Unless its fake news of grand proportions that even Trump would have a problem with, India is now being lit by more fires from funeral pyres than street lights if seen from the distant sky. However while people are gasping for oxygen, dying from a rabid Covid, the leader of the country appears calm but apparently angry about losing Bengal elections and obsessed with bestowing central Delhi with his heritage new buildings that would be a testament to his legacy. The line, ‘While Rome Burns’, never seems to be more apt. Nero was allegedly thinking of new palaces as people burnt and buildings razed to the ground.

There has been criticism from every corner on the handling of the second wave of the corona. From the politically motivated Bengal and the Hindu nationalist Shiv Senna to the objective and most serious medical journal in the world, the Lancet, there are expressions of disbelief. It remains to be seen whether the Indian medical fraternity will now be deprived of the Lancet for criticising the Emperor without his 4.3 crores or $600000 suit.

Udhav Thackeray has targetted the bullet where it probably hurts most. Udhav cannot be called an anti-nationalist by any stretch of the imagination. Nor can he be called a minority-loving liberal. Shiv Senna is as Hindu nationalist as one can get. Thackeray has effectively said that Modi has achieved nothing in his tenure. He said that systems created over 70 years by previous prime ministers such as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh helped India survive through the tough times being faced today while the present government was not even ready to suspend work on the Central Vista amid a devastating pandemic. 

This criticism has come from many quarters including the famous NRI artist sculptor  Anish Kapoor in the UK. It does seem very surrealistic and possibly inconsiderate for the building of the project to develop a new Parliament building and a new residence for the Prime Minister to continue while the only news about India around the world is its fast failing medical system and its abysmal preparations for the second wave of Covid. Its poorer countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan are coming to its aid. The world is appalled that the PM is not sitting in Delhi, holding hourly meetings and reassuring his countrymen what steps he is taking to see them through this difficult time. Leadership appears AWOL.

Instead, the news from Government is about a trade deal with the UK and an ongoing trade deal with the EU. Workers who need to be furloughed during the lockdown are instead being bussed into the Central Vista, the genius of Lutyens in central Delhi, to continue building the planned new project to dwarf Luteyen. There is enough money for this project. This is money that could have been used to vaccinate the country.

Yet, we are in strange times. The great hope of a modern rational democratic world demanding accountability from politicians for failed promises and for better opportunities in life seems to be one for the children’s books. From the west to the east, the enlightenment has failed, particularly in democracies. People seem to prefer pain, failure, and poverty while seeking ever more comfort in medieval-type pseudo-religious grand ideas such as Brexit and Hindutva.

Brexit is a delusion built on lost grandeur but herding the English towards isolation and easy prey to predatory trade deals by countries such as the USA and India. The average Brit will be joining the gig economy in greater numbers. Hindutva is delivering Ram  Mandir, Central Vista, and Shanshan ghats (crematoriums) on the streets of major cities while promised jobs, money in the bank, or a house for everyone seem to treat as otherworldly. Democracy thrives on psychedelic dreams now.

America is no different. Despite the Biden win, which was a narrow one given the carnage Trump visited on his countrymen, millions and millions of Americans still voted for him, for a baseless slogan Make America Great Again. It needs a Houdini-type political stunt to tell the people of the richest and most powerful country that they have fallen way behind and need to be on top again!

Modi knows that like moths to light, the average person in twenty-first-century democracy is driven more towards esoteric issues than the education and wellbeing of his/her children. So Modi is calmly focused on what will make the populace fold their hands in awe after the many have died around them and remain only in distant memory. The voter will marvel at Central Vista as the triumph of Indian Hindutva over Lutyen. Perhaps this is real post-modernism. Vote for Imagery over food.

MAMTA’S POWERFUL FOOT

It used to be that shakti flowed from the palm of the hand. Traditionally a god, or in Marvel Comics a superhero, holds out the hand, palm facing the enemy and great force emanated from it to throw the enemy many miles into the sky. Mamata has defied the laws of miracles. The Tigress of Bengal has used the sole of her foot from her wheelchair and blown Modi and BJP back into the central vista of Delhi.

