Grammar For The People

One of life’s simple pleasures is when a little known country that you barely ever hear about or know anything of suddenly pops up in the news, usually for something utterly ridiculous, because no one would really bother reporting about them if they did something completely humdrum like sign a defence agreement or participate in an economic forum. Take Tajikistan, for example. You would think it’s a run of the mill, rugged central Asian country with a rugged landscape, rugged people and even more rugged rulers that suppress all art and culture. It’s so obscure a country that even Narendra Modi would not visit it on his foreign sojourns, and he loves descending upon all manner of countries popular or obscure to sign some new treaty that will boost bilateral trade tenfold and raise India’s profile and stoke the fires of patriotism amongst Indian diaspora there with an elaborate function reminiscent of those pointless opening ceremony extravaganzas they hold at all those multinational sporting events. Coming back to Tajikistan, it sounds like the sort of country where discontented ex-Soviets collude with other unruly elements to foment Jihad and smuggle arms and indulge in the illegal trafficking of narcotics. In short, it’s the sort of country about which if Borat made up something outlandish about people engaging in unnatural acts with their donkeys you’d probably believe it.

One of these slices of life’s simple pleasures did materialize a few months ago, in the form of news that the Tajikistan government would start fining journalists for using ‘incomprehensible’ words in their articles. To impress upon others just how out of hand the whole situation had gotten, Gavhar Sharifzoda, the head of the state language committee and quite possibly the world’s first governmental grammar nazi, said that there were cases where journalists used as many as 10 words in one day that the simple reader could not comprehend. I’m generally one for minimum governance – I don’t see the need for the government to botch up something that can be messed up perfectly well by private enterprise, but 10 words really takes the cake. If it were 3 or 4 one could’ve turned a blind eye to it; maybe even at 5 or 6 a simple slap on the wrists would suffice, but by the time you reach 10 incomprehensible words, it surely calls for government intervention at the highest level!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: If a strange law had to be passed somewhere, Tajikistan sounds like just the country that would do it. It’s the kind of country you can easily imagine passing a law stating that people cannot leave the egg yolk for the end while they’re having a sunny side up, or that a restaurant owner has the right to fire his chef if he breaks more than 15% of the yolks while making eggs sunny side up. Now, I don’t know about you, but I recently got three consecutive sunny side ups messed up – a new low even for someone who doesn’t have a stellar record when it comes to sunny side ups. I probably have a lifetime average of just a little over 50%, which is utterly shit for someone who makes sunny side ups pretty regularly. But it isn’t as easy as it looks, is it? First, you have to crack the egg just right, and even if you do that, you’re immediately under pressure because you then have to gently ease it on to the frying pan, making sure to drop it at just the right height so the yolk stays intact. By now you’re all relaxed and complacent as a perfectly round yolk stares back at you from the frying pan – little aware that another opportunity for peril is just round the corner in the form of the final hurdle of getting it on to the plate without any mishap. It’s just too much pressure!

Daft as the Tajikistan government’s order is when it comes to newspaper articles, one should always be happy when governments are occupied spending all their time coming up with such orders. Closer home, take the order on national anthems, for example. Not only did someone put in a lot of thought to arrive at the conclusion that the best time to make everyone’s heart swell with patriotic pride was just before a movie, they even took the trouble to go to great lengths to arrive at guidelines for how the national anthem should be played, at what angle should the flag be displayed, whether doors needed to be shut while this is happening, and so on.

You’re well entitled to think “Hey, but I’ve paid good money in the form of taxes. I want some roll-up-the-sleeves-and-get-the-hands-dirty governmenting happening, goddamnit, and not guidelines on national anthems, massive PR exercises on cleaner India and bloated rhetoric on self-sacrifice.” The risk though, is that when the government does actual work, it’s probably worse. It’s all fine saying the only thing the Congress government did was corruption, or that the only thing the Modi government does is PR. But when the government actually gets around to work, you’ll land up with the colossal mess that’s demonetization. Or travel bans – look at Donald Trump. Everyone thought that like all other politicians, his election promises would only be that – false promises broken as soon as he came to power. Now that he’s actually implementing it, a horrific apocalypse seems upon us and suddenly even Nixon seemed like he was a fine, upstanding man worthy of public office!

We're Digging It!

