But is it the greed?

The single word 'greed' is most unlikely to explain the present financial crisis in the US.(please see the comment on my post 'passion is the key).

I'm not an expert but as a small man, I'm terribly anxious t get to know how the present crisis cmoes about. So, I kept on reading and I found two most likely explanations:

One, despite the huge demonization of the Wall St whiz kids, they prove to be extremely inoovative types. They devised the innovative instruments like derivatives, credit swap, securitization etc. And such innovative instruments of the financial world have just begun to seep into the workings of the financial sectors of the other parts of the globe. One school of thought speculates that we have come face to face with the present crisis some of those inoovative instruments failed to work.

Secondly, I'm veering towards accepting this explanation now. The mostly widely accepted mathematical model underlying all these innovative instruments proved to be,well,just a mathematical model. This is the clear case of the futility of mathematics trying to explain away the complex decision making of homo sapiens.

The author of this mathematical model is Mr Davis X. Li. He is a Chinese national.

Giving fertile ground for conspiracy theorist, Mr Li now lives in, and works from, Beijing. And he refused to talk about his mathematical model or the present crisis.

I'm still asking myself--why don't he talk about his work so that the rest of the world get more enlightened?

Small people like me don't get the news as yet but I bet all the whiz kids of the finacial world are pooling in all their resources in dizzying speed to explain what went wrong and devised ways to work around the problem.

But I love one of the fall outs of all these hated innovative instruments!

Consider this real life scenario in American finacial sector enterprises:

When a bank gives out a loan to a business or a household, it immediately securitize the debt. By giving out a loan it automatically creates a debt in its balance sheet.

Now it securitize the debt and sell the securities to the American public. BEfore the preent crisis, the American public was happy to buy such securities.

So, the banks morph into some form middlemen and the American public actually make the funding for the businesses and households.

I think it's beautiful?

Now, how about the single word 'greed'? I've got no idea of the inner working of Wall st or the fiancial sector enterprises. To me, it seems that there is a lot of truth in saying that 'greed' propels most of the innovative instruments of the Wall St whiz kids. And 'greed' widens the gap between the have and the have nots.

But leaving the moeny matters,were it for these inequalities and for the purpose of empowering the small mena nd women that Messiahs regularly descended into this world?

To be sure, Messiahs regualrly got executed for their jobs!

So, as the full time Messiah job is tricky, can we ask the corporate leaders to play Messiah for a little bit of their time?

If you at Google, you would agree with me that I'm not overly asking for more.

Isn't Google's mission statement like 'don't be evil' or 'organizing the world's information'impregnated with some Messiahnic streaks?

May be, someday management gurus would start arriving in the scene propounding that for the corporate leaders to play the Messiah a bit is good for the Corporations, good for the business, good for the economy, good for the country and above all, good for the whole globe!!

Past few days

For the last few days, there has been a lot of activities in the Imphal sky.

From early morning till dusk, there has been near constant buzz of high flying planes. Besides the sounds of UAV, there were also sounds of assortment of turbo-prop planes.

We are all accustomed to sounds of commercial jetliners. For Imphal's case, the number of such jetliners coming into, and going out of, Imphal is very small. We cannot imagine any plausible business for any planes coming over Imphal skyline if they are not on military mission.

So, what's so many military planes doing here for the few days?

The good part is that it has subsided today.

There has been only few random sounds of planes, besdies the commercial jetliners.

I'm glad they had gone away.

Passion is the key

Talking of empowering small men and women(my last post), Barrack Obama seems to be a passionate believer in the idea. We are observers from a distance but I get the clear impression that he passioantely believes in empowering small men and women.

How did I get this impression of the first Black President of US? I've got no idea.

One established fact is that his campaign funds mostly came in small amounts, less than 100 dollars per contribution. It's clear vast numbers of small men and women donated for his election campaign.

And, internet enabled vast numbers of small men and women to connect to his campaign and pooling of small contributions from such men and women.

Nearer home, do we anyone with such passion?

Sonia and Rahul look like a well meaning aristocrat or oligarch. As such, they have already lost the crucial rapport with the small men and women.

Well, Mayawati seems to have that rapport with the vast small men and women. But I've got this lingering fear that she would think and act like a feudal lord.

Coming at other sectors aside politics, when I look at Steve Jobs or the guys at Google, they all seem to be passionate about corporate missions.

But when I look Ambani brothers, I get this clear impression that they are essentailly banians in the garb of corporate niceties.

