India recently became one of the world’s most democratic countries that demonstrated the most dictatorial desires of its current government. Kapil Sibal, a high-ranking minister first proposed and then dropped efforts to censor the internet. His attempt created an uproar round the world and while there is no doubt that the government will revisit the issue in the future, the very prospect of it must worry western governments and the Indian diaspora.

Wikipedia defines internet censorship as the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to, information on the internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organisations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative. Censorship never works technically, because techniques and technology always find a way around it.  Filtering works to a point, only partially – mostly geographically and always retrospectively and sparingly. In short, internet censorship is not worth the effort, unless the government in question has the will and brute force as well as unlimited financial resources similar to those of China or Russia. Certainly India is the wrong candidate for censorship. Perhaps Sibal got that message all right?

The main issue that worried Sibal is not sufficiently discussed in public; however the internet is rife with the talk that it had to do with one or more websites that mocked Sonia Gandhi or had something objectionable at a glance. This however, is to be expected for leaders everywhere.  Who hasn’t read derogatory jokes about George Bush that would hurt even his worst opponents? From queens to kings, from dictators to opposition leaders, politician leaders are routinely the subject of cartoons, jokes and derogatory content. In fact, more derogatory content exists on the net on Ganesha, Shiva and other Gods than for politicians. So his objection to a website commenting on Sonia was nothing but an expression of frustration at new technology and the people’s power to express whatever they want, whenever they want and however they want! That power is here to stay. What Sibal and Sonia need is what every politician needs – a thick skin and an ability to keep people focussed on the good deeds of the government.

Around the world, governments are unhappy about some aspects of new technology like social media. However, the overall public good that these technologies deliver is massive in comparison to the puny problems they create for a few powerful people.  If one took too much of a sacrosanct view, one would never allow the screening of a film or TV series with the ‘F’ word – which features in almost every TV series and action film these days! Social media is a reflection of what people do around clubs or barbeques; they say anything they want to, about anyone they want to. People do not so much as go on social media to publicise things as much as make their views public. After all, it is their view, which can be good, bad, likeable or unpalatable. But in a democracy, views are bound to be many, different and still allowed to be reasonably “aired”. When a movie uses the ‘F’ word repeatedly, the director looks like a dud and the film becomes a bad attempt to create an elusive reality. Similarly, when views on social media are too derogatory, many people are in fact, unaffected, and this is the main reason why the best cartoons or political caricatures of leaders have just a slight accentuation of their negatives, without being downright derogatory.

Sibal needs to calm down. Sonia will forever remain the subject of discussion for many Indians. If the current government wants people to view them in more positive light, they need to do more positive things like popularising social media. As more people use social media and take a keener interest in the working of the government, they are going to be interested in real issues rather than personality issues. And as they understand political priorities and constraints, the opportunities, efforts, resources and responsibilities of the government, they will provide Sibal and his party with good solutions through social media.

Censorship is the wrong way to deal with any government’s problems, not just in India. Even filtering is a bad idea except when applied to child abuse, child pornography or outright terrorist activities. The government should not even be afraid of subterfuge activities, like some communist government that sees many activities on the internet to be suspect. If a government is not able to survive an internet subterfuge, let us say that it is not a strong or popular government, and it will not last too long anyway!

The recent Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan was an evocative illustration of how great tragedies of our age stem from economic disparities that are untreatable with military or political misadventures. And how the great powers refuse to address inequality, the root cause of the age of terrorism, at any cost.

Almost exclusively, every lunatic Islamist terrorist is based in a country that does not have electricity or running water outside its capital.Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan are all are heart-wrenchingly under-resourced, the disowned second cousins of the international family.

In recent times the North effortlessly ignored them. With globalization, we dare not. The world’s people now view their personal situation in a much broader perspective. They look further than the village to assess what is right and what is wrong in their life.

The starving Sudanese farmer, whose crop has failed and whose family is victim to murderous bandits, can be convinced by Islamic opportunists that his situation is a sinister American-sponsored plot.

The West was all but consumed by this phenomenon. Hitler preyed on the weak and feeble minded at the height of the Great Depression, promising exactly what any Al Queda propaganda officer worth his salt, does today. Order in chaos. Bread for the poor. Expedited justice. A classless society. Above all, belonging.

Now with globalisation, the West has to contend not with a single strategically relevant population that is easy prey to a master manipulator, but a matrix of impoverished communities plugged into a network we all share.  London, Madrid, Bali and New York were horrific scenes of carnage that were born of philosophies nurtured in the backwaters of the world.  Countries that no longer are beyond reach or, as these crimes have evidenced, not beyond us being touched.

