Leadership crisis in India - Conclusion

I apologise for being away for a while again, especially without finishing an idea that I started. A combination of factors has been the reason but indolence is perhaps at the top of that. Anyway to comeback to what I was saying in my previous post, how does one identify a leader. I must say that in most situations leaders do come into the forefront situationally. The problem lies not with the people who have leadership qualities (there are enough of them) but with those who cannot recognise a good leader even when there is one standing in front of them. This is the true problem that India has. And it stems out of the fact that there is no semblance even of a meritocracy in India. I am the first to argue that a complete meritocracy is unachievable and also that there are a few philosophical issues that complicate the issue of what constitutes merit and therefore what is a meritocracy. Under the circumstances one will have to have some operational guidelines of what a concept is so as to not end up in nihilism. I say this because many times I have come very close to becoming or may even have been a nihilist, in instances. Without getting into rhetoric it is possible to argue that there is a system in place and that leaders are required to run it on a daily basis (house keeping functions) and also to look into the future not as in crystal ball gazing but as in anticipating problems that a country is likely to face and also being ready with strategies that will become solutions to those problems. That is a simple enough proposition and very workable.

Take the case of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Most people are quite happy to make stupid jokes about him, call him a puppet etc. These people are missing a point. They are unable to look at a true and good leader. That is because the stereotypical way of looking at leaders is that which says leaders must be powerful orators, whip up mass frenzy, make people do things that they demand of them and the list goes on. In which case the greatest and most successful leaders in the world would be Hitler and perhaps even N T Rama Rao. I do not have to say anything about the first name, but people maybe surprised by my bringing up the second name in this context. To me N T Rama Rao was a failed leader, whose non-existent leadership qualities came to be extolled only because of the stupidity of the general mass of people. Somebody plays a few stupid roles in films and people think that in real life too that person will be a saviour just as he was in films. But fortunately that was found out by the people who sent him out of power and the second time he became Chief Minister only because people realized that the other party the Congress that is, was even more incapable. This trend seems to continue with Chiranjeevi being taught a good lesson at the hustings. But the problem is grave, irrespective of a few people being taught lessons. Rahul Bajaj one said that Chandra Babu Naidu was thinking about the next generation when other politicians were thinking about the next election. I hope he has realised how far away he was from reality since time has shown that Naidu is nothing but a cunning, devious and opportunistic politician. Today people are singing praises of Y S Rajashekhar Reddy and his leadership qualities and how that won the Congress elections in Andhra Pradesh. If leadership is all about promising free things, ruining the economy and keeping people lazy and below the poverty line, then I have nothing to say. Naidu ran the State like it was a business corporation and Reddy ran it like it was his personal fiefdom. Yet there should be some explanation for the Congress doing well in the elections. For all my criticism of Y S R Reddy I would say that two projects "Jalayagnyam" and "Arogyasri" showed glimpses of some thought. Now is the time to renew my thoughts on Manmohan Singh. Not an orator, not a charismatic personality but a most impressive leader. He knows what needs to be done for the future of this country as much as the present. His initiatives in education are laudable. Education of the people is true empowerment and that is where his vision can be seen. The launching of new National Universities is testimony to this. Power or electricity is one of the most important issues facing the country today and its development hinges on how much electricity is generated. Manmohan Singh's initiative in signing the 123 Agreement with the USA against all odds is truly outstanding. Nuclear power is the way ahead undoubtedly. Now here is a politician thinking of the next generation and how many have recognized this? Not too many in my estimation. A leader at the top can take initiatives but how many of them will convert into reality? One person's leadership is not adequate. There should be many, many more who are able to take the process forward at different levels. Singh wants universities, but these may end up with Vice-Chancellors who are political appointees in which case the new universities will also fall into the same rut as the existing ones. This is India's problem. Too few people to recognise the many leaders that are there around them and endow them with leadership positions. Instead there are mediocre and less than mediocre people manning important institutions like universities in particular and education in general. There are many other spheres like this. There are people who can man them but never will, simply because India's leaders are rabble-rousers who are quite contented to stay in positions of power by cunning means while real issues are thrown away somewhere. I am not a prophet of doom, but there is a crisis looming upon this country and there is very little leadership and thought about how to handle that.

