Archive for category January 2015

By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 2006)

Recently, I had to visit Phuket in Southern Thailand on the coast of the Andaman Sea, which is part of the Bay of Bengal. If you go due west from Phuket across the sea by over 1500 miles, you will be in Tamil Nadu.

Thailand is overwhelmingly Buddhist with strong roots in Buddhism’s Southern School, or Theravada School, in which the Buddha is seen not as God, but only as a spiritual role model for inspiration. There are exquisite Buddhist temples everywhere.

The hotel where I stayed was an hour from the airport.  The landscape en route reminded me of Kerala where I grew up. Verdant hills and valleys with a variety of palm trees — coconut, arecanut, Panai, Eecham, and Kamugu — were everywhere. And then, the bamboo shrubs, banana trees, rubber plantations, hardy teaks, jackfruits, mangoes, tamarind, even cashew nuts. Water buffaloes and elephants were roaming along the road. Flowers too were familiar: kolambi, jasmine, pavizhamalli (frangipani), arali, Even the Thai letters in road signs and shop signboards resembled the curvy Malayalam script. If Kerala is called God’s own country, God was smart enough to make several countries his own…….

Phuket, an island 400 miles north-south, and 100 miles east-west at its widest, is very touristy, with over 50% of its population at peak season comprising of tourists mostly from Germany, Russia, France, Italy, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Japan, China, and now India. In the resort hotel where I stayed, the cable TV beamed programs in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, and English programs from Australian TV, and BBC. The only American channels were ESPN and Discovery. No CNN.

On the basis of Purchasing Power Parity, or PPP, the per capita income in Thailand is $8100 (Ref: http://siakhenn.tripod.com/capita.html/  So with $1 ~ = 35 baht (the Thai currency), a few hundred dollars go a long way. So, if you are from the industrialized societies, you don’t have to be rich or sophisticated to be a visitor in Asia. The PPP-based per capita income in India is only $3000. So, dollars go even farther in India than in Thailand.

With 50% of the population being affluent tourists compared to the Thais, the entire economy is tourism-driven. With the tourists playing such a dominant role, the locals are forced to make every effort to gratify every need and every fantasy of these tourists. I leave the rest to your imagination, given that this magazine is read by school-going children.

Before improving the standard of living of the poor in India, the gora-friendly in India want to make India a tourist Mecca for relatively affluent international visitors, mostly Europeans. They need to go and take a look at Phuket at what would become of India if the brown sahebs succeed, given India’s poverty.

Desis are color-conscious. Not many desi men, not to speak of desi women, with brown skin tones developed over tens of generations and hundreds of years in evolution, would dare to bare their brown-skinned torsos and midriffs in pools.

In conversations on the Phuket beaches I heard and overheard, I was struck that even white women were embarrassed about their pale and pallid skin tones. Caucasian women coming from above the Tropic of Cancer were sharing their embarrassment in having to display their pasty skin in their swimwear.

This only confirmed my belief that there is nothing absolute in people’s sense of beauty. Whatever is relatively scarce in a given region will be considered something worthy of possession — lighter skin tones (at least “wheatish” as they say in Shadi.com) in the Tropics, and tanned skin north of the Tropic of Cancer. 

 I read somewhere that during Napoleon’s time in the 17th century, in palace banquets, while the emperor’s noblemen and noblewomen ate off gold and silver plates, Napoleon alone had an aluminum plate. Aluminum in Napoleon’s time was so rare that only the emperor could have it. (It is an entirely different matter that, given the excesses and debauchery of the nobility, there was nothing “noble” about them.)

When many svelte women were showing off their tan and trim waistlines in skimpy swimsuits in the hotel lobby; many 9-to-5 women tracing their stock to Northern Europe were embarrassed to reveal their not-so-svelte and not-so-tanned bodies even in the poolside and covered themselves with Turkish towels.

And past-middle-aged white men — Germans, Russians, Eastern Europeans — and a few Arabs were also in the pools. Many of them had pork bellies carefully cultivated over several decades of living on beer, vodka, bad food, and inertia. These men too were embarrassed and covered themselves with even larger towels as they walked in the hotel lobby.

In the bazaar outside the resort, the past-middle-aged male tourists with leathery skins, like Mahabharata’s Yayati, were refusing to age gracefully. They were hanging around with their Thai “girlfriends,” who were a few decades younger, and at least one hundred pounds lighter than themselves.

One sign of the Indians’ increasing affluence is their social and office functions organized in upscale resorts outside India. In India now, holding weddings in upscale hotels in big cities is prosaic. The in-thing is weddings in overseas resorts. In Phuket, there was a desi wedding —  one Nitin marrying one Nayantara. Well into the wee hours of the Saturday night, one could hear in the hotel lobby and the bars upstairs Punjabi and Bollywood beats from the dance floor below. And the Indian operation of Max New York MetLife was having their annual sales meeting in the resort, with over 100 Indians participating in the meeting and the following revelry.

In the 1960s, with the US economy booming and the dollar soaring, many poor European immigrants who migrated to the US decades ago went to Europe with their families to see their ancestral land. This was the beginning of the guided tours. Remember the Hollywood movie If It’s Tuesday, It Must be Belgium?

While these loud Americans were happy to be everywhere during summer in Europe’s tourist spots — Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, Venice’s waterways, Rome’s cathedrals, and Parisian roadside cafes — the European natives only had condescension for these expats. This condescension was also partly out of jealousy. The term Ugly American gained currency not only in Europe, but also in the US itself.

Then, in the 1980s, with the strong Yen, it was the turn for the Japanese to become “ugly” and the butt of jokes in many touristy US cities like San Francisco, LA, NY, DC. These short Japanese men and women in their khaki shorts and T-shirts, with their expensive cameras dangling from their necks, were everywhere. Californian newspapers of that era, with their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, recalling Pearl Harbor, were talking about the new Japanese “invasion.” Envy was part of this condescension.

These Japanese tourists would go in buses to the Golden Gate Bridge Vista Point in San Francisco, come out of the bus, and stand in line. One by one, they would take pictures of themselves in the same spot with the Golden Gate Bridge in the backdrop, and whoosh, off they go to the next photo-op spot.

Now, with India’s economic emergence, it is the turn of the Desis to be “ugly.” In Phuket’s hotel lobby, many Desis, almost all of them men, were loud. And in their Hinglish — Arre, Bell Boy ka call karo yaar thoda, or dekho yaar, idhar breakfast me desi fruits vagayara sub hai. Woh tasty bhi hai. They were as usual, late checking out and were in a hurry. Some were even trying to cut the line in front of the check-in counter in the hotel lobby, much to everybody’s annoyance.

End Piece: The Thai language is Sanskrit-based, with vowels and consonants similar to Indian languages. Even the names sound Sanskrit. The king’s name is Bumbol Adulyadej, which can be traced to Bhumi-Pal Atulya-Tej, which means Ruler-of-the-Land with Unparalleled Brilliance. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (written in 2006)

Folks, there is no way around bringing class and wealth in discussing this issue. Towards the end of July, the US Senate did not pass a bill that proposed to increase the minimum wage from $5.15/hour set in 1997 to $7.25 in three steps over several years. This bill was passed by the US House of Representatives with a Republican majority. The Republicans, facing an uphill task in the November midterm elections, wanted to outfox the Democrats with a bill increasing the minimum wage that was dear to Democrats. So, the Republicans, despite their dogma not to disturb the Market Forces in diminishing wealth, yielded to election-year compulsions and passed a minimum wage bill 

But true to their commitment to give tax breaks to the real rich, the Republicans also piggy-bagged an item to the bill that would reduce the estate tax for the real wealthy, benefiting only slightly over 8,000 people in a country of 300 million. Republicans were only helping the really rich cushion the adverse impact of the rise in minimum wage on their lifestyle. Some Compassionate Conservatism!

Republicans talked about how bipartisanship is the need of the hour in today’s poisoned political environment. Sen. Santorum waxed on how the bipartisan compromise bill would give something both to Democrats and Republicans to take home.

While the bill increasing the minimum wage gave something to Democrats to take home, it gave much more to Republicans. In the fall campaign, Republicans, likely to lose the majority in one or both chambers of Congress, sure will take full credit for the minimum wage increase. And also, for more tax-cut goodies to their wealthy friends.

The minimum wage of $5.15 was fixed in 1997, which has the same

purchasing power of around $4.20 in today’s dollars. The plot above gives the minimum wages and the gas price after adjusting for increases in the US Department of Labor’s consumer price index (CPI). In the history of minimum wages, this is the longest time during which the minimum wage did not see any cost-of-living adjustment. The members of the US Congress during the same time gave themselves several wage increases with impunity. Remember, Republicans have been in the majority since 1997, and they have had their president since 2000. So much for Bush’s compassionate conservatism.

The Democrats in the Senate, sending the Republican blood in the water in November elections, managed to defeat the bill in the Senate.   If Democrats win a majority in one or both chambers in Congress in November, they sure will send a bill to President George W. Bush’s desk a stand-alone wage increase bill.

