Mutuality: The Ever Growing Exchange For Favors!

Prologue:There is some reason; you may call it even frustration, in republishing my old article here. It is for someone who is getting helplessly caught in the crossfire of favors being granted or taken without having the ability to overcome or neutralize it. It applies anywhere the ‘someone’ works to eke out a living; it may even apply to governments. You all know what to expect when there is change of power—it means persons in key posts either get transfers or even the sack and some others filling up those posts. Naturally, the new rulers do not have ‘mutuality’ with the present ones and therefore take in the ones who fit their exchange for favors granted or taken. In an office the powerful chief possesses the strongest exchange and can thus indulge continuously in giving and taking favors (favors meaning any kind of profitable assignments). In a bigger office where there are more powerful post-holders parallel exchanges for favors work. When one chief does a project s/he invites all members of his/her exchange to participate and gets reciprocated in ‘taking’ ways. But, when several top bosses work together in a project the picture gets complicated, because the process enables, disables, confronts, restricts and bars ‘mutual’ people to get invited.  An open competition takes place for ‘favors’ to be given and only the most powerfully expert one manages to get his/her quota of mutual friends fully filled up. Someone who sticks to his/her yardstick of merit or ability for extending invitation (not favors, but calling upon to contribute productively) languishes and most often is ignored completely.  

The Article: Relationships of all shades and colors have, apparently, undergone a sea change in today's cut-throat modern times. Mutuality or reciprocity, though the underlying strength in olden times too, has now become conscious calculative logistics. And worse, even that conscious logistics have ceased to be respected.

In simpler terms, if every relationship is justified by a policy of 'give and take'; now it has become for some only to give give and give and for some only to take take and take leaving on its trail sufferers and broken hearts and divorced relationships.

Once upon a time one used to call up one's beloved just for the warmth of it. Now, if you call up your loved ones you are most likely to face the crushing query, 'So tell me, why you have called up?' Now, if you want to surprise your loved ones by visiting them you are likely to be most unpleasantly surprised. You will have to take an appointment well before the date and give your reasons for that too.

In fact, there was a lurking danger in the 'give and take' policy, conscious or unconscious. If it's 'give and take' it sort of harmonizes, but if it's 'take and give' it stinks. This danger, most probably, had opened the gates for exploitation and abuse of relationships. The 'takers' have become dominant and the 'givers' have become the sufferers.

In all marital relationships the husband is the natural 'taker' taking things for granted. The 'giving' wife suffers. The husband makes promises to give while taking and after promises fall flat he renews his promises to take more. Some aggressive wives, of course, can reverse this scenario, but then the misery only shifts to the other party. Relationships hardly get better.

All top functionaries, be it in government or in private firms or in corporations, enjoy immense powers of 'giving' in terms of huge favors, contracts, promotions, transfers, loans or sanctions. The shrewd ones expertly bargain for these powers and get compensated with plain cuts or bribes or more real benefits. The upright ones go on only giving expecting a natural mutuality that never comes. The expert ones in the opposite camp, like the taker husband, make promises to take favors, do not keep them and periodically renew the promises to take more favors. Relationships hardly get more productive.

All the credit card issuers make big promises to squeeze as much out of their customers as possible and when their lies are caught they make much more lofty promises to squeeze some more. Relationships hardly last.

Teenagers indulge in fast gives and takes. The expert ones try to optimize only the takes while the ones in the opposite camp try to minimize the gives. Relationships hardly grow.

The profound question that surfaces is: do the relationships have to be based on a harmonious policy of give and take? Has it then become a conditional access into a defined relationship? And even that conditional access is not at all free of the bug or the hackers? The unconscious 'harmony' of relationships in the olden times is lost forever?

The relationship matrix is getting more complicated, more perplexing and more frustrating day by day. Someone needs to try find out newer keywords for relationships very quickly and urgently.  (Source:)

Epilogue:The mutuality exchange leaves the ones who go by merit or ability fully frustrated, wasted and angry. However, s/he should not lose heart. Sometime somewhere s/he might still come out successful, fulfilled and happy.

General Elections-2014: Mumbai Hits Second Half Century In 25 Years!

After all the fears and speculation Mumbai, the financial capital of India, has recorded a voting percentage of 52.6% on the polling day yesterday for General Elections-2014. Although the figure is much lower than the national average and that of 65% recorded in the political capital of Delhi this reflects a 10% surge over the dismal voting of 41.4% in 2009.  This is the city’s second half century during the last 25 years with its first one coming in 1998 when the percentage was just over fifty. Before 1991 the voting percentage in Mumbai never fell below fifty percent and the city’s highest ever turnout of 68% was recorded in 1967 General Elections. Voter apathy grew largely after 1989 and various reasons like impact of economic liberalization, decline of the working class movement, closure of the cotton mills, constant shifting or elimination of slums, migratory population and even summer vacation during poll period are cited for this. This dismal voting in 2009 could also be explained in terms of the city losing faith in political leaders of all parties following the horrific Mumbai terror attack of 26/11/2008. 

