SAVE THE ENGINEER
Well readers, the time has come, the time for which I have been waiting for from aeons (that would be 2004). The time to stop being an undergraduate and to become a graduate. Hell, that tells that you have arrived. You turn adult legally on your 18th birthday, but for those studying in educational ( and social ) backwaters like the place where I am, you are not treated like one till you call yourself a student of the campus. So finally I am about to taste real freedom, and I feel like the immigrants approaching New York who have just spotted the Statue of Liberty. So what’s that tinge of sadness. Am I feeling pulled apart from my alma-mater. Hell, no! If I had it in my powers I would make it so that no one remembers where I graduated from – they would say – he did his schooling at Oak Grove, Mussoorie, and did his Post graduation from so and so place, but we know nothing about his graduation college! Like some sort of Lord Voldemort, I would remove all traces of my origin, my middle years. Sadly, I am no Dark Lord, and I guess this would remain just wishful thinking. I am not sad, but a bit apprehensive. Apprehensive of the great unknown called ‘responsible life’. I have got my job, and to tell you, that’s almost as good a job as you could expect around here. Moderate salary and good perks. For those who are born motorheads, this would be a job to kill for – you are making more than thousand cars a day ( about 2000, in fact), at the heart of the car making behemoth of the country – good learning on the job, and a chance for advanced learning in exotic lands. Well, what’s the problem dude? Why am I not really pulled towards it ? Reasons could be many – I am not an automaniac, and I have stated it before also. So this job is not that special to me. I have a classmate who is dumping a government job, that would involve just 8 hours a day, and is going to pay at least 25 % more (and further more, subject to the Sixth Pay Commission), in face of vociferous opposition from folks, for the same job. That’s because he is what we call a motorhead – he eats drinks and breathes petrol, he is a moving talking Automobile-101. I wish I could feel the same way about it, but I just can’t. Earlier, I had not thought much about tit, as we still had a very grueling medical test to go through, where many big ones had fallen – where no GPA or automania could sail you through, but now since even that is over, I have to set my priorities very clear. Let’s see the options I have. Soon I would be a graduate, but even before I heave a deep sigh of relief and good riddance, I could become a Graduate Engineer Trainee. Or I could go on to become a post graduate (PG) – that really sounds too academic – and in that I would have two choices – a post graduation in engineering, or a post graduation in business administration, or management, to the layperson. How to weigh the options – that’s easy, man. Just check out what my job holds for me – some four hundred and thirty grands a year, minus taxes. Or it could be some seven hundred and fifty, if I am chosen eligible for the exotic training. It could also give me a chance to live in what goes by the moniker of the ‘Millennium City’, and is the backyard of a bigger city, a city which I love to hate. Is it worth signing up for four years of it? Mind you, it’s nearabout the highest my sort of engineers are expected to get. If that is what a grad makes, what about a post-grad. I had the call for interview from the best post grad institute in the country, which ranks something on the world level too. Post graduation in engineering, I meant. It meant going south to the ‘Garden City’, more south than I have ever traveled, clocking more continuous train hours than I have ever clocked, in such crowded circumstances that I had to get tickets for the highest class one could ever travel, to get a seat. It meant leaving a week of classes unattended, leaving myself at the mercy of Professors, a fickle species. Lots of investments, plus the risk of flunking for the first time in my whole 19 year long educational life. (I really suck at Mathematics, and I know I can’t be getting lucky forever.) So I decided to check out how my life will change with this PG – I traced on Orkut communities, and contacted those in know how, got a number and called. That was ‘the call that changed my destiny’. ( I love Backstreet Boyz – not in that way – I am straight) It was all fine for the time we were discussing the interview and stuff, but when I discussed ‘package’, I discovered it wasn’t a ‘big package’. Seeing how the place is a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ ( I love Churchill, too), I won’t reveal the figure here, but that is in no way compensating anyone to rack his head over more sines, cosines, exponents, differentials and integrals for two more years! I love science and technology, and the place I am talking about is to an engineer what Mecca is to devout Muslims, what the Holy Grail was to those Knights, what the Champions’ League is to Manchester United fans and what the Deathly Hallows were to Albus Dumbledore. Sadly, dreams are just dreams, and life does not feed on ideals, it feeds on currency – crisp banknotes, and sadly, not much here. That leaves me with the third option. Become a management PG. It’s called MBA, and it’s more of a pandemic than influenza could ever be. What is management – getting things done by the others. That’s not a smart alec definition – I swear by God and my GPA, that is the textbook definition! How blunt! Why would one do that – getting things done by the others? To take credit for it. After all, the great Taj Mahal was not built by teams of labourers in teams of 20,000 over a decade and a half, nor was some poor chap called Essa involved. To us, the Taj was built by Shah Jahan, the Great Moghul. How to do it – politely, its called directing – but I call it bullshitting. Doling out crap to workers and engineers so that they think you are the Boss, and without you the enterprise would simply collapse, and blinding them to the fact that it’s their skill and expertise that is actually making things happen, doling out crap to media to show how buoyant it has been under your charge, doling out crap to all and sundry. If you do not believe me, look at how they select B-School grads – first they have a test, where you must do questions in half the time required. Oh, you must be smart to get to a B-School, real smart – you have to think clever ways to see that your dolings of shit are not mistaken for shit – understood ? Once through, you go through GD-PI. That’s group discussion and personal interview. I have nothing more futile and more hilarious (even if I am down and out) than GD – ten-fifteen guys packed in a room and given 10 minutes to ‘discuss’ a topic, which, in a normal canteen discussion, would leave all silent, with no thought to speak out. But since this is a selection procedure, thoughts do come out, thoughts unencumbered by a rational mind, thoughts presented half baked, half mixed. It is said that when opinions collide, freedom rings (that’s from Adlai Stevenson). But in a GD, opinions do not collide – they run parallel, and take opposing curves, go on tangents, swerve, bounce off the walls, levitate and fall, and then annihilate together like electrons and positrons. You know what rings out – not freedom, but stupidity. Stupidity enrobed in sagacious phrases is passed off as sagacity, just as caramel enrobed in chocolate is being passed off as chocolate. Anyway, it’s not the thoughts that matter, but the words – those who have difficulty with words ( did I hear you cough - **engineers**) take it for granted that those with the words are meant to rule over them. Anyway, engineers come way above ‘workers’. Even engineers read a course or two on management – by God, the way ‘workers’ are written about, one might think we are talking about dogs or something – doesn’t a discussion on ‘how to reward worker so that the production does not go down’ sound frighteningly similar to ‘how much salt you can feed your dog so that his hair does not fall off’? Or those Hawthorne experiments, on how workers react to changing light level in their rooms – aren’t they similar to works of Pavlov with the dog? Don’t I hate this profession – they are worse than lawyers, and better at it – have you ever heard of manager jokes? I have an offer from a B-School, not the exact top dog, but still a significant one. It is in the city I hate with all my heart. So why is this option even in the picture? Just because if a put myself through this cesspool and wade out to the other end, I might be making 1.2 million or more, at the average going rates! Are you kidding me – did I hear – an exotic land trained auto engineer gets nearly half, and these crap cannons get 1.2 millions? Exactly, and that is an irony. What am I going to do. Earlier, I was all for my job, or a technical PG and an honest day’s job, but in all that B-School fever, I took a few steps closer to the other side, and now I am steadily being pulled by the gravitational pull of all that money. But what about my dreams, and my revulsion for this ‘side’? It is said that there is a bit of the whore in all of us, so let’s just quote our price. (that’s from Kerry Packer, I think) So simply think it that way, if despite all my efforts, an engineer dies, and a new manager is born – all suited up.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
