Panty-bombers beat back the pub-bombers!

Someone recently described the computer as the charkha of the 21st century!

In the last few days, Nisha Susan has shown us a new way of fighting back mindless violence, 21st century Gandhi-style.

This is a case study of how an imaginative approach using the power of digital media, combined with mainstream media, can take on the sledgehammer methods of the muscled and the powerful!

Barely three weeks after he vowed to go round Mangalore on Valentine's Day, with goons, priests and video cameramen in tow, and forcibly marry off unmarried couples celebrating Valentine's Day, Pramod Muthalik has been forced to sit out Valentine's Day in a police cell so that women can celebrate their right to love!

It is a powerful victory for the rational and the balanced.

Barely three weeks ago, this self-styled leader was threatening to force his belief that women ought not to go to pubs, because it was against "Indian culture", on the rest of the world.

What made the difference?

The power of click! Nisha Susan had two options -- stay quiet and accept everything, or meet these people head-on and make fun of them. She chose to click off an imaginative "Pink Chaddi Campaign" of the "Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women" on Facebook on Feb 5 – and made a difference!

"Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!" was her approach.

Print and television media picked up the story of the "panty-bombers vs the pub bombers" five days later, on February 10. Other social networking sites took it up. Bloggers and media columnists jumped in and the word chaddi, normally an unmentionable in conservative Indian society, acquired acceptance as the campaign became the buzz of the country.

By 5 pm on Feb 10, over 5,000 had signed up for the campaign on Facebook. By 8 pm, the number had crossed 8,000, by 11 pm it was 11,000 and by Friday night it had crossed 33,000. By Valentine's Day morning the number was 38,150 and still climbing!

"The content and the form of the movement enthused me. It'll make a point in a cheeky way. This is a way of taking back the space the guardians of morality are trying to take from us. This movement isn't just an activist movement, it's by ordinary women who want to speak up and fight back," one woman told the Main Stream Media (MSM).

Media reports say that the BJP top brass picked up the signals that Yedduurappa did not! He had come out in support of Muthalik's anti "pub culture" campaign, though he said he was against his methods! They packed him off from the Nagpur meeting a day earlier than scheduled and told him they wanted no more negative headlines from Mangalore.

Which is why Muthalik's men called a news conference yesterday, eve of Valentine's day, to announce a change of plans – instead of forcibly marrying of couples or compelling them to tie rachis, they would be good law-abiding boys and merely inform the police about "obscene displays of love in public "!

What a change of heart!

Hurrah for the new digital media – and for Nisha and those have shown us a new method of fighting back! Thank you!!!

Panty-Bombers Put Pub-Bombers in Prison for Valentine’s Day!

The Power of Digital
Panty-Bombers Put Pub-Bombers in Prison for Valentine’s Day!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49641698651&ref=mf
http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/
India has just experienced the power of Digital!
Exactly three weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, Pramod Muthalik and his goons beat up women in a pub having a beer over lunch in Mangalore, in south India. This self-styled leader of the right-wing Hindu Sri Ram Sene (SRS) felt women ought not to go to pubs because it was against “Indian culture”, whatever that means. Muthalik also threatened to go round Mangalore on Valentine’s Day, with Hindu priests and video cameramen in tow, and forcibly marry off unmarried couples celebrating Valentine’s Day.

Three weeks later Muthalik and his ilk are being forced to sit out the day in jail today (Feb 14) so that women in Mangalore can flood the pubs to celebrate their right to love!

Behind that arrest is the story of the power of digital -- how social networking sites like Facebook , word of mouth, print and television have channeled horror, shock and anger at what happened in Mangalore into an imaginative campaign that shamed a reluctant government to act.

And it was all because of the power of click! “Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!” was the message that clicked out and created a novel Gandhian, non-violent protest!
Nisha Susan, a Delhi-based media professional originally from Bangalore, clicked it off on Feb 5. She launched a “Pink Chaddi Campaign” or “Pinky Panty Campaign” of the “Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women” on Facebook. Chaddi is the Indian word for panty. It is also slang in India for right-wing hardliners.

“After the attack on the pub in Mangalore, I felt I had two options. One was to stay quiet and accept everything. The other was to meet these people head-on and make fun of them. So, I started this group on Facebook. The chaddi is also slang for right-wing hardliners and the saffron (right-wing) agenda, while pink stands for things that are frivolous. The combination is offensive.’’