American Express gold card members are thin on the ground inNorthern Sudan, but intelligence is not the monopoly of the wealthy. With penetration of cable television and the internet, untold millions are now witness in streaming video, to just how shamelessly ostracized they are by the players of global business and politics.

Jealousy is a powerful motive (imagine underemployed Abdul watching the hedonistic Kardashians on YouTube). In conjunction with the biting shame of poverty, you will have no dearth of combatants who will be spellbound by the teachings of prophets who envision a just world.

During the sixties, smelly, opinionated students everywhere worshipped Che Guevara – the bearded violent revolutionary who did not hesitate to kill and imprison Cubans who detracted from an overwhelmingly radical philosophy. He is responsible for the execution of hundreds of homosexuals and former regime leaders who didn’t perfectly fit his insane mould. Not dissimilar to another bewildered bearded prophet who killed scores of Americans who didn’t enroll in his cockeyedschool of Islam.

Both Guevara and Bin Laden had philosophies that nourished themselves on the biting indignity of exploitation, the genesis of inequality. Bin Laden, who was as mad as a March hare, was the modern Guevara.  Same manure, different bucket. Both figureheads of ideology that is strongly driven by the wrongs of inequality.

The war on terror, a stillborn idea from the fact that you can’t wage battle against an emotion, should be a war against poverty. How many Talibanis could be coerced into patrolling the deathly cold Khyber Passif they could be at home watching football on a two metre wide plasma television, with a goat roasting in an oversized barbeque that looks like a milk factory. Or more seriously, how many Afghan patriots would pursue violence if their children had access to the same health services that Westerners afford their pets?

Giving violent misfits, a middle class life would have cost a fraction of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have reportedly cost US Dollars $1,292,164,039,372.  If I’m not wildly off the mark, that is $1.2 trillion dollars. Thus far, the cost of the war in Afghanistan is $465,056,330,769, which I’m guessing is a lot of textbooks and hospital beds in any borough.

India’s own litany of mutinies is painted over with the same brush. In the Indian Government’s eyes, Maoists are terrorists that need to be eliminated.  This is the easiest route, as addressing the real problems of acute poverty that is breeding armies of youth who literally have nothing to lose, is well and truly stuffed into the ‘too hard’ basket, bureaucrats studiously ignoring the numbing fact that hunger is the worst form of terrorism.

How different are the motives for Kashmiri Azadis? Nagas? ULFAs? How much of their revolutionary zeal is driven by ethnic and religious identity? How much of their hatred stems from suffering poverty?  From not having a ticket on the great Indian economic miracle?

With Governments internationally refusing to acknowledge the true motives behind terrorist behavior, how can they can they win this abstract war?

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson recounts how the future innovator of Apple computing once spent seven months searching for spiritual enlightenment in India. Jobs did not consider this to be wasted time. Jobs, it says, was convinced that the people in India do not just believe in rational thinking, but also in intuition. It was soon after returning from India that Jobs set up his Apple computing laboratory in his parents’ garage with an investment of a mere $1,300.

The Western quest for spiritual enlightenment in India is nothing new. The Greeks have had a long association with India which forms part of Greek lore. Two outstanding Greeks, Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyana, are said to have visited India according to alleged accounts which supposedly quote their disciples.

From the 1960s onwards, Westerners, who had become disillusioned with excessive materialism, journeyed to the sub-continent. Their favourite haunts were Goa, Varanasi and Nepal. Whether they gained any spiritual satisfaction depended on many factors. Some seekers might have been simply escaping from some unpleasant situation back home, whilst others might have been confused about what they wanted to achieve in life. Drugs sometimes entered into the picture with possibly deleterious effects. Others might have adopted a disorderly life. Such lifestyles had nothing to do with what Indian philosophy might have been able to offer them towards improving their life.

Paul Brunton (an adopted name), a modern searcher, spent several years in India in the 1930s, mostly as a guest of the then Maharaja of Mysore. He penned several books about his forays into the East such as A Search in Secret Egypt, A Search in Secret India and The Secret Path. In India, he met Ramana Maharishi and Meher Baba.

Brunton aroused an interest in yoga and meditation in the West. In The Inner Reality, he wrote that meditation is “the process of interiorization….consciousness indrawing itself by forgetting the five senses, from the external world… and sinking deeper and deeper into itself through reverie. Then coming to the mind, or intellect, and indrawing itself still farther… it finally comes face to face with itself, its own pure white light…”

Steve Jobs also believed in quietly doing one’s own thinking. In his speech, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish delivered in 2005 at Stanford University, he advised: “You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down. … Your time is limited … Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

The ABC recently aired the popular comedian Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey in several weekly parts. This series is an exercise in self-exploration. Lucy was brought up in a strictly Catholic household. She found her upbringing to be unfulfilling and sought to experience other spiritual disciplines. The TV instalments are intensely provocative and at times irreverentially humorous.

