Paramendra Bhagat's Blog
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Is there a trade-off, as in if you are to truly contribute at the level of ideas, you actually diminish your abilities to execute them, and will have to hope others who might have a harder time coming up with new ideas will do the action part. Perhaps especially true for the truly cutting edge stuff, like altogether new mathematical equations that help make sense the various social realities.
Someone political from a majority group might end up holding office, but someone from a traditionally marginalized group might end up being a civil rights leader instead. Is it possible to get so consumed into larger issues that you fall short in the microcosm of your personal life?
If the internet is the new country, what happens to the individuals in that country? A netizen is a more well-defined individual. In the pre-democratic setups, the individual routinely gets put down in the name of the group; in a mature democracy, the individual is better defined. But the difference gets start in the new country. One small comparison, in a democracy, free speech is protected, online free speech is celebrated. Big difference. The internet has arrived way before anything closely resembling a global political or economic union, an eventuality that will likely get much rough ride from the right wings in all member countries, curiously. It is a whole new reality. The fundamentals change.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Have been reading up on Laloo Yadav, easily the most colorful politician in India, now Railways Minister. One of my mother's cousins, Ram Chandra Purbey, was Education Minister of Bihar in the 1990s when Laloo was Chief Minister. Laloo came to power in Bihar by toppling the traditional caste arithmetic and forging a strong political alliance of Yadavs and Muslims, something that then Prime Minister V P Singh largely failed to do at the central level. The Singh wave - Mandal - was followed by the BJP wave - the Kamandal. And now the coalitions. Laloo has prime ministerial ambitions, though it is hard to see how that can be realized, unless there is a reconfiguration of the non-BJP, non-Congress forces. Google News makes it so easy to keep up with Laloo. I used to keep up with Clinton like I now like to do with Laloo. The guy is much entertainment, but he is also much substance, more than the media has traditionally given him credit for.
The most recent Laloo "antic:" introducing clay pots, khadi and butter milk to the railway passengers, and taking a whole lot of sattu with him to Delhi, along with baskets of mango and leechee.
I seem to have extremely mixed feelings about the high school and the college I attended. The push and pull is whether to make do with the institutions or discard them and start all over again, create altogether new institutions. What would be the most productive way out? After all, I almost became School Captain at high (how those bahuns and phirangees can gang up on you!), and hold the record at college, the only freshman elected to the office of student union president. As for the hostility towards people of my shared backgrounds at both, what are my options?
In the case of the high school, I could get myself elected SEBS NA president, raise huge funds for a BNKS Endowment, and totally reorganize the school's admissions policy to make it just along ethnic and gender lines and entirely meritocratic, entering classes that look like Nepal, and not the Kathmandu elite with little spatterings of people from outside.
The college. Within a few years, with expected major successes through my business, I could end up on the Board. Could fire the president and the vice president. Hire a minority woman for president who is decidedly post-civil rights and is not hung up on issues of either race or gender but, at the same time, takes Berea back to the social cutting edge, a statement against isms of all kinds, and reorganizes the admissions policy so as to make the entering class a response to the global economy, maybe 25% international students each year. Stop calling Berea a Christian college. Have clear guidelines against any classist remarks by administrators. Present the internet and globalization as vehicles for the Appalachian region to catch up economically.
Or totally bypass the two institutions. Work on major success on the business and then spend some time on the side creating altogether new institutions.
Larry Shinn, that white boy has got to be the dumbest white trash motherfucker I ever laid my eyes on, that pig, that primitive asshole, that fucking anachronism. Why do I call him a pig? Because that motherfucker looks like a pig, that's why, that fucking priest, that motherfucking senior citizen. Usually the body decays before the mind, but in this particular motherfucker's case, it happened the other way round. The ringleader of racism in that sick, little town. Gail Wolford is easily the most virulent racist bitch I was ever forced to work with, a sick, little, insignificant half-person. A virus is inactive and dormant, or it is evil, it is n-e-v-e-r a-n-y g-o-o-d. There is sulphuric acid, and there is concentrated sulphuric acid. There is racist bitch, and there is concentrated sulphuric acid racist bitch. Sin, Woolfoo, Gina Fugate, Lyssabeth Mattoon (Ms. Rice-does-not-cost-much-does-it White-trash-piece-of-shit, that fucking reptile, the David Duke of Berea student politics, the lousy childhood syndrome bitch), Virgil Burnside (that fucking racist bitch negro asshole .... for participating in an institutional racist attack on me), John Heyrman (Asshole, I look like a Unabomber to you, motherfucker, you fucking degenerate? It is like I walk down to his office after a class and the motherfucker refers to me as a "Unabomer," and Berheide and him have their white asshole male bombing moment. That dumbfuck's reaction to the large amounts of time I spent online during my final three and a half years at college, that pigeonshit asshole), and about a half dozen others from that period in my life belong in that second unglamorous category. It is like Sin follows Fugate's lead, Berheide follows Heyrman's lead in the racist race to the bottom: the lowest common denominator prevails.