The philosophical basis for the estate tax is well known. Paul Volcker, the ex-Federal Reserve chairman, and Bill Gates Sr, the father of multi-billionaire Microsoft’s Bill Gates support some form of Estate Tax.

After all, we have adjusted to the phenomenal increases in gas prices in the last 3 years that have a cascading effect on price increases on everything; we have survived the Republican tax cuts to the wealthy; we are continually adjusting to companies walking away from their pension plans; we have survived runaway increases in healthcare costs and the rapid increases in the cost of higher education. So sure, we can adjust to marginal increases in the minimum wage as well!

End note: The annual salary of someone on a minimum wage is around $10,500/year. This annualized minimum wage is below the government-estimated poverty level income of over $12,000/year for a single parent with one child. Besides, people who work at incomes close to minimum wage rarely have health insurance. These people can as well be living in the much-derided Third World. In fact, they do live in Third World living conditions, but in the First World. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 2005)

We hear all the time the axiom of good marketing: Know your product or service, know your audience, and tailor your message to your target audience using a suitable medium. Recently, I came across an infomercial on the Golf Channel that followed this to the “t.”

I am not a great fan of golf. So why was I watching golf in the first place, and why a golf infomercial? I watch the golf channel to draw cheap pleasure when a veteran or a wannabe veteran misses an easy putt. I don’t care about their drives (unless the ball goes into deep rough with trees all around, or in a sand pit, or better still, into the water). Mostly, my interest starts only after the ball has landed on the greens, particularly with putts not too easy, usually ten feet or longer.

When all golf enthusiasts on the fringes of the green look for the ball to plop into the hole, I, like the golfer’s competitors standing by, eagerly wait for the ball to miss the hole — he closer it comes and misses, the more enjoyable it is for me. Particularly when the player is obnoxious or flamboyant on or off the field, which many of them are.

I was sweating it out on my treadmill as I was watching the infomercial. The TV’s clicker was too far away, and I didn’t want to get off my treadmill to change the channel. So, I was stuck with the golf channel.

Golf is a multibillion-dollar sport. See the inset of the basic golf stats taken from the National Golf Federation (www.ngf.org). That’s why there is an exclusive golf channel with golf infomercials. To the best of my knowledge (I only have basic cable) you don’t see infomercials for tennis, football, or ice hockey. Only for golf.

The infomercial I was watching was

* Not about new and improved golf balls with the latest elastomers that give the balls the longest drive and the most bounces,

* Not about the new and improved design of dimples and how they improve the aerodynamics of the ball in flight to give the longest drive and the most bounces,

* Not about the symmetry of distribution of the weight within the ball,

* Not about the better design of the contour of the blade, or the newer alloy of the blade material of the club, and

* Not about the new and improved sweet-spot on the drivers.

It was also not about the correct posture and stance for the swing shown in an ad. In this ad, the peddler was showing his “training” golf club. This had a flexible joint in the middle. This joint remained straight only when the club was used, in what the peddler said, as the “correct swing.” If you swing it any other way, the joint buckled awkwardly, making the golfer look dumb.

The informercial was about the golfer himself or herself.  Not the pro-golfer though. The target for the informercial was “mature” golfers –- golfers who are over forty who are “into the sport” because of social needs or business compulsions. The type you see in airports carrying huge golf bags on their way to seal big contracts on golf courses, or the affluent and leisurely class getting away for the weekend to play with their social equals on the manicured courses in Hilton Head, Florida beaches, or in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico…

Golf in the US continues to be the game mostly for the leisurely, for the affluent, or for the ambitious. Its participants are overwhelmingly male, majority white, who are by and large conservative, socially and economically. They are desperate to to improve their game.

These golfers prefer to externalize the root causes for their poor games. Many of them are corporate executives or owners of big and small companies, and they routinely use these at work, blaming hurricanes, tsunamis, oil prices, droughts, high interest rates, inflationary trends, wars, Nafta, Cafta, competition from China, outsourcing to India… for the poor performance of their companies.

So, as golfers, it becomes natural for them to blame their poor games on the wind speed and direction, drizzle, bad balls, bad golf courses, somebody coughing, poorly designed clubs and putters, uncomfortable shoes… even geese flying overhead making noise.

Finally, here comes the Golf Guru, Roger Frederick* trying to sell his idea for helping golfers to improve their game by focusing on the golfers themselves, on their flexibility, rather their lack of flexibility.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone if these middle-aged golfers are stiff like their golf clubs, particularly the male species among them. After all, there are the movers and shakers in businesses and in their professions, putting in long, arduous hours to keep abreast in their narrow field of specialization. If you take away their sleeping and eating hours, travel times, and hours and hours in front of TV watching NFL, NBA, and other games, not much is left for anything, particularly if it demands commitments and regularity such as any exercise regimen.

Roger Frederick’s central thesis for improving golfers’ game is to improve their flexibility of their musculoskeletal system.

These days, when you think of flexibility, the things that would come to your mind are Tai-chi from China or Yoga from India. Roger Frederick’s infomercial talked about the same ideas that any $5 book on Yoga and Tai-chi would give in its first introductory chapter for improving the flexibility around shoulders, hips, elbows, wrists… necessary for general living and for any sport, including golf.

But Roger knows his audience very well. These 40-plus male target audiences are from a social class that is kind of supercilious, if not condescending, to learning anything from other cultures, especially if they are from emerging societies and old civilizations such as India or China.

So, Roger introduces the need for improving flexibility for golfers using all the appropriate golfing jargon, not mentioning even once “Yoga,” or “Tai Chi ” or “asanas.” There is no Omm, there is no Soorya Namaskar, no tongue-twisting Sanskrit names for the different postures, no loose garments, nor svelte women in leotards, no incense sticks, and no soothing music in the background. The only thing that tells you that Roger is familiar with Yoga is the sticky Yoga mat he is using to squat. I was impressed with Roger’s marketing strategy.

The backdrop is golf greens with trees, with portly men in their golfing pants and T-shirts practicing stretching.

With golfers spending over $4.7 billion on golfing clubs, balls, and accessories, Roger will be gleefully walking away to his bank with his DVDs selling for $29.99, without having to design, manufacture and sell any new golfing gadget, but asking golfers to sweat it out on a yoga mat on golfing greens.
(* www.frederickgolf.com). END

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Kollengode S Venkataraman, written in January 2005

As a species, we are reactive organisms. Only the most exceptional among us are capable of proactively changing the status quo even in our personal lives. No wonder, even the institutions we build tend to be reactive. As we have seen time and time again, organizations change the way they operate only in response to huge problems — financial crisis or scandals, usually both. Religious institutions are no different.

Hindu religious institutions, when they become rich, seem to forget that their assets are not in their ornate buildings, jewelry in gold, diamonds, & precious stones, ostentatious floats, and huge bank accounts.

Their real asset — in fact, their only asset— is the trust/faith devotees have in them. After all, devotees donate money to them out of blind faith. Lack of transparency in money matters and organizational details is the starting point for all scandals. When they abuse this trust in matters of money and people, we need to hold them accountable.

US-based Hindu religious organizations, particularly larger temples, are not known for their transparency on money matters and other dealings. These temples’ financial statements are open only till they owe money to banks. Once they clear their debts, a pall of secrecy insidiously settles in.

This can change only if donors, big and small, demand at the very least, information on how their money is spent by the temples’ governing bodies. But this is unlikely to happen any time soon because of donor apathy. Besides, in the case of larger US temples, donors contributing over 90% of temples’ revenue are dispersed in many near-by states, often, all over North America. These donors have no voice in the affairs of the temple. Eventually, a handful few, often outside the formal organizational chart, end up having disproportionate influence on temple’s temporal affairs.

Besides, on organizational matters, US-based temples buy peace among quarrelling ethnic subgroups by yielding to regional/ethnic pressures, and self-inflicted compulsions of dogma. The governing bodies often hide behind saffron-robed India-based heads of orthodox religious institutions, and others steeped in the ritual part of the faith. These Acharyas have their own agenda as they try to get a toehold in the lucrative and resourceful North American Hindu organizations.

Many of these men in ochre robes are either unfamiliar with, or do not want to recognize, the diverse composition of US temple-goers, their needs, and the compromises they continuously make in their personal life in synthesizing their own unique Indo-American lifestyle. These people struggle to reconcile their traditions and faith with the mainstream ethos, while raising their children in their “newfoundland.”

Members of the governing bodies of these temples, for their part, use these Sannyasis as their armor to fend off internal opposition, real and perceived. Soon, these India-based God-men exert enormous influence on US temples’ organizational matters. Scandals in religious organizations start innocuously as policy disagreements among members that morph into irregularities in their internal affairs and billow into scandals. Then these religious organizations, like any other organization, try to buy peace through money and favors, failing which, through intimidation, blackmail, and litigation. And when these also do not work, and if one can get away with it, through violence.