Now speculation is ripe as to why Mumbaikars showed a willingness to vote in large numbers and whom this is going to benefit. One reason that comes to mind immediately is the tremendous public awareness campaigns undertaken by the Election Commission with active support from the media telling and urging Mumbaikars to exercise their democratic right on a daily basis. Then there is the latest voting option of NOTA (None Of The Above) thanks to which you can press that button to reject all candidates if they do not qualify in your view. Sulking and angry voters who sat at home on earlier occasions can now come out to exercise their democratic right and express themselves. 

Sachin Tendulkar Votes

Historically, at least since 1977, whenever Mumbai voted comparatively better there was a change of government. Post-Emergency in 1977 voting turnout in Mumbai was more than sixty percent and this reflected in rejecting Congress and bringing in the Janata Party Government under Prime Minister late Morarji Desai. The Janata Party messed up the public mandate leading to mid-term polls in 1980 and the angry city sulked. Post Indira Gandhi assassination and the tremendous national sympathy wave Mumbai recorded a turnout of more than 56% and brought back the Congress government in 1984-85 General Elections. Following Bofors Scam and growing terrorism Mumbai recorded more than 57% voting and rejected the Congress government in 1989 General Elections. Even in 2004 General Elections voting percentage was only a little higher than normal at 47% and that amounted to throwing the BJP led NDA government out of power. If this anti-incumbency trend is consistent then this time also the higher voting in Mumbai could spell trouble for the ruling combine of Congress-NCP in Maharashtra. Leaders of the ruling combine are quick to rebut the anti-incumbency or wave-for-change theory ascribing the higher percentage to an upsurge of voting by certain Muslim and backward communities. For witnessing the true significance of the Mumbai half century we will have to wait till 16^thMay, 2014 when counting of votes start and results come out.

General Elections-2014: A Saga Of The Three Ps!

Five polling phases of the 9-phase General or Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian Parliament) Elections-2014 have been completed. The sixth phase polling is being conducted on Thursday, the 24^th of April. In this phase Mumbai too goes to poll with its six Lok Sabha seats. In this last phase of polling in Maharashtra there are 13 other seats including in Thane, Raigad, Nashik and Jalna-Aurangabad. When Maharashtra and Mumbai go to poll the malady of voter apathy comes in naturally since voting has been consistently low in these parts over the decades. Talking particularly about Mumbai the normal voting percentage has been around just 42% taking all kinds of poll into account. This General Elections things seem to be improving quite a bit, but about Mumbai fears are still there. Only tomorrow the scenario here would be clear. Anyway, we will come to this first P of our subject that is percentage of voting later.

The other two Ps are the absolute low points of this General Elections. First is personalized. Leaders of all political parties are getting extremely personal in their attacks and counterattacks. No kin of any candidate seems to be safe anymore. If someone is attacked for his rediscovered or existing wife then some other is attacked for the lack of a one. Similarly husbands, mothers, sons and even in-laws of candidates are being brought in to score more over one another as far as ‘antics’ or ‘the lack of it’ of their kin are concerned. The hapless voters are the mute spectators of such abusive missiles and they are at a total loss to understand what sort of political gains are being made out of these. We had already mentioned in these pages earlier that this time mutual attacks have plummeted to never-before lows and mere name-calling is driven out as an unnecessary detail of the past. Now the circus has stopped to be entertaining.

The most sinister P of our narrative is polarization. All political parties, major or ally or bully, are shamelessly indulging in the politics of communalism. One after the other political leaders in almost all parts are making hate speeches and divisive and inflammatory comments aimed mainly at polarizing the two major religious communities of the country. Their agenda or so-called manifestos are no longer national. They promise ‘things’ to be done for a particular community if voted to power. Those who want to come back to power are promising the opposite. ‘Revenge’ is also emerging as the underlying theme of ‘repairing’ things. Bans or restrictions have been imposed by the Election Commission of India and FIRs have been lodged too in some cases. But the leaders know well how ineffective these measures finally prove to be and so are hardly caring for these. Voters must take into account this unprecedented ‘low’ for the largest democracy of the world while exercising their democratic right.

The only highlight represented by one of the three Ps is percentage of voting thanks to the novel initiatives of the Election Commission and awareness campaigns. General Elections-2014 records high to very high voting percentages ranging from 70% to around 86% in various states of India that have voted so far. In Maharashtra the percentage has improved to around 65%, a 20% increase in some areas, so far. However, it is still low compared to other states or regions. More positively, in the Naxal or Maoists-affected regions citizens have voted fearlessly in large numbers.

Normally, high voting turnout is considered as an anti-incumbency wave. That is to say, people want a change in ruling political parties. However, due to the never-before polarization visibly obvious in the country some experts would like to ascribe this high percentage to polarization. This means that maybe due to desperation voters of a particular community want to ensure ‘their’ candidates win. We hope this is not the case. We hope the people of India are voting for an authentic and meaningful change. Amen!