Being Rahul Gandhi

Let's not pretend that Rahul Gandhi is anything other than an embarrassment. He is merely a beneficiary of dynasty.

Indians love to hate their politicians. Manmohan Singh is getting the flak too for numerous corruption scandals under the present government.

This has prompted certain numbers of people to become vocal advocates of a certain Narendra Modi.

It's as if the admittedly absolute incompetence of Rahul Gandhi or Sonia or the others in Congress were a proof of competence of the Gujarat chief minister.

The problem with considering Modi to be the "solution" to India's problems is that this pushes various inconvenient truths under the carpet.

Sure, Modi does not indulge in corruption. But he runs a personality-centered administration — perhaps somewhat like Putin. Critics are obliterated. Then there is the residue from that riot in 2002.

But as Lessig compared USA-land to Lester-land and argued that Lestor-land was in fact better; similarly, India's democracy is far from perfect.

Is it corrupted by politicians having to remain loyal to the donors like in the USA? May be the need to fund-raise is one of the aspects of why democracies attract corrupt folks to enter politics.

Those who are not interested in making compromises prefer not to enter the quagmire.

As it happens, corrupt businessmen fund the politicians; the politicians in turn focus on keeping the corrupt businessmen happy and being corrupt, they amass whatever wealth they can and try to perpetuate themselves and their clan as the "ruling class".

Be that as it may, let's consider the great qualities of the Indian electorate for a moment for it's the citizens who after all decide who will be the elected "rulers".

The citizens of India are poor and have a tough enough time just making ends meet — that probably applies to 70 or 90 percent of the population.

Then they tend to have babies to take care of; their hobbies primarily revolve around religion, cricket, and Bollywood. Clearly, none of these activities give evidence of the "superior" intelligence of Indians.

There's a certain small proportion of Indians who think they are "educated" who have various hilarious beliefs — such as their unending and uncritical admiration for the idiot Swami Vivekananda.

Or they will believe in various silly urban myths such as one-third of NASA comprising of Indians or some ridiculously large percentage of Microsoft being Indians.

Forget dead swamis and consider various living charlatans. You have got idiots like Sri Sri Ravi 'Bastard' Shankar who attracts millions of devotees; the joker Baba Ramdev who similarly has millions of fans; numerous other similar godmen including Asharam Bapu, Mata Amtritanandamayi (or something like that), a godmen named 'Bhagwan' (meaning 'god' — how humble of him to name himself simply as 'god'), and the dead Sai Baba and so on ...

This habit of Indians to fall for such cheap stage magicians and others and make a big deal about third-rate people like Sachin Tendulkar or Amitabh Bachchan shows the inability of Indians for critical thinking.

It's enough to point out a few facts to conclusively demonstrate how far behind India is.

I won't repeat the statistics about India having the largest number of malnourished children in the world or the largest number of child laborers or the largest numbers of children dying, etc. That's depressing statistics.

Instead, consider the fact that the UK and France each with populations of about 60 million each are permanent members of the UN Security Council whereas India with about 1.25 billion people is not a member.

Hilarious, isn't it? If India had any self-respect, India should issue an ultimatum to the UN to immediately include it in the SC, or else it should quit.

I don't care about Brazil and Japan and South Africa; the "comprehensive" reform business is probably just a ruse to keep delaying any real reform for ever and ever.

India is yet to send a human into space. India will be launching a tiny orbiter to Mars this year.

This is all hilarious and so 1960s.

So, as a "fellow Indian," I like to say: cut the crap, people. India is a nation of idiots who only know how to make babies.