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Time of India
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Quit India
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE Bugbear of the brain drain has resurfaced, but its causes need questioning A social media post has again raised the bogey of the brain drain, the outflow of the highly educated from our state-subsidised IITs and IIMs to foreign shores, there to enrich other countries at the expense of the Indian taxpayer. The post highlights what amounts to asset-stripping of the Indian economy to benefit the adoptive countries of the highly qualified migrants. The reason the writer adduces for this post-Independence 'Quit India' movement is monetary gain: The paycheque of an entry-level technocrat in say, US, is some 15 times that of a counterpart in India. The post decries this outward tide as putting pecuniary gain over patriotism, placing personal advancement over the national interest. The writer likens this transfer of value to a form of neo-colonialism in which the colonising powers, the so-called First World, plunder developing countries like India not of material resources, as former colonists did, but of the incalculably more valuable fund of intellectual capital. However, while former colonists took their loot by force of arms, today's expropriators do so with the more than willing consent of migrants. Is the keen edge of greed the only, or even the major, motivation that induces the migrant to cut loose the main-stay anchor of home and chance the terra incognita of foreign shores? Could there be, apart from the pull factor of financial benefit, also a push impetus that impels those who quit India? The greater part of the Great Indian Diaspora is composed of low-skilled labour drawn by the prospect of monetary gain. But the highly-educated, who turn their backs on their home country, might have other reasons for doing so. Could these include a desperation to forsake a climate in which, increasingly, the innovative and the unconventional are stifled by sectarian ideology, and a once shared inclusive identity is fragmented with exclusionary fissures of creed, caste and language? Love for one's country is laudable, as is the reciprocal love the country must bear for all those who call it home, and not just for those who constitute a brute majority. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
10-07-2025
- General
- Time of India
Thankful Britain
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE A country that always expects expressions of gratitude, even for its past misdeeds On a recent visit to London, I noticed a sign near the exit door of the bus I was travelling on: When getting off please say Thank you to the driver. An Indian visitor to Britain will notice that the country is full of thanks. You go into a shop to buy something. The shopkeeper hands you your purchase and you say Thank you. You pay for what you bought and the shopkeeper says Thank you. A person preceding another through a doorway will hold the door open for the person following, an everyday courtesy – which in India would be as remarkable as the sighting of a UFO – eliciting a Thank you from the one for whom the door has been held open, which might prompt a reciprocal response of Ta, or Cheers, which are Thank yous in other avatars. However, the most widely circulated oral coin of the realm is the word Sorry. The British are a very apologetic lot, forever vocalising regret for some trivial transgression. You stop a passing stranger on the street and ask the way to a particular place. If the person cannot supply the information, admission of this lack of knowledge will be prefaced with a profession of sorrow for inability to be of assistance. In a crowded bus or train, if someone inadvertently jostles you, a minor mishap that you barely register, the occurrence will evoke a salvo of Sorries as though you've been the recipient of GBH, Grievous Bodily Harm. Coming from India, where such transactional tokens of politeness are notable by their absence, the visitor might find the British protestations of gratitude and remorse perplexing in their profusion. Such perplexity might be compounded by the contrasting lack of any official token of Britain's regret for Jallianwala Bagh or the man-made Great Bengal Famine, which claimed an estimated three million lives. Perhaps this reticence on Britain's part might be in reproof of India's negligence to say Thank you to the driver who took it for a ride on the bus called the British Raj. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Trump it all
