What the PPPuck! (Teach Me Some Economics, Please! – Part II)

 

We are truly a chest-thumping nation. Now they say India is the third largest economy! That is in terms of purchase power parity, which basically means comparing countries in terms of how much you have to spend for certain amount of everyday products in each country. So a dollar in India could be worth 10 dollars in the US.

There is this Big Mac index, which basically compares the cost of McDonald’s McChicken in different countries, in local currencies, and decides a country’s PPP by calculating how much McBurgers a country’s gross domestic product can buy. Strange. And we Indians, at least our media, which works 24x7 to boost stock market sentiments, get excited by such comparisons. We won’t allow the sheer number of people we have in the country to come into the picture.

They say it’s not required because we are comparing countries’ wealth, not that of people.

If that’s the case, then why PPP? Let’s go by real exchange rates. Let’s go by one’s affordability anywhere in the world.

And by the way, what if we calculate this PPP on the basis of the price of petrol?

Indians apparently pay much more for petrol than most countries in the world, in real currency conversion rates, not PPP, mind you.

Now, I drive a petrol car. When I see a newspaper that screams petrol prices are up by more than Rs 3 per litre and an advertisement of Jaguar XF Diesel S, an SUV costing about Rs 50 lakh, next to it, I just lose it. I’ll never understand why somebody driving a jaguar be offered subsidized fuel while users of two-wheelers and small cars, who account for most petrol consumption, pay through their noses.

What the PPPuck!

On the road I start seeing things. All those big SUVs going by were now laughing at me. They looked down sarcastically at the guy carrying all his 5-member family on a scooter. The world seems hostile and I feel a victim of injustice sitting in an air-conditioned car. Beggars and rikshaw pullers go out of the picture. It’s a world of diesel cars and petrol vehicles.

There were some suggestions of dual pricing for diesel, to limit subsidies to farmers, commodity transporters and perhaps public transport vehicles. But the finance minister has denied it and oil marketers have said it’s difficult to implement and anyway it’s not worth the pain because private vehicles account for just about 10-15% of total diesel consumption. Fair enough.

But the problem here is, petrol sales could well be less than diesel sale to private vehicles. And by artificially keeping diesel prices much less than petrol, the government is only encouraging people to shift to diesel vehicles. So petrol consumption falls and diesel sales rise. What’s the point? Why increase petrol prices so very often? After all petrol accounted for just about 3% (Rs 5,300 crore out of Rs 121,571 crore losses from oil sales) of the country’s total oil subsidy.

Also, apparently, it’s not that the government is subsidizing diesel, or jet fuel, which also by the way costs more than Rs 10 less than petrol in India, the only country where it happens. Fuel prices are so high because taxes are so high on them. In the case of petrol about 40% of its prices are taxes and duties.

So next time we talk about GST, or common tax rates for goods and services across the country, let’s talk making petrol and diesel, and perhaps jet fuel too, part of it.

Teach Me Some Economics, Please!

I would love to help realize the editor’s call for making our business newspaper accessible to as many people as possible, with simple and clear writing. But, often I don’t get the economics. (Psst! don't tell the editor.)
Economic theories are like god’s commandments. You can’t question them.
But I’m tired of renegotiating my home loan with the bank. It’s some eight years since I took the home loan. And I think they must have increased rates at least 15 times. They never cut benchmark rates. Instead they offer larger discounts to attract new borrowers. Existing customers can avail better discounts through renegotiation, which mostly involves a five-figure fee. I must have availed this five times. Some new guidelines I believe bar banks from offering higher discounts to new customers. So hopefully I will not have to renegotiate my loan rate again. You never know though.
The problem now is the loan rates are only going up. And prices of food and fuel are going up. The learnt tell us that increasing interest rates is the most effective way to stop increase in commodity prices. So when prices go up, the banking regulator prompts an increase in the interest rate of all kinds of loans. But how?
If you can’t afford a product, you can’t afford a loan to fund it too. This will make several buyers not to buy and then sellers will be sitting on a pile of products—they call it inventory—for which there are no buyers. This will force them to reduce prices.
The idea is simple. But it doesn’t seem to be working these days. Over the last 19 months, the Reserve Bank increased interest rates 12 times, yet the inflation rate—or, increase in prices of commodities in one year—is still high, at about 10%. Why?
My sense is that this theory is meant for things like houses, cars and televisions, not for basic and perishable products like food and vegetables. That’s because man can’t do without food, he can put off car and fridge for later.
So when demand for food is higher than supply of food and this pushes up prices, the only way to deal with it is to increase food availability. If you are reducing the demand, that may be through starvation of the poor!
The government should encourage farmers grow more food crops through incentives and cheaper loans. It has made loans costlier.
This has begun to impact production. This has begun to impact sales of cars, houses and garments, which are growing at a slower rate than before. So, food inflation is staying high, while industrial production is slowing.
Now, our government is trying to keep prices down but it wants to ensure overall economic and industrial growth stays intact. So, while increasing interest rates, it also allows companies to borrow more money from overseas at lower rates. This option is however not available for farmers.
So it seems making loans costlier is an extremely ineffective way to fight rising food prices. But then I don’t know much of economics. Many those who do, including our policy makers, apparently believe it is effective and they give a feeling that it’s a tried and tested method.
But I don’t get it. Can somebody help, please?

This is the darkest hour in my life…

This is the darkest hour in my life
There’s no trace of light anywhere
Nothing moves, not even the air

Where has everyone gone?
Where’s the music, where’s the booze?
Is the party over so very soon?

There were a whole lot of us
My crazy family, our cranky friends
We were celebrating the now of our lives

Now I see nothing, hear no sound
I can’t touch myself, can’t smell my sweat
Now is unbearable. Is this the end?

It was great fun, our party
We sang and we danced,
Children with their great grandparents

We laughed over globalization,
Fought over dumb charades
Everyone equal in the power of now

Then one of us stood up,
Raised a toast and collapsed,
Then another, then another…

Perhaps the heavens were jealous
A killer virus felled our champions
Without warning, without mercy

This is the darkest hour in my life
Now fragile and most uncertain
I’m frightened, I can’t live this moment

Is this the end? Has everyone left?
Am I hearing you footsteps,
My love, my love?

moments by borges

Moments
Jorge Luis Borges

If I were able to live my life anew,

In the next I would try to commit more errors.

I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more.

I would be more foolish than I've been,

In fact, I would take few things seriously.

I would be less hygienic.

I would run more risks,

take more vacations,

contemplate more sunsets,

climb more mountains, swim more rivers.

I would go to more places where I've never been,

I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans,

I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.



I was one of those people that lived sensibly

and prolifically each minute of his life;

Of course I had moments of happiness.

If I could go back I would try

to have only good moments.



Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:

only of moments; Don't lose the now.



I was one of those that never

went anywhere without a thermometer,

a hot-water bottle,

an umbrella, and a parachute;

If I could live again, I would travel lighter.



If I could live again,

I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring

and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends.

I would take more cart rides,

contemplate more dawns,

and play with more children,

If I had another life ahead of me.



But already you see, I am 85,

and I know that I am dying.

How much ado about Anna?

Anna Hazare is an unlikely champion for India’s youth. The 74-year-old social activist and Gandhian from Maharashtra recently started a second hunger strike for new anti-corruption authority in the country. It is certainly not the first proposal for an anti-corruption legislative. But this is the first nationwide mass movement against corruption. And perhaps the first time the country’s youth has hit the streets for a national cause.

That’s a good thing. They say 72% of Indian population is below 40 and 47% is below 20. So it’s important the younger lot take some interest in the way things are done in the country.

