Socialism - Romanticizing Poverty

Often my father and I debate on socialism and its influence on India. Constitution of India defines the Union of India to be a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic. I feel the term ‘socialist’ has no place in this definition as we aren’t one any longer. To me socialism is just a theory and a flawed one at that! It can never succeed in any democratic economy. My father being a ‘Nehruvian’ would beg to differ but I present here a small experiment conducted by a university economics professor in the US, to give a hint of what happens in a socialistic democracy. I am not going to get into the pros and cons of capitalism and socialism and will just present this short experiment.

The professor said that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked as a system and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich--- a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will conduct an experiment on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one would receive an ‘A’.” After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who had studied hard were upset and the students who had studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too and worked less. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. The average in the 3rd test was F. The scores never increased and bickering, blame game and name-calling started resulting in hard feelings. No one wanted to study for the benefit of the other.

Everyone failed, to their great surprise, and the professor then told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

To put it in more formal words I quote the Late Dr. Adrian Rogers; “You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don't multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn't first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don't have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor”.

Socialism as a theory seems great and just, but it is impractical and studded with many flaws. It leads to other evils plaguing our country like reservation etc. I wish to conclude by saying that the greatest injustice a government can do is to treat unequals as equals.

Bangalore vs Hyderabad @ Durban

Rahul Dravid on strike for Bangalore and Ishant Sharma with a shining new white ball; opening the attack for Kolkata. There is a buzz around the ground, the spectators are anxious and here are two youngsters in the crowd playing ‘inky pinky ponky’. Why are you boys doing that? “We don’t know whom to support” comes the answer. Of course, we are in Wanderers, South Africa not in Chinnaswamy or Eden Gardens. This is IPL2, it’s about Shahrukh, Preity, Shilpa; it’s about Buchanan and his idiocracy and finally it is about Lalit Modi and his money spinning affair. Sorry officially it’s a cricket tournament.

Just some things happening in IPL

1. “Even when he is 106, Ganguly will be the captain of KKR”- Shahrukh Khan (owner), 2008

“Mccullam replaces Ganguly as captain of KKR in IPL2” – Headlines, 2009

2. “T20 isnt Gavaskar’s cup of tea, if he wants, let him buy a team and run it the way he wants” –Shahrukh Khan

“ If Gavaskar ‘Saab’ asks me to stand on my head and run the team, I will do it” – Shahrukh Khan a week later.

3. “This year I am going to sleep with all of them”- Shahrukh Khan on how to bring the best out of his players.

4. “ I hope you can spin more”- Shilpa Shetty about RR ‘fast bowler’ Shiddhart Trivedi

And many more such…….

Open ibnlive.com or ndtv.com, you can see Shahrukh, Preity and Shilpa all over the page, either releasing their team’s T-Shirt or dancing in the inaugurals. Then we have the hero of IPL Mr. Modi posing for photographs with Shilpa and Preity on either side. I even read somewhere; next we are going to see him in a Bollywood movie too. This doesn’t complete the picture; we also have two dummies posing. One is the boy friend of Shilpa , Raj Kundra and the other the companion of Prieity, Nes Wadia. What a pretty family picture they make.

So what happened to all the discussions of who is in which team, what will be the strategies’, how are they going to fit in only 4 foreign players (though this year it should be corrected to 4 non-Indian players, even Indian are foreigners in SA) and the hoards of cricketing question we discuss and debate?

I understand why they decided to move the venue, elections is much bigger and going by what we have seen in the first phase (18 people including 5 polling officers killed by Maoist), Chidambaram was right; we do not have enough security personnel to provide security. But, how can you ignore cricket in a cricket tournament. Why has it become a platform for Shahrukh Khan to make a fool of himself? IPL was supposed to rival EPL; it was supposed to be EPL of cricket. I have never heard any team owner speak so much in EPL, in the last 20 years of its existence.

Please stop this tomfoolery and get down to cricketing. I want more of, “I feel BRC made a mistake by making Pieterson the captain, because he is very temperamental and hasn’t proved his worth as a captain”- Geff Boycott before the match, “Sachin Tendulkar dancing down the wicket and has lofted the ball in the air and it goes for a six, what a player what a man”- Tony Grieg during the match and a good panel discussion involving Ravi Shastri, Harsha Bhogle and Ian Chapple discussing why KKR lost the match, at the end.

IPL Zindabad, Bad press Murdabad !!!

Love Letter attacks…..Ram Sena in schools

Love letters have always been a source of trouble. Give a letter to a girl in school, the next day you are in front of the principal explaining your ‘heinous’ act, give it to a girl in college,it's the same scene, only it's the parents or another suitor who is enraged that you dared to give a letter to his future girl friend,that you are faced with. And try giving it to a girl who already likes you, there are chances of her mother finding it in the notes and so on. But the ever problem causing lover letters were written, is written and will be written.


