Sunday Posts

Don't be perplexed. I know you may be wondering how on earth can someone love bureaucracy, which stands for all the bad things - slowness, indifference, complexity, lethargy - but I argue back: If we don't love bureaucracy, how does it persist?If we hate it, why the first thing when we start a business is to draw an org chart? Why, when things go wrong, we want to see a manager? Or, better still, why most of us want to be managers? Why we want a job description? Why we fill so many forms and want to fill some more? Why we love emails and calendars, show off our smartphones and smart watches, want to prove how busy we are? I love bureaucracy because it's everywhere. Call it any name, but our lives are bureaucratic. Every morning, when I plan the day and write down my to-do list, I am bowing to bureaucracy. As I run for meetings, cut short conversations, skip lunch or feel guilty about not responding to a message, I am celebrating it. There is no escape. The only way I ...

I am surprised to note the buzz around Shashi Tharoor's Twitter comment. Dr Tharoor said that in Vietnam, people work on Ho Chi Minh's birthday. And, also, in a reply to a direct message, said that he thinks the Indians should work on Mahatma's birthday and not take a holiday. Amazingly, this is taken as a mark of disrespect to Mahatma. I could see Dr. Tharoor having to explain to someone that he meant that he would pay his homage to Mahatma in the morning but get on with day's work thereafter. Congress Party said that the comments were purely Dr. Tharoor's and did not reflect the party's, or government's stance - the sort of spineless, boring reply you can expect from career politicians. Overall, it seems that India's political class is yet to come to terms with Twitter openness, and Dr. Tharoor is getting into trouble ever so often because he is speaking his mind. But, before we get into that, why it is so wrong to work on Mahatma's birthday...