges, and insisting on bikini rounds? Cadaverous caravans cascade.

I wouldn’t be worried about women being commodified by these contests, by the way. Women are already treated as sub-human in much of rural India. No?

India’s loss to Sri Lanka

I’m travelling for the rest of the day, and won’t get to blog much. Before I go, a couple of quick thoughts on the India-Sri Lanka game.

One, why do so many Indian fans have such a strong sense of entitlement? They behave as if they were entitled to a win, as if they paid good money to see a film, went into the hall, and were shown a film with a different ending than the one they were promised. This is not cinema, dramatic as it is. This is sport. Shit happens. No one betrayed anyone. One team played better than the other on the day, that’s all. Having said that…

Two, it was clear that India weren’t merely unlucky, but were simply not good enough to win the World Cup. The reasons for this have to do with preparation, not ability. Contrast our fielding with Sri Lanka’s. Contrast the number of dot balls we faced with how Sri Lanka did. These don’t depend on the vagaries of the day, but on how well one prepares for the event.These two things are the most tangible reflections of a coach’s impact on the team. I don’t see how even Greg Chappell, if he is honest with himself, can deny that he has failed.

But here’s the thing, O Crazed Fans: it was not a wilful failure, but a human one. Chappell certainly wanted India to progress as much as any of us did, and he and poor Rahul Dravid must be terribly gutted now. There is certainly cause for us to feel disappointment. But anger?

And that brings me back to my first point…

(Comments are open.)

What to do about Moninder Singh Pandher?

I’ve just been watching the TV news channels, and they’re all a little psyched right now. The CBI has announced that Surendra Koli is solely responsible for the Nithari killings, most of which took place when Moninder Singh Pandher was either out of the country or not in his house. The anchors and reporters are bewildered, and are hinting at all manners of dark conspiracies. There are soundbytes of relatives of the victims protesting against the “injustice.” One thing is clear: many of these people decided long ago, after a rapturous media trial, that Pandher was guilty of the serial killings. Now that he’s not even being charged of the killings, they don’t know how to deal with it.

This is especially so because a significant part of the media made it a class issue. They focussed a bit too much on the subtext of a rich, influential businessman killing off poor, defenseless kids in his neighbourhood, and much of the outrage about the Nithari killings came from the class difference. Now that storyline is sinking, and they’re trying to figure out what angle to take. Perverted psychopath killing and eating a whole bunch of kids is less juicy if it’s the servant and not the master we’re talking about.

The whole truth of the matter will hopefully emerge as the trial proceeds, and it might well turn out, as some of the reporters are insinuating, that Koli is covering up for Pandher. But it might also turn out that he’s telling the truth. Either way, should we not suspend our decision until the facts are established?

Air Deccan incompetence, and courtship at Mt Abu

Air Deccan’s getting much attention from CNN-IBN, and rightly so: their disregard for customers has been so blatant for so long that something had to give. Well, Gautam John points me, via email, to an excellent comments thread of people relating their experiences with Air Deccan. One of them, in two parts, by a gentleman named Saurabh Chauhan, is particularly hilarious, and I carry it below the fold.

Sex education in Madhya Pradesh

IANS reports that “[s]ex education will no longer be imparted in schools in Madhya Pradesh.” MP’s chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has explained his decision with the following words to HRD minister Arjun Singh:

The union government has devaluated [sic] Indian culture and its values. I believe that the text material on the subject was not submitted before you in a proper manner or else you would have not approved it.Instead, the younger generation should be taught about yoga, Indian culture and its values.

How these old fogies take kids for granted! Biology is stronger than culture, and these kids will get their sex education whether the schools provide it or not. As for Yoga, if you teach it to them at school, they might end up hating it for the rest of their lives. Such naïveté.

Where your taxes go: 18

Advertising campaigns for governments.

It’s quite possible that Amitabh Bachchan did the ads for UP for free, but my contention is that the government shouldn’t be wasting our tax money in producing and broadcasting advertisements for itself.

(Update: Reader Hemant brings my attention, via his comment below, to an Amitabh quote in the article in which he says that the ads were funded by the SP. If so, then this is clearly a wrong example, as your taxes may not be involved in this particular case. My bad, sorry! My larger point about government advertising, though, remains.)

A government should not need to advertise, its efficiency or inefficiency will be evident to all the people it governs. By all means, let a political party advertise its achievements with its own money, but to spend taxpayers’ money on it is a waste.

(Where your taxes go: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Also see: 1, 2, 3.

My essays on taxes and government: Your maid funds Unani, A beast called government.)

“Ban jokes on the internet?”

I have often written about how giving offence in India is treated as a crime, but it’s being taken to a ridiculous extreme now. The Times of India reports:

Buoyed by a successful campaign against a publisher of joke books, members of the Sikh community have now approached the Mumbai police to block any form of humour on the net targeting them.

The cyber cell department of the crime branch has received a plea asking it to “ban jokes on the internet” which portray Sardars as objects of ridicule.

The article goes on to tell us that a gentleman named Ranjit Parande has been arrested under Section 295-A of the India Penal Code for publishing The Santa and Banta joke book. I have written before (1, 2) that, like so many much of the antiquated Indian Penal Code, Section 295-A should not exist. Let me reproduce it here in full:

Section 295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs

Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of [citizens of India], [by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise], insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to [three years], or with fine, or with both.

Note that this is a non-bailable offence, and I suppose I should be glad to be a free man given that I am an equal-opportunity religion basher. Isn’t it ironic how those who show the most hubris about their Gods are most insecure about the damage that mere words can do to those Gods? Tsk tsk.

Or perhaps I should look at this as an opportunity and demand that The Flying Spaghetti Monster be incorporated as an official protected deity by the Indian government. Pastafarianism is no less worthy of protection than any other religion. No?

(Link via breakfast conversation with Manish Vij.

Comments are open, but if you insult the FSM, I shall make sure you pay for your words!)

Alcohol advertising and free speech

It’s okay to sell and drink alcohol in India. But it’s not okay to advertise it on television. Immensely silly, I think.

Now I’m off to get me some packaged drinking water.

Look who’s making demands now

CNN-IBN tells us about the All Kerala Drinkers’ Welfare Association, an association that “pledges to protect the rights of alcoholics.”  This association has apparently “presented the government with a 15-point demand that includes a room for the lower-middle class drinker.”

I wonder why they haven’t asked for reservations yet. Don’t government offices discriminate against alcoholics?

(Link via email from Gautam John.)