A Pat For Good Old Amby

The yesteryear's iconic car got an unexpected encomium from an exalted automobile forum - BBC's Top Gear. A honour which, probably, the car did not receive even during its hey days. The car has been voted as the world's best taxi. Describing the car as 'virtually indestructible' the statement says "It's (Ambassador) so tough that, although it now lives in World of Top Gear, with a quick wash and brush up, it could be back in service tomorrow - probably".

The reaction in India, the home to Ambassador car, was more of surprise and amusment, rather than any sense of pride or achievement. The car has been reduced to dinosaur status on Indian roads and this news is unlikely to create any extra buzz at its Uttarapara plant (which also happens to be India's oldest car plant) in West Bengal.

These cars, with hoods resembling bowler hats, once lorded over the Indian roads. Its high ground clearance was seen as a perfect antidote to the vagaries of Indian roads. And thanks to the Government's licence permit raj, the car had a competition free journey until the 1990s.

The car's manufacturers, Hindustan Motors (HM), milked the captive market by doling out antiquated offering with nothing much to write home about on the fuel economy and maintenance front. They were shortchanging customers by offering new 'models' (Mark 3, Mark 4 etc), which at best only meant a redesigned front grille.

The liberalisation of 1990s came as a hard knock and the management could do precious little to stop its rapid slide in market share. Customers rejected it as an expensive, unwieldy and old fashioned jalopy and it soon ceased to be among the top preference for family cars.  It did bring in features such as power steering and power windows, but it was too little too late.

The next to go was the taxi segment with Tata Indicas, Indigo and later Mahindra Logan doing the honours of replacing them.

Soon it got relegated to its last stand - the Government of India. With 'laal batti' on its hood it was a constant in most motorcades of our political netas. But of late even the political class seems to be going for more hi-tech offerings such as Toyota Corollas, Innovas and fancy SUVs and Ambassadors have been reduced to pilot vehicles.

Last heard that the C K Birla owned company has not totally given up and will be launching a BS4 version of Ambassador and that too under a new name.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Egypt Needs a Mandela

As the South African patriarch doggedly fights even after being on ventilator, the rainbow nation he built up from the embers of apartheid stands in refreshing contrast to countries struggling to find their feet after casting away totalitarian regimes and rulers.
 
His greatest legacy was that he managed to avert any revenge attacks from the black South Africans against the ruling whites. Thus Madiba, as he is affectionately known, was a unifying and reassuring presence even to his subdued opponents and other minorities in the country.

This is despite spending a good part of his life in various prisons and suffering vilest campaign from the then apartheid regime and also from Western world. Leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan saw him more of a terrorist or Communist agent than someone fighting for the empowerment of the blacks.

Yet after coming to power, one of his first gesture was to host the rugby world cup in 1995. In South Africa rugby was a sport played only by whites. Mandela exhorted the blacks and others to support the The Springboks (as the South African rugby team is known) in the spirit of nationalism. The Springboks went on to win the trophy and it was immortalised on celluloid by Clint Eastwood in his movie titled Invictus.

One of his quotes currently doing rounds on Facebook says it all: “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”

Not many countries are that fortunate. The neighbouring Zimbabwe imploded after the apartheid regime ended. A Mandela like leadership is acutely lacking in the pro-democracy movement in Egypt. Though as a caveat it must be noted that South Africa's economy was in a much better shape than Egypt. And Egypt is living in a much more difficult neighbourhood than South Africa, surrounded by countries strongly tethered to dictatorship and religious fanaticism.

Egypt's pro-democracy activists managed to oust Hosni Mubarak the dictator but could not nurture enough numbers at the subsequent hustings and got upstaged by a better organised Muslim brotherhood. Hence Egypt got saddled with a polarising regime which inspired little confidence among minorities and women.

The current overthrow of Morsi, with the army playing midwife, seems to be hurtling Egypt more towards a civil war than a democratic transition. The atmosphere is all the more vitiated by the meddling of oil-rich Gulf states, steeped in Shia-Sunni power struggle, acting as messiahs to bail out Egypt's beleaguered economy. They have a proverbial axe to grind in keeping democracy at bay and preserving patriarchal values.