What's there in American society which enables it to throw up men an Obama or a Jobs?

Th.Tarunkumar lecture and my viewpoints

The lecture is named 'The Lost Decades'.

From the 1950s onwards, the most noticeable characteric of the political process in Manipur is the abscence of any effort towards the empowerment of the small men and women. In that sense, many decades, for us, are as good as lost.

That's the undelying theme of the lecture.

What strikes me most is when Mr Th.Tarunkumar mentioned at the very outset of his lecture that Manipur's very brush with the Union of India started with the dumbing down of the small men and women.He gave an example: The Union of India scraped the already working constitution of Manipur during 1947-48. He said the idea behind this is that ruling class in Delhi decided that Manipur's people was not ready for the constitution.

I think he got a point here: that's definitely dumbing down the common people. If they were for the empowerment of the common people,they should have said- 'Hey, this constitution is not good enough; let's bring in a better one'. Instead, they scraped the contitution together with the popularly elected legislature and imposed direct rule from Delhi, which was, by any name, totally undemocratic.

But, what about now? The following is my viewpoint which is stimulated by the lecture.

Let's look at the two most annoying elements in our society right now--the 'thikadars'and police commandos. However annoying they are, they are sure signs that there is now a process of empowering the common people underway in our society.

If the 'thikadars' want to go places with their favorite construction business,they have only to put into places the needed corporate framewok and culture,instead of hobnobbing with buereaucrats and ministers.

If the police commandos want to do a better police job, unintimidated by the rebels,it's only to be encouraged. The only condition is that they should be guided by the law of the land.

If we look at the other sectors of the society, like sports, popular arts,especially cinema etc, we can see the same empowering process.

But it's not the empowerment of the samll men and women by design.

The stream of the empowerment process started its tortured course because of the intense competition between the ruling class in Delhi and the whole assortment of rebels here for winning the hearts and minds of the small men and women.

The intensity of the this competition is magnified many fold because of New Delhi nearly-neurotic needs for containment of rebels in Manipur purely for geo-political compulsions, percieved or otherwise.

Marvel of technology

Nobody seemed to remember that there was a thing called election on this day. It was totally a non-event, that is, at least in my area.

I spent major part of the day trying to listen to the lecture by Mr Th. Tarunkumar, chief editor of Eastern Quarterly.

He delivered the lecture in JNU on Sunday. One guy named Mr Atom Sunil of Manipur Research Forum(Manipurresearchforum.org), which publish the Quarterly,was so quick in responding to request to the links of the lecture.

He quickly emeailed me telling me that the lecture was yet to be published online. In another email he attached an audio file of the whole lecture, presumably recored live. I got hold of Sunil's email from a Yahoo Group in which he invited everybody to the lecture.

I said I was trying to listen to the audio file because it was not the work of professional recordist and so, you have to lsiten to it several times.

But,still, it was an encouraging efforts on their part. Now, I'm listening to a lecture delvered only some days back in Delhi.

It's the marvel of technology.

Amidst the din

The military had just formally ended the 'Operation Summer Storm'.

But amidst the din, we should not fail to notice that the striking edge of the whole military operation was 21st Para Regiment.

The loudest din,as usual,was generated by the Assam Rifles. But behind the smokescreen of the whole din the troops from the 21st Para Regiment quitely went for the kill.

The seemingly chaotic and haphazard duality of the strategy is the result of a carefully crafted doctrine.

What the troops from the Assam Rifles were doing was they call the job of 'area domination'. The nature of the job needs large numbers of troops. But Assam Rifles is what they call the para miltary force. Thus categorized, they can move around the troops of the Assam Rifles anywhere in the country without attracting undue notice of the observers, especially those of the neighbouring countries.

Making large scale troop movement by any country is a legitimate concerns for the neighbouring countries.

So, the Indian military neatly work around that legitimate concerns of the neighbouring countries by inventing a paramilitary force in the name of Assam Rifles, which, by the way, is commanded by officers loaned from the military itself in every hierarchy of the chain of command.

Rashtriya Rifles is the national version of Assam Rifles.

Once the bulk of the troops for the 'area domination'is in place, they can move around extremely small numbers of troops from elite regiments like the Para Regiment to act as the cutting edge of the sword.

Nice strategy.

DOCTRINAL DEVIANT they are.

Every conceivable rebel group talk about the analogy of fish and water--they are the fishes and they are given lives by the water ie, the general populace.

If they actually walk the talk, why is it necessary to build up a full scale military camp in Loktak, very near to the surrounding villages?