Leadership crisis in India - 1

In the concluding part of my piece on "Agitations" I had said that I would next be writing about leadership and its crisis in India. Then I was overcome by pangs of guilt for not explaining my true position on the "Agitation" and in the process I said that I would look at the agitation's implication for the social fabric of this country and for federalism too. The logical thing would have been to continue with that line of thought because the issue is topical. But somehow I feel that whoever is reading this blog is tired of my writing only about one issue, two or three pathetic attempts at breaking the monotony not withstanding. So it seems the time is ripe to give that line (the agitation one that is) a break and write about the leadership crisis. Now having said that I cannot guarantee that references to the agitation will not creep back into this piece as well. But the saving grace would be that they will be just references, if at all. I cannot however guarantee that this piece will not be pathetic. I shall leave it to you to judge that.

Let me first make it clear as to what got me thinking about issues of leadership. I am an avid follower of music, rock music at that and I have always marveled at the control that record companies have over bands who are actually the creators of the music. But it was not too difficult to understand that since record labels wield financial power and also because they retain the rights to marketing and promotions, they are in a position to dictate terms to bands. The more difficult question to understand for me was why managers who are paid by bands have a fair amount of control over the bands. The answer to this came to me in a more round about fashion. I myself have been involved in various rock bands. Let me also tell you that in all the bands that I have been a member or a guest, I was the LEAST talented. Even that perhaps is untrue because every once in a while I question myself and find that I somehow am not blessed with any talent at all, in any field. But for reasons of convenience we shall proceed with the premise that I was and am the least talented. Yet the status that I have enjoyed within these bands was not commensurate with my talent. In most instances I saw myself playing leader. Over time I have understood that this happened because I had the courage and the drive to give bands a push in a certain musical direction and take decisions without fearing the consequences of those. I also was forthright in what I wanted and never employed deception. Therefore, people who were very talented (one of the hight lights of my life is that I have had the proud privilege and honour of playing with some of the most gifted musicians) felt convinced by the things that I said and empowered me to take the decisions. That is when I learnt first hand what being a leader meant and what went into being a leader. Please do not construe this account of a part of my life as an attempt at blowing my own trumpet. I only mentioned it because I thought it would have an impact on the narrative that I am indulging in now on leadership.

While what I have written above shows positive things happening and demonstrating to me what leadership is, most of my other lessons have come from totally unacceptable situations which high light the indecisiveness born out of cowardice and lack of understanding of issues and therefore negatively impact on decision making. Most of these situations, I encountered at work. Here is an important disclaimer of sorts. I have worked with many great leaders but it is those who did not have leadership qualities but occupied positions of leadership that brought me face to face with some very valuable lessons. I cannot remember which of the Roosevelts (Theodore or Franklin) said that committee systems were invented by cowards to hide behind safety in numbers and prevent responsibility being pinned on them, but it is indeed a wonderful statement of fact. Look at governance at any level today and it is all based in committee systems where egos fight with each other and all decision making is delayed. Committees are bodies in which everyone agrees to disagree or disagrees to agree or have a frank exchange of views or some such rubbish. It is a pity that today the paradigm of work is this stupid system in which horses and donkeys are reduced to an artificial oneness. I cannot therefore help but agree with Voltaire that it is better to be ruled by a lion than by a thousand rats. In my career spanning almost two decades there must have been at least twenty instances when I have approached higher ups with ideas to make the education system better but each time I was presented with this huge wall called a committee and I have had to retreat after banging my head on that wall. Sometimes I have been part of these committees and there too my experience was similar except that I was banging my head on the other side of the wall. That is the reason why I am always questioning the merits of a democracy but reminding myself of Nehru's assertion that he supported democracy because other forms of governance were even worse. I also remind myself of Hitler and the gas chambers and the application of the final solution. Even these frightening instances cannot keep from questioning the whole idea of leadership. A good and able leader, how or where can one be found? How does one look for that person? I will write my thoughts on that in the next round of this blog. Indulge my indolence till then, please.

