What Arundhati Roy gets right and what she gets wrong.

I have read two of her socio/political books, The Algebra of Infinite Justice and The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. Both are very well written as is expected from an author of her stature. Her tongue is sharp and the vivid picture she paints about the capability of our government for repression of its own people in the stories about the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the dirty world of big business behind it, the IMF, the World Bank and most depressing of all the Indian Supreme court's cavalier judgements in the matter leaves one with a lot of questions. Questions about our way of life and about the crazy comfort zone that we the privileged few live in. And most of all one is left with a sense of helplessness, of frustration and of anger. All this she gets right, spot on.
However, on reading both of the books one cannot but disagree with her views on globalization and private enterprise. It just feels that she does not get it at all. She is critical of the government in almost every paragraph of her writings. However in the same breathe she is also critical of globalization and privatization. I am not claiming that privatization is without its evils. However for me it is the lesser of the two evils where the second happens to be complete government control. I do not want to go into why private enterprise is better. It has been argued and documented by better people before. However just for quick examples look at the telecom industry in India, compare it with the times when about 7 years ago one used to wait for late night calls to ones home (and they still used to cost more than what a prime time call today costs) and you ll know. Her commentary assumes that private business and earning money is inherently vulgar and evil. It is hard for me to digest why she has such an irrational point of view. If one does not approve of private enterprise and also not approve of government enterprise, what is the alternative left, whom do you trust? Should we go back to being a hunter-gatherer society? I remember a certain IITB professor once saying that the industrial revolution has been the single biggest mistake in the history of mankind. Maybe Arundhati Roy will also support that view.

Sacrifice?

Its that time of the year when the media does the annual academic results dance and props up all and sundry e.g. Seen on NDTV..a girl chose to not do some dance with SRK and concentrated on her studies ..when interviewed she said thus "My sacrifice really paid off...." Sacrifice?? Hello?
On a related and more serious note the IIT-JEE results are also out. Those lucky few who made it are of course happy and should be. The news stories point out that about 250000 applicants vie for the ~4600 seats and then go on to how difficult it is to get through the test blah blah. None however raises the more serious issues of why in our country is there a shortfall of quality education. Why should we be able to grant the best engineering education to only 4,600 students every year in a country of a billion people? Where's the rot? What's stagnating the education industry? Who benefits from this constricted supply? Why do most of the engineering colleges in the country have a politician connection? These are the questions that they need to probe and air rather than the banal stuff that they dish out yearly.

Modi, Art and Lions

A lot of the (very few remaining) Asiatic lions in Gujarat's Gir sanctuary have recently died raising alarms with the conservationists. Some therefore asked for some of the lions to be moved to another sanctuary. But the Gujarat govt said that these lions are the pride of Gujarat..well that is true you know...a pride of lions living anywhere would be a pride of that place then won't it :-).
Elsewhere in the state right wingers called out an attack on an art exhibition alleging obscenity. We all know that our tradition and religion "was open" in matters of sexuality. Go to Khajuraho towards the north, Halibeedu and Belur temples (Note: _temples_ ) towards the south and plenty more I guess and you ll know. (I hate to repeat these examples again and again but in the interests of contributing to the collective liberal voice I shall do it anyways.) Look at the site Kamat's Potpourri for a collection of images and essays describing our rich and open heritage. But we are digressing here..
I want to add another reason for the movement of lions out of Gujarat. Given the ideas of obscenity that some people have in Gujarat I am afraid that the lions there might soon stop fornicating..what if some wild VHP-BJP animal takes objection about the pride of Gujarat indulging in indecent acts and gets them jailed or killed :p. I say get lions out now.