Politics for dummies

I have given the wannabe politicians of this country, who must be in their mid-twenties and thirties, a list of ideas which have provided their earnest followers with rich dividends. If you want to climb to the top of the political hierarchy, you must diligently follow one approach and you shall be rightly rewarded in the ballot box.

Before I give you the list, here are a few things you must know about the electorate and in general about the people of this country.

1. They are down right selfish, what else do you expect in a resource constrained environment? They praise you when you give them concessions and hate you when you don’t. (Didn’t you see Mr.Bainsla - the gujjar head, who spoke so much against Ms Vasundhara Raje saluting her when she announced concessions to his community?)

2. People Identify themselves more with their language, religion, caste, and other such groupings. The Indian identity is reserved for India-Pakistan cricket match.

3. People don’t understand economics. They can’t appreciate when you fix the budget deficit, fiscal deficit of the country or set right the Balance of payment there by putting the economy back on rails. They respond better when you give them free TVs, free electricity, fertilizer, waive their loans etc

4.They are emotional. This is an unique characteristic of the Indian population. They vote for you if you lose someone in your family or meet with an accident. Many elections are announced when such mishaps happen –Mr.Chandrababu naidu knows it better.


If you understand the above concepts, it will not be tough to lap up the following recommendations to attract the electorate.

1. Pro-linguistic drama.

a) You could be a person who cannot pronounce many words right in your language (forget the writing part). Yet, you must send your party men (rowdies) and threaten the commercial establishments to replace their name boards from English to local language within a given time. It may make your already tourist-unfriendly state worse but don’t worry, foreigners don’t vote in our elections.

b) You can conduct a one-day fast to “pressurise” the centre to recognize your language as a classical language. You don’t need to know what that status means for your language, but be sure to rush before someone else takes it up.

c) Thackeryism. This is a proven strategy wherein you ask people who don’t speak your language in your region to get out so that the sons of the soil can get that job. Though the very jobs you want “your people” to get are themselves snatched from sons of the foreign soil, no one will question you about it. People can’t think that far.

2. Pro-culture drama

a) Suddenly, you can appoint yourself the custodian of our Indian culture. Ask the bar-dancers to stop or risk being prosecuted, close down the bars by 11pm, give the police an additional job of moral policing, and you’ll surely strike a chord with the majority. You can email Mr.R.R.Patil (Home minister of Maharashtra) to understand the nuances better.

b) Anti-Love. Select such men and women in the society who couldn’t find a person in the opposite sex to have fun or the ones who have a skewed opinion about the opposite sex, love and life in general. Recruit them into your party and these guys will “protect the culture” really well by chasing away couples from parks during Lovers day and by damaging the shops that sell greeting cards for lovers.

3. Anti-Muslim/ Pro Muslim

Look, the society is made of many fools who cannot see the virtues of the secular values enshrined in our constitution. Interestingly, though sacred texts like the “Bagavad Gita” asks its followers to see only god in all things -living and non-living, and enunciates the concept of ‘oneness’ in all beings, there are many misguided youngsters in India (both Hindu and Muslim), who miss this truth. You can harness this to your advantage depending on whether Muslims are in majority/minority in your region. Accordingly, you can ask them to “go to their country”, or give them reservations and appoint a worthless committee for their upliftment (like the Rajinder Sachar committee).

4. Anti-Industrialisation (pseudo pro-farmer)

You can threaten the industrialist who invests in your region with dire consequences if he doesn’t do “justice” for the farmers and block him from doing business. You don’t even have to tell him what will amount to doing justice. If you’re forced, then you could ask for something impossible which will eventually send the poor guy packing. Though the people of that town may dislike you or even hate you, you can be sure of votes in the larger level. This brand of politics off late is also knows as “MamataLitics”. More commonly this is the strategy followed by Indian communists who seek to achieve equality in the society by bringing the rich to the level of the poor.

5 .Support for strikes

When a bunch of government employees go on a strike, usually in protest of being asked to move their lazy bums and do some work, you could “be with them” and support their rightful demands. Though it has the risk of inviting the public ire, you can trust the public memory for being short. Moreover it can win you chunks of votes from trade unions.

I hope with that, I have sown the seeds of the next generation of politicians in this country ;) I invite my visitors to give more ideas to the budding leaders.

DARE TO THINK BEYOND MEDIOCRITY?

It is irritating to see full page advertisements of management schools wooing prospective candidates to join their institutes. Everyone, including the person who occupies half the page of the advertisement, knows its all for the money. Why then drag premier institutes like IIMs and IITs into it?