Most people assume that the government is excellent at corruption, very good at digging up roads and terrible at everything else – but this is only part of the picture. We may curse the government each time we pass by a road that has been dug up for the last 6 months, but the reality is that a dug up road is like a new year’s resolution gone wrong. It’s like the gym that you’ve stopped going to a month into the new year, the cakes that you’ve started eating after a fortnight of conscientious abstinence and the pair of jogging shoes that you used precisely twice and that’s now making you avoid the shoe rack in fear of being consumed by an overwhelming sense of guilt.

You know how it is. Each New Year begins with a significant proportion of the population making a resolution to make their neighborhood gyms richer. Well, alright…the resolution is to lose weight and get fit in the New Year, but the reality is it’s the gyms that get richer. To their credit, though, the people at least tried. It’s the same with the government – a dug up road is like the government ebulliently committing to a new infrastructure project, beginning work with fresh-faced enthusiasm and promptly losing interest midway through. Which is why the road remains dug up until the next time an election is round the corner.

So while most people were cheering the government’s announcement that it’ll allocate several thousands of crores for infrastructure investment in Bangalore at the Global Investors’ Meet last week, I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. It just meant that there would be many more roads dug up all over the city before promptly being forgotten in the eager rush to do some fresh digging up.

For those of you wondering, the Global Investors’ Meet is one of those annual shindigs that are increasingly popular in India these days. It’s the sort of event that gets the newspapers frothing in excitement because it includes high ranking politicians as well as corporate leaders who are so senior that they cannot afford to be seen doing any actual work and hence spend all their time networking. It’s one of those events that most governments can fall back on to bail them out of a crisis situation and buy them a few weeks of goodwill. “Rising racial intolerance? Collapsing infrastructure? Power crisis looming? Let’s have a Global Investors’ Meet before this gets out of hand!”

A big sign of the success of any of these Global Investors’ Meets is the value of the MoU’s signed at the meet. And you know it’s always a spectacular success because every year it’s a new record number that ushers in a sense of unmitigated optimism for the state in question. The newspapers eagerly lap this up with reports stating that “Investors signed MoU’s worth Rs 60,000 crores with the Karnataka Government which could lead to the creation of up to 6 lakh jobs in the state. To address industry concerns about excessive paperwork that scuppers most investments, the state government has promised that it would hire origami enthusiasts to make all that paperwork a lot more interesting. Ratan Tata has also praised Karnataka claiming that it’s one of the few states that he actually enjoys investing in, while Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who had twice threatened to leave Karnataka, has once again changed her mind and decided to stick around and invest some more.”

Each year, everyone goes back thinking that the state is well and truly on the way to being an oasis of development and prosperity, only to come back for the next Global Investors’ Meet with everything still being the same. Any reasonable person would be well within his rights to wonder why this is so. The chief culprit for this is the MoU. In essence, an MoU is like a non-committal, no-strings-attached version of the IoU. While it officially stands for Memorandum of Understanding, it's meaning is closer to “Might Owe You”. According to its definition, MoUs are “not legally binding but they carry a degree of seriousness and mutual respect, stronger than a gentlemen's agreement”. I’m no Sherlock, but that does sound very suspicious, doesn’t it? Even if an MoU carries the highest degree of seriousness and respect, it still means that a company may invest a certain amount in a state, but it just as well might not do so if it doesn’t feel like it. So you’ll have legal teams as well as government and corporate big shots spend months and months agonising over the fine print and meticulously poring over the details of a document that finally looks something like this:

In short, major investment decisions that could impact the future of a state are made on documents that hold less legal water than your average rental agreement. Which means that you’re more likely to get your rental deposit back than the Global Investors’ meet resulting in any actual investment – now that’s a headline worth reading!

A Text from the Government

“Marry at an early age. Delay first child. Have sufficient gap between first and second child.”

Now, if someone were to tell this to you, who do you think it would be? If I were to take a shot at it, here are some plausible guesses:

1. Your parents.
2. One of those meddlesome relatives that always transpires when there’s talk of marriage in the family.
3. Your newly married acquaintances that are still in that phase of enthusiasm that distinguishes an early convert from a weary veteran.
4. A Karan Johar movie.

On the other hand, here is a list of entities that are quite unlikely to ever tell you something like this:

1. Al Qaeda.
2. Your unmarried friends.
3. Deodorant advertisements.
4. A James Bond movie.
5. The government.

So imagine my surprise when the government gave me this matrimonial advice via the admittedly modern (for a government) medium of text messaging. As any single Indian person in my age group would know, once you’re beyond a certain age, you pretty much prepare yourself for everyone around you to be trying to convince you to get married – whether it’s parents, grandparents, random relatives, friends or acquaintances. What you're not prepared for, however, is for the government to also join the “get married” chorus. You pay taxes to the government, the government fines you if you’re drunk while driving, the government takes you through endless layers of red tape whenever you need anything from it, the government randomly digs up certain stretches of the road on your way to office – these are the sort of things you’re primed to expect from the government. Marital advice from the government, however – now that can completely throw you off-balance.