The instructions to the sisterhood were—look in your closet for pink panties or buy them cheap, dirt cheap. Those who could not mail them were asked to drop their packages at “Chaddi Collection Points”. Men were also invited to join in.
The print and television media picked up the story of the “panty-bombers vs the pub bombers” five days later, on February 10. Other social networking sites picked it up. Bloggers and media columnists jumped in and the word chaddi, normally an unmentionable in conservative Indian society, acquired acceptance as the campaign became the buzz of the country.

By 5 pm on Feb 10, over 5,000 had signed up for the campaign on Facebook. By 8 pm, the number had crossed 8,000, by 11 pm it was 11,000 and by Friday night it had crossed 33,000. By Valentine’s Day morning the number was 38,150 and still climbing!

“The content and the form of the movement enthused me. It’ll make a point in a cheeky way. This is a way of taking back the space the guardians of morality are trying to take from us. This movement isn’t just an activist movement, it’s by ordinary women who want to speak up and fight back,” one woman told the Main Stream Media.
Reena Wadhwa, an interior designer in Mumbai, told media she bought a pack of three panties of different shades of pink. Women who do not visit pubs or drink wrote in to say they supported the cause. “It’s absurd how women were harassed in Mangalore. I wanted to take a more proactive stance instead of just being defensive and so I’ve joined the campaign,” said Bishakha Datta, a documentary film-maker.

Manasi Subramanium, a Chennai-based publishing editor and campaign supporter, felt the movement was a contemporary interpretation of old feminist ideas. “This is an old feminist response, akin to bra-burning. I believe in the statement this group is trying to make and I am not at all surprised by the response,” she said.
Women were also exhorted to join the Pub Bharo Andolan (Fill the Pubs Movement on Valentine’s Day). “Join Us on February 14, Valentine’s Day, the day when Indian women’s virginity and honour will self-destruct unless they marry. Walk to the nearest pub and buy a drink. Raise a toast to the SRS.”

What’s interesting is that the Chief Minister of Muthalik’s state, B.S. Yeddyurappa, while disapproving of the violence said he too was against what he called “pub culture” and vowed to stamp it out. His daughter, who runs a BPO in Bangalore, openly opposed him, affirming a woman’s right to visit a pub. He would not relent.

Soon, the Chief Minister of a north Indian state, this time from the centrist Congress Party headed by Ms Sonia Gandhi, also expressed himself against “pub culture”. Others jumped on the bandwagon. Groups of Muthalik’s followers began patrolling college campuses in Mangalore to ensure students respected the gender divide. Others made similar threats in other cities. With weeks to go before national elections, India seemed headed for a clash of cultures, just the sort that the right-wingers desperately need to get back into power.

Two weeks after the pub attack, a Hindu girl talking to a Muslim boy was pulled off a bus in Mangalore along with the youth. Both were thrashed and the girl was made to go down on her knees and promise to behave like a “good Hindu girl” and not go with Muslim boys. Then this week, another Hindu girl seen talking to a Muslim boy was taken to a police station and slapped for jumping the communal divide. Humiliated, she went home and hanged herself.

But last night, exactly three weeks after the pub attack, Mr Yeddyuurappa was forced to arrest Muthalik and his goons and put them behind bars for24 hours so that young couples are able to celebrate their love in peace today.

Hurrah for the new digital media!

