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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (3146)	11/1/1998 7:06:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Vox Populi.[The Praxy Missive] THE PRAXY FERNANDES COLUMN It is a comforting feeling, isn't it, that we live in a democratic society; that it is we who place into high office the powers that be and that we have the right to knock them down from their pedestals if they do not behave. This mighty power we derive by the exercise of a vote once every five years. But there are moments of misgiving. Is it possible that the once-in-five-year-vote is a myth to lull us into a sense of complacency? Is it possible that real power is exercised by those shadowy figures in the back rooms of party headquarters; those wire pullers behind the scenes and the gentleman so graphically described as “Power Brokers”. There seems to be an increasing realisation that peoples' power needs to be expressed in other and perhaps more effective ways. Thus you have the soapbox orators at Hyde Park corner, protest meetings at the Delhi Boat Club, Chowpathi Beach or Cubbon Park. We, in India, have certainly developed an impressive array of non-traditional weapons of protest, hartals and dharnas, the great invention by the Bengalis of the gherao and George Fernandes's contribution to civilisation, the Bandh. Recently we have witnessed innovative variations in the shape of ‘Rail Roko' and ‘Rasta Roko'. The great Mahatma himself conceived of many of those challenges to authority as part of his non-violent philosophy, non-cooperation, satyagraha and the supreme weapon of the fast. There was fear and trembling in White Hall and Westminster, when the frail Mahatma was on one of his fasts unto death. Not to say that lesser mortals are precluded from following this path. Some years back, Miss Shabana Azmi staged a fast on behalf of the slum dwellers of Bombay. Some of her detractors in the film world had cynically suggested that the few kilograms which Miss Azmi shed in the process had done her more good than the fallout benefits secured by the slum dwellers. And now the protester's bug had bitten our very own Sadiqa Peerbhoy. Sadiqa is a gentle, friendly and bubbly personality. Whenever she walks into a room she brings the sunshine with her. In a recent article Sadiqa storms “Now I know what makes a person really mad. It's feeling helpless in the face of someone walking all over your basic rights as a person, that boomerangs as uncontrollable rage”. Her hackles have been raised, and justifiably so, by the decision taken by J. H. Patel and Co., to encroach on Cubbon Park to build luxury flats for our ‘honourable' MLA's. And so she called for public agitation “Can we please agitate, morchafy, burn effigies, chipko to trees, lie down on roads or do whatever it takes to knock a sense of civic citizenship into people who call the shots!” And for good measure she adds this quite irresistible invitation “I am game for anything”! Indeed we live in a world of protestants. You remember the suffragettes chaining themselves to the railings of public buildings to secure the vote for women or the unbelievable Carrie Nation leading her psalms-singing females into the bars and smashing the bottles with her hatchet in her prohibitionist zeal. Protests may also ring a tragic note such as those young idealists fighting for a homeland in Palestine with their terrifying weapon of hijacking. Do you remember the dramatic incident that occurred at the historic test match at Lords, between England and India, when saucy Miss Ashley Sommers ran into the field stark naked holding aloft a banner which proclaimed “Bring Botham Back”. Streaking as this new art form is called, is undoubtedly a potent and shall we say visible weapon of protest. It certainly attracts attention. And I wonder whether the intrepid Miss Sommers was not partly responsible for our success in the match, provoking so to speak Azharuddin's leg glances and Maninder's spurt of bowling many a maiden over. And then in the eighties there was a remarkable happening reported from Helsinki. More than 3,000 Finnish women declared a child bearing strike as a protest against nuclear power. Demanding that Finland renounce nuclear power by 1990, the women said that they would not give birth until the Government changed its policy of advocating nuclear power! Now you might think that these Finnish Females had pioneered a most imaginative and innovative protest weapon. But they had, in fact picked up the idea from Greek literature. In 441 B.C., Aristophanes the immortal Greek dramatist wrote his ‘Lysistrata'. This was at the time of the Peloponnesian wars. The play revolves around the seizure of the Acropolis and the treasury of Athens by the women who, at Lysistrata's instigation, declared a sex strike until such time as their men make peace! Those hapless Greeks were compelled to choose, so to speak, between the sword and the Sheath!. (Praxy Fernandes is the former Finance Secretary, Govt. of India.) [Source:From Bangalore Mag.]