In fact, they should live mingling with the villagers and every conceivable villager should act as their eyes and ears reporting troop movements in the vicinity of the villages.

The ongoing Loktak operation codenamed 'Operation Summer Storm' shows that anything of that sort is happening. We should not take it lightly as just another military operation against the rebels or just another rebel group temporary taking military defeat.

'Operation Summer Storm' is happening because most of the rebel groups are slowly becoming DOCTRINALLY DEVIANT.

Water, water--not everywhere!

Right at the moment, there was a sputter of rain and then, it stopped.

Some days back, I accompany a friend to a house in Singjamei. The host told us the tap water in his area ran dry several months back and they are forced to buy water. As he has no larger storage tank, he has go for the 1000cc autorickshaw mounted water tanker. Such tanker is priced at Rs 180/-.

And, his family consumes the whole supply in 2 days.

So, he is forced to shell out nearly Rs 100/- every day for water!

Now, cut to my sister's case.

She has scheduled the long pending house renovation this month. All the preparations are complete. When the workmen arrived, it came to their notice that there was no water--either in the pond or in the water.

In a sense, they were taken by surprise by the situation!

She has to postpone the renovation.

Water as a cause of war and turmoil in the new world order seems pretty real even in a smallish town like Imphal.

Which one?

I began to think that the uniterrupted power supply during the past week was something to do with the coming Election. Then, suddenly, it went away.

The day before yesterday, we didn't get even one hour of power supply during the day and it only came back at around 9 in the night.

By the time I got it, I felt so exhausted that I was incapable of going near my desktop.

I guess it was totally due to anxiety. Because I was planning to spend the whole day-10 to 4-in front of my computer. Then, breaking the pattern of the week(at least), I even didn't get one of power supply.

I felt so let down(by whom?) that day.

And, yesterday?

There was complete failure in BSNL networks.Even their dial up services were not working.

So, it's either the power failure or the breakdown of the internet networks!

Let there be some more mix ups!

It's almost a week now--a week of uninterrupted power supply. Day and night we got power supply that's not interrupted.

Then, two nights ago, there was a loud explosion in the Keisampat power station. There was blanket black out in my area.

Late in the night, I heard murmurings in the neighbourhood that there woul be no power supply during the night and the following day also. But an hour or so later, I heard the big generator in the power station starting up and immediately we got ligth.

I've haerd people talking that the particular generator is the emergency stand by for the Governors, ministers and VIPs.

So, the transformer feeding our area got connected to the big generator! What do you think of this? I'm sure that it must be due some mix ups! I can't think of any other reason!!

But when I tried to start my computer up, my crt monitor went crazy. I tried for nearly 30 minutes but it would not show any picture.

Yesterday, I rushed out to repair it.

The repairmen could only deliver it this afternoon.

"3 birds"

Can we have a glimpse of the fine-grained offensive(my last post)?

Let's consider this scenario:

The JAC has been infiltrated.

It has been slowly but unobtrusively coaxed to take tiny steps which would have the cumulative effect of infuriating a particular rebel group.

It happened--the particular rebel group reacted sharply on 12th April.

This achieves two objectives:

First, first step has been taken to cripple the JAC--and thus, the agitation for the punishment of the murderers of Dr Kishan and his two subordiante staff.

Second, the particularly rebel group which reacted sharply on the 12th April can now be conveniently blamed for crippling the agitation.

Killing of two birds?

In my mind, it's more than that.

A much fine-grained agenda is to put a wedge between two rebel groups. If we go down a little further we would find one rebel group encouraging the JAC for further agitation and promising all the helps at its disposal.

Now, another rebel group has been made to publicly threaten the lives of the leaders of the JAC.

At this point we must remember that these two rebel groups are the only ones which had managed to form a Joint Co-ordinating Committee(JCC) for the unity of efforts of their two organizations.

So,they are trying to kill "3 birds" at one stroke.

Backwardness that's pervasive

Now,it's out in the open.

Every keen observer in the world knows that rebel groups in Kashmir and NE are intent on carving out various independent states by taking up armed struggles against the nation of India. But one question that refuses to go away from the mind of every ovserver is-- Would they be able to pull it off?

12th of April is an important date here because it's now clear that the above quesion is a very valid one.

Reading the press statement of a rebel group in todays paper, it's clear that it thows up two important facts:

First, most of the rebel groups are confused about the basic anatomy of rebellion.