In this matter, Hindu religious organizations are not alone. In the 1980s, the Vatican Bank and Banco Ambrosiano were involved in financial shenanigans involving billions of dollars. Recently, in the US, many Catholic archdioceses filed for financial bankruptcy after pedophilia cases came out against scores of parish priests. The Rev. Jim Bakker’s and the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart’s tryst with prostitutes is another story. The real problem with religious organizations today is their moral and ethical bankruptcy.

So, it is time the faithful donating money to temples started demanding, at the very least, financial transparency from temples and religious heads.

On organizational matters and finances in Hindu temples, skepticism, not implicit faith, is the need of the hour. Often, among Hindus, people’s implicit faith is erroneously founded on the fear of Godly wrath, believed, and often subliminally reinforced, by what people hear second- and third-hand on events in other people’s personal lives. This is a deplorable way to inculcate and reinforce faith.

Don’t get me wrong. Implicit faith, rituals, and catechisms are wonderful, even necessary, in the early stages of one’s life-long spiritual journey. But they are only means to a greater end, not ends in themselves.

When religious organizations are built around rituals and dogma, and are confined to them, they become like any other organization, given to venality, pride, exclusivity, hatred, aggression, and desire for control.

Mercifully, in India, throughout ages, reformers have repeatedly reminded us that the true basis for religion is freedom from ignorance, anxiety, fear, and bondage. Thiruvalluvar, the Tamil sage, over 2000 years ago wrote:

“Grasp and hold on to the One who is free from all attachments, so that you can free yourself from even that grasp.”

US-based Hindu temples would be doing themselves and everybody else a favor if they do some introspection on these. But will they? END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman   (written in 2004)

Recently, the UK’s Prince Charles was in India. His visits to Mumbai’s Victoria Terminus, chawls, and his interactions with dabbawallas (whose delivery performance is better than FedEx’s) were all over the Indian media. However, the event that did not receive wide publicity was his meeting with the Indian IT gurus at the Taj Hotel’s ornate Crystal Room, where he heard how the Indian IT wizards eased the traffic problem in central London’s shopping district.

Ramananda Sengupta covered this for Rediff.com, a web magazine (www.rediff.com/money/2003/nov/04charles.htm).

According to Sengupta, industry leaders — Kiran Karnik, chief of the Indian software industry organization, Ashank Desai, chairman of an Indian software company, and others — made multimedia PowerPoint presentations to the prince highlighting India’s software industry.

Desai presented the challenges he faced in designing a system for collecting the toll from the 250,000 cars daily entering London’s shopping district: 1) The already congested London traffic should not be slowed down further, 2) no booths or barriers are to be erected, and 3) vehicles should not be stopped.

Desai told the prince how his group did it: Every day a) 500 fixed and mobile cameras read number plates of over 250,000 cars, b) computers process 1,000,000 images and issue 75,000 permits for new drivers wanting to enter the area, and c) an India-based call center answers 64,000 calls and processes 100,000 financial transactions.

Desai told the prince, “All this was completed and delivered in record time. Not only has this brought down noise and traffic pollution, but it has also earned revenue for London’s Municipality.”

Charles then asked questions. Even though he had a microphone, journalists didn’t hear his questions, a reminder that low-tech problems are still endemic in India. But they heard a peal of polite laughter from the software gurus at one point at what the prince told them.

Sengupta later came to know what made the Indian software gurus laugh. The prince told them: “You’ve cleaned up London’s congestion. What about Mumbai?”

While the Indian software gurus solve the problems of the English-speaking societies and the industrialized West, India’s nuts-and-bolts problems are only fit for their polite laughter.

During our visits to India, most of us make similar remarks to our friends and relatives. Hearing it from a videshi Desi who was one of them years ago, our remarks only evoke their anger.

But hearing it from the descendant of India’s erstwhile colonial master, the latter-day Indian brown sahibs politely laugh it off instead of feeling embarrassed, betraying their own assessment of India. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Written in 2003)

On May 13, 2003, the Indian media widely quoted a Merrill Lynch study that said that in the US, over 200,000 people of Indian origin have a net worth over $1 million each. This study was done in 2000 during the overheated “dot.com” euphoria days, well before the bubble burst. But still, this number is impressive considering that we have only two million people of Indian origin in the US. Assuming an average of 3.5 people per household, this is around 500,000 families. So, roughly, one in three families of people of Indian origin is a (multi)millionaire household. 

Granted, a million these days is not what a million used to be, say, in the 1970s and 80s. Granted, the study’s basis for net worth includes homes, stocks, 401-k, PAYSOPs, and other savings.

But considering that the US has only 2.1 million millionaires in a population of 280 million, the 200,000 desi millionaires are noteworthy. On this basis, nearly 1 out of 11 millionaires in the US is Desi.

Also, while the national median family income is around $38,500, the median family income of a desi household is over $60,000. As observed by Merrill Lynch executives, these 200,000 Indian millionaires, along with their less wealthy NRIs — and also shall we say, less “worthy” NRIs, given our obsession with wealth — we may be the wealthiest immigrant group in the United States.

This is impressive any which way you analyze. The desi millionaires are among physicians and surgeons, motel owners, entrepreneurs, business executives, and two-career professional couples.

Even without the Merrill Lynch study, the resourcefulness of the Indian immigrants is well recognized by real estate agents, auto dealers, financial planners, banquet organizers, brokerage houses, insurance agents, and lawyers.

We have every reason to be proud of our accomplishments given that most of us have come to this country with the proverbial “$100 in pocket” that our children have heard ad nauseam. We should be equally evocative in being thankful to this bountiful land of opportunity, and a society that accepts people from every nook and corner of the world, embracing them as one of them legally, if not socially.

More importantly, the US has accepted us in their communities with our lifestyle, faith, and ethos quite different from those of the US mainstream; and given us the freedom to pursue our interests — even criticize it, as we have done several times.

We are proud of our accomplishments and hard work. But we need to recognize that this was possible only because the US has the environment to bring out people’s potential and an economic system that lets us cash in our skills to accumulate this phenomenal wealth. Honestly, how many of us could have become this wealthy within a few decades had we stayed in India? This is not just a rhetorical question.

So, it is prudent for us to remember, particularly after 9-11, that along with this distinction of being immigrants who have access to considerable wealth come a few obligations to the communities in the US where we live.

On this point, how the mainstream USA perceives us is quite telling. Only 15% of us vote. One refrain one hears from outside is that we are disengaged from local issues. The perception comes from our very limited interactions with mainstream USA. This has to change.

The early and more successful Indian immigrants are in their retirements, or at least looking at their retirement options. So, maybe it is time to consider giving back something to local communities in the US where you live: Endowments in your names as your legacy for annual scholarships and lectures in schools, colleges and universities; for concerts in Indian performing arts; for grants to inner-city children’s centers, soup kitchens … …

The list is long, and the needs are many. The important point is that the beneficiaries of these endowments/ charities should be the people in the US mainstream.

If we want inspiration, we can look at the Parsi and Jain charities in Mumbai, or Chettiar and Nadar charities in interior Tamil Nadu. Or we can just look at the Jewish charities in the US.

If we emulate our own Indian forebears, America would recognize us not simply as an immigrant community that became rich in the US, as Merrill Lynch did. America would also recognize us as successful and resourceful immigrants who recognized their social obligations that come with wealth, and who acknowledged the bounties they have received from this land.

A Point to Ponder: Given our relative prosperity, it tells a lot about us when we expect free lectures, music/dance recitals, etc. This forces desi organizers to sheepishly seek discounts in renting auditoriums from public institutions. This is embarrassing. Besides, accompanying artists — mrdangists, violinists, tabla, and flute players — are often paid a pittance, sometimes none at all. We’ve heard horrifying stories from accompanying artists — sometimes from main artists themselves — on their experiences with the US-based desi organizers.

We can call ourselves arts patrons only when artists — accompanying artists in particular — get decent honorariums. For this, we need to buy tickets, for starters. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (written in 2003)

Adapted from a story available on the Internet

A wily zookeeper had fifteen monkeys in a cage. In the middle of the cage, he kept a ladder that reached a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling. The monkeys always wanted the bananas, but the crafty man wanted the bananas all for himself. So, each time any one of the monkeys tried to climb the ladder, he doused ice-cold water on all monkeys. Each time any one of the monkeys tried to climb the ladder for the bananas, the same thing was repeated again and again.

Soon, whenever any one monkey went near the ladder, all other monkeys, not wanting to be doused with ice-cold water, pounced on the monkey trying to climb on the ladder to get the bananas and beat him up. Eventually no monkey ever went near the ladder.

The crafty man then removed one monkey and replaced him with a new one. The new monkey, seeing the bananas and the ladder, wondered why none of the other monkeys was doing the obvious. As he began to climb the ladder undaunted, all other monkeys joined together and beat the crap out of him. The new monkey had no idea why.

However, he learned not to try to reach for the bananas.

A second original monkey was likewise removed and replaced.

