Why Raj Thackeray Hates Biharis?

Mr Raj Thackeray, I wonder why you detest the mention of the name Bihari.
A look at some facts why Raj Thackeray abhors Biharis. Biharis working in Maharashstra and Delhi account for the highest monetary remittances to their home state, amounting to millions of rupees. Trailing them closely in the list are Bihari migrants in Punjab, West Bengal, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, according to a study. In 2005-06 alone, the total value of money orders sent to Bihar from other parts of India was Rs 4.5 billion. This represents a fraction of the total. Biharis are despised for the same reasons as are Indians abroad — they give more than they get, they help their compatriots, and, thus, succeed more than a second rate immigrant group is expected to. They turn out to be serious competition for the local contenders. Another fact why Raj Thackeray loves to hate Biharis is that there is hardly a household without one or two members having migrated outside for jobs or education. They account for over one fourth of the finance of the “self-financed” professional colleges of south and western India. They fill the narrow cubicles in the call centres and BPOs of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Noida. They are nearly everywhere, in spite of frowns and whines. Yet, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit holds them responsible for the problems of Delhi, or Assamese slaughter them, or Raj Thackeray boots them out.

Why Raj Thackeray spews venom at Biharis? Because they are loyal and hardworking. No work is too mean or big for them. They supply cheap, unskilled and semi-skilled labour to small and big businesses in Maharashtra, North India and Souther parts of India. Mr Thackeray wants the wealth but not the creators of wealth who live in Mumbai.

Mr Thackeray, the public toilets, Sulabh International, used by Marathis across Maharashtra are the brain-child of a Bihari, Bindeshwar Pathak. He not only eliminated manual scavenging from much of India but also created over 50,000 jobs in more than 40 countries. And one more Bihari surely must have entered Raj Thackeray’s hate list. The boy who won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship.
Let me remind you, the wealth in Mumbai had not been created by Maharashtrians alone but Biharis have made huge contributions to its development.

Now for some free advice: Don’t go overboard, lest you may be butchered by Biharis.

No, Mr Raj Thackeray I am not a Bihari. I hail from Andhra Pradesh.

The New Age Hitler

The new age ‘Hitler’ has arrived, orchestrating attacks on North Indians. This Thackeray, like his uncle, wants to ‘raj’ over Maharashtra through xenophobia. Like uncle, like nephew. By his own admission, the Marathi fascist admires German dictator Adolf Hitler. The barbaric annihilation of millions of Jews notwithstanding, Raj Thackeray believes there are several things about Hitler, that can make any leader turn envious.
The targeting of north Indians, mainly migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, in Mumbai by a small outfit headed by Raj Thackeray is the latest example of sectarian violence. Raj Thackeray is whipping up parochial sentiments among the Maharashtrians by blaming north Indians on two counts - depriving the locals of jobs and housing and not identifying themselves fully with the state.
Mr Raj Thackeray, I think you don’t understand the pattern of migration. People move out of their villages to the nearby towns, from towns to cities, from cities to state capitals, from state capitals to metros and from metros to international destinations. Raj Thackeray, your blinded by Marathi dogmatism. I must educate you that if all individuals are driven out of their present residences to their respective places of birth, then virtually all cities and towns will have to become vacant. Indians abroad should leave their jobs and drill soil in their own land! And then what about the millions of Maharashtraians who migrated across the length and breadth of the country, not to forget those who have comfortably settled abroad? The billions of dollars that come into India as FDIs and FIIs only mean that the capital which was earned and generated in one part of the globe are being invested in yet another part meaning thereby that job opportunities that could have been created in their own countries are being created elsewhere. Thus if someone says that jobs in a particular federal unit have to be reserved exclusively for persons born there, then they might as well give back all investments that someone else brings in. Will this economics work out?
Mr Raj Thackeray, chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh invited Ratan Tata to set up Nano plant in Maharashtra. Why ain’t you opposing a non-Maharashtrian from setting up Nano plant in your fiefdom? Oh yes, the state (read Marathis) should prosper. There is nothing wrong in that, but your behaviour is that of a lunatic. Raj Thackeray, you badly need a psychiatric treatment, and your uncle is anyways a senile old man.
And coming to your majoritarian brand of politics, it will remain a short-term strategy. Your strategy will be a spoiler in the coming elections, and that’s what I am praying for.