Having once contemplated becoming a nun, Lucy dissects her own faith and does the same with other beliefs. Her spiritual quest ultimately takes her to India where she visits well-known locations which are considered sacred in India. She also explores derivatives of Indian ideas as synthesised by Western exponents. She experiences yoga practices as well as Vipassana  which is a Buddhist-type meditation.

Eat, Pray, Love is a recent popular film starring Julia Roberts. It portrays a journey by the heroine to Italy, India and Indonesia. Based on a semi-autobiographical account by Elizabeth Gilbert, the book remained on the New York Times Bestsellers list for over two years. In the first part, the recently-divorced heroine flies to Italy to gorge on much-loved Italian food. In the second part she moves to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. The last segment is in Bali, where the film morphs into a light hearted romantic fantasy.

The Indian segment involves praying and meditating in an ashram. The heroine experiences detachment from the world with which she has been familiar. This helps her to see that another reality exists to that promoted in the Western world. The dialogue in this segment is the most convincing part in the film.

In these spiritual journeys there appears no separation to have been made between Hinduism and Buddhism. That artificial dichotomy is rightly rejected by these Western seekers. Steve Jobs’ biographer states that Jobs realised that simplicity is the “ultimate sophistication” and that Zen Buddhism inspired his design sense.

India’s current quest for scientific and industrial development hopefully should not make Indians lose their once-habitual cultivation of their inner calm. As Steve Jobs has said, it is our “inner voice” we need to be in touch with.

Sydney has just had its annual talk-fest of dangerous ideas where emotive and taboo subjects could be freely discussed. This article is not going to refer to those proceedings, but rather to “dangerous ideas” in the Indian and Australian context.

Lokmanya Tilak, one of India’s greatest freedom fighters, supported revolutionaries who used violent means to protest against the British occupation of India; he based his support upon the teachings of the Bhagwad Gita. Tried and convicted for sedition, he was transferred from his home in Ratnagiri to a jail in Mandalay in Burma. It is a quirk of history that some years earlier when the British seized Burma from its King at his capital in Mandalay, they had him exiled to Ratnagiri! In jail, Tilak wrote an extensive treatise on the Bhagwad Gita.

Mahatma Gandhi, in contrast, advocated non-violent means to achieve political rights for Indians but he was nevertheless considered a man with “dangerous” ideas. At least that is what the British, quite rightly, believed with regard to their own interests. Here was a diminutive scantily clad man (a “naked fakir” according to Winston Churchill) who dared to question the very existence of the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi stressed that India’s struggle for independence should be a non-violent one and that Indians should remain friendly with the British people.

Gandhi went on to become an inspiration for independence movements in all the British colonies. He was a man laden with “dangerous ideas” which covered political freedom, women’s rights, rights for those who are traditionally oppressed and despised, and for universal education and voting rights. Gandhi also inspired the civil rights movement in the United States.

There was a time in Australia when considering Aboriginals as the equals of European settlers was taboo. Thus any idea that Aboriginals should have equal political and land rights was considered dangerous; they had for long no voting rights. Australia virtually ran an apartheid system with Aboriginals confined to reserves and having “protectors” to look after their affairs. The term “protection” was practically a cover for “oppression”.

Despite its own dismal Aboriginal record, Australia, to its credit, was at the forefront in condemning South African apartheid. Malcolm Fraser can be credited with his relentless attacks on that inhuman system and its ultimate dismantling.

There have been many important voices raised in recent years claiming that the Federal Government intervention in Aboriginal communities is actually an apartheid which smacks of the discredited South Africa system. That intervention is still continuing.  Those who justify intervention point out that alcohol addiction is so widespread in the Northern Territory, particularly amongst the Aboriginals, that stringent rules are needed to protect Aboriginal families. Education and good leadership by the Aboriginals themselves is needed.

The world is a patchy place where human rights are concerned. The very idea that females should have any rights is taboo in certain countries. This concept is prevalent in certain quarters in the Subcontinent. It ranges from denying females basic education to even well-educated females being denied the right to choose their own spouses.

In the worst scenarios, which still exist in some countries which are neighbours to India, females should neither be seen nor heard. In such places it is dangerous for females to even ask for basic rights. A female author is considered a menace and there are many cases of female authors fleeing to other countries just to be able to survive. This contrasts with a good percentage of Indian females being well educated and holding high offices in both political and corporate life.

There was a time when scientists were considered dangerous because their views were opposite to those of religion. A celebrated example is that of Galileo, and later that of Darwin. One believes that the European Age of Enlightenment ushered in a new era for scientists. They would henceforth be allowed to dedicatedly work to unravel the mysteries of nature and to create new inventions.

Scientists studying the earth’s atmosphere and its effect on climate have worked relentlessly to unravel the effects of industrialisation and modern living on the earth’s weather. Their research has been disseminated for decades in school and university textbooks.

Little had these scientists foreseen that companies associated with the fossil fuel industries, that is coal and petroleum, would attack their personal integrity and motives. Such scientists themselves were portrayed as being part of a “political conspiracy”. The most prominent of them is Rajendra K Pachauri who heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That Panel shared the 2007 Nobel Prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore for their work on climate change.

Dangerous ideas of one era often become the normal ideas of another era. Traditionalists often battle to retain old ideas whilst radicals have to overcome barriers to ensure that new ideas get accepted.

There is an energy and vibrancy about the Indian private sector which continues to dazzle. Be it the new super-efficient banks or the explosion in telephony options or supermarket chains, the private sector continues to stun observers. Contrasting the sector with the government public sector is a sharp reminder of what is driving India’s GDP growth of over 8% and why India’s star is rising around the world.

The latest example of how the private sector can take an idea from conception to a successful conclusion was the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Greater NOIDA recently. The Formula 1 car race with the best and most technical cars in the world, is the brainchild of Bernie Ecclestone. For years, Formula 1 had been raced around circuits in Europe, but as the continent reels from its massive economic problems, the excitement for the F1 waned. Ecclestone was now looking at a different staging platform. Last year with the cooperation of the Singapore government, F1 was conducted under the night skies in Singapore. Now was the time for something different and recognising India as one of the fastest growing global economies, Ecclestone took the bold step to engage with an industrial powerhouse there – the Jaypee group.

This enterprising company pulled all stops to facilitate this sporting spectacle to be staged successfully, even pumping in no less than AUD$350 million (Rs 2000 crores) in the construction of the track alone. Over 7,000 workers and 400 engineers and officers worked round-the-clock to get the track – over 350 hectares – ready in time.

The Buddh International Circuit, home to the Indian Grand Prix, seems to be the country’s sporting El Dorado. That India pulled off staging the F1, the world’s most expensive spectacle in the history of motor racing, has been a major coup for the country in this elite sporting world. It signifies an entrée into the elitist big league of international spectator sports, an accolade unheard of in the country’s history.

On the other hand, the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games – often touted as a chance for a country to show off their organizational skills – were an unmitigated public relations disaster for India. With constant interference from the public sector, the memories (other than the spectacular, and yes, private sector organized opening ceremony) are those of constant bickering and fighting, rampant corruption and an impotent government unwilling or unable to solve the various problems that arose before, during, and after the event. The Commonwealth Games were a shameful disclosure to the rest of the Commonwealth, of the poor public sector governance in India.

While Australia debates its two-speed economy – the mining and the non-mining sector, India has to have its private sector push its public sector into the future. The public sector seems to work at its own pace (or critics may say at no pace), while the private sector is in a hurry to discover tomorrow yesterday. At places where both intersect, such as the telecommunications industry, the private sector has pushed aside the public offerings and now has instituted a highly efficient private phone system which the ever-demanding public has readily lapped up. On the other hand, national assets which are solely in the public sector such as Air India are a big drain on the public purse, with their reputation in tatters.

In the world of sports, those which are wholly dependent on the government such as hockey or football, are never able to break out of the poverty cycle; while those that have managed to break away from dependency on public sector handouts such as cricket, now have overflowing coffers.

India shone at the latest Grand Prix in India; there were 95,000 cheering Indians around the racetracks lapping up the beauty and excitement of it all. The private sector was at its very best. They certainly did India proud.

The eyes of the world are focussed on Greece because the world’s current economic crisis is largely, but not exclusively, dependent on resolving the Greek budgetary woes. Greece was allowed to get away for too long with an undisciplined spending spree.

A bloated public sector, generous pensions, a high social welfare budget and tax concessions for the wealthy preyed on the public purse. This extravagance was supported with increasing borrowings from its well-to-do Eurozone partners. Other Western economies also have extensive, and often much higher borrowings, such as the US .

Greece has a strong sentimental value in Europe . It has been considered as the mother of European civilisation as well as the originator of democracy with good reason, although it is to Britain that we owe the parliamentary system in vogue. But Greece is more than European. It is the bridge between Europe and the lands to the East upto north-west India . The Greek Empire of Alexander the Great spread eastwards through Persia , to the east of the Indus river.