What looks not so good is the anti-corruption bill that Anna is starving for. Basically, Anna and his allies demand a super cop with powers to police the police and act against every public servant from an office clerk to the prime minister and chief justice.

Why? Because the existing anti-corruption authorities such as the central vigilance commission and departmental vigilance wings lack powers, resources, transparency and, hence, credibility.

Fair enough. There is a need to have a transparent, efficient ombudsman to take actions against the corrupt across all levels within a limited time frame.

But is Jan Lokpal the solution for this? I doubt.

The Anna team’s proposal says Lokpal members will be selected not by politicians, but by “judges, citizen and constitutional authorities”.

Their contention, rightly, is that the government and the political class have become far too corrupt and have lost all credibility, so they cannot be trusted to put the system back in order, not even finding the right people to do it.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it demands people's trust for a new supreme bunch of credible and responsible people.

Now, the law makers, judges and bureaucrats are all bound by oath to be true and fair in their duties. Most of them are not. How different the new super bureaucracy will be?

If people cannot trust the government—or those they can vote out of power—to ensure the bureaucrats and police do their jobs efficiently, or to even find a right ombudsman to do it, then how can they trust a new bench of “judges, citizen and constitutional authorities” to appoint a super, super authority that can take action against the highest democratically appointed authorities?

Who are these people anyway?

Judges one can relate to and perhaps accept as being more truthful and responsible than politicians—although it will extremely tough to convince a common man that K G Balakrishnan is more trustworthy than Manmohan Singh and AB Vajpayee.

Constitutional authorities? OK, at least something that will be clearly defined somewhere.

Citizen? Free for all? Unlikely. Or, some super citizen, like super cops? Apparently, they will be more responsible than you and me and the local legislative member who promised a hospital in your village to convince you to vote for him and perhaps built it. You may not have heard of them before, but you can always Google search: they will be reasonably well known.

Is that what all those people wearing Gandhi topis and waving tricolors all over the place, shouting “Anna, Anna”, crave for? Really?

I would like to think that it would be better to provide or force what they lack to the authorities responsible to ensure transparency and fair play: namely, autonomy, authority, powers and resources. The chances of success, however minuet they may be, will not be any lesser than having a new undemocratic super body.

What is good about Anna is the impact he had on the crowds. His ability to bring people to the streets in millions. Transparency in the whole system and effective implementation of the right to information Act are crucial and need nation-wide mass movement to have a chance to succeed. Anna has initiated it.

Of course, there are all kinds of people in the streets. There are those who have spent their lives fighting corruption and those who try to drive their agendas. There are hooligans and well-wishers, there are those who have come to capture a piece of history and those who have come to make some money or pickpocket. There are office-goers and the jobless, conservatives and liberals, Rightists and Leftists, social workers and sex workers, lovers and beggars, celebrities and the destitute….

There are also the youth, who caught the Anna fever from Facebook or college campuses, and who are having their first encounter with a national movement.

Hopefully, Anna is only a starting point for this new generation to become proactive and clean up the system.

1964 borges

today is jorge luis borges' 112th birthday. he was born on august 24, 1899 and died on june 14, 1986.

here is one of his poems that somewhat reflects my mood sometimes...

"1964"

I shan't be happy anymore. Maybe it doesn't matter.
There are so many other things in the world.
Any instant is more profound
And diverse than the sea. Life is short
And even if the hours are so long,
An obscure wonder awaits us.
Death, that other sea, that other arrow,
That free us from sun, moon
And love. The happiness you gave me
And took away, must be erased.
What was everything must turn into nothing.
Now I only have the joy of being sad.
That vain custom that takes me
To the south, to a certain street, to a certain corner.

dearest thampychayan...

this occasional sinking of spirit
a pointed pain at the centre of my chest
that grows heavy and beats with my heart

your image like flickering candlelight
when i think about you
my eyelids feel heavy and wet

you have been so light and easy
a true liberalist, rising and stooping
to reach levels with people

you laughed into people's heart

and laughed at their business of life,
earning respect and, yes, disrepute

laughing and browsing, drinking

and texting, you, downager, stuck
to the whims of your young heart

you said you couldn't love anyone
as much as your daughters, but, comrade,

you tried with your innumerable 'mols'

if only i could be as selfless,
if only i could kill my ego,

as effortlessly, as part of life

what would you say if you hear this?
you'll find a spoonerism, perhaps
slip into a nap in your chair

if i say you live in our spirits
you'd burst out to add
"in liquid form, cheers".

xxx---xxx---xxx

ps: but, thambichaaya, how will you resist

sharing the secret of afterlife with all of us, seriously?

you are reading half truths

Journalists have become ruthless news hunters, experts in extracting sensational stuff from almost nothing. There is no reporting. It doesn't matter what happened or what somebody meant, all we need is one name, one word, a slight hint that can make something controversial or sensational.

So when accused former telecom minister A Raja says before the court that the then FM said in front of the PM that equity dilution is not the same as disinvestment, it becomes 'Raja says FM, PM knew it all'!

Not just in India. When a report says Samsung has sold anywhere between 18-21 million smart phones in the second quarter, it becomes 'Samsung beats Apple' which has sold 20.4 million smart phones in the quarter. The chances of which is less than one-fourth as only the top band of the estimation is more than iPhone sales.

Why do they do it?

The idea for any newspaper or news channel is to make people read/watch them.

But if you want to know what has happened around the world, then well it seems there's nowhere to go.

Anyways these things don't matter –what raja says and what samsung does – do they? Except that they caught your attention in the morning. That's all it was meant for.

If you want something meaningful, go back to Mark Twain who said a half truth is the most cowardly of lies.

Girl from Argentina

I met Delfina on the last day of her first trip to India. I liked her.

She was lively and friendly, and she was completely at home in the subway coffee shop where we met.

“I will come back to India, I don't know when, but I will; it's so energetic...” She was loud and almost non-stop. Her brown eyes and wildly gesturing hands wouldn't stop while she paused for the right words.

Words didn't matter, not any more. She could have talked in Spanish, or Portuguese, or whatever they speak in her homeland Argentina. I couldn't have missed the unbound excitement of a traveller.

In two months, this young journalist from the other side of the planet travelled across Kerala, Karnataka, Mumbai, Nepal, Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, by train, bus and on foot.

She found Nepal calm and peaceful. But she liked India more for all its noise, chaos and life. “You know what I mean?” I do, I do.

“They sleep on the street, have no drinking water, they don't even wear chappals, but everybody has a mobile phone.”

I can't explain, I resigned.

Delfina smiled and flew home that night.

A Dialogue

Part 1

Don't plead to me with your eyes,
It's futile
I don't see you the girl
I see only you the people

You never let me be
You made me one of us
What wrong did I do to you?
What wrong did my father and brother?

Don't plead to me with your eyes,
It's futile

You grouped us and preyed on us
You killed every individual in us

We moved in herds,
We lived in camps
Our names and faces
Just identity marks

Don't plead to me with your eyes,
It's futile

We are hungry and angry
We pray the same pray
We carry the same grudge
Together we suffer,
Feel the pain of every death

I know you don't know
It's not about you and I
It's about you and us

Don't plead to me with your eyes,
It's futile.

------------

Part 2

All I see in your eyes are ghosts
And I'm not scared

Don't stare at me, gunhead,
It's just flesh, earthly fun
You don't play, do you?
Masters of your soul won't let you

How did you lose it, my brother,
And let them take you over?

All I see in your eyes are ghosts
And I'm not scared

You and your masters
And your enemies, you fools,
Fight for power and space
In your small little world!