My take on agitations - Afterword

Let me make a couple of confessions. First of all this whole thing that I have titled as "My take on agitations" is actually rooted in cowardice. It should simply have read "My take on the Separate Telangana Agitation". This is not a justification for my cowardice, but the whole atmosphere which is so vitiated makes one think twice while doing these things. But every thing that I have written in my blog is accurate and authentic. The content is genuine. But to the reader it will be obvious that never have I mentioned where I stand. It is all as if a researcher is viewing this situation by standing at a vantage where he is personally not involved. That in a sense is true of me as well. But I live here in this area and therefore I must have a view. I am from Telangana. My father, my grandfather et al are from Telangana. Yet I do not somehow subscribe to the view that a separate Telangana is an answer to the problems raised by being in a united Andhra Pradesh. Those of you who may have read that lengthy piece would know what the problems are and how much they are rooted in the struggle for power between various castes. To me this is untenable. The whole articulation of the Telangana question is for me very flawed. At its most innocent it is a knee jerk reaction and its most diabolic (which is unfortunately the dominant paradigm) it is a strategy for the capturing of power. To me that is a serious indication at fractures not just in Andhra Pradesh but possibly those that can at a later juncture manifest in the Indian State itself. This is neither tea pot whimsy nor is it the fear of a paranoid person. There are many challenges facing the country today and at the base of it all is the one that emerges out of caste fissures. The Telangana movement too is caste based today and whatever comes out of if it has consequences for the whole country and in my opinion not pleasant ones at all. The other challenge that is important is what it means in terms of challenges of and to governance. Looking at the small picture, it is easy to say that small states facilitate better governance. What is being missed in the small picture is that these small states are not independent republics and therefore more number of states should be seen in the context of what it means for federalism and nationalism. My gut feeling is that it is not such a wonderful thing. I am aware that my views will possibly distance me from some friends (and very good ones at that) and win me some new enemies, but what are convictions for when they are not expressed, fear not withstanding. In the next few days I will deal with what could be the implications for Indian Nationalism both from the caste and small states points view. At the moment I am relieved that I have made my confessions.

My take on agitations - conclusion

The last bit of my story on the Telangana agitation mentioned the previous separatist agitation. Since then a lot of things have happened which culminated in the second iteration of the same. Here is the time when one has to understand the role of the dominant upper castes in the Telangana region. The sons of the soil argument has been forwarded first by the Telangana Reddys and the Velamas. These two castes are firmly rooted in Telangana feudalism and have not kept up with the pace of entrepreneurial capitalist progress that the Kamma community from coastal Andhra had shown. The Kamma entrepreneur grew in stature and in size during the rule of the TDP with NT Rama Rao as Chief Minister. In fact, the Telugu Desam party represented the Kamma business interest and was patronized by the Kammas from Coastal Andhra. Media Baron Ramoji Rao threw his weight behind NTR and the TDP and functioned almost as a mouth piece for the party. The shrewd entrepreneurial spirit of Ramoji Rao saw him taking his Eenadu daily newspaper in Telugu to every nook and cranny of the state of Andhra Pradesh. Over a period of time highly localised editions of the newspaper became available. What became a formidable combination was NTR's populist policies as Chief Minister and the carrying of the news of the same to all people by the Eenadu news paper. This did lead to an increase in the popularity of NTR and the TDP especially in the Telangana region where populism worked due to the relatively higher levels of poverty and lack of development. This also presented an opportunity for the Kamma capitalist from Coastal Andhra to expand into the Telangana region. The logical destination for this was Hyderabad which is the State Capital and the biggest market. It all started off as hotel industry and the cinema industry. Later on it went on to retail market capturing and finally onto the Information Technology industry which came alive with the dot com boom (which later went bust) and the opportunities provided through the Y2K problem. Mainly the Kamma caste and some others like the Rajus and Brahmins from the Coastal Andhra region basically took advantage of the IT boom. During this time another development happened. Hyderabad saw the drain of the original dwellers to the USA over a period of time. These Hyderabadis went to the States with the intention of never returning and the space left by them in Hyderabad was occupied by a wave of migration from the coastal districts. This is the time that also saw the burgeoning of engineering colleges and the sheer number of them actually made local reservations almost redundant. The students from Coastal Andhra were in a better position to compete and therefore amassed the benefits. When the second IT wave came, it brought the out sourcing boom with it. Now was the opportunity not only to go abroad but also make use of jobs in Hyderabad itself with Chief Ministers like Chandrababu Naidu and Rajshekhar Reddy encouraging the trend. The business opportunity was once again taken up by the Coastal Andhra entrepreneurs, and the jobs by the educated sections from there. The mainly feudal Reddys and Velamas missed out on these opportunities and have since been relegated into the background. For caste groups that had dominated the region for aeons this situation was most unpalatable. The other losers were people from the BC and SC communities since they were never provided decent education ever. NTR's and TDP's support of local capitalism translated into a divide between the feudal Reddy and Velama communities on the one side and the capitalist Kamma and Raju communities on the other. On both sides are the Brahmins playing relatively insignificant and consequently peripheral role in the development of antagonisms freshly.

