Bengaluru : Lesson

What happened in Bengaluru on new year’s eve is nothing new to us. Places changes but story remains the same since Ramayana. Men want to get women by force. Similar incidence happened in Mumbai in 2008. Same thing happened in Nirbhaya’s Case in 2013. What has not changed in Mentality of people to view women as an object of pleasure. What has changed since Ramayana is lack of Jatayu in our society.

First thing first. Women need not to dress according to anyone’s cultural or religion. Men need to be more cultured and religious. No cultural or religion says women to wear short at the same time no cultural or religion give permission to men to rape women wearing shorts. So the whole cultural argument is out of question. It is men who are behaving like animals because they can not control their feelings. Now that’s needed to be addressed.

Our films and TV dramas promote much openness. We like hot modern heroines in movies, while also liking the strong and independent bahu of TV serials. But are we allowing our daughters/sisters to be that free and open? This gap between what is desired and what is considered as ideal is hypocrisy of modern Indian society. Our desires are different from our ideals how are we supposed to reconcile them? Simple. Dump the ideals. They are fake and outdated. There is no sanskari bahu in our homes. The fundamental requirement for being a bahu is having presence of a sasuma. With the nuclear family life that we have adopted in modern urbanization the ghar ki bahu is independent working wife. So start accepting that. Drop this bahu word and start using word like Better-Half. That’s where the change lies. It may not seem a big deal but it will change the psyche of the society and free the young women from age old stereotype.

Second and most important, stand for the right of women. See the example of Jatayu how he gave his life fighting for Sita. I am not asking anyone to be martyr here, but this was our age old culture. Some say it changed when muslim invaders taking hindu women for their pleasure and it was dangerous to oppose, some say something else. Pandavas went to War for pride of Draupadi. Ram went to war for Sita. This is our culture. It is still inside us. We need to be free from the slave mentality and to understand it is our duty to oppose when anyone is being suppressed unjustly. Duty to keep our country safe and law abiding. If we are not opposing such behavior remember we are indirectly encouraging them. I don’t want to use cliché that it might happen to your wife or sister or daughter one day. I am saying it happening to your sister every day. The women in front of you is your sister. We all Indians are brothers and sisters. If not ask your own sister. And she might tell you the horrible situation she face because of men like you.

You can either wake up and prevent such event from happening or become accomplice in a rape.

Is Cyrus Mistry Yogendra Yadav of Corporate India!

The question is not is he, but to what extent.
Please read the Mistry's email to the board.
Yes it is official. Cyrus is Yogendra and Corporate governance is his swaraj. Yogendra wasn't promised free hand at the time of joining like Cyrus had. But the difference ends there. In all events and results that turned out you will see a drastic similarity between these two figures and their nose dive.
Arvind Kejriwal gave party candidacy to some shady goons in Delhi election. He also ran a campaign "Paach saal Kejriwal" which was against his party's ethos. The two points which Mistry highlights in his mail are 1. Bad business decision. 2. Shady transactions which are difficult to explain under current legal framework. The second point comes as a shocker as Tata has good standing in the eye of general public. At least in terms of legality of their business transactions.

Both Yogendra and Cyrus not only stood against it firmly but sought to do something about it. To save their organization by pulling out before it is too late.

They didn't knew that it was too late for them. Ratan Tata and Arvind Kejriwal started taking control of the organisation in order to prevent Cyrus/Yogendra from undoing their work. That lead to skirmishes between to parties. Which finally lead to immediate suspension from the office for both of them.

We do not know what took place behind the doors. We have only seen the bitter end result of suspension.

The leaked letter of Cyrus is just in line of many leaks, if not press conferences, that would be followed in coming week from both sides.

In next post I will discuss the e-mail of Cyrus Mistry in detail and we will try to discover the role of Swaraj/corporate governance in India.

Uri Attack : Thoughts

Uri attacked happened today and all Namo-rugna clan suddenly became foreign policy, defence strategy and international diplomacy expert. The clan, which was claiming victory of Modi, on South China Sea, in Permanent Court of Arbitration, Hague. And which was claiming that Modi is doing splendid job, just hours before the attack, started advising Modi on what he is doing wrong and what he should do next.

The purpose of writing this blog is not to slam those who do not deserve slamming. This is just to tell them Calm the F down.

Change in Policy

Modi has turned India’s preserved as passive policy and made it more open and aggressive. Modi has started behaving on international arena like being military superpower (Which in absolute it is, but not in relative term) and making bold policy moves that perceived as threat by the competing nations.

India delivers a definitive blow to China’s string of pearls project, by helping Maitripala Sirisena to become President of Srilanka.  After becoming President Sirisena cancel port development agreement with China and entered similar agreement with India. Srilanka is vital for String of Pearls project as without it all the other bases around India are disconnected and vulnerable. The second blow India deliver was by striking decade long Chabahar agreement with Iran and Afghanistan.  This was double blow for China as well as Pakistan. China having being lost Srilanka already and Pakistan loosing Afghanistan.

