The Politically Incorrect Indian

In kala namak country, where even money is segregated into black and white, it is but natural for armchair analysts to brand India as a racist state.

There is some superficial truth to the accusation. As a country we do seem to have a congenital fascination for the ‘Fair and Lovely’. The dark and not-so-handsome have to somehow justify their existence with the Mehmoodian ‘Hum kalein hain to kya dilwalein hain’ (I may be sooty, but my heart is a beauty) kind of warped logic.

To be fair, we as a culture, are equally nasty to anyone with a deviant physical trait. Aren’t you guilty of calling your generously endowed neighbourhood aunty, ‘moti’? In Tamil films, till recently, it was the norm to have lyrics that poked fun at corpulent heroines using euphemisms such as ‘bamblimas’ (derived from pamplemousse, the big fat grapefruit) and ‘gundu pooshnika’ (plump pumpkin).

Even at school, no one finds it inappropriate to label ‘that dark kid’ as ‘blackie’. Grownups at office think that it’s funny to lampoon a bald colleague as ‘taklu’. The list of insensitive and downright pejorative nicknames in circulation include langda (for the lame), soda buddi (for the spectacled), damaaram (for the hard of hearing), tube light (for the dim-witted), chotu (for the shortish types) and otra kutchi (for the thin and tall).

My surmise is that Indians were not always this offensive. Yes, they did name names that bordered on racism but it was never with an intent to run down the person. On the contrary, the idea was to identify a person using his or her most visible trait.

For example, ‘Krishna’ is a Sanskrit synonym for ‘black’. He was called so because of his melanin-rich skin tone. Goddess Kali had a similar shade, hence her name. Ditto with Shyama. Likewise Shweta and Shukla are names that cue ‘whiteness’ and Neelkant stands for ‘blue throat’. So, what began as an attribute descriptor degenerated over centuries into pseudo-expressions of scorn!

It’s time we put an end to the debased tradition of name-calling. Else we’ll all end up looking like the Ku Klux Klanners who couldn’t think beyond their white supremacist noses.

What the Gandhi Dynasty owes India.

Naming rights is a nascent industry in India. BCCI, the famed not-for-profit society was the earliest to milk the potential to a Yes Bank Maximum by hawking every teensy thing associated with IPL. As Amrit Mathur points out here, the BCCI rakes in annual franchisee fee payments ranging from ₹ 198 crores from Sahara Pune Warriors to ₹ 36 crores from Rajasthan Royals. Considering the title rights (2013 to 2017) was sold to Pepsi for ₹ 396.8 crores, you can clearly imagine the cash cow that has been created by a mere transfer of verbal branding rights. Although sports is the lead arena for naming rights, internationally several cash-strapped universities, governments and hospitals have raised truckloads of money by deploying this strategy. To give you a quick idea:

 University of Missouri-Kansas City (UKMC) retails professorship naming rights for ₹ 4 crores, endowed chair for ₹ 8 crores, restroom branding for ₹ 13 lakhs and bigger ticket items for amounts ranging in the realm of ₹ 30 crores and above.

 The Pattison Avenue Terminus was renamed as AT&T Station by the city of Philadelphia for a price of ₹ 21 crores. In Camp Hill, Pensylvania, government officials were offering to name two gyms for ₹ 1.3 crores each, the town library for ₹ 80 lakhs and high school counseling offices for ₹ 8 lakhs!

 Hasbro Children's Hospital at Rhode Island Hospital, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, The Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey, and Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles are some hospitals that have benefited. It seems, Hasbro paid ₹ 13 crores way back in 1994 to clinch the deal.

Given this background, now let's examine what our Government of India has been doing, year on year. Naming rights to all leading institutions in all leading cities, has been gifted away to the Gandhi Family for almost nothing. Here's a very conservative estimate of the loss incurred by the tax payer:

 INSTITUTIONS NAMED AFTER RAJIV GANDHI 

•  6 Airports and ports. Let's apply a basic fee of Rs. 50 crores a year. That's 300 crores gone. 
•  98 Universities and educational institutions. Let's apply a peanut fee of 50 lakhs per institution per year. That's 49 crores gone down the drain. 
•  39 Hospitals. Applying a pessimistic rate of 1 crore per hospital. That's 39 crores gifted away. 
•  74 Roads, Buildings and Places. If the naming rights were to be auctioned, it will yield at least 50 lakhs per entity per year. That's again 39 crores. 
•  15 National Parks and Sanctuaries. Since every corporate covets the green tag, the naming rights may yield at least 10 crore per park per year. That's 150 crores. 

INSTITUTIONS NAMED AFTER INDIRA GANDHI 

• 1 Airport and 1 port. @ 50 crores/year, the damage is 100 crores. 
•  11 Universities and educational institutions. @ 50 lakhs/year, the loss is 5.5 crores. 
•  5 Museums and Parks. @ 10 crore/year, the government loses 50 crores. 
•  5 Convention halls and sports arenas. @ 10 crores / year, GOI gave up 50 crores of revenue. 

 I am not going to count the awards and other schemes named after Indira and Rajiv.

The net opportunity loss per year for the government of India is at least 775 crores. That's just for the naming rights. Think of what all can be done with 775 crores. For starters we could feed at least 7 lakh people below poverty line (Montek's definition of 28 rupees per day) for a whole year!

Two cents on currencies.

Elizabeth Taylor summed it up best when she quipped: “Money is the best deodorant.” In these times of bizarre bailouts that feels ‘right on the money’ as the stench of bankruptcy that surrounds Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal can only be overpowered by a liberal squirt of Euros or the enchanting odour of crisp greenbacks cranked out by Ben Bernanke and the Fumbling Feds.

A deep discussion on the economics of recession always puts people to sleep so I shall stick to the superficial and serve you the trivial stuff you’ve always craved for.

Let’s set the ball rolling by understanding why the rupee is called the Rupee. Before Sher Shah Suri came along and applied the Sanskrit word for ‘shapely’ (what Rupiya means) to silver coins, the tankha (yes, the Hindi word for salary!) was the fiat currency of the Thuglaqs. Babar and Humayun somehow didn’t fancy the Rupiya. They preferred the Shahrukhi instead.

Akbar deserves the credit for putting the Rupee back into circulation as he felt it had its merits. The rest of the Mughals just cut, copy, paste Akbar’s template and that’s how India was flooded with many variants of the Rupee. The East India Company standardised the currency system by subsuming the local denominations.

For example, in the Madras Presidency, the basic unit was the copper Kasu. Then there was the silver Panam (80 copper kasus). Followed by the Rupee (12 panams) and on top there was the gold Pagoda (3.5 rupees). Over time, this was simplified into Pice, Paise, Annas and Rupees. 16 Annas, 64 Paise and 164 Pies were the equivalent of one rupee. Now you know the real import of the legendary Bollywood dialogue ‘pie pie chuka doonga’!

The Yuan and Yen have similar origins to the Rupee. As in, they cue the round shape. Pound comes from Latin word ‘Poundus’ indicating weight. While ‘Dollar’ is derived from Thaler, short for Joahimsthaler, a coin made from metal mined in Joahimsthal, a town in Czech Republic. And ‘Dirham’ owes its origins to the Greek word Drachma meaning ‘handful’. Hope the dime-a-dozen trivia you just learnt was worth every penny!