Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Being a big fan of Vajpayee, I constantly keep looking for videos of his speeches or articles throwing new light on his life and principles.

Today, I was reading the transcript of Karan Thapar's interview of Brajesh Mishra in 2009, who was the principal secretary of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1999-2004). This excerpt was just brilliant:

Karan Thapar: What was the special quality that Mr Vajpayee had that allowed him to hold a party like the BJP together and a government of 24 members together without any real major problems?

Brajesh Mishra: The first quality that he has is that he is very generous at heart. He never denied anybody the opportunity to speak his or her mind even though it may be critical of him. He dominated the meetings through his silence. Innumerable meetings of the Cabinet, he would keep quiet. Every member who wanted to speak or say were allowed to speak their minds. At the end of session, Mr Vajpayee would say just one sentence -- 'Shall we do it this way?' And that was it. This quality of his was a rare one. That's why I call him a statesman and not a politician. He understands people, he gives them all the opportunity that they want. It's human nature that once you have been given the opportunity to put your say forward, then you tend to be more amiable to decisions being taken.

Karan Thapar:You are clearly saying that both by giving people opportunity to speak and also by his masterful silences where he withheld what he himself would be thinking was actually a master tactician?

Brajesh Mishra: If you want to call him a master tactician, I would say that was something inborn. That was within in nature. Perhaps this tactician business is a by-product of his nature rather than something which he has cultivated deliberately.

Karan Thapar: The second corollary, the first from what you are saying is that because of his character, he always got the better of the sort of person who wants to burst out and speak first.

Brajesh Mishra: Yes.

Karan Thapar: He was never scared of others jumping into the fray wanting to speak and voice their opinion?

Brajesh Mishra: No, never.

Karan Thapar: It seems he got the better of his entire Cabinet?

Brajesh Mishra: I gave you instances. He let everyone speak but at the end he finished it with one sentence.

Freedom Park - Lokpal

At the height of the August agitation against corruption led by Anna Hazare, the people started coming on the streets, the numbers increasing day by day from August 16th. I started supporting the movement wholeheartedly after reviewing the points of the government, Anna's team and the sequence of events.

For sequence of events, please read the minutes of meeting (which not many people seem to be aware of):

http://www.lokpalbillconsultation.org/page.php?page=3

For the synopsis of Lokpal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHcKlIsvAQ

On day 6 of the movement, I finally managed to go to Freedom Park, the epicenter of movement in Bangalore. I arrived at 2:30pm and headed to the stage area where all the events were happening.

The stage area had around 20 - 30 people fasting, including a woman who was fasting from Aug 16 without water. Actor Vishnuvardhan's wife was also present among these people. But otherwise, the stage hosted various speakers and singers throughout the day.

When I arrived, the mobile phone numbers of all Members of Parliament were being announced so that people could sms and call these to ask each one of them for support. Creative stuff... good engagement with the crowd and increased the energy level.

Next, a swamiji came on stage who spoke in kannada but had the crowd on such a high with his speech on corruption ranging in both politics and religion. Wherever I could follow, it was really good stuff. Crowd was whistling and cheering wildly.

Among some other highlights for the 4 hours I spent were some children singing patriotic songs and other good speeches. But the ultimate of them all was the one from the head of the Gurudwara in bangalore who had some 300 people with him from the Sikh community. He apologized on behalf of his community for the actions of Manmohan Singh... making a really bold speech on how even though the PM maintained a very clean image of himself his claim to ignorance on corruption happening around him was just nonsense, and how it took 3 years for his government to arrest Raja but took only 3 days to take a wrong decision to arrest Anna. The crowd couldn't really expect to hear a more bold speech from a person taking pride in his community.

Some images of the crowd:

The crowd shouting slogans and waving tricolor all around, let me say this on a level headed basis that it was a very genuine coming together of people for a heartfelt cause. There is nothing superficial about this and especially I, an otherwise skeptic about everything, am convinced that now the government has no other go but to listen to the demands of the people. People on both sides now understand that the MPs and MLAs are public servants. We dont need to fight elections to make our voice heard, its rather the government who should understand our essential needs and listen to us.

Little drops make a mighty ocean indeed... and now I believe.

During this whole time of course, there were songs from Vandemataram (ARR), Rang de Basanti, Lagaan etc being played in between all the speeches and stage programs which gave the crowd a reason to sing, rejoice and get entertained. As "V" says in "V for Vendetta": Whats a revolution without a celebration?

EASY MONEY

There are many ways to make money. The best jobs in the current world are not always easy to get into. Many jobs require consistent effort and hard-work from us to get through the day, for the amount of money we make. But there are some ways to make money that puts the person at ease, settling his life for the long term. I am listing some of these which occurred to me in random thoughts, in the first part of a multiple-post series

1. Analyst jobs:

There are different types of analyst jobs. But you know about the ones I am going to talk about.

Now, there are TV channels on business news. Now, we usually see these financial experts talking a lot of bullshit which is quite interesting because so much of it is just jargons and the rest is either simple common sense reiterated or gross manipulation/interpolation which the college students are usually familiar with. Let’s see for example:

“The growth rate (of India) might slip from 7.85% to 7.79%, looking at the situation prevailing in the last few weeks.”

