Our genius economists and rising fuel prices

Cartoon by Alok Nirantar (Check out our contributors section to know more)

Pasting text from my earlier post here. This is a loosely translated analysis from a Malayalam weekly that squarely fixes the blame on the Congress for the escalating fuel prices.

By the 1980s, India was almost 70 % self sufficient when it came to petroleum products. The country had an overall vision of becoming self sustainable in terms of its energy needs and was actively working towards it. Loads of money was spent in oil discovery and to set up refineries. This is when Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and other oil PSUs were set up. In 1985, the government made two changes in its outlook. It felt that it is cheaper to import crude oil than exploration. By this time, large corporations like Reliance began increasing their share in oil production. (Which means they reaped the benefits of all the government's effort. Which means, taxpayers money was handed over to  private players in a neat thick wad.) It was also a time when energy demands of the country were beginning to increase due to industry friendly and pro rich policies. Instead of encouraging means of alternate transportation, the country subsidized automobiles and private transport in various forms. Instead of encouraging agriculture, and sustainable industries, government encouraged fuel hungry industries. This led to soaring fuel demands. Industries were promoted heavily without keeping in mind the power requirements. India's oil prices were already dependent on world crude prices to a large extent by now because oil was being largely imported and not produced within the country. The next time when inflation hit the roofs, Manmohan Singh had an excuse ready-- We don't control crude prices. Neat.

 PS: Italics mine. Some points have been lost in translation. Fuel prices have now been deregulated. Which means the markets control the prices. Which means Indian's have no cushion if prices go north due to the vagaries of demand-supply-hoarding.

Yours truly on BBC

Excuse this plug. But I have to do this.


 Last Saturday, I debuted on international television!


I was interviewed by the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for Click, their flagship technology programme.

 You must have already read about the Click team's arrival in Bangalore to film the tech scene in India.

The episode was aired on the BBC on Saturday and Sunday, last.

Despite my extensive acting experience in the Doordarshan era, as a 12 year old protagonist in a telefilm which never aired and as the hero's childhood sidekick in another teleserial and a cameo role (I was maybe 2 years old) in a documentary on environment, the camera was making me slightly nervous. So if you noticed any problem with my accent, don't bother telling me. I already know.

You can read the story online here. Read other stories they covered here and here.

Follow BBC Click.

That's it for now.

Yours tully,
JPK

Looking for a reason to celebrate? Here's two.

Cartoon by Alok Nirantar (Check out our contributors section to know more)

Cartoon by Alok Nirantar (Check out our contributors section to know more)

Don't get art? Join the club

There is a real danger of being branded a philistine if I say that I somehow don't get art. What I really mean to say is that I don't get all art. I get some. This is in no way an attempt to discourage artists who take pride in their work. Just that I don't get all art.

In a recent blog post, I'm Sick Of Pretending: I Don't "Get" Art, Glen Coco argued

"I'm like, 99% sure that nobody's ACTUALLY into art and it's just some exclusive club you can only join if you've got more money than interesting things to communicate to the rest of the human species. Just as nobody wanted to be the first one to go up to the Emperor and say "dude, I can see your arsehole", nobody wants to be the one to go up to the lady in the above photograph and say "you are at least 50 years old. What the fuck are you doing?"

Get that feeling? I'm sure you must have felt it at some point or the other on a visit to an art exhibition.

Coco is not just some nut with a blog. He claims to have gone to art school and says he has written a dissertation called "The Elevation of Art Through Commerce: An Analysis of Charles Saatchi's Approach to the Machinery of Art Production Using Pierre Bourdieu's Theories of Distinction."

He has also attended art openings at least once a month for the last five years, even "fucking purchased" pieces of it,  he claims.

But then, he went to the Tracey Emin retrospective at the Hayward Gallery and said "I just don't think I "get" art."

(Source : The Vice)

On this picture, he commented "Look at these fucking guys! Just to be clear: They are in the process of spending three minutes looking at a photograph of a woman they don't know sitting on a chair. Can you imagine how quickly they'd be skipping over this photo if it was in their mum's holiday snaps?"

I promptly forwarded the post to my friends group and quite predictably, our resident intellectual who recently deconstructed why this Kolaveri di in the postmodern context,  replied. 

Here is his response.

Philistines I tell you. What no comments PK?

Here take a look at this piece of Art. On permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Doesn’t get bigger than that.

 

It’s called ‘Vir Heroicus Sublimis’ that’s like latin for ‘Man, heroic and sublime’. if you tire of standing in front of it as you gaze upon its inner metaphysical implications and messages, thet good folks at MOMA have given you a bench to do it on.

Now the philistines will say that the painter Barnett Newman probably sub-contracted this to a house painter, but that’s where you are wrong. Painting something a solid colour is harder than it looks, especially if you – like Newman – are one of the masters of modern abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism geddit? In te words of Newman, “If we are living in a time without a legend or mythos that can be called sublime... how can we be creating a sublime art?” that’s what this is. Sublime. Art. IInstead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘life,’ we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. And those are worth millions of $$s. it is neo-classical. It is postmodern. It is distilled decontructionism. It is the obvious and the abstract. Sigh. Some people just don’t get ‘art’. All you need is a good vocabulary in BS to be an art critic. And on that note, here is a cartoon that illustrates superbly the point at hand:

Our resident intellectual (surely he disdains this reference), blogs here.

If you don't get the sarcasm, add English next to art in your list.

And here's Mr Coco's follow up: I still don't get art.

