The adjudication and enthronement of Indian (Andhra)-origin Nina Davuluri as Miss America 2013 is not only a triumph for this 23-year-old medical student, but also a well-deserved slap in the face of the brain-dead badshahs of Bollywood and beauty pageant organisers, who seem to be innocent of all notions of ethnic good looks. Although multi-ethnic America, hitherto a white racist — and in pockets still supremacist — nation has accepted that norms and standards of beauty need to be broadened, and several Afro-American women have been crowned Miss America, Bollywood moguls who define standards of beauty can’t seem to accept that forget black, brown is beautiful.

The new Miss America’s coronation is also a triumph for the Stay Unfair, Stay Beautiful media campaign of the Chennai-based change.org/stay beautiful movement. Supported by actress Nandita Das, who has suffered colour prejudice in Bollywood, the campaign is protesting the promotion of skin lightening creams and lotions by Bollywood stars. Despite being blessed with striking ethnic pulchritude and thespian talent, Das is routinely rejected for lead roles by Punjabi and north Indian producers who dominate Bollywood.

But this brainwashing of cinema and television big and small shots by the skin lightening creams and lotions manufacturing industry led by the London/Amsterdam-based Hindustan Unilever whose suggestively branded Fair and Lovely cream contributes an estimated 15 percent of the company’s annual revenue, is not confined to Bollywood. In the film industry of peninsular India, including Andhra Pradesh where  Davuluri’s parents were born and the general population is chocolate complexioned, its de rigueur for film stars — especially actresses — to be whiter than white and male actors are obliged to be painted tall, fair and handsome in sharp contrast to supporting actors.

Yet despite the perverted efforts of skin cream manufacturers and Bollywood producers, your editor’s research on the subject indicates that the general population  appreciates, and is quite content with the nation’s millions of brown beauties. Only cinema producers and mothers-in-law aren’t.  

Soured honeymoon

No government — not even the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government of the infamous Emergency (1975-77) —  in the history of independent India has done as thorough a job of alienating the intelligentsia as the Congress-led UPA-II under Dr. Manmohan Singh. Ironically, the surprise appointment of this scholar-economist, widely (but erroneously) credited with having masterminded the resurrection of the Indian economy with partial liberalisation and deregulation in 1991, as prime minister of the Congress-led UPA-I government in 2004, was welcomed by the intelligentsia which believed he would complete the overhaul of the Indian economy.

In its second term when a rash of scandals — 2G telecom spectrum, iron ore mining, coal blocks allocations, Adarsh housing, and Robert Vadra-DLF to name some — shocked the public even as Parliament descended into chaos, gender crimes and communal conflagrations rocked the republic, Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement was scuttled by an all-party conspiracy, and prices went through the roof, the intelligentsia has lost all respect for the government and the Congress party.

A case in point is Yogendra Yadav, the celebrated psephologist of television news channels and former top lieutenant of anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare. After Hazare’s movement was scotched by a grand alliance of the political class, he joined up with Arvind Kejriwal, another Anna lieutenant, who broke away to start the Aam Aadmi Party. But now the Congress party and reportedly the prime minister who is vested with tremendous discretionary powers, are hitting back hard. Recently Yadav, an honorary director on the board of the University Grants Commission, was sacked.

Likewise Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, another critic of the UPA-II government, who in a brilliant essay in the Indian Express (July 29) accused it of severely damaging almost every institution of governance and ruining Indian industry and agriculture, is reportedly experiencing the wrath of the deceptively gentle prime minister. Stung by his clinical criticism, the prime minister and Congress party bigwigs have reportedly finalised a smear campaign against Mehta and the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi headed by him, for accepting foreign donations, and are also turning the screws on trusts and corporates who are giving the centre research assignments. Clearly the honeymoon between the intelligentsia — and perhaps every other segment of society — and the Congress is over. 

Unprotested indulgence

Curiously, even as the country’s politicians at the Centre and in the states are spreading chaos and misgovernance, there’s surprising silence over their extravagant expenditure and self-indulgence at public expense which is in inverse proportion to their administrative and development performance.

Palatial residences and array of perquisites aside, the most spectacular manifestation of the viceregal lifestyle of our rulers and masters is the fleet of aircraft that the Central government maintains for the ease and convenience of ministers, ruling party leaders, bureaucrats and flunkies. In 2005, shortly after it was unexpectedly voted into power in New Delhi, the Congress-led UPA-I government celebrated its election by ordering five Brazil-built Embraer private jets priced at Rs.250 crore each, in addition to three custom-built Boeing jets, priced at Rs.1,000 crore each.

Following the example of New Delhi’s self-indulgent ministers, even state governments are getting into the high-flying-at-public-expense act. On September 18, Uttar Pradesh’s youthful chief minister Akhilesh Yadav slipped in a Rs.40 crore supplementary budget demand for a private aircraft for himself in addition to a Rs.170 crore demand for expansion and modernisation of airports and airstrips in the state. Yadav’s predecessor in office, the great Dalit queen Mayawati had five fixed wing and three helicopters for her personal use.

Quite frankly, the thought of leaders of one of the world’s poorest countries jetting about the country spreading little more than crime and communalism sticks in the craw. But it doesn’t seem to bother the silent majority. Therefore your editor needs re-education in the practice of democracy.