Top 10 Examples of Jugaad in India

“Aapko koi problem nahin hogi, maine jugaad kar rakhi hai”. “Kuch setting ho toh batao”. “Are apni upar tak setting hai”. Every one of us would have come across something similar at one point or the other. What exactly is this much celebrated setting aka jugaad? Well, it can simply be defined as an improvised quick fix to a tricky situation; goes to the extent of bending the rules; wisely attributed to lateral thinking.

Let me list down the top 10 examples of jugaad in India over the years.

1. The Third Front as Alternative Governance
   Recent elections have shown a new trend. The opportunist, UPA/NDA discards come together to form an alternative famously known as “Third Front”. It’s nothing more than a jugaad with sole purpose to bargain hard with UPA/NDA when time comes to form the Govt. Everyone knows it is not long term, but as to the purpose of holding the Govt to ransom it has worked quiet well.

2. Chidambram as Home Minister
   Prithiviraj Patil was busy putting make-up and changing wardrobes amidst the 26/11 attacks. He needed to go and went he did! The big question was “Who would fill the empty chair”? Chidambram, known to be an astute economist, was fitted to run the Home Ministry. Barring a few fiasco (Hindu terror, Shoe sting et al), expected of a jugaad, PC has more or less fulfilled the role of a workable HM.

3. Ravindra Jadeja as All Rounder
   The lack of all round cricketers in India is well known. One too many players have been tried by the selectors. When all else failed, time was ripe for the jugaad, Ravindra Jadeja. This jugaad failed and failed miserably. It even put a question mark to the very existence of jugaad. This, until he was selected again. You can hate jugaad, you can love jugaad, you can’t ignore jugaad.

4. Students and College Exams
   Most of us never studied the whole semester and used to bunk the classes. At the verge of exams, we had no notes/no idea. The jugaad used to come into effect. Whole course was divided into 4-5 parts, depending upon the number of friends in the group. Each one read a particular section and then explained it to the rest of the group. I still don’t understand how, but we faired really well, Jugaad rocks!!!

5. L K Advani as Leader of Opposition
   The fight for the post of Leader of Opposition was out in the open. Feelers were doing the rounds. When the GenX of the BJP leaders failed to come to a settlement, it was time for jugaad. The age old tested campaigner Advani, who till then had shown inclination to retire from active politics was brought back and he did some serious damage to UPA over price rise and corruption issues.

6. Security in India
   Secuity setup in most of the places in India works on jugaad. Overworked/underpaid policemen; lack of proper fighting equipments; lack of transport vehicles; lack of proper police station. When people say, “How the hell do we not see anarchy in such a scenario?” I tell them it is the Indian jugaad of 3rd Degree. If you get caught by frustrated law enforcers, God help you!

7. Elections year after year
   If you know someone who has acted as an Electoral Officer, you would know the whole election runs on nothing but jugaad. Govt officers are made poll officers, School/ Colleges are made the poll booths, Long lines at booths with no facility at all. Locals provide the chai/paani/lodging to the booth officers posted in remote areas. In tribal areas, the poll stationary is transported on Elephants. At some places people vote under lantern light. But this jugaad has stood the test of time and hopefully will continue doing so in the future.
   
8. Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister
   When Sonia Gandhi did not accept the post of PM after 2004 victory, there was a big frenzy as to the appointment of the PM. Dr. Manmohan Singh, a respected, senior member of Congress party, was employed as a jugaad. Never contested an election, not known to be conniving politician, he turned out to be a shining success of Indian jugaad and how! Into his second term, the jugaad continues to rattle iron man Advani at his own game.
 
9. IPL in South Africa
   IPL2 in SA is a shining example in the Indian jugaad armory. At couple of weeks notice, it was decided to shift the event to SA. Frenetic night outs, back room negotiations and “karna hai” attitude paved way to one of the highly successful events in cricketing history. It was a city moment of jugaads.