LIVE FROM LIFE - ENGINEER ABOARD
Hello there, and thanks for visiting this post. I feel the most honoured that you have taken minutes off your busy schedule to look at what’s been posted on ‘Live from Life’. Though remote, chances are that you might have visited this page a few times before this occasion and wondered if the owner of the blog had expired. Well, dear Sir, (or Ma’am), I had not died, but barely so. I was fighting a few big battles in the Great Patriotic War of Career, and have returned, scarred but experienced. Not that I had forgotten about the blog- how could I? This blog had entitled me to mention ‘Blogging’ on hobbies column in my CV, and that must have given me an edge over routine stuff like reading, music, philately etc. So why have I suddenly returned to revive this blog when its purpose seems to be over (embellishing my resume, that is). I have returned as I have some real nice stories to tell. This particular instant occurred on 29th March, 2008 – the day I fought the Battle of DMS – IIT Delhi. First of all, let me make it clear, I hated Delhi, from the bottom of my heart and from the heart of my bottom. I am fascinated by Calcutta, I have never been to Madras and I am awed by Bombay, but I simply can’t put into printable words what I felt about Delhi. Why? That’s because I felt that in Delhi, everybody was out to make an ass out of me. Some examples – in Bombay, you ask a cab driver the location of some place you do not know, chances are high you would get an honest reply, and an honest estimated charge for getting you there. (‘Estimated’, as in Bombay, cabs run on meters – for Delhi guys, that’s the funny thing dangling on the left flank of the auto, because chances are you have never seen one being used) Do the same in Delhi, and you would hear that the place is very far, and it would take a fortune to transport you there. To give a more concrete example, this one happened on 27th February en route Bombay for the Battle of SJMSOM. Have you seen the DMRC Chandni Chowk station? How far is it from Delhi Railway Station? Far!! It is on the same campus! That I did not know, and I managed to ask an auto wallah about it. Well, he told me the nearest Metro was 5 kilometers far, and offered me a ride there at a small price of Rs. 50 only! How sweet! Luckily I was in no hurry, and I thought that maybe I would wait a while before going to New Delhi, and as I turned to my left, there was the Metro station, just where we were standing! Be fair to me, I was new in the city, and DMRC does not really mark its stations in bright colours, they look like a crossing subway stands. Anyway, the auto wallah was not new to the city, and yet he had tried taking advantage of the ignorance of a stranger. Cut to 22nd March, after the Battle of VGSOM. It was Holi, and any means of conveyance was hard to find. So we found this auto, who agreed to drop me to New Delhi Station for Rs.120 ( the normal fare is Rs.70, never mind) So we were off. On the way I reminded him to drop me at Pahargunj Terminal and not the Ajmeri Gate Terminal. Well, the two are separated by a rail underpass, and it takes hardly 5 minutes to go from one to the other by auto. It so happened that we were approaching from the AG end, and the guy decided he did not want to do those extra 5 minutes. Well, he could not refuse outright, I hadn’t paid him. So the rascal racked his brains, and came with a story that really showed his IQ level. He told me that the police had closed off Pahargunj station, because of Holi, and all the trains are leaving from Ajmeri Gate station. May be he had never been inside New Delhi station, or he would have known that it was one station only, with two sides, and it was not really possible to close one of the ‘stations’. Well, I told him to drive on, and that I have got curfew passes to get into the besieged Pahargunj ‘station’! All this, just to avoid five more minutes of driving (in a one hour drive)! So naturally, whenever in Delhi, I always keep my guards up, seldom ask for locations and advice from people, and even if I do, I take them with a pinch of salt. So it so happened that on 29th March I was in the city again. I had already fought two battles: The Battle of DMS IITD and the Battle of MSIL Medical, and I had already won the latter. So I had gone to Nehru place, to get spare parts for my ailing PC. (That’s one reason I have to give points to Delhi – Nehru Place!) Well, I had to return to Delhi Railway Station to catch a train back, so I started my search for auto – and I got some really obscenely exaggerated demands- Rs. 150, Rs.200. Now I was in no mood to fork out that kind of money in the situation- I was in no hurry. It was 3:30, and my train left at 10:30. Hell, I could walk to the station in that much time! It was then I met this guy, who had not parked his auto near the rest. He told me to hop in, and pay what the meter shows. I could not believe my ears. Meters, in Delhi? I asked him again, what would he charge for dumping me at DLI. He refused to go that way, and said the law was to go by the meter, and he would respect the law. Okay, fine by me. We started. I asked him how did I have this pleasure of riding by meter in Delhi. He said that all Delhiwallahs are ‘chor’, ‘haraamkhor’ and lots of other things I cannot type here. He said that they are fleecing unknowing commuters with impunity, and they did not have a soul. My feelings, actually. But then, wasn’t he a Delhi wallah himself. No, he said. He was from Ayodhya – the birth place of Lord Ram, and one who hails from the birthplace of the Lord does not indulge in ‘do number business’. I nodded my head in agreement, but for me, he was still a Delhi auto wallah, and I was not going to fall for his sweet talk. I was wondering why was he so keen on going by the meter. I glanced at it. It had already clocked about Rs.40. I thought, this was it. His meter was running free of the wheels, and it was going to conjure up some really big figure in the end, in the most lawful way! We stopped at a red light. I kept on glancing at the meter. If it was free of the wheel, it should have been clocking away at the stop. Strangely, it was not. It seemed the meter was working as it was supposed to. Still there was the possibility that it was clocking away at a higher rate than normal. I checked the fare against the kilometers and ran a few numbers through my mind. It worked out to about Rs.4 per kilometer – not unreasonable. Now, only one thing was possible – his meter was showing more kilometers than we were actually moving – not much needed to pull that one off, just separate the meter shaft from the drive shaft by a step up gear train. Well, I could not demand to see his auto’s innards then and there, so I sat and waited for my destination. It was when he asked – Sir, are you working or studying? Studying - I replied. What is your highest degree? – he asked. B.Tech – I lied – technically I was still 3 months away from being a Bachelor of Technology, but telling him that I was a Class XII pass was also an understatement! He exclaimed – O, that means you are an engineer. I needed an advice sir. I