Flags & Anthems

I thought the Supreme Court verdict passed on Republic Day, five years ago, in the famous Naveen Jindal case would put an end to our hypocrisy on flags, anthems and such. However, the two 'controversies' of the past week surrounding SRT and NRN quickly burst that bubble!

The "anthem" controversy has hypocrisy built into it. Pray, can someone explain to me what an 'instrumental version' of a national anthem is, in the first place? Logically, if the instrument starts playing, the crowd starts singing - without any prompting! It's only in India where people are either too embarassed or ignorant, that we need to arrange for a choir of school children to sing, while the rest mumble or just ... stay mum! Whether it's a movie theatre or a stadium, a function or a felicitation, one never hears a thundering anthem being rendered with gusto. Infy had arranged for a five person choir and then apparently dropped the idea because "foreigners might be embarassed". I think the foreigners would have been rather puzzled to see no one on stage or in the crowd singing! We just don't like singing our own anthem for some strange reason.

While the Infy incident raised some hackles because of Chairman Co-Chairman Narayana Murthy's explanation (which he has since apologised for), the Sachin incident is just downright comical. Agreed, whoever decided on the theme for that cake had poor taste (seriously, saffron icing?), but why blame Tendulkar when the Indian High Commissioner himself was looking on approvingly? In any case, when it's quite clear that the intentions are not malafide in any way, why resort to grandstanding and jingoism?

I am loathe to admit that I draw intellectual inspiration from mainstream Hollywood but a few lines from an otherwise trite scene in The American President, sum up my thoughts perfectly:

"You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."

300: Brilliant Fiction

I finally found the time to go and catch "300" - the flick based on the "graphic novel" by Frank Miller (which is itself inspired by the 1962 film). I loved the comic book so I was determined to see the adaptation and its allegedly unbelievable special effects. The visuals were brilliant and the acting was intense. While some contend that this kind of film-making will destroy cinema as we know it, the actors themselves confess that it brings them closer to real theatre. Having nothing but a chroma in the background is apparently a liberating experience for a true Thespian.

It was clearly the least politically correct day of the year to watch the film - yesterday was the Parsi New Year and the film is pretty hard on the ancient Persians. However, if it's any consolation to my Parsi friends, I wasn't seeing the film for its take on history - poor Xerxes is made to look like a drag queen! It was purely to enjoy a mindless action flick made using stylized digital techniques. Blood and gore never looked so beautiful!

I was surprised that Iranians are protesting against the film. After all, wasn't it the supposed tyranny of the Zoroastrian kings that the early Islamic conquerors highlighted to get the masses on their side, before driving Xerxes' descendants out? If anyone should be protesting, it should be those original Parsis, a majority of whom wound up in India. Fortunately, they've proven to be far too intelligent a community to take these things seriously and are even apologetic for the few among them who have cried foul!

All I can say to our friendly neighbourhood 'Bawas' is: "Guys - nothing remains of Ancient Greece except touristy ruins! You're still worshipping your God and have made your adopted country proud. The (approx) 300 of your ancestors who braved the Arabian Sea and landed on the shores of Gujarat, centuries ago to start from scratch, are heroes in their own right. Happy Navroz!"

Bun-tea Aur Bubbly

IIT-JEE Diary

First published in JAM: Just Another Magazine

The recent IIT-JEE media blitzkrieg brought back some bittersweet memories. Bitter because I regret taking the year off to study for the JEE (and failing) and sweet because the intellectual challenge and academic input of that one year was more than the 2 years at high school and three years at undergrad put together.

The event also allowed me to touch base with the guy who ran the coaching class I attended. No he wasn’t a scheming conman as members of the coaching class community are made out to be but a young, fun-loving and brilliant entrepreneur who kindled my love for physics. He was genuinely upset when I didn’t make it and refunded my entire fee. He even gave me some seed money in those crazy dot-com days to “fund” my own start-up! Little wonder that when my colleagues at CNBC TV18, who were putting together a show that would debate the new format, asked me to invite a panelist, I gave him a tinkle. It was great catching up with Praveen Tyagi after many years.

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Obviously the people who’ve thought up this hair-brained new exam scheme have got it all wrong. Far from putting the coaching classes out of contention, an objective-only exam will widen their market like never before. It was only very focused and motivated junta who would put their hearts into the exam and go for special coaching. Most others were content to concentrate on their boards and get into the second rung tech schools. An objective-type exam suddenly gets everybody who’s taken science in +2 to think. “Hey! Maybe I can do this too!” So instead of a few classes offering JEE coaching, now everyone will be offering coaching and students who otherwise wouldn’t have prepared for the JEE will be cajoled into it by parents and peer pressure.

