The “Robin-hood” philosophy
June 27th, 2009
It is common knowledge that most governments on this planet work on the “Robin Hood philosophy”: take from the rich and give to the poor. The rich pay more taxes, the “schemes” are all mostly to benefit the poor.
So, what is wrong with this philosophy ? Multiple things:
1) The Robin Hood mentality labels all rich people evil. Robin Hood and his little green men worked on the assumption that rich people in the city had accumulated their wealth by stealing and robbing from the poor. So it made sense to steal back from the rich and complete the cycle; it was divine justice delivered by a bunch of human beings. It is also assumed that in our society, the poor work hard to produce goods which the rich consume but give very little back in return. Hence, the taxes that the rich pay are some form of “compensation” that our government extracts from the rich for the poor.
But things have changed. Today’s rich come in all shapes and sizes. Yes, there are still those rich people who are evil, who rob the poor. But there are also rich who work their butts off to earn their money, who produce goods that our society uses to make its life easier. There are, among today’s rich, people who have added more value to the society than they have taken off it. It is not a simple zero-sum game anymore (It can be argued that it never was; but, unfortunately, we tend to see history in black and white because of our present prejudices. “Shivaji was good, Aurangzeb was bad” is somehow never probed further.)
So, by taxing the rich more than the poor, we are essentially creating a penalty for adding value to society. That this logic escapes the grasp of so many people is a huge credit to the Robin Hood mentality where we strip everything down to black and white, rich and poor.
2) We tend to equate the rich with power over the rest of us. However, we never think that the actual power is only borrowed by the rich; it actually resides, more permanently, with the government. Those in the government are also rich, in the sense that they can lend some of the power they yield for a little money. They have a source of income without having to produce any goods for the society. From there on, it is a vicious cycle: the powerful people in government can make more money, money helps them to win more elections which gives them more power and so on. If the government did not have the power to make decisions for the rest of us (like whether we should smoke or not, where we should invest our earnings, what we should study etc), it would not be able to lend it to others for money. So, money would give you goods but never power; the vicious cycle would be broken.
3) The Robin-Hood philosophy works towards building a equal and classless society. Few of us understand that this is not only a Utopian objective, it is also meaningless. No two human beings are alike in all respects. There is a scene in the Enemy at the Gates where the ever jealous Danilov tells his friend and rival in love Vassily:
“I’ve been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there’d be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there’s always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don’t have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.”
Men will never be equal. Each one of us has a different skill and a different level of skill from the next person.But there are unique gifts that each one of us brings to the community. It is more worthwhile to give someone freedom it is to give them someone else’s money. It is unfortunate that the government does not allow farmers to sell their lands to industrialists and mall-owners even if it means that the farmers starve to death in the face of a drought.
The Robin Hood philosophy is most comfortable in black-and-white but ill-equipped to handle the varied colours that we see in society today.
Still, governments pursue this philosophy. Why ? Because it allows them to steal from the rich and keep it for themselves. Power is their source of income. The rich are able to borrow from the government what we have surrendered to it.
It is time to get those rights back; it is time for a revolution. It is time to revive Robin Hood - a Robin Hood who steals power from the government and gives it back to the people: rich and poor. The only way to ensure equality is by ensuring that everyone has equal rights, equal control over their own lives.
Poverty as an enabler for corruption
June 13th, 2009
Andy Sullivan writes about the concept of ”joblock” in the US which he feels is hurting the chances of recovery through innovation:
Countless workers in the United States are trapped in jobs they would like to leave because they cannot get health insurance elsewhere, calcifying innovation and mobility in the world’s largest economy.
Daunted by health-care costs, a would-be technology entrepreneur in Texas decides not to start her own business. A communications expert in Washington decides not to strike out on his own. And a freelance magazine editor in Brooklyn decides to take a less satisfying corporate job.
“I would rather be freelancing, no question,” said Jessica Tolliver, a former editor who now works in public relations. “I got my work done in less time, because once I finished what I had to do, the time was my own.”
Economists call this phenomenon “job lock,” and studies suggest that it keeps between 20 percent and 50 percent of workers from leaving their current jobs.
Because health insurance is tied to employment in the United States, workers who leave their jobs can see health bills skyrocket if they strike out on their own or take a position with a company that offers fewer benefits. Workers who would like to retire early stay on, unable to qualify for the government’s Medicare program until they turn 65.
