When bad times come, they come in waves. As Kingfisher rocks in air turbulence, the earth below Vijay Mallya is all set to cave in. That is, if Anna Hazare has his way and tipplers are flogged into abstinence, would that not automatically put VM’s core brewery business also on a crash course?
Author: T R Jawahar
The country and its rulers are worried stiff. And why not? Vijay Mallya is in deep financial trouble. So too the Indian farmer. But since VM’s main mascots, the wafer-thin, skimpily clad models actually look more impoverished than the Indian farmer, the government and the media seem all eyes and ears to the liquor baron’s plight.
Former PM Vajpayee, during his stint as External Affairs minister during the Janata joke of late seventies, was asked by a foreign scribe: ‘When are you planning to visit India, Sir?’. High flying PM Rajiv Gandhi’s passion for foreign … lands was so much a talking point in the eighties that on his arrival in Delhi once an opposition MP quipped
It is perhaps not without reason that India was ‘chosen’ as the venue for the arrival of the 7 billionth baby. We are the undisputed reproduction champs clocking a population growth that makes every fifth homosapiens an Indian. Traditional economic and social wisdom is that such a baby boom spells doom but of late the positive side of this rise has also drawn a lot of attention, even admiration: India is turning out to be the most youthful country in the world with 65% under age 35 and raring to reap a huge demographic dividend in terms of economic prosperity and social change.
The modern mind has cultivated a hypocritical reluctance to deal with religion in all honesty. On the one side is the conditioning wrought by the education system and the external environs that seemingly stress on rational inquiry and material pursuits. On the other is the undeniable pull of the metaphysical mystery, an inner urge to understand something we know is there but fail to perceive.
The term ‘politics’ originally referred to the ‘art or science of governance’. Politics being a public matter was to be insulated from isolated individuals and instead stress on groups and consensus. But since it still rested on fallible, fragile and fickle humans, politics gradually became less related to governance and more about managing and manoeuvring. It is today the art of the possible wherein anything goes and ends make even foul means sacred.
Sonia’s sickness may be Cong’s sacred secret, but that party’s own sickness cannot be so safely wished away. The nation is ill-inoculated against the afflictions raging in the ruling regime. All major epidemics – scams, terrorism, inflation etc have their origins in a contagious Congress. For the country, the passage from INC to ICU has been seamless but most painful.
It is not that the 2G scam is getting bigger only now with the exposure-a-day routine. The scam was born big on Jan 10, ‘08 itself, the day it happened when Raja sold lakhs of crores worth spectrum to chosen buyers at throwaway prices through a dubious process which itself was preceded by about four years of even more dubious intra-UPA shady shenanigans.
Political instruments get blunt by frequent use or abuse. Fast as a means of protest has always been a dubious tool despite popular use. Hunger strikes invariably turn into a public show and a war of nerves between the protestor and a tormentor with the touted purpose of the fast often getting lost.