The newcomer again tried to climb the ladder, but all other monkeys, including the previous new monkey, hammered the crap out of him. The previous new monkey, even though he was grateful that he was not on the receiving end this time, trigger-happily participated in the beating nonetheless because the other monkeys were doing it. But he had no idea why he attacked the newcomer. Thus, one by one, all the original monkeys were replaced.

Eventually, even with all the original fifteen monkeys gone, none of the new fifteen monkeys ever dared to climb the ladder, even without the need to spray the ice-cold water. And all of them enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tried for the bananas, even though they had no idea why. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (Written 2002)

Note: A condensed version of this appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as Note: A condensed version of this appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as a Letter to the Editor.

On Sunday, August 11, 2002 US Airways, which occupies over 70% of the gates and accounts for over 80% of the arrivals and departures in Pittsburgh International, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11. I was in Little Rock on business, and on August 12, US Airways CEO David Seigel said (quoted in USA Today,) “When an airline files for bankruptcy, there is always some erosion. But we are in a strong cash position. The sophisticated customers will understand.”

In the post-Enron, post-Arthur-Anderson, post-WorldCom, post-Tyco world, people, sophisticated and unpadh, are not trusting company executives when they try to reassure the public, particularly when they are in deep doo-doo. So, I didn’t take Seigel’s comments seriously.

With US Airways dominating Pennsylvania’s air travel industry (it has hubs both in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia), news on US Airways is always on the front page above-the-fold in papers. With thousands of jobs directly and indirectly tied to air travel, not to speak of the tax revenues, this is, as it should be. So, on 8/13/02, the Post-Gazette ran a story on US Airways’ problems, assuring readers with a bold caption, “Fliers won’t see much change, but stockholders will.”

If fliers indeed do not see much change, US Airways has the real possibility of not recovering from its Chapter 11 woes. Here is why:

Let me start by saying I am not a “sophisticated” traveler. I work for a large, Pittsburgh-based corporation, and I travel on and off on business. Neither my company nor my immediate boss has insisted — or even reminded me, for that matter — that we should always choose the least expensive air carrier. They have left it to our judgment.

Years back, when I booked tickets through our travel agents, I started routinely asking ticket prices for different airlines. I started comparing US Airways ticket prices to cities to which US Airways was the only one flying nonstop, or worse still, US Airways is the only airline flying. And I was outraged.

Once I flew to San Francisco on business. The US Airways nonstop ticket was over $1500, nearly three times as American Airlines ticket with one connection, for identical travel dates and times.

I go to Little Rock frequently on work. US Airways flies 50-seater small jets nonstop to LR, and the ticket price at short notice is over $1100. American Airlines and Delta routed through St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Atlanta, are slightly over $700 for identical terms of travel.

I was mad. And I wondered, “How come US Airways is in the red despite gouging its corporate customers?” As a helpless single business traveler, I did the only thing in which I had full control: I simply refused to fly US Airways. For several years now, even without any prompting from my company, I’ve been choosing the inconvenience of connections via Cincinnati, St. Louis, Dallas, Chicago, you name it, instead of letting US Airways fleece my company.

You can imagine how other companies with tighter travel budgets, not to speak of individual travelers, make their travel decisions.

If you have to travel from Pittsburgh to, say, Raleigh-Durham, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and similar places that are too far away to drive, and not far away enough to warrant a ticket with a connection, you are out of luck. You have no option other than getting ripped off by US Airways.

Pittsburgh has first-hand experience of the vulnerability of its well-being tied to one industry — Steel. It took Pittsburgh more than twenty years to recover from the demise of Steel.

If tying your fortune to one industry is bad, tying it to one company is even worse. And yet, that is precisely what Pittsburgh International did by letting US Airways overwhelm the airport.

Pittsburgh airport and the region can, and will, recover from the US Airways mess in the next several years. Pittsburgh International has the advantage of its location, and is an excellently designed airport with over 100 gates. It is one of the finest airports in the nation, perhaps in the world.

What we need are two or three dominant carriers using Pittsburgh International as their hub. Having two or more carriers operating from Pittsburgh will serve the traveling public better, and bring stability to the airport’s finances and the region’s economy.

My eyes swell with tears upon hearing US Airways Chapter-11 bankruptcy humiliation. But they are not tears of sorrow. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 2002)

Industrialized nations, with the U.S. leading the pack, preach to the less developed countries the virtues of Free Trade and dissuade them from imposing duties on the goods they import from them.

The argument is compelling: Import duties are protectionist and artificially make the imported goods more expensive even though they cost less and are better made. The real losers, the industrialized nations argue, are the ordinary citizens of the LDCs (Least Developed Countries) since they have to live with costlier, but poorly made goods than the imports.

Many LDCs during the last fifty years never attempted to nurture internal competition while they gave protection to native industries from overseas competition. The Nehruvian India is a classic example.

The unholy alliance among India’s Congress Party, big industrialists (in the Indian context) and India’s entrenched bureaucracy kept alive what was derisively called the Permit-Licence-Quota Raj.

The politicians’ palms were kept greased. And the already established industrialists (the Tatas, Birlas, Mafatlals, Kamanis and their ilk), by working on both the politicians and the bureaucrats, saw to it that no competition-domestic or overseas-ever came in their way.

The top-level civil servants got their vicarious pleasure in making the industrialists wait at their door for an appointment even as they took the crumbs the tycoons threw at them periodically. This system was preserved for decades till it imploded after the Cold War. Given this background, it was no surprise that none of the Indian industrial giants ever dared to enter the aggressively competitive global marketplace.

But in asking the LDCs to remove trade barriers, the industrialized West is driven more by self-interest. While the industrialized West tells the rest of the world to remove duties on imported goods, it grants subsidies to its farm products — grains, cheese, meat, poultry — to artificially depress their prices in the global market.

The industrialized nations spend over $300 billion of their taxpayer money per year on agricultural subsidies. This subsidy alone is roughly close to the total GNP of sub-Saharan Africa.

Gov. George W Bush, in his election campaign two years ago, said in stump speeches that if elected, he would phase out farming subsidies so that farm products would be produced and priced by market forces.

That was two years ago. But his election rhetoric was replaced by the realities of US congressional election in November 2002.

So, what did he do? He signed legislation increasing the farming subsidies by nearly 80%, ostensibly to protect small farmers, that would cost US taxpayers nearly $90 billion over the next ten years.

But the truth is the largest beneficiaries of this subsidy are large-scale corporate farmers who are driving family-owned farmers out of business. And when Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and the Irish rock star Bono toured sub-Saharan Africa for 11 days, he heard an earful on the US hypocrisy on farm subsidies. Bono publicly chided O’Neill that the US-backed International Monetary Fund has pressured Ghana to drop farm subsidies, while dumping US taxpayer-subsidized rice on Ghana (Wall Street Journal, editorial, May 30, 02).

In LDCs, where over 70% of their populations are in farming, this makes domestic products less competitive than the imports. This is a prescription for social disasters. In the less populous industrialized West, only ~ 5% of the workforce is engaged in farming. It needs no imagination to know the social consequences in nations where 80% are engaged in farming lives on food grains imported from richer nations.

This is similar to companies underselling to kill competition. When businesses do this, others go to court. But when powerful nations do this to poorer nations, they have to plead for fairness, or for mercy.

The free-market Republicans seem to give a perverted meaning to “Think Globally, but Act Locally.” If you ask them, they will still say they believe in what they preach. But they would add, “Look, we didn’t say we have to reconcile the ‘thinking’ and the ‘preaching’ part with the ‘acting’ part.”

The “local” considerations for President Bush are the 2002 Congressional election in which he wants to wrest the US Senate from Democrats’ 51-49 majority and retain his majority in the House. Midwestern states are toss-up states in the senatorial election. And the farm subsidy comes in handy to tilt the balance in the Republicans’ favor.

* In another decision, the Bush administration yielded to the lobbying of steel manufacturers in the US by raising duties on imported steel by up to 30%, again, ostensibly to protect the domestic steel industry and the steel jobs against dumping by mostly third-world steel producers.

But the real reason is to increase the odds of his second inauguration in January 2005. Thanks to Enron and the energy mess of 2000-01, California, with its largest number of electoral votes, is gone for the Republicans in the 2004 election. So, the steel-making states — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida — are important to him in 2003 because in 2000, Bush won or lost by a wafer-thin margin in these states.

And even though Republicans are ideologically averse to the power of organized labor, they also know it doesn’t hurt to keep unions on their side because organized labor brings in voters.

* The Teamsters Union and the US trucking industry are trying to stop Mexican 18-wheel trucks from coming into the US as per the NAFTA agreement. They are using all kinds of arguments, such as the poor safety records of Mexican trucks, even though the Mexican trucking industry is bending over backwards to comply with US standards.

The real reason is that since moving goods to and from Mexico using Mexican trucks is cheaper for US businesses, the US trucking industry will lose its business, and the Teamsters Union will lose their jobs. Mexican President Fox threatened that if Mexican trucks cannot ply in the US, then US 18-wheelers will have “No Entry” signs at the border. So, bye, bye Free Trade! END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, written in 2002

South Asian politicians display their exaggerated machismo in ridiculous ways, thereby unintentionally revealing their mental time-warp.

