A Hairy Story!

Haircutting is one of the oldest surviving professions. India, which is now known for it’s IT and Outsourcing sectors, still has the old style barber shops. What is interesting is that even today, roadside barber stalls are still prevalent here along with the ones with proper salons.

















Some of these barbers have newly started their own businesses with their own salons. While some have carried it on as family tradition and take pride in it.
























Some of these barbers have migrated to big cities like Delhi from smaller towns. Most of them run their haircutting stalls by the roadside. And it is always a struggle for them to make both ends meet.


























As far as haircutting is concerned, it is an art for the barbers. It is something which is achieved after a lot of practice and requires a lot of concentration. If we keep this thing in mind, then they are no less than any big shot hair designer.















By Joydeep Hazarika and Tilak Jha

Reservation issue and Loksabha elections

As India prepares for the Loksabha elections, in April-May this year, party manifestoes are full of reservation promises. The party manifestoes of even major political parties including the Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI (M)] and the Bhartiys Janata Party (BJP) seems to have got caught in the reservation bandwagon.

CPI (M) in its 31 page 2-part election manifesto has blamed congress for not implementing women reservation. The party promises reservation for Dalit Christians and Muslims apart from promising reservation in the private sector. The party manifesto calls for extending 27% reservation for other backward classes (OBC) in the private educational institutions.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has been promising reservation for poor upper-caste people since a long time. Quite recently the party released a new slogan, “vote se lenge CM PM, aarakshan se SP, DM” (we will take chief minister and prime minister posts through votes and civil services jobs through reservation). Though the party has not issued its election manifesto saying BSP believes in doing and not in making promises.

Congress that currently heads the ruling coalition promises 1/3 rd reservation of jobs to women in all government jobs, and yes reservation in the private sector.

The BJP on the other hand promises all the reservations promised above but opposes religion based quota.

As election dates are nearing, the reservation issue is back. Be it regional or national party reservation sops continue to polarize voting patterns.

Death In Delhi

The one thing that has kept me perplexed in the last two years of my stay in Delhi is that what is it that makes me and probably many others of all sorts to love and hate it at the same time. From what I am able to conclude about based upon my own experience is, it’s the difficulty in our home towns more than any thing else that makes it attractive.

I love travelling; and that I loved always because the wanderer in me is powerful than so many other things. I have travelled a lot in Delhi also. Just yesterday, you won’t believe, I went to AIIMS mortuary and then to the Safdurjung mortuary.

The plan was to meet the people who actually handle the dead body and get clue of how I can do a video story of around 2 min. It was difficult. The first time I had thought of doing this story was last year when I had been to AIIMS to record the ambience in a hospital premises as part of our radio assignment.

But yesterday’s was much tougher than what I would have otherwise imagined.

The moment I reached, I found a dead body lying wrapped in the lawn. For a moment I thought like returning, like thinking bad about what kind of project I have planned!

I waited for around 15 min. thinking about my pressed jeans that I wore just the same day and will have to cleanse once I am back. I also thought that some day I will also be wrapped liked the one lying in my front. That no one has ever avoided death, nor can I. that I too will need to handle a body of people who I love so passionately. And that they will show no emotion once they are dead. I felt about my parents, about my grandpa who died when I was a kid. I thought about my kids who might have to handle my dead body. I thought about the business of handling dead, about the people who handle one every day.

It’s not normal.

Why not? It’s like anything else. It’s like just handling a chicken, a lamb! Nope! Definitely not! Man is not chicken. Man is not animal. He is more than an animal. A chicken can’t build institutions, a lamb can’t build empires. And man can’t stop resisting for if something unwanted happens to him or her.

It was my first conscious encounter with death. I had seen many deaths around me. We all have seen. But I had never thought of presenting death. I had never thought of reporting death. I had never thought of looking towards a dead body just like a body.

Am sounding stupid? I hope so! Not because I think it’s bad. Not because it’s not normal. But, because like everyone else, I also fear death. In our lives of struggle, we never count death as a factor. We earn to live, we give to earn again. We don’t do anything to die peacefully.

We run away from dead body, from flyovers where a person meets an accident, from a collapsed building where a family is buried alive, from a pond where a car jumps drowning and killing all inside, from hostels where a student hangs himself, from a village where people die after drinking spurious liquor.

Hello, death is unavoidable. But we can be much more responsive towards people who die due to negligence of us ‘will die later men’.

Economy and Election

When problems come, they don’t come alone. Sometimes, solutions are there too. We God believing human beings can’t wait for eventualities to come naturally. We actually create one, when they can be avoided. We give sops; allow black economy to flourish when times are good. We also do away with fiscal responsibility and of course we dream in every decoupling type theories and surveys that present the rosy picture of a sustained growth, whatever happens in the other part of the world.