10. Baap of All Jugaads: Sheila Dixit (Common Wealth Games)
    To term CWG, Baap of all Jugaads won’t be a misnomer. Everything was left to the last moment, to the chance. Sports Minister termed it the Fat Punjabi wedding, which turns out well at the end. A quick fix to the impounding problems, CM Shiela Dixit was the jugaad to get the games up and running. And boy did she turn out to be one hell of a jugaad. The opening ceremony was a grand success and the whole world came to know and respect the great Indian Jugaad. Bharat Bhagya Vidhata!

Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC)?

We have been exposed to a new phenomenon during the recent times. I am talking about the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). Opposition wants to have a JPC, Ruling party does not want to give a JPC and Common man is left wondering what the JPC is?

By JPC, I understand a committee jointly constituted by parliamentarians across the party lines. How is it any different from any other gazillion committees that are formed to probe matters? Why the obsession? Will it prove to be of any help?

JPC is constituted mainly in the cases where people don’t have faith that the Govt. will allow an impartial probe or the Govt. wants to impress that it has nothing to hide. There are no specific rules to it and very few references to generalize from.  JPC does not have any punitive powers. It can only pass resolution and give recommendations.  Let’s delve in a bit of history. In all there have been four investigative JPC’s till now as below:

JPC 1

• Cause: Bofors scam in ‘87.
• Days Parliament was stalled before it was constituted: 45.
• Effect: Recommendations were rejected by the opposition party.
• Timeline: Aug ‘87- April ‘88.

JPC2

• Cause: Harshad Mehta scandal in ‘92.
• Days Parliament was stalled before it was constituted: 17.
• Effect: Recommendations partially accepted but never implemented.
• Ministers summoned: Dr Manmohan Singh (then Finance Minister).

JPC3

• Cause: Ketan Parekh securities scam in ‘01.
• Days Parliament was stalled before it was constituted: 15.
• Effect: Recommended a lot of stringent changes to stock market regulations but were diluted later on.
• Timeline: April ‘01-Dec ‘02.
• Ministers summoned: Mr Yashwant Sinha (then Finance Minister).

JPC4

• Cause: Pesticide in Soft dirnks in’ 03.
• Effect: Recommended guidelines for water usage by Soft drink companies.
• Timeline: Aug ‘03-Feb ‘04.

So what will the JPC achieve in this case and why is Govt. not allowing it? One thing for sure, it’s going to achieve nothing more than a set of recommendations that too in a year’s time. As to why the Govt. is not allowing it, is a bit tricky.

UPA has 259/545 in Lok Shabha and 91/243 in Rajya Sabha. Given these funny numbers from the coalition era and SP/BSP giving outside support, UPA will be in minority with strength of around 7 in a 15 member JPC. UPA might not be able to dictate terms in the JPC.

In the past the ministers summoned were Finance Ministers but this time the focus is on PM himself. Congress is worried that JPC might summon Dr. Manmohan Singh for questioning. Thus it is ready to sacrifice entire Winter session. If PM is summoned it would be highly embarrassing to the Govt.

Also the opposition will get a potent tool against the Govt. with leaks from investigation sprayed across the media. Govt. can ill afford it.

Verdict: Govt. might not allow a JPC in this matter. Winter session will be sacrificed.

देश मेरे देश मेरे

आजादी की सौंधी खुशबू,
जब नथुनों में भर आती है,
सर उठाकर जीने की,
तब आदत सी हो जाती है|

संघर्ष किया था जब सबने,
वो साल पुराना लगता है,
खून बहाया था जिसने,
वो भाई बेगाना लगता है|

बापू की तस्वीर पर,
बस फूल चड़ाए जाते हैं,
१०% कमीशन पर,
सब काम कराये जाते हैं|

आजादी बोले कुछ, तू सुन,
६३ साल की हो गयी हूँ में,
अब मुझमें वैसी बात नहीं,
मेरे बूढ़े कन्धों में अब,
पहले जैसी जान नहीं|