Many South Asian men stereotype women as weak despite innumerable characters of courage in Sikh, Rajput, and South Indian history, not to speak of mythological characters such as Panchali, or deities such as Durga or Kali. Besides, is standing up against brute force the only sign of courage? How about fortitude and endurance against adversities? South Asians’ ossified idea of courage surfaces on and off.

When Nawaz Sharif was Pakistan’s prime minister in 1999, India pressure to explode Pakistan’s nuclear bombs, and Japan and the West pressured him not to do so. The latter dangled goodies for him for not exploding bombs. Given Pakistan’s bad economy, and caught between the proverbial devil and the deep sea, Nawaz Sharif agonized for several days over how to respond.

Benazir Bhutto, who Nawaz defeated in the preceding election, was in her element to put Nawaz on the mat. In a public meeting in Karachi, she threw her chudiyan (bangles), asking Nawaz to wear them as a sign of his wimpishness and his lack of “manly” courage, known as mardangi in the subcontinent.

The public outburst of Bhutto, herself a woman and the first woman prime minister of a Muslim nation, was both ironic and paradoxical.

Piqued by this ultimate “insult” heaped on him by his woman predecessor and his Islamic hardliners, Nawaz upped the ante by exploding six nuclear devices, giving a “befitting reply to India.” That Pakistan got into a deeper economic quagmire was a small price to pay.

The chudiyan metaphor in Pakistani politics didn’t end. In the current US-led war against the Taliban, Musharaff abandoned the Taliban, its 20-year-old ally, in “Pakistan’s supreme national interest,” and joined the US-led coalition. General Musharraf was on Pakistan TV addressing Pakistani citizens. Using fauji (army) language, he was trying to divert public attention from the change in his Taliban policy to Pakistan’s traditional enemy, India. He asked India to “lay off” Pakistan. Speaking in Hindi/Urdu, he said, “Pakistan is not a chota-mota (piddling) country,” and threatened India “with a befitting reply.” In his desi bravado, chudiyan surfaced again: “Hamne bhi chudiyan nahin pehni.” (“We are also not wearing bangles.”)

[On CNN, Musharraf morphed from the hawk to a dove. When Larry King asked him about peace with India, Musharraf replied, “We need two hands to clap,” indicating India’s lack of response to his overtures. King and his US audience would never know of Musharraf’s blow-hot-blow-cold overtures for talks with India.]

The chudiyan metaphor was picked up by Sushma Swaraj, Information and Broadcasting Minister, who took umbrage as a woman at General Musharraf dangling the feminine bangles in front of his viscerally “manly” Pakistani audience.

In New Delhi she told reporters Musharraf should not belittle chudiyan. After all, Sushma said, Pakistan’s General Niazi surrendered to a chudiyanwali (woman with bangles) in 1971 after the Bangladesh War. Sushma’s chudiyanwali is, of course, Indira Gandhi. Paradoxically, in India the joke among us college students at that time was that the chudiyanwali Indira Gandhi was the only “man” in her Congress party and her all-male cabinet.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a seasoned statesman-cum-politician and a Hindi/Urdu maven, did not miss the opportunity to display his mastery. He told reporters in Gujarat: “Baat chudiyon tak pahunch jaye yeh koi mardangi ki baat nahin hai. (When the level of discussions stoops to bangles, it is not a sign of manliness.” There you go, bhayya! END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (written in 2001)

Pakistan’s dictator, president and general Parvaiz Musharraf repeatedly said before the failed Agra Summit that “Kashmir is the core problem, and all others are only minor irritants” for the bad relations between India and Pakistan. This assessment is too simple.

With the failed summit, is a quarter of the world population living in South Asia condemned to live in hostility and poverty? Not necessarily, though it looks likely. If Germany and France, the sworn enemies during WW II, live in peace now, anything is possible.

But this requires Indian and Pakistani leaders to integrate their foreign policy goals with their social priorities; show sensitivity to the anxieties of each other in words and deeds to gain trust; and be realistic in their expectations. They need to persuade their domestic hardliners to compromise while talking to each other even as they disagree on issues. They can learn from the US, USSR, and China. Even during the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cold War, they never ceased talking to each other.

Granted, neighbors — individuals and countries— will always have problems even under the best of circumstances. The atmosphere in the Indian subcontinent was not in the past, is not now, and will not be in the immediate future, anywhere near the best. Seasoned analysts on both sides are aware of the history not only of the last century, but also of the last 1000 years. That’s why they don’t endorse Musharraf’s simplistic characterization of Indo-Pak relations.

The general’s public posturing in India before the talks began doomed the summit. Kashmir’s pro-Pakistani All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) wanted to have an exclusive meeting in New Delhi with him during his visit. India conveyed its discomfort, and the general publicly said in Islamabad that he would be a good guest. Then he bowed to his hardliners. He gave a tea party in Delhi inviting only the APHC from Kashmir, as if there is no other Kashmiri voice. In turn, Vajpayee introduced Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah to the general during the banquet. Thus, the stage was already set for the summit’s failure.

Musharraf praised Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence at Raj Ghat even as his jehadis were slaughtering Hindus in Kashmir. Then, like a hormone-driven teenager on his first date, he focused only on Kashmir, talking to Vajpayee. Vajpayee reiterated Pakistan-inspired cross-border terrorism by the jehadis, Kashmir, bilateral trade, etc.

Then the general in the supposedly off-the-record talk with Indian editors, distorted history of the subcontinent, with the editors sitting as potted plants. Not once did the Indian editors question Musharraf till the very end on his distortions, or the lack of his credibility as the military dictator to preach the right of self-determination for Kashmiris, or the fact that Pakistan itself occupies 1/3 of Kashmir.

China is the Real Winner: The real beneficiary in the doomed summit is China. China too occupies a part of Kashmir, and not once did India or Pakistan raise the issue of how—or if—they are going to deal with the Chinese on this issue. China being Pakistan’s only benefactor outside the Islamic world, Pakistan will not dare to raise the issue.

Pakistan is still nursing its self-inflicted wound of losing its eastern wing in 1971. The dictator blamed India for supporting the Bangladeshi freedom fighters. He conveniently forgot that in 1970-71 West Pakistan denied Pakistan’s premiership to Mujibur Rahman from East Pakistan when Rahman had the majority in Pakistan’s parliament. Ten million East Pakistanis ran into India, escaping Pakistani tyranny.

In losing the eastern wing, Pakistan suffered a spiritual defeat. The breakaway of Muslim Bangladesh negated Pakistan’s core principle that Islam would be the bond to hold its people together.

Other issues on the horizon: From Pakistan’s perspective, other issues would take the center stage to vitiate Indo-Pak relations even if Kashmir is solved to the complete satisfaction of India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiris — an unlikely event. Why unlikely? Because treaties are essentially compromises between sovereign nations on substance. And the military mindset inspired by religious fundamentalism abhors compromises. And there are hardliners in India too.

So, before embarking on high-stakes summitry, both nations need to mobilize public opinion on their home turf towards compromise.

Dictators, trained to give marching orders, are ill-equipped for persuading people. When summits fail after raising expectations, hardliners dig in their heels. After the summit, rhetoric from Delhi and Islamabad is shriller, and the jehadis have become more violent.

Besides, the Pakistan government has built its foreign policy around Kashmir, its military establishment against India, and its national identity around Islam to checkmate the “Hindu” India. With so much internal strife in Pakistan today-sectarian killings between Shias and Sunnis, and among different sects of Sunnis; the Kalashnikov culture; drug traffic and addiction; religious fundamentalists drowning out moderates; ethnic strife among Punjabis, Sindhis, Mohajirs, Balochis and Pathans; mounting debt; sagging economy-the Pakistani establishment needs a glue to hold its people together.

Politicians with insurmountable internal problems often create external enemies, real or imaginary, to divert public attention. Pakistan cannot publicly cultivate hatred against neighboring Iran, Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics (all Islamic), or China (its only other benefactor). But India is a perfect enemy. Pakistan even calls its missiles Gaznavi and Ghaur, after Mohammad Gazni and Mohammad Ghori who repeatedly raided and plundered India (that paradoxically included today’s Pakistan) over 1100 years ago. By their very name, these missiles are India-specific.

Pakistani leaders supporting the jehadis militarily, politically, and materially may be thinking that the low-intensity proxy war is a cost-effective way to bleed India to death. For Pakistan’s discomfiture, however, its Kalashnikov-wielding jihadis are now turning their guns against Pakistanis who do not tow their line. Hundreds of lawyers, doctors, and journalists are murdered in broad daylight under military rule. Like the rakshasas (demons) in Hindu Puranas harassing the very Gods who granted them the boons of immense power, the jihadis are tormenting their own mentor.