The feudal culture of Telangana also meant that jobs were given to those who curried favour with the entrenched power groups represented by the Reddys and the Velamas. This unfortunate tendency was extended even into government employment and educational institutions including universities. The bit about the universities is extremely important because in the last three decades a good university like Osmania University has seen its reputation go down drastically in social sciences due to lack of quality teachers and researchers. The same maybe true of other faculties as well. This tendency has almost killed education in the districts of Telangana and education has been reduced to the provision of degrees to students who have no knowledge of the subjects that they are supposed to have studied. Here is a crisis. There are plenty of jobs available in Hyderabad but nobody from Telangana has the skill or the capability to claim them. These jobs have gone to Andhra people wherever there are hard core skills requirements and to people from other parts of the country wherever there are jobs that need soft skills.

The Reddys and the Velamas have also slowly lost their lands and the power that comes along with it. For communities used to the exercise of social power this is an unfamiliar situation and the step that they have taken is the kindling of the separate Telangana State spirit in order to drive back the Coastal Andhra Kammas and any one else who is a threat to them. When they were in power they had followed the David Eastonian principle of authoritative allocation of resources and values but with the growth of power of the Kammas the same principle was used by the other side to dispossess the Reddys and the Velamas in the technocracy that was created in the State especially during the reign of Chandrababu Naidu. This coincided with the time when the Indian State and the State of Andhra Pradesh had embarked upon a programme of structural reform as advised by the World Bank and that saw a drastic pull back from the employment sector by the Government of Andhra Pradesh. With the withdrawal of the State and a majority of jobs going into the private sector a meritocracy of sorts came into being and employment depended on certain skills which people from Telangana were not in possession of thanks to an almost useless and archaic system of education. This has led to lack of employment among the rural students of Telangana. The Separate Telangana agitation has two dimensions. The call for a Separate Telangana by the Reddys and Velamas now, is basically an attempt to snatch back the power that they are used to. Their belief is that if the State becomes accessible to them again they would be in a position to exercise social power. The other side is represented by the students who mainly belong to BC, SC and to an extent ST communities. Politicians, especially the Maoists are interested in exploiting this opportunity so that they can seize control of a new State. The belief of the students is that the creation of the new State would help them to get employment while the Maoists who have lost a lot of ground in their traditional stronghold want that back. The Telangana issue is therefore more complex than it seems and has within itself tangles that will prove to be a problem now and in the future. The agitation is now headless in the sense that it is now in no one's hand. There are various groups and all believe that they can gain control of the movement and corner the benefits that come with the success of the movement. What all this will lead do is anybody's guess. There is no crystal ball that one can gaze into and predict the future. I am just being social science student doing a post facto analysis of things. Whatever may happen with the movement it seems that it is unlikely to make everyone happy because within the movement there are tensions which will surface when the question of who controls Telangana pops up. That then is the conclusion to my story. In all this I have seen that there is a huge failure at all levels in terms of leadership and that for us should be a matter of concern. A failed leadership is a failed country and that should be unacceptable to anyone. This is a subject that needs further exploration and that is what I hope and intend to do next.