What we do not realize that we have a similar form of “Joblock” in most democracies where the government locks citizens into a loyalty via its “welfare schemes”.
For one reason or the other, we were discussing the Arogyasri project in Andhra Pradesh and why it was one of the reasons the Congress came back to power here. For those who have chosen to be unacquainted with this scheme, the AP government sometime back negotiated a deal with insurance providers and medical service providers to provide free health care to families in the so-called Below Poverty Line (BPL). As an insurance premium, the government of AP would pay Rs 200 per annum per family. The budget for this would be an annual Rs 600 crores which would come out of the CM’s Relief Fund which in turn would come from the excise duty charged on liquor and arrack.
I do not have any complaints on this scheme - it is definitely much better than a scheme where the government just subsidizes the medical benefits for “poor people”. Although there are the usual loopholes to allow corrupt officials to help themselves to some cash (special treatments require the CM’s signature — wonder how many “officials” are “providing this service” for a cost outside the CM’s residence !), it is still at a more advanced level than most banal and crude schemes the government could have come up with.
So, where does this “joblock” come in ? This is an annual scheme which means that the decision on whether to continue the scheme would have to be taken every year. Which is akin to the government telling its BPL citizens: “As long as we are here, we will keep the scheme running. If we are gone, you are on your own — your call !” There is a poison pill in the form of the scheme being named after Rajiv Gandhi (which scheme in AP isn’t !). Why would a Chandrababu Naidu govt continue a scheme which has the RG name on it ?
(That is not as preposterous as it sounds. Consider this: the AP Govt decided to change the name of the ATDC hotel chain from Punnami to Haritha simply because Punnami in telugu has reference to the moon or Chandra…Chandrababu Naidu !)
So, the citizens are locked onto loyalty towards a government because of the welfare schemes it offers. True, the same scheme could be offered by a different government through a different name, but how can the poor people be sure ? Why risk losing a bird in hand for two in the bush, when you are not even sure there is a bush around ?
This brings us to the point of this article. The concept of joblock works solely on the need. And the painful fact is that the poorer you are, the more urgent and base your needs. A man starved for a week will not bother to browse through the menu at leisure.
The folks in the BPL category in India have urgent needs. They cannot afford to look at long term issues such as corruption. A society/country/community which has urgent needs can never be individualistic. People with urgent needs do not have the time or the energy to dissect policies to expose their long-term impacts. For people with urgent needs, it is the “now” that matters most. Its always a struggle for the next meal, the next gulp of water, the next dose of that critical medicine that can save their lives - for “now”.
Which is why collectivist political ideologies thrive in societies with urgent needs. Communists and socialists rule most of the poor countries. The US put the Democrats in power when its populace were facing urgent needs. Freedom comes only when the people are free first of their day-to-day needs. That is how the British were able to rule a huge country like India for almost two centuries.
Socialists and communists do not love poverty, their prize is poverty. The more prevalent the poverty, the more people to follow them blindly.
People develop individual thoughts, ideas and perceptions when their dependencies on others around them are not urgent, when these dependecies do not over-ride their individuality. When that individuality dies out or loses out to these needs and dependencies, they tend to stick with each other no matter what. That means that you stick with the community at large even when you know that not everything the community is doing is ethical or even in the best interests of the community. That is how communal riots take such on huge proportions in such a short amount of time. That is why people vote by caste and caste alone. It is like collective suicide because the alternative - surviving on your own - is not an alternative at all.
Poverty is a necessary and sufficient condition for corruption. Without poverty, the populace would have no urgent needs that only the government can fulfill. Such a populace will tend to look more at the long-term than the “now”. Private enterprise does not need poverty. In fact, private enterprises require people to be free of urgent needs so they can buy stuff they “don’t need”.
Why then do we choose to put all the power in our government ?
Why IT is crucial to India
June 1st, 2009
It looks like we are at the fag end of this recession now. Let us not kid ourselves, however. We have a long way to go before things are gung-ho again. But there are a couple of things Indians need to understand.
This recession hasn’t been anywhere close to as bad for India as it was for the US and other developed countries. And contrary to what some morons might say, the IT and ITES industries are to thank for this.