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE From sea to shining sea, America sees the Don of a new era Second Opinion was granted an exclusive interview with the White House. Second Opinion: Mr President, thank you so much for… White House (interrupting): Drop this Mr President crap. Call me by my new title, Mr Permanent Resident. SO: But doesn't making yourself the Permanent Resident go against the Constitution? PR: Heck, no, There's nothing wrong with my constitution. Cholesterol, BP, all great. SO: I meant the Constitution of US, the Bill of Rights, and all that. PR: The heck with the Bill of Rights. Don't you know that two rights make a wrong. SO: I think it's two wrongs that don't make a right… PR: Rights, wrongs, what's the diff? Anyways, I'm having a ball with my new sidekick Bibi in Tel Aviv as side by side we kick ass in Iran. SO: What happened to your sidekick, Elon? PR: He turned out to be a softie, a real Musk melon. So I took him aside and kicked his ass. SO: But mightn't all this sidekicking in Iran lead to World War III? PR: World War III? I didn't know that there'd been I and II. But a good sequel will sure make me a bomb. SO: I think World War III will involve bombs of a different sort…But tell us how your plans to make America great again are coming along. PR: They're coming along real swell. Time is making me the Man of the Era. SO: Wow! That's wonderful. When did that happen? PR: It happened right after I made Time the MAGAzine of the Era. But now you're gonna have to excuse me. I gotta go and ICE some illegal immigrants, like this bimbo who was smuggled in from France or someplace, and is carryin' on about huddled masses yearnin' to breathe free. SO: You're deporting Liberty? PR: Yeah, the Statute of Liberty… Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Sound effect
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE Thanks to a scientific phenomenon, distance reduces the noise of the news Distance is said to lend enchantment to the view, blurring the sight of warts and other eyesores. Distance also lends detachment from the news. On a visit to London I stay tuned to what's happening back home in India by following the news. There is a familiarity about the news, born out of repetition that makes the word 'news' into an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Perhaps the people in charge of compiling dictionaries should, by deed poll if necessary, officially change the name of news to olds, because much, if not most of it, is the same old, same old. Opposition is going at govt hammer and tongs. And to return the compliment, govt is going at Opposition tongs and hammer. Operation Sindoor was/was not an unqualified success. The White House did/did not play the honest – or dishonest – broker in effecting a ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad. Govt, after having opposed a caste-based census all this while, is now in favour of it because it wants to consolidate the so-called Hindu vote/it wants to fragment the Dalit/OBC vote. Ding-dong, dong-ding. But there's not just a familiarity in the news, there's also a reduction in its noise level, making it sound less frenetic and frenzied the farther off it is. The scientific reason for this is called the Doppler Effect, after the Austrian physicist, Christian Doppler. The scientist described this phenomenon in 1842, whereby the frequency of sound waves changes as the source of the sound approaches or recedes from the hearer. The whistle of a train approaching a station sounds increasingly sharper and more shrill, the sound waves getting scrunched together like a squeezed accordion, and gets muted as the train passes and the wavelength becomes longer and flatter, like the wrinkles being ironed out of a shirt. Distance and flattening wavelengths take much sound out of the fury of the news, and some of the fury out of its sound For this relief much thanks, Herr Doppler. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
24-06-2025
- Climate
- Time of India
Britain on the boil
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE With its summer weather taken from other places, Britain blows hot and cold It is the end of June and it has to be hot in Gurgaon, where I live. The problem is that I'm not in Gurgaon, but in London, and the temperature today is going to be 34°C, making it hotter than Gurgaon with its pre-monsoon showers. Britain has long been in climate change denial of its own climate. It persists in thinking of itself as a cold country. And it is a cold country for most of the year. But then, all of a sudden, the sun will burst through the grey skies, temperatures will soar, and the tabloid headlines will go into a frenzy about how it's going to be hotter than Spain, and the south of France, and Sicily. And the nanny state will exhort people to carry water with them, and get off the bus, or the Tube if they feel faint, and everyone who's been moaning and grumbling about the wet and cold, will now moan and grumble about the horrid heat. It happens every year, regular as a Swiss clock. But by common consensus, Britain believes itself to be a cold country or at least a temperate one. Hot? No fear, not us. We don't do heat. So when the heat wave does strike, everyone's caught unprepared. Homes don't have ceiling fans. Bars, restaurants, and most public transport lack air conditioning. And people get bowled over as much by astonishment as by the heat, like ninepins in a game of skittles. Britain's denial of being a hot country, even temporarily, is both understandable and factually correct. Britain is not a hot country; the extreme heat waves it regularly endures are all borrowed from foreign shores. What the weather reports describe as a 'plume of hot air' will come whooshing in from North Africa, or some such outlandish place, and smite the country with sunstroke. Britain's borrowed heat from distant climes is analogous to the wealth it euphemistically borrowed in a fit of absent-mindedness from its former colonies and forgot to return. British heat? 'Course not. It's only borrowed. Like the Kohinoor. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
