Ripples on the brain

While there has been discussion about the issues in holding elections in India - money power, caste politics, multi-party contests, low voter turnout etc. - I feel there have not been too many questions on the “design” of these elections. For a long time, I had assumed that this was the best design for elections in a Parliamentary democracy, i.e. state split into constituencies with each constituency electing their representative, the majority of the elected representatives electing a leader amongst them who heads the executive.

Whenever I have had to firm up my decision on whom to vote before an election, more often than not, I find myself caught between two options: do I have to vote based on whom I think should be the head of the executive or based on whom I think should represent me in the Parliament. Even in these situations, so far, I’d never suspected that this issue arose because of the way our elections have been designed; I’ve always felt it was because of the quality of our candidates. But, now as I reflect upon this and read articles written by experts, I believe a lot (even if not a majority) of the issues are because of the way our elections have been structured.

Let me explain. What are some of the important issues with our elections (I’m specifically ignoring the issues while conducting the elections - like the security issues etc.):

1. There is no negative vote as such
As a voter, I cannot cast a negative vote or vote against a candidate. All I can do to vote against a candidate is to vote for some other candidate in the fray, which is not the samething as voting against a candidate.

2. Most of the time, a candidate doesn’t get a majority of votes from a constituency he represents
A candidate that gets most of the polled votes is declared the winner. In most cases, the candidate secures only between 18 - 24 % of votes. This happens because a) multiple candidates split the votes of people who vote against him and b) the voter turnout itself is in the range of 50 - 60% (i agree that voter turnout cannot be blamed on the design of elections). Assuming 50% of the voters exercised their franchise in a constituency and 30% wanted to vote against a candidate A, but voted for multiple candidates, candidate A could still win in the constituency. This example also ties with the first point in that if the 30% of the voters had an option of negative vote against a candidate, he would not have won.

3. Abstaining from voting doesn’t lead to anything
The only use of 49-O seems to be to avoid others from misusing your vote. It does not, in anyway, represent your protest against the elections or the candidates in a constituency. So even if 99 out 100 voters choose not to vote and one person votes for a candidate, the candidate is declared elected today.

4. Votes polled doesn’t always translate to seats
At the constituency level, the winner takes all. So more often these days, we have a scenario where even if a party wins 20% of the overall votes, it might translate to a very small number of seats. This happens because of the way constituencies have been divided. The losing party may have won handsomely in a small number of constituencies and lost narrowly in a majority of the constituencies. Advani has claimed that this is what happened to the BJP in the last Parliamentary elections.

5. Post poll alliances dilute / destroy people’s mandate
This best example of this issue is the comedy called the United Front. 16 or 17 parties came together and claimed that the mandate was “against non-secularism”, whatever that meant and diluted the people’s mandate.

6. Every voter faces the question of what she should vote for / Quality of the representative from the constituency is almost always not an issue We *can* vote for 4 different things today: a) we can vote “against” an incumbent party in power b) we can vote “against” our incumbent representative from the constituency (happens not so frequently, I guess) c) we can vote for a party / alliance to get to power and d) we can vote for a representative. Most of the time in Indian elections, we think we go with option “c”. This was especially true in the last General Elections when Congress got the mandate. If you are a voter in Tamil Nadu, however, almost all of the time, option “a” is what the voters do. They vote a party out of power. Irrespective of which option you take between “c” and “a”, the voter never cares for the quality of representative they elect. If voting the right leader is what an average voter wants to do, then is the Parliamentary system the right one?

To be continued…

It’s surprising that the crux of Niira Radia’s tapes have not shocked the nation’s conscience yet. It’s probably because, for the last few years, the 24 hour news channels have become the main source of people news bits and the channels “choose” the news that should shock viewers. And the viewers themselves are happy to leave the job of determining what news they should be exposed to to the news channels. In this case, it is actually not surprising that none of the contents of the tapes have made it to any of the 24x7 mainstream channels as it might lead to their own undoing. And in doing so, all the news channels have proved that they are all cut from the same cloth, that NDTV 24x7 is no different from a Jaya TV (it’s actually probably worse) and that “news” in any of these channels should probably taken with the same cynicism.