Hello! We better not dream that decoupling means, getting not affecte4d at all. This is not possible. Simply because however less we are coupled; there will always be exports and imports and yes FDIs and FIIs who will be affected in case there is a financial downturn.


And least not when the IMF estimates global growth contraction in 2009 to a range of (-) 1.0 to (-) 0.5 per cent; first in 60 years. Another first is that all the advanced economies – the United States, Europe and Japan – had never gone so firmly, simultaneously, into recession. The world is projected to contract by 2.8 per cent in 2009, again the highest shrinkage in the last 80 years.

In a speech delivered at the Confederation of Indian Industry's National Conference at New Delhi on March 26, 2009 RBI governor D. Subbarao said, “In a globalized world no country can be an island.” I would say not even an island can be completely decoupled today.

Let’s have a fact check. India’s two-way trade (merchandize exports plus imports), as a proportion of GDP, increased from 21.2 per cent in 1997-98, to 34.7 per cent in 2007-08.
The ratio of total external transactions (gross current account flows plus gross capital flows) to GDP, this ratio has more than doubled from 46.8 per cent in 1997-98 to 117.4 per cent in 2007-08. Though the external demand, as measured by merchandize exports, accounts for less than 15 per cent of our GDP. Still it’s a significant number, at least enough to tarnish the scorching growth figures.

Well, while the government continues with stimulus measures and has already invoked emergency provisions of the FRBM Act to seek relaxation from the fiscal targets, the real recession threat will be faced by the next government.

For the time being one another stimulus package is eager to be poured in the economy in Loksabha election. And if newspaper reports are believed the expenditure is set to cross 10000 crore barrier; that’s more than US presidential election!

Well, but this black election stimulus will only; delay the crisis to come powerfully: NEXT TIME dear!

The power of appreciation

Can a man be made to do anything by thrashing, criticising, booing or just ignoring? I think, if someone believes in this, he is more than dishonest.

When you have a kid, you love it. Don’t you? We water a plant in the hope that a beautiful flower will smile for us some day. But what happens, when it comes to building men for the future? What happens to that father or mother in you, who claims to be the builder, the creator? Where goes that lover inside, when someone looks with hope towards you?

I sincerely believe, if things can be built, it can be built but through patience, perseverance, determination and love. With praise, you don’t bring satisfaction for others but the desire to get praised, again and again. With criticism you don’t gain, but make others lose, which is never intended.

All Great things in this world are dependent upon great relationships. Be it friendship, or institution building, relationship has to be at the core of all these processes.

We love dogs, and train them? Again,all by love. We can’t get anything out of them by whipping. We love ourselves and keep looking for good thing in us. That way we try maintaining our strengths and reduce our weaknesses.

It’s very easy to look for weaknesses. You can always find one. The toughest and therefore the most difficult thing is to praise, to appreciate, to encourage, to promise, ‘I am with you’.

Are you with me?

Advani as PM?

Who thinks Advani will not be a good PM? And who is sure Advani will be bad PM?

I am confused! Not because of Advani, who I think, has done both good and bad things unlike Manmohan Singh, who never did anything bad! Not because Manmohan Singh might be the longest serving coalition PM? I am worried, why everyone is not confused?

Let me present myself in a bit ‘organised’ way!

First why I think he will be a good PM?
Advani was acquitted by the court in the Baabri Masjid demolition case. Remember, Rath Yatra was no joke! Advani, if you ask an Investigation Bureau insider, was much better than any of the home ministers in last couple of decades. Remember the Muftis and the Patils were suit not polity changers! During his tenure as Home Minister, Kashmir saw a significant decline in terrorism. Forget human rights violation, they have always happened. After all we can’t hundred percent is an improbable idea. And let’s not take the credit of his Jinna praise away! After all Jinna gave us a neighbour! And anyway a man, who partitioned India, for whatever reasons, can’t be a stupid person! And I don’t have problems with Advani’s open declaration, ‘I want to be PM’. We feel bad because of our tradition of pretense! We liked Obama. Let’s be fair to Advani.

Now why I think, he will be bad PM?
First, Advani doesn’t have a Rahul and he can’t choose his successor. This will be his greatest handicap. Everyone will fight for post Advani scenario. Second, PMO is not Home Ministry. And, he can’t handle it like the terrorists! Next, he is just going to be yet another PM, not a Rathyatri this time. He might be an embarrassment if he does not have any information of his finance minister going to New York in recession times, the way it happened in Quandhar!

Hello, one thing I am sure without confusion! We are not going to have a powerful PM.