When we moved to Hyderabad, there were a bunch of old residents who frowned at us. We realized that the entire IT fraternity in Hyderabad is forever being forwned at by this older part of the citizenry here. Why ?
These people reason that the IT fraternity have caused the prices of everything to go up. These “young devils” make money not proportional to what others make. The devils have the buying power to gobble up everything in sight: real estate, cars, multiplex and mall fares..everything that the existing citizenry craved for longingly while checking their pockets.
I am sure this is a reaction that the IT folks get in most cities that they live in. The old Indian middle class - that of the “family of four in a Maruti 800″ is incensed at and threatened by this new Indian middle class. The IT folks in India get much the same respect that the nouveau rich in the 1930s America used to get. They are rich, but the “old family rich” class doesn’t accept them. They are middle class in their ambitions, but the existing middle class cannot accept them. The middle class blames them for the inflated prices of everything. The “old family rich” blame them for everything else.
But it is this IT industry that saved India from the horrors that have visited the US. What is America’s equivalent of India’s IT industry ? None.
The Indian IT industry is mature enough to absorb the shock of the recession while being young and dynamic enough to report strong growth rates in better times. What other industry in which other country can boast of this youth and maturity ?
True, the IT industry did see lay-offs. However, to compare the number of jobs lost here to the number of jobs lost in the US during the same period is an exercise in futility. Also, the money earned by this class has ensured that there was enough to flow and keep the economy moving. IT had, in good times, given the economy a momentum that kept it going even when the fuel ran out.
Other more “settled” economies couldnt get that momentum.
Even with all this, there is a perception around this country that IT is a dirty word. Like the heavy dust that hangs over all of pre-monsoon India, there is this attitude that somehow, money earned by the “young devils” is not as well deserved as it is by the other middle class - that of the ”family of four in a Maruti 800″. In short, it is “easy money”. This is the money that fills the pubs and “spoils our youth”. This is the money that is feeding the “decadent culture of today that has lost all roots with tradition”.
Coming from a lazy-body like me this may seem outstanding, but I have no preference for IT myself. If there was any other industry that paid as well and was as easy to get into, I would have taken that route. As would have - and will - most of the “young devils”.
But the socialist country that we are, we are more interested in semantics, language and words. It would be too much to actually do something. It would be far easier - and far more aligned with our cultural mores - to just talk about things and paint them with adjectives such as “dirty” and “immoral”.
Maybe its time to change all that. Maybe this is the biggest lesson this, or any other, recession could ever teach us.
Chennai “Super” Kings
April 21st, 2009
Watching part of last night’s match between Bangalore and Chennai, I realized that Chennai have the dream team for Tests and ODIs.
They have the ideal team with a fantastic opener who has been succesful in all forms, two wicketkeeper-batsmen (obviously one miles better than the other, but still), two fantastic allrounders (including one who is currently the best in the world - Flintoff), a fantastic spinner and two very good specialist seamers (Balaji and Gony). On top of all that, they have Dhoni as their captain. Maybe this is because I am an Indian, but I get the feeling that Dhoni is the best captain in international cricket, in all forms of the game.
What more can you ask for ? Oh, yes - Hussey. Once they get Hussey, they will probably have the best middle order in the game. Wouldn’t that be a dream team !
My excuses for not voting…
April 16th, 2009
Every time there are elections, I roam around hanging my head in preparation for accusations of being a lazy middle class non-voter.
It is true: I have never voted, and may never do so for the rest of my life.
Yet, this has as much to do with my laziness and irresponsibility as with lack of choice. Lack of choice is probably one of the biggest reasons most of the educated middle class refuses to acknowledge their “privilege” to self determination.
Most of the India’s politics is about people: the Gandhi family, the Advanis, the Yadavs and now even the Chiranjeevis. It has rarely ever been about policies and ideologies.
Take the manifestos of any two political parties and remove the party names from them. Then see if you can differentiate these manifestos. Apart from some spectacularly ridiculous exceptions, they all make the same promises, more or less (more less than more): Roti, kapda aur makaan. All the manifestos are variations on this theme. The only thing a party will tell you is that the party previously in power did not deliver on its promises, we will. There are no declarations about the policies, the directives, the ideologies.