Look at us, our world
Made of fancy and fantasy
We have infinite power,
We have infinite space
(Dora is more fun
Than Norah next door)

All I see in your eyes are ghosts
And I'm not scared

Blink just once,
You won't, I know,
To shatter your illusions
And live in the moment

You want my head? Take it.
I have outgrown my body
And your dirty immaterial world

All I see in your eyes are ghosts
And I'm not scared.

---------

Note: I had two teenagers in mind - a terrorist and a metropolitan.

Encore, Joshua Bell live at Metro

Published in ET on April 29, 2010 (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5870831.cms)

Rishi V K

Three years ago, Joshua Bell, one of the best classical musicians in the world, walked into a busy Washington metro subway station in jeans, T-shirt and a baseball cap and started playing his violin just like any street musician.

In the next 45 minutes Bell performed some of the best compositions ever written. Free for all.

Yet, there was hardly any listener.

More than a thousand people passed by and just seven stopped to give him an ear. And only one person identified Bell who collected $32.17 for the performance. Just three days earlier he had full-house show at Boston Symphony Hall where a decent seat went for $100.

The metro stunt when some of the best music fell on nobody’s ear was initiated by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten who used it to join the classic debate on beauty and highlight the frenetic pace of modern life. He got a Pulitzer for his article.

It could have happened anywhere. The response would not have been much different in Delhi or Mumbai. In fact, almost 20 years before Bell’s metro performance, rock star Bruce Springsteen once joined a street musician in Copenhagen to play a song. Not many people noticed him, either.

How come? It’s not that people are not interested in music. Some of those who passed by, completely ignoring Bell, may have been his fans. The US is after all the largest market for music, be it classical, rock, rap or live performance.

Yet, that day the superstar violinist was royally ignored. It’s not just life at the speed of light. People were busy, but they were in a hurry. In the video – it’s there on YouTube and Washington Post website — one can see many people strolling by without even noticing the musician.

In fact, there was a fairly long queue before a lottery machine in the station. People had to wait five to ten minutes for their turn. It might have been the most inactive 10 minutes of their day, yet nobody in the queue had time for a street musician. So what if he lends his soul to his music, they would rather listen to Joshua Bell in their iPod! Or, talk on their phone or chew on their nails.

Everybody was preoccupied. More in thoughts than in action. With the business of their lives; with hundreds of small and big tensions that make up their lives. From meeting an official deadline to picking up child from day care to booking a holiday to whatever, everybody is engrossed in their private tensions, their private lives, their private worlds.

Joshua Bell was alone in public world. And his music — loud and clear and beautiful — was there for everybody, to share and enjoy. Yet, very few got it.

The problem is with the system. It forces people to be on their own, to fend for themselves. It encourages selfishness and calls it competitiveness. It forces people to scramble for their lives and calls it fair play. The challenge is to amass maximum wealth.

Nobody is spared. Everybody is in a Formula One car, racing with everybody else. You are either a winner or a loser. Either way, you are alone, in your private, air-tight world.

It’s inhuman, yet this lifestyle was the most sought-after; at least then.

It was 2007, before the financial crisis rocked the world. Every country wanted to be the United States. Every people aspired for the American way of life — a lifestyle then president George Bush would not yet compromise.

And those people who walked through some of the best music with their ears shut are supposed to be among the luckiest, living the rest-of-the-world’s dream.

What is it that makes capitalism at the same time inhuman and romanticised? Why it is not challenged? Where are the world’s social philosophers? Are they talking alternatives? Why are their voices subdued?

Capitalism may or may not be the best system. But it is effective. And it’s selfish, like its successful practitioners.

Any person or idea that challenges it is labelled ‘communist’ or ‘loser’ or ‘unrealistic’ or whatever. These labels are assigned a negative connotation — a no-no zone for the smart and the hep.

Things could be changing though, however slightly. After the global crisis that felled once-deemed-invisible institutions such as Lehman Brothers and General Motors and forced a change in the American gas-guzzler way of life, there are more talks and action on sustainable growth, clean technology and regulated markets. They point to a less selfish, more human system.

There is no evidence that these changes and the saner voice of President Barack Obama have made Americans slow down a bit and keep their eyes and ears more open to the world around.

Perhaps it’s time Joshua Bell repeated his metro performance.

ends

Work for Microsoft, fly to South Africa…online frauds show the moon to steal pennies

An edited version of this was published in The Economic Times on May 22 (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Protect-yourself-from-fake-online-job-offers-and-lotteries/articleshow/5960181.cms)

Rajiv Singh & Rishi V K
New Delhi

Dear Sunil C,
Virgin Atlantic is pleased to offer you a job in London. You will get a salary of 6,900 pounds per month plus family accommodation, free education for children, a brand new Toyota Camry, 15 days leave after every 90 working days and free flight tickets. To accept the offer, send a copy of your passport along with a demand draft of 1,000 pounds towards visa processing fee to Virgin.
Sender: Dr Williams Carter Lee, HR department, Virgin Atlantic London Extension. Email: virginatlantic@london.com, virgincareer@london.com

Sunil (name changed), a 38-year-old chartered accountant in Delhi, pinched himself before calling out to his wife Sonia.

A monthly salary of Rs 4.7 lakh! That’s more than four times what his current employer, a private internet firm, pays Sunil. That too, without even a telephonic interview, based on his profile at a placement portal.

It was April, but not the fool’s day.

Sunil checked out the UK airline’s website. He noted that the address, www.virgin-atlantic.com, was different from where the email had come from. Sure enough, the company's career site had a warning against job offer emails.

"It was embarrassing; Sonia had already broken the news to my parents and some friends before I realised it was a scam," says Sunil.

His offer had come from an online money laundering racket. One of many.

Such frauds are on the rise as they find easy preys to bogus job and lottery offers in a world where greed is inseparable from need.

Thousands of racketeers across the world are sending mails and calling up people on various pretexts to extract money and personal details such as credit card numbers and banking passwords and plunder crores of rupees.

Their attacks have intensified recently, fuelled by the growing use of internet and mobile phone as well as the general desperation of a global downturn that left millions jobless, mostly in the West.

In 2009, they are estimated to have duped 11.1 million Americans — almost 5% of its adult population — of $54 billion through bogus offers and identity theft, forcing regulators, banks and other institutions to spruce up the defence through warnings, denials, security alerts and most importantly mass awareness drives.

“The situation is really bad,” says Alpana Killawala, spokeswoman of the Reserve Bank of India.

The central bank will soon launch a television, print and internet campaign in 13 languages to spread awareness among people about such scams, she says. “We are in talks with TV channels for the slots and the campaign will be aired soon.”

It already runs a continuous ticker on its website, www.rbi.org.in, cautioning people of fictitious offers, lottery winnings and cheap fund offers.


Stealing You Softly

In this Age of Information, thieves don’t steal you at gunpoint; they make you happily give away money or key details of your bank account and credit card.

These scamsters are populated across the world, working in groups or on their own, creating websites and email addresses such as adidas@adidas.org that sounds official addresses of established institutions and shooting off job and lottery offers. Or, creating fictitious accounts and sending spam mails saying the recipient is the chosen one to inherit the assets of a millionaire with no family. Or, just calling up people pretending to be a bank executive calling to verify their personal details such as date of birth, address, internet banking password...

Around the same time as Sunil got his not-even-once-in-a-lifetime offer from Virgin Atlantic, Manish P, a software engineer working with a Delhi-based small company, got a much more believable email purportedly from Korean electronics maker Sansui Technologies India.

It was an invitation for the final interview for a Rs 2.5 lakh-plus job. He had to pay Rs 6,050 as surety before the company send him flight tickets and hotel booking details to attend the interview in New Delhi on May 14. (Imagine a Delhi-Delhi flight ticket.) The money was to be deposited in favour of Mr Ajay Kumar Gupta at Shivalik Mercantile Bank A/C no 169810100006001 latest by May 5.

Manish did not do it. Neither did Mike K, another software engineer working in Delhi, who received a similarly worded offer from Intex India. In this case, the surety amount of Rs 5,250 was to be deposited at EDC (Ernakulam District Cooperative) Bank A/C no 2489734535646 by April 7.

They were smart enough to check if the mail was genuine. After all, these companies were only a local call away for these Delhiites.

Suveer Kumar Gupta, CEO of Saharanpur (UP)-based Shivalik Mercantile Bank, denied any money transfer from the bank. “This email (fake job offer mail) is misusing our name and is detrimental to our good image and reputation,” he told ET. “We have already lodged a complaint with The Additional Commissioner of Police, Cyber Crimes Division, New Delhi," he added.

When contacted, C Bhanu, general manager of the Kochi-based bank, expressed shock that his bank is used by online frauds. “We are not at all aware of such incidents. It's shocking,” he said. “We will get the information published in newspapers so that people may become aware of such frauds,” he said.

Mr Gupta too said his bank is trying to spread awareness among customers to prevent any misuse.

Experts say these fraudsters use small banks to run such scams because it's easy for them to evade detection. “Most of the small banks in India don't have sufficient mechanism and technical knowhow to detect frauds of such scale,” says Mahesh Singh, a Delhi-based cyber crime analyst. “So, they become easy target.”

Also, it is easier to open and close accounts in smaller banks, experts say. Fly-by-night accounts. In fact, by the time ET contacted Shivalik Mercantile Bank and EDC Bank, the said accounts did not exist.

These fraudsters appear so genuine. They can issue certificates, letters and circulars on letterheads that look like that of the Reserve Bank of India or any other organisation, duly signed by senior officials, to make such offers look genuine. They provide telephone numbers and e-mail IDs that look genuine.

While multinational rackets mostly take bigger bets with big-dollar job offers and migration, smaller players are content with TV coupons and gift processing or shipping fee.

With the use of mobile phones spreading much faster than the use of the Internet, many fraudsters now reach their victims through the phone.


Easy Preys

An ET journalist recently got a missed call from a Pakistan number. When he returned the call, one Arjun Singh told him that he had won Rs 15 lakh lottery from Airtel, his mobile operator. Singh claimed he was at Airtel office in Mumbai, but hung up when asked why his Mumbai number carries Pakistan country code.

And there are those who call up behalf of banks and other service providers to “verify” your credit card, account and contact details. Only to steal your identity and money.

In the last two years, India lost more than Rs 115 crore to online banking frauds and the number of cases more than doubled last year, minister of state for finance Namo Narain Meena told the Rajya Sabha last week.

Many Indians are also falling for international lottery scams. The Reserve Bank of India has clarified several times that the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, prohibits sending money abroad for securing price money and awards or to participate in lottery and money circulation schemes. Yet, many people break the law, only to be cheated.

“When it comes to interacting safely online, the awareness level of Indian Web users is dramatically low,” says Rajiv Chadha, vice president of internet security service provider VeriSign.

Nine out of every 10 internet users in the country have experienced cyber threats, he says quoting a recent study commissioned by VeriSign. Yet, 83% of the people do not check if a website is genuine.

It’s this lack of awareness that helps the new-age goons expose the virtual reality that the cyber police is.

Lawmakers have yet to find ways to police the countless labyrinths of the cyber world.

“At present, the law is a toothless tiger against emerging cyber threats,” says Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate and cyber law expert.

In India, the IT Act does not even cover such scams; they are considered cheating offence under the Indian Penal Code, which is bailable and easy to get away, he says.

More developed countries have stronger cyber laws, but they are unable to check such scams because racketeers can operate virtually from any part of the world.

As many as 11.1 million adults in the US lost $54 billion through identity theft last year, according to a recent study by Javelin Strategy & Research, an independent provider of research focused exclusively on financial services.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, recently said cybercrime is the third-highest priority for the intelligence agency after terrorism and counterintelligence.

The US Federal Trade Commission recently launched ‘Opeartion Bottom Dollar’ and the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce last month ran a weeklong campaign, Online Offensive — Fighting Fraud Online.

Private companies such as mobile firms, banks and security service providers too are trying to alert their users against such scams through advertisements, messages and webpage postings.

While most companies have posted warning messages on their websites, very few are taking any initiative to combat the fraudsters and take them to the law. They leave it to the victims.

"If a member of the public has fallen victim to these sort of issues (bogus offers on behalf of the company) then we would advise them to report the matter to their local law enforcement authority," says Katie Francis, interim press officer at Virgin Atlantic Airways.

Cyber security experts say there is no way companies can go after scamsters because there is no end to it. Anybody can potentially run such a racket from any corner of the world.

So, it requires international cooperation to take them on. But, so far, there is no major international initiative to counter online fraud except for a European Commission (EC) plan to form an EU agency to tackle cybercrime.


Wake Up Call

While the stout bureaucrats take their own time to build a cyber defence, the agile scamsters have backed their superior technical knowhow with sharp marketing skills to create a deadly mix. They don’t miss out on big events.

Right now, they are feasting on the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup football championship with offers of prizes, free tickets and stay for the biggest event of the world’s most popular game.

With the kickoff less than a month away, thousands of e-mails and phone messages are crowding inboxes, informing recipients that they have won substantial sums as lottery awarded by world soccer governing body FIFA and South Africa’s World Cup Local Organising Committee (LOC), or brands associated with the tournament such as German sports goods maker Adidas.

FIFA has issued several media releases, starting from back in 2005, disowning such mails and messages. Adidas website carries a warning that it has nothing to do with adidas.org. "The Adidas Group would like to warn consumers that emails from adidas@adidas.org claiming that the recipient has won US$800,000 are fake," it reads.

They lure their victims with various offers, from jobs to free tickets for FIFA World Cup Football, and urge them to send visa charges or processing fees that could be anything from TV recharge coupons to tens of dollars in foreign exchange.

While multinational rackets mostly take bigger bets with big-dollar job offers and migration, smaller players are content with TV coupons and gift processing or shipping fee.

It is easy to fall for their tricks. Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, some months back admitted that he was one click away from sending his bank account information to phishers.

The only way to check them is to be alert. At an individual level.

“Remember, there are no free lunches. Do not believe in any unbelievable offer,” says Mr Duggal. "Any law comes into play only after the crime has been committed. So, the best thing to do is to exercise due diligence and caution."

Banks, mobile operators, job portals and other institutions such as ICICI Bank, Airtel and TimesJobs.com alert people against such scams through messages, media campaigns and sometimes through timely interventions.

The ET journalist earlier mentioned got a message from the phone operator warning against calling unknown number and sharing personal details, within hours of calling up the Pakistan number.

Yet, while almost every company is screaming caution, nobody seems to be listening.

According to VeriSign’s Rajiv Chadha, more than 60% of the internet users in India access the Web at least 4-6 times a week and many of them are using it for shopping and banking. But only 9% of the users are aware of visual cues such as the green address bar that signifies it is a secure site, according to the VeriSign survey conducted by IMRB among 5,000 Internet users across 10 cities in 2009.

It’s time to wake up.