My take on agitations - 4

First of all my apologies for staying away from the blog for 3 days and for not finishing the story that I have started. Unavoidable situation where my presence away from the computer is necessary. This piece is just an interim one and aimed at expressing my disgust with politicians. Makes me lose my faith in democracy. Lies are uttered in public without the faintest of hesitations and shame. One can only say too bad, but then it is not so nice when the too bad part is for us. Another thing to say is the role of the media in keeping the whole thing look like a story which is still fresh when in reality everyone with a semblance of sense and balance is sick of this whole murky mess and wants a quick end to it. Not the media, they want this to last as long as possible, keeps them busy and provides them with enough footage to run 24 hrs a day. It will be a good day when issues are fought on and decided on people's interests and not for money. Apologies again for not finishing this whole story but once my presence at the computer becomes a little more easier, I will be back to finish it.

My take on agitations - 3

I had promised that the third part of my take on agitations would follow soon, but there has been a two day gap since I was posting other things which I thought were topical. In the second part of "My take on agitations" I had dealt with how the Coastal Andhra Region was a part of the Madras Presidency and how that affected its development process in a positive way. I was also saying that the nature of development was mainly capitalist and that this process was aided by the resources that the region was endowed with. I had also made this brief argument that Telangana which was carved out of the erstwhile Nizam State did not see this kind of development due to the fact that the main paradigm of existence there was feudalism which was combined with the relative lack of resources. This I had said was the basis of cultural difference between the two areas. The word culture is often misunderstood. So it becomes my duty to clarify what that means, and what exactly I mean when I say there was a difference in culture.

I will take the lead of the British Analytical School in arguing that every time certain words are used they should be clarified in terms of their meaning since the same words could be carrying multiple meanings that emerge out of multiple contexts. Culture has been understood as a synonym of fine arts such as dance, drama, music and literature along with the various activities that are allied with them. Initially people talked of high culture and low culture, but over a period of time low culture was no longer a category and that meant that culture was the preserve of the rich and the upper classes of society. This is the commonsensical notion that gets perpetuated and reinforced time and again in all interactions of society. When I use cultural difference as a category I do not mean the superficial aspects of life. Culture for me is the way of life that has been adopted by an area or a grouping of people as the best possible to make a success of their quest for an organized life. Due to the differences in feudalism and capitalism it means that the ways of life in Telangana and Coastal Andhra were different culturally speaking. Now this is not a justification for the separate Telangana argument. At this moment it is just an exercise in mapping out the causes that have led to the current agitation, especially among the students.