I suppose for the government, this is the perfect sort of reply to a lot of its detractors that have been complaining that the government has not been doing anything much at all ever since it took oath – that policy paralysis has meant that the government has just sat and twiddled its thumbs while the economy went for a lazy stroll downhill, or that the only thing the government was active in was corruption. Well, for all those detractors, I’m pleased to say that the government has been quite active when it comes to texting. It’s not just personal marital advice that the government has been giving me – it has given me helpful tips to avoid dengue, it has asked me to design a mascot for the Income Tax Department so that I’m perfectly fine giving away chunks of my salary as long as there’s a friendly smiling mascot present, and it has also asked me to pay service taxes just in case I’m a food business.

As is customary with a lot of the things that the government does, this whole business of the government sending texts does not make any sense. Think about it – it was the government that came up with the regulation in the first place to ban commercial SMSs so that ordinary consumers were not troubled by pesky texts through the day. And what does the government do once those texts stop – send texts of their own!

At the same time, however, this does raise a lot of interesting questions. Who in the government first came up with the idea of sending text messages to citizens? Is this the government trying to keep up with the times and be ‘with it’ by showing that it can also communicate through texts?

More importantly – is there a centralized government department that just deals with texting? I’m guessing there should be – otherwise if all government departments started sending their own texts willy-nilly, things would really get out of hand and we’d be inundated with 50-odd texts every day. A centralized texting department also fits in well with the government’s fondness for regulation – it would mean that the texting department gets applications for sending texts from all other government departments, which are then duly processed by a committee that decides what messages are approved to be sent, which ones are rejected, if any amendments need to made to the copy, etc. In which case, how does one get into this department? It kind of sounds like a fun job!

And it could be made even more fun if the texting department started using texts as a tool for foreign policy. Instead of wasting time in state-level meetings, it could begin communicating foreign policy in the form of text messages. Here are some possible texts that could be sent:

To: Government of Pakistan

Being best friends with the Taliban is like leaving your child in the custody of a grizzly bear. It could only lead to disaster – ha ha.

Ministry of External Affairs, India.

To: Non-Aligned Movement

Just checking – why are we still in existence? Didn’t the Cold War end like 20 years ago?

MEA, India

To: Government of USA

This is all very confusing. Are we strategic allies, regional allies or key allies? Also, what’s the difference? Oh, and Osama found in Pakistan!!! Lol! Told you not to trust the Pakistanis!

MEA, India.

To: Kingdom of Bhutan

Of course we haven’t forgotten u! What nonsense! Tell you what – how abt we make your king the chief guest for the Republic Day parade? Warm Regards.

MEA, India

To: Government of Mongolia

Fresh spices, high staple-length cotton and the finest iron-ore – these could all be yours, in exchange for some weapons-grade uranium. If interested, please get in touch.

MEA, India

Ok, I think I should stop now, before one of the copywriters for the Idea ads gets a brainwave out of all this and creates a typically daft ad about governments across the world bringing about world peace by sending each other friendly text messages.

The National Board For Blog Control Would Sue This!

A few days back, I stumbled upon this interesting headline in the papers “SC: Scrabble is a game, not a puzzle”. Baffled and bemused in equal parts, I went on to read further and discovered that the Supreme Court judges had spent a good deal of time studying the history and development of Scrabble (and presumably also played a good deal of games) before concluding that Scrabble could not be classified as a puzzle and instead was a game. They went on to list differences between Scrabble and Crossword puzzles to prove beyond doubt that Scrabble was indeed a game. Now you might wonder “It’s been 25 years since the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and the perpetrators have still not been brought to justice, so what on Earth is the Supreme Court doing wasting precious time on the taxonomy of Scrabble?” But there you have it – being a Supreme Court judge does not simply involve wearing a funny wig and presiding over judgments that change the course of a nation – you also get to play a lot of Scrabble.

And then it dawned on me – there are a lot of people with important-sounding titles all over the place, who really don’t do anything much. Take, for example, the National Egg Coordination Committee. Now, I’m not saying they don’t do anything at all, and they must be quite busy putting out all those “Roz Khao Ande” ads; but I’m pretty sure the NECC employees don’t come home dead tired at 10 in the night saying “Honey, don’t disturb me today – I’ve been working really hard coordinating eggs all day.”