Wow! First this guy isn’t even predicting anything. If he at least says that growth rate will come down from 10% to 8% it makes sense. A mere 0.06% is nonsense. Then he adds a “might” to his sentence. And if there is some brave prediction that someone really makes, its nothing other than a pure extrapolation/reference to the past. If the share price for example has climbed from Rs.330 to Rs. 340, Rs. 350 in last 2 days, its safe to say:

“I think we can expect the share price of company X to reach Rs. 355 at the end today.”

Of course, the Rs.355 is to play safe rather than say Rs. 360. Smart, eh?

Now, the weather analysts aren’t far behind either. Probably the Indian weather predictors have the time of their lives predicting just by extrapolating stuff from satellite images, wind speed, moisture content etc. which are regular measurements. Especially Mr. S R Ramanan, who comes in all the tamil TV channels to predict rain and cyclones (He happens to my 2^nd degree relative btw). Just chk out this apt comment on him: CLICK HERE. If asked about the heavy November rains which flooded Chennai, he probably would have replied,” I have been saying for a year that it is going to rain but no one listened to me”.

2. Marriage Hall

The situation in Chennai and probably in other cities in India is that marriage halls are overbooked, overpriced and unavailable. If you have a piece of land in any upcoming area, likely to be urbanized/populated in the near future, construct a marriage hall immediately. I have been to halls which have the worst facilities and poor maintenance, but still run to packed house. People don’t really mind marriage halls which are a bit away from the city, but rather they prefer a place which is accessible and is decent enough. Unlike other commercial investments with land like Apartments, Restaurant, or Theaters that are very much dependent on various factors such as location, market trends, finance etc., marriage halls constructed even in bizarre locations in the city are a massive hit. Totally worthwhile investment for the long term with constant money inflow!

If you are really considering constructing a marriage hall, you can consider this next step too: construct marriage halls across India and make it a branded chain of marriage halls, and importantly having an ISO: 9001, 9002…and all certificates for extra brand build-up. More importantly, marriage halls are very good prerequisites for shining in politics and popularizing yourself through marriage posters popularly seen everywhere in Chennai. Check this page on related stuff: CLICK HERE.

3. TV Astrologer

An astrologer needs to establish himself properly to make his business run, with good fundaes on whatever he does. But a TV astrologer seems to be a totally shady dude who just blabbers the most easy-to-say things for astrology, that too predicting the week ahead for you. Now, the dude who does the daily astrology is even worse… he can say anything and get away with it. Now, with the amount of new channels coming in, and especially if your relative or your childhood friend is opening a new TV channel which desperately needs programs, jump into the bandwagon and start an astrology program. Of course, the innovation factor for the program can be very high. Let me list some of these:

1. Use permutation and combination of various free flowing astrology website material to decided the content of daily prediction in the most intelligent manner.

2. Introduce the “raasi-of-the-day” concept and say that raasi XYZ will have the highest strength for next 24 hours. Prediction of this raasi will determine the actions and predictions for all other raasis. Saves you lot of thinking and makes everything very consistent.

3. Include the special section of “bhoomi-raasi” which predicts the weather based on the astrology of Tamilnadu state. It’s too easy because all you have to do is contradict Mr. S R Ramanan’s prediction and get done with it. CLICK HERE if you have missed my previous commentary on him.

4. Avoid making illogical statements like “colors red and blue are favorable for the day” or for that matter other conclusions and correlations at this level of intellect. People have gotten smarter and thereby make simple common sense statements for fillers (however obvious they are).

5. Insert day to day healthy living advice along with astrology in a very subtle manner. For all the varieties of yoga exercises, allot one exercise for each raasi daily. For example, introduce "pranayama" for them to get rid of the "maha-kali-yuga-vayu-dosha". Keep rotating the exercises to make it mutually exclusive on a daily basis and completely exhaustive on a weekly basis.

6. And last and most important: Make sure that the program host is 50+ and looks very religious and stud like the picture shown below. The nama is very important indeed.

MY candidate for the show host if someone wants to start a TV Channel in 20 years:

Sehdev vs. BBC

Ok, all you guys who have seen the movie Swades, remember this subtle character called Sehdev ? Well... I ll give you a brief introduction of the whole setting, and how this struck me hard while I was in London.

In the movie SRK is a hi-fi scientist/engineer in NASA who is heading a project involving placing a satellite into the space which monitors some Global Precipitation blah blah... and predicts the weather conditions in a much more rigorous way. He returns to India to visit his home village, which is a proper underdeveloped place both infrastructure and people wise. So when he visits the village head man, he is asked what he does. He says that he does weather prediction through usage of satellite and stuff. The headman is a bit confused, seeing this as a simple task, and says " Hamra Sehdev bhi wahi karat hai" (Even our Sehdev can do it). Then there is this country villager called Sehdev who steps forward and looks at the sky and tells that the sky will be clear for the next few days and there will be a lot of sunshine.

In London, I was amazed at the way BBC broad casted its weather prediction prediction pretty accurately telling about the possibility of rains and sunshine ahead for the next whole week. And everyday it would always go according to the forecast of BBC.

Now thinking about the relevance of this situation with that in Swades, the wetern world relies on a prediction as that of BBC which is the outcome of the scientists like the one SRK played int he movie; while in India it doesnt matter whatever prediction anyone makes, it rains when it rains and it shines when it does, so weather prediction is as easy as words coming from the country villager Sehdev with relevance to India.

Of course, my point is just on weather prediction and not to extend the comparison between Sehdev and SRK to be as similar to the comparison between India and the western world... It makes me wonder whether I should even view everything about India that way...