At the point I would like to return to what I had called the question central to this desire for separation. And that is caste. In the Andhra State that was carved out of the Madras Presidency the dominant caste group were the Brahmins in spite of not having any numerical strength. This situation was challenged by the Kamma caste, the members of which believed that the position of power enjoyed by the Brahmins was only due to intellectual chicanery that facilitated them also becoming a land owning community. The ground that was fertile for this conflict was the Palanadu region which roughly corresponds with Guntur and Krishna districts of the Coastal Andhra region. The Kammas rejected everything Brahminical and even created a sub-caste of priests among themselves and these were referred to as the Kamma-Brahmas. Over a period of time the Kamma caste attained complete ascendancy and it was at this time the Nizam of Hyderabad enticed people from Coastal Andhra to come to Hyderabad in order to impart learning to the local people and improve the levels of development in the area. The Brahmins of the the Coastal Andhra region who had education in English fit the necessity to a tee and happily migrated to the Nizam State in search of better opportunities and better financial rewards. A key point has to be noted here. The number of Brahmins originally in the Telangana area was quite small and there was a huge upsurge in their numerical strength thanks to this migration. Hyderabad was the place that became the place to host this new migration since it was the capital of the Nizam State. This is a key point because this was one of the reasons for the first phase of the Separate Telangana agitation of 1969 under the leadership of Marri Channa Reddy. At that time it was felt that the purpose of developing the area was not served by the migrant Brahmins and that they took away opportunities of employment as well. This was also the time when the Kamma caste followed the Brahmins of Coastal Andhra. But unlike the Brahmins who were looking for employment opportunities, the Kammas who came much later went in search of opportunities in agriculture and unlike the Brahmins they went not just to Hyderabad but to the rural hinterland of Telangana as well. This was the time that irrigation projects such as the Nizam Sagar project were taking shape and wetland agriculture was introduced in the Telangana region. The communities from Coastal Andhra who had experience in this took advantage of the situation. The local farmers who were only used to dry land agriculture went up in arms citing this as an exploitative tendency. What did not help matters was the fact that the farming community from Andhra made very little attempt to assimilate into the local culture. Instead they maintained a separate physical and cultural existence. In the Warangal district the settlements of these people were called Guntur Pallelu and in Nizamabad they were called Camps. It is this inability to assimilate which became another cause for the agitation. The immigrant Brahmins for their part started a trend of mocking the language and the lifestyle of the local people. Apart from this the experience that the Coastal Andhra farmer had with wetland cultivation also led to his amassing more money here and it resulted in an economic disparity which was seen as a result of an exploitative process by the local people. This did not help the cause of peace and tranquility and thus began the first agitation for a Separate Telangana. The first agitation was bloody, claimed hundreds of lives and scarred the psyche of the people on both sides deeply.

I had intended to finish this piece today but constraints of time stand in the way. I will be back tomorrow and find a denouement for the story that I have started. Please bear with me again.

A Preview to how my piece on "My take on Agitations" will conclude.

Considering the fact that I teach Political Science at the Osmania University in Hyderabad, a lot of people have been asking me why the students of the Osmania University are at the forefront of the Separate Telangana agitation. Many are too impatient for me to finish the long piece that I have started. I was foolish enough to think that I could finish writing that piece in one go, but now I realize that as I write, there are so many details that I need to incorporate into that piece. I think therefore I will proceed at the pace at which I have been doing so far but give a small preview of sorts to how the lengthy exposition is going to end, or should I say, likely to end. What I will do therefore, is pick two questions that most people ask me about the students and their involvement in the Separate Telangana agitation.

Question no. 1

Are the students a part of a cadre of a political party or are they independently operating on their own?

Brief answer: They are not really a cadre of a political party, even though they, along with some teachers, have definite party affiliations and maybe just a few are possibly official cadre of a party. But perhaps with the exception of one party, the others are not even cadre based parties.

Question no. 2

What are the motivations of the students in getting involved in the agitation? In fact they seem to be spearheading it, at least at this point in time.

Brief answer: A brief answer to this question is really not possible. I would say that the closing section of my serialized piece will answer that in detail. But for now, I am compelled to say something, and therefore I will. The student involvement in this agitation is not as simple as it may seem. It has everything to do with the process of policy making and governance that has over a period of time disadvantaged students belonging to the rural areas, especially of Telangana. To put it succinctly, this has made most of the students graduating in the recent past, and those who are in the process now, and those who are likely to in the immediate future, unemployable. This is because they have been never introduced to the skills required to make them employable. In a country where education is seen as means of employment for livelihood, this is unpardonable. The frustration that comes with knowing where exactly they stand, and a remote hope that the agitation and setting up a separate state may find something to do, drives them towards the agitation and even to spearheading it. This is representative of a failure of leadership, as also a systemic failure. More of this will come out in the final part of my piece. So please bear with me till then.