Clearly, this state of renowned intellectuals, noble prize winners, and leading thinkers, has not taken to the seduction of Hindu Rashtra. The BJP tried to deploy the whole force of Bahuda (Vedic pluralism) and tolerant Hinduism to turn Bengalis against fellow Muslim Bengalis from the Hindutva version of reconstructed revisionist shastras. Unfortunately, the Bengali is not an Uttar Pradesh or even a Bihari. This land of Tagores, Amartya Sen, and Satyajit Ray has remained true to the original version of a pluralist Vedic and Sanatan Dharma and decided that the tradition of tolerance is more important than the idea of Muslim Mukt Bharat.

So Mamata was able to convince her fellow Bengalis while being wheelchaired around and her foot facing large banners of Modi, that Bengal must remain a land for all, a state for Bengalis of all background, and a state whose people still believe in the famous Vedic statement, ‘Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti’ in earnest rather than a PR slogan at international forums by Hindutva.

An office romance with the founder of Microsoft evolved into 27 years of marriage, three children, a 20-year foundation, and 124billion US Dollars. On the 3rd of May 2021, the pair announced their decision to get a divorce over Twitter.

“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,”

“We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life,” they said.

How Bill and Melinda met

Bill, 65, and Melinda Gates, 56, met at Microsoft — which Bill Gates founded and was, at the time, running as CEO. She started as a product manager as the only woman in the first class of MBA graduates to join the company and eventually rose through the ranks to become general manager of information products.

They met shortly after she joined the company in 1987, at a business dinner in New York. She described the encounter in her book, “The Moment of Lift:” “I showed up late, and all the tables were filled except one, which still had two empty chairs side by side. I sat in one of them. A few minutes later, Bill arrived and sat in the other.”

The couple married in Hawaii in 1994.

The Gates Foundation

The couple founded their philanthropic organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together in 2000. Since then, the foundation has spent $53.8 billion on a wide range of initiatives related to global health, poverty alleviation, and more, according to its website.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ranks as the largest private philanthropic foundation in the United States and one of the world’s biggest, with net assets of $43.3 billion at the end of 2019, according to the latest full-year financials shown on its website.

From 1994 through 2018, the couple gifted more than $36 billion to the Seattle-based foundation, the website said.

Last year, investor Warren Buffett reported donating more than $2 billion of stock from his Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) to the Gates Foundation as part of previously announced plans to give away his entire fortune before his death. Despite their split, there will be ‘no change to their roles’.

The Divorce

In a joint petition for dissolution of marriage, the couple asserted their legal union was “irretrievably broken,” but said they had reached an agreement on how to divide their marital assets. No details of that accord were disclosed in the filing in King County Superior Court in Seattle.

Bill Gates is ranked No. 4 on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest individuals, with an estimated $124 billion fortune.

In a separate statement, the Gates Foundation said the couple would remain as co-chairs and trustees of the organization.

“They will continue to work together to shape and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation’s issues, and set the organization’s overall direction,” the foundation’s statement said.

The split comes two years after another leading Seattle-based billionaire and philanthropist, Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos, said that he and his then-wife, MacKenzie, were getting divorced.

At least one critic of billionaire benefactors cited the Gates’ split as a cautionary tale in the wisdom of concentrating so much sway over global humanitarian issues under the control of super-wealthy individuals.

“The Gates divorce will do more than upend a family’s life. It will ramify into the worlds of business, education, public health, civil society, philanthropy, and beyond,” Anand Giridharadas, author of the book “Winners Take All” told Reuters.

“That is because our society has made the colossal error of allowing wealth to purchase the chance to make quasi-governmental decisions as a private citizen,” he said.

About Bill Gates

Gates dropped out of Harvard University to start Microsoft with school chum Paul Allen in 1975. Gates owned 49% of Microsoft at its initial public offering in 1986, which made him an instant multimillionaire. With Microsoft’s explosive growth, he soon became one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.

After an executive tenure in which he helped transform the company into one of the world’s leading technology firms, Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in 2000 to focus on philanthropy. He remained chairman until 2014 and left the company’s board in March 2020.

Known in the technology industry as an acerbic and ruthless competitor, Gates drew the ire of rivals and eventually the U.S. government for Microsoft’s business practices.