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On a more fundamental note, the new format opens up a small crack in the once watertight process. The JEE ensured that no one undeserving would ever get in although many deserving students would be left out (yes, yes that’s what I keep telling my sorry self!). Unless you cheated, it was impossible to fib your way through those subjective problems. Now, there is a significant probability that many people will get in using the ol’ heads/tails guesswork. Yes, the proportion will be small, but the probability of some “tukkha” candidates getting in is still high. That would indeed be a shame for however much you got coached in the earlier system, you still had to have aptitude and slog to clear the exam – Kota or no Kota!

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Now here’s some advice to those of you who would just like the IIT ‘chhaap’ but have no particular interest in any engineering stream. Don’t drop a year if you don’t clear the JEE. Opt for a three-year BSc at a decent college instead. In your third year sit for the two-year MSc exam. This is the best-kept IIT secret – it’s the only non-common entrance exam for the IITs. Every IIT administers its own exam for the four to five different MSc courses that it offers. Very often it’s barely a case of 150 odd students competing for 30 odd seats! Out of these about half have not seriously prepared. Way better than 2 lakh serious JEE aspirants for 2000 seats. Assuming you dropped a year and then got in, it would take you four more years for a BTech. This way it takes you 3+2 for a MASTERS degree from an IIT. True, you may not be as well tuned to the IIT system as the BTechers who you will share some courses with – but hey! You want the chhaap and the job don’t you? And if you genuinely get enthu about your subject in those 2 years, you have a Master’s degree in your pocket from an IIT – Grad School USA, here I come!!

Asian College of Journalism

First printed in JAM: Just Another Magazine

There aren’t too many true-blue journalism schools in the country. While there are tons of so-called “media schools”, only a handful of institutes offer quality post-graduate programs. However all these courses are broad based - embracing Corporate Communication, Public Relations, Advertising, Media Management, Film, Television and Mass media in general.

History
The B.D. Goenka Foundation, backed by the Indian Express Group had set up the Asian College of Journalism in Bangalore but was struggling to keep the institute going. At about the same time, the Media Development Foundation (MDF) was looking to start a full time journalism school in Chennai. The ACJ in Bangalore had already built up a reputation of sorts and thus in order to keep the brand name, the MDF took over the school. The first batch of students of the one-year post graduate program passed out in 2001.

The Columbia Connection
For those of you who aren't in the know, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism is the Mecca of journalism education. The school awards the Pulitzer Prizes every year, has produced America's greatest journalists and is by far the world's most prestigious place to learn the ropes of reporting. One of its alumni, N. Ram (now editor of The Hindu) thought it would be a good idea to set up a school on similar lines but tailored to Asian conditions in general and Indian conditions in particular. The one-year course is modeled on Columbia’s Masters program. While you won’t get a degree from Columbia, you will be taught by faculty of the school thanks to a MoU between the two institutes

Academics:
Three PG Diploma courses of ten month duration are offered by ACJ:
1) Print journalism – 40 seats
2) New Media – 20 seats
3) Broadcast Journalism – 30 seats

The curriculum of the ACJ is far superior to any institute in the country. Highlights include a compulsory course called 'Covering Deprivation' – an attempt at making third world journalists conscious of the social issues surrounding them. After a rigorous lecture series, students go on a week-long tour of a remote part of South India to get a feel of the issues in the ‘real India.’

The first trimester is common for students of all streams. Courses include Media Law, Media history, Key Issues in Journalism, Tools of the Modern Journalist and the cracker of a course, Reporting-Writing-Editing. If you thought your English was good, this course will bring you down to earth pretty quickly. Students get a basic grounding in all three streams.

The next two trimesters are dedicated to “stream work” and electives. The broadcast journalism students take a 12-week course taught by a qualified BBC journalist cum instructor. They then go on to producing full fledged daily news bulletins with reports from around the city, often scooping the mainstream media. They also go through a documentary making workshop and make short films. The Print students learn the basics of layout and publishing and run a weekly newspaper which is circulated to a wide audience in the city. New Media students learn to navigate cyberspace and run a 24-hour website called Digantik. In the final trimester, students have to submit an investigative project as well as a 10,000 word dissertation.