Salaam Rushdie, Adaab Adiga, Indian Literature Arrives

Though late, I wanted to record India’s tryst with the Booker prize, the world's second most famous award after the Nobel. The country has been consistently producing award-winning authors or inspiring other writers to base their works on Indian themes and identity. Considering that India is the third largest English book-producing country after the United States and the United Kingdom, the Booker achievement of Indians is not very surprising. Indeed, there seems to be an acceptance of Indian English literature as one of the voices in which India speaks. Indian writing represents a new form of Indian culture. It has become assimilated and is today a dynamic element of the culture. India is the flavor of the season for English literature.
First it was Salman Rushdie who put India on the global literary map in 1981 with “Midnight’s Children, followed by Arundhati Roy (God of Small Things, 1997), and Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss, 2006). Indian-origin V S Naipaul bagged the award in 1971 for In a Free State, a collection of short stories that dealt with displacement. Canadian author Yann Martel won the prize in 2002 for Life of Pi, a novel that deals about the life of a youth who lives in Pondicherry. And now, its Aravind Adiga. His Man Booker Prize work features a protagonist who will use any means necessary to fulfill his dream of escaping impoverished village life for success in the big city. It tracks the ambitions and divided loyalties of Balram Halwai, the son of a rickshaw-puller from an Indian village.Rising above lingusitc handicaps and dispelling pre-conceived notions, writings from India -- a country that continues to be surreal for many the world over -- has fascinated readers offshore.
Indian writing in English has become a bit of a trend. Many have moved beyond the traditional Anglophone market to enter European territory, as publishers from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have trickled into India in recent years in search of the next literary sensation.
More than 25 translated works of fiction have emerged in the German market. They include books by Altaf Tyrewala, Samit Basu, Suketu Mehta, Vikram Chandra, Kiran Nagarkar, Thrity Umrigar, Shobha De and Raj Kamal Jha.
In all fairness, writers such as Rushdie, V S Naipaul and Vikram helped prepare the ground for Roy’s phenomenal success. But nobody was prepared for the stampede of literary agents and publishers from London and New York into India, signing up a string of writers who had barely begun work on their novels.

So, the next step is the Nobel.

Goonda Raj In Maharashtra

Bullet for bullet in goonda raj. I woke this morning to the disturbing news of a young life wasted by violence. The encounter (read murder) of a revolver-wielding young boy from Patna by a trigger-happy Mumbai police left me benumbed. What a waste of a life. The 26-year-old man whipped up the pistol to vent his anger and disgust at Raj Thackeray, the man who is fanning regional hatred. Did the cops really need to kill Raj? Was there no way they could have caught him alive?
The nephew of Bal Thackeray, Raj Thackeray uses his political energy in such a way that he wants to defeat his uncle in state politics. To achieve this, Raj Thackeray set up 'Maharashtra Navnirman Sena' (MNS). He talks of 'Marathism' instead of nationalism in his speeches.
The strength of Marathi chauvinism must not be underestimated. The Sena cynically exploited the Shivaji cult and the rancour among a section of Maharashtrians at the fact that their struggle for a unified Maharashtra succeeded politically but they remained “subalterns” economically: Mumbai, the “jewel in the crown”, was not “Marathi enough”; its economic levers were controlled by Gujarati and Marwari businessmen. This resentment was mobilised to attack underprivileged working-class south Indians active in Mumbai’s once vibrant trade union movement.
I cannot imagine that Raj Thackeray actually believes what he said about the Marathi Manoos. This is political posturing, but one which is dangerous to the fabric of India. What is even more terrifying is that this idiom of pernicious belief is now becoming a means of gathering votes, something that even the Election Commission chooses to ignore. Add to the fact that on the day Raj Thackeray should have been in jail, he was busy attending the Mumbai police commissioner’s dinner, makes the nexus so apparent. But even this was not condemned with the shrillness that it deserved.
Maharashtra’s growth is non-inclusive and inequality-enhancing. Unemployment runs there at 15 million, in a population of 100 million. Fifty-four per cent of the unemployed resent migrants. This provides a fertile ground for hate-driven politics ---Marathi chauvinism.
It will be impossible to combat this xenophobic chauvinism without campaigning for a pluralist notion of Indianness based on a multilingual, multicultural identity, defending basic constitutional freedoms, including the rights of residence and work, and advocating a passionate egalitarianism. This alone can counter the parochial ideas of an insular, insecure, lumpenised middle class, with its inferiority complex and propensity to blame “outsiders” for its own shortcomings. Regrettably, that combination is not on the horizon. We have a system that feeds on caste politics and Raj Thackeray is just a symbol of this feeding frenzy.
Mumbai is more than a city. It is a symbol of India’s commercial and economic prowess. It cannot afford nightmares like Raj Thackeray and his ilk. Mr Raj Thackeray, there are lakhs of Maharashtrans in Andhra Pradesh and across the country. What do we do with them? Should we chase them out or should we kill them?

