The "S" Effect - Must be the Genes !

The newspapers all around are screaming of the admitted tragedy that has been accorded to the Bhopal gas victims. The comparison of the hefty damage of 20 billion which has been wrested off by US from the oil giant BP stands in stark comparison to the 450 million given off to the dead and the injured in Bhopal. Just to put things in perspective the cost of an Indian life is just 2% the cost of US ecosystem and its nature.

While we are screaming for Andersons head, and asking for his extradition, the question that arises is why and how this has happened? Congress in its press statement , and politcs playing has called the entire episode a “systemic failure”.

Nopes, it is not a systemic failure. The real reason, which may be unpalatable to some, is the fact that we have still not outgrown our colonial mentality. We see ourselves subservient to the white skinned. I think it is the remnant of 200 years of subjugation and that has tossed out a genetic trait as such.

Don’t believe me? Ever walk into a restaurant and look at the treatment accorded to a foreigner who is white skinned. You would say that the guy is merely doing it for his tips. True to a certain extent, but if the same foreigner is a black, American or otherwise the treatment meted out is the same or in some cases worse off than to normal citizens.

At this point my roommates interject and toss out a rather interesting reason for our behavior as such.” They are more beautiful than us, and it is human nature to be appreciative of beauty and acknowledge it. Have you ever seen a foreigner who is having misshapen features? “

I chuckle inwardly at their attempts to justify their behavior. Admittedly white people are better endowed anatomically, but they are not really beautiful. Pretty, maybe but beauty no.

And again we are not appreciative of prettiness, we are appreciative of structure. I am reminded of an experiment which showed pictures of various pretty people to toddlers and recorded their response.

Denzel Washington scored the highest among all the beautiful people!

This led to the conclusion that symmetry is what we involuntary look for in people. Washington’s features align perfectly. That is to say that if your were to cut his face into 2 halves with a vertical line across his forehead and nose, and put one over the other they would overlap perfectly.

So the next time you come across a white skinned person and find yourselves being, well “appreciative of beauty “ you may want to take refuge in the fact that it isn’t you, it is your genes, which is called the slavery or the " S "gene.

Freudian Dilemma !

 I had worked on a module for a web startup, while I was studying. During that period I had access to lot of literature, (online and offline) and some great minds as well.(no pun intended !)

Borrowing from OB and Marketing I worked out some set of questions that could help you reveal some insight in your thought process, witha little bit of humor in play.

Here I reproduce them with teaser responses.

•    Suppose there are two planks across tallest buildings on the earth, for what possible thing in the world would you be willing to walk across them?
Forget it, its too risky!

•    Black T-shirt or a pink chuddy what would you like?
Huh?!

•    The person sitting next to you is gossiping about you online, what do you say to him?
Hey, am no schizophrenic; P , let it leisure

•    Describe yourselves in word?
Pssst …TDH (i.e. Tall dark and handsome sorts)???!!!

•    What is your first response to unknown mails which star with “congrats you have won “?
Wow?!

•    Who would you prefer to marry, a person with brains or someone with money?
Neither!

•    Imagine a world without an email or cell; how would you communicate?
Send letters with pigeons! , it would be a lisure past time indeed :)

•    What do you consider yourselves, Smart Intelligent or Hardworking? (constraints you cant have all, but you can prioritize )
No teaser!
 

Dirty .......Dirtier........ Dirtiest ?

Benares, Varanasi, Haridwar are considered to be highly polluted places with the fecal chloroform content almost 100 times the permissible limits. Many westerners who visit these places often remark with characteristic wonder, towards all things in the mystic land of India “Indians come to one of the dirtiest places in the world to cleanse themselves of their sins”.

Ganga Action Plan (GAP) one of the famed government proposals, after hundreds have been pumped in and more than 2 decades, Ganga is no cleaner then the neighborhood gutter. Now it seems the IITs have been roped in to find some solution.

But I cannot fail to remember the other grand venture of IIT, in Delhi the BRTS which was supposed to make cars obsolete. All which was made obsolete was the residual sanity that Delhi bus drivers possessed. Seeing a vast stretch of empty road reserved exclusively for their use ignites the formula one driver inherent in every male. For a rare time they had the pleasure of zipping in at fast speed much to the dismay of the AC car with humongous horsepower under its hood but forced to crawl at a bullock carts pace.

This time around we have Japanese helping us to understand the mechanics of cleaning, as a part of the GAP. Let me ask here we would clean something because it gets dirty, correct so instead of spending time cleaning wouldn’t it be wise to spending time not dirtying?

So logically it would augur well to find the source of pollution. The various pollutants are human and industrial. Put a tab on these two I believe there might be a sizable dip in pollution. Acting on one plan that is just cleaning in isolation would not augur well as it is essentially addressing a part of the problem.

Enter, Sulabh International with its low cost clean toilet schemes. This is winning accolades all over the world. It might be a wise idea to implement GAP along with a plan to develop Sulabh toilets at vast stretches of river passing trough rural populace.

Cost, where to find the money the government asks? Simple make Sulabh model a community venture, appoint a community leader to overlook on the functioning of the facilities which would essentially be pay per use.

Why the heck would someone pay for doing something which has historically been done for free? , would be the second question. I don’t have an answer to that. For a rural Indian, his traditional lota and two trips to the jungle are a well established venture. Breaking a habit and forming a costly one in its place is a challenge. But I do say that , if the same guy can forgo his coin operated telephone booth for a cell phone at an additional cost why not pay nominal amount for a clean place to do the honors instead of the jungles ?

सब माया है

Think about a job, a living that would enable you to increase in scale by almost 100 % in less than a year. By scale, let me clarify on record it is the amount you take home.

Blank? Let me give you a hint. No accountability in this job and certainly no qualifications required as in basic education.

I am sure at this point you would have put together the title of the post and the first couple of lines. Politics, my friends is the vocation I am talking about. The case in point is the increase in declared assets of mayawati from 45 crore to 88 crores in a span of just about an year

The impunity in which BSP workers acknowledge the “honesty " of their leader in declaring her assets and urging their opposition leaders to show their " black money"  is more well, tragic.

However, on has to acknowledge the political acumen of Mayawati in declaring her assets as white money. Firstly it is an indication of the "me too" syndrome. If the girl of a poor dalit can amass such fortune her vote bank of dalit would automatically support her regardless of whether she does them any good or not. Affinity to ones kin is more demonstrable at the bottom of the pyramid, where people from rural areas are still known by their community names. Secondly from the standpoint of a attack to her from the centre (Congress), in terms of black money hoarding, a messy CBI enquiry there is absolutely no chance. I am not saying that she does not have some additional stash hidden somewhere, but the fact that she has some much already in white would naturally casts aspersion on her black(less or more not particularly relevant).And you don’t make so much money all alone, you have to give a share o the pie to all so as to eliminate any nuisance or a disgruntled wannabe screaming "corruption".

One of my friends aquaintace is in the PWD, (Uttar Pradesh) who was at sometime repsonsibel for the highway project.He used to meet Mayawati regualry, and presnt project proposals.Maya ji had only one question " क्या वलुए  है , और मेरा कितना है ?!"

PS – when I was writing this MS word gave me an auto suggest or Mayawati as … megawatt! Serendipity huh?!