मेरे बच्चों अब तुम पर है,
की देश का आगे क्या कुछ हो,
अपने सपने तुम खुद देखो,
तुम खुद ही उन्हें साकार करो|

हे माँ तू ऐसा क्यों बोले,
तूने तो बहुत कुछ है दिया,
हिम्मत, सोच और इज्जत का,
जीवन में हमारे प्रकाश किया|

महनत करेंगे सब मिलकर,
देश को आगे ले जायेंगे,
ज़रुरत पड़ी तो फिर एक बार,
हम अपना लहू बहाएंगे|

देश मेरे देश मेरे,
तू ही मेरा तीर्थ है,
तू ही मेरे चारों धाम,
मैं जी लूँगा फिर और कभी,
इस बार करी जां तेरे नाम|

For Now: For Ever

Getting bored sans interesting company during my recent train journey, I took a pen and paper and decided to write. I realized that it’s been a long time since I wrote something considerable using pen and paper. In fact with e-transfers in vogue, I barely sign my cheque these days.

There were times when one thought of no alternative to felling trees for paper. Today laptop/computer is increasingly replacing it. I remember getting scolded for bad hand writing. I guess I turned out to be pretty far sighted coz these days it hardly matters. No matter how permanent things seems they are essentially temporary.

Horses/Bullocks pulled passenger carts for the longest time. They have become almost extinct today from cities and villages alike.

Oil was drilled for the first time around 150 years ago. No one knew then that we had only 250 years of this fuel on earth. We took it to be permanent. Every other thing started running on oil. Now that it is about to run out, new form of yet another temporary nuclear energy is already here.

Similar are the phases of life. Good and Bad. It is said that good thing about bad time is that it is temporary. I used to get tensed at most trivial things during early years of my life. It took me some time to understand the futility of it. To control it.

During the bad times, one needs to stop being short sighted. Say you are tensed about your exam results. Try and think of the time 6 months from now. Will you be alive? Yes. Will you be fine? Yes. Ease yourself. Never take tension. Take action. You can’t alter the result of the exam. Better stop worrying. It you worry for now, you will worry for ever.

Likewise it’s futile to sulk over the mistakes committed in the past. What’s important is what one learns from them. Mistakes committed are in a temporary moment. What one learns from them remains permanently in life.

Racism: Reverse and Progressive

A lot has kept us busy as a nation last couple of weeks. CWG, Mohali win and most recently some serious allegations of racism against a few officials from down under.

If I am right, Ministry of External Affairs, India summoned High Commissioners of respective countries and lodged protests. Last I heard the said individuals either resigned or were ousted and rightly so. Such behavior has no place in civilized societies.

Okay, tell me one thing. Has racism sprung up all of a sudden during recent times? The answer would be a no. Racism is a perception which a society or a race developes about contemporary society or race overtime. It’s just that with the advent of Globalization, these days we get to know of it real time. Earlier Lord Ganesha on Chappals was mere fashion for a society that doesn’t know anything about him, Today it is offensive.

Tell me frankly, how many of us think Bhajji did indeed utter “Maa Ki” and not the racist slur. Why then were we as a nation hell bent on seeing Bhajji free of the allegations? Now come ‘on, it had nothing to do with lack of evidence or anything thereof. If such had been the case then all our politicians were saints.

To be frank it’s about who is leveling the allegations. Had the opposite team been Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, West Indies or for that matter South Africa, we as a nation might not have backed our player to that extent. Why? Coz we have seen long periods of unabashed Aussie sledging as a reminder of the days of the Raj perhaps.

When a society which has perception of being shamelessly racist, throws up allegations of such sort, it seems rubbing salt in the wound. You gotta handle what you dish out. Right?

But what worries me more is a developing phenomenon, Reverse Racism. In our part of world racism is generally related to prejudice that developed white nations have against us about them being superior. The aspect of racism under which emerging societies like us berate, taunt or create a certain perception about developed nations is what I call Reverse Racism.