The greatest shock for me after listening to the transcripts is not Barkha Dutt’s conversation with Radia. Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose of CNN-IBN have already been two great pillars of modern journalism and two sources of excellent entertainment for the public (especially Ms. Dutt with her antics on TV and her responses on Twitter). However, certainly the involvement of people like Vir Sanghvi really shocks me, because many of his Editorials seem to be original and well thought-out. That someone like him would directly base his editorial on some lobbyist’s views shocks me. And I’m sure these just look like the tip of the iceberg. A lobbyist’s value seems to be directly proportional to the number of people he / she can talk to. In that respect, I’m sure Radia has talked to more people and there is definitely more entertainment in store. What comes out clearly in these tapes is that the craving for power and prominence (or just being closer to power in terms of having access to those in power) is not restricted to the politicians. If anything, people who deride these politicians day-in and day-out (i.e. the news channels) exhibit this trait more than the politicians themselves.

Barkha Dutt and Vir sanghvi’s responses in Twitter and other places are again laughable. Barkha says that when people want insider view, then the journalists need to have contact with insiders, good or bad. It’s as if they are performing a great service to the nation by performing these acts. The other response that Dutt or Sanghvi gave was that they never “acted upon” any of the requests actually makes matters worse!

The other aspect that comes to light is the complete confusion that has prevalied during the portfolio negotiations between DMK and Congress. Despite the challenges with his physical and mental faculties, Karunanidhi would have been better-off directly talking to Manmohan and Sonia instead of relying on these aravekaadus like Niira, Barkha, etc. who always seem to claim they did more than what they actually did. It is always assumed that Karunanidhi is a shrewed politician (in a positive or negative sense) and in his heyday, he would have never trusted any of these folks to do his job.

I miss LA. I miss 10 Universal City Plaza - the place that I called my office during the first 3 months of this year. I miss Studio City. I think my stay in Los Angeles between Jan and March this year (though it feels like ages ago) was one of those times when I felt very good about many different aspects of my life. These things were probably small and simple, but I remember feeling very good during my stay there.

The first was obviously work. It was so fulfilling. It was my first time working for the entertainment industry and boy, did I love it! I was consulting for one of the top 4 in the music industry and enjoyed every bit of my experience. I worked with a bunch of people who were passionate about music and about what they did. They were also one of the most comfortable clients that I had ever worked with. While work was not actually easy, it was one of those things that I could be proud of, in hindsight. I remember every Friday when a budding artiste would be invited to perform at the office. The amount of respect that he / she would get from the employees would be amazing. Once there was a small time artiste who probably turned up a little late after everyone had assembled and was connecting and tuning his electric guitar. There was an absolute silence among the 200-odd employees who’d gathered in a rather cramped conference room. The guy, who felt a little nervous at the silence and attention, stopped his tuning and commented, “Guys, it’s okay. You can chat a little”.

The view from my office used to be breathtaking. I could clearly see every flight land and take off from Burbank airport through the large windows from my office.

Then THAT moment that will etched in my memory forever. I called up home to break THE news from our apartment. Dad started talking about the local news as usual - changes in the budget presented by Chidambaram, tax slabs etc. etc. I remember hearing him out patiently though, in my excitement, I absorbed zilch from what he said. When he paused, I broke the news. The happiness that followed…

Our long walks on Sundays in the South Weddington Park…

Unplanned visits to Universal Studios… The bus ride to Universal Studios will be something that I can never forget - it feels almost similar to being in a flight during lift-off.

I think by the time we moved to Los Angeles, I became very comfortable with my driving in the US. Those drives on 101 and also to North California were some of our most enjoyable drives. I also began to figure out routes pretty easily which eased a lot of hardship that was associated with my driving until then.

Also, LA was the only place among all the places I’ve stayed in the US, where I had a close relative staying near by. The experience of frequent mutual visits and lunches and dinners were very enjoyable.

The Malibu temple…

Newport beach, where we made a couple of futile attempts to spot a whale…

There are also a lot of things that we missed. We didn’t visit the Grand Canyon, nor did we go to Las Vegas. Hawai was also part of our plans…

The memories just flash by whenever I hear Los Angeles or California or Universal Studios mentioned. I sometimes wonder if I had made the right decision to move back from LA so soon. I should have probably stayed on. I don’t know if I will ever get an opportunity to be there again. Even if I get one, I’m sure it will not be the same.

Krea creations, a Bay area based theatre troupe, is currently staging a play “Thanimai” in different sabhas in Chennai. The schedule can be found here. I watched the play yesterday in Narada Gana Sabha. It was a pleasant surprise to see the main hall filled to atleast 70% of capacity for an under-advertised play.

