Difficulty in Humour -Standup

 I still remember in my younger days, we used to have jokes on Sardarjis, Tamilians, Punjabis, Marwaris, Parsis and you name it, it was there. Everybody understood the sense of humor and unlike Khushwant singh said with Malice to one and all, nobody bothered to dissect and just enjoyed the joke at its face value and with malice to none.

Today, things have changed. While stand up comedy has grown, the act is increasingly difficult to design as in our broad progression we have achieved two words - Sensitivity and Sentiment. Any joke on any category of people can hurt the sentiment of people. Let alone people any joke on a dog or an animal could hurt the sentiment of NGO's specifically dealing in those.

Thus humor vehicle has increased through social media, but humor enjoyment has declined. Everyone looks for that word or language which they feel has hurt their community and goes to file an FIR and the cycle of court- bail - release etc. happens leaving humorists to be left without humor.

Now with government also pitching in to ban humor on ruling govt. politicians and govt. bodies, it is all the more difficult to create a joke on the day to day happenings, which RK Laxman so eloquently portrayed in his daily cartoon.

It is not just the ruling govt, but every govt. now a days are too sensitive to jokes and try to jail the cartoonist or humorist. Gone are the days, when a Nehru despite being lampooned in a cartoon had the good sense to talk to Shankar the cartoonist and appreciate the cartoon.

Seems as our minds broaden, our views gets narrower and wish the old times return to bring some semblance of humor in this overburdened world of scare, fear, pandemic and not look for hurt of sentiment in every piece of humor. 

In this regard, while the govt says it wants to bring change and remove all hundreds of years things, it does not have the guts to remove some of the archaic laws of the britishers. One of the archaic section is Sec 295 of CPC. This has been amended to make it Sec 295 a, putting anyone criticizing the govt. in jail under sedition, hurting religious sensibilities etc. Even in parliament, they have increased the number of common words that cannot be used. This way, the whole of Hindi dictionary will be banned. 

The standup comedy becomes tougher now.

 

India's Incompetence - Incredible India turning to be Incompetent India

When the first wave hit, India considered itself to be in a safe zone and hoped to be the Santa Claus of the world. But with new variant hitting, the whole story of Incredible India has collapsed and now the world sees us as Incompetent India.

While many theories exist as to the situation we are in (May 2021), most of it can be squarely blamed on the govt. True, nobody knew the extent of vaccine requirement in India, when India started distributing vaccines to the world, but the govt should have ramped up production by releasing funds to the vaccine makers SII and Bharat Biotech.

The govt. has become more in a win all mode and this hubris has to be broken. The govt. could have done the following:

a) Talked to the various political parties and postponed the election for a year. Everyone would have agreed and those that didn't could have taken the blame.

b) Work with non BJP govt (end of the day people have elected them) and seek their support in the pandemic.

c) Talk to independent experts and the need for a strategy to tackle the issue

d) Stop being cheesed off for every comment that is made and spend time defending the comment.

e) Delegate and give more credence and support to competent people than dictating the policies from center.

f) Let media and reporting be free and not jail like UP does for every small thing (be it the rape case reporting, oxygen reporting etc).

g) Sab ka saath sabka vikas should have the priority and not focus on Hindu votes only. Hindus are self thinking and would not vote en-masse like other groups.

h) Be more reasonable and project a more approachable leader who is interested in India and not just BJP gaining power.

i) Megalomaniac projects can be put on hold as more productive projects are the need of the day- Sardar patel statue, Central vista, Bullet train are megalomaniac projects which can be tackled if we become rich and not when we are in a poor state.

j) Focus on Competent, Corrupt free, Compassionate India.

 If we do not do this, the Secular and free loving people of India will be shattered and we will go back to the -|India could have done, but did not do|- repeat of yesteryears. We will be only left with potential, not progress.