Second, the presently much fine-grained offensive taken up the ruling class in New Delhi is beyond most of the rebel groups, let alone making expectations from them to take one fine-grained counter-offensive for another fine-grained offensive.

I can imagine the wry chuckles of the counter-insurgency operatives in Delhi.

It's really sad seeing the gap in the battle readiness of the two combatants.

I'm not sad for sensing the weaknesses of the rebel groups but for the pervasive backwardness of the whole polulace of which the rebel groups form the very vociferous sections.

Is this a class act?

We have no idea that she is coming. We came to know about her election campaign schedule on 13th only when the JAC called another bandh on that day.

We are talking about Sonia Gandhi.

The turn of events surprises me because I always think she is classy.

The general perception about her is she is a class apart. She is head and shoulder above other politicians. She is not even a willing politician.

Besides these, she had lost two of her most loved ones--snatched by the same hands that put an end to the promising lives of Dr Kishan and his two subordiante staff.

And, she is not exactly in the Government. That frees her from the decorum of the State to, at least, share the sorrows of the three widows. That gesture from a widow to another 3 widows would surely touch the hearts of the whole populace.

But it turns out she is actually trying to outwait the JAC.

Is this a class act?

It makes me sad.

Did I spot a trend?

In Manipur's tightly contested arena of student activism, it has been more or less normal to find the student groups which have all India footprints ( and have affiliations to what we call the national poltical parties) pushed out of the arena itself or at best, pushed out to the periphery.

Now, that one rebel group have a tie up with the Naxalites students groups which have Communist parties' affiliations are trying to push themselves right into the centrestage of the arena of student activism.

As usual I'm trying to spot the trend by reading newspapers, meaning I have no privileged informations whatsoever.

But is it a discernible trend?

I bet it is.

Murder and National Security matters??

I thought that as the Election drew closer, the ruling party would somehow coax NSCN(IM) to do something minimum, like suspending their cadres involved in the murder of Dr Kishan and his subordinate staff.

Now, it's clear that nothing of sort is going to happen.

This forces me to have a re-look at everything that's related to the murder.

First, Is still clearly remember taht the Chief Minister went to Delhi to meet the Federal Home and Defence Ministers specifically in connection with the murder. He quitely returned and kept mum about what transfired during his meetings in New Delhi. At that time, I thought that Delhi people might have told him the peace talk is more important than the lives of three individuals--so, let NSCN(IM) handle the matter.

At this point of time, we are forced to question the veracity of the above perception.

Even if the Chief Minister kept shy of meeting the media and disclose what the Delhi people had told him, why didn't the Opposition MLAs in the just concluded Assembly Session forced him to put that on records?

Normally, the Opposition MLAs should do that.

So, there is something 'not normal' here.

Did the Chief Minister meet the Opposition leaders privately and disclosed to them what transfired during the meetings in Delhi?

Is that the reason why everybody kept mum about the subject on the floor of the House?

If that's the case, then we can safely assume that the Chief Minsiter was told in Delhi that some weighty national security matters were involved and so, he should keep quite. And, he should ask the Opposition leaders to keep quite as well.

Are the weighty national security matters the ones that are likely to have to impact on the existing geo-political equilibrium in the region?

Or, are they the ones which are being shaped by the geo-political forces that are starting to break out of past equilibrium?

Question -- a profound one

Well, it is quite reasonable to infer that NSCN(IM) is a prized catch of the ruling class in Delhi.

But it's difficult to assume that NSCN(IM)'s leadership is so naive that they are willing to be used as tool for somebody's interest.

Can we say that NSCN(IM)'s seeming naivette and its decade old peacetalk(without any tangible result) is the product of its leadership's perception that they are being hemmed in by the overwhelming force of geopolitics?

Any rebel group worth its salt should have a base area which is beyond the reach of India's military power. In the context of NE rebel groups, we can easily count out Bangladesh and Bhutan as a workable miltary base area. That leaves us with only the sparsely populated area of Burma. In those feasible areas, NSCN(IM) is effectively checkmated by the political and military prowess of NSCN(K).

In reality, NSCN(IM) has still nowhere to go. By the sheer of force of geopolitics, NSCN(IM) is forced to initiate the meaningless peace talk with the ruling class in Delhi.

Again, they are forced to have had a political undepinning to legitimize this meaningless talk--that comes in the form of demand of integration of Naga inhibitaed areas.

Now, we are confronted with a very profound quetion: Like NSCN(IM), does the ruling class in Delhi feel hemmed in by the overwhelming force of geopolitics in the conduct of its statecraft in reference to Manipur?

