Blame it on the Boogie

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

A few weeks ago, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was gripped by anticipation. All the illegal gambling dens selling illicit liquor had their radios tuned into a single station. Somewhere deep inside the bowels of the hinterland, dacoit groups sent whichever member of their group owned a nokia asha to the abandoned safehouse which got the best reception. Teevee channels all over the state interrupted their regular programming for this special broadcast. Laptops given to college students by the UP government automatically connected to the internet and opened their browser window to the homepage of the Samajwadi party. After all, the party’s anthem for the next election was about to be released! Then, as the clock struck twelve, the airways all over the state were filled by words extolling the virtues of one Mulayam Singh Yadav set to the tune of Billy Joel’s We didn’t start the fire.

Yes, that’s right. The Samajwadi Party thought using a song with the lyrics We didn’t start the fire was totally appropriate. What happened, was Bob Marley’s I Shot the Sheriff taken? The day they chose this song, irony died in a fire started by a riot in Muzaffarnagar while the police stood on the side, watching the proceedings, doing nothing.  Maybe they confused ‘theme song’ with ‘legal defence?’

Although, to be fair, I think this is a capital idea. Every political party in India should have an official anthem based on a song from the 80’s. Think of the possibilities! The Congress could use Europe’s The Final Countdown as the people of this country count the days until the UPA is sent to the dustbin of history. Nothing describes the BJP’s campaign better than the Aretha Franklin & George Michael duet I Knew You Were Waiting For Me. U2’s I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For seems like it was tailor-made for the AAP. The DMK can hum Whitney Houston’s I Want to Dance With Somebody while looking for somebody, anybody, who will align with them. The BSP should put a small device under Mayawati’s statues which constantly pumps out The Bangles’ hit Walk Like an Egyptian because of their dear leader’s Cleopatra-like obsession with herself. Laloo Prasad Yadav should have used all his free time in the penitentiary learning the lyrics to Michael Jackson’s I Just Can't Stop Loving You while wondering why the RJD still has feelings for the Congress despite being continuously shunned by the latter. Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy seems perfect for Ajit Singh’s political outfit as it is perpetually available for lease to the highest bidder. The TMC should start playing Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth from the loudspeakers they put up next to Calcutta’s many traffic lights so as to remind the people of that city of their luck in being alive during Didi’s glorious reign of peace and prosperity. Nitish Kumar’s version of the Janata Dal should keep Milli Vanilli’s Baby Don't Forget My Number handy in case they change their mind after the election and suddenly find their former ally quite acceptable once again. The left parties should definitely play La Bamba by the Los Lobos at their rallies because just like the current version of the band, they’re a cheap imitation of their former selves. 

One may wonder why the Samajwadi Party is trying to reach out to anyone who isn’t into criminal activity. Well, apparently someone told them that all the young people, at least those who aren’t patrolling the neighbourhood in their party issued standard jeep looking for someone to pick on, are spending all their time on the internets. So they made a website to show people what they’re all about. Which is why the website is low on information and high on proving how the party supremo is god’s greatest gift to the people of Uttar Pradesh. Hey, just because they are against everything that the modern world stands for doesn’t mean that they don’t want to at least give the impression of living in the twenty first century.

It’s not just Mulayam Singh Yadav’s ancient tribal council that wants to keep the past alive. Most of our political parties suffer from the same ailment. They imagine that by having a website or twitter account and letting their leaders take friendly questions from internet users will make them appear like they are Y2K okay. Yet, they don’t realize that no matter what the medium, their message remains the same. Like our page on Facebook to receive updates consisting of the same regressive pabulum we always talk about!

You can’t cover up outdated policies and an incomprehensible worldview with fancy gadgets. Leaders seeped in intolerance, misogyny, homophobia and religious bigotry want us to believe that they are ready to face the challenges of the modern world because of their ability to hire someone who knows what email is. Can’t thinkfluence my vote, bro!

Political parties in India are modern like the Khap Panchayats are acceptable of young love. Political parties in India are modern like Iran is a democracy. Political parties in India are modern like “baba” ramdev is spiritual. No matter how much you try to shine a turd, at the end of the day, it’s still a turd.

If only there was some sort of communication network our political parties could use to find out what people really want.

Let’s get fiscal

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As the budget day approached, the nation got ready to celebrate this non-religious holiday very religiously. Students were assigned essays to be written on why budget day is their favourite holiday. Everyone in the workforce cancelled all their appointments. Restaurants were offering their patrons special deals on drinks and appetizers to induce consumers to do their budget watching with them. Television channels dusted off their annual glimpses-of-various-finance-ministers-showing-off-their-budget-briefcase video. Twitter users were remembering Bengali stereotypes to make terrible Pranab Mukherjee jokes. Economic experts were taking a break from giving a discourse on other issues and concentrating on second guessing the finance minister. A number of think-tanks even came up with alternate budget suggestions, which they released on the day before the budget presentation (because obviously the most important financial document of the world’s fourth largest economy is prepared the same way I used to study for all my exams: by pulling an all-nighter). India was ready to get fiscal.

I was watching news television the whole day so besides breaking into a terrible rash, my only take away from the budget broadcast was that somehow I would have to back-pay all my taxes again, going back to 1962, for some reason. I was so outraged that I joined a Facebook group protesting this blatant power grab. As I was about to sign a strongly worded online petition, I ended up using the ‘Google machine’ and found out that my object of outrage was only a clarification of an old law, something that is not a punch in the face of the constitution but a normal budgetary procedure.