tell you, that’s one ‘O’ moment engineers from regional colleges like mine dread, when some layman asks for engineering advice. I must digress to elaborate. Once a few of my mates were returning to the hostel from the University market on a rickshaw, and were discussing some stuff from the last paper. The rickshaw wallah asked – Are you from the College of Technology? Yes – came the reply, and the ride became hell for the hapless guys. The rickshaw wallah asked them about advice on how to improve his ride quality by tampering with the springs and stuff like that. Had it remained till that, it would have been fine, but then, the rickshaw wallah left ranting about his springs behind and began discussing some tractor back home. Our guys, who had completed three years of engineering education on one night fights before the papers, were made to look like total morons. So here I was, in an auto rickshaw, in nearly the same situation. Not that I was completely ignorant of what I was supposed to learn in these four years. The Great War of Career had made me battle hardened – but still, one could not know the extent and variety of a question a layman can field – after all, genius has limits, but stupidity is unbound. I braced myself for it – but the question was totally out of the blue. He said – I have a kid in Class X. Can I make him into an engineer like you? Wow, an engineer like me! That felt good. Of course – I replied – nowadays, anyone can become an engineer, with a bit of hard work and determination. I was feeding the guy the same dog crap anybody of some minor success feeds tip-seekers – hard work and determination indeed. I hoped I had buzzed him off, but I was wrong – he had dodged that lump of crap and asked me to be specific – how could he make his son into an engineer. Well, since the station seemed nowhere in sight and we seemed to be stopping a lot at lights, I decided to help him out – but what could I say – I could never figure out how the hell I was studying engineering when my original love had been particle physics. I am still not sure if I would remain an engineer after this June, or would I turn into a manager, and administrator, or God knows what. How could I, then, tell somebody how to become an engineer? I started at the basics. How is this kid in class – I asked. Sir, he is a topper – came the reply. Well, I thought to myself, nowadays everybody is a topper. If you are not a topper you are nobody. It was alright till I was in school. 80 percent marks were considered very good, and only few got 90’s. In my brother’s batch, there were guys getting 100 in social science and literature! So I thought – another topper! Well, I could not be blunt with a guy dreaming big for his kid, so I asked - how is he in Mathematics. Mathematics, my biggest bugbear, my biggest roadblock. Sir, he gives tuition to other kids of class X in Mathematics – said the cabbie. Now this was some serious stuff – guys who can teach others are something to be serious about. I, with all my grades, can’t teach anything to save my life, leave alone teach Maths. I hold Maths teachers in the greatest awe, same way Harry Potter was awed by Dumbledore, or the way the Mancs are awed by Sir Alex Fergusson. They have mastered Maths, which in itself is a big achievement, and then they are helping others do it, which is simply unbelievable! I said – Wow! He teaches Maths to kids his own age! What is he doing now. He is studying at the village school at Ayodhya only – replied he – but I am planning on bringing him here soon. I said – This boy shows potential for engineering. Then he asked – Sir, do not give me these clichéd answers. I am a man of limited means. Considering that, please tell me if I can make my kid an engineer. Now that was a tough one – how much money does it take to make an engineer. As much as one can put in – I know persons who have taken 5 years of coaching, at about 60 to 80 thousand p.a. or more, to arrive here, and I can’t imagine how much more these guys would have had to shell out if they had not rested before cracking the JEE! Still, I replied – your son sounds good in studies, so he does not seem to need any coaching. I personally did not join the Kota queue despite lot of coaxing, so I felt this guy should take his shot raw. Then, if he made it to a state funded institution, the expenses would come to about 30 grand p.a. He said – 30 to 40 grands, I can handle it – beyond that, I would have to think. Well – I said – hope your kid makes it to a state college then. Then I wondered if this was possible. State colleges are for high ranking students only, and unfortunately, in these days, it means students who can avail coaching. This kid, no doubt bright, would find it hard to rub shoulders with the coaching bred contenders. Chances are that he may clear the entrance exam, but with a low rank, which leaves the private colleges – where education could cost an arm and a leg. Clearly this cabbie was not in a position to give donations and pay six figure fees. So chances were high that one good candidate for engineering would lose out, just because his dad was a cabbie and not an officer. These kids do need help – maybe financial, maybe reservations. But I did not ask this man if he was an SC, ST or an OBC. In this great country of ours, we have not learnt from past mistakes – we are trying to annul the caste based negative discrimination of the past by caste based positive discrimination. Economic criterion based reservations are not talked about, as they are not vote-effective for the politicians. But is this a fault of the politicians, when they tender to vote banks- aren’t they supposed to do that only, what their constituency wants? Till the time the masses identify themselves by caste and religion and region, the politics will be based on the same. So a non SC, ST or OBC poor kid will not get into an engineering college – as he would not have coaching enough for a state college and money enough for private college. Soon, we passed the Red Fort, and I saw the old station at a distance. Here we are, Sir – said the man – would to alight here or at the gate. I glanced at the meter – it was in 80’s, and I thought that better take it to the gate, and make it near 100 to avoid change hassles. So I asked him to take me in. If I was suspecting foul play in his meter before, now I was thinking the other way – it hardly crawled into the nineties and we were at the gate. Anyway, he had been a good hassle less cabbie, so I pulled out a 100 note and gave it to him and left. Soon I felt a tap on my shoulder, and it was the same man, offering me loose change from my 100. I said – there was no need for it. To that, he replied – Sir, one who earns from hard labour would never accept others hard earned money for nothing. That was humbling. I felt bad for myself, how I had stereotyped Delhiwallahs and Auto wallahs as crooks, and how I had doubted the man’s well intentioned actions and sayings, looking for the trickery where none was involved. We shook hands as friends, and bid farewell after wishing each other well – he wished me success in my interview and I wished his kid the best in engineering. Now, sitting in my room, I am typing this piece as his wish has come true. In fact all the things I had planned for that Delhi trip in a single day had gone very well, and now I have an offer from the Institute. So I write this article praying to the Powers that be to let my wish for him come true, and implore any reader who has read this far to pray for the same.
P.S: After this article was finished, I came across an interesting piece of news – now they are offering coaching kids coaching to crack the entrance exams to the elite – wait for it – coaching institutes at Kota! God help the next generation!
P.S: After this article was finished, I came across an interesting piece of news – now they are offering coaching kids coaching to crack the entrance exams to the elite – wait for it – coaching institutes at Kota! God help the next generation!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
LIVE FROM LIFE -RANTINGS ON DEMOCRACY
Let me begin with a very famous joke from the end of the Cold War period. (Circa 1990; it may have been in currency even before that, but I read it in a publication from the said period.)