And consider these from Pakistan’s perspective: The deep scars of Partition (the scars among Indians are equally deep); the size of India’s economy, population, and military; India’s diversity; India’s growth (relative to Pakistan) in industry, higher education, and IT sector; and India’s competitive edge in bilateral trade.

Anxiety Over Cultural Invasion: However much Pakistan’s orthodoxy denies it, her sophisticated and anpadh citizens alike recognize Pakistan and India share a common heritage for better and for worse. Pakistani schools teach history only after the arrival of Mir Qasim on the Sindhi shores in 8th century AD, thus denying their children their pre-Islamic heritage. By contrast, Egyptians are proud of their Pharaoh, and Iraqis, of their Mesopotamian history, both dating back to millennia before Christ. Both are 100% Arab, 100% Muslim.

Besides, Indian women — at least middle class and above — freely pursue their careers in all fields. India’s tradition of encouraging women in classical performing arts is likely to plant ideas in Pakistani women to seek artistic expression, taking inspiration, not from India (God forbid), but from their own historical roots. This may not go well with the mullahs. Further, Pakistanis see Muslims in India living with Hindus. This is likely to reopen old questions.

India has as many Muslims as Pakistan. And Pakistan’s record in treating minorities — not Hindus and Sikhs — but Christians, Ahamadias, Shias, and its treatment of women are there for all to see.

Bilateral Trade May Not Be Easy: Pakistani industrialists will resist inexpensive goods from India flooding Pakistan — as Indians resist cheap Chinese goods entering India — as this requires a structural change in its economy. Pakistani labor leaders and farmers also have reasons to oppose trade with India. Some Pakistani writers derisively refer to the Bania-Brahmin nexus in India as a threat to Pakistan.

So, if Kashmir is amicably solved, the Pakistani establishment needs something other than India hatred to hold its people together. Creating a newer glue to hold together its heterogeneous Muslim populace would need structural changes in Pakistan. In Pakistan today, members of just over 400 families dominate all facets of life. This will have to change.

But vested interests don’t give up without a fight. Look how difficult it was — and still is — to bring about land reforms or eradicate untouchability in India, or break Nehru’s permit-license-quota raj that suffocated Indians’ entrepreneurial instincts for decades.

So, sentiments and lofty intentions are inadequate to improve Indo-Pak relations.

And commando attacks, whether in battle fatigue or in three-piece suits from the podium, rarely settle disputes. What we need are leaders with patience and endurance to build national opinion for compromises, and who are sensitive enough to instill trust between the two governments. Only such leaders are likely to succeed in settling England’s sinister parting gift to the subcontinent.

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 2001)

Among Desis, even highly-educated Desis, all kinds of subjective and anecdotal indicators are tossed around in conversations on how rapidly things are improving “back home” such as: The availability of a) high quality private school and college education, b) enclaves pr luxurious flats and access to contemporary household gadgets, c) private modern medical establishments, d) consumer electronics, Internet access and cable TV, e) old-age homes, f) the wider choice of food in restaurants…… The list goes on and on.

Add to this the overflowing crowds of vacationing NRIs seen in jewelry stores and expensive sari stores in India during their visits.

While all these things and more are available, when we ask if they are affordable to the average Indian who earns in rupees and spends in rupees, we confront the uncomfortable answer that most of these are affordable only for the wealthy and the powerful in India, and not for the “average family” (husband and wife, 2 kids, 2 parents) struggling to live in their 800 sq. foot flats in urban India’s concrete jungles.

Traditionally, village folks in India list man’s needs as roti, kapda, aur makaan (unavu, udai, uraividam in Tamil) or food, clothing, and shelter. The order in which people list the three is significant. As an animal, man is instinctively driven first by hunger and thirst, and only then as a social animal, by the sense of shame, and only then he thinks about a roof over his head. So, rational indicator of social development in today’s “modern” world is the percentage of income an “average” family earning “average” income spends on roti.

The US Department of Agriculture’s statistic on the money the American family spends on food is revealing. It is remarkable that in the US the proportion of money a family spends on food has decreased from 21% in 1940 to 11% in 2000. This, in spite of all the economic ups and downs and the structural changes in the economy, from the one dominated by manufacturing in the 1940s to the one driven by services in 2000s. Life in the US is still manageable for the average guy.

% Income spent on food by the average US household (Ref: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/76967 :

1940:  21%
1960:  18%
1980:  13%
2000:  11%

In today’s India, an average urban Indian family (couple, two kids, two parents) earning in rupees and living in rupees spends a whopping 40%-50% of its income on food alone. How do I know? Personal experience. If you want reference, Google-search In 2000, an average urban middle-class family in India spent. Approximately 60% to 70% of an average urban family’s budget in India was spent on basic food items in the 1960s, which steadily decreased toward roughly 42% to 48% by the late 1990s and 2000 (source: Google-search under Between 1960 and 2000, % of family income an average urban middle-class family in India spent on food). But still not anywhere clos to the number in the US.

Add to this another 30 to 40% of their income going towards the even more sky-rocketing cost of housing – for a small 800 sq. feet 1-bed room flat, that is. “Average” young couples struggle to make down payments for their flats without parental support, which brings its own complications in the complicated checkerboard of relationships among the in-laws. That is why average Indians are leaving India in hordes to wherever destiny takes them. Instinctively they believe any place else would be better. And they are right.

With so much availability and so little affordability, is there any wonder why corruption has permeated society in less developed nations in so many perfidious ways?

Besides, with more than 80% of an average Indian family’s income gobbled up by food and shelter, very little is left for other activities-recreation, hobby, travel, health care, fine arts.

Recently my friend told me about the bill for the last stages of his mother’s hospitalization was Rs. 700,000. In India, there is no equivalent of Medicare or health insurance, and the quality of healthcare in government hospitals so wanting, and the private medical industry borders on racketeering. So older people dread hospitalization. With their liquid assets eaten away by inflation, they are forced to depend on their sons and daughters physically and financially.

Now you can see how easy it is for us to send our kids to tennis lessons, piano classes, golfing, Indian dance classes… … We have the luxury of disposable monies and disposable time too.

And we in the US also use other taxpayer-funded social services — public education, good roads, libraries, and parks, for example, to make effective use of our disposable time and resources in the activities of our choice. These activities, affordable only to the affluent in India, are well within the grasp of middle-class NRIs here, not to speak of the affluent desis.

The problem with emerging economies is that their development is skewed. A large number of low-income vernacular-educated families — not to speak of very low-income families — are overrun by sweeping changes whose beneficiaries are mostly urban middle class, or the rural propertied class. END

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By Premlata Venkataraman, (written in 2001)

The increasingly skewed gender ratio in India’s population is a sad reflection of Indians’ outright bias against girls.  See below. The social consequences of man messing with nature by abusing technology can be horrendous.

(Already, in the poorer northern provinces of China, because of the skewed gender ratio, villages inhabited mostly by men dot the landscape. Police say crime is up among the men in the marriageable age who cannot find brides. Kidnapping of women is common, and gangs traffic in Vietnamese and North Korean women for Chinese men (Washington Post, May 29, 2001). India cannot escape a similar trend.)

These skewed gender ratios are not because Indians have perfected the technique for conceiving male fetuses. No, it is only because of an unholy alliance between technology (ultrasound and amniocentesis) and the unscrupulous, unethical, and irresponsible radiologists and gynecologists in India-some of them women themselves.

This alliance has given a diabolical option to Indians to eliminate girls in families. “Spend Rs. 5000 now [for tests/abortions] and save a bundle later [in dowry],” says an ad hanging from trees in Punjab.

Adding to this disgrace, girls in poorer rural families go undernourished in their early years giving them problems in their child-bearing years. Girls’ literacy levels are low compared with boys’.

. This is the state of affairs in Gujarat and Punjab, the most industrialized states in India, where the literacy rates are low in spite of industrialization.

By comparison, in the less industrialized, but almost fully-literate Kerala, this gender-based disgrace is a lot less severe. So, education, not industrialization, is the key to address gender-related issues.

A cording to Hindustan Times, in India 430 mothers die during delivery per 100,000 live births. Even in low-income countries, this number is around 350. The statistic stands in sharp relief, given India’s accomplishments in missiles, nuclear weapons, satellite technologies and in the IT sector. Among the Indian middle class (~25% of the population), the mortality of mothers during childbirths is very low because of better medical care. So, death of uneducated, and poor mothers during delivery would be dreadfully high.

NRIs living outside India may not relate to these numbers. But beneath the surface, “Old World” values persist even among the educated NRIs with reference to gender preference.

Jagtar Singh, a machine operator in Punjab, summed it up with rural panache to the New York Times reporter: “Now it’s the girl’s family who pays the dowry,” he said. “In 20 or 25 years, you’ll see, it will be the boy’s family paying the dowry.” END
 

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (written in 2001)

Sri Sri (Srirangsm Srinivasa Rao) was a well-known firebrand Telugu poet in post-independent India. He claimed himself as one of the Digambara Kavulu (Naked Poets). In the 1960s and 70s, he and other Digambara Kavis defied the orthodoxy of their time by getting their work published in street corners by lesser-known personalities such as a rickshaw puller, even a prostitute.