The most fun part of the course for many however is ‘Electives’. Students can chose 4 electives out of a long list that includes Arts & Culture, Business, Politics, Sports, Science, Environment, International Affairs, Photojournalism, Gender etc. Students often sit in for classes from electives that they have not opted for.

Infrastructure and Faculty
The Infrastructure is outstanding. The college is fully air-conditioned, which is half the battle won in sultry Chennai! The broadcast studio in the sprawling basement is fully equipped with a production control room, sound booth and editing facilities (linear and non-linear). Camera equipment is plentiful and the facility is excellently maintained. The college is one of the few places that can actually boast a computer for every student (An entire floor is dedicated just to computer labs!) and nearly all lectures are taken with audio-visual support. There is a well-equipped library and an auditorium that can seat more than a hundred people. The canteen is on the sprawling terrace, where underarm cricket is the official sport.

The Chairman of the college is the formed head of PTI News and later founder of AsiaNet, Sashi Kumar. He occasionally gives lectures, conducts workshops in anchoring and provides feedback on bulletins. The core faculty of half a dozen comprises full-time professors while a large part of the faculty serves in an adjunct capacity. Many of the electives are taken by practicing journalists from The Hindu group of publications. The endless stream of visiting speakers will expose you to a range of ideas that will totally blow you away. To be honest, the real strength of the institute is the sheer spectrum of experts that it can assemble to speak to the students during the span of a single year.

The downsides:
Fees (gulp!) are very high. 1.5 lakh for print and new media and a whopping 2 lakhs for broadcast. There is no hostel facility either since it isn’t a residential campus. The college does however make arrangements for students to stay together. If you factor in rental and living expense it is an expensive affair for one year! Also, a lot of people especially from the North have a mental block about studying in Chennai even though the language problem is rather overplayed. Those of you with strong right wing/neo-conservative or free-market capitalism ideologies beware! This is hardcore liberal, left-wing and often commie territory.

Admissions
Look out for newspaper ads in the month of May and keep checking the website http://www.asianmedia.org . The written exam is held in all the metros in mid-June and consists of an English paper and an extremely difficult Current Affairs and General Knowledge paper. The interviews are held only in Chennai. There are 90 seats in all though 12 are set aside for overseas Fellows.

Financial Aid:
There are a number of partial and full scholarships offered on a merit-means basis. The college also administers the SAF Madanjeet Singh Fellowships to one girl and one boy from each of the seven SAARC countries and Afghanistan. All fees are waived and fellows are paid a stipend as well. Due to political reasons, Pakistani students haven’t yet been able to make it even after receiving the fellowships though the guys and gals from Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Afghanistan more than make up for it. The foreigners are usually experienced journalists, so all you America bashers watch out! These guys will give you more than a mouthful on how India is as much of a bully in the region…

Futurescope:
All the major news outlets in the country have ACJ grads working for them and the alumni network is beginning to kick in as well. Lots of people tend to go the NGO / Independent Media way as well. Those who are interested in academics usually apply for PhD programs in the US and UK and their ACJ year is accepted in most big places as a Masters equivalent year of study.

Verdict
ACJ has within a couple of years established itself as an outstanding institution with one foot in the hi-tech future. However it's not the kind of time-pass course one should do just because you can't figure out what you want to do after graduation. This is a full time highly intensive course which can be tackled only by extremely motivated junta.The intellectual atmosphere on campus according to students is electrifying and says Yamini Narayan, 2002 print journalism student, "People in the South have already nicknamed it the NLS of Journalism." Not a bad comparison, for NLSIU was virtually unheard of when it came about and within a decade it established itself as a world class law institution without peer in the country. Incidentally the guy who topped my batch is a lawyer who happened to be Rank 1 in the all India entrance for NLS.

A Must Read for those interested in the 'Asian Miracle'

First posted as a book review on Amazon.com

The Rise and Decline of the Asian Century: False Starts on the Path to the Global Millennium by Christopher Lingle

The reason that this book should rank as one of the most important books that is seldom heard of and rarely read, is simple. Its predictions turned out to be devastatingly accurate within no time at all. Christopher Lingle, while a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore, wrote an article in the International Herald Tribune, which angered the Singaporean government. Faced with the threat of imprisonment, Lingle fled the country and began working on this book in the USA. The book was published in 1997 - a few months before the catastrophic collapse of the East Asian economies.

Lingle talks about the mountains of literature being churned out in praise of the 'Asian miracle' and the phenomenal economic progress of the Asian and other Asia-Pacific nations, which displayed double-digit growth rates through most of the 80s and 90s. The author contends that the highest-growth industry seems to be the one publishing books about the 'Asian century'.