An American (yes, it always has to be an American, I don’t know why) and a Soviet were discussing the merits of their government systems. The American says, “Hey man, in the US we have got democracy, and hence freedom. For example, I can go to the center of the town square any day and yell, ‘President Bush is an asshole’, without any fear.” To this, the Soviet replied, “What’s the big deal about that? Even I can do that.”
Let me follow up with the disclaimers. First of all, I am no writer/ columnist/ journalist or whatever else one is required to be in order to have one’s works read and criticized. I am a simple Mechanical Engineering undergraduate, and by the nature of my trade, I am supposed to know absolutely nothing about how the ‘great minds’ which lead our nations (or businesses, colleges, or anything which can be ‘led’) work. I have had political science only till junior high school, so it might happen that I occasionally overstep my jurisdiction and mistakenly refer to one thing as another. So a handy reading tip would be that it is all about ideas- the terms may not mean what their classical definition means them to be. ‘What’s in a name? A rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Secondly, I have not taken English after school- so just don’t expect what the highbrows call ‘classical writing’ to flow from my pen (or keypad). I had thought of rendering this piece in the best and the richest of language, going to my highest limits (which are very modest, relatively speaking). Then I had a second thought, and switched to common, layman’s parlance, for two reasons- firstly, I know as much about serious, formal, ‘inspiring’ writing as a eunuch would know about the Kamasutra. Secondly, I am posting it on a far corner of the great, big blogosphere, where it has to compete with many other, ostensibly more interesting blogs, like lonely girls and their lonely machinations, for attention. Let me explain mathematically (don’t think I know my maths?? You are so right..). At the time of writing, the web has got about 60 million blogs. If I give my blog a catch attention value of 2 out of 10, i.e 2 out of every 10 who come across it will have a peek at it (I know I overestimated!!), the chances are 1 to 120000000 that somebody will read this article. A highbrow writing will surely piss the poor guy off (a 99 to 100 chance), so I decide to stay clear of it. I forgot to mention that I am writing this piece when I am really bored up on a Sunday afternoon, and have seen all the movies and played all the games my PC has got. So the writing may go astray at points, winding up nowhere before returning to track. So forgive me as you would forgive your roommate/ girlfriend / boyfriend / spouse / boss / customer, or any other person who has had a bit too much of booze last night. With that we are over with the disclaimers, and we can get down to business, really serious business, business that would ruffle up feathers, business that would get people calling for a ban on the blog, business that would set people demanding my head. All this is expected, because I am going to present my ideas about democracy.
Abe Lincoln said, “Democracy is a government of the people, for the people, by the people.” Did he say that it was good for the people? No. Great men seldom give the complete ideas to lesser mortals, leaving us to guess for ourselves. Most guessed that it was good, so it became good, and those against it became bad, and thus began a classic good versus evil clash, and heads began to roll- Charles I, Louis XVI, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, to name a few. ( No points for spotting that a few of these heads had rolled before great Abe had uttered the magical formula) Did these heads necessarily have to roll? Is democracy worth the fuss being made about it? To put it mildly, is democracy the right thing for everybody?
Let’s start by examining what democracy means to laymen like us (assuming a specialist won’t be wasting valuable time going through this). Since the days of grade one we are being taught that democracy is about liberty, equality and justice. The three hallowed pillars of democracy (may be there are more hallowed pillars of democracy, but they were not hallowed enough to register on my radar screen). The three great principles have guided the famous French revolutionaries, the American freedom fighters, the Nepalese anti monarchists, to name a few. Yet, it takes all but a cursory glance at the three words before one spots contradiction. Let’s set aside justice for a while, and examine equality and freedom. Aren’t the two mutually contradictory? If you have not got it, let me explain, in detail. Freedom means one’s guarantee to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’. In a free society, one cannot stop another from ‘pursuit of happiness’, as long as it is through legitimate, fair efforts. So far so good. Now another thing is that no two human beings are similar in all characteristics. So it is sure that one’s effort at ‘pursuit of happiness’ may be better than the others. Now let’s bring in justice. If there is justice, the person whose legitimate efforts in ‘pursuit of happiness’ are better than other’s is bound to get more of ‘happiness’- higher remunerations, higher grades, higher status. Concentrate on the word ‘higher’-‘higher’ implies that there has to be a ‘lower’ to be compared with. That screws up the equality. Now let’s begin with the equal, egalitarian society. In this society, everybody is equal, which means that all have equal wages, equal status. That means those putting in better efforts in ‘pursuit of happiness’are getting the same returns as those putting in feeble attempts. That screws up the justice part. Now let’s assume the third case. It is an egalitarian society, where every body has equal status and equal wages. Justice is taken care of by making everybody put equal efforts in the ‘pursuit of happiness’. Now, since the laggards cannot match the efforts of the frontrunners, it is front runners who have to come down to the level of the laggards. So the better part of the society is forced to under perform. That screws up the freedom part. This analysis, in a nutshell, is the difference between a capitalist democracy (e.g. the USA), a socialist democracy (e.g the Republic of India) and a communist state ( e.g. the USSR). Of course, there are many more ways to solve the problem. In place of reining in the frontrunners, one could just cleanse off the laggards - that screws up both freedom and justice, and the result is a fascist dictatorship (e.g. the Third German Reich). All I wanted to show by this long series of assumptions and hypotheses is that one cannot have all the three pillars of democracy standing under the same edifice, as long as the individual humans are unique. So that’s something similar to the second law of thermodynamics, as it defines an upper cap to the level we can achieve democracy in the real world. It was meant to simply show that there is nothing called an absolute democracy- we just have different blends of democracy. Don’t you commit the mistake of not counting the communists in the list of democracies, it’s just that they do not confirm to our ideals of the first kind of democracy. If everything else is discounted, the communists are the most fond of wearing democracy on their sleeves- the Red China styles itself ‘ Peoples’ Republic of China’ and the East Germany was also known as the ‘German Democratic Republic’ !! ( By the way, I just remembered that North Korea is also called something with ‘democratic’ in it)
Let’s get back to the Lincoln quote. Which one of these contenders for the title of ‘Democracy’ was he referring to? Since we do not have the means of accompanying Bill and Ted in their excellent adventure (if you do not get the last one, watch the movie by the same name- not related remotely to the topic, but a good entertainer), we must guess- and the obvious guess is the American form of democracy- which stays primarily on the posts of liberty and justice. Equality is confined to political one, and not force-fed down people’s throat as our leaders would have here in India. Obviously, the system has its merits and demerits. Merits are just hard to ignore- the country with hardly half a millennium of history is the world leader. Its military is the strongest ever assembled on the planet. Its economy continues to lead others by a huge margin. Its culture (yeah, the culture which has been developed in a short span of 100-200 years) is spreading throughout the world without any prodding, worrying all those swamis and mullahs all over the world over the ‘degrading’ western influence. It won’t be altogether wrong (although it will be politically incorrect) to state that today we are living in a sort of superstate led by the USA. Believe it or not, it is my view that world history has entered one of those long phases of relative large scale peace, e.g. Pax Romana, when large scale power struggles cease e.g. WW II, the Cold War, and one big power minds over the smaller ones. The journos have dubbed this phase as Pax Americana, and not wrongly so. There will continue to be small skirmishes, and Uncle Sam would be really irked by the way some of his recalcitrant nephews work, but one good hard spanking on the derriere would do the trick of putting them down, and none of them is really going to grab his collar and chuck him out of the house, at least in the foreseeable future. What the hell drives such huge machinery so efficiently? Liberty, for sure. People there are free- free to call Prez Bush an asshole, free to worship the God, or to spoof Him, or to have nothing to do with Him, free to decide if they want to watch sexy commercials or Tom n Jerry, free to take their girlfriends out to the city park if they want to. I may be getting a bit emotional here, counting the blessings of those Yanks, as most of these have been denied to us in the ‘world’s largest democracy’. Yet one cannot deny that nothing has been muzzled in the US. The industry is free to produce whatever it wants, and they may include death dealing machines like the F-16’s and the F/A-18’s- Uncle Sam will keep the large part, and for the rest, there is always some small scale conflict going on somewhere, isn’t it? Nobody is told what to do, what to make, what to sell, what to watch, what to eat, as long as it does not really cross the line .