Varun Gandhi's hate Speech in Pilibhit

It’s a shocking reminder of how our democracy functions? It’s a repetition of what was always expected. It’s a reassertion of what’s the direction in which we are heading? The democracy is maturing or going off track?

Who thinks that Varun Gandhi was a liberal? Go and read what he has written in so many articles published in the RSS mouthpiece ORGANISER. Well, Gandhi is not the first in BJP or for that matter in Indian Politics to have found such short cuts to success. His fate was in doldrums since when Shivraj Singh Chauhan didn’t let him fight election from Vidisha in 2006 after he became the CM of Madhya Pradesh. Since then, he was really looking for an opportunity to project himself as a rising leader?

What Kalyan Singh and Narayan Rane did? What did Sanjay Nirupam do? Hello, this is politics? And you are mistaken if you still think that politics in this great country is for the cause of democracy.

I always think, why people believe that Nehru, Indira or Rajiv were great. For that matter Advani too has the credit of being the man who changed the polity of India. And I agree with Advani at least on one point. It is on what he told about Jinna being a great man. We consider Ravan also a great king. Why not Jinna?

If Indira imposed emergency, but won a war in the battlefield she becomes great!
Nehru is great as he was Gandhi’s favourite and returned to India to ‘suffer’?
Gandhi, I sincerely believe, was a great person; mistakes can always happen.
But lo Rajiv is also great; because he was killed for he sent IPKF to Lanka to check what was an ethnic problem and required a diplomatic solution?

Varun ‘deserves’ criticism for his effort. But remember until we can’t rid our politics of caste and power and ah sweet money; hate is here to stay!

IPL:Where in this world

Courtesy the home ministry of India: Delhi and Jaipur are out of the third revised schedule of the IPL 2009.
Now it’s upon these two states to take care of security concerns if they want T-20 in their state! What a pleasant surprise for Delhi, home to two of India’s currently playing stars cricketers and of course Jaipur, the defending IPL champion!! Indian state’s capital does not have the wherewithal to provide security to our ‘Cricket’!!! Credit: The Home Ministry of the State of India which won’t give in to the terrorist threat and is prepared to defend to any attack.

Why so much fuss about security! We have commandos to defend all our politicians and their cronies. We have police to deploy outside the homes of every Shahrukh and Amitabh. We have personnel to guard every single flower in the Raisina Hills. But when it comes to defending the game of cricket, suddenly, problems prop up. So much so for the government that claims the credit of ‘improved’ security inside the country.

The issue is of credibility and not allowing others to exploit the recent attack on the Sri Lanka cricketers in Pakistan, wrote Rahul Bhonsle in the ‘mint’ yesterday. It’s more than that. It’s the spirit of the game, the creed of cricket which ought to be upheld against all odds. It’s the popular.

We are world’s largest democracy, my dear. Let the ‘gentleman’ be his own.

Responding Against Economic Crisis

If we go by our response against economic crisis, historically, it has almost always been perfunctory. Indians do not take financial crisis seriously. We respond to wars, we respond to famines, we respond to earthquakes and floods. Economic crisis, we don’t care for much.
Nehru responded to China’s attack not US capitalism. Indira responded to Pakistan’s attack not to China’s liberalization of its economy. We began responding once we landed into serious trouble in 1990s and we had to put negotiate our gold reserve. It’s a sad comparison when compared to the way geopolitics has worked in the post industrialization era. The power holds today with those who keep a tab on economic factors.
In India the British were successful and not French most importantly because the financial powerhouse of Bengal was with the British. Why British were able to rule India was because they decided to exploit India economically and not interfere with the lifestyle of the populace. The response of 1857 was more due to violent suppression by the British of the intermittent unrests than the economic misery they brought to the Indians.

Albeit it’s true not only for India; our response has been more sluggish when compared to others.

In the global meltdown of 2008-09 the response has been quite unhurried. While the CRR and repo rates were election adjusted, export led sectors were allowed to fall making thousands jobless. We brought loan waiver scheme when we should have made micro credit easily available for farmers. We implemented 6th pay commission reports when we should have worried about fiscal deficit. We have allocated higher subsidy for fertilizers when we should have gone all out for organic farming. But we just don’t care for all this in an election year. And alas when was it last when there was no election for one whole year?
Today we are safe because our economy has been on the roll courtesy individual enterprise of the Tantis, the Ambanis, the Mittals etc. The government focus has been to punish the wealth creators and not award the deserving. But that is how India always responds. We don’t vote out a party for dabbling with our financial security. We are happy with a government that does creative accounting to hide financial deficit. We are satisfied with a government that puts fiscal responsibility on the back burner, which believes in allocation and not implementation, which has damaged autonomous institutions like the AIIMS and the IIMs by threatening their annual allocation. It’s all shocking and disappointing.
…to be continued.