Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Driving in Kerala is scary. Walking on the road is deadlier. Both can kill you sooner than any other cause. Look at statistics. Covid kept the accident numbers low in 2020. Lockdowns kept people at home. As soon as people were given liberty to drive around, they started driving people to their death. Nearly 55,000 accidents in 2023! That is 150 accidents a day!  Two-wheelers cause most accidents. Youngsters form the lion's share of the victims. Nearly two-thirds of the victims are in the age group of 18 to 45.  My house is situated on a road that is designated as state highway. Actually the road's construction was never completed due to the kind of politics Kerala usually had and hence the highway suddenly ends in the middle of nowhere. Hence the traffic isn't much. But youngsters come from God-knows-where on their roaring bikes which fly on the roads. The speed and the noise, both together can be murderous. A lot of people die  before reaching the age of 60 in this area

In a rather sentimentally titled article, The Saddest Trend , The Economist says that more and more people are committing suicide in the country of “inexorable progress.”  From 1999 to 2014, the suicide rates in America rose by 24%.  The article does not list any reasons.  America is a dream for many people in the world.  So many Asians are willing to sacrifice their lifetime savings in order to be able to migrate and live in America, the perceived paradise on earth.  America, the land of progress, the land of dreams, the zenith of human aspirations.  Yet the Americans are choosing to end their lives prematurely!  “Men shoot themselves, women take poison,” tells the article pithily.  Let the reasons be, whatever they are.  We shall wait for experts to analyse them. In the meanwhile, we may ask ourselves why is India, our country, leaving no stone unturned in following in the footsteps of this nation whose people are choosing death over life.  Don Quixote and Sancho Pa

The more notorious a criminal you are, the more respected you are in Tihar, says Kobad Ghandy in his Indian Express column .  The petty thieves and other little criminals vie with one another to join the notorious ones.  Your very survival, let alone success, depends on how close you are to the great guns.  Virtue will undo you.  Principles will turn into knots round your neck.  Kobad Ghandy knows what he is speaking about.  He has spent seven years in Tihar.  Seven years in Tihar is enough to dehumanise anyone, writes Ghandy. Is this true only of Tihar?  Isn’t it true for the entire country?  Where do you find virtue and principles in the public life of the country?  Criminals and murderers occupy eminent seats in the parliament and state assemblies.  Mafia dons and land grabbers masquerade as godmen.  The poor become poorer and end their lives on knots that descend in various shapes from above.  The rich are given more and more.  What little the poor have is ta

On the New Year’s Day, the government of India slashed the price of aviation turbine fuel by 10 percent. This is the second reduction in the price of ATF in a month’s time.  The New Year gift to the common person was a hike in the price of cooking gas.  The price of non-subsidised LPG was hiked by Rs 49.50 per cylinder.  LPG price was hiked on 1 Dec by Rs 61.50.  Prior to that, rates were increased by Rs. 27.5 per cylinder on November 1. The flight ticket rates have not changed though ATF rates were cut.  The benefit does not trickle down to the passengers.  The corporate sector harvests the benefits.  The trickle down effect of neoliberalism is a myth.  When the price of petroleum shot up to $140 per barrel, Dr Manmohan Singh managed to keep the price of petrol in India at Rs 72 per litre by providing subsidies so that the common people would not be taxed too much.  Now when the international price hovers around $37 the prices of petrol and diesel in India refuse to come d

She, the Producer Today, 15 Dec, is observed as International Tea Day by countries producing tea.  What the Day brings to my mind primarily is the picture of a tea picker I came across in one of the undulating tea plantations in Darjeeling when Maggie (my wife) and I were on a holiday trip in June 2010.  When the woman noticed us, she came rather shyly and offered her basket to Maggie asking if she wanted a photo with that basket on her back.  In the conversation that followed, the worker listed her grievances.  She was paid a pittance by the plantation owner.  She had to work for endless hours and walk down the hill to the factory where she had to deposit the collected leaves.  She pointed at a distant building and said, “That’s the place I have to take these leaves to.  A long and arduous walk down the hill.  And then the return climb...”  The tourists who paid her Rs 10 for lending her basket for a photo were a very munificent source of income for her in contrast to her empl