"As long as you are alert, you can't be duped. It's only when you drop your caution and give in to the 'incredible' offer of the fraudster that the problem starts," says Vivek Madhukar, VP, TimesJobs.com, a job search site of the Times of India group.

ends

Sex in God's Own Country

(Published in The Economic Times on Jan 14, 2010)

The recent arrest of a local politician for alleged immoral trafficking has catapulted into one of the most talked-about events in Kerala. The person, Rajmohan Unnithan, a member of All India Congress Committee (AICC), has been suspended from his party and barred from travelling outside Kerala by a local court since his arrest in the night of December 20.

Sounds pretty normal. What is not normal is the way this small-time Malayalam film actor was taken into police custody and charged with such a serious offence.

According to various media reports, local activists of DYFI, the youth wing of ruling CPI-M, and the People’s Democratic Party of Abdul Nasser Madani, broke into a house at Manjeri in Malappuram district to find Unnithan was with a woman. They accused the two grown-ups of immoral activity, took their photographs and held public hearing for hours before handling them over to the police.

Unnithan and his 32-year-old female companion, a former Congress Sewa Dal member, were subjected to medical tests and had to spend a night in the police station before being granted bail by the Manjeri first class judicial magistrate the next day.

All this for being in the same house?!

Since that day, Unnithan has been using all his time, energy and oratory skills to explain he was set up and that he had no sexual relationship with the woman in question.

Most commentators, bloggers and public at large are debating what the two grown-ups were doing in the house and trying to guess what comment from this otherwise small fry in politics may have led to such a trap.

(Unnithan is known for his sharp and often nasty remarks. For example, when Congress invited K Karunakaran to rejoin the party, this is how he explained why the former chief minister’s son Muraleedharan was not invited: “Vada comes free with masala dosa in Udupi hotels, you don’t need to order separately.”)

His own party, Congress, has ordered a probe into the incident.

Very few people in the state have come out to say the real issue was about violation of privacy and that consensual sex has nothing to do with illegal trafficking. One prominent person who did it, writer Paul Zacharia, has allegedly been roughed up by DYFI activists for doing so.

That’s God’s Own Country. A paradox. It leaves the rest of the country far behind in social indicators such as literacy, healthcare and social awareness, yet Kerala remains one of the most backward places in man-woman relationship.

At the beautiful Varkala beach in south Kerala, Indians are not allowed to bathe in the main beach. It’s kept exclusively for foreigners. There’s no need to argue with the security guards or local police. Just watching how sensitive sun-bathing foreigners are to local stares is good enough.

At Kovalam’s famed Hawah Beach too, it’s hard to spot brown skin in a sea of bare-bodied sunbathers.

That may sound like conservative, hinterland India. But Kerala is progressive. It believes in equality. It voted the first democratically elected Communist government into power. It has implemented land reforms. Here, girl children are taken care of, they are well-educated, confident and most of them work for a living, many outside the state.

Yet, here, even young husbands and wives are reluctant to share the same seat in local buses and college boys and girls seem reluctant to mingle with each other outside campuses. It’s next to impossible to find a local woman in a bar or see a woman travel alone after sunset.

Despite all its progressive claims and the ability of its people to adapt to different conditions around the world — it’s said that there are more Malayalis outside the state than within — Kerala remains a male-dominated society that’s caught in a moral backwardness. Only exceptions could be among the youth in cities like Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.

Here, only man is human. He errs. He drinks and robs, and sometimes kills. But woman is beyond all that. She’s a goddess, or furniture, or a machine. She’s incapable of action. She can’t sin. She can’t live.

Here’s the most Catholic society in the world. It lives in a false morality that stands between man and woman, increasing their distance and distrust, and turning people into perverts. There are numerous sex scandals and cases of gang-rapes. Yet, everybody is moral policing. Sex is a sin in the God’s Own Country.

Soccer Mom

(Published in The Economic Times on Dec 28, 2009)

It’s a winter evening. There’s a chill in the air. The big orange sun has packed up its rays and is set to disappear beyond the metro station on the other side of the small playground. Little Soham is not aware and not bothered. His eyes are fixed on another big orange ball as he starts warming up his legs with nimble steps, his body bent forward, fists clinched, his loose red shorts barely visible under an oversized white jersey. So are the other 25-30 pairs of eyes on the playground as his playmates chant “Soham, Soham, Soham…”.

The lanky Nigerian coach whistles. Little Soham runs in. His thin, fragile legs moving in perfect tandem; no slowing down, no last minute adjustment, he goes through the shot as fluently as Lionel Messi. The goalkeeper, double his size and age, jumps and pushes the ball over the crossbar. Soham’s tiny hands rush to his head in complete dejection as the crowd sighs “ooh”. Nobody notices a metro train, a new attraction in this part of the city, passing by or the sun vanishing or even the small mount of mosquitoes above their heads. Even the goalkeeper looks sorry.

Little Soham, three feet tall and five years old, is a football prodigy. He started playing the game when he was three-and-half and spends more than eight hours everyday on football, on the field or practising in the living room or watching European club matches on TV. He can already do tricks that most of his elder playmates can’t, and is easily the star on this ground.

“If he had scored he would have gone sliding,” says Anju Abbott with a wide grin that bares her gums. She is all excited about Soham. Everybody else is equally excited about Anju.

That’s because, if Soham or any other of the close to 50 children getting trained here goes on to become professional footballers, this slender unassuming housewife will be one of the first persons they would remember.

Anju is the one that gave Delhi’s Mayur Vihar its first soccer coaching centre where two Nigerian professional footballers are taking turns to teach the basics of the game to these children.

Most people living in this populous middle class area in East Delhi may not even suspect the existence of any such thing.

“I came to know about it from Soham’s aunt Neeti Rajeev, who is a friend of Anju,” says Naveen Varshneya, Soham’s father, who is determined to help his only son become a footballer if his craze for the beautiful game stays alive. But Naveen just can’t imagine what he would have done if the ‘Black Tigers Soccer Club’ was not there in the neighbourhood.

Most parents who send their children to Black Tigers, which is still waiting for the Delhi Soccer Association to register its name, would not have considered giving soccer training to their wards if not for Anju.

So how come a woman who herself never played football initiate a coaching centre? “Sports was always my passion,” she says, adjusting the hood of her maroon pullover before running away to kick back a ball to the play area.

She is hyper-active, clapping and cheering kids, taking part in the drill, showing kids how to do this and that, never sitting or leaning or even relaxing as she talks in short spurts. Clearly, she is a natural athlete.

Yet, Anju never became a professional sportswoman, mainly because her parents wouldn’t allow her to pursue sports after school. She used to take part in every sports event in her neighbourhood school in Karol Bagh, where she grew up as the third and youngest child of a middle class businessman.

“Nobody gave me any encouragement, but somehow I managed to keep up with my jogging and yoga,” says Anju.

All that changed with her marriage to Sandeep Abbott, a chartered accountant who runs his own business of sales promotion and who happened to share her passion for sports. “We started going for swimming and jogging together,” she says.

Her tryst with football, however, started as a mother. Some five years ago, Anju and Sandeep’s only son Pushkin, then seven years old, fell in love with his football and wanted proper coaching.

The Abbotts were keen to fulfill his wishes, but realised that there was no soccer training facility anywhere nearby. Cricket was the only popular sport. “We tried to persuade him to learn cricket but he said nothing doing,” says Anju.

For the next two years or so, Anju and Pushkin spent a lot of their time in autos and buses, first going to Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in Delhi and then to the Noida stadium in Uttar Pradesh.

“Everyday we would go at around 3.30 as soon as he came back from school and by the time we reached home, it would be 9 in the night. But we never missed a session.” While her son trained, Anju would jog.

The shift to Noida after about a year in the Delhi stadium improved timings slightly, but the Abbotts were not satisfied with the facilities or the sessions.