Historically, Greece has had a strong Indian connection. The Greeks established the kingdom of Bactria which encompassed parts of Afghanistan , Pakistan and India , east of the Indus river. The most famous Indo-Greek King was Menander (known in India as Milinda) who encouraged the development of Mahayana Buddhism.

Greek influence is evident in the statues of the Buddha of that period which have halos around the head. The Questions of Milinda is a famous Buddhist text. Milinda was involved in local battles in northern India . He had tried to conquer Pataliputra, present day Patna .

For many centuries, Greece and India became remote from each other politically and economically. There were visits, though, from King Paul of Greece and other members of the Greek royal family. Queen Frederica developed an interest in Indian philosophy and became an exponent of Shankara’s Advaita philosophy. The Greek Orthodox Church maintains ties with the Christian Orthodox Churches of Kerala.

Current-day Greece is a small nation. Covering about 132,000 square km, it has 11.3 million people. In contrast, Italy has an area of 301,000 square km and has a population of  about 57 million.

Greeks know about external interference in their affairs. Greece attained its independence from the Ottoman Empire only in the nineteenth century. During World War I, there was heavy fighting between Greeks and Turks, with heavy loss of life. A transfer of a large number of Greeks from Turkish territory eventuated. Greek-Turkish rivalry continues to this day and is seen at its worst in the ongoing division of the island of Cyprus . For some time Greece opposed Turkey ’s entrance into the European Union, though it no longer insists on this opposition.

Modern Greece has had a turbulent history. Initially, its war of independence from the Ottoman Empire was followed by a short-lived republic. At that time, the important European powers installed a Bavarian prince as its monarch. However, he proved to be dictatorial and had to be replaced by a Danish prince as the king. The monarchy was ultimately ended in 1975 in Greece , following a referendum.

For the Greeks, German intervention in their affairs is nothing new. As noted, soon after gaining its independence, a Germanic king was imposed on them. During both the World Wars, Germany invaded Greece with very unhappy consequences, including over a million deaths by starvation. This time, the German intervention is economic and hopefully will help Greece put its economic house in order.

The European Union, made up of twenty-seven nations has no uniformity. The more developed western members of the Union tend to consider southern and eastern Europe as being economically peripheral. It is the southern countries (“PIGS” – Portugal , Italy , Greece and Spain ) which are now causing economic headaches, both for the Eurozone and for the entire European Union. The Eurozone covers only seventeen members of the European Union.

Britain has retained its own currency, but is now being called upon to help solve the Eurozone crisis. The European Union has suggested that a financial transaction tax be levied throughout the Union so as to create a contingency fund to help European nations in need. This tax would adversely affect Britain , as London is the financial hub of Europe . Unsurprisingly, there is opposition in Britain for such a tax as the Eurozone crisis was not of its making. Besides, Britain has helped Iceland to recover from its financial crisis and is also lending a hand to Ireland in its hour of need.

China has offered to help Europe , but has made it clear that European nations need to first put their own houses in order. India has been attending Group-of-Twenty meetings and there are vague hints that India might also help, but currently the world is watching what steps the Europeans are taking to solve their own problems.

An outcry for peace

“Bomb blasts in Mumbai” shout the headlines, and I feel a brief, overwhelming sense of raw fear. My thoughts instantly fly to the family and friends back home, specially since we live very close to Dadar, where one of the bombs went off. I have to curb my anxiety, telling myself that if any of them were affected, I would have known by now. And then an instant search on the net for details fuels a kind of bizarre relief that the count of dead hasn’t crept past the 50 mark, and that the injured are below 200. Fortunately the toll hasn’t increased, as we are assured by the media a few days later. In this teeming city, detonated to go off at peak time, it is almost a miracle that the explosions haven’t caused the carnage one would expect as we have seen in the past.

Tinged with my dubious relief was a strong sense of anger and disappointment that Mumbai has taken the rap again. News reports state that the bombs were only strong enough to cause panic and mayhem, and they certainly seem to have served their purpose. And of course, as usual, Mumbai woke up the next day and a majority of its denizens went right back to their routines, albeit with a sense of the suspicious. Local tabloids took pride in lauding the city’s ‘resilience’, Bollywood’s citizenry inundated Facebook and Twitter with their comments and support, and I guess the one thing that truly tugged the heartstrings was an outpouring of sympathy and aid to the injured and the families of the dead.