The software giant was convicted of antitrust violations in the late 1990s. But the verdict was overturned on appeal, and the company then settled the case out of court.

Gates’ public persona softened into an avuncular elder statesman as he turned his attention to philanthropy, and he has largely steered clear of the many controversies currently roiling the technology business.

India is a country of paradoxes. It has an inept political class but a world-class bureaucracy. No challenge is too big for the bureaucracy. From time to time, it has shown that it can cope and manage the biggest disasters with ease. Its only handicap is its masters, who have to make decisions and let it take control in situations such as the current Covid crises.

If anything showcases the incredible machine that is the Indian bureaucracy, it is its handling of events like the Khumb Mela, the biggest festival in the world by far that makes events like Glastonbury (UK), the Olympics, and even the Huj at Mecca mini-festivals by comparison. It might seem absurd to be giving the example of the Khumb when it is being blamed for much of the current Covid spread, but during normal times, the Khumb can attract up to 50 million people in the month-long celebration. That is the equivalent of managing a country plus.

The Khumb management is a nightmare always in waiting. From the sanitation planning, the sleeping arrangements, the security, the food supply, and delivery, the water supply, the provision for essentials, the demands of the VIPs for special attention and not to forget that this is the most fertile place for terrorism, pickpockets, thieves, and drugs. Yet the bureaucracy manages it with an ease that marvels. The planning starts years ahead.

Or take disasters, such as the earthquake in Gujrat or floods in Bengal, or the absorption of millions of refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Any western country would be stretched to limits of breakdown. Not the Indian bureaucracy. It meets the challenge with its co-partners, the Indian Army, and the Indian police.

The question is what happened with Covid. Has the Bureaucracy failed? Has it been brought to its knees? Has it been exposed as a mythical juggernaut of civil servants, beaten by a microscopic entity, the coronavirus?

In fact, the Bureaucracy and the medical scientist’s teams had been warning of this doomsday scenario long before the second wave of Covid descended. They had been asking for preparations as they do for other events. They had been asking for stocking for a second wave. They had been asking for vaccination programs to be escalated. But ultimately, the Indian bureaucracy’s Achilles heel is its political masters.

The BJP Government was too busy compromising the free press. It was too busy with elections and making Hindutva a political winner. It was too busy fighting its own citizens, the farmers. It was too preoccupied with spreading its ‘political goodwill’ worldwide to compete with China by promising vaccines to other countries rather than making them available to its billion people. And it ignored the cautionary warnings of its own experts of the hurricane that could come with a second wave Covid.

The Government was preoccupied with religious nationalism and letting Khumb go ahead despite warnings. It was concentrating on the gamble that a religious festival of this size would create imagery around India of the powerful narrative of Hindutva and belonging to ancient roots. It would help to bring a wave of nationalist sentiments in Bengal where the focus of the top political leadership was. But viruses are not politically motivated nor influenced. They see an opportunity and go for it.

The Indian Bureaucracy is incapacitated or activated by the political class. It acts in all its glory or fails ingloriously depending on clear instructions from the political leaders. The army too awaits instructions from the top. That is the hallmark of Indian democracy.

This is both a strength and weakness of the Indian system. It insures against recurrent coups that plague many other decolonised countries. But it makes the ability of the bureaucracy to act dependent on the prerogatives of the political masters.

This Covid crisis can be controlled if the bureaucracy is now given a free hand. It can muster help around the world, bring in safety equipment, bring in the personnel, ramp up production of necessary medical equipment, set up new crematoriums, build make shift hospitals, and bring in the doctors. And during all this, it can ensure that security is maintained, lockdowns are followed and people are fed.

With its partner the Indian Army, the Bureaucracy can handle the Covid crises that have now made India reach the top slot in mismanagement, deaths, and people infected. What’s more, given its history, it can handle this within days. It needs the Government to start governing for the crises rather than be obsessed by divisive matters such as how many crematoriums have been built for Muslims and Hindus. The Government needs to stop playing politics with the Virus. The Virus has no religious or religious preferences. It has no understanding of history or political expediency. Its only enemy now is the Indian bureaucracy. Unleash it on the virus.