Apparently, there is only one approach to the problems of our country (and God knows we have many problems in this country). Every party, every candidate, every co-alition parrots the same promises: we will bring water to the villages, roads to the cities, electricity to the masses and “social justice to the downtrodden”. The approach to achieving all this ? promise to throw money at the problem, set up reservations for umpteem sections of the society and then throw some more money. When was the last time you heard about an innovative solution to these problems discussed at an election rally ?
For instance, when the latest reservations bill (I have lost track of how much percentage is actually open to the “general quota” in any field) was table, all parties voted for it. That is some ideological difference, don’t you think !
You wondering why ? The answer is: how can our politicians be different from each other when all they want to be is corrupt ! How can one haena be different from the other ? Power corrupts…and it will corrupt everyone. That is precisely why the effective civil servant, the honest politician is such a rare occurence.
How do we fix this lack of choice ? I do not know. We would probably be better off voting for policies rather than for people. Our politicians know that they do not need innovative solutions. Once elected, they have so much power that they can just bulldoze whatever their agenda is with very little resistance from anywhere. Our politicians have access to so much money when in power that they will never ever understand the scarcity of it. The mind boggles at the hundreds and thousands of crores being mentioned in government figures when even most of the so called “middle-class” lives its “luxurious and irreverent” life style in maybe 10-15 lakhs per year. Maybe, just mabye it is time to consider taking away that access to ready cash.
Millions of people in this country work their asses off every day to earn money. The government robs a considerable portion of that in the name of taxes. This amount collected must run into thousands of crores every year. I will bet you that most of this amount is spent on maintaining the “humble” lifestyles of our politicians, their bungalows, their unlimited telephone calls, their unlimited staff, their cars, their security and so forth. (Approximately Rs 100 crores is spent on maintenance of our Rashtrpathi Bhavan alone ! And this is for a post that has no relevance at all. I mean, why do we even need a president !)
Why do we go through this drama of voting every five years (which in itself is giddyingly expensive: the 2004 general elections are estimated to have cost Rs 1000 crores. I have given up counting the number of zeroes in that !) so our politicians can play musical chairs ? And what an expensive musical chairs too !
You show me choice, I will vote. I am being taken for a ride anyway, I refuse to indulge anymore in this than I absolutely have to.
Off with computerizatin, folks….the socialists are here !
April 13th, 2009
I wonder if Mulayam said this with a straight face or if he practiced this in front of the mirror to control his own giggling when the words came out:
“Let us put an end to any further computerisation in this country.”
Addressing a press conference in Lucknow, he said, “India is a country with millions of unemployed hands and if we go on computerising everything, we will soon have a bigger army of unemployed youth.”
Not only are these the most corrupt bunch of bastards this country has seen (please excuse the language, I am unable to find a better adjective for our “leaders”), they also have no clue about how to run a country. What I really fear though is that it is not that they do not have a clue. It probably is that they know and are smart enough to use such tactics to exploit us illiterate voters. Moreover, we voters are stupid enough to keep these morons in power.
The Alter Ego
April 13th, 2009
I thought about it a bit: before I launch the new blog, maybe I should write about it a little, maybe I should wait till I have more content there, maybe I should schedule an unveiling ceremony and invite Amar Singh as my chief guest.
But then I decided that this would be the best way to do it. A simple introductory post on this blog.
So, here we go: I am starting a new blog : Hardly Working Only
Here is the reason I am writing this blog.
Lets see how it goes.
Notes on “The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work”
April 8th, 2009
I once picked up a Ken Blanchard book at my office library (It probably was the One Minute Manager or something like that). After reading five pages of that, I felt a weird churning in my stomach. The positivity and the out-of-this-world characters in that book just got to me.
I had deja vu today when I flipped through this book : The No Complaining Rule.
Just to show my defiance, I will break this rule and complain about the book here ! To be fair, the book does provide some very good clues on how to get out of the complaining and self-pity rut that we all sometimes get into. The only problem is that the author doesn’t know when to stop. Or maybe he does, but didn’t want to stop !
The most obvious sign that a self-help book is trying too hard is when it has a story-line and its characters are not anything like you have met in your life. Actually, this is one thing that I have learned from this book that will stand me in good stead throughout my life: stay away from self-help books, especially those that have a story line.