Lingle attributes the over-enthusiastic optimism for Asia's 'miracle economies' to the classic faux pas of extrapolating short-term observations. While no one can deny the fact that there has been rapid growth of these economies, he points out that, historically, several regimes with fundamentally flawed institutional arrangements have produced relatively long periods of high growth. Spain under Franco in the 50s and 60s, apartheid South Africa, Soviet Russia and even communist North Korea have all shown periods of sustained economic 'progress' until their inherent weaknesses led to an inevitable collapse.

The inherent contradiction is that true economic advance is a direct function of the human spirit and entrepreneurship, both of which are repressed under regimes, which practice collectivist repression in order to maintain the single-party political status quo. The capitalistic tenets of contract law and property rights are fundamentally individualistic in nature and fly in the face of the policies of East Asian regimes.

Lingle takes the bull by the horns in analyzing how the world reached the consensus that indeed the economies of East Asia were 'miracle' economies. It all began when the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) buoyed by the success of the Japanese model at the time decided that it was time for some economic evangelism. The extensively bureaucratic and interventionist model championed by the Japanese was at sharp odds with the World Bank endorsed neo-classical view.

In order to showcase their approach as a theoretical model, which could be successfully adopted by other countries in the region, the Japanese government commissioned the World Bank to produce a report that was published in 1993 under the title 'The East Asian Miracle.' So what were the conclusions of this (at the time, enshrined in economic folklore) report? The most important conclusions of this report were that the 'miraculous' growth experienced by the region was a result of macroeconomic stability achieved by pursuance of prudent fiscal and monetary policy. Much to the liking of its Japanese masters, the report admitted that the large-scale market interventions carried out by these governments had contributed to the 'miracle'

Lingle talks about Max Weber's nineteenth century view that Confucianism would retard the modernization of Asia and how that particular contention seemed to be far from the truth when the Asian ascent began in the 1970s. It soon became widely accepted that neo-Confucianism was a source of East Asian dynamism. This neo-Confucianism, created by selective picking and choosing of tenets from the original belief system and transforming them into a distinct political ideology, justifies the pre-eminence of the rights of the community over the rights of the individual. The 'virtuous rulers' theory, (rather than the choice of the citizenry) advocated by neo-Confucians fitted perfectly in the scheme of things for authoritarian patriarchal governments.

Thus extensive market interventions, rejection of the notion of the self-regulating economy and the ability to enforce stability, resulted in the creation of the myth that East Asia's dynamic yet traditional rulers were responsible for the great ascendancy to economic power. This neo-Confucian inspired set of Asian values is championed by what it commonly called the 'Singapore School', which aggressively promotes its own model of development as uniquely Asian, indisputably successful and easily transplantable.

The distinctive neo-Confucian concepts of 'filial piety' and subservience to authority neatly lend themselves to the one-party authoritarian style of rule of leaders like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia. The venerated Confucian tradition of strong family bonds, in a modern context translates into what Lingle calls 'dynastic succession and an entrenched policy of nepotism.'

Examples of course, are numerous. From Sukarno and Suharto in Indonesia to the Gandhis and Bandaranaikes in India and Sri Lanka respectively; from the Korean Kims and Cambodian royalty to the Marcoses and the Acquinos of the Philippines, Asia has a long 'tradition' of dynastic democracies. Lingle points out that such nepotism is in direct conflict with modernizing forces such as marketization. They seem to be more compatible with imperial colonialism than modern democracy.

Spare Us Sony!

First published on TheHoot.org

The recently concluded Champions Trophy Cricket tournament in Sri Lanka was a washout in more ways than one. We may not have had an outright winner, but there was definitely an outright loser - Sony Entertainment Television (SET). The channel which has won the rights to telecast next years World Cup in South Africa took cricket programming to abysmal depths with its show 'extra innings' that appeared before, after and in the innings break of the ODIs.

To begin with, Charu Sharma is no Harsha Bhogle though that really isn't his fault. In fact to sympathize, one could see how uncomfortable he was in the idiotic format that, I suppose, was thrust upon him. Its one thing for a recorded voice to accompany an ad that says "Super Sixes brought to you by so and so..". Its downright demeaning on the other hand for a sports journalist to be saying, "We'll get back to you Krish, after we take a look at the Kwik 4s package - Kwik ho paas to dard khalas". After the montage of boundaries, we're back in the studio to hear Charu repeating "Well that presentation was brought to you by Kwik, Kwik ho paas to dard khalas! Getting back to you Tony, what do you think ." In fact most of Charu's time was spent interrupting the experts to tell them that there was "lots more to talk about after this next package". Montages are entertaining to watch, especially when Sehwag is in this kind of form. But there is a concept known as "too much of a good thing" and SET totally overdid it. Some of the packages were ludicrous and it was obvious that they had been made for the product and not the other way around. Shouldn't special packages be conceived for their relevance to the game so that a company can then decide whether it deems sponsorship fit, depending on the image of its brand.