 Ashraf Ghani, current president of Afghanistan, was said to be pro Pakistan. But after India offered him bigger piece of cake he not only turned pro India but also started signing in tune with India asking Pakistan to take action against terrorist while his visit in New Delhi earlier this week.

It is also said that India is currently in talks with Mongolia to develop air base, in Mongolia to counter China.

China’s retaliation

This has pushed China which is losing financially due to India’s aggressive stance, to retaliate with more politics and diplomacy.

First they blocked us at UN when we wanted a ban on Jaish e Mohammad and it’s chief Masood Azhar.  Second they blocked us at NSG. When PM Modi visited Switzerland it has promised us support at NSG. But in NSG they turn their back on us and supported China’s call.

While these events were taking place on international diplomatic arena, Pakistan wasn’t keeping quite either. First they attacked at Gurudaspur on 27^th July 2015, followed by Pathankot on 2^nd January 2016. Note here that Pathankot was mere a week away from PM Modi’s visit to Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif on 25^th December 2015.

It was in response to these attacks India took side of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. Both are extremely crucial to Gawadar port developed under China Pakistan Economic corridor known as CPEC. IF Pakistan loose either of them, CPEC will be useless. Not to mention USD 10.63 billion (INR 71.22 crore) worth of investment China is doing in Pakistan.  They are not losing Balochistan without making India pay twice as much if not more. So don’t be fool to assume that this will be last attack. This will one of many in the series to make India pay, And we should be ready to pay the price if we want us to win. No victory has ever been achieved without sacrifice.

Current Scenario

It is very easy to ask Indian government whether Manmohan or Modi  to go war with Pakistan but the truth is that we are not prepared. Neither financially nor militarily.

Our economy is still struggling with balance of payment and deficit on current account. We are net importer. We import more than we export. We are not able to satisfy needs of our citizens. Whether it comes to Toothpaste, soft drinks, Hard drinks, Mobiles, TV washing Machine, Fridge all are imported. India which has rich textile culture is importing Jeans from America.  On the other hand even though we have reached to Mars we cannot develop fully Indian Aeroplane, nor an Aircraft carrier. Tejas has been highly criticised for using American Manufacturer of Jet engine over Indian Manufacturer in an aeroplane which is supposed to be fully Indian Aeroplane. Remember Japan had more Aircraft carrier in 1947 than United States of America and all were home made. Same with  Japanese fighter Mitsubishi  Zero, which was superior fighter plane compared to than British RAF aircraft Hawker Hurricane or USA’s Lockheed Lighting or Grumman Hellcat. What we learnt from this? NOTHING. We just entered a new agreement with Japan for Buying Arms.

Stock piling arms will not make army stronger. But our experiment at home with Tejas (Code name LCA) or with Arjun MBT has ran into such a disaster that rather than correcting them we choose to import. India has burnt more than twice on time as well as resources on developing indigenous weaponry.

So if we enter into war tomorrow and if our suppliers from all over the world stop supplying us with spare parts we will lose war in 14 days.

Indian Military is world’s third largest military with advance equipment and hard training. But it is not able to rise as military superpower because it has been contained in the region. While United States of America with largest military and highest operate around the world, they have very peaceful and cordial relationship with their neighbour. Whereas, India was forced to fight 5 wars, in last 68-69 years. With unstable and troubling neighbours, both of them are nuclear capable, Indian military is left with only one option, to contain the situation. Because if we start taking more and more aggressive steps, we may not able to control the outcome.

Way ahead

India should continue to do what we are doing till now. We are not keeping quite over these years. We have provided fuel to Balochistan for 10 years before raising it in UN. Afghanistan is also looking to settle scores with Pakistan regarding Taliban. With Afghanistan on our side Pakistan’s northern border especially the disputed Durand line is burning for last few months. Afghanistan is shelling Pakistani post on the border.

So before jumping to conclusion of war we must realised that we are already fighting a cold war. Just because we don’t see it and just because it is causing dozens of casualties than millions we should not be disappointed.

Post World War two United State of America had a President named D. Eisenhower. He was world war general, and took steps to strike peace with Russia (Then USSR). He was losing popularity because people thought he was giving in under pressure from Soviet Primer Nikita Khurshchev. In reality he authorised to ran several secret operations which actually gave him an edge over Khurshchev during negotiations. Soviet realised this after U-2 incident and broken away from talks.

Conclusion

In conclusion I would say these foreign policy issues are too complex for any one of us to understand fully. Let the things run their own course. We cannot control them as there are many factors involved. The only thing in our hand is our own action. Every time china does something people come up with don’t buy Chinese product. Message gets forwarded for few days and then everyone wants cheap products. Remember First World War was fought for 4 years; Second World War was fought for 6 years. If we cannot hold our nerves for few hours and starts slamming government, we are surely not prepared for war.