A Rude Awakening

Not even more than two decades of terror had prepared us for the kind of assault Mumbai has suffered. We were used to bomb blasts, not rampaging gunmen across streets, platforms, bars and five star hotels. Unlike anything before, the dangerous drama has unfolded in front of our eyes for two long days on live television planting fear firmly in our living rooms. For us, the educated elite of India, it never happened so close to us. Terror strikes were reserved for trains, crowded markets, courthouses, mosques and temples - not the kind of places we went to. Not the Taj or Oberoi, not a Unilever board meeting.

It is not just that the targets were upscale, they were the theaters of a confident, aspiring superpower. The protective veneer is broken, confidence shaken. We are angry, very angry. Never have we been so infuriated with our politicians and their utter lack of intent to protect our lives.

But we also need to introspect and apportion some blame to ourselves. These incompetent politicians are sitting in seats of power because we let them get there. We, the educated upper classes have been so acutely apathetic towards the country's problems, that it is now coming back to bite us.

First we ran away from the process in order to secure our futures. Then we closeted ourselves out in the safety and comfort of sanitized, gated communities insulated from the problems of the common man. We remained mute spectators as the system degenerated. We prospered and we thought we could buy our way out of every problem. Many argued that the rot was so deep that we can't make a difference but the truth is we have hardly ever tried. If we don't step out now and become involved in the political process, we will continue to be misgoverned by the Shivraj Patils, Modis, Deshmukhs.

The last great generation of Indian leaders were western educated lawyers who planted and nurtured the roots of Indian democracy. Time will tell whether the anger with the Mumbai attacks will spawn a new generation of leaders from our midst. The terror victims, commandos, cops and firemen risking their lives this very moment, deserve a lot better from us than calls for POTA from the comfort of our living rooms. For a start, let's vote and make ourselves count. An active role in public life would be a lot better.

Obama and the End of Racial Bias?

Barack Obama's election is just the kind of advertisement America needed. The flurry of celebrations across the globe suggests that finally the world may again look up to America. It sets to rest months of speculation whether Americans can ever elect an African American as President. Even the cynics are forced to acknowledge that America is not just about Stupid White Men with guns and SUVs.

But countries and their media tend to give more credit to themselves than they deserve. Just like we in India took pride in the diverse minority power troika of Manmohan-Sonia-Kalam, it cannot mask the utter lack of equality of opportunity in the country.

While Obama's election is being hailed as bridging the racial divide, fact is that that any white male half as good as Obama would have won as a Democratic candidate (and Obama had to be that much better than a white to do it). If it was not for the anti-incumbency wave against the Republicans bolstered by the greatest shrinking of American personal wealth in years, Obama wouldn't have had the kind of resounding win he did. As somebody said that "when your house is on fire, you don't care if the fireman is black or white". Not many cared if thr President would be ideal company for a backyard beer and barbecue. So there isn't enough evidence that this marks the end of racial bias. Also let's not forget that he is only the 3rd black senator. Arguably this election will help in dismantling racial barriers and prejudices much faster than anything else would have.

But there's no case whatsoever for US bashing . Obama is the first black Head of State in the entire developed world. A sobering thought for Europeans so fond of deriding America for being "racist" among other things. It also underscores that no other country on the planet offers the equality of opportunity that America does

And now for a little pat on our own back. While we are still some time away from a popular elected Prime Minster with Hussein in his or her name, there is probably no country as accepting as India of people of any background in positions of power. If only we could find more like Obama who did not exploit their identities for political advantage!

Chandrayaan-I and India's Scientific Temper

The Chandrayaan-I launch has been the big news story of this week. While there are those who believe that for a a country with millions living in poverty an unmanned lunar mission is an expensive distraction, nobody can deny that it is an achievement and even the most ardent critics would congratulate the scientists and engineers behind the mission. The business case projects a 3x payoff for India's budding space launch industry and it is hard to argue that there is any extravagance involved here.

Such missions serve another very important objective - promoting Scientific Temper in our society.

Amartya Sen in "The Argumentative Indian" highlights how traditional Indian discourse and thought has been seeped in logic, rationality and openness. Nehru held Scientific Temper as dearly as Secularism and Socialism. He placed tremendous emphasis on combating superstitions and religious bigotry via spread of scientific thinking and a development model based on research in science and agriculture.

Over the past few years, I do believe we are losing this scientific temper or maybe it never percolated deep enough. One has to look through popular media to find numerous strains. India's most watched news channel is Aaj Tak and anybody tuning into it will find loads of coverage on religious miracles, godmen of all kinds and the occasional TRP toppers of milk drinking Ganesha statues and Shivalingams. Recently hundreds of educated Mumbaikars ran to the sea side to drink "sweet" water from the Arabian Sea. Astrology is big business and astrologers are celebrities. Godmen and their establishments are booming. Vaastu was not fashionable two decades ago but now India's newly rich make their buying decisions based on it. The Ram Sethu controversy, saffron brigade vandalism, religious fatwas - all evidence of a resurgence of irrationality and the polar opposite of scientific temper.

Oddly, the above regression has taken place in the backdrop of an IT driven economic boom, the nation's top scientist as President and foremost economist as Prime Minister. Almost every Indian middle class family has a son, daughter, nephew or niece working in the IT industry. We still aspire for our children to become doctors or engineers. Yet it is inexplicable that large sections of the educated class remain rooted in orthodoxy and distanced from rationality.

Initiatives like the Lunar mission provides the kind of folklore that is needed to shore up belief in science and engineering. People will start holding scientists and researchers with more awe and respect than they presently command. I am hoping that Dr Madhavan Nair and some of his scientists will become celebrities in their own right and spur a few people to switch off from the next Bejan Daruwala show. I am also hoping that many more schoolkids would dream of a career in scientific research.

Anti-Intellectualism in America

All these years, I have been unable to comprehend the strain of anti-intellectualism and aversion to nuance which is central to the conservative and Republican rhetoric in America. The origins have been unclear to me.

Till I came across Thomas Frank's article in the Wall Street Journal - "Joe the Plumber and GOP 'Authenticity'" Frank quotes Ronald Reagan's poll strategist Robert Wirthlin from his election strategy in 1980: "People act on the basis of their perception of reality; there is, in fact, no political reality beyond what is perceived by the voters."

He adds "The "perception of reality," on the other hand, is an amazing political tonic, and with it conservatives have cemented a factproof worldview of lasting power. It is simply this: Conservatives are authentic and liberals are not. The country is divided into a land of the soulful, hard-working producers and a land of the paper-pushing parasites; a plain-spoken heartland and the sinister big cities, where they breed tricky characters like Barack Obama, all "eloquence," as John McCain sneered in last week's presidential debate, but hard to pin down."

With Reagan, the strategy worked beautifully and has then been embraced whole heartedly by electoral strategists like Karl Rove with remarkable effectiveness. More than two decades of feeding on this mantra has shaped an entire generation's view that anti-liberalism equals anti-intellectualism and it is not going to be easy to shake off

David Brooks in his New York Time piece "The Class War Before Palin" says "Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. ..... What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect."

Brooks goes on "Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch"

Time will tell if an Obama presidency (assuming he does become president) will reverse this thinking in middle America. If the economic situation doesn't improve during the term (which is a probable scenario) sadly there may be yet another republican revolution and a re-establishment of red neck hegemony.