My family back home reacted in much the same way. My sister claims that after the initial shock and surprise, people rushed home that evening and preferred to stay indoors while keeping updated with the news and perhaps in fear that there may be more blasts. But the next day, things were back to normal. Children were sent to school, their parents followed their travel routine to get to work and although there was an air of nervousness, life went on, almost as usual.

Almost, but not quite. Because once the dust settled down, leading questions were being asked. With the Government’s sophisticated defense equipment and its numerous intelligence agents who, it’s been reported, have permeated the very core of India’s underbelly, how could these attacks still happen without prior knowledge, without an inkling of their cause and effect coming to the notice of the powers that be? Could it be that the coils of corruption have finally strangled whatever vestiges of conscience existed in these perpetrators, as we know that sometimes money can be a much more powerful argument than the lure of religious righteousness? Was this actually a terrorist attack, or was there some other motive? A minor underworld entity trying to make a statement, perhaps? Or simply some warped psychotic trying to create chaos and panic, and enjoying its brief success?

Certainly, such an incident would cause widespread panic, but something much worse inevitably rears its ugly head. Mumbai has its share of strong communal feeling, and it takes only a few moments to insist on a call for vengeance. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and lay the blame, without thought or reason, to the people who are most likely to be responsible, simply because they share the same religion as the world’s major terrorists. When I was last in Mumbai, I bumped into an old colleague, who, despite his greying hair and increasing medical problems, still burns with the fervour of a ‘warrior for Maharashtra’, as he calls himself. At the first sign of trouble, he informed me, “We gather together all the possible weapons we can, from stones, sticks, sometimes knives, and man our illakas at strategic points. We make sure that other unspeakable community is kept in its place and if they attack us, we’ll be ready!”  For all its national cosmopolitanism, Mumbai still simmers beneath the surface with suspicion, hatred and the need to cause pain for past slights. It wasn’t surprising to see the government appeal for calm and hint that retaliation was unnecessary until the true culprits are identified.

Everyone has something to say on the blasts that shook Mumbai. There are the ones who had ‘narrow escapes’ as they were almost three kilometres away from the spots in which the bombs exploded. Others had ‘divine premonitions’ to avoid those spots at the time. Yet others captured the horrific moments on their phone cameras, hoping to make a quick buck from the ever-ravenous media. Sometimes our sense of what’s right gets lost in the magic of the moment. Right now, the media is full of speculation, the government is full of reassurances, but one can sense a feeling of rising anger at the incompetency that has made this city a target of attack yet again. When will it end, seems to be the question that everyone’s asking. And how long will it be before these incidents become commonplace and trite, almost as trite as “Mumbai’s resilient spirit”. How much longer before the city’s inertia matches that of the government? How much longer before we tire of hearing the same banal chants of solidarity with few or no results in actually doing something to prevent the situation from happening again?

Yes, Mumbai is a city with a heart, but surely, even its seemingly indomitable spirit seems to have taken a beating. It needs anger, righteous, justifiable anger against the people who do this and get away with it. It doesn’t need the anger born of resentment and directed at a certain community. It needs anger born of unity, to help its denizens feel safe, secure and proud of their city.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, Health Minister, Government of India

Ghulam Nabi Azad’s startling statements about Indian homosexuals exposes not only an idiot but more importantly the cancerous ‘chamcha culture’ that grips the Congress.

I met Azad many years ago at a function hosted by Sonia Gandhi, who had then not even hinted of her ambitions. Azad was pompous to the point of absurdity but when Mrs. Gandhi entered our midst he went from being the sultan of greater India to a groveling buffoon. I have never seen such a change in posture. He nearly head butted the floor with his whimpering bow and I’m sure if I had looked his knuckles would have been bright purple from the force he pushed together his namaskar. It was not dissimilar to someone on the brink of starvation begging at an intersection. When Mrs. Gandhi left our circle his fellow Ministers laughed their heads off and told him he was a chumcha, admittedly an excellent one.

When you are assessed for your ability to kiss royal posteriors and possession of obscure vote banks you will always get an Azad. Individuals who are so removed from reality that you have to purchase tickets to their world to have a conversation.

His statement that homosexuals were hard to administrate because unlike prostitutes they didn’t congregate in readily recognizable areas is sensationally bananas.

Azad, not yet even remotely discouraged, then generously bestowed another profound pearl of wisdom: homosexuality was not only unnatural but that homosexually was brought to India by foreigners.

Bring out the men in white coats with two straight jackets – one for Azad and one for Mrs. Gandhi.

Investing any responsibility that involves anything more complicated than the demands of a rickshaw puller in this incompetent politician is equally mad.  Mrs. Gandhi’s constant five cents that the windows to Government need to be cleaned and MPs held accountable is now a further heavily devalued currency.  The window has not been cleaned as so much as it has been smashed and we have had an unsettling peek at her bathroom cabinet.  Cabinet ministers that could not run a brothel.