First of all these institutes don’t have any entrance examination worth the name. Anybody who can pay the fee they demand can secure a seat in these institutes - and they have the audacity to ask you to “dare to think beyond the IIMs and IITs”!

Tell that sick looking man in the ad that an institute doesn’t become famous by promising free laptops to students – by the way those “free” laptops are charged through “invisible” components in the fee structure. Also add to the invisible component charges for “free” trips to Europe.

It is sad that advertisements should rely on women from shaving blades to management institutes. Showing cute women working on laptops, girls and guys playing basketball and hugging each other are aggressive marketing strategies targeting the male crowd.

To satisfy the middle aged parent about the “high standards” of the institute there is a write-up on current national events at the bottom of the advertisement. Such articles are written knowing completely that they won’t be read by anyone. It is this confidence that gives the writer the strength to write whatever he feels like. At best some bored soul may skim through them – yet they find a place in the ad to convey the “seriousness” of the institute in imparting sound education.

It is sad that education should be advertised like a commodity, and I’m not sure if it’s the case with developed countries too. Such advertisements show the failure of the state to regulate the quality of education and provide enough opportunities for students to study. People who brag about the power of privatization, free market policy to solve the problems of the bygone era should learn from this.

World 2050

I have presented a critique of the world order in the year 2050A.D. This might hurt you more than just a bit if you stand for capitalism, nuclear non-proliferation, market controlled economy and other evil things on earth.

An article from a leading daily in the year 2050 A.D…

Sub-Prime Marriage Crisis rocks the world….(11.06.2050)
Sub-Prime Marriage is a highly complex financial instrument which had entered the stock markets recently. The sub-prime marriage loans were widely given to Americans who wanted to get married without having enough cash on hands to ring their wedding bells. The couples agreed to pay a fixed interest to the bank as long as they stayed in the marriage without getting divorced. However the problem started when the banks lent these loans to unscrupulous couples who had no intention of staying together for long. The banks started making heavy losses when most of the marriages ended in divorce prematurely. This forced the clever banks to shift their losses to the people and markets by making complex instruments called Credit derivative obligations (CDO) out of the pre nuptial agreements.

These ‘sub-prime’ loans were unfortunately given ‘AAA’ (the best rating possible) by the credit rating agencies like the Poor &Very Poor, MoodyRaters and others without reading their recklessly written pre-nuptial agreements. Thus many investors believing them to be promising investments invested their hard earned cash. When the marriage-linked financial instrument started failing, the markets went bearish and the economy went into recession. The Central bank chief Mr. Bumbake urged Americans to stay in their marriage for long to help their country bail out of recession.

The chief of Banks’ association who did not admit that sub-prime Marriage stocks were an example of the failure of Capitalism retorted angrily that it was in fact a different form of socialism in which the ‘profits are privatized while the losses are socialised’.

US prez replies to subprime- Marriage Crisis ( 12.06.2050)
... Uncle Sam blamed the developing nations - especially India and China for the present recession in the world. He pointed out how the people of these two nations were eating a lot which resulted in spiraling of world prices. He also pointed out that the world must learn to live like his countrymen who use minimum resources for their living. When a reporter interrupted the president and informed him that it was his honorable country men who used papers right from sneezing to shitting which caused enormous pressure on the tress of the world, the president cut the reporter short by saying “Those trees are got from Africa where dragons fly and humans don’t live anyway”. He was greeted by a wide round of applause.

The President continued his speech by saying that the hike in world prices of oil is due to the uranium enrichment programme carried out in the ‘secret establishments’ of the oil-and-gas-rich-yet-impoverished state of Mamalia in the sub-saharan Africa. He said Mamalia was posing a grave threat to humanity and it must immediately discontinue its uranium enrichment program. It is pertinent to note that the UN has released its AYCR (As if You Care to Read) document promptly to condemn USA’s intention. The President however asked his army to be ready to save the motherland from the enemy.

Mamalia’s Response (13.06.2050)
The oil-and-gas-rich-yet-impoverished state of Mamalia had replied that its top bureaucrats had heard of the name ‘Uranium’ only once before the US President had accused Mamalia of enriching it -in a spielberg movie. The Mamalian president who had recently won an election without even participating in it angrily shot back at USA by saying ‘USA will bite dust if they war with us’. He admitted that if Mamalia had enough money to buy uranium its citizens would give themselves a good shave everyday.

The Mamalian president replied irritatingly to a question on how he won the election without competing in it by saying “Mamalia has its own form of democracy in which the opponents to the ruling party lose everytime.”