And I bet you didn’t know that the Indian Government has a Ministry for Non-Resident Indians as well as a Ministry for Overseas Indians! I suppose both the ministries are perpetually at loggerheads over what falls under their purview, which is probably the only way to keep them occupied. The second of these ministries was probably created just to stop some politician from defecting to a rival party, is what I would guess. Here are some of the more obscure government departments that you probably didn’t know your tax-money was supporting:

• National Centre for Jute Diversification
• Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan
• National Balbhavan
• National Centre for Promotion of Urdu Language
• National Remote Sensing Agency
• National Mission for Manuscripts
• National Frequency Allocation Planning Board

And this is not just limited to the government. Take scientific research, for example – sounds like a perfectly serious and responsible profession, doesn’t it? Yet every second day, solemn scientists with top degrees and impeccable credentials make the news for research that would not exactly make you go “Oh my god! Is that really so?” If you ever turn to that section of the newspapers that talk about the latest developments/findings on the health/lifestyle front, these are the kind of reports you’re likely to see:

Men Likely to Stare at Women in Skimpy Clothes

Researchers at the Department of Anthropology, University of Bath, England, have concluded that there is a 94.6% higher chance that men would stare at a woman dressed in skimpy attire as opposed to a woman wearing a brown paper bag over her head. This was the result of a research conducted across 12000 men all over the world over a five-year period. According to eminent anthropologist Dr Ludwig Van Ecclestone, who headed the research, “Men tend to suffer from what we in the research circles refer to as the ambulatory optic syndrome, something that lay men would call a roving eye. The minute a scantily-clad woman walks in to a room, most men’s eyes would immediately dart in her direction to catch a quick glimpse. This explains a lot and we hope this study contributes to a greater understanding of the cross-gender interaction in a socio-environmental context.”

Humans Need Privacy

In a groundbreaking research that was conducted across 25 different species that included humans, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles and Paris Hilton, it was discovered that humans needed privacy more than all other species, except bears during hibernation. “The human need for privacy is indeed a very strong one, which is why there are so many houses that have been built all over the world. Not just houses, our research has helped explain other phenomena of human civilization such as curtains, doors, and why Russell Crowe is regularly in the news for beating up a pesky paparazzi photographer”, says Dr Ricard Ecschnede, Director, Psychiatry Studies Wing, University of San Diego.

Three Bottles of Beer a Day is Good for Health

Well, its official – beer is good for your health. At least until the next such study is conducted. Researchers at the Oktoberfest University of Health Studies in Munich have concluded that having three bottles of beer after work every day generally keeps your bodily functions as well as mental faculties going and can lead to a longer life expectancy. This contradicts the earlier study that stated that consumption of beer was injurious to health, which itself was a direct contradiction of the previous study that said that beer had a lot of beneficial effects on the human health.

And I’m not kidding about any of all this – you might think that I made up all the stuff mentioned above, which may be partly true when it comes to the finer details, but the essence of it is pretty much the same. If you don’t believe me, I quote below the headlines from yesterday’s newspaper on the kind of research that’s been happening:

“US docs relocate fat to create bigger breasts”

“Tomato and potato plants are carnivores”

“All men watch harmless porn”

So remember – the next time you meet some official-looking person who hands you his business card and it says “Vice President, Documentation”, he could very well turn out to be the office photocopying boy! (as one of my professors at GIM had put it)

To Do or Not To Do?

After the spectacular failure of condoms as contraceptives, the government has decided to opt for more drastic measures to confront one of the biggest challenges facing our country - overpopulation. Recently, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad announced something along the lines of “The best way to control the population is by having a TV set in every house in every village. Witty and engaging late-night television programming is the only way to ensure that people do not spend all their free-time having sexual intercourse and procreating.”

Now, a lot of you might be wondering why condoms have ended up being such a spectacular failure, what with the government doing its utmost to promote their use – they created embarrassing ad campaigns and condom ringtones to generate awareness, they distributed condoms across the country, they enabled easy access to information about condoms, they installed vending machines at public places, they spread awareness of sexually transmitted diseases, they created catchy slogans for family planning, etc.

The problem is that people will not listen to anything that the government tells them to do. Most people will go to great lengths to do something that is dangerous and frowned upon by the authorities, but might not care much about it the minute it is approved and/or encouraged by the authorities. Take pornography and drugs, for example. Condoms probably had a perfectly decent shot at being a successful contraceptive until the government decided to step in and promote its use. Perhaps the best way to encourage people to use condoms would be to ban them.

