COVERT (16-30TH NOVEMBER 2008)
The Insecurity
of Petty Ideas
By M.J. Akbar
|
November 17, 2008
The
times have changed. Patriotism used to be the last refuge of the
scoundrel. The scoundrel is now the last refuge of patriotism. This is
not because the cad and the poseur have filled up, but because we are
busy chopping democracy up into little pocket-sized units of petty
patriotism. Culture, economics and the history of the last hundred
years unite us. The greed for votes is beginning to divide us. It is
one thing for municipal-level politicians to try and survive by wooing
the lowest common denominator. But when politicians of some stature, a
Cabinet Minister hoping to rise to Prime Minister, or a Chief Minister
begins to parrot the pidgin politics of parochialism, then it is time
to address the infection with a scalpel. Regional separatism is the
sore that can deteriorate into secessionist cancer if not addressed in
time.
- Add your Comments
| Email the Post
| Subscribe
Covert
Share on
Facebook
COVERT (1-15TH NOVEMBER 2008)
The Quiet Shift to New Horizons
By M.J. Akbar
The sound of a stereotype crumbling travels deep into the individual
psyche and the collective consciousness. The two largest democracies,
India and America, comparable in size, demographics and ethnic
tensions, have both heard such a rumble in the last few days. The
trigger in both cases might have been the relentless pressure that
elections bear upon social relationships, the amoral quest for power
that brings subterranean flows to a boil.
- Add your Comments
|
Email the Post
| Subscribe
Covert
Share on
Facebook
COVERT (16-31st OCTOBER 2008)
Who wants to be the pinprick inside a bubble?
By M.J. Akbar
It often needs a startling image to convey the dimensions of a crisis.
Bloggers have time to discover such startling analogies. Someone on
the net has had the time and patience to conjure up this image about
$700 billion, the most dramatic figure among the many mountains of
cash that Governments have doled out to capitalism's poster boys in
order to save capitalism.
If you stacked up $700bn in 100-dollar bills [100, not 10 or 1], it
would climb 54 miles into the sky. If you counted one billion at the
rate of one digit a second, you would need 30 years. 700 billion?
Don't begin.
- Add your Comments
|
Email the Post
| Subscribe
Covert
Share on
Facebook
COVERT (1 - 15 OCTOBER 2008)
Fuse of self-destructive terrorism gets shorter
By M.J. Akbar
Governance is the easy
part of being in power. You govern through systems. Systems are
protected by institutions. Institutions grind their way forward on
hierarchy, oiled by memory or precedence. When there is need for
innovation, change is sifted through a time-consuming committee. The
end product may not be brilliant, but it comes with minimal-risk
insurance: it will not do damage, and might even do some good.
- Add your Comments
|
Email the Post
| Subscribe
Covert
Share on
Facebook
COVERT (15 - 30 SEPTEMBER 2008)
Fluff-and-bluff
can't change harsh truths
By M.J. Akbar
We may have all missed the most interesting point in the kerfuffle
over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi
have emerged as the greatest advertising team since World War II. They
have sold a personal obsession as a nation's lifeline. The strategy is
not dissimilar to that employed by Germany and Italy in the war:
repeat a lie often enough and it will be perceived as the truth.
High-decibel propaganda has this hypnotic effect on the masses. To use
a term from theatre, there is a wilful suspension of disbelief.
- Add your CommentsShare on
Facebook
COVERT (1 - 15 SEPTEMBER 2008)
Three Questions
for the Wandering Indian
By M.J. Akbar
To
jaded Delhi eyes, the sky is much more vast in Canada. That could only
be an illusion, right? Wrong. The horizon is not limited by
claustrophobic cement, concrete, stone; the vision is not trapped by
the tensions of road-crawl, or blocked by the arrogance of bullies who
believe that a steering wheel has lifted them out of the demands of
common decency. It is not distance that makes Canada seem like a
frontier, although it takes a while to ingest that London is only a
midway point between Delhi and Toronto. This frontier is not merely
the boundary wall of the familiar; it is also the gateway to new
space.