Can you blame me for not cutting the UPA any slack? This government has fucked up so many times the country has fuck-up fatigue. It has less inertia than a 101-year old man pushing his own wheelchair. A government so rudderless it makes a sunken Italian cruise liner seem like it knows where it’s going. A government which meanders from crisis to crisis and yet has the temerity to act like a ‘mean girl’ towards anyone who suggests that they might not be the most awesome thing to happen to the country.

Things are not helped by the fact that our free press- the supposed vanguard of our democracy- has the attention span of a schizophrenic sociopath suffering from attention deficit syndrome. There is no sense of proportion. Even minor governance issues are trotted out as do or die situations. Mid-term elections have been just around the corner ever since this government has been elected. The media is so eager to badly analyze a horse race that they have no qualms in disingenuously engineering a crisis every other week. 

They spend less time vetting the messiahs they force upon us than the amount of time the McCain campaign spent vetting Sarah Palin. Montek Singh Ahluwalia was supposed to be Manmohan Singh 2.0. He was everybody’s dream finance ministerial candidate, until it turned out that he had no idea where to draw the poverty line. Laloo Prasad Yadav was the best Railways minister in the history of the country until reports came out that he was pulling an Enron. Anna Hazare turned out to be less Ben Kingsley in Gandhi and more Ben Kingsley in Sweeny Todd. Rahul Gandhi was India’s ‘youth icon’ until he was unceremoniously dumped for India’s new boyfriend, Akhilesh Yadav.

Now, whatever you do, don’t blame me for being distracted by all these shiny objects. Blame stupid people for doing stupid things and those crass reporters for reporting every non-story as breaking news. The navel was already visible; all I did was gaze at it. Don’t shoot the recipient of the message! In fact, I get so angry at the media for reporting a non-story that I will punish them by continuously watching and/or reading every new non-development update about stories which don’t deserve to be extensively reported on. Don’t tell anyone, but, sometimes, I even go out looking for things to be outraged about. No, no, I don’t have any ulterior motives when I do that! I follow these stories ironically! Do you think I like feeling superior to stupid people? Don’t Simon Cowell me, bro.

A government which refuses to govern. An opposition which is even more incapable. A media which has a shorter attention span than an infant. A people who match the government’s sense of apathy.

At least the captain of the Costa Concordia had the decency to abandon ship.

Fantasy Elections and slick politicians

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

One of the most strangely popular hobbies of sports fans is to participate in a fantasy league. A fantasy league is sort of a fan’s wet dream come true. It gives them the one thing that they think will help their team win the game. If only they could choose the players! Yes, the best judge of a team’s strategy is the guy with a beer belly shouting things at the television who has never played a sport in his life.

Such sentiment is not limited to sports fans, though. There is an amateur pundit in all of us. From the day the last vote in the assembly elections was cast, to the day the counting began, the punditrati was busy playing fantasy elections. The news anchors, political analysts and party spokespeople spent three days holding discussions on hypothetical results. Though no party would accept the fact that they would do as badly as the results predicted, the harsh rhetoric of the past few months had been already forgotten and everybody was in a conciliatory mood. Old tropes were being dusted off and called into service again to sugar-coat any future cynical power grab. Each party was ready to work with their sworn opponent, ‘for the good of the people of the country.’ Ah! We are so lucky to be living in a utopia in which our politicians are so patriotic that they don’t let mere principles stand in their way.

The Congress used this time for a soft launch of ‘Operation Don’t Blame Rahul Gandhi.’ Everyone from Rita Bahugana to the ghost of Arjun Singh went around saying that if the Congress did bad in UP the blame was to solely rest on their shoulders. The BJP took turns giving dubious reasons for the absence of Narendra Modi from the campaign trail to having to explain why having 15 contenders for a single post means that everybody in the party is on the same page.

Then, as the election results came in, alliances were being built in the television studio. As the largest party in all the states staked their claim to form the government with Arnab Goswami, common sense conclusions were being presented as an ‘exclusive’ (BREAKING: Water will quench your thirst. Remember, you heard it here first!). The only narrative anyone was paying attention to was the emergence of Akhilesh Yadav as the new star of Indian politics. Since he is a blank slate in the public imagination, it’s easy to project people’s hopes and aspirations on him. He’s young! He can speak English! He uses an iPad! He caused a tectonic shift in Indian politics as the people of UP rejected a scion of a dynasty for the scion of another dynasty!

However, in six months, everyone will be asking whether Akhilesh is “losing his mojo” when he is unable to clamp down on the law and order problem in UP (because how do you clamp down on the very people whose support you need to stay in power?). And then, in 2014, when some other party gets more seats than the SP in the parliamentary election, everyone will ask whether he was “all hype and no substance.” There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that a government led by Akhilesh will be any different than a government led by his father, but who knows! Maybe Chief Minister Michael Corleone will be the one to take the family business legit. 

It was also hilarious to watch the exberts on twitter dance on the grave of Rahul Gandhi’s political career. Because in India, political careers hinge on one victory or one loss! That is why the career of a young, promising MP called Atal Behari Vajpyee was ended in 1984, when his party was routed in the election. Who knows, maybe he could have gone on to become Prime Minister! And has anybody heard from former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha after she lost two consecutive elections? I bet she is planning to go back to acting in movies right about now.

People forget that Indian politics is like the Hotel California. You can check-out any time you like but you can never leave.