Thus for women and minorities (especially Coptic Christians) in Egypt there is little they can look forward to. For some men the recent Tahrir square protests were a happy hunting ground to indulge in mob sexual attacks.

According to a report their modus operandi worked something like this: Lines of men would push their way through the packed square, surround women in a circle, and start ripping their clothes and sexually assault them. Often described as 'circle of hell' the women had formed squads to fight the mobsters and save those affected by it. Even otherwise sexual harassment is something grossly under reported in Egypt.

As for Coptic Christians they were at best a marginalised community during the Mubarak regime being denied government jobs and other benefits, but to his credit he  ensured that they were insulated from rabid Islamists. This cocoon broke under Morsi regime and Christians began facing attacks from Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists. Even after Morsi's fall his supporters continued attacking Christians and their property, as in these uncertain times their safety is not much of a priority for the state.

And unfortunately amidst all this turmoil and chaos there seems little possibility of the emergence of a Mandela-like unifying figure in Egypt.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Andy Murray And The Identity Battles

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. This axiom, immortalised by late John F Kennedy in one of his speeches, came into play after Andy Murray's historic win at Wimbledon. For the Brits, a long-drawn drought of their own countryman winning or coming anywhere close to the trophy, finally got over. The last guy to win the tournament was Fred Perry (1936).

But his success also brought to fore the latent sub-national identity and gender politics in the British society. During one of his interviews Murray himself had joked that he is a British when he’s winning, but Scottish when he’s losing. Many newspaper headline writers unwittingly stoked the embers of identity politics by mentioning it as 'England's' historic success. It turned out to be a proverbial red rag to Scottish nationalists, who took umbrage at this 'insensitive' reporting.

Murray's success also had its play in the arena of gender politics. The Guardian reminded us that another Brit had won Wimbledon in 1977 and that person happened to be a woman - Virginia Wade. In fact the newspaper points out that in women's tennis the country had been far more successful. Barely a year after Fred Perry won the championship Dorothy Round Little won the women's singles – for the second time in her career. In fact they had tasted success three times after Dorothy's feat, with Wade being the last one.

Describing it as a 'dark day for sports journalism' it quotes a tweet by Chloe Angyal, a feminist writer, "Murray is indeed the first Brit to win Wimbledon in 77 years unless you think women are people". For affable Murray all this may be something he may not have bargained for.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat 

Games Politicians Play

Now that much water, silt and corpses have flowed down the Ganges since June 17 it's now time for our netas to let their hair down and get immersed in political muck. The main motivating factor seems to be the forthcoming 2014 general elections.

The latest I heard was the Twitter war between Congress and BJP over the handling of 'Himalayan Tsunami' - it makes even the verbal duels in Saas Bahu serials look quite dignified. The Twitter savvy among both parties were busy trading hashtag jousts.

The ball was set rolling by 'Rambo' Modi and his clever PR plants, which some of our mediamen lapped up with a willing suspension of journalistic scrutiny. This set social networking sites ablaze. The keyboards of 'internet Hindus' had little respite as they got busy waxing eloquent about the Gujarat strongman's big feat of rescuing 13,000 Gujaratis.

This bubble of hot air kept circulating for a couple of days, but later came crashing down when some started asking basic common sense questions, which the erring journalists should have asked in the first place. Initially Modi and his partymen too kept silent and basked in the glory, but when things turned sour they denied making such a claim. Thus Modi acquired an additional sobriquet - Feku.

This is not to say that the country's grand old party (with its long history of sycophancy and hero worship) was a picture of poise and sobriety. With much fanfare trucks carrying relief materials were flagged off from Delhi by party bigwigs, only to run out of fuel and get stranded at Rishikesh and Dehradun. The drivers were not provided enough money (they were handed over a mere Rs 2,000 per head) to buy fuel.

The latest I hear is that some of the relief packets provided to flood victims have photos of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on them! Thus political parties are seeing everything through the prism of 2014 elections.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat