When big bucks are at stake, shame takes a backseat. This is not the only way to look at the admission of former Wimbledon champion Andre Agassi that he took drugs and proferred lies during his heydays. I do not wish to be mean and suggest that being less newsworthy now than in the past may have made him embrace openness at its shocking best to garner guaranteed attention. Flamboyant and charistmatic in his prime and now deep into charity and public welfare, Agassi deserves a better label than just a publicity-seeking maniac.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deepavali (Or Diwali) is one of the occasions when I miss being In India. The celebrations are sparkling in Singapore, too, but there can be no substitute to being in India to savour the spirit of the festival.

 

To me, Deepavali is one festival that cuts across all religions (Onam is another one), getting all Indians into a genuine mood for fun and celebration.

 

Have a wonderful Deepavali with family and friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, now we know Barack Obama is a Gandhian!! And, judging by reports in India's news portals, Indians are gloating over the Nobel Peace Prize that he has won even as the chemistry win for Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has made them euphoric. Indians love role models, they don't like to be one. We love celebrating the successes of people, which is a good thing as it does show us as a gracious lot who will not hesitate to give others their due.

 

But praise is lavished only on winners, not on potential winners. In fact, potential winners may even be easily brushed aside as Nobel Laureate Hargobind Khurana discovered when he was rejected for a lecturer's job in India. The country lost him to the U.S., and that went on to fetch him a Nobel. It is quite another story that even if he had been offered the job in India, he may still have migrated as those were times when there were not enough facilities for research in the country.

 

Talking of potential winners, I did not realize until yesterday that imaginary or assumed potential successes also can win people Nobel prizes as that appeared to have been the yardstick for giving the American President the honour. It negated the joy over the Nobel that Prof. Ramakrishnan won for Chemistry. It takes a lifetime of research to win that, but here we have a politician who has had it fall on his lap for what the Nobel committee thinks he will achieve in the future. In winning the Nobel, Obama has now joined the likes of Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. The value of a Nobel Peace Prize is indeed eroding step by step. The list of all winners is here -- http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/peace.html 

 

Obama to visit Singapore: That said, there is no reason for Indians to be exuberant over Obama. "The America of today has its roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi," Obama is reported to have said. But then he is a man full of words and little action -- a true American who talks big and means little, a culture that reverberates in politics as in business.

 

Nine months after he took over the American Presidency, he still does not have an India visit on his agenda.  He will be in Singapore next month for the APEC Summit from where he will head to China, stopping in both Shanghai and Beijing, before heading to Japan and South Korea -- http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BarackObama/idUSTRE5965MY20091007.  Clearly, business comes first for this self-professed Gandhian.

 

Anyway, the Nobel for Prof. Ramakrishnan is a matter of pride for Indians. But India may have contributed little to this American citizen -- his career was shaped up by the U.S. and Britain. He is the seventh native Indian (people of Indian origin included, but excluding Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama). He is affiliated to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) of Cambridge,  He is the 14th Nobel Laureate of the LMB and the 29th for the Medical Research Council (MRC) which runs the LMB, according to a report in The Hindu today. Just one institution has won four times more Nobels than a one-billion-strong country. In fact, during my days at Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent), I figured that the company had itself (including when it was a part of AT&T) produced eight Nobel Laureates.

 

Also, barring Rabindranath Tagore and Sir C V Raman, the rest of the Indian Nobel Laureates owe their awards in some measure to their overseas affiliations. 

 

But then India has just about begun to make developmental strides, so we can expect better numbers and, importantly, winners groomed locally, over time. Congratulations Dr Ramakrishnan!

 

 

 

 

The Hindu Plays up National Day Celebrations in Beijing even as India Protests China Issuing Separate Visas to Kashmir Residents

Time for India to have Military Rule to Counter China

Deepavali days are here again with Little India in Singapore gloriously decorated and lit up. Checking out Indian newspapers during this period, particularly on Fridays, is a sure way to dream of the festive charms of Chennai. All Friday newspapers from India sell in Singapore like Tirupati laddus (deliberately avoiding the use of “hot cakes” What hot cakes, I don’t think anybody loves eating cakes straight from the oven – you hardly get it that way anyway in shops.).

So, I can call myself lucky that I was able to get hold of the Friday editions (October 2) of The Hindu, Indian Express and The Times of India. Forget the news content of the newspapers (I get it all online fresher), my interest in the hard copies lies in the colourful advertisements that wow and woo shoppers.

But looking at the front pages of the three newspapers made me push the ads to the backburner. It was a day after China’s National Day celebrations. I see no reason why that should raise a flutter in India. The Hindu had only the previous day carried a report on China’s year-old practice of issuing visas to visitors from Jammu & Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh on a separate sheet of paper rather than stamping it on the passports.

I was hoping The Hindu will have done a detailed follow-up the next day (Friday) on the issue as it for sure merited that. After all, China's action was a subtle indication that it did not recognise J&K and Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territories!

Instead, it led with a report on the China celebrations from Beijing – filed by N Ram himself supplemented by a few other reports from another journalist of the newspaper, glorifying communist China for its rise as a superpower. Fair enough, since newspapers are expected to play fair and hail those who deserve it irrespective of their political affiliations!

Still, I cannot see why India should care about China’s celebrations when it is undermining its (India's) unity and sovereignty? China is not a country that can be trusted by any means. The way it backstabbed India in 1962 is still fresh in our memory. Then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was heartbroken and never recovered from the blow till his death in 1964. I am not one to harp on the past, but China has still not changed. It continues to supply weapons to Pakistan and is indulging in anti-India activities in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

It is a treacherous country that has no shame stealing military secrets from other countries. Businesses follow the government's lead and steal the patents of other companies. But then we all like to believe that the country is changing.

The world may need China amid today’s recession. But I do not think India needs China – true friendship with them may do us good. But how can we expect friendship from a known backstabber?

Corrupt Indian Leaders Letting Country Down: Let us not sugarcoat our speeches and be diplomatic in our messages. Unfortunately, in the last more than 60 years since Independence, Indian leaders have only been cut-throat rascals who swindled the country and enriched themselves, leaving the bulk of the people in poverty. China used half of that period to make unimaginable inroads into the world stage in every conceivable sphere, including toppling the U.S. and the rest of the world in the Beijing Olympics. Whereas Indians are still content with the very few world champions we have such as Vishwanathan Anand who are where they are only because of their own perseverance with little support from the government.

Our corrupt leaders continue to make millions from Tamil Nadu to Uttar Pradesh and nobody cares! I think we should impose death sentence for those convicted of corruption of any form. India does not care when even chotta Sri Lanka mistreats Indian fishermen, indiscriminately firing at them. India shamelessly listened even when they, flush with glee over having wiped out the LTTE, offered help to fight terrorism in India. Anyone can needle us as we do not show any spine in our reactions. The narrow-mindedness and insularity that exist in India can dangerously lead the country downhill the way the Soviet Union disintegrated. Do we want that?

But then I am digressing again. What I am trying to drive at is that India must act tough with China and not be fooled by any of its friendly traps. If need be, we can snap diplomatic ties with them and bring on military rule in India to counter the threats coming out of China. Democracy has only fostered corruption of unimaginable proportions in the country. So, the sooner we get rid of it the better. But doing away with democracy does not have to mean curbs on free speech. If freedom of expression is ensured at least to some degree (as irresponsible openness has to be kept under check) in a military regime, we will have a great model that will take the country forward.

It is important for India to come out of the Third-World syndrome, learn to get seriously tough where it warrants and emerge as a power that the world will not dare to trifle with!

n  G Joslin Vethakumar

 

The way Vijay TV is going overboard with celebrating film stars Kamalahasan and Rajnikanth makes me hark back to the days of the Cold War. They were times when any visit by the Indian prime minister to the U.S. will be jotted by a return stopover in Moscow just to ensure no feathers are ruffled. Such was our farcical commitment to non-alignment!

So after a month-long daily airing of features on Kamalahasan’s 50 years in cinema, it has now started eulogising Rajnikanth with a series on his holy pilgrimages. To me, Vijay TV is just playing politics – trying to win over the fans of the two megastars by pretending to give equal footage to both. It does make business sense for them, though!

I have respect for both Kamalahasan and Rajnikanth, for their acting talents, and have interviewed both during my days as a journalist. I then had the habit of only interviewing people I like, deservingly so! But making people larger than life with exaggerated tales is not something that goes well with me. Give them what they deserve, but don’t put them to embarrassment by going overboard just to woo audiences!

And isn’t the “Ulaga Nayagan” (world star) title prefixed to Kamalahasan's name a little too much? Any sane person in his shoes will be ashamed to carry that title. I am surprised that the star himself is not feeling that way. If he was, he will have stopped people from dubbing him so. Even if he was a real global star, he will have no need to reinforce it with such titles. That is not the only title that is appended to his name – all references to him are now made as “Ulaganayagan Padmashree Dr Kamalahasan.” His fans and sidekicks seem to be doing a disservice to him. I don’t think such abuse of titles (particularly the Dr bit!) and prefixes happens anywhere else in the world.

He is a fantastic actor by all means and I am myself a big fan. But I strongly feel the titles undermine his achievements and show him in a lesser light.

When will Tamil Nadu come out of the culture of hero worship and when will the Tamils show a sense of balance in the way they glorify people? Will they, at all?

n  G Joslin Vethakumar