( You cannot really expect to assemble a nuke in your backyard and get away citing the right to freedom.) What happens next? All and sundry go on in their ‘pursuit of happiness’, and since happiness is something which is to be pursued very keenly, all go for their best chasing shoes. The best of efforts, statistically speaking, bring out the best of results. The results are out for every one to see. As we had previously derived quite mathematically, this total liberty has given rise to inequality- and definitely there are the poor guys out there, but then, they are not so poor as poor can be. While going through the Times of India a few weeks ago I read an article about poverty and came across an astonishing fact- the income level that determines the poverty line in the USA is what is considered middle class here. If that’s what poverty is, it is not so bad a poverty. It has been said that it’s better to rule in hell, than to slave in heaven, but I guess the guy who said this had not seen hell firsthand!!! What I mean to say is that in a whole perspective, most of the West’s poor are better than the middle classes of the third world. So why not take on this system and be done with it?? Did I hear you mutter Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Yeah, strangely, the Yanks and Brits type of democracy does not seem to function everywhere. The reason is simple- for a world class sophisticated machinery to be installed, one needs world class infrastructure. The western democracy is based on the strength of general education, a sense of nationhood and responsibility, and above all, a morbid fear of wars close home. The education makes one aware of one’s right- so that no one tramples them, and of other’s rights , so that they are not trampled by mistake. (Just another digression, but how many of you know that the cops who participated in the Meerut and Aligarh moral pogrom actually thought they were doing their legal duties!!) A sense of nationhood and responsibility is needed to allow for a bit for self policing, so that we do not cheat our fellow citizens, and the nation, and do our best for a positive growth. A fear of war will avoid daily brawls ending up as communal clashes. The last two together go into eliminating the need for eliminating a heavy policing- which means a true liberated society. Needless to say, Iraq hardly qualifies, and Afghanistan would be a poor joke if even compared on this scale. What about India? I think at least twenty more years are needed. That’s the least- I’ve not accounted for the socialists and moralists yet.
Let’s examine the third type of system at the second place, because the third one hits closer home, and shall have to be taken in detail at last. The communist model-all work equally, all earn equally and all rot equally. This type of model had a really short shelf life and has gone out of stock in 1990’s ( a few of them have been kept preserved in India, of course). I say this because China has left that communist market model at the time the communist edifices were going crashing down in Europe. Now it’s a case somewhat like the fourth minor form of ‘democracy’ I had described. Yeah, we do not have any parallel for Herr Fuehrer in the Chinese government, but essentially the system is same. The market is free, the governance is not. The government leaves the market alone as long as the market does not mess with the government. Symbiosis, anyone? Of course, we are digressing. I was writing about communism- not much to write in layman’s terms. It was an enforced equality at the expense of liberty, and may be sometimes even justice. The standard of living was low-across the linguistic, national or any other sort of boundary. e.g. the GDR was the most economically developed of the Warsaw Pact members. ( You must have guessed it why- because they were Krauts- really these guys have a thing for development.) Yet, the GDR economy did not even came close to comparison with FRG economy, and that economic polarization was so severe that even 17 years after the reunion, the west is pumping money into the east to bring it up to scratch. So that shows the difference between a free Kraut and a commy Kraut. Yeah, the commies were all equal, and all equally poor. Were they happy at their equality, at the thought that the neighbour next door, and the one next to him, were feeling as deprived as they were? If the records of the no. of persons who died trying to scale the Wall show any thing, the answer is a big no. The mere presence of the wall showed that the entire system was repulsive. Obviously its creators had got their priorities wrong. Now I haven’t read Marx’s ‘The Capital/ Das Kapital’, nor much about his ideas, but I’ve heard he thought communism was the next step in the evolutionary ladder, after feudalism and capitalism. Well, as history has shown us, it was not as much of an evolution, as that of a genetic engineering job, that too horribly botched up. Their intentions might have been good- they saw the proles starving, while the bourgeoisie swelled their bellies. So they thought, lets kill these fat GFN’s ( good for nothing- for the uninitiated- go learn the SMS lingo, that’s what we will speak in late 21st century) Then these GFN’s wealth could be divided amongst the proles, who would now get their daily bread, and would be happy. Unfortunately, they did not see beyond this point while planning their system. They did not see that once the proles got their daily bread, they would try to have bit of butter too. May be some cocoa or red wine. Why not meat? Unfortunately , the system was already built, to ensure that each of the prole- the hard working prole, the lazy prole, the pious prole, the drunkard prole, the eastern prole and the western prole, the prole who has the potential to rule, and the prole who is surviving on grace- in short each of the prole, could get the bread- whether their efforts were bread worthy or not. Well, the breads do not rain, they are made by efforts- one bread per one bread worthy efforts, two for a ‘bread-n butter’ worthy effort, three for a ‘bread, butter and cheese’ worthy effort, and so on. Initially, all worked to their full strength, and on an average, the non bread worthy attempts were cancelled out by ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts- and in the end, all had bread-but just the bread. The writing on the wall was clear- YOU GET JUST THE BREAD. So the one’s capable of ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts moderated their efforts to match the yields. In the aggregate, this meant lesser no. of breads, and hence all got less than one bread-even those who had made the ‘full bread’ worthy attempts. This led to gradual resentment. Some capable of ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts fled, others were shot while fleeing. The result- continuously lesser and lesser number of breads-until an implosion occurred- the reaction time was approximately 70 years, a wink in the long history. Communist system, though the best in theory, has failed most miserably in all the places it took roots. Worker’s took just 20 odd years to get disenchanted with the Worker’s paradise, and 50 more years to overthrow it for the humble ‘earthy’ freedom. Communism is best when everybody is very poor and hardly gets a subsistence, because then any sort of help from the government will be welcome. Life is definitely more important than standard of living. Yet, once the life attains a certain degree of security with respect to food and shelter, a man craves for more- and this ‘more’ cannot be achieved in the shackled communist regimes. Kudos to the comrades for lifting the czarist Russia and the largely underdeveloped China of 1949 to the present level of standing. However, the roads further cannot be traversed by muzzling the human free will, but by channelizing it properly in a free market.