Then one day, they met a couple of Nigerian players who had come to the stadium to play a game for a local club. The Abbotts found them good and asked them if they could coach Pushkin.

A series of meetings followed, covering everything from immigration status to fees and a deal was struck. The two Nigerians — Decka and Kalechi — would take turns to train the boy for 2-3 hours at a nearby ground five days a week.

Their search for a ground led them to a ghost of a playground with overgrown grass, weeds and trash on uneven surface facing the new Samachar Metro Station. The Abbotts spent their own money to clean and level the field, lay grass, repair the goalposts and the pipeline to water the ground. The field was ready in a couple of weeks and training started.

That was three years ago. Within 10 days, a group of children approached the coaches wanting to join them. “We were not very keen at first, but then we thought we should. After all, we had a lot of difficulties ourselves,” says Anju, who also enjoys cooking and reading.

Today, there are about 50 young members aged between 5 and 16 in the Black Tigers club, which has already won several trophies in various under 16, under 10 and under 7 tournaments. George and Daniel, also Nigerians, have taken over as coaches as Decka and Kalechi have returned to their homeland. “All these guys are very committed and on most days parents have to tell them ‘let’s pack up for the day’,” says Anju.

Her own drive is stronger though, and drill tougher. She gets the park maintained and watered and runs to the Delhi Development Authority for sanctions for everything, besides supervising the training. “Black Tiger is a story of social entrepreneurship by a woman who is a true mentor and her efforts are paying off,” says Naveen Varshneya.

The club charges small contributions from the parents every month, but the Abbotts have no plans to make it a profitable business venture. At least not yet.

“No other feeling can match the satisfaction we get after playing with these kids for three hours,” she says, adding that Sandeep joins them every Sunday.

“There’s a lot more that needs to be done in terms of facilities,” says Anju about future plans. But she has no set targets or fixed plans. After all, for Black Tigers, nothing was planned. Everything just fell into place.

“This was not a dream. Some things we get without any dream,” she says, while greeting Naveen with a wide grin and a hand wave.

It’s almost dark and yet Soham is angry that his father has arrived to take him home. “Not now, not now,” cries the little striker, who is sporting a pair of extra-small boots specially made in Jalandhar and procured at no extra cost by a local sports goods shop owner overwhelmed by the boy’s passion. He doesn’t want to meet new people and shake hands. All he wants is his father’s nod to play on. Once he gets it, he rushes back to his coach and playmates.

“He is only concerned about the ball and the goal, nothing else matters,” says Anju, baring her gums and her bundle of energy and passion.

Indian mobile model

tell me, sir, what do you talk about when you talk about indian telecom model crying to go out?
i mean, i don't understand what bharti airtel's failed attempt to take over mtn of south africa had to do with that, sir.
but, sir, can't indian telecom model go out without airtel buying into mtn, or, for that matter, any indian company buying into any foreign company?
why, sir, aren't vodafone essar and tata docomo too following the so-called indian telecom model?
doesn't that mean vodafone and docomo have access to the secret of indian telecom, sir?
why can't they replicate the model somewhere else, tell me, sir.
if they can't, for whatever reason, what makes you believe bharti can?
tell me, sir.
god will save you, sir. god will save the deal, sir.
please, sir. please tell me, sir.

hi nabokov

oh vladimir nabokov! i can't believe you got it wrong! how could you? perhaps because you never saw the world from outside, outside of both communism and capitalism, outside of the unites states and soviet union, outside of black and white. poor you, perhaps you never had an idea what globalisation is or would be. there was no concept of globalisation then, were there?

anyways, you know what, you great man, your worst fear about communism -- that it will create a flat world without the mountains and the valleys, without oceans and rivers, perhaps a flat water world (sorry, i don't know how exactly you imagined it) -- is coming true but not because of communism -- it's as good as dead, that most logical philosophy -- but through globalisation.

can't comprehend? just take a world tour. you'll find the same people everywhere, buying and selling the same stuff, demanding the same comforts, providing the same facilities. we're all now global consumers and we all demand global standards -- the best services, the best roads, the best accommodation, the best food, the best wine...

those who have them are developed, those who are building them are developing, and those who doesn't have them and are not building them are out of the global map.

any question?

My Right To Scoot

It’s a tough decision, to vote. Despite all the eye-catching campaigns by well-meaning social organisations, despite a new-found willingness at a personal level to own up to all the political mess in the country, despite the anger, despite the frustration, despite everything, there’s nothing to vote for. Really.

Everybody knows that. One of the TV campaigns in fact urges viewers to vote not for, but against, this and that. Our national leaders – a breed that’s in real danger of extinction – too give us ample reasons why we should not vote for their rivals. Somebody is a puppet, somebody is a traitor, somebody is a liar. And everybody is too old and too mean and too bloody full of each other to do anything for the country.

After winning the race for Satyam Computer Services by valuing the IT outsourcing company some Rs 700 crore more than the second-highest bidder, TechMahindra chairman Anand Mahindra said, “The best runner runs the race without looking behind.” It’s clear that there are no good runners in the political race for the central government.

As you sit in front of the TV, your right thumb constantly working on the remote, watching who you thought were the most respectable leaders in the country accusing each other of this and that and everything in different poses and backgrounds on different channels, resembling quarrelling fisherwomen in the noisy fish market in the coastal town that’s your home, as you see excited supporters burning effigies and pelting stones, and as you wrestle with newspaper sheets full of charges and counter-charges, somewhere it strikes, it strikes very strong, that nobody is worth your vote. Nobody.

Conversation on the beach

“What is USA? A lot of people say it’s the land of opportunities. An old Chilean poet said it’s where liberty is a statue. I say it’s the land of the next revolution,” said Babaji, his eyes fixed on the magnificently painted sky of a sunset sea. Punditji gave a big grin as he watched his oldest friend lick his lips wet and adjust his frameless, round glasses as sounds of waves hitting the shores and children playing on the beach filled the salty air. Babaji’s unkempt, shaggy hair and overgrown beard stood out around him like a halo, shining in the golden sun, making him look like a prophet and a mad man. He was both. He prophesied mad things. “I am not joking, darling,” said Babaji, now conscious about his childhood friend’s gaze.

“Balls,” said Punditji in his husky voice, without hurry, his unblinking eyes slowly soaking up all the details of the spectacle around, like a movie camera. He touched his crotch, slightly bending his knees, and then caressed his clean-shaven, meaty cheek with his right hand, now scratched his chin, his mouth half open, his big, round, almost-barren head tilted to the left. The two friends were a study in contrast. Babaji shabby, lean and wild, and Punditji groomed, clean and round. “Bugger, you can never get these crazy ideas out of your head. Jeez, this Obama mania is so strong in India! Listen to me, buddy, Obama is not going to change anything, he is more white than white,” said Punditji who spent three years studying in the USA and is now settled in Canada.

“Darling, you are not getting me. Forget Obama. He’s just an accident. I am talking about the end of capitalism,” Babaji said, stroking his wild beard like a wise man, squinting at his friend. “Balls,” said Punditji again, feeling his crotch again, bending his knees again, feeling his cheek again, now scratching the back of his head of tightly cropped black-and-white hair. He stared hard at his right hand, now held in front of him, as if he’s reading his own palm, and grimaced almost like a smile: “You bloody, this is the typical commie mindset! What the heck do you think? That this economic recession will turn the world on its head? Forget it darling, nothing will change. I am telling you nothing will change.”

Babaji too was studying his friend’s hand closely as he listened hard. He smiled as if he knew what was coming. Then he dug out a beedi and a matchbox from different pockets of his kurta and jeans. Still smiling, he turned his face to a side and held his trembling hands like a fort as he successfully lit the beedi in his first attempt. He took a deep drag, staring straight into the sea.