Mention love letters and two instances from my school days come flooding back. When I was in 7th standard there was this classmate who liked a girl in our class.After guarding the secret for a long time he decided to open his heart to her. As you might have guessed he wrote her a love letter, in an Inland postal sheet. If you don’t recollect, it is the one which is blue in color and has two pages. He was well prepared, he had seen a lot of movies and knew exactly what to write and how, he drew a huge heart on one sheet with an arrow piercing through it and on the other sheet he tried to write a poem on his lady love's beauty. I remember some of it and it saidsomething about her blue eyes and long hair, she had neither, and how she looks like the moon ( she was only as pale as one) and all the creative stuff a 12-year-old can think of.
I don’t know if he had the intention of giving it to her or not but that’s when destiny intervened. He had kept it in his book which was accidently seen by Kartik and me. It was too good a chance to miss and we picked it up from there and as soon as the class was over we went to the Xerox shop and made a few copies of it. This we distributed among a few friends. This was the moment of 7th standard for us and some brilliant guy got the idea of pinning it on to the bulletin board which was immediately approved. I couldn’t wait for the next day; I had goose bumps and hurried my father to take me to school early. But from here everything went downhill. First by the time I went to class the girl was already there and was crying and was being pacified by the rest of the girls and all the boys were standing around and looking at her. Still we had a few laughs and congratulated each other, but the tension of where this will lead to started creeping in. Then our Bangarappa made a grand entry and got to know the situation and couldn’t handle the teasing and took his bag and was about to leave when the bell rang and he had to go to the assembly. The girl didn’t come to the assembly and so didn’t half the girls in the class. When we came back, things turned for the worse.
We were welcomed back from the prayers by our class teacher,head mistress and the principle. The boy was asked to stand out and was asked whether he wrote the letter. He didn’t answer, the teacher asked again, he didn’t answer, by the this time the PT master had entered the scene, again he asked the same question,but the guy didn’t answer and then there was a huge sound of a hand making contact with the cheeks. I almost peed in my pants, now we had two people crying. I could understand why the boy was crying, he was embarrassed and moreover he was at the receiving end of one of the most resounding slap (it was even rumored that he lost his hearing capacities because of this), but why was she crying? Later I got to know that getting a love letter was equal to being raped in 7th standard terms. In half an hour her parents were there and his parents were there and there were a whole lot of closed door meetings and after about two hours this boy walked in followed by teachers and his parents, then the girl came with her parents and he was made to apologise to her in front of us and he had to apologies to us, for what I don’t know, then he started crying and then his mother started crying and I suddenly felt really sick in my stomach. Later we came to know he was trashed by the PT master in the principal’s room. Finally this guy failed and left the school and the girl never received another lover letter in her entire life, infact I think if she gets hold of that letter now, she will treasure it for life!


The second incident happened when I was in 10th standard, there was this junior in my school, I forget his name. He gave a letter to his classmate and it ended up with the teacher. As we passed this guy this guy, who was with the teacher and an ‘aaya',we noticed that there was something pinned to his shirt .The teacher had pinned the letter to his back and was parading him throughout the school.The tearful guy stood there while the teacher told everyone what he had done.We had a good laugh, but not before our teacher gave us a sermon about how studies should be our priority and how God won't appreciate acts such as these.

Cutting to the present day, I am reminded of another happening. Ram Sena, the self proclaimed protector of the society trashed a group of partying youngsters in Mangalore because that act was "against our culture". They entered a pub on a Saturday afternoon and ransacked the building and trashed the people inside. They had various reasons, protecting the culture, teaching youngsters the right ways to live, protesting against conversion etc. I am not debating their intent though I strongly oppose it. I am talking about their actions. Even if the youngsters were indulging in activities that were anti-Indian, there is way to handle things and to put your thoughts across. Duly Ram-Sena was attacked by all sections of the society and it became a political issue. We even had a women’s group send Pink-Shorts to them and Ram-Sena sent sarees in return, pink or not I don’t know. I am very happy Ram-Sena was reprimanded and labeled a terrorist organization.


What I fail to understand is how the third incident is different from the first two. You have children,13-15 year old, who are having hormonal changes and who were hit and paraded throughout the school like criminals for writing a letter. They are left scared for life because of this. Once again I am not debating whether it was right or wrong, though personally I see no wrong in expressing your feelings. I am talking about the treatment meted out to these two boys. Why are these teachers any better then Ram-Sena? I even had a teacher who told us that we can’t be taken on a two day excursion because the girls and boys in the class would then mingle freely. No wonder Ram-Sena has its supporters. We are breeding them in our schools. I leave it here for you to think about it and form your conclusions. Personally, when we have teachers like these in our schools no wonder we have Ram-Sena on the Streets.