Just for the moment imagine what would have happened if the writing on the wall had not been so damning. What if it had said- YOU GET THE BREAD, AND YOU MIGHT GET THE BUTTER. This is the second form of democracy, the socialist model- welcome to India. In this system, you can get the butter, at least theoretically so. So the people do not try to flee the system as much as in the communist system- they hang on to that hope of butter. Sometimes, they feel frustrated at the bread they are receiving in lieu of ‘bread and butter’ worthy efforts, and rein in their efforts. The number of breads goes down, and all get less than usual share of bread. However, in the long run, the optimists win, and again efforts are made to get to that fleeting butter. Meanwhile, such system evolves such people who subsist only on the butter, some who denounce the butter as evil- against the morality of frugality our forefathers have been teaching. In the end, some of the lucky ones do get the butter, but majority get less than the required share of even bread. However, the writing on the wall remains unchanged. While living under this sort of system is less torturous physically as compared to that under the communist regimes, it can be argued that it is much more frustrating mentally. So I cannot clearly say which form of democracy falls behind. The commies were bad, but so are ones running the show called ‘world’s largest democracy’. In the words of the great KS, the politicians here are congested with too much of power and often let out puffs of malodorous gases. In my opinion, this ‘socialist democracy’ is the worst form of democracy after the demise of the Nazi state and the communist bloc. Time and again, history has shown us how people have risen against tyrants and tyrannies to put in a better system. However, these socialists are no tyrants in the sense of the word, but they are killing the country. Don’t think of a stab or a gunshot wound- think gangrene or consumption, or in words of Lyngdoh, a cancer. One can either run away from the tiger, or fight it with all one's strength, or get mauled by it; but one faced with a barrage of mosquitoes often gives up after a few swats here and there. Same is the condition here. No great stalinist purges, no tsarist pogroms, but quite obviously, the State is at a battle against its own people, with the help of its own people. It has happened before- white colonists have done it before, and now the brown colonists are doing it. Yes, we still have some examples of a few exceptions, who dare challenge this system and get their bread, butter and cheese despite the system, but the majority is still like the horse on blinkers. If this is democracy, then God help us!
[P.S. This one article has been written over a cumulative period of many damned hot holiday afternoons, when one does not have just anything to do. So there may seem to be really big chasms in various ideas put out there. The problem is that I really have so much to say about all this (yeah, I just love yakking) that I cannot put them serial wise one at a time. If you do care to read this one and want to know more, just contact me.]
An American (yes, it always has to be an American, I don’t know why) and a Soviet were discussing the merits of their government systems. The American says, “Hey man, in the US we have got democracy, and hence freedom. For example, I can go to the center of the town square any day and yell, ‘President Bush is an asshole’, without any fear.” To this, the Soviet replied, “What’s the big deal about that? Even I can do that.”
Let me follow up with the disclaimers. First of all, I am no writer/ columnist/ journalist or whatever else one is required to be in order to have one’s works read and criticized. I am a simple Mechanical Engineering undergraduate, and by the nature of my trade, I am supposed to know absolutely nothing about how the ‘great minds’ which lead our nations (or businesses, colleges, or anything which can be ‘led’) work. I have had political science only till junior high school, so it might happen that I occasionally overstep my jurisdiction and mistakenly refer to one thing as another. So a handy reading tip would be that it is all about ideas- the terms may not mean what their classical definition means them to be. ‘What’s in a name? A rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Secondly, I have not taken English after school- so just don’t expect what the highbrows call ‘classical writing’ to flow from my pen (or keypad). I had thought of rendering this piece in the best and the richest of language, going to my highest limits (which are very modest, relatively speaking). Then I had a second thought, and switched to common, layman’s parlance, for two reasons- firstly, I know as much about serious, formal, ‘inspiring’ writing as a eunuch would know about the Kamasutra. Secondly, I am posting it on a far corner of the great, big blogosphere, where it has to compete with many other, ostensibly more interesting blogs, like lonely girls and their lonely machinations, for attention. Let me explain mathematically (don’t think I know my maths?? You are so right..). At the time of writing, the web has got about 60 million blogs. If I give my blog a catch attention value of 2 out of 10, i.e 2 out of every 10 who come across it will have a peek at it (I know I overestimated!!), the chances are 1 to 120000000 that somebody will read this article. A highbrow writing will surely piss the poor guy off (a 99 to 100 chance), so I decide to stay clear of it. I forgot to mention that I am writing this piece when I am really bored up on a Sunday afternoon, and have seen all the movies and played all the games my PC has got. So the writing may go astray at points, winding up nowhere before returning to track. So forgive me as you would forgive your roommate/ girlfriend / boyfriend / spouse / boss / customer, or any other person who has had a bit too much of booze last night. With that we are over with the disclaimers, and we can get down to business, really serious business, business that would ruffle up feathers, business that would get people calling for a ban on the blog, business that would set people demanding my head. All this is expected, because I am going to present my ideas about democracy.
Abe Lincoln said, “Democracy is a government of the people, for the people, by the people.” Did he say that it was good for the people? No. Great men seldom give the complete ideas to lesser mortals, leaving us to guess for ourselves. Most guessed that it was good, so it became good, and those against it became bad, and thus began a classic good versus evil clash, and heads began to roll- Charles I, Louis XVI, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, to name a few. ( No points for spotting that a few of these heads had rolled before great Abe had uttered the magical formula) Did these heads necessarily have to roll? Is democracy worth the fuss being made about it? To put it mildly, is democracy the right thing for everybody?