Waves are now stronger and considerably louder. The sun was now a huge orange ball of a lampshade. Grownups, seated for long eating masala nuts from conical paper packs, had started getting up and egging their children playing in the waves to get back. Women pulled the lose end of their saris around them and tucked it under their skirts or made several loops of their dupattas round their necks and tied their hair tighter to deal with the strong wind. Men in dhotis were having a much tougher time. Behind them, beyond the wide golden sand beach, thousands of coconut trees lined up as a green wall that protected the majestic lighthouse. Noisy crows were trying to perch on swaying coconut trees. Tens of fishermen’s boats were coming back from the deep sea and many bigger boats had started going in for a long, dark night in sea.

“Go ahead, man, go ahead, call it the ravings of a communist, but, whatever you say, capitalism is done. Not for you and me, but for the American,” Babaji paused to take a drag. “You and me and India and China and Cuba may be still chasing the American way of life but America has had it, it’s going through the last stages of market economy.”

As he listened, Punditji laughed out a couple of times in protest and in agreement, shook his head, threw up his arms, grimaced, gestured, made grumbling noises as if he wanted to interrupt. But Babaji kept talking: “Meanwhile, you can go ahead. Get hold of your iPods and PlayStations, have fun at Orkut and shop in Wal-Mart, multiply you money in the stock market, buy luxury sedans and farmhouses with borrowed money, holiday in five-star hotels and private jets. Chase all prodigious pleasures, selfish and sensational. Why not? You deserve it all. We all deserve it.”

He paused again, wet his salty lips, made eye contact with Punditji, but wouldn’t let his friend talk, not yet: “But for how long, darling, how long? Do you think we will enjoy it, generation after generation, forever and ever, without questions, without pangs? You can’t go on, buddy. Nobody can. The Americans are exhausted, or are very close to it. I’m sure. They are a lost generation. They don’t know what to do. They are confused. They are tired of shopping and customised products and services, they want to go beyond Web 0.2 and Second Life. Poor things! ”

Babaji stopped and turned to Punditji. “Imagine! A generation no marketer can please, no inventor can excite! Imagine, darling.” He was extremely intense and was now talking very slow, almost like a poet, like a prophet.

“You bloody bleeding heart!” said Punditji. “But don’t you agree there is an end to material pleasures?” said Babaji.

“Bull, man, bull. In what world are you, bugger? Even if – and that’s a big if – even if there ever is an end to material pleasures, no man is going to reach there. No chance. Not in a lifetime. Not until we crack death and become eternal. Even then, it may take hundreds of years. Thousands perhaps. Because when you get tired of Second Life, you’ll get third life or fourth life or tens of lives, simultaneous criss-crossing. If you find your extra slim mobile phone too bulky you’ll get phones that you can stuff in your ear like cotton. Perhaps use-and-throw phones made of cotton-like material. Well, I am not saying this or that. What I am saying is, the world, or America, is never going to have its fill of...fill off...what’s the word you used?...yeah, fill off prodigious pleasures. Prodigious pleasures! Isn’t that what you said? I like it, prodigious pleasures! It’s time for our own prodigious pleasure for the day.”

Punditji laughed out loud and hugged his friend seated next to him. People were leaving the beach in droves, just like after a houseful movie show, like a procession. Children with balloons and whistles. A couple of guards were whistling aggressively to dissuade the few still playing in the waves. The show was truly over. Now it was a colourless world: grey sky, grey sea, grey sand, grey world. Different hues of grey, dark and light, took over the world as if to remind everybody who cared to see that black and white are the same. Waves were now enormous. Their sound pushed everything else, whistles, crows, cries, mobile phone rings, everything to the background, to a distance, to a rapidly increasing distance. Babaji was playing with sand, his head bent. He would pick a fistful and let it through his fingers slowly into the wind. He would look ahead at sea at every break. He looked at his friend, cleaned his hands, stretched them and started working on his hair. Punditji was sitting cross-legged, looking straight into the sea and, as he talked, at his palms.

“I am telling you, darling, nothing will change. America will remain America. And India and China too will become America. Perhaps the whole world will become America. You think an Obama, or a credit crisis, or Keynes, or depression, anything, can change America? Get all that shit out of your head and listen: Andersen or Keynes, money rules the world. The battle is over, capitalism has won. And money will rule the world,” said Punditji.

Babaji now held a hair band between his lips as he vehemently tried to turn his wild, unkempt hair into a ponytail. Punditji continued reading from his own palm. “Haven’t you yet realised darling,” he looked at Babaji, “that money is God?”

“I mean it, darling. Money is God. Jesus got it wrong, it’s not love, it’s money. Look at people, look at institutions, religions and nations, every group, every category is worshipping money. Everybody. Everybody is sold to money. Everybody is sold to that eternal substitute that can replace and represent anything and everything, like the joker in a pack of cards,” said Punditji.

The world was positively dark by now, the moon was out, on the other side, above the trees. Many stars were out too. Lighthouse had started making its presence felt. Children had gone, crows were settled and sound of the waves ruled the little world around. Only a handful of people hung around, in groups of two and three. Peanut vendors and balloon sellers were packing up to leave. It was still windy. Punditji watched big white waves landing on the shore with a thud, going up and down like the digital display of a system playing a soft number. Babaji was now through with his hair. He stretched his hands and grimaced.

Punditji continued: “Money is the one single strongest idea that man ever came up with: stronger than heaven, stronger than love, it has captured, conquered, stole the imagination of the whole world. No prophet may have yet said it, but, darling, I am telling you, and everybody knows it, money is God. Money Almighty!”

Punditji laughed out loud. Babaji smiled. They sat in silence for some time. They started cleaning their feet and put on their sandals of fine sand dust. They got up and shook off the sand from their clothes. They wiped their hands, Punditji his head too. Babaji adjusted his glasses and pulled out another beedi and lit it. They walked clumsily on fine sand. They crossed onto the narrow, well-lit pathway with stairs that lead to the road through lawns, a garden, deer park and children’s play area that was still crowded and noisy. On the road, people were bargaining hard with adamant autorikshaw drivers while roadside vendors wooed their children with balloons, whistles and other toys.

Babaji and Punditji stared at each other. Then Babaji said, “American revolution.”Punditji retorted, “Money almighty.” “Eff you,” said Babaji. “Eff you,” said Punditji. They laughed out loud and without another word, started walking to the left, towards the heart of the city a good two miles away. These days they seldom walk 2 km at a stretch, but then this is a road they have walked together hundreds of times 20 years ago.

This the small town where they grew up together, the small town they explored together, the place they left separately, to different destinations, within a span of six months some two decades ago. It’s a city now. She too has grown up, like Babaji and Punditji. Cityji! She has a couple of big shopping malls now, perhaps more. She has more movie theatres and 3-star hotels. She has more platforms in the railway station and wider roads. She even has a couple of roundabouts. More shops, more schools, more people, more vehicles, more bars...there must be more whores and robbers too.

But she hasn’t changed much. The heart of the town is still the same. Narrow, congested roads; dirty, potholed streets; noisy, crowded markets and bus stands; the boat jetty; clock tower and public library; golden sand beach and lighthouse; her lakes, her parks, her cemetery and cremation ground, her mosques, temples and churches, cotton mill and cashew factories, they all are there, as before. The bridge which they crossed umpteen times and stood on watching sunset evening after evening, dreaming and blabbering, where they smoked their first cigarette, was still there with all her beauty. Their schools, their colleges are still there, although there is a new women’s hostel in front of their first school in the place of a pond that used to overflow every monsoon. The sky was the same, the stars were the same, same sea, same sun...it smells the same, it feels the same.