If Azad had had the intelligence to remember mid sentence that his Empress was an erstwhile foreigner he would have died from a major cardiac event. That he didn’t is very unfortunate because he continues to administer the mortally important health portfolio, that he clearly does not, without a pinch of ambiguity, have the marbles for.

This fact is cold steel solid when you consider the statements were made in an HIV conference.  The equivalent of rocking up to a Holocaust memorial in a Volkswagen or asking for a jumbo box of condoms at the Vatican gift shop.

Many of my dearest friends, and I am very proud to call them friends, are Indian homosexuals.  For six years I lived next to a Delhi Hijira colony full of characters. Their sexuality is only a part of their identity. Though I will indulge in some bigotry.

My stereotype of an Indian homosexual is quite prejudiced in that I believe they are almost without exception above average citizens. They are high achievers in business and the corporate world with their strong sense of civil behaviour. I also believe in my prejudice that they have a predisposition for getting the job done right.

To alienate this community, which could be at least 50 million Indians, is not the brightest move. Twice the population of Australia could be natural dancers and know their flared jeans from their skinny jeans.

A phenomenon I have witnessed is that a considerable amount of Indian students studying in Australia have come out of the almirah. It is of course much easier to do here rather than Rajouri Garden.

A gay friend very bravely went back to North Delhi, a bastion of conservatism, and shaking like a leaf told his parents he was batting for the other team. His father’s reaction would have been less violent if his son had told him he was batting for Pakistan.

Indians will forgive you for being gay but they will never forgive you for not procreating.  His father’s response, after having a stiff peg and a lay down, “Beta, you have to stop being naughty and get serious”, as his Mother handed him some homeopathic medicine and told him about some girls she had lined up.

Azad’s Jurassic attitudes help reinforce these impractical ideas. The Congress leadership needs to purge itself of unqualified dinosaurs living in fractured realities.

Indian gays need to be recognised in a society that badly needs them.  They need to be embraced by the State and welcomed to share the exciting burden of lifting India higher and yet higher.

The last few days have seen Delhi University colleges reach new heights for cut off marks. SRCC announced a stratospheric 100% cut off with St. Stephens, in a close second for absurdity, with 97%.

Things have changed since my days in Sri Venkateswara College, or Venky for the English medium types. Even then getting admission was not simply a matter of turning up and bribing your way into the sports quota. (Many Venkyites were track and field champions who didn’t have the stamina to run after the ring Road bus for more than the length of a bus stop.)

Many readers will be very upset that I gained admission by quota. Not as a scheduled tribe person or a backward caste member, despite those groups being a more apt description of my character, but as a bloody gora. This was something I didn’t advertise, as my very first day in college was a full blown riot in the dark days of the Mandal Commission that saw volatile nationwide protests against quotas for education and jobs.

I spent that first day with my eyes wide open like a possum caught in a car’s headlights. I saw future friends, through a light haze of tear gas, address the students with a frenzy that you don’t see in New Zealand unless you are a mental health nurse. That has never left me: the raging passion for a fair chance from having studied madly for the larger part of their lives, often at the cost of a childhood.

Australasians have it so very easy. For me to have qualified for a seat in DU on a level playing field is a comical concept. I certainly wouldn’t have got in the sports quota as sumo wrestling in India is still in its infancy and my Kiwi exam marks were an almost perfect inverse of the now ridiculous cut off marks.

Not everyone is disadvantaged enough to have an unfair advantage, such as being a Kiwi. This lack of opportunity, despite securing an average of 80% plus, is a matter of life and death to many students.

The tragedy of the annual suicides that darkly come with the admission season is proof to that.

Young boys and girls in India have pressures that many western children would simply not withstand for a mere morning. Parents, petrified at the thought of their loved children ill equipped in a society that has no Centrelink, end up strongly projecting those intense fears on already stressed kids.

Frustratingly, these tragedies are not only driven by justifiably neurotic parents and elite colleges conducting ‘branding exercises’ but by the reality of sheer numbers mismatched by finite seats.

Delhi University has 54,000 seats with over 125,000 applicants. “It is a grave crisis that we need to look into. At least six more DU’s are needed in the national capital region to meet the skewed ratio of demand and supply,” said Pillai, The Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Other solutions have been put forward including a much wider program of evening classes in DU’s 70 colleges. This would have been a policy from heaven in my day as our Doordarshan era dance parties were stifled by girls having 4 pm curfews; however, I think, it will leave students with little incentive to graduate within 8 years and there’ll be a need for abnormally large crèches.