- Add your Comments
|
Email the Post
| Subscribe
Covert
Share on
Facebook
COVERT (16 - 31st August 2008)
Why Mumbai is the
heart of Muslim Terrorism
By M.J. Akbar
There
are only two Mumbai Muslims whose lives have been made the subject of
movies that were released commercially. One film was official,
financed by the Government of Pakistan. The other was unofficial, and fictionalised, made by the Mumbai film industry. The film on Mohammad
Ali Jinnah was a tribute to a stalwart whose admirers will not
tolerate a word of criticism against him.
- Add your Comments |
Email the Post | Subscribe
Covert | Share on Facebook
COVERT (1-15th August 2008)
The
Headmaster of A School for
Scandal
By M.J. Akbar
In the end it's the jokes that get you, isn't it? SMS, that deadly
virus, has been spreading sound bites like "Sting is King". Its first
cousin, email, has been circulating emotional pleas to the heartless
Finance Minister: "Don't you know how old MPs are? They have bad
backs! Can't you print Rs 100,000 notes instead of measly little
thousand-rupee notes??? Do you know how heavy a sack of 30 crores is?"
There are heart-rending stories of MPs breaking down because they did
not know how to take their loot, collected in Delhi, back to the
security of their small towns.
Add
your comments
|
E-mail the Column
Share on Facebook
COVERT (16-31st JULY 2008)
CHECK THE IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND THE POSSIBLE
By M J Akbar
In
times of meltdown,
the great eagerness is of course to get a glimpse of the future. The
tendency, but naturally, is to track the future along the seam lines
of what politicians can do. There is a much surer way of negotiating
such minefields. Check out what politicians cannot do, and you will
get a far better idea of what they will do.
Add your Comments |
Email the Post
COVERT (1-15th JULY 2008)
Have you ever heard a cake crumble?
by M J Akbar
In the second
last week of June, after nearly fifty months of office, Congress Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh offered Congress President Sonia Gandhi one of
two options. She could either support the Singh-George Bush nuclear
partnership and shoot herself in the Left foot, or she could abandon
the Marxists who had carried the government on their uneven shoulders
and shoot herself in the Right foot. If the bullet went Left, the
partnership would fracture, hobbling the Congress severely in its
effort to remain the core of a future non-BJP alliance. If the bullet
went Right, the credibility of theManmohan Singh government, already
in hospital, would be put permanently to sleep.
Read
the column | E-mail the Column
COVERT (15TH-30th JUNE 2008)
The Fine Art
of Doing Nothing
-By M J Akbar
Sensible
politicians are wary of big words: they never know when one will
rebound and bite them, with painful consequences. The philosophy of
power is one word too many in a phrase about politics. Politicians
keep their nose to the ground, philosophy out of their thoughts, and
their conscience in a safe deposit vault, so that, while it remains
out of sight, it can always be taken out, brushed up and put on
display when expedient.
Read
more and Add
your comments
E-mail the Column
COVERT (1-15TH
JUNE 2008)
The secret
diaries of Manmohan, Advani
-By M.J. Akbar
How
could my fellow-traveller Buddhadeb Bhattacharya call me the worst
Prime Minister
India has had? That stung. I rather like Buddha. I know his type, a
sheep dressed in wolf’s clothing. I’ve done my bit of lip-service to
socialism. What option did one have if you wanted some trajectory up
the old Congress bureaucracy greasy pole? Indira Gandhi would spread
nonalignment at breakfast and turn pink with the salad over lunch:
poor dear, no one told her that nationalization and nationalism are
not quite the same thing.
Read
More & Post
your comments |
E-mail the Column
COVERT (15-30TH
MAY 2008)
THE
DANCE OF THE GHOSTS
- By M J Akbar
(Posted from Princeton University where
he is giving a lecture on Talibanisation
of Pakistan)
Old rules get old because they
have legs to walk through generations. Time, then, to recall one
of the oldest: When you are dead, lie down. So many politicians
simply don’t get this, whether they are provincial wannabes like
the erst while Congress satrap from Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Das or
the woman who wanted the White House, Hillary Clinton.
Read
more & post your Comments
Email the Byline