Fiction It was years since I had left Kochi.  Sitting on the shore of the Vembanad backwaters sipping beer with an old classmate, I remembered those days of my life as a college student.  Professor Leela Menon wafted into our conversation as naturally as the breeze from the lake set the coconut leaves nodding gently.  “She retired more than ten years back,” said Mohan.  “She now lives all alone in a villa facing the Vembanad.” I decided to visit her.  I was one of her favourite students.  I adored her poems as well as her lectures on literature.  I participated in every essay competition to which the college was invited; I participated more to please her than anything else.  Professor Leela Menon was a poet and a social activist.  She did not marry; her life was dedicated to social causes.  She was bitterly opposed to the kind of development and that was overtaking the city.  She hated people cutting down trees in order to widen the roads.  She deplored the roar of the tr

When India gained independence from the colonial rulers one of the cardinal challenges before the nascent nation was poverty.  The rampant poverty persuaded Nehru to opt for a welfare economy based much on the principles of socialism, though America had already begun to ride the exhilarating waves of capitalism.  At the same time, in 1947, an American professor of philosophy wrote the following lines: “ The tremendous concentration of wealth at one end of the social scale is matched (perhaps overmatched) by a concentration of poverty at the other end.  A dazzling prosperity in the urban rich hardly conceals the infamous and degrading lot imposed upon ... social victims.  No one can look upon this scene with clear eyes and then suppose that justice is being done .” The author of these lines was victimised much for his radical views.  He was Barrows Dunham and his controversial book was Man Against Myth .  In the introduction to the book, Dunham wrote that “truth has been s

Development is the only mantra today for many Indians, it seems.  Making Mr Narendra Modi the Prime Minister would mean putting India on the magical highway to economic development, they argue.  What they fail to understand is that the kind of development that prevailing economic theories and systems can provide is a highly flawed one.  It is good to look back at some classical notions when confronted with crises.  Mahatma Gandhi had some very illuminating views on development.  All of his views may not be relevant in today’s situation and may not be practical either.  Yet it is worth revisiting a few relevant ideas. Gandhi said: “ That you cannot serve God and Mammon is an economic truth of the highest value. Western nations today are groaning under the heel of the monster-god of materialism. Their moral growth has become stunted. They measure their progress in pounds and dollars. American wealth has become the standard. She is the envy of the other nations. I have heard m

Somerset Maugham narrates an anecdote in the Foreword to his majestic novel, Of Human Bondage .   Celebrated French novelist, Marcel Proust, wanted a periodical to publish an article on one of his great novels.   The novelist wrote the article himself thinking that none would be a better critic of his than himself. Then he asked a young friend of his, a man of letters, to put his name to it and take it to the editor.   The editor called the young writer after a few days.   “I must refuse your article,” said the editor.   “Marcel Proust would never forgive me if I printed a criticism of his work that was so perfunctory and so unsympathetic.” Authors are touchy about their productions, says Maugham, and inclined to resent unfavourable criticism.   But they are seldom self-satisfied.   “Their aim is perfection and they are wretchedly aware that they have not attained it.”   Not only authors, but any person or institution should be ready to accept criticism from others as well a

Dr Manmohan Singh, our Prime Minister, reminded recently of the country’s economic security.   On the basis of GDP, India ranks at the 10 th place in the world.   However, when it comes to per capita income the country’s rank is a pathetic 141.   We are a rich country with poor people, in other words. GDP is the sum of all the products and services of a country.   If we calculate the sum of the entire amounts spent by the government and the private sector including individuals as well as the savings and earnings from exports and then subtract the sum spent in imports, we will get the country’s GDP for the concerned year. Interestingly, the GDP will grow when prices rise.   When you spend more money on petrol or shopping or medicine, you are raising the GDP of your country.   If you wash your own clothes instead of paying a launderer for that, or polish your shoes instead of paying a shoeshine boy, or cook your own food instead of eating at a restaurant or some such plac