All this injustice is good news for Australasian education institutions. In fact it might give impetus to phenomena where the intellectually less fortunate Indian students are the foreign students rather than the cream.

As when Malaysia exercised its prejudice against ethnically Chinese aspiring students, Australian and New Zealand Universities enjoyed, and still do, a windfall.  The continued and strongly increasing prejudice of the Indian Government against her own aspiring students, albeit a universal prejudice, will ensure greater numbers will look abroad.

But what about students who do not come from business families who can afford foreign fees? What about students who don’t come from families that can support perfectly good students that don’t have impossibly perfect scores?

They will have to live in a society that has very little opportunity for a ‘respectable’ position without a graduate qualification. It can be a nightmarish reality to exist in vacuum of opportunity.

Young seventeen year old innocents know this. I feel deeply sad remembering the tears when friends saw their posted results. I remember how the student sitting next to me in an exam who was caught cheating wept and begged with pressed hands to be excused. It was like he was begging for his life. He was.

Twenty years ago few of us would have wanted to work in Asia. Today, few would refuse a good opportunity there. Today’s Asia is the place to be; it’s ‘the happening place’- an ocean of opportunities and challenges where ‘more and more’ is the economic mantra.

Missing out on Asia sounds like missing out on the chance of one’s life!  In comparison, the West feels like a retiree’s homestead in a rustic hamlet where the afternoon tea follows the morning tea and the afternoon siesta turns into a good night’s sleep – an utterly boring routine!

Today’s India leaves one absolutely gobsmacked, not by the progress alone but more so by the shortage of workers! Salaries in India are rising fast and moving overseas is not an appealing option anymore to many. Across India and China, anyone who wants and can do half decent work for half decent pay has multiple job offers – a stark contrast to just four years ago when folks queued up for almost any job!

Recently, most people I met had jumped jobs or were in the process of doing so. Cleaners, plumbers, brick-layers, plasterers, security workers, housemaids, servants, drivers, assistants, accountants, managers, engineers, sales staff, handymen, and their ilk are in perineal short supply. This is a new dawn for Asia, where work exceeds workers despite billions of people already working vigorously.

That India had to allow African workers on some projects is a case in point. A number of high profile Indians have returned to work in India, and they are telling others why Asia offers a better deal.

The inflation of rising Asian markets, it is often argued, is eroding the value of their earnings and the buying power of citizens. The rise in food price, or core inflation, is driving a lot of non-core inflation and mismanagement of food grains in India is the sole reason for that.

However, relative to inflation, India and China have kept their interest rate rises quite modest, and that has been the secret of their economic miracle. The stronger China and India become materially, the stronger their economic engines get. Inflation, deemed a huge economic issue in the west, is just one of the many urgent economic issues in the East.

It is widely accepted that economics is an imperfect science. Nowhere is it truer than in Asia.  Some measure of inflation spoils some things but improves others. For example, high growth rate without high inflation is almost impossible. Also impossible is to satisfy 70 years of pent-up demand across the economy without incurring non-core inflation rises. The emerging Asian giants not understand that inflation and foreign exchange rates are actually double edged swords, they’ve also learnt to use these to their advantage.

An increase in GDP raises export earnings, which is not possible without surplus production of goods and services beyond the pent-up domestic demand. Therefore inflation is but one factor, not the key factor.

Inflation saw many Indian salaries double in 24 months and Chinese salaries are also rising fast – a trend that has led to more buying power despite the inflation. This, coupled with pent-up demand and economy of scale benefits, has allowed for an increased production, some of which is clearly exportable, especially in view of the low exchange rates.

One can call it a new economic experiment in using the inside edge of the inflation sword to promote growth. If I was an economist, I would theorise this new understanding like this: The Western economic model that advocates controlling inflation so that workers’ money buys more goods works on the assumption that there are enough goods. On the other hand if there are not enough goods, pent-up demand leads to inflation anyway. In this case giving more money to workers not only motivates them to work more efficiently, it also results in an increased production. This in turn helps in satiating pent up demand, and creates an export surplus, too. The resulting rise in inflation is more than countered by the increased salaries owing to a better net GDP growth.  This system, which could be termed Eastern economic model, actually puts more non-working people to work!

This ‘growth-despite-the-inflation’ phenomenon has created a huge market for more than a billion workers across India and China. If the world needs more workers, it has to train the rest because the juggernauts of Asian markets will not be halted by inflation. More production and more purchasing power is their quickest path to ultimately controlling inflation. And the world will feel the squeeze of skilled worker scarcity like never before.