When white girls are considered nothing but free meat. Whole society is said to lack values. If it’s not racism, what is it? I was shocked to see in a recent episode of Bigg Boss, a dozen white models in skimpy dresses made to dance with the ousted contestant. Just as his inaam. When the whole crowd enjoys it, it’s not just racism, it’s sadness.

Equally frightening is Progressive Racism. Progressive racism is when slightly more developed race is prejudiced against slightly lesser developed race.

When an African student in Delhi University is called Kaalu. A person from the same region is called Habshi on national TV. When CWG teams from African countries are given step motherly treatment. On daily basis do we see jokes being made on color of skin on TV. “Abey door hat, tu rang chodta hai”. “Sab log fair and lovely lagate hain, yeh cherry blossom lagata hai”. “Abe langoor ke bhai”.

I am not trying to be apologetic here, I hate that frankly. But if such progressive and reverse racism continues in our society, we too would lose our moral right to complain. We would just be another hypocrite in the bunch. Do we really want that? It’s bit scary to answer, isn’t it?

नींद शर्मा गयी

आखें उसके दीदार के नशे में डूबीं थी ऐसे,

की नींद भी शर्मा के रह गयी रात भर,

लफ्ज़ मिले नहीं बहुत सोच कर,

जब मिले तो जबाँ दगा दे गयी,

हाथ घायल थे उसके भर स्पर्श से,

कलम उठाई तो सियाही सूखी निकली,

बहुत हिम्मत कर उस दिन स्टेशन पहुंचे हम,

जालिम ट्रेन को भी उसी दिन समय पर आना था,

निगाहों ने बस उसको ढूँढा सारी तरफ,

जब दिखी तभी बारिश आ गयी,

मिलना था उससे जब, ख्वाबों में,

कातिल एक बार फिर नींद दगा दे गयी|

Inception: What is Limbo?

What is Limbo?
According to one of the Catholic theologies, Limbo is described as periphery to hell. People who are not assigned to hell and have died in original sin, have to bide their time in Limbo. In the movie it is explained as a state in the dream where dreamers end up while trying to go too deep into dream levels or by getting killed in the dream under heavy sedation. It’s an unconstructed dream space of raw infinite subconscious which seems more real than reality itself. Here time runs fast enough for one to lose his/her mind.

What happens when one dies in a dream?
If one dies in a dream, he wakes up to the level above (wakes up to reality if dies in a single level dream). In the opening sequence Cobb shoots Arthur while on an extraction mission and Arthur wakes up on the 1st level. This is true for any normal sedative induced dream. Since the Inception involved going to the 3rd level of dream, it required a special strong sedative, with possible side effects. One such side effect was, if a person dies in the dream, he would end up in Limbo.

Is Limbo like being in Comma?
No, limbo is not a state ad infinitum (comma). One gets out of limbo as soon as the sedation wears off. But since in limbo time runs very quickly, mind tends to burn out, even couple of hours of real time would seem like eternity and one might end up insane.

Is Limbo a shared state?
Limbo is indeed a shared state. As stated in the movie, Limbo would be empty except for the things left by someone who had already been there. Hence near the end of the movie, when Adrain and Cobb went to Limbo they found the world which Mal and Cobb had created there earlier. It does not mean that people in two different dreams altogether, will share the limbo. Only the people physically connected by the PASIV device, sharing a single dream will share the Limbo.

How to reach the Limbo?
1. By getting killed in the dream under strong sedative.
Saito and Fischer got killed and reached Limbo.

2. By trying to go deeper and deeper and states getting unstable
a) Cobb and Mal tried going deeper and deeper and reached Limbo where boundaries between reality and dream vanished.
b) On the snow fortress level, Cobb and Adrian tried going deeper from an already unstable state and reached Limbo. (rememeber, the sedative they took could just take them to Level 3, which too seemed unstable). Adrian explained to Cobb that they needed to go deeper to get Fischer back. They found Mal there (Cobb stated that he had created her projection in Limbo over the period of time from the memories he had of her) who was keeping Fischer captive. They also found the world created by Mal and Cob in Limbo as explained earlier.