For a change, a play (or any other event for that matter) started on the trot in Chennai. A very positive story, told with a now familiar ploy of going back and forth between present and flashback, good screenplay and effective acting by the entire cast are the hallmarks of the play. The play’s protagonist, Ramani (a) Mani, is a widower whose children have settled abroad. Mani spends most of the time reminiscing old times and yearning for company. His loneliness accentuates his already failing health. How a chance meet with his neighbour Sridhar, a professor, changes his life forms the rest of the story.

While the main story trods a familiar path after a point, the flashback scenes, with the travails of a newly-wed couple in a Tambrahm joint family, are the ones the audience really look forward to in the first half. The flashback scenes are interlaced with the right amount of humour and they adequately compensate the gloomy environment of the main story in the first half. The cast recreate the joint family very well with their acting and language. Given the fact that actors in even the most professional troupes like S.Ve.Shekhar or Crazy these days routinely forget their lines, this was a highly professional display by this troupe with mostly amateur actors. The novel idea of making a main actor sing an entire song was well-received by audience, especially since the song was rendered very well.

Given that the audience enjoyed the flashback so much, it was a disappointment that the sequence had to end so abruptly, even though the story probably demanded it. If I have to point out a couple of things to improve, one would be to work on the scene transitions. On a couple of occasions, lights came on before the actors prepared the set for the next scene catching them off-guard. Also, the end of the play was stretched a little bit at the very end, with atleast one additional scene after the audience assumed that the play was over. To be fair, none of these are even worth mentioning given the acting of the cast and the screenplay.

Overall, a play worthy of your weekend. I hope to watch it atleast one more time, before the next weekend when the troupe winds up its schedule in Chennai.

(Picture courtesy: The Hindu)

The Hindu could have chosen to fill all its pages with the news of Anand’s victory and his subsequent arrival to Chennai and still couldn’t have conveyed effectively what this photo (by its staff, R.Raghu) conveys. Amazing photo! I could keep seeing this all day and still not get tired of it. The admiration in his mom’s face, the pride in Aruna’s face (who, by the way, seems like she’s on her way to a Muhurtham and not on her way out of an international flight and immigration at midnight), Anand’s modesty and the way his father looks on just captures everything that we have read and heard about Anand.

I know I’m not the first person saying this, but apart from being the greatest sportsmen in the world in their respective sports, Anand and Sachin are such role models for us Indians. The way they handle themselves in public and in their private lives is such a joy to watch.

At the end of the day, I’m counting how many times Dhoni uses the phrase “at the end of the day” in press conferences and post match interviews.

I somehow feel there’s a scam in railway reservation that is just waiting to unfold.

In the last 3 - 4 years, after internet reservations have been introduced (7 years ago), seats of all kinds (sitting, sleeper, 3rd AC, 2nd AC), except probably First Class, in the major and not so major routes get reserved as soon as they are opened for reservation, i.e. 3 months before the date of journey. Mostly, in the routes that I look at (Chennai - Mumbai, Chennai - Delhi, Chennai - Trichy, Chennai - Bangalore, Chennai - Coimbatore), tickets for all the different classes mentioned above in all the trains available get booked within the first 3 days of the opening of advance reservation, especially for a weekend journey. More queer is the Tatkal reservation. Unless you book the tickets at 8 AM on the day Tatkal reservation opens (mostly through the Railway reservation counters and not online), you are sure not to get any tickets.

It may be argued that a lot more people travel every weekend these days what with many people working away from their hometowns and visiting their family every weekend. I have myself seen a lot of my friends booking tickets for weekend journeys as soon as they open. While this is a fair argument to a certain degree (atleast for routes where the journey time is 8 - 10 hours), there is one more aspect to this. There are almost no cancellations for the entire 3 months period till the date of journey. I have seen this more than once that if I have a wait-listed ticket, the waiting list number doesn’t move at all (or moves by 5 at most) for almost the entire 3 months period. If at all any substantial movement happens, it does on the day of the journey.

I find this aspect extremely surprising. If an individual or a family books a ticket 3 months in advance, the probability of cancellation of the ticket is pretty high in my opinion. No travel plans (except may be during summer vacation) can be finalized with such certainty. This leads to my strong belief that more than 50% of the tickets are probably booked by travel agents for proxy names. Mind you, while Southern Railways allows travel agents to book tickets by giving them agent logins, these are probably not booked this way. These agents reserve tickets using normal logins but for proxy names. I suspect these tickets get distributed and re-distributed when the first customer chooses not to travel. This probably explains why the tickets do not get cancelled at all. They are just transferred from one person to another. The agents probably wait till the last day to see if they can sell the tickets, before cancelling them (if at all they don’t find any takers).

