What ever happened to tall, dark and handsome as the standard of male pulchritude? It took test cricketer Abhinav Mukund to take to twitter to remind the public that fair is not always handsome. Under assault of the brain-dead badshahs of Bollywood and dominated by Neanderthals and corporates hawking fairness creams (banned in most Western countries as racist) — led by the Great Satan Hindustan Lever whose Fair & Lovely brand is a market leader — the great majority of Indians seem to have lost all pride in their ethnicity, and to all intents and purposes have swallowed the myth that individuals can’t be attractive without sporting light near-Caucasian skin complexions. To his credit, Mukund exhorted Indians to take pride in their ethnicity.
Nor is he the first. Several Bollywood stars, notably Aamir Khan and Kangana Raut have refused to advertise fairness creams known not only to be ineffective but to also contain harmful ingredients, including mercury. Despite this, the Union and state governments have shown an astonishing reluctance to ban fairness creams and lotions which consume large percentages of rural incomes and visit numerous ailments upon ignorant villagers. This prejudice notwithstanding that the great beauties of Indian mythology (Draupadi) and history (Padmini of Chittor) were famous for their dark ethnic looks.
Surprisingly, even seven decades after independence, aspirational Indians want to sport second-class European visages, or even pass off as Middle Eastern stereotypes. If you measure the IQ of the country’s textbook writers and feature film producers — not to speak of politicians — the answer to this conundrum will become self evident.
Long predicted tailspin
Way back in 1978 when your editor wrote the first ever cover story on Air India for Business India, I proposed denationalisation of India’s international airline which was taken over by the government in 1953. At that time, the self-righteous Morarji Desai as head of the Janata government — his professed pro-private enterprise leanings notwithstanding — had just sacked JRD Tata from the office of chairman of Air India. Since JRD had started the airline way back in 1932, for sentimental reasons he had stuck on as chairman to see if he could stem the inevitable rot once the self-serving neta-babu nexus took over the country’s international airline. At that time it was plain as a pikestaff that the said neta-babu combine would pillage the airline by way of commissions on new aircraft purchases, and further down the pecking order pack the airline with their kith and kin. The result is that right from the start to this day, the country’s once competitive airline has the highest number of employees per aircraft among all international airlines worldwide (221 per aircraft cf. Singapore Airlines 140).
Given the venality and abuse of power of politicians across all political boundaries — a National Commission ought to be appointed to investigate why Air India surrendered several lucrative Middle East routes, the reason it was merged with Indian Airlines in 2007, and why in 2005 the Congress-led UPA-II government placed an order for 68 aircraft for the clearly failing airline from the US Boeing Co.
Now as predicted, the airline has run up a humongous debt of Rs.53,000 crore — a sum which could have funded 5,300 urgently needed Jawahar Navodaya Vidylayas — and the incumbent government led by the professedly pro-private enterprise BJP has reluctantly tilted in favour of privatising Air India. Even so, the BJP government is tying itself into knots by trying to hive off Air India’s massive debt and burden the exchequer with it, to make the airline attractive to prospective purchasers. In effect, it means budget cuts in education, health and rural development.
Don’t ignore the elephant
The Allahabad and Lucknow high courts, which have directed the BJP state government to conduct an enquiry into the causes of the 72 children who died in the government-run BRD Medical College Hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh in the ten days between August 7-18, need to take judicial notice of the open, continuous and uninterrupted corruption that is rife within the government health system of UP, which it’s common knowledge is the most corrupt state in India.
Even if their lordships of the high courts — and the media which has neglected to comment upon it — are unaware, it’s common knowledge that it’s virtually impossible to land government contracts without bidding the lowest price and paying substantial bribes to purchase officers of government institutions, in this case the BRD Hospital and/or health ministry. Moreover it’s standard practice in this benighted republic ruined by the ‘socialism’ of the Congress and successor governments, for bribes to be paid to accounts officials to clear the dues of the supplier firm.
The exasperated notice of August 8 of Pushpa Sales Pvt. Ltd, to discontinue supply of oxygen cylinders to BRD Hospital unless its outstanding dues aggregating Rs.68 lakh were cleared, has to be read in this light because it’s quite probable that in lawless UP where ease of doing business is a monumental joke, the payment wasn’t cleared even after all bribes were paid in the expectation of further squeezing of the unfortunate managers of the company.
The state government has ordered an inquiry by the chief secretary who has presumably risen through the system. Therefore he should be well aware of its institutionalised corruption and begin his enquiries by ascertaining whether at the very least there was honour among thieves. There’s a hypocritical tendency within the judiciary and the media to pretend ignorance of standard practices which are deeply rooted in the government system. The cause of justice won’t be served by ignoring the massive elephant of institutional corruption which has become embedded within the government order and purchase system.