Now Ruby Bhatia has been singled out for so much ridicule that I almost feel sorry for her. Some feminist friends told me I was being an MCP when I commented after the opening match that Ruby stuck out like a sore thumb. "Just because she's a woman invading a man's game" was their retort. The ironic part is that the reason she was put there in the first place should raise any feminist's ire. It's quite obvious that she's been put there PRECISELY because of the predominantly male viewer-ship and because she's part of the 'entertainment.' Considering her knowledge of cricket is non-existent we all know what part of the entertainment she was contributing to. India Today's Sharda Ugra is right up there as a top cricket writer and Star's Sonali Chunder is probably the best sports newscaster in the country. The issue was never about women. It's about people who know something about the game. Ruby just consolidated the stereotypical image of women being ignorant of cricket by perennially behaving like the dressed-up doll watching her first cricket match. Patronising men answering her idiot questions probably negates any effort made towards destroying the stereotype, on the pitch by the Indian women's cricket team. Little wonder that a curvaceous damsel with an exotic name was the host of the Indiatimes SMS prediction game in the same studio. Incidentally, one SMS question asked viewers to predict the number of times a fielder would crash into the advertising hoardings. W.G. must be turning in his grave.

Agreed - its entertainment after all. But one must realise that Indians take their cricket seriously. SET may have a strategy of focussing on cricket and Bollywood - but do we have to be forced to watch them being merged into one? Is anyone really interested in knowing at what position Fardeen Khan fielded for his school team? Or whether Arbaaz Khan prefers watching cricket on his home theatre system versus in a pub with his friends? The same bubbly attitude which makes a Ruby a hit as a VJ makes her look like a fool in a studio. The dance sequences are great on the movie screens - but do we need to be shown bollywood clips in a cricket studio?

The one that took the cake though was the tarot card reader - Ma Ritambara Devi. On one hand you have ESPN-STAR using cutting edge technology to make the LBW decision more scientific, and on the other we have SET-MAX bringing mumbo-jumbo into sport. Yes, people are entitled to their beliefs - but why force it upon the general population. What value it added to the programme I still don't understand but it was rather hilarious to watch. 'Ma' would make Ruby pick a card for a team and lo! It would be the 'Card of Integration' which was ostensibly interpreted to mean that the team would 'integrate' all its resources together. (Genius Holmes! You've done it again.) Another would be the 'Card of Shakti', which meant a team would come on to the field full of confidence and energy! When the team in question was Sri Lanka it was 'predicted' that the crowd support would help them.

A particularly hilarious incident occurred before the final when Ruby drew a card for India that showed a figure '8' who's lower region was black and upper white. 'Ma' said that this meant the Indians would 'begin in darkness and come to light" which implied that they would be jittery against the home team but slowly gain confidence. Charu asked her why it couldn't be from light to darkness since the direction wasn't indicated on the card in any way. Ruby saved a flustered 'Ma' by scolding Charu and telling him to stick to cricket rather than Tarot! Considering that if anything, the sunny weather eventually gave way to dark rain clouds, Charu may indeed have discovered a hidden talent!! One wonders why 'Ma' didn't bother to predict who would win the toss or any other such quantifiable parameter. In the end, the most unpredictable science of weather forecasting proved to be more reliable than tarot!

In the final analysis one can only say that the purist dreads what 'ideas' SET has for the World Cup. Could Charu Sharma be forced to spew lines such as "The Indians looked sprightly - Sprite bujhaye only pyaas, baki sab bakwaas'- on the field today." ? Or could we have Bejan Daruwala in the studio contemplating the fact that Saturn is poised menacingly over Sachin's birth star? Maybe the commentators will have former Miss Indias escorting them to their seats in the studio. Maybe the entire Lagaan team and not just Guran could be placed amongst the crowd. One thing is for sure - we'd all love to get back to Good ol' Geoffrey Boycott and even Sherry if we must. As for what SET is putting us through, Boycs would have only one ord ' "Rubyish!"