Don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against self-help books. I love 7 Habbits immensely. I find Dale Carnegie very cute and very accessible. That probably has something to do with the fact that these books quote actual people who have been through difficult situations. Hence, there is a lesser tendency to roll your eyes as you read the advice (With Dale Carnegie, I especially loved the “43 words that changed my life” and “4 lines that changed me forever” phrases that are spread across the book. They invoke in me feelings ranging from rolling of the eyes to slight annoyance - I mean, your life has been changed by something that you read somewhere, and all you can think of is count how many words there are !). It felt slightly childish, but it was good clean fun.
I , of course, never learnt much from these self-help books. All I helped myself to was some good fun.
The No Complaining Rule, though, was no fun. Nor was Ken Blanchard. In fact, Ken has an open invite from Sanjay Leela Bhansali to write the script of his next “bollywood opus” …whatever that means !
Combating corruption through privatization
April 8th, 2009
During conversations with friends over the corruption in our country, many have noted that the public enterprise in India would be just as good if we didn’t have so much corruption, if we didn’t have so many illiterate voters, if we didn’t have so many self-absorbed politicians and so on. Examples are sighted as to how the public sector works things out so well in some of the developed countries.
Some of the common examples sighted are education, health care, power generation, financial regulation, public infrastructure etc. People have suggested that only if we had better leaders, public enterprise would serve us just fine. We wouldn’t need to opt for privatization.
In short, the implication is that the solution to our problems is not privatization. Rather it is an improvement of our political landscape, electing more self-less leaders, educating the masses about voting etc. I am told that these problems are only the symptoms and the actual root cause is the way we chose our leaders. If we can fix the root cause, all the symptoms would vanish on their own.
My argument against that is simple: all the above tasks are not only close to impossible, they are also a round-about approach to solving the bigger problems at hand. To rephrase, the energy we are going to spend, generation after generation, in fixing this “root-cause” is enormous. Most of the generations that will spend the majority of their lives self-lessly on this cause will never live to see its benefits. They will have to persevere only in the expectation that atleast 3-4 generations down the line, their progeny will reap the rewards.
So, where is the motivation for the majority in addressing this “root-cause” ? Should we blame the majority at all, if they have no interest in fighting this root-cause ? Would’t we be tempted every minute to just get on with our lives ? Aren’t there more important and more self-serving things on the table that can take our time ?
I believe we need to change our perception about which is the root-cause and which are the symptoms. Not just because the symptoms are easier to fix, but also because there is no evidence that re-inforces our existing perception of the root-causes and symptoms.
To cut short this sermon, I will tackle two examples: education and power generation. I will tackle education here and approach power generation in my next post.
Education is currently “majority-owned” by the public sector. That means, if education were a company, the majority stake-holder would be our government. Not only does the government own and run the majority of schools (to keep it simple, I am mostly focussing on primary education here. Neverthless, this would apply just as well to other levels of education), it also decides who can start a school, whcih areas should get schools, how many students these schools can take, what syllabus they should teach and so forth.
(One word on the syllabus part before we move on. It is true that schools can teach their kids whatever they want to…atleast theoritically. However, to be “accredited” by the government - and this is a huge thing for most schools - they have to teach a pre-defined syllabus. Added to that, we have a nation full of cry-babies who feel hurt and insulted by every minor thing. For example, there are people who are hurt by the fact that schools have their students sing Vande Mataram, hurt by the fact that schools teach vedic hymns. Some are even hurt by the fact that schools do not teach their students vedic hymns ! No wonder, schools are not entirely free to choose their own syllabus)
There are several excuses for the government to have this kind of ownership. I call them excuses because the government has hardly done enough to deserve such an exalted position in what is such an important area of our lives - the education of our kids. One of the arguments against privatization is that poor children wouldn’t get proper education because private schools would be too damn expensive. You know, Coca Cola is available at most stores in the country including those miniscule ones tucked away in tiny villages. In fact, Coca Cola (or Pepsi…why should I discriminate amongst beverage companies !) came up with a miniature Rs 5 bottle to serve this “smaller” market. A lot of other companies have come up with similar adaptations for the rural markets. Banks have come up with micro-finance models for the rural market; Arvind Mills devised a ready-to-stitch concept on its jeans especially to capture the rural market (source: The Road Less Traversed) Schools cannot and will not be an exception. In fact, sample this from IndiaUncut’s special on education vouchers:
A 2005 study by education specialists James Tooley and Pauline Dixon showed that 65% of schoolchildren in Hyderabad’s slums attend private unaided schools—for which their parents had to pay—rather than a free government alternative. In a similar finding, an October 2006 survey by CCS showed that 14% of households in Delhi earning less than 5,000 rupees ($113) per month opted to send their children to a private school.
