The government has privatized PIA on much the same principle as the fellow who knocked his head against the wall repeatedly. He said it would feel good when he stopped. Similarly, the government is apparently happy with the fact that it would not get much money from the sale, because it would have the relief of not paying anything out of its budget.
Of course, there’s a mountain of Rs850 billion of debt, which has been shoved off onto a holding company, for which the taxpayer is responsible. However, it seems the banks to whom this money is owed have been told that they shouldn’t expect to see any hard cash soon, just government securities and other such instruments about which it is debated whether they are worth the paper they’re printed on.
Anyhow, I suppose the government was happy to have made the sale. It got an embarrassing shock last year, when none of the bidders got to within the government’s reserve price, Only KP CM Ali Amin Gandapur offered to buy at the reserve price. The government was desperate enough that it asked him to pay the money and take the airline, but it smelled a rat when Ali Amin said that drinks would once again be served on flights, and he would take a daily flight to check that service was adequate, and when pressed for money, said, “Ask Sharjeel Memon.”
It was funny that while PIA has privatized in Pakistan, Christmas was disrupted in India. It makes one wonder whether there Two-Nation Theory could be extended from Islam to other religions. It almost seems as if the Muslims being out of the equation, Hindus are turning their attention to other religions.
For the sake of the Christians of India, perhaps someone should tell the Hindus that there are still a lot of Muslims out there, and the ‘Ghar Wapsi’ movement has had a negligible effect. There are still a lot of Muslims out there who have not relapsed into Hinduism, so perhaps they should be handled first before going after Christian churches or schools, as has happened this Christmas. Otherwise, with the Muslims left unhandled and the Christians hardly touched, you might find Hindus haring off after Sikhs, or Jains, or Buddhists. Frankly, I think the Parsis are next. It’s sad when you think of it, because there’s hardly anything more Indian than Parsis, who are the last remnants of the Iranian pro-Chosroes monarchists after the Arabs conquered Persia, who sought refuge in India about 13 centuries ago. Yet the BJP still thinks they are foreigners.
Now Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism are undoubtedly religions that originated from outside India, but Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism split off from Hinduism over the same issue, caste. Now none of them acknowledge caste, but all of them have it practically. Heck, such Hindu reform movements as the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj also reject caste. But the BJP is caste-ist in an almost unashamed way, even though Modi is an OBC, a teli.
I’m not sure we should talk. We might not be baste-ist, but we are an almost pathological biradari-based society. Electoral politics is all about biradaris, and not just for local councils or legislatures, but even for professional organizations like bar associations. Then there are biradaris in professional life.
Muslims managed to get away because they got a separate country. Sikhs have got East Punjab, Christians may have Mizoram and other states in the North-East. Still, getting a separate country may not be a complete solution, because some of your co-religionists remain in India.
A little like England opener Ben Duckett, who was being widely castigated for being drunk on the beach during the current tour, just before the Melbourne Test. That was over in two days, like the Perth Test. Maybe it indicates what the wickets are like. Or is it an aspersion on the batsmen?
Well, Duckett may find himself out of the game, as Monty Panesar, the slow left-armer, did. Panesar found his cricketing career come to a crashing halt after he relieved himself on the wall of a pub one night after he’d had one too many. Wonder what he’d’ve done had he been on this tour? Relieved himself in the ocean? Did Duckett? Will it help that England won in Melbourne?