Railway ticket prices have not been increased in the last 7 years or so. Going by the trend, it will become increasingly difficult for the Railway Minister to raise the price of these tickets, unless there is a very significant excuse like sudden increase of fuel prices. I think the artificial low price is feeding this racket since train journey is far more comfortable and cheaper than a bus journey and customers do not mind paying even upto Rs.100 as agent commission.

Since Railways is a public good and is operated by the Government, I think its performance should be judged, not just by how much profit it makes, but also by how many needy people are turned away from using its service (apart from other parameters like safety etc.).

Speaking of Indian Railways, the latest GloAdventurer issue is on Indian Railways.

Dhoni says about his Chennai connection, “Yeah, when I used to ride my bike late night in Chennai and stop in red light areas, people used to talk to me in Tamil”.

I don’t know for how many years that we kept listening to his “Indru Oru Thagaval” through AIR Chennai (If my memory serves me right, it was at 7:40 am or something). In fact I had a Social Studies teacher who used to discuss about his “Indru Oru Thagaval” in class. Unfortunately or fortunately, at that time, many of my classmates were from the North and in her class we used to discuss as well as translate Swaminathan’s thagavals for them. We had been hearing the programme for so long that we were able to spot the “repeats” within a minute after it started.

I remember longing to see the face behind that wonderful voice for such a long time and used to keep asking my dad to take us to meet him. I don’t remember when I first saw him on TV. But he looked a lot different than how I imagined him to be. I have seen him in SUN TV only a couple of times. He will be one of those guys that will be remembered.

I remember in the 1990’s when bilateral series were not as common as they are today. During working days our school library had a TV that we used to watch in between classes and during breaks. If time was very short, we would just ask anybody coming from the general direction of library for the score assuming he/she is coming from the library. He would probably give a third person’s account of the score (he wouldn’t have actually seen it himself).
While going back home in the evening, there would generally be buzz in the bus as everybody would want to know the score. Mostly, there would be a guy with a transistor and the whole crowd in the bus would be around him. On a couple of occasions, a request would be loudly made in the bus for a guy who understands Hindi so that he could listen and do the translation for the anxious folks around. I have myself answered the request on those occasions and would be summoned to listen to the commentary and do the translation. I recall those moments so fondly. Cricket was one of things that united us so much. Suddenly all inhibitions would go away and we would discuss the nitty-gritty’s with the stranger about what the captain should do next and so on. It would be as if that was the only objective in life for all the 20-odd people in the bus. I remember the same events repeating when I was in hostel. We would crowd around a transistor (which was, by the way, banned inside the hostels) and listen to the score and inform the rest.
Other than cricket, one of things that unite us, I think, is film music. I’m a fan of Anthakshari and have always enjoyed participating in formal and informal Anthaksharis in any sort of get together. In an intense session of Anthakshari, you invariably find that after a while the most enthusiastic bunch just sings irrespective of whether it is their turn or not. There are some songs, especially for my generation, some select Illayarajaa numbers that are very difficult to hear and not hum. There is some sort of camaraderie I feel when I’m in such a gathering.
Something similar happened when I was at a close friend’s wedding recently. This guy was marrying some big shot’s daughter and the wedding was a grand affair. But what attracted us most to the reception was the band. There were a couple of guys that were mediocre, but one of the guys had an amazing voice and my office colleagues and I were glued to him whenever he was singing. But before the dinner, the troupe was singing current chart busters which didn’t impress us so much. When we returned after dinner, there wasn’t that much of a crowd and the troupe had also warmed up. Then the guy with a good voice started dishing out some Illayarajaa favourites. Most of us were forced to stay back and listen. I think he sang some 3 numbers and the last one was “Mandram vantha thendralukku” from Mouna Raagam. There was a buzz in the hall (though there were only a handful of people) even as he started the initial humming. As he started singing the main piece, I could see at least 3 or 4 people singing their own versions of the song parallel and enjoying. There was instantaneous applause as the guy finished with the song. Surprised at such a vociferous applause especially as the hall was almost empty, that guy thanked us. Though no words were spoken, so much had been communicated. We were so happy he sung THAT song at THAT time. And he got the message and responded.