When I was a student in Berkeley in the early 1980s, Sri Sri visited the campus. In his talk, he read his work first in Telugu, after which he translated the lines into English for the benefit of those like me who did not know Telugu.

Sri Sri was freely using imagery from Hindu epics in his firebrand poems asking people to arise and end the social oppressions and economic exploitations he saw all around. The similes he used were very Hindu: “Arise like the arrow from Vijaya’s Gandhiva; destroy your enemies like Kaali overpowering Mahishaasura.”

Later, at a friend’s place, hesitantly I asked him, “You are one of the revolutionary extreme-leftist poets who denounce religion as the opium of man. Yet in your poems you use themes from the very religion you denounce. How do you reconcile this contradiction?”

Sri Sri stared at me for a few seconds and said something along these lines: “I am an atheist. But as a poet, I recognize that the imagery from our epics is so deeply embedded in my people’s consciousness that nothing else will convey my passion and verve better. I cannot remain without using the similes, metaphors, and other imagery that are chiseled deep into our languages. No poet, however revolutionary he is, can completely insulate himself from his linguistic traditions, if he wants to reach his audience.” I admired him. Sri Sri died in late 80s.

Kaifi Azmi is another left-leaning poet, but in Hindi/Urdu mélange. Last December, in New Delhi, they released his selected poems translated into English. In the function, I read in newspapers recently that poet Kaifi Azmi peppered his talk with anecdotes and appropriate couplets to illustrate his points.

His poem on the destruction of the Babri masjid was poignant. Kaifi Azmi, a born Muslim, took imagery from Ramayana to drive his point as if he had talked to Sri Sri.

This is what Kaifi Azmi said: “On December 6, 1992 (the date on which Babri Masjid was razed years ago in Ayodhya), it was as if Shri Ram Chandra was returning after fourteen years of exile. Seeing what had been done in his name by others, instead of reclaiming his throne, Shri Ram Chandra decided to go back to the jungle.”

They may be speaking different languages. They may not even be aware of each other’s existence. But their minds work remarkably alike. END
 

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 2001)

Indian mystical poets have used imageries of religious conflicts of their time to stress the unity in man’s spiritual yearnings for liberating us from the shackles of religious bigotry.

In the middle of 18th century (1680 – 1758), near Bahavalpur-Multan area in the northwest part of the Indian subcontinent (in today’s Paki-stan) lived Bulleh Shah, the Sufi mystic. Puri and Sharang have translated Bulleh Shah’s mystical Punjabi lyrics (Bulleh Shah, Radha Soam Satsang Beas, Amritsar, Punjab, India, 494 pp). In Bullah’s time the strife in Northern India was between Hindus and Muslims, which survives to this day. Here is an example of Bullah’s outpourings:

I’m neither a Hindu nor a Mussalman;
I’m neither a Sunni, nor a Shia; I take to the path of amity for all.
I’m neither hungry nor satiated; neither naked nor clothed
I don’t cry, I don’t laugh; I’m not settled nor am I homeless;
I’m neither a sinner nor a saint… …
O Bullah, if in the heart lives the Infinite One,
one would renounce both Hindu and Muslim.
I’m neither a Hindu nor a Mussalman.

Around the 10th century(?), nearly two thousand miles away from A Bulleh Shah’s Bahawalpur, lived Shivavakkiyar in the Tamil country. Shivavakkiyar, a Siddha mystic, rebelled against the religious bigotry of his time. In his time in Tamil Nadu, the strife was not yet between Islam and Hinduism, but within Hinduism itself, the strife that lingers even today among the bigoted.

His Tamil works, all 4-line verses that rhyme and alliterate brilliantly, are easy to memorize and understand. Shivavakkiyar rises above the undercurrents of religious exclusiveness of his time camouflaging as spirituality. Here is a loosely translated example:

It is not Hari (Vishnu) nor is It Hara (Siva) because
It is beyond the black, and the white, and also the red;
It is not large nor is It small; Grasp It, and grasp It tightly
That Which is beyond all descriptions.

Nature has counterbalanced man’s tribal instinct to overpower, others militarily, economically, culturally, and even religiously, with his innate yearnings for spiritual freedom, as we see in Shivavakkiyar and Bulleh Shah speaking against the exclusiveness of organized religions.

Their idioms and vocabulary reflect the conflicts of their times — 10th(? century Shivavakkiyar transcending the Saivite-Vaishnavite hair-splitting in dogma in Tamil Nadu; and 18th century Bulleh Shah, transcending the Hindu-Muslim conflicts in northwest India.

Yet, their message is the same. It is probably because the similarity in these and other mystics’ expressions comes from the identity in their spiritual experiences. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 1999)

You know the story of Seven Blind Men of Hindustan describing the elephant in terms of the parts they touched. The following is even better Everyone in this story sees the same person and has very different reactions.

Dr. Hariharan B Palakkad, the young US-born graduate from a US medical school, joined a hospital for his residency. When his name appeared in the hospital newsletter, this is what went through the minds of other doctors in the hospital:

Dr. Jack Tipinsky: “Uh oh, one more Asian.” Dr. David Li: “Uh, One more Indian.”

Dr. Ahmad Khan from Lucknow: “Umm… One more Hindu.” Drs. Ahluwalia, Trivedi, and Banerji: “Sssala, aur ek Madrassi.“

Dr. Arumilli from Andhra Pradesh: “Okay, One more Aravaadu, Tamil.”

Dr. Anbalagan from Tamil Nadu: “Mmmm, a Brahmin.”

Dr. Kasturi Iyengar: “Oookay, One more Iyer.”

Dr. Raman, an Iyer from Tamil Nadu: “God, One more Keralite.”

On the day Dr. Palakkad was introduced to the staff, Dr. Venkitaraman, the middle-aged doctor, originally from Kerala, asked the new kid, “Hey, l’m from Kerala. What is the B in your middle initial?”

“That’s a long story. Briefly, my father says we belong to the Bharadwaja gotram. I don’t know what it really means.”

Venkitaraman, the Kerala Iyer who belonged to Kaushika gotram thought, “God, one more Bharadwajan. They are everywhere.”

* Palakkad is a well-known region in Kerala in India. Note: The Hariharan in the story could as well have been a Reddy, a Gowda, a Nair, an Athavlé, a Ganguli, a Dwivedi, a Kuriakose, or a Sodhi. The reactions would be similar.

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A Delhiwallah working in Europe went to Egypt on business. At the hotel, his Egyptian business associate met him.  True to the traditions of that part of the world, he was effusively gracious.

It was a summer full-moon and the skies were clear. The host asked the Indian if he wanted to see the pyramids under the natural full moon light. The Indian said yes.

Around midnight, the Egyptian drove his guest to the Giza pyramid.

The roads were empty. Therefore, as he was driving, the Egyptian zipped through several red lights. For the Indian who was used to the insane Delhi drivers, this was too much. His stomach tightened every time his host ran a red light.

Finally, they came to another intersection where they had green light. Strangely, the Egyptian slowed down. Puzzled by this, the Indian asked, “Why did you slow down for the green light?”

“Oh, you never know. Some crazy drivers may run the red light in the opposite direction.”

— Anecdotes from a Travelling Indian 
 

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman (written in 1999)

Stories in mythologies are often not cut and clean. This is because mythologies go beyond the simple black-and-white narratives and address the gray areas of our lives and the ethical dilemmas we frequently agonize over. Some of these stories have an enduring quality simply because human frailty, predicaments, and dilemmas are the same since the dawn of civilization.

Gennifer Flower, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Kodderick, and of course, the infamous Monica Lewinsky. The time and money the nation spent following the lurid details of Clinton’s travails brought X-rated movies into our family rooms. Our eight-year-olds, and even six-year-olds, lost their innocence.

But is there anything new about people having wealth, influence, or power “fooling around,” to quote Monica Lewinsky? These people always found willing partners for fooling around. For some, letting powerful and wealthy people “fool around” with them is a way to get ahead of others in life where winning is everything. The Tamil poet Kannadasan once cynically remarked, “No one ever asks a victor whether he played by the rules.”

But reckless hubris is followed sooner or later, as the Greeks believed and as Clinton found out, by an avenging nemesis. In politics, worse than being hated is being ridiculed.

Thanks to First Amendment rights, Clinton gave a new lease of life to late-night comedy. If Clinton’s Presidential library is to truly depict all eight years of his public life while in office, it will be the one having a section advising “parental or adult discretion” to visiting minors. As the nation got tired of the whole sequence of sordid events and the soporific trial, recalling a story in Vyasa’s Bhagavatam (written at least two millennia before Bill Clinton) would help young men and women everywhere:

An elderly sage was chasing his very youthful teenage son on the _shores of a lake where a bevy of young girls were bathing. The sage observed from a distance that when the youthful boy ran past them, the girls did not bother to stop playing or cover themselves.