As we are well and truly into the second year of living life with COVID-19 we will take a look over the past year and how the entertainment industry has adapted, from covid-friendly concerts, computer-generated ceremonies, and online Oscars.

Online concerts

Just this month we started to see aspects of normality in parts of the globe. Putting their faith in the covid tests, Barcelona, Spain held an in-person concert. Around 5,000 music fans took part in the experiment after testing negative for Covid-19.

Spain joined New Zealand, which appears to have handled the global pandemic outbreak excellently. April 24th, New Zealand hosted the largest in-person concert since the pandemic began, with 50,000 fans packed into New Zealand’s largest stadium Eden Park. Through a combination of swift lockdowns and border closures, New Zealand has all but eliminated the coronavirus, with 2,600 cases and 26 deaths reported since the start of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database. Masks are rarely worn, and there are no social-distancing requirements in place. Instead, people are encouraged to scan in on the country’s tracking and trace system, and hand sanitizer is widely available.

As the globe has had to adjust to the new reality of life under self-quarantine in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a number of artists and musical institutions have taken their shows online to share some musical joy during these trying times.

With venues and bars on lockdown across the world, there are plenty of things you can watch from the safety of your home, thanks to everyone from Miley Cyrus to the New York Metropolitan Opera and the folks at Disney.

Online Worship

Christianity

The Church of England’s national online services alone have attracted more than 3.7 million views since the first restrictions on gatherings for public worship to limit the spread of Covid-19 were introduced almost a year ago.

Clips and content from the services have been seen 40 million times on social media channels.

The Church of England’s prayer and discipleship apps – through which people can join in ancient services of morning and evening prayer from wherever they are – have been accessed eight million times, up 50 percent on the previous year.

The figures for online services are thought to be just the tip of the iceberg as churches’ response to the pandemic triggered a major change in the way Christians worship and reach out to their neighbours.

At least 20,000 services and other online events are now listed on the Church of England’s ‘church finder’ website AChurchNearYou. A year ago there were none.

And a special hymn download service, designed for local churches to use as part of online worship, has seen more than a million downloads.

As churches look ahead to an expected easing of restrictions and more public gatherings, many are assessing how to incorporate the lessons of the last year into their regular patterns of worship and outreach after the pandemic.

Hinduism

Four Hindu priests sat cross-legged on the floor in front of silver trays of rice, flowers, and vermillion powder, chanting in low baritones that reverberated off the bare walls of the old brick temple.

An iPhone propped on a chair captured the service — known as a puja — and beamed it via Skype to a home in San Francisco, where a middle-aged woman wearing a red bindi and a headscarf watched intently.

Every so often, the priests peered into the screen and instructed her to mimic a gesture or repeat an invocation.

In Hinduism, the dominant religion among India’s 1.2 billion people, there are elaborate pujas for virtually every life event — and now there are virtual pujas too, along with last rites and other religious ceremonies being sold over the Internet.

This digital twist on a mystical, ancient faith is a growing part of India’s multibillion-dollar spirituality market. E-commerce sites also have popped up for Indian Muslims as well as minority Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists.

Offering their services anywhere in the world, the companies are capitalizing not only on improved Internet connectivity throughout India but also on a growing diaspora as more citizens emigrate for higher education and employment, leaving behind their families and spiritual networks.

Online Oscars

Oscars’ broadcast like no other in the 93-year history of the Academy Awards.

It’s been the longest awards season ever after the Academy decided to delay the 93rd Academy Awards from February to April because of the pandemic, but the big show finally happened. The 2021 Oscars ceremony began at 8 pm ET Sunday on ABC, broadcasting live from both Union Station and the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles

The show has been teased as a kind of three-hour movie in which all the presenters and nominees play a role in advancing a narrative story. “Movie storytelling is so unique,” said Soderbergh. “We have the resources, through the stories the nominees are telling us, to tease out the detail of what makes movies so special, why we connect to them so strongly all over the world.”

So, the question is, will this be the future? When the world slowly goes back to normal, crows return and social distancing is a distant memory, will the option to watch online remain? The benefits of online services have been incredible, while it has done its purpose and reduce the spread of COVID-19, it has also meant more people can enjoy events at a more reasonable cost, or even for free and it has stopped people from traveling across countries.