Move Over English, Inglish Is Here

I got a mail recently that said, ‘Please contact the undersigned’. I was reminded of the Indianisms and archaic usages that we still hold on to. Some of them are quite amusing and are actually a good basis for anthropological and ethnographical studies. These reflect our propensity for euphemisms and hyperbole. Receptionists ask “what is your good name?” before informing them that the boss has gone “out of station” (out of town) with his “cousin-brother” (male cousin). An executive while opening a Demat account asked me, “What is your good name?” To mean “What is your full name?” It is a carryover from the Hindi expression “Shubh-naam” (literally meaning “auspicious name”) or the Urdu “shariif" (meaning noble name”). The phrase “Out of station" has its origins in the posting of army officers to particular 'stations' during the days of the East India Company. And there are many more.
In India, a driver, when asked what he does, may refer to his occupation as “drivery”. Housemaids on their way to buy vegetables say they are going “marketing”. A government official urged farmers in Gujarat to grow “herbs in their backsides” (backyards). Use of the English words 'uncle' and 'aunty' as suffixes when addressing people such as distant relatives, neighbours, acquaintances, even strangers like shopkeepers who are significantly older than oneself. E.g., "Hello, Vimala aunty!" In fact, in Indian culture, children or teenagers addressing their friend's parents as Mr Govardhan or Mrs Govardhan is considered unacceptable, perhaps even offensive — a substitution of Sir/Ma'am is also not suitable except for teachers. On the contrary, if a person is really one's uncle or aunt, he/she will usually not be addressed as “uncle”/"auntie", but with the name of the relation in the vernacular Indian language, even while conversing in English. For example, if a woman is one's mother's sister, she would not be addressed (by a Hindi speaker) as “auntie” but as Mausi. It is interesting to observe that calling one's friends' parents auntie and uncle was also very common in Great Britain in the 1960s and 70s but is much rarer today. And then politicians “air-dash” to a destination, the couple is “issueless” (those without children) and people “prepone” a meeting (bringing forward meetings).
If one has an extra-marital affair, the person has a “stepney” or “stepaney” (refers to a car's spare tyre) It is also used to refer to a mistress (i.e., a “spare” wife!). Indian English is really bizzare at times if one is not used to hearing it that way. Its so Indian to say “Where all did you go?” instead of “which places did you go to?”. Or ending a sentence with “no” as in “You'll have dinner at home no?” Or “I am like this only”. I “only” called him. I live in Hyderabad “only”. Such phrases are entrenched.
I remember one of a friend from Maharashtra saying "Please open the doors and windows and let the atmosphere come in". It made me crack up. A literal translation of some Marathi line, I suppose.
The phrase “bold scenes” substitutes as a description of risqué scenes in movies, though in India, an actor and actress brushing cheeks qualifies as quite naughty. yes, we are also very fond of the uniquely Indian expression “neck to neck”. Doesn’t that conjure up images of some awkward – and fairly strange - teenage petting? Pronouncing “content” as “Cunt-ant”. In the Indian equivalent of rhyming slang, you may be invited to a “party-warty”, or a “picture-wicture”, or to have a cup of “chai-wai” (tea).
Indian-English is a sub-genre that has taken on a life of its own, the phraseology might not always make sense to a speaker of English in the West, but it will delight and entertain you! It even has its own dictionary these days.
The regular Indianisms
Nature’s call
Morning ablutions
Praying god in the morning
He attained the Lotus Feet of the Lord (no offence meant)
My backside neighbour
Sweetmeat Store, Savouries Shop, Condiments Store
Ryots, another word for farmers
You are invited for my happy birthday
Awaiting your revertal
Prepone
I am like that only. ‘wonly’
And then there are some killers in the daily press.
1. CM ‘airdashed’ to Delhi2. The victim, a ‘rowdy-sheeter’, was done to death by unidentified ‘rowdy elements’, together with area ‘miscreants’.3. This “scribe” was pleased to learn that…

