On one issue the usually brain dead scriptwriters and directors of Bollywood and its regional avatars are bang on target: women are the worst enemies of women. In reel life, the greatest persecutors of heroines and indeed any woman endowed with half-good looks, are the scheming mother or sister in-law, and often the neighbourhood killjoy sworn to uphold Brit-Victorian interpretation of Indian culture.

A case in point is the National Commission for Women (NCW, estb.1992), promoted with the objectives of reviewing consti-tutional and legal safeguards for women and advising government on all policy matters affecting women. Alas, over the past two decades the national and state commissions have degenerated into Bollywood-style mother-in-law institutions given to faulting women rather than speaking up for them. So when a teenager emerging from a pub was sexually molested in public by a gang of goons and the incident was filmed by a regional television channel, a Delhi socialite sent by NCW to investigate, unhesitatingly disclosed — instead of protecting — the name and identity of the victim. On another occasion, an NCW chairperson advised women that being referred to as “sexy” by strangers should be regarded as a compliment even as she routinely advises them to tone down their dressing to discourage sexual molestation.

Moreover, following an attack and sexual assault on a group of young people — including women — on July 28 in Mangalore by Hindutva activists for the crime of staging a birthday party, C. Manjula, chairperson of the NCW (Karnataka), refused to condemn the attackers, who she said  were justifiably provoked by the “immoral activities” of the partying youth, ignorant of “the values of this soil”.

Never having experienced romance and probably having ‘purchased’ their husbands, these frustrated harridans are hell-bent on ensuring that Gen Next doesn’t enjoy any of the freedoms they themselves were too timorous to demand. The public interest demands that the regressives who dominate NCW and its branches are sent back to mind kinder, kuche, kirche (children, kitchen and church — the role of women decreed by the late and unlamented Adolf Hitler). 

Academia inertia

In these depressing times of scam upon scam, unrelenting inflation and internal displacement of innocent people, a sliver of good news which has uplifted your dejected editor has come from XLRI, Jamshedpur, the reputed B-school which perhaps because it’s run by men of the cloth, has never quite been bestowed the public esteem conferred upon the IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management).

Yet XLRI is lengths ahead of the IIMs whose academics preach business management, but seldom practice it, in fundraising. According to a report in the Economic Times (August 14), the reverend fathers who double as faculty at the institute, have accumulated an endowment corpus of Rs.2.5 crore by systematically tapping their alumni for donations. The top management of XLRI (estb.1949) has now set itself a target of raising Rs.100 crore over the next five years to construct a new campus in Delhi, and to endow new chairs in Jamshedpur.

For several decades, your editor has been informing cash-strapped managements in academia that business-savvy institutions abroad, particularly in the US, have accumulated mind-boggling endowment corpuses by practicing rather than merely preaching business management. Thus Harvard University’s corpus is a humungous $32 billion (Rs.160,000 crore); Yale’s $16 billion (Rs.81,600 crore); and Princeton $13 billion (Rs.66,300 crore). Nor are these universities exceptions. Almost every American varsity has built up a respectable $2-5 billion endowment corpus.

Your editor is often at the receiving end of hard luck stories about lack of funding for expansion of departments and infrastructure. But all advice about tapping into alumni databases to raise funds for institutional development falls on deaf ears. One suspects this reluctance is more attributable to oriental inertia than ignorance. With the XLRI management going public on its fundraising plans, education institutions will do well to tap their alumni for endowments and reduce abject dependence on Central and state governments.  

Hubris malaise

The spectacular outing of Mumbai-born, US-based foreign policy strategist, CNN/Time columnist, television chat show host and transnational talk circuit pundit (reported fee: $75,000 or Rs.41 lakh) Fareed Zakaria as a plagiarist and his subsequent dismissal (and reinstatement after an apologetic explanation) from CNN/Time, has prompted several writers, columnists and TV anchors including Chidanand Rajghatta, the US-based columnist of the Times of India and Rajdeep Sardesai of  CNN-IBN to recall their experiences and encounters with him. To this chorus, let me add my own experience(s) of this new fallen icon of the Indian diaspora.

My connection with Zakaria goes back one generation, with his mother Fatma, a journalist of modest accomplishment who rose high in the Times of India group as assistant to legendary editors Girilal Jain in ToI and Khushwant Singh in The Illustrated Weekly of India. Way back in 1976, Khushwant commissioned me to write a piece on the US presidential election of that year. I travelled to the US (at my expense) and thereafter submitted my brilliant analysis to the Illustrated Weekly. Two weeks later it was returned to me with an abrupt note ‘Not suitable’, signed by Fatma.

A decade later when Fareed and his brother Arshad began frequenting the Bombay Gymkhana tennis courts, their fumbling play and junior membership forced prolonged sit-outs for them. On those occasions your correspondent was the only volunteer to play with, and coach them. Cut to 2010, after Fareed had risen to the position of a guru of the American establishment. Your editor invited him to write a column for the tenth anniversary issue of EducationWorld. Inevitably, citing the pressure of time etc, he regretted.

Writing in the TOI Crest (August 18), Rajghatta suggests that hubris is a common malaise of Indians who succeed abroad. Yet it’s a moot point whether this malaise is restricted to NRIs or embedded in the genetic code of all sub-continentals. Your editor could give you an arm’s length list of former best-buddy Indian tycoons, who didn’t lift a finger to help in the bad old days when this publication was struggling for survival. But that’s another story — or stories.