We are forced to ask this question when we try to answer why the ruling class in Delhi is so BLATANTLY siding with the murderers of Dr Kishan and two of his subordinate staff.

Leikai clubs vs Government of India

It's worth noting the JAC (Joint Action Committee) spearheading the agitation for due punishment for the murderers of Dr Kishan and his 2 subordianate staff is constituted by the leikai clubs of Uripok, Nagamapal and Yumnam Leikai. It's also increasingly clear that they are keeping the known Civil Society Organizations like Apunba Lup or UCM at an arm's length. In doing so, they are clearly sending the message that they have no other agenda other than giving punishment punishment to the murderers.

To my mind, the citizens of Manipur recieve their message with a lot of understanding. It's evident when there was spontaneous response to the bandh called on the day Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to address an public meeting in Hapta Kangjeibung ie, Konung Lampak.

Rahul Gandhi had to cancel his schedule. He flew back after addressing a meeting at Tuibong at Churachandpur.

We could see the same spontaneous response to another bandh called by the JAC to coincide with the visit of Sonia Gandhi in the State. She also cancelled her entire schedule of visiting the STate.

After considering this scenario, what do we see at the other end of the spectrum?

The Government of India, instead of receinving the JAC's message with understanding and with a sense of duty, is BLATANTLY siding with the murderers.

They are OPENLY shielding the murderers from the due process of law.

How can we explain such a response from the ruling class in Delhi, which, by and large, is considered to have acted with a commendable degree of responsibility in other spheres of world affairs?

Do they run out of option if they let go of NSCN(IM)?

Options for what?

Evidently it's for waging dirty war against the unfortunate populace of this tiny State.

If this is not the case, then it's clear that NSCN(IM) is too a prized catch that they are risking alienation of whole citzenry of a State.

Aaside of this, what's most intersting is at looking back at the normal functions of typical Leikai Club. Most of the times. they are engaging in organizing sports meets, cleaning drainage of the locality etc. Putting in another words, they are just the welfare society of a locality.

Now, some of these societies are putting in joint efforts to do battles with the Government of India.

Isn't it what we a paradigm shift?

Two at a time is bad enough.

I kind of began asking myself if having red meat once in a week was sufficient. That came to mind some weeks ago.

Yesterday was Sunday and I had some red meat for lunch. During the night, even at around 10, I felt so full--but I forced myself to eat something.

This morning I woke up with the funny feeling of still so full. I had only some fruits for breakfast--actually, I forced myself to eat that also.

I had to skip lunch as well. I had only some biscuits and I am resting right now.

I've this hunch that if I do not take some rest, I would make myself ill.

I thought of closiing the frequency of having red meat once every 4 days. Now, I'm asking myself if yesterday's meat was the culprit for making me feel unwell right now. What would happen if I start eating it for every 4 days?

One reason might be that I mostly depend on fruits, vegetables and fish. Meat is so oily and that proved to be a stress builder yesterday.

Another reason might be that yesterday was so warm. Warm as a normal summer days, it was. Even if April Imphal is otherwise cool.

May be, my body could not stand two stress builders yesterday.

People with candles in their hands

Crowds sure can energize you.

That's how I felt when I saw people slowly filling up BOAT to its capacity. They were queueing up for the premiere show of a film.

I had no plan for going for a movie this evening. But when I saw so many people queueing up, I was about to buy a ticket. The crowd had a pulling effect on me.

But I didn't want to miss the occassion of Don Bosco alumni lighting candles for the departed soul of Dr Kishan.

So, I hurried back towards the western gate of Kangla.

I was merely 100 ft or so from the Kangla gate when I saw people already lightinig up candles and started moving towards BT Road in a slow procession.

And, my watch read exactly 7.30 pm. Did they start early?

There was a breeze. So, the procession was rather slow when they were concentrating on keeping the candles lighted against the breeze.

I wanted to walk in close and have a look into the faces of the people there. But there were so many flash lihgts popping up that I stood there and watched the slow procseeion from a distance.

Newspaper camera men had a field day covering the slow procession. Some even climbed atop the basement of the monument of Bhagyachandra with the elephant to click away the people with the candles in their hands!

Got it, again!

The day following my last post, the phone went completely dead.

I got it back this afternoon.

I was so fed with the BSNL swervice that I went rushing to Airtel office for their EDGE connection. They also said that they had no stock of their usb dongle and they would have them after 2 weeks.

So, here I am with the same old BSNL!