Let’s start by examining what democracy means to laymen like us (assuming a specialist won’t be wasting valuable time going through this). Since the days of grade one we are being taught that democracy is about liberty, equality and justice. The three hallowed pillars of democracy (may be there are more hallowed pillars of democracy, but they were not hallowed enough to register on my radar screen). The three great principles have guided the famous French revolutionaries, the American freedom fighters, the Nepalese anti monarchists, to name a few. Yet, it takes all but a cursory glance at the three words before one spots contradiction. Let’s set aside justice for a while, and examine equality and freedom. Aren’t the two mutually contradictory? If you have not got it, let me explain, in detail. Freedom means one’s guarantee to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’. In a free society, one cannot stop another from ‘pursuit of happiness’, as long as it is through legitimate, fair efforts. So far so good. Now another thing is that no two human beings are similar in all characteristics. So it is sure that one’s effort at ‘pursuit of happiness’ may be better than the others. Now let’s bring in justice. If there is justice, the person whose legitimate efforts in ‘pursuit of happiness’ are better than other’s is bound to get more of ‘happiness’- higher remunerations, higher grades, higher status. Concentrate on the word ‘higher’-‘higher’ implies that there has to be a ‘lower’ to be compared with. That screws up the equality. Now let’s begin with the equal, egalitarian society. In this society, everybody is equal, which means that all have equal wages, equal status. That means those putting in better efforts in ‘pursuit of happiness’are getting the same returns as those putting in feeble attempts. That screws up the justice part. Now let’s assume the third case. It is an egalitarian society, where every body has equal status and equal wages. Justice is taken care of by making everybody put equal efforts in the ‘pursuit of happiness’. Now, since the laggards cannot match the efforts of the frontrunners, it is front runners who have to come down to the level of the laggards. So the better part of the society is forced to under perform. That screws up the freedom part. This analysis, in a nutshell, is the difference between a capitalist democracy (e.g. the USA), a socialist democracy (e.g the Republic of India) and a communist state ( e.g. the USSR). Of course, there are many more ways to solve the problem. In place of reining in the frontrunners, one could just cleanse off the laggards - that screws up both freedom and justice, and the result is a fascist dictatorship (e.g. the Third German Reich). All I wanted to show by this long series of assumptions and hypotheses is that one cannot have all the three pillars of democracy standing under the same edifice, as long as the individual humans are unique. So that’s something similar to the second law of thermodynamics, as it defines an upper cap to the level we can achieve democracy in the real world. It was meant to simply show that there is nothing called an absolute democracy- we just have different blends of democracy. Don’t you commit the mistake of not counting the communists in the list of democracies, it’s just that they do not confirm to our ideals of the first kind of democracy. If everything else is discounted, the communists are the most fond of wearing democracy on their sleeves- the Red China styles itself ‘ Peoples’ Republic of China’ and the East Germany was also known as the ‘German Democratic Republic’ !! ( By the way, I just remembered that North Korea is also called something with ‘democratic’ in it)
Let’s get back to the Lincoln quote. Which one of these contenders for the title of ‘Democracy’ was he referring to? Since we do not have the means of accompanying Bill and Ted in their excellent adventure (if you do not get the last one, watch the movie by the same name- not related remotely to the topic, but a good entertainer), we must guess- and the obvious guess is the American form of democracy- which stays primarily on the posts of liberty and justice. Equality is confined to political one, and not force-fed down people’s throat as our leaders would have here in India. Obviously, the system has its merits and demerits. Merits are just hard to ignore- the country with hardly half a millennium of history is the world leader. Its military is the strongest ever assembled on the planet. Its economy continues to lead others by a huge margin. Its culture (yeah, the culture which has been developed in a short span of 100-200 years) is spreading throughout the world without any prodding, worrying all those swamis and mullahs all over the world over the ‘degrading’ western influence. It won’t be altogether wrong (although it will be politically incorrect) to state that today we are living in a sort of superstate led by the USA. Believe it or not, it is my view that world history has entered one of those long phases of relative large scale peace, e.g. Pax Romana, when large scale power struggles cease e.g. WW II, the Cold War, and one big power minds over the smaller ones. The journos have dubbed this phase as Pax Americana, and not wrongly so. There will continue to be small skirmishes, and Uncle Sam would be really irked by the way some of his recalcitrant nephews work, but one good hard spanking on the derriere would do the trick of putting them down, and none of them is really going to grab his collar and chuck him out of the house, at least in the foreseeable future. What the hell drives such huge machinery so efficiently? Liberty, for sure. People there are free- free to call Prez Bush an asshole, free to worship the God, or to spoof Him, or to have nothing to do with Him, free to decide if they want to watch sexy commercials or Tom n Jerry, free to take their girlfriends out to the city park if they want to. I may be getting a bit emotional here, counting the blessings of those Yanks, as most of these have been denied to us in the ‘world’s largest democracy’. Yet one cannot deny that nothing has been muzzled in the US. The industry is free to produce whatever it wants, and they may include death dealing machines like the F-16’s and the F/A-18’s- Uncle Sam will keep the large part, and for the rest, there is always some small scale conflict going on somewhere, isn’t it? Nobody is told what to do, what to make, what to sell, what to watch, what to eat, as long as it does not really cross the line .( You cannot really expect to assemble a nuke in your backyard and get away citing the right to freedom.) What happens next? All and sundry go on in their ‘pursuit of happiness’, and since happiness is something which is to be pursued very keenly, all go for their best chasing shoes. The best of efforts, statistically speaking, bring out the best of results. The results are out for every one to see. As we had previously derived quite mathematically, this total liberty has given rise to inequality- and definitely there are the poor guys out there, but then, they are not so poor as poor can be. While going through the Times of India a few weeks ago I read an article about poverty and came across an astonishing fact- the income level that determines the poverty line in the USA is what is considered middle class here. If that’s what poverty is, it is not so bad a poverty. It has been said that it’s better to rule in hell, than to slave in heaven, but I guess the guy who said this had not seen hell firsthand!!! What I mean to say is that in a whole perspective, most of the West’s poor are better than the middle classes of the third world. So why not take on this system and be done with it?? Did I hear you mutter Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Yeah, strangely, the Yanks and Brits type of democracy does not seem to function everywhere. The reason is simple- for a world class sophisticated machinery to be installed, one needs world class infrastructure. The western democracy is based on the strength of general education, a sense of nationhood and responsibility, and above all, a morbid fear of wars close home. The education makes one aware of one’s right- so that no one tramples them, and of other’s rights , so that they are not trampled by mistake. (Just another digression, but how many of you know that the cops who participated in the Meerut and Aligarh moral pogrom actually thought they were doing their legal duties!!) A sense of nationhood and responsibility is needed to allow for a bit for self policing, so that we do not cheat our fellow citizens, and the nation, and do our best for a positive growth. A fear of war will avoid daily brawls ending up as communal clashes. The last two together go into eliminating the need for eliminating a heavy policing- which means a true liberated society. Needless to say, Iraq hardly qualifies, and Afghanistan would be a poor joke if even compared on this scale. What about India? I think at least twenty more years are needed. That’s the least- I’ve not accounted for the socialists and moralists yet.