Yeddyurappa’s Achilles Heel

Yeddyurappa’s Achilles Heel
When I was a young boy growing up in Bombay as Mumbai was then called, women could not enter restaurants even to have a cup of tea. The only restaurants for the middle-class in Mumbai then were the Irani restaurants and, for some reason, women never entered them. These restaurants had what were called “family rooms” screened by a curtain for women patrons, but these “family rooms” had acquired a sleazy reputation and no decent woman went there, either with family or husband. The result: restaurants were all-male affairs.
It was the Shettys from Mangalore who changed all that in the late ’60s. Through what came to be called “Udupi restaurants”, they brought in a new restaurant culture that enabled even single women to walk in and have a meal without raising an eyebrow. This happened at a time when women began to enter the work force in greater numbers. To them, these restaurants were godsend.
Which is why it is strange then that those who turned the clock forward in Mumbai in the ’60s, should now be turning the clock backward in their own home district of South Kanara or Dakshina Kannada. They have taken it on themselves to beat up and molest women who, they think, should not be seen in pubs. Sadly, the Chief Minister of the State has chosen to support these Huns who ran amok on seeing young women having a meal at a pub on a Saturday afternoon, and perhaps washing it down with a glass of beer.
Their actions are clearly born of desperation. They see themselves as losing control over women and are desperate enough to attempt to stop it by beating up women if necessary. This is an act that requires the least amount of courage anyway, be it done in the home or outside.
Historically, in times of rapid change, it is men who have felt most threatened because women seem to make the transition to change more seamlessly. I had a reporter colleague from Tamil Nadu in the Times in the ’80s who used to boast that he would never allow his wife to wear trousers because they were a male prerogative! He felt no embarrassment about it and was the butt of many a joke at a time when women were beginning to stream into journalism.
I remember as a boy in the 1950s, one of the big controversies in my parish church was whether women should wear sleaveless dresses, tight skirts and lipstick! Parish Bulletins debated the subject and most men felt that women coming to church in any of these should be refused Holy Communion, so that they would be shamed before the whole congregation! Sad, but true! No one bats an eyelid today at women going to church or temples in jeans and T-shirts!
In the 1990s, Muslim women used to have their ears cut off in some small towns of Maharashtra because someone decided that they should not visit cinemas. About the same time, Muslims in the suburb of Jogeshwari in Mumbai hit the headlines because they were advised to throw their TV sets out of their living rooms. Which they did!
In Afghanistan, girls are advised not to go to school. Those who do have acid thrown at them! Different times, different places, same story! And yet, in Mumbai today, it is Muslim girls who are increasingly getting into the merit ranks at the SSC and HSC exams! When the going gets tough, the tough get going!
In the 19 century, the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II saw women’s role in society as “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”, meaning “children, kitchen, church”. A century later, Hitler adopted this as the foundation of the new society he visualised – women were barred from medicine, the law and civil service and squeezed out of many occupations through bribes or coercions, to meet the needs of the Nazi state with women’ horizons limited to the 3Ks of Children, Kitchen and Church.
The coming of information technology and globalisation in the 1990s has seen more and more women enter the work force and free themselves from economic dependence on men. Which is what has made our cavemen friends in Mangalore desperate enough to beat up women in full view of TV cameras. “Get back to making babies, idlis and being Sati Savitris” is their message.
They will not succeed even with Chief Minister Yeddyurappa’s support! Of that you can rest assured! In any case, the poor man has troubles of his own answering questions about his wife’s death. He has already acknowledged that the case is the “biggest crisis of his life”. So be it! It may well turn out to be his Achilles heel!

The Irony of Rahul Gandhi's speech in Parliament

I wonder how many of us were struck by the irony of the great grandson of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, admitting before Parliament this week that there were still very many homes without a light bulb in this country 61 years after Independence.

The irony is that his father, his grandmother and his great grandfather ruled India for most of those 61 years. To me it was an admission of the failure of the dynasty and the party that has ruled India for six decades to deliver on its promises.

And this is a party whose Prime Minister told the Bucharest conference in 1976 that “development is the best contraceptive”. One of its family planning ministers told Parliament in the ’70s that “when a village is lit up, the birth rate falls.”

The National Electricity Policy (NEP), 2005 recognizes electricity as a “basic human need” and has set a goal of ‘electricity for all by 2012’, with a ‘minimum lifeline consumption of 1 kWh/household/day’. This would mean increasing per capita availability of electricity from 631 units to 1,000 units per annum.

But we are a long, long way from ensuring a light bulb in every home, nuclear energy or no nuclear energy, despite the goal of electricity for all by 2012.

Half the 220 million households in India do not have access to electricity. As of March 2007, the government has been able to provide power to less than a third of the 125,000 targeted villages under the Bharat Nirman – India Renewal – programme.

Electrification of villages does not mean that all rural households will get electricity – a village is declared electrified if 10% or more of households get electricity! Only eight of the 26 states – Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Maharashtra and Goa, Punjab and Haryana, and Nagaland have achieved 100% electrification as per this definition.

That means 90% of the rural households in these states could still be without electricity. Is it a surprise then that 18% per cent of those in urban areas and 39% of those in rural areas are still illiterate?

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, told the McKinsey Quarterly (Nov 2007) that India’s performance in power over the past several years is “the weakest”.

But he sought to lay the blame on the states as “most of the critical actions lie in the hands of state governments”. The Central government has now put in place the appropriate legal and regulatory framework to get the states to act But “performance, is lagging behind,” he admitted.

Today’s papers report that the situation is not just alarming, it’s scary even in the IT and financial capitals, Bangalore and Mumbai, respectively.