This would result in a huge underground market for condoms, and people would go to great lengths to get hold of condoms. Youths across the country would be planning their Saturday-night escapades, “Let’s get really wild today – we’ll get pissed drunk, smoke up and then use condoms while having sex!” Condom dealers would replace drug dealers as the coolest people around town; although the downside would be that the condom mafia might pose all sorts or strange law and order problems – “Four Killed in Gang Warfare between Ribbed and Extra-Lubricated Condom Gangs” or “Textured Condoms Kingpin Arrested in Raid – Six Cartons of Dotted and Flavoured Condoms Seized”

But I guess the government had had enough of condoms, and decided that “If condoms have not succeeded as contraceptives, then by God we’ll find something that will!” As is usually the case with the government when choosing something, tenders were invited from various different pastimes/activities to pitch for the position of “Official Contraceptive of India”.

Predictably, the government was swamped with responses from all sorts of entities pitching themselves as the ideal fit for India’s next contraceptive - whether it was sports, television, movies, surgical procedures or Paris Hilton. Below is a sample of the responses that have been obtained from the inbox of the Ministry of Health:

From: Chocolate [mailto:chocolate@aphrodisiacs.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:21 AM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

Since time immemorial, chocolate has been effectively utilized to enhance one’s appetite for sexual activities. Whether it was the Egyptian Civilization, the Indus Valley Civilization or the Flintstones, there is enough evidence to suggest that Chocolates have played a major role in boosting the sex-drives of humans throughout history. Even today, most cultures accept chocolate as one of the foremost aphrodisiacs...WAIT A SECOND!!! OH, SORRY...YOU’RE LOOKING FOR CONTRACEPTIVES! UMM...JUST IGNORE THIS MAIL. DELETE IT FROM YOUR INBOX. Sorry for the confusion, this is so embarrassing.

Warm Regards

Chocolate

From: Religion [mailto:religion@rubbishconcepts.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:35 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

While it makes absolutely no sense for people to stop having sex, history has revealed that there is only one way to get people to do something that makes absolutely no sense – Religion.

Therefore, we believe that the answer to India’s new contraceptive can only be religion – we’ll tell people that it’s against their religion to have sex.

Thanks and regards

Religion

From: BCCI [mailto:BCCI@humoungousprofits.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:15 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

Over the years, Cricket has emerged as India’s favourite pastime. The entire nation is hooked to cricket when the Indian team is playing – therefore we sincerely believe that the best way to stop people from having sex is to get the Indian team to play cricket every night.

Truly,

Board of Control for Cricket in India

PS – This has nothing to do with us wanting to make more money – do NOT listen to our detractors who’ll tell you that the BCCI is nothing but a greedy, money-spinning organization.

From: Work [mailto:work@takethefunoutoflife.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 2:08 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

dear govt

spectacularly successful in a lot of countries across the world (refer attachment), longer and more stressful working hours have resulted in people having sex less frequently with their partners. plus it has the added advantage of raising the country’s national output – hence we believe that work is the most effective and safe form of contraception now that condoms have failed.

rgds

wrk

From: Banking Industry [mailto:banks@thedoldrums.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 4:45 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

We don’t know how or what we’d do as contraceptives, BUT WE REALLY COULD USE THE BUSINESS, what with the recession and all.

From: Chocolate [mailto:chocolate@betterthansex.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 5:15 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Proposal – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

Statistics reveal that sex is one of the most primal and pleasurable activities known to man. Now, a lot of people might suggest different ways to get people to stop having sex - sports, household chores, long hours in the office, joining the army, looking at nude pictures of Paris Hilton, etc. But I ask you this – are any of these MORE enjoyable than sex? The answer, dear government, is that they’re not.

So how do you get people to stop having sex then? Innumerable surveys have revealed that there is only one thing women enjoy more than sex – CHOCOLATES!

This is why you need look no further than Chocolates when looking for a new contraceptive.

Sincerely,

Chocolate

Just as the government was finalizing on Chocolates, along came the winning pitch, the one that instantly convinced the government on whom to go with for the “Official Contraceptive of India”:

From: Television [mailto:tv@thenextcondom.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 6:12 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

“I suppose all my competitors would be saying a lot of things and giving a lot of reasons as to why they should be made the next contraceptive. I just have this to say:

According to research conducted in Italy, people with TV in their homes had 40% lesser sex than those without TV in their homes. And this is ITALIAN WOMEN we’re talking about!!!”

Regards

TV