The no vision television news channels of Andhra Pradesh

I know that I am supposed to get back to the serialized story "My take on agitations". But there are a couple of other thoughts that I want to get rid of before getting back to the main theme. This time it has everything to do with the Telugu television news channels. Perhaps due to investments being comparatively less, there has been a surfeit of news channels in the Telugu language. They have also come into being for another reason, and that is to propagate their own desires (I refuse to call that ideology). Today every political party in Andhra Pradesh has either a channel of its own or a channel set up to sympathize with and propagate its (the political parties) views or both as in some cases. In some cases, the news channels also double up to serve the purpose of certain caste interests as well. Someone may then ask me, why are you titling this the "no vision...". The no vision refers to the myopic vision. I am sure all would agree that short-sightedness hardly qualifies as vision. Now that the problem of semantics has been disposed of, let me give you some concrete examples of idiotic behaviour of television channels.

A couple of years ago, a span of a flyover under construction in Hyderabad collapsed. Needless to say, the TV channels were all there in strength. As the TV crews were trying to get closer to the accident site, a certain conversation was heard on one of the channels. There was a policeman imploring with the TV crew to stay a distance from the accident site so as to enable the police to get on with their job. The reply from the TV crew was "we are also doing our job".

I personally found this amusing. Just look at it. The policeman's job is to attend to the problems created by the collapse of the span and the TV crew's job; to hinder the policeman's job.

The last month and a half, the only thing that is happening as far as the TV channels are concerned is the Telangana agitation. There are other developments happening in the world but those do not carry any significance for the Telugu news channels, except one. That channel is ETV 2 and is opposed to a separate Telangana. So when the Telangana activity is at its peak, the ETV 2 mainly shows programming about the feeding habits of dolphins or sea lions or something like that. When the movement for United Andhra Pradesh started, then it started showing the politics of that, while the sympathizers of Telangana switched over to showing their audiences the jewelery preferences of both men and women during the Inca or Zoque periods in human history. These TV channels also have 'panelists' who are expert "Academicians" with "vast knowledge" in the atrocities that have been committed by one region over the other. The "discussions" drag on forever over the same point and in order to "enlighten" viewers about the problems of one region or the other, these programmes with the "Expert-Knowledgeable-Academicians" in discussion are repeated over and over again. This is reminiscent of the stories of propaganda-driven regimes of the old Eastern Europe and Castro's Cuba. Most interestingly, I am told that there are actually people glued to TV sets to listen to this constant drivel. Well apart from making a statement about their own intellectual prowess (in this case the lack of it) these avid TV watchers are not establishing anything else. And here I end my analysis of the TV medium.

Fear, freespeech and democracy

I know that I have to finish the story that I have started in "My take on agitations" but today I have decided that I shall slightly delay the part three of that story. I was having a conversation with someone yesterday and it was mentioned to me that I might be treading dangerous ground by posting on a subject like the agitation in Telangana. The person feared for my safety since there is so much posturing going on. I therefore thought that I should give the main story a break and consider this. The fact that people have concerns such as the one mentioned to me shows that there is a feeling that some types of sentiments or ideas should be bridled so as to preserve one's self. That is when I thought what is democracy coming to? There are some subjects apparently that should only be used in hush-hush conversations where only the most trusted people will or should be privy to one's idea. I find this is a little unusual because in this age which is being proclaimed as a communication age, people are apprehensive of sharing their ideas and prefer to not communicate, or confine it to esoteric circles. Let what I have said so far not look like the indictment of a paranoid person who feared for my safety. I understand that there is a strong lumpen element to our society these days and this dimension is the one that thrives by preying upon the fears of the larger populations. Then there are subjects and names of people that can only be spoken in veneration or not spoken of at all. Even as I write this, I first toyed with the idea of providing one such name as an example, but my survival instinct tells me that I am probably better off not doing so. While it is entirely correct to object to anything that is totally wrong or abusive, it is a little unusual that some things cannot be discussed about even for the establishment of certain ideas which are probably not derogatory of the name concerned. Yes this seems to be the unreason of democracy, wherein the principle of free speech as a mechanism for resolution of conflict gets suspended. How does then one find solutions to problems, if one only just keeps quiet over things that need to be talked about? I think that this is worth pondering over. Very shortly I will be back with "My take on agitiations -3".