If Shinn is so innocent, why has his consistent fantassy been that I leave the country? Woolfoo never stopped retaliating. That stupid two wits person who felt smart pulling the levers of institutional racism. I just ordered someone else to do my dirty work, it was not me. Western civilization is going to regret having birthed these two insignificants.
Oh, you don't want to donate money to the college, never mind all those Nepalis who do, we are no longer going to recruit students from Nepal! Dumb is what dumb does. We spent a lifetime plucking the internalized racists from the crowd to counter your anti-racism, but now we think you represent them all!
When you hit me with a force of 10 units when the power differential between us is 10 and it takes me 10 years to hit back, you get hit back with a force of 1,000 units. So you want to pray you get hit back early as possible.
And Jeevan Raj Wagle and Sudarshan Risal just might end up being the two worst things that ever happened to the Nepali Congress. The fuck with the dumbfuck bahuns. Brian fucking Garton missed the pleasure of my company. The founder folks should perhaps rename the A J Wild Institute of Higher Studies after perhaps Shahid Gangalal,or even Ganeshmanji would do. As long as you do not challenge the macro power paradigm, these assholes are fine and polite and shit, but as soon as you step out, they misuse their limited powers.
There is racism and there is internalized racism, both usually sustained by the give and take of the existing money and power arrangements, of social "common sense." Those in both those camps can be accused of racism.
How do you respond to people drawing upon 500 years of world history to make their racist comments, express their racist attitudes? You shove those 500 years up their rear ends, that's how.
At least 90% of my competition is with myself, because most of the work I do tends to be of the creative kind. But I am a trucker, I have seen bugs hit the windscreen. I am extremely comfortable with the idea of picking a few fights along the way. I have worked very hard to channel my anger into peaceful political channels and tools. With concepts like total, transparent democracy and non-violent militancy. And some of these people just need to do themselves the favor of staying out of my face. Just stay out of my face, and you might do just fine. Or I intend to undo your entire careers going backwards in time. That is my response to glass ceilings. If you can go backwards in time to act unreasonable, what stops me from going forward in time? I guess we are both playing in the same dimension: time.
I seem to have become blog-happy: Paramendra, Madhesi, SEBS, Nepal, Berea, UN. Wow. I have not had a chance to cultivate membership bases for each as yet, but that will follow. For now I am too focused on my business. I am so excited about the education and support system I have designed for my team. It has taken me a few months to get it worked out, but the basics are ready. I feel the business could soon explode because of it.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Clinton is all over the news about his forthcoming book. I am a big Clinton fan, like I am an Amitabh fan, like I am a U2 fan, like I am a Michael Jordan fan, like I am a Marquez, and a Tagore fan. All my life I have been someone who gets books from the library or the school, and I still rely primarily on libraries, but now it is because I don't like to own too many things that take up space. Buying books is rather new to me: yes, I did get the Hillary book, and the Colin Powell book. But the Powell book, years later, and Powell is too restrained, and the military details do not charm me; he is not my type, and his homophobic statements are a turn-off, it is just that I like talk of him as a potential non-white firstie.
The Clinton book is the first I will not have bought at Goodwill, or in paperback; let me correct that, I did get Hillary's book in hardcover but it was months after it came out, and I had been reading about it for a while, and then saw copies at a Walmart; I guess also got the Larry Ellison biography Soft War, quite a read. I look forward to sinking in my $35, and then reading all the supposed 1000 pages. Wow, what a gift, Clinton himself talking about him, after everyone else has been talking about him forever, most of all the the scandalous type: yes, the vast right wing conspiracy exists.
It is said of Einstein the guy's heart and mind soared with the cosmos. He was in the room with you, but he was not. He was on stage, but he was scribbling away on a piece of paper, oblivious of the surroundings. It would be a major disservice to Einstein to compare Clinton to him, but the guy comes pretty close to someone whose heart and mind is constantly soaring with the human dynamics, the political condition, the details of retail politics. The guy is Michael Jordan. He needs to be tapped for the top UN job. He has done his homework, after all.
I had the good fortune of attending the best school in Nepal. I should feel lucky. But there is a flip side to the coin. Such an institution also ends up housing the institutional prejudices, played out through the miniature men, shifting from committee to committe, stopping at no personal attack, the surrogates of the larger Nepali Speaking High Caste Men psyche, protective of their turf, not few of them in your own age group: a lot of my classmates spend some energy explaining away my academic successes of my first seven years to this day - never say never, die hard; cubs of the political elite, the tiny minority who keeps on its hold to power with its relentless ideological guns pointed at the Madhesis, the Janajatis, the women.