But when the older father came along, to his horror, they scurried to cover themselves. Feeling offended, the sage stopped and confronted the young girls:

“Young maiden, you were shameless when a young man ran past you even as you were bathing half naked. But when I, an older man, dressed properly, pass by, you cover yourselves. Isn’t that strange?

“Oh, sage, ” they replied, “We are convinced of the innocence of your youthful son. But we are not quite sure of yours.”

Herein lies a message for all our young women – and men too!

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By Kollengode S. Venkataraman (written in 1999)

On November 15, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee took the first step towards eventually granting dual citizenship for people of Indian origin (PIO) who are citizens of another country. The program proposes PIO cards that would eliminate visas for NRIs to visit India.

Further, under this plan, PIOs can acquire and transfer immovable property in India; can have admission to educational institutions, presumably on a preferential basis; and will be free to take part in government-sponsored housing schemes. This program would also make dividends from non-repatriable NRI investments tax-free.

PIOs are scattered all over the globe, from as close as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Middle East, to as far away as Fiji, the Caribbean, and Africa, in addition to Western Europe and North America.

True, a few descendants of poor PIO plantation and farm workers in Malaysia or the Caribbean, or South Africa will benefit from this program. But the major chunk of the beneficiaries will be the affluent PIOs from North America, Western Europe, and the Pacific Rim.

Given the historical trend for abuse in government programs in South Asia, the dual citizenship idea for PIOs with access to hard currencies will lead to corruption of the system.

Dual citizenship raises important ethical, moral, and even legal issues, even though many NRIs would welcome it purely from personal considerations. Dual citizenship is likely to make life more precarious for millions of middle-income Indians earning in rupees.

Consider the provisions for higher education in India, access to immovable properties, and investment opportunities for PIOs.

In Education: Facilities for higher education, especially in developing societies, are a critical national resource exclusively funded by tax money. As it is, the government-mandated reservations for the scheduled castes and tribes (SCs/STs), and the other backward classes (OBCs) leave only a handful of seats for students belonging to “forward” castes. Many of the latter, even if they have near-perfect scores in exams, cannot get admissions into good universities. Never mind that many students belonging to the SCs and OBCs come from economically prosperous and politically powerful families, and many of the “forward” caste students come from poor families. And most of the PIO students will leave India after their 4-year stint.

These economically and politically disadvantaged “forward” caste youth will now have to also contend with the PIO students with hard currencies brandishing their high-decibel audio systems, camcorders, and cellular phones.

How can a society prosper when it does not nurture competition, reward talents, and weed out incompetence is a simple question that all Indian politicians have learned to duck and obfuscate.

In Real Estate: The real estate values in posh Bombay/Delhi suburbs in dollars are close to those in New York or San Francisco. Giving access to PIOs to buy immovable properties will simply raise real estate prices even more. For millions of fixed-income people earning in rupees, owning their own 700 sq. ft flat will remain just a dream.

As it is, close to 50% of the income of an average Indian household goes to food. With home mortgage eating up another 30% to 40%, not much is left for anything else.

On Investments: The bulk of NRIs/ PIOs investing in India keep their hard currencies in the capital markets that can be withdrawn at short notice. India does not have effective self-correcting mechanisms that mature industrial nations have. When opportunities soften, as they surely will, these investors will flee with their hard currencies, leaving the Desi Indians in a hell hole.

In any case, the bulk of the middle-class people in India in fixed-income earning in rupees will become second-class citizens in one more dimension, as was the case during the colonial rule. What makes it worse for them now is that their masters this time are people of their own breed. END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (written in 1999)

In India, Hinduism bears the karma of untouchability and the rigidly hierarchical caste system; Islam bears the consequences of ravaging of temples by Turkish marauders and their minions in its name, and the compulsory tax Jizzia they imposed on Hindus for practicing their religion; the Catholic church bears the Indian cross of the Goa Inquisition.

St. Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, brought Christianity to India rather uneventfully twelve centuries before European missionaries arrived on Indian shores. But when the European missionaries came to India in the 17th century for “saving souls,” the “second coming” for Christianity in India was far from being uneventful. Caught up in temporal power in Europe, Christianity lost its own soul when, in 13th century it instituted on heretics the Spanish Inquisition that extended to all Iberian colonies, including the idyllic Portuguese colony of Goa in India.

Now, nearly seven centuries after the Spanish Inquisition, the Vatican seems to be ready for repentance. Bosco de Sousa Eremita of The Gomantak Times (Nov. 1, 1998) published from Panaji, Goa, reports that the Vatican may apologize for the Spanish Inquisition after a scholarly symposium during October of this year for what it calls a “Review of Conscience as part of celebrating 2000 years of Christianity.

According to the Gomantak Times story, P. P. Shirodkar, director of archeology in Goa, one of whose ancestors was among those tortured and killed in the Goa Inquisition, said, “The Vatican meeting will surely help assuage whatever ill will that exists between Christians and Hindus,” particularly in Western India. The Goa Inquisition first tried to check the practice of Hindu rituals among converts, but later was used “as a weapon to punish anybody,” he said.

Father Carmo Martins, spokesperson for Goa archdiocese, hailed the current Pope’s decision to “accept the mistakes committed by his predecessors.”

Jorge de Abreu Noronha, who edits a newsletter for the Goan community in Portugal said, “The Pope has done what the clergy and even the Catholic laity ought to have done, and the move boosts his image.” However, not everyone agrees on the latter part of the statement.

Teotonio de Souza, author of Jesuits in India: In Historical Perspective, commented, “If vengeance is served cold, the Vatican’s apologies are served colder still.”

Goans should be thankful that the Vatican apology, bitter as it is, is still better late than never. Why? Because the Catholic Church’s meandering bureaucracy took more than 350 years to exonerate its own Galileo Galilei, the astronomer, for his heliocentric theory.

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Reviewer: Usha Chandrasekaran, (written in 1999)

Book Review: 60-plus Ways to Drape Saris. Usha Chandrasekaran, an Upper St. Clair resident, reviews Chantal Boulanger’s recent book Saris: An Illustrated Guide to the Indian Art of Draping. Email her at devi@devi.net. You can order the book from the author’s website http://www.devi.net

Every time we attend an Indian gathering, my mother gently prods my daughter to wear a sari, saying, “I started wearing sari when I was only twelve.” My daughter would smile and reply, “But Patti! I am afraid. I don’t know how to wear a sari without help!”

Imagine my delight when I got the book Saris: An Illustrated Guide to the Indian Art of Draping by Ms. Chantal Boulanger, a French author! It is a great gift not only to second generation Indians living outside India, but to their mothers and grandmothers as well!!

The book begins with the warning that learning to drape a sari by reading a book is not easy. Boy, was that an understatement! With a crisp introduction to the definition of terms, the techniques, and key words to the basic drapes, the author describes ten styles of wearing dhotis, more than sixty-six different styles of wearing saris and mundus. It is amazing that people could come up with so many creative ways of wrapping themselves so elegantly with a given length of unstitched cloth.

Boulanger has classified the various types of saris in six chapters, highlighting the variation in each type. Each chapter has briefly described the style and the reason for the differences in styles. The author has traveled extensively all over India, researching the various types, and even wearing them herself during her travels.

Once in a temple near Goa, the kaccha sari that she was wearing caused the local women to tease her because the way she wore it revealed a little more than it should. She learnt from them the right way to wear it. She learnt to wear the Kappulu sari from a woman crossing the road in Masulipatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

Along the way, the author has given very interesting titbits of information. Did you know that one can tell the social identity of the person by the way they draped themselves in saris? Or that the same type of sari may be worn in regions thousands of miles apart by people belonging to the same caste? Did you know that in the old days, cholis were worn by men?

Next time you see a Tamil Iyer woman wearing the traditional nine yards sari, note that the left part of her drape evokes a woman, and the right part, a man, giving a mobile illustration of the concept of Ardha-nareeswara!

The author has tried to be specific with elaborate illustrations for each kind of sari, describing the techniques of pleats, the kosuvam, Saris…… (Continued from page 10)

mundi and so on. She has portrayed them authentically, and the drawings are precise. I quizzed my mom, and we realized that she herself did not know that there are so many variations, even in her own neck of the woods.

I had a lot of fun trying to wear saris in the Bengali, Raipuri, the Manipuiri, and the Tondaimandalam styles. The author has even described several tribal saris like the Badaga, the Boro Mekhla and the Thoda.

Some of the saris with several pleats, tucks, and turns were downright difficult to follow, especially to try them from just the drawings. The easiest, of course, is the Nivi style, the way we wear the modern sari today, that originated in the Andhra region. I felt that addition of photographs might have been more helpful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a must for all Indian homes – especially the ones outside India – for our daughters to understand and appreciate the dying art of draping saris. With many traditional styles of wearing saris disappearing, this book not only glorifies the past but also preserves the art of creatively draping saris for future generations.

Watch out readers! Next time you see a woman draped in a unique style of sari in an Indian gathering in Pittsburgh, it might just be me. END

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