They were walking in silence. And they went into a bar in silence. Every time they talked, they talked the same thing. In the bar, in the taxi, next morning on the lakeside at Punditji’s backyard, sitting on rocks with their legs in water, with tens of small fish tingling their feet their kisses, watching birds fly and boats go by, in several bars on the way to the airport, at the airport, all along they had the same exchange and only that.

“American revolution.” “Money almighty.” “Eff you.” “Eff you.”

“Money almighty.” “American revolution.” “Eff you.” “Eff you.”

Several weeks later, while at his newspaper office in the metro thousands of miles away, Babaji received a rare international message on his mobile. It said: “Money Almighty”.

Tower of Babel

An overwhelming pall of gloom, like a thick black cloud of gun smoke, has been hanging over me ever since reports and images of Mumbai being attacked by a handful of gunmen started streaming in from all around. A couple of twenty-somethings in jeans and casuals firing indiscriminately at hundreds of commuters at the monumental Victoria Terminus railway station with AK56 assault rifles and then walking across the streets unchallenged to the nearby Cama hospital to kill more and then again after a bloody shootout coming out to attack the vehicle Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare and his famous lieutenants Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kamte were in, killing all three, and running helter-skelter around the town, first in the police SUV and then in a hijacked Skoda, for two more hours before being brought down by police, one dead and the other alive—shocking and unbelievable—exposes our fragility as a nation, as a people, as individuals. A Times of India photographer managed to photograph these guys, more than once, from different angles, at VT within minutes of the start of the carnage. A single armed police sharpshooter in the vicinity could have easily brought them down then and there. There was none. The attackers knew it.

They knew a whole lot. As I watch again and again Hemant Karkare—the celebrated chief of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) who has been under fire from BJP and other right wing political parties for linking a bomb blast in Malegaon in September to a Hindu terrorist network—putting on a helmet and bulletproof vest for a possible encounter with terrorists, somehow he looks to me more like a person going through the motions before being led to the execution chamber than a fearless soldier eager to get into the war front. All I see in his eyes is a sense of fatality, not excitement. Did he think he was being set up? Was he one of the targets? Or is it just that I was expecting him to be as expressive as a movie star? I don't know. But as I go through the same images and scenes being played out in different news channels I see a gleam in the eyes of the young terrorist on the street and only gloom in the eyes of the champion policeman.

Or, is it? Perhaps, all the gloom is in my eyes, not in Karkare's. For the last couple of days, every time, most of the times, I do something, anything, this thick cloud of smoke comes up and consumes me. I pick up a book to read, but before I start I put it down. I put on my shoes to go for a walk in the morning, and then take them off before tying the lace. I just don't feel like doing anything. I’ve felt it while playing with my kid in the park or talking to my wife on the phone or drinking a cup of tea, in the loo, at work, on the road...it happens anywhere, anytime. My head just gets lost in thick black smoke, in the smell of gun powder, and I am light and floating. Lost in thoughts? I can’t say that because when it happens there’s nothing clear in my head. I don’t know what I am thinking, I don’t know what I am seeing, I just go weightless, out of bounds of any pulling factor, beyond gravity, beyond love, beyond hatred...all I want then is to get out of whatever I am doing, get out of the whole world.

Is it fear? Is it rage? Or is it just sorrow? I am terrorised to see Taj up in flames, the sight of murderers wielding fully loaded assault rifles and grenades ruling perhaps the country's most historic and crowded railway station and familiar streets—streets and platforms I walked almost every day for a month when I was in Mumbai—was frightening. But not to the extent to feel scary about going out or going to Mumbai or walking the same streets and platforms or staying in those hotels. Having a drink at Leopold, a restaurant in Colaba where two terrorists started their shooting spree before going into Taj, is one of the first things I would want to do when I visit Mumbai next. Not to prove any point to anybody, just a natural instinct. And I won’t be afraid. Without being a true believer in God, I believe I ultimately belong to my destiny. I can do things without worrying what will happen next. It’s not fear that’s behind the thick smoke that consumes me every now and then. It's clear.

It is annoying and unsettling to see people being shot down without any reason, to see our policemen running away from terrorists and their duties, to see intelligence agencies and think tanks preoccupied with politics failing to collate information they receive and prepare strategies, to see them blaming each other, to see our best commandos taking days to overpower less than 10 terrorists hauled up in three different buildings. I understand all the outrage around, against insensitive, selfish politicians who never spare a thought for the country and the people, come quake or terror, against widespread corruption that has made our system so fragile. I hate political and religious leaders of the world for promoting separatism and divisions, I hate hardliners who brainwash youngsters without giving them a chance to see the other side. But I am not exactly breathing fire. I've always been aware of the dirty politics of the world. But I can live with that. I am far too convinced that the biggest problem in the world is lack of tolerance. I just can’t let my anger dictate me.

Not terror, not rage. Perhaps it’s plain sorrow causing this thick black smoke, this unbearable lightness. But what am I crying over? I've seen people suffer before. I've watched equally bad if not worst attacks before. I remember being much more agitated during the Gujarat riots. What's different this time? My feeling, my reaction, my numbness. It's like I am mourning the death of someone dear. But there's nobody so close involved. What am I mourning? What am I missing?

Confused, I go back to the TV to see young, daring, highly competent journos fighting like scavengers to capture the miseries all too obvious and visible all around. They throng people just emerging from two full days of sleepless nightmare with cameras and mikes and a flurry of questions that sound, I feel, like gunshots and blasts still echoing in their ears. The media commandos block their ways and vehicles, without enmity, without common sense, full of compassion. And the daring cameramen risk their lives to capture every move of the National Security Guard (NSG) commandos engaged in the rescue mission, and most probably keeping the terrorists inside Taj, Oberoi and Nariman Point aware of what’s happening outside. What grief! I try some cartoon channel, only to get lost in the smoke again.

What is that's paining me so much? I can't even call it a pain, it's beyond that. I don't get the sinking feeling in the chest that sadness usually brings. Not now.

But there is sorrow, I feel it. A deep, unfathomable, indefinable sorrow is swelling in my mind. There’s no doubt. It's not personal. It's not mine. It's the sorrow of the God, if there's one. It's the combined sorrow of all the gods, if there are many. And definitely, it's the sorrow of the human being—the one who's inside both the terrorist and the victim, the politician and the commoner, the Muslim and the Hindu, the rich and the poor. The one who is helplessly watching the human race—perfectly capable of unravelling all the secrets of space and time and existence—staying in a small tower of a world, talking in different tongues and committing hara-kiri in the name of love, revenge, money, family, race, religion, region, sex, sexual behaviour, god, heaven, anything, everything. Only a motley crowd of scientists, explorers, philosophers and meditators ever tried to understand the unquantified, unexplored, universe. They are still there on the terrace, fixing radars and beaming signals, or going around the tower with walkie-talkies and handheld cameras, or sitting at their desk studying and thinking, or going deep into themselves, all trying to capture the bigger picture. No one cares. This crowd is unpopular, apolitical, powerless, negligible and completely forgotten.

It’s always been like that. Nothing has changed. As was then as is now: we do not know what we do. The problem is, we will not be forgiven forever. We, the world, have become far too powerful to survive without tolerance, without love, without understanding the rules of the universe. This tower is filled with firearms and it’s so full of hatred that the whole thing can blow up and collapse in no time. Is this the end? Is this our destiny? Or, will there be a revival, a worldwide revolution, a global awakening? I don't know. I can't say. It's too dark here. It's too full of smoke, this tower.