Let’s examine the third type of system at the second place, because the third one hits closer home, and shall have to be taken in detail at last. The communist model-all work equally, all earn equally and all rot equally. This type of model had a really short shelf life and has gone out of stock in 1990’s ( a few of them have been kept preserved in India, of course). I say this because China has left that communist market model at the time the communist edifices were going crashing down in Europe. Now it’s a case somewhat like the fourth minor form of ‘democracy’ I had described. Yeah, we do not have any parallel for Herr Fuehrer in the Chinese government, but essentially the system is same. The market is free, the governance is not. The government leaves the market alone as long as the market does not mess with the government. Symbiosis, anyone? Of course, we are digressing. I was writing about communism- not much to write in layman’s terms. It was an enforced equality at the expense of liberty, and may be sometimes even justice. The standard of living was low-across the linguistic, national or any other sort of boundary. e.g. the GDR was the most economically developed of the Warsaw Pact members. ( You must have guessed it why- because they were Krauts- really these guys have a thing for development.) Yet, the GDR economy did not even came close to comparison with FRG economy, and that economic polarization was so severe that even 17 years after the reunion, the west is pumping money into the east to bring it up to scratch. So that shows the difference between a free Kraut and a commy Kraut. Yeah, the commies were all equal, and all equally poor. Were they happy at their equality, at the thought that the neighbour next door, and the one next to him, were feeling as deprived as they were? If the records of the no. of persons who died trying to scale the Wall show any thing, the answer is a big no. The mere presence of the wall showed that the entire system was repulsive. Obviously its creators had got their priorities wrong. Now I haven’t read Marx’s ‘The Capital/ Das Kapital’, nor much about his ideas, but I’ve heard he thought communism was the next step in the evolutionary ladder, after feudalism and capitalism. Well, as history has shown us, it was not as much of an evolution, as that of a genetic engineering job, that too horribly botched up. Their intentions might have been good- they saw the proles starving, while the bourgeoisie swelled their bellies. So they thought, lets kill these fat GFN’s ( good for nothing- for the uninitiated- go learn the SMS lingo, that’s what we will speak in late 21st century) Then these GFN’s wealth could be divided amongst the proles, who would now get their daily bread, and would be happy. Unfortunately, they did not see beyond this point while planning their system. They did not see that once the proles got their daily bread, they would try to have bit of butter too. May be some cocoa or red wine. Why not meat? Unfortunately , the system was already built, to ensure that each of the prole- the hard working prole, the lazy prole, the pious prole, the drunkard prole, the eastern prole and the western prole, the prole who has the potential to rule, and the prole who is surviving on grace- in short each of the prole, could get the bread- whether their efforts were bread worthy or not. Well, the breads do not rain, they are made by efforts- one bread per one bread worthy efforts, two for a ‘bread-n butter’ worthy effort, three for a ‘bread, butter and cheese’ worthy effort, and so on. Initially, all worked to their full strength, and on an average, the non bread worthy attempts were cancelled out by ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts- and in the end, all had bread-but just the bread. The writing on the wall was clear- YOU GET JUST THE BREAD. So the one’s capable of ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts moderated their efforts to match the yields. In the aggregate, this meant lesser no. of breads, and hence all got less than one bread-even those who had made the ‘full bread’ worthy attempts. This led to gradual resentment. Some capable of ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts fled, others were shot while fleeing. The result- continuously lesser and lesser number of breads-until an implosion occurred- the reaction time was approximately 70 years, a wink in the long history. Communist system, though the best in theory, has failed most miserably in all the places it took roots. Worker’s took just 20 odd years to get disenchanted with the Worker’s paradise, and 50 more years to overthrow it for the humble ‘earthy’ freedom. Communism is best when everybody is very poor and hardly gets a subsistence, because then any sort of help from the government will be welcome. Life is definitely more important than standard of living. Yet, once the life attains a certain degree of security with respect to food and shelter, a man craves for more- and this ‘more’ cannot be achieved in the shackled communist regimes. Kudos to the comrades for lifting the czarist Russia and the largely underdeveloped China of 1949 to the present level of standing. However, the roads further cannot be traversed by muzzling the human free will, but by channelizing it properly in a free market.
Just for the moment imagine what would have happened if the writing on the wall had not been so damning. What if it had said- YOU GET THE BREAD, AND YOU MIGHT GET THE BUTTER. This is the second form of democracy, the socialist model- welcome to India. In this system, you can get the butter, at least theoretically so. So the people do not try to flee the system as much as in the communist system- they hang on to that hope of butter. Sometimes, they feel frustrated at the bread they are receiving in lieu of ‘bread and butter’ worthy efforts, and rein in their efforts. The number of breads goes down, and all get less than usual share of bread. However, in the long run, the optimists win, and again efforts are made to get to that fleeting butter. Meanwhile, such system evolves such people who subsist only on the butter, some who denounce the butter as evil- against the morality of frugality our forefathers have been teaching. In the end, some of the lucky ones do get the butter, but majority get less than the required share of even bread. However, the writing on the wall remains unchanged. While living under this sort of system is less torturous physically as compared to that under the communist regimes, it can be argued that it is much more frustrating mentally. So I cannot clearly say which form of democracy falls behind. The commies were bad, but so are ones running the show called ‘world’s largest democracy’. In the words of the great KS, the politicians here are congested with too much of power and often let out puffs of malodorous gases. In my opinion, this ‘socialist democracy’ is the worst form of democracy after the demise of the Nazi state and the communist bloc. Time and again, history has shown us how people have risen against tyrants and tyrannies to put in a better system. However, these socialists are no tyrants in the sense of the word, but they are killing the country. Don’t think of a stab or a gunshot wound- think gangrene or consumption, or in words of Lyngdoh, a cancer. One can either run away from the tiger, or fight it with all one's strength, or get mauled by it; but one faced with a barrage of mosquitoes often gives up after a few swats here and there. Same is the condition here. No great stalinist purges, no tsarist pogroms, but quite obviously, the State is at a battle against its own people, with the help of its own people. It has happened before- white colonists have done it before, and now the brown colonists are doing it. Yes, we still have some examples of a few exceptions, who dare challenge this system and get their bread, butter and cheese despite the system, but the majority is still like the horse on blinkers. If this is democracy, then God help us!
[P.S. This one article has been written over a cumulative period of many damned hot holiday afternoons, when one does not have just anything to do. So there may seem to be really big chasms in various ideas put out there. The problem is that I really have so much to say about all this (yeah, I just love yakking) that I cannot put them serial wise one at a time. If you do care to read this one and want to know more, just contact me.]
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