Whatever happened to Varsha Bhosle, India's Ann Coulter?

Varsha Bhosle, political columnist and one-time star of Rediff’s online news portal has suddenly resurfaced in the news, after almost 5 years of a self-imposed hiding of sorts. For those who no longer remember, Varsha Bhosle, once compared to Ann Coulter for her right wing, somewhat breathless hyperbole and sarcastic style was an extremely popular pioneer of the online opinion column in India, and wrote on Rediff News from sometime in the late 1990s till upto 2003.

Like everyone else, I was hooked! Ms. Bhosle managed to capture middle class indignation at imagined issues and transform one’s sense of impotence into a kind of furious anger that reflected in her writings. Her enemies were the usual culprits—the ‘pseudo-secularists,’ the left wingers, Muslims and the occasional Orientalist. But unlike the rest of the rabid right wing- who were uncouth, sounded uneducated and let their biases show here was a more palatable, sophisticated, online ideologue who said what she thought and made it seem so innocuous.

Varsha Bhosle, suddenly stopped writing for Rediff News at the peak of her popularity around 2003, just as the market for online political commentary started widening. She claimed she was taken off by Rediff under pressure from ‘secularists’ for being ‘inflammatory.’ during the Gujarat riots. I would've said that her writings were much more than just inflammatory, they were downright violently polemical and catered to a kind of NRI Hindu with very little connect with reality but that never stopped Rediff before....