It is a common canard that the cost of education is higher in private schools than in public schools. Numerous studies have shown that private schools use capital as much as twice as efficiently as their public sector peers. Why? When competition is absent, waste ensues. Voucher schemes, put simply, allow public money to be put to better use.
I could go on till the cows come home (aaah ! cliche used, item checked off !), but the point is made.
Government brings neither efficiency nor quality to primary education in our country. Hence, my point that it does not deserve its majority stakeholder status in this area.
I have and always will argue that the best way to take out corruption from any area would be take out the chances of that corruption surfacing. That means, in simple English, take out the government’s - and this means the people who run our government - power to make decisions in this area. But most important, take out the stranglehold that a small group of people have on something so important as the future of our kids. We have already seen that private enterprises are easily capable of providing quality and efficiency at a much greater level than the public enterprise. Why, then, do we need the government here anymore ?
The other problem area is the regulations that the government brings. When we know that the government does not know (or even if it knows, it will not use that knowledge) how to provide proper education for our kids, maybe it is not the best enterprise to decide what our kids should be learning and how. Maybe parents should have more say in that. And for parents to have more say is to have a more responsive group running the policies. We already know that our government is anything but responsive. Moreover, there is no incentive for the government to be responsive (or responsible for that matter). Hence the need for application forms in triplicate for everything. How many times have you waited in the sun to collect your kid’s Transfer Certificate from a public school ? if you haven’t gone through that exercise, I suggest you do or observe someone who is about to. It is quite a learning experience.
I hope I have been able to convince you that private enterprise is not only needed in public education, it is infact our only chance for salvation. Instead of spending our well-meant energies trying to fix the education ministry and its vassals, maybe we should start promoting public schools. We should demand that our government reduce taxes and regulations on private schools and sell off its assets in this area.
Don’t try to convince or charm the poisonous cobra from biting you. De-fang it.
As promised, I will address the power generation in a future post.
The declaration debate…redux
April 8th, 2009
I was reading a piece on the Cricinfo blog by Samir Chopra about “something rotten in fair city Wellington on Tuesday” when the 3rd Test between NZ and India ended in a draw due to rain. Samir takes Dhoni to task for delaying the declaration.
Very well argued point by Samir. I have my opinion but nothing against the way the argument was framed…very compelling I may say. Then I read a few comments that agreed with the article and were on the lines of “yes Dhoni should have declared at the end of the 3rd day when India were 531 runs ahead…if NZ did go on and score those runs, they deserved to win..that’s all”.
Yikes ! Since when did Indian cricket fans start accepting Indian defeats with the sentiment that the opposition “deserved to win” ? When was the last time an Indian defeat was greeted with a shrugged shoulder and congratulations for the winners ? Let me see…..err…..not since I was born, that’s right !
The truth of the matter is: if Dhoni had declared with the lead at 531 and NZ had actually gone on (Jesse Ryder 250, Ross Taylor 150, McCullum 150…sound probable ? the wicket was still good…) and polished off those runs, Dhoni would have had to spend some serious money on re-painting/re-building his home in Ranchi. Our MPs would have demanded that the government conduct a CBI investigation into this, our fans from West Bengal would have burnt Dhoni’s effigy and not-so-subtly sent out the message that Dada be recalled as the Indian captain.
Maybe I am exaggerating…but not by much, I am sure. I have seen it all before, and I am sure Dhoni and his team-mates have too. Perhaps with the series already in the bag 2-0 going into the last test, Dhoni would have declared. But never with the series win on the line. Call it defensive, cowardice or plain lack of balls, I am sure Dhoni knows better than to be heroic.
It is OK for us to have an opinion about when Dhoni should have declared, or any other tactical decision that he makes. But to call the guy (or any other Indian captain) a coward is to take our countrymen and their “protests” a little too lightly !
So, please. Get a life, will ya !