The Truimph Of Human Spirit

This is an interesting story my friend mailed me, late though, I thought I should share it with my other friends through this blog. It is inspiring how some individuals with their indomitable spirit claw up their way against all odds. Naga Naresh Karutura is an IIT pass out from Madras. He joined Google in Bangalore. So, what’s the big deal, there are thousands of students passing out of IITs who later take up plum jobs in several MNCs dotting the country.

Naga Naresh is a story of human spirit, fighting the adversities of life. Let me come to the point straight: The 21-year-old has no legs and moves around in his powered wheel chair. Penury and illiteracy of his family have not bogged down this ever optimistic guy from a remote village, Teeparru, along the banks of Godavari.

This son of a lorry driver believes in God, and thinks the almighty has different plans for different people. Riding on the back of a buffalo or taking a quick nap on his teacher’s lap, the fond memories of Naresh and his hardships are awe-inspiring. “My father taught me when I was in the 1st and 2nd standards. My father would ask me questions from the text book, and I would answer them. At that time, I didn't know he could not read or write but to make me happy, he helped me in my studies,” he recalls.

Things were all fine for this boy until that fateful day on January 11, 1993. On that day, Naresh along with his mother and sister went to his grandmom’s village. “With no buses available, my mother took a lift in my father's friend's lorry. As there were many people in the lorry, he made me sit next to him, close to the door,” he recalls. The boy continues in a tone of regret, “It was my fault. I fiddled with the door latch and it opened wide throwing me out. As I fell, my legs got cut by the iron rods protruding from the lorry. Nothing happened to me except scratches on my legs.” This happened in front of a private hospital whose management refused to admit Naresh as it warrants a police case. Nonetheless, a conscientious cop who was passing admitted him in a government hospital.

“First I underwent an operation as my small intestine got twisted. The doctors also bandaged my legs. I was there for a week. When the doctors found that gangrene had developed and it had reached up to my knees, they asked my father to take me to a district hospital. There, the doctors scolded my parents a lot for neglecting the wounds and allowing the gangrene to develop. But what could my ignorant parents do? And eventually his legs were amputated up to the hips. “I remember waking up and asking my mother, where are my legs? I also remember that my mother cried when I asked the question. I was in the hospital for three months. Life hasn’t changed much for this young boy after the tragedy.
I was enjoying the attention I was getting rather than pitying myself. I was happy that I got a lot of fruits and biscuits.”

Naresh thanks his parents, his teachers and friends for supporting him all through in time of adversity. “My friends saw to it that I was part of all the games they played; they carried me everywhere. I believe in God. I believe in destiny. I feel he plans everything for you. If not for the accident, we would not have moved from the village to Tanuku, a town. There I joined a missionary school, and my father built a house next to the school. Till the tenth standard, I studied in that school. If I had continued in Teeparu, I may not have studied after the 10th. I am sure God had other plans for me.” The boy secured fourth rank in the IIT-JEE in the physically challenged category. And the rest, as they say, is history. I congratulate Prasad and Kumari, Naresh Karutura’s parents for having given birth to such a lovely son.

Are Our Children Guinea Pigs?

In India, animals are perhaps better protected from exploitation than humans. For the powerful pharmaceutical companies in the US and other Western nations, India is a dumping ground for banned drugs and a favored destination for clinical trials, perhaps only after Africa. The death of 49 children due to clinical trials conducted at the country's premier All India Insititute of Medical Sciences during the last two-and-a-half years is horrific.