How to get out of Limbo?
1. If you kill yourself, you wake up to the real world. (Mal and Cobb committed suicide on the railway track and woke up to reality).
2. Get your own kick in Limbo (free fall for Fischer and Adrian) with the kick on any level above (like using the defibrillator in snow fortress for Fischer). These two synchronized events will take you to the level from where the kick was engineered. Fischer and Adrain got out of it this way in the end.

Why didn’t they try to bring Saito back from Limbo just like Fischer?
Saito could have been brought back just like Fischer with synchronized kicks. But it would have been worthless to the mission. Fischer was important and time was running out. So Adrian and Cobb first found Fischer. He was easy to spot since Cobb knew that Mal’s projection would have captured Fischer to force Cobb to come after her. He went to the place in Limbo (their own apartment) where he could find Mal and thus found Fischer. Meanwhile the kicks started taking effect. There was not much time for them to find Saito. Adrian and Fischer went back and Cobb stayed behind to look for him.

How did Cobb end up again on sea shore and hadn’t aged a bit?
One wakes up on the sea shore when arrive in Limbo. Cobb and Adrian woke up there when they got to Limbo to rescue Fischer. Adrian and Fischer left, leaving Cobb behind to find Saito. Considerable time would have passed during his search for Saito. He should have aged in accordance that time runs pretty fast in Limbo. However he ended up again at the sea shore, un-aged. What happened was, Adrian left Cobb in Limbo and came back eventually to Level 1 where Saito and Cobb were left in the drowning car. Saito was already dead by then but Cobb was alive. He died again due to drowning and his new projection entered Limbo (re-entered). Hence he ended up again at the shore un-aged.

P.S: Queries and Discussion Invited

Checking the Trends

Who do we love more? Mom or Dad. Who do we think about more? Jesus or Satan. Do we Love more than we Hate? One would agree, these questions are quite vague to answer. Not any more. Thanks to Google’s insatiable desire to hold more and more dough over its users, we are now able to analyze the search pattern traffic over the years via Google Trends. As much as I hate Google for storing private data, I love the way they use it.

Mom vs Dad

Mom seems to be the favorite here. Time for Dad’s to buckle up or lose the battle.

IPad vs Kindle

Since IPad is quite new, let’s consider just the last year’s data. IPad beats Kindle quite easily. Despite being a new entrant, people prefer it over Kindle. It seems IPad will put out this Kindle soon.

Engineer vs Doctor

I have always taken pride in being an engineer. But my doctor friends can smile now. I concede. You win. You are more dear to people than me.

Apple vs Microsoft vs Google

No prizes for guessing. Google beats Apple and Microsoft by a margin. Microsoft seems to be on a decline and next year’s data might though some shocking statistics.

Twitter vs Orkut vs Myspace vs Facebook

Facebook is way ahead of its peers. For Twitter/Orkut/MySpace, seems a tough life ahead.

BJP vs Gandhi

I tried Advani, Vajpayee etc v/s Gandhi. They never stood a chance, anyways. I then decided to put the whole BJP against the Gandhi surname. BJP lost quite heavily. No wonder they lost the election. A surname seems mighty.

Cricket vs Football vs Basketball

Football dominates globally. Cricket and Basketball have a long way to go. As far as Indian subcontinent is concerned, it’s the other way round.

Beauty vs Brain

The age old question has been left in the deadlock again. It’s a virtual tie between beauty and the brain. It seems we still have not been able to make up our minds b/w Female beauty and Male brain.

Oil vs Blood

Oil and Blood go neck and neck showing their equal importance. Given that so much blood has been spilt because of oil, this seems hardly surprising.

War vs Peace

Man’s violent nature and urge for war is evident here. Peace seems to be the last thing on the mind.

Love vs Hate

Well there seems to be some hope left. Despite the urge for war, man has not forgotten the cardinal urge to love. We still haven’t learned to hate each other as much.