In Mumbai, unable to cope with outages, the MSEB has increased load shedding in certain industrial areas to a whopping 40 hours at a stretch. Electricity shortfall in Maharashtra has crossed 5,000 MW. Rural areas in Maharashtra have a nightmarish 13-hour power cut a day. Many towns will not have streetlights till 8 p.m. and possibly even beyond.

The political heart of India, Uttar Pradesh, fares no better with a shortage of 2,000MW per day against the demand of 8,500 MW per day. To bridge this gap, bigger towns and cities face up to eight hours of load shedding, district headquarters at least 10 hours and villages a staggering 16 hours.

The booming IT hub of Hyderabad has witnessed its first power cuts in more than 10 years. The government plans a two-day power holiday every week to tide over the crisis! And yet we claim to be a superpower and entertained the nation to two days of debate about whether India should sign the deal with the US on nuclear power or not.

Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai used to say, “What difference does it make if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice!” Perhaps Mr Prakash Karat and his new found friends in the BJP and the BSP (both are strong believers in caste, each at extreme ends of the caste spectrum!) should go back to reading the speeches of Chou and Mao. ###

Christmas or Easter are not festivals of noise

I am glad that the Bombay High Court has sought a report from the Maharashtra Home Secretary about noise pollution in Mumbai and compliance with the noise control regulations in force.

It has given me a chance to take up with the Home Secretary my efforts for the last eight years – yes, eight years! – to get my parish church to stop firing crackers at night after the 10 p.m. curfew in “celebration” after the Christmas Eve and Easter vigil services.

Non-religious music has also been played on the loudspeaker system used for the church services held in the open air on both occasions. This is a clear abuse of the extension beyond 10 p.m. deadline given purely for purposes of the religious services being audible to the open-air congregation.

I have made every effort to get the priests in my parish – mostly rural boys from the south who do not understand the situation in Mumbai or their own parishioners and don’t want to learn either! – that this is not done if they are true followers of the man who said, “Do unto others as they do unto you!”

I wrote to the Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Ossie Gracias, who agreed with me that this should stop and asked his local bishop, Percival Fernandes to take up the matter. The only thing that has happened is that instead of the crackers being fired from the terrace of the church, they are now fired from the periphery to make it seem that the church has nothing to do with them.

But the timing of the firing of crackers, in synchronization with key prayers during the service or when the priests are leaving the altar, is a clear indication that this is being done with the connivance of the priests.

If the priests do not connive with the perpetrators of this unwarranted noise pollution, the Parish Priest, Claudy Vaz, should have been the first to complain to the local police about the violation of the law laid down by the Supreme Court of India. He hasn’t!

Worse, when I went to the parish office to persuade him to show consideration for the old and the young, for those who might be sleeping after ten, I was advised by the assistant parish priest, Anto Vijayan, a smart but immature young man too full of himself, to first stop people in wedding processions firing crackers on the road.

I thought Christians who consider themselves several levels superior to others – and especially Christian preachers like Anto who preach about environmental pollution – set their own benchmark.

I then went to the police who do not seem to be interested in enforcing the law either! As one of them told me, “these are sensitive matters because these are matters of dharma.” I would think this is a matter of adharma because the firing of crackers is not a part of Christian religious rituals either during the day or night!

I thought it was the job of the police to enforce the law regardless of dharma or adharma, and regardless of the dharma of the complainant or the violator. But that is not so. But that does not deter me. I have fought several battles over several decades in a 39-year-long journalistic career and this one is far from over!

I am now looking forward to the Bombay High Court taking up the matter and cracking the police as well as my parish priests on the knuckles for making a mockery of Silent Night, Holy Night, or the solemn Easter Vigil with their misconceived idea of “celebration”.

Watch this space!

Innocent techie spends 50 days in jail!

Here is an example of how an Internet MNC like Google can inadvertently aid ill-equipped police forces in emerging markets and authoritarian regimes put people behind bars for absolutely no fault of theirs.

It reiterates the point that those interested in the freedom of the Internet have been making – that the Internet must be kept free of govt control, else you would have horrendous cases of miscarriage of justice in countries where these values are not appreciated much any way.

In this case, the real mistake was committed by Airtel, an Indian telephone company and Internet service provider. Airtel’s response has been one of indifference. Worse, it has been hounding the man it helped put in jail for not paying his Internet service bill, though one can't pay bills from jail.

Innocent techie spends 50 days in jail
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Wrongly Accused Of Defaming Shivaji On Net

Ketan Tanna TNN

Mumbai: In the early hours of the morning of August 31, Lakshmana Kailash K was asleep in his home in Bangalore . He was woken up by eight policemen from Pune who came knocking on his door and waved the Information Technology Act, 2000, in his sleepy, terrified face. Get dressed, he was told, we are taking you to Pune for having defamed Shivaji.

Lakshmana protested that he didn’t know anyone called Shivaji. The policemen said that they were talking about Chhatrapati Shivaji, and that an insulting picture of him had been uploaded on the internet networking site Orkut. The cyber trail had led them to his computer in Bangalore.

Turning a deaf ear to his protests, the police took him to Pune and put him behind bars. Along the way, the 26-year-old Lakshmana, who works with HCL, learned that what he was being arrested for was a case that had triggered riots in Pune in November 2006. Political parties had forcibly closed cafes and gone on the rampage over the posting of the illustration which had poked fun at Shivaji.

New to the ways of cyber crime, the police took over ten months to trace the alleged source. Google, which owns Orkut, had cooperated with them but the vital IP address (computer number) was provided by the service provider Bharti (Airtel). Bharti said that the IP address belonged to a Lakshmana K who lived in a Bangalore apartment with friends. His first bail plea was rejected. Finally, on October 20, after spending 50 days with 200 undertrials at Yervada Jail, Lakshmana was released.

Sorry, said the police, the IP address given to us was wrong.

We are sorry, said Airtel, and “deeply distressed by the severe inconvenience caused to the customer’’.

To add insult to injury, the police released Laskshmana nearly three weeks after they claimed to have picked up the “real culprits’’ on October 3— three Bangalore boys from Koramangala, all in judicial custody.

Asked about the earlier arrest, assistant commissioner Netaji Shinde says, “Yes, we made a mistake. So what?’’

Bharti was a little more contrite but made no mention of compensation. “We are in touch with the customer. We have robust internal processes which we review frequently to make them more stringent,’’ said Airtel in a written response to TOI. “We have conducted a thorough investigation of the matter and will take appropriate action.’’

Lakshmana’s ordeal has uncanny resonances of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, the more so because his name has the same initial K as Kafka’s hapless protagonist. K is arrested one morning before breakfast on a non-charge and is left to battle the state’s mindless might.

Lakshmana was charged under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code for a deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings, and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act for publishing ‘lascivious’ material or material that ‘appeals to the prurient interest’.

Times View: This is a shocking case. The police can’t get away with a mere apology after wrongly charging Lakshmana Kailash and putting him in jail for 50 days on the basis of a “mistake’’. The cops may argue that they acted in good faith and the error was made by the telecom company. But wasn’t the mistake compounded because of poor police work? In fact, it’s because of police sloppiness—or is it arrogance?—that the youngster has suffered this nightmare.

Currently, the law doesn’t allow for suing the police and other authorities for such mistakes. The law must be changed so that hapless persons like Lakshmana can demand and get compensation for being gravely wronged. That will also force the police to be careful while exercising their vast powers.

Jail played havoc with the techie's health

Mumbai: Bangalore techie Lakshmana Kailash K was charged under the IPC and the Information Technology Act. The latter charge carries a punishment of five years’ and gives the police the right to search cyber cafes and residences without a warrant.

Like Kafka’s K, Lakshmana tried initially to be brave. But he cracked when he was made to pose for a photograph with a black slate carrying his father’s name and his alleged crime. “It hurt me a lot that my father, who is a retired banker in Tirunelveli, was being associated with a crime. I just broke down,’’ he says.

“We were given a vati (bowl) which we had to eat and drink from and even take to the toilet. The long queues for filling water in the vati was our survival routine,’’ says Lakshmana. The three-in-one bowl system hit him hard. His kidney stones started acting up and his health deteriorated rapidly.

“Because of depression and the bad food, I lost 12 kilos,’’ he says. “I now even have an enlarged liver because of the food and the stress.’’ He’s back home now trying to put it all behind him. HCL has been supportive but Lakshmana is not sure whether his job still exists. “I have forgotten coding. I need to start all over again,’’ he says.

Asked if he planned to sue for compensation, Lakshmana is philosophical. “My family is considering it. Right now, I’m just beginning to appreciate the small things in life. It’s good to have a toilet to oneself. It’s good to have clean drinking water. It’s good to have family to quarrel with.’’