Cheers,
JPK

There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza...then fix it, dear Henry

(Cartoon by Alok Nirantar. Follow him on twitter: @caricatured or e-mail him breathing.cartoons@gmailcom)

This cartoon reminds me of the poem There's a hole in my bucket. Read it, you will find out why.

There's a Hole in My Bucket

(~Bergliederbüchlein (c 1700))

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

Then fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

Then fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.

With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza?

With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, with what?

With straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

With straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, with straw.

The straw is too long, dear Liza, dear Liza,

The straw is too long, dear Liza, too long,

Then cut it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

Then cut it, dear Henry, dear Henry, cut it.

With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, dear Liza?

With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, with what?

With an axe, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

With an axe, dear Henry, dear Henry, with an axe.

The axe is too dull, dear Liza, dear Liza,

The axe is too dull, dear Liza, too dull.

Then sharpen it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

Then sharpen it, dear Henry, dear Henry, hone it.

On what shall I sharpen it, dear Liza, dear Liza?

On what shall I sharpen it, dear Liza, on what?

On a stone, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

With a stone, dear Henry, dear Henry, a stone.

The stone is too dry, dear Liza, dear Liza,

The stone is too dry, dear Liza, too dry.

Well wet it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

Well wet it, dear Henry, dear Henry, wet it.

With what shall I wet it, dear Liza, dear Liza?

With what shall I wet it, dear Liza, with what?

try water, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

try water, dear Henry, dear Henry, water.

In what shall I fetch it, dear Liza, dear Liza?

In what shall I fetch it, dear Liza, in what?

In a bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,

In a bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, bucket.

There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,

There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

Today's cartoon: The one that came back

(Cartoon by Alok Nirantar. Follow him on twitter: @caricatured or e-mail him breathing.cartoons@gmailcom)

Elephant Boy at the National Gallery of Modern Art

Ravi Gupta forwards this:

(Image courtesy: NGMA)

Nirmala Govindarajan writes in the Times of India

When Sabu Dastagir, the boy mahout from Mysore, made his maiden appearance in Robert Flaherty's 'Elephant Boy' in 1935, he captured the imagination of the West. "Sabu was an enigma to begin with, an exotic savage straight out of the backyard of Rudyard Kipling's 'Toomai of the Elephants'," explains film critic Prof N Manu Chakravarthy.

By the mid-1930s, people in the West had some inkling of images defining such exotic people through their experience from colonialism. "More importantly, these images found their connection to anthropological works, which correlated to Africa and its natives," he explains. And Sabu too, was looked at as an object of curiosity.

Read more here.

In Palembang, Big sister's watching you

(Cartoon by Alok Nirantar. Follow him on twitter: @caricatured or e-mail him breathing.cartoons@gmailcom)

West Bengal Chief Minsiter Mamata Banerjee 's didigiri can put hard core Stalinists to shame.

You must have heard or read about of her recent exploits. In short, she had a college professor jailed for forwarding a cartoon poking fun at her. Which is exactly what cartoonist Alok Nirantar also does (see above). The threat of being jailed has never deterred any cartoonist who is a true practitioner of the art.

Not content with the achievement, following the footsteps of certain angry citizen who recently filed criminal and civil suits against Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other internet companies, Didi now has the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of West Bengal write to the world's largest social networking site Facebook asking it to take down pictures making fun of her.

In activist speak, these (CID, Police et al) are called instruments of state oppression.

The sad part?

All this, in a state where once upon a time, stalwarts of Indian cinema like Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak took apart sociopolitical issues and exposed hypocrisies with wit, sarcasm, nuance and at times, outrage. Time for the intelligentsia to debate...again.


Sorry didi. It's Poschimbongo. Shit. Paschimbanga. Spell check says Palembang.

Are we in entering an era of intolerance? Fuck yeah! No debates please.

No offense to my friends from WB, the bhadraloks and the open minded. Oh, and none to the good people of Palembang.

And by the way, have you read about what's going on at the West side of the country? Of Modi-fication and Modi-fixation?

Of Modi-fication and Modi-fixation

(Cartoon by Alok Nirantar. Follow him on twitter: @caricatured or e-mail him breathing.cartoons@gmail.com)

BJP hardliner, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, known to be both Good and Evil depending on who you talk to, has scored another "clean chit" as he tries to come clean out of a past that keeps him from fulfilling his priministerial ambitions.

According to the supreme court appointed special investigation team which is conducting an inquiry into the post-godhra, Gulberg massacre, no offense has been established against Modi and dozens of others accused in a complaint.

The 61 year old emperor of Gujarat who was recently uncrowned by The Caravan, finished third in the Time magazine's global poll on the 100 most influential people.

Ishan Tharoor writes in the Time Magazine's blog about one of the most polarizing figures in the country

India’s Narendra Modi. The controversial Chief Minister of the western state of Gujarat, Modi is, as a recent TIME International cover story discussed, one of the most polarizing figures in the world’s largest democracy: to his supporters, he’s a pro-business reformer and man of action who ought to be the country’s next Prime Minister; to some of his critics, he is little better than a war criminal, complicit in the hideous 2002 religious riots in Gujarat that took place under his watch in which thousands died.

Read more: here.

Trivia: Ishaan Tharoor is congress MP Shashi Tharoor's son.

Today's cartoon: Selective Vision

(Cartoon by Alok Nirantar. Follow him on twitter: @caricatured or e-mail him breathing.cartoons@gmail.com)