By 2010 it is estimated that some two million people in India will be taking part in clinical trials. According to a report, an estimated 40 percent of all clinical trials now take place in Asia, Eastern Europe, central and south America.
The mention of the word "clinical trial" at once reminded me of John Le Carre's book 'The Constant Gardner' about a Western company using Kenyans as unknowing guinea pigs for a tuberculosis drug. In the book, the drug works but it has fatal side effects in some people and the company is in a hurry to get the drug on the market so it tries to fudge the data. So are these clinical trials reminder of 'The Constant Gardner'? A BBC scribe's investigations, which were later screened as a documentary Drug Trials: The Dark Side, showed the woeful lack of informed consent by Indian patients, many of whom were taken off their existing medication to take part in drug trials commissioned by US companies. Giving informed consent to be part of an experiment is the golden rule of all clinical trials which goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Code.

Most of the world largest pharmaceutical companies have established a presence in India, where they are increasingly recruiting patients and outsourcing trials. Lack of regulation, accountability, low costs of operation and wide availability of target participants are reasons why multinational drug companies, researchers and institutions are increasingly basing their clinical trials in India.

Many of the poverty-struck patients the BBC correspondent spoke to in Kerala hospitals signed the consent forms as they were illiterate. Most consent forms were written in English, which many patients could not read, let alone understand, and some were able to give only a thumbprint as their acquiescence to the clinical trial. The patients (read guinea pigs) were under the impression that their usual drug was no longer available and the new drug was merely a continuation of their treatment. It's widely known that most trials are tainted because they play on the fears of desperately ill-patients, involve some sort of subtle coercion like money or free medicine or fail to warn patients of the very real dangers they face.

Cases abound. Six years back, an experimental drug from the US called M4N was injected into cancer patients in India without being properly tested on animals first. Later, it was discovered that several patients had not known they were part of a clinical trial.

In 2006, Netherlands-based WEMOS, an advocacy health organisation tracking clinical trials in developing countries and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations prepared an overview of 22 known examples of unethical clinical trials, eight of which were operating in India. The Indian examples of illegal and unethical trials involved Sun Pharmaceuticals and Novartis’s Letrozole for inducing ovulation when approved only for breast cancer, Novo Nordisk’s for diabetes treatment, Solvay Pharmaceuticals’ for treating diarrhoea, Johnson and Johnson’s for treating acute malaria, Pfizer’s for cardiac events, Otsuka’s for arterial disease, Indian companies Shantha Biotechnics and Biocon for diabetes and the John Hopkins’ University’s trials for treating oral cancer.
Other countries with documented illegal trials include Russia, Nepal, Uganda, Peru, China, Nigeria, Argentina and even places like London and New York involving well-known institutes like the U.S. National Institute of Health, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Centres for Disease Control and several international pharmaceutical firms. Experimental tests are conducted in developing countries on sick and vulnerable children under the guise of free and ethical treatments sanctioned by the FDA and complicit medical institutions. The Washington Post revealed that drug giant Pfizer Pharmaceuticals was accused of conducting unethical clinical trials on children in Nigeria in 1996 . This accusation was made in a Nigerian government report instigated by a whistleblower.

The Indian Council for Medical Research has published guidelines for research on humans. However, in a poorly regulated scenario such as ours, there are concerns that these guidelines are being violated. In order to minimise the risks to human volunteers, the World Medical Association has laid down fairly stringent safeguards in the Helsinki Declaration. There is a need for global regulation in clinical research, so that drugs and trials not approved in one country may not be tested or used in another.

In recent years, India has made some regulatory attempts, amending its Drugs and Cosmetics Act to require compliance by trial conductors with a set of good clinical practices (GCP) guidelines along with the ethics committee that the ICMR formulated. But there is still no mandatory compensatory payment, or strong penalty against the defaulting company. In this case, the defaulting company is the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. AIIMS cannot bring back the lives of the children who were victims of its clinical trials, but least it can do is compensate in terms of money to the kin of those who died.