I have been reading a lot of blogs of late. Instead of being my usual self-absorbed self. It is amazing how opinionated we Indians are. And how impossibly India-centric in our politics. If it doesn’t affect India, we couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Unless its Hollywood or something. Obama is good or bad because he is good or bad for India. And where the hell is Somalia anyway?

And yet, our understanding of economics, for the large part, is either an idiotic , arcane  pot-boiler of class struggle, proletariat and revolution; or a slick neo-con ignorance of India’s realities. Our political bickering and our enduring cynicism of everything is a malaise that tires me. Petty, narrow and crippled by the debates of the past, we continue down a path where compromise and unity are long forgotten words. And being clever on television is the most coveted asset.

And why shouldn’t it be. We have an incredible political system in India. Time solves everything in India. So give it a few months and the communal ‘tension’ (read gang-rape, murder and pillage) in Orissa will die down on its own. Meanwhile send stern verbal messages to the Orissa government. Taxis in Mumbai brought to a grinding halt, their windshields shattered? Lets just see who wins the elections, na. We’ll decide after that as to who is right and who is wrong. Humanitarian concerns in Kashmir? Aren’t you a little out-dated child? Those were headlines in the Eighties. Now its cool to say that Kashmiris are just an ungrateful, hateful lot, prone to group violence and ‘seperatism’?

We are a country where our most liberal cities have legislation which encourages ghettos and religion-based living. Though our criminal laws make us in many ways a police-state, our police, just like the government, believes in conserving its energies and resources. To kill Naxalites and Maoists of course! And supress the odd riot here and there.

Come to think of it though, how is it so different in the world outside?