Two days after he returned to Bangalore , Airtel got in touch. But it wasn’t about the arrest. They sent him a text message reminding him to pay his bill. The text message was followed up by a visit from a collection agent. “I told them it’s all because of you that I haven’t paid,’’ says Lakshmana. “We can’t pay bills from jail.’’ ###

Times Impact

Techie case: State govt, policemen get MSHRC notice
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/skins/TOI/navigator.asp?Daily=TOIM&login=default
Ketan Tanna TNN

Mumbai: Taking suo motu cognisance of a report in the The Times of India on how Bangalore IT professional K Lakshmana was jailed for 50 days on false charges of defaming Shivaji, the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission (MSHRC) has issued notices to the state government, the chief secretary, additional chief secretary (home), DGP, Mumbai, and commissioner and assistant commissioner of police, Pune city, for “breach of (Lakshmana’s) human rights’’.

In a one-page notice, MSHRC chairperson Justice Khsitij R Vyas said the mental agony and torture suffered by Lakshmana was an evidence of the “sorry state of affairs in a country where every citizen has a right to live, move and breathe freely’’. These rights cannot be taken away at whim or in a careless manner as has been done in this case, Justice Vyas said, adding,

“We are living in democracy where the rule of law prevails. There is no place for jungle raj where anybody can be picked up and put behind bars. The fact that Lakshmana’s bail plea was rejected by the court shows the manner in which the police had collected material against him with the sole objective of branding him an accused.’’

The special IGP of the MSHRC’s investigation wing has been directed to seize the case papers and produce it before the panel. Meanwhile, Lakshmana said he was happy that his innocence had been proved. ###

Media "most trusted" institution in India

As one who has been in media for 37 years, I have often come across skeptics and cynics. The first category is acceptable and welcome. We need a little more questioning in this country, a little more reluctance to accept something simply because someone says so, even if it is attributed to the Almighty.

It is the second category that disturbs and repels me -- the cynics. And I have come across a lot of people who are cynical about the media ("reporters need to add mirchi-masala to make their stories readable", "after all media is a business" and so on).

Which is why I was most interested by the findings of Edelman's first-ever quantitative study of stakeholder expectations of companies operating in India (I work for Edelman). The study covered 140 opinion leaders across the country. It found that despite the popular perception that people are in general cynical about media, most so today because media is big business, in India at least media is the ‘most trusted’ institution.

In fact, the study found that media got a top rating of 50 percent on trust, followed by business at 44 percent. The study also found that Government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the least trusted institutions with equal ratings of just 32 percent. Now I am not surprised that Government is not so trusted. But the finding that NGOs are least trusted, barring a few exceptions certainly, makes for interesting reading. It indicates which way the wind is blowing.

I have a lot of respect for NGOs. A lot of them do good work. They were the product of Mrs Indira Gandhi's Emergency from 1975-77 when many of us discovered what hypocrisy meant. When the emergency ended, many new "rebels" who had fought the Emergency on the quiet in their own way, came out into the open and began to fight for justice for the poor and the underprivileged.

Some used their legal acumen. to do so. Judges began to see the other side of an unjust system and Public Interest Litigation came into being. In course of time, a triad of the mediapersons who believed in standing up for a cause, lawyers and socially-conscious judges came into being. A lot of good resulted.

But, as often happens, some began to misuse the system. Many jumped on to the NGO bandwagon as a new career opportunity, not as a mission. And hence perhaps the distrust that has crept in and grown. There is a growing perception that NGOs are very well- funded and that many of them are doing the bidding of their funders.

There is also a perception that NGOs shout fire when there is smoke in order to attract attention. I remember reading this in an NGO instruction manual! Also, that activists should "step on the toes of your opponents till they pay you to get off"! The campaign eagainst all dams, rather than fighting for more rigorous rehabiliation of displaced people, is another example of the distrust of NGOs that has crept in.

There is a feeling that NGOs are out to push a cause, regardless. As one of them told me many years ago, "I am not interested in the truth, I am only interested in my cause."

Rains prove the hollowness of official claims

Today's rains in Mumbai are a clear indication that official claims about being ready for the monsoon this year are nothing but water down the river. Someone must take the rap for this. Why should the municipal commissioner, whoever he is, not be sacked for failing to deliver on promises to taxpayers? More expecially when he and other officials over the years have been talking about making Mumbai first a Singapore, then a Sydney and now a Shanghai. Balderdash!

As a first step, the municipal commisioner's residence should be moved from Malabar Hill to Malavni in Malad and he should be forced to commute to Mahapalika Marg daily -- for a start he can do so by road using his official car, rather than by train. That will help reduce the shock! Let's give him a chance to prove his mettle from Malavni rather than Malabar Hill. If he fails to deliver on promises, then withdraw his car and ensure he travels by train and bus.

That's just for starters...