Much ethnic strife might be a direct product of poverty, but within that climate of limited resources, the playout is not different from the social wrongs in different situations that call for major civil rights initiatives. You lose respect. When one teacher instigates some students to go organize a beat-up at the city buspark, you lose respect for many teachers. When the cousins and brethren of the post-1990 political elite ham in and disrupt your step-up, it takes years to get reoriented. It is abuse across the age barrier. And during the tumble down, minor inconveniences and indignities. Three final years of unhappiness. Political work to be aided down the line: a federal form of government. The next generation should have a fairer shot at their futures. And it has been a delight to claim more and more of the Indian in me. I am half Indian by birth. The social hostility towards Madhesis in Nepal rides that Indian bogey. Nepal bhaneko Nicaragua, Costa Rica jasto bhare-bhoorey desh, India bhaneko 20-30 barshama global superpower banne desh; duita ko tulana nai chhaina.
The fallouts of those prejudices come all the way to the Nepali communities in the US. There is a polite veneer that sometimes gives way, especially among the older, new arrivals. They court social delinking.
College, similar, "the Harvard of the South!" - more like a Bible Belt crap pretending to be a social statement: "I have been to India, so I can't be a racist!" Happy first year. Unhappy final four years: "He was so much easier to talk to when he was not student union president!" Insignificant administrative minions, and their allies in the academia, who will stop at nothing, taking delight in their servings of indignities, racist comments, a relentless barrage of suggestions to disrespect your collective identities, dwarfs who fantasize you will plead with them for your rights, overestimating their station in the scheme of things; their twin allies among the student David Dukes, their happy get-along international students who will comply by not asking the hard questions. Institutioal racism of a college-town, the white trash fantassies of looking down upon the foreigners: "We don't appreciate all we have!" The exotic foreigner effect is only a mild coverup. And the pollution permeates into the personal life. Prejudice gets in the way of friendships and relationships, possibility of relationships. The case of a few really rotten apples covering up the stink of the many slightly rotten apples and threatening the health of the promising apples. People at the near bottom of white success trying to tell you where your station in life might be. You end up feeling sorry for them.
Make big money. Never give a dime to the high school or the college. Be an agent for positive social and political change. Play hardball: give back as good as you get, got. That should keep one busy.
I am a refugee onto the Internet. The high tech high touch combo is a dynamo. Progress perhaps invites conflict. The social sphere awaits changes unforeseen. Oh, that new country.
Producer to Regional Warehouse to Customer. One sound business model to pursue. There ain't no ceiling. Huge potential. Trucking is part of the zigsaw. A recent article in Fortune looking into the future has predicted the largest company in the world in 2050 would be an "AmazonBay." E-tailing is big game, dog!
It will be a true delight to be able to do the ground work, get even with a few past players (so as to aid structural change), and move on to be able to contribute to primary education and primary health care where it matters most. Create wealth to put it to service. Think thoughts. Contribute or at least lay ground for an equation or two in group dynamics.
If you draw parallels between the Cold War and the War On Terror, one most outstanding observation is to realize the struggle is primarily ideological. If it were about military supremacy, it would have been over before it begun. The pre-FDR form of American capitalism was dog-eat-dog. At some level it can be said the US responded to the threat of communist ideology by acknowledging the market can not reach all nooks of social responsibility, and the state has to step in where the market can not. The US won, but not without reforming itself.
The biggest fight the US might have in its war against Islamic extremism might be at the right end of its own political spectrum. The Robertsons and the Falwells and the Limbaughs in their extremism are mirror images of the Islamic extremists. Their relentless attacks on the line of demarcation between church and state, their ideological tantrums about the English language, and other cultural backhandedness play into the hands of the likes of the Taleban and the Al Qaeda. Granted the right wing elements who form the welcome, burning core of the Republican Party are not organized militias, but they pollute the social space as vehemently as the likes of the Al Qaeda wishe to pollute the physical. On the other hand, the conservatives do not even recognize hate crimes for what they are, acts of violence perpetrated against individuals for the groups they happen to belong to.
A functioning democracy in Iraq would be a great thing. Hopefully that will lead to reforms throughout the region and ultimately democracy. And the democracy-market combo might lift up the Middle East that might drain the water out of the swamp. But victory will not come by unless the US works on its own end, and the American society learns to be inclusive. What that means is Aschcroft's harassment of the tens of thousands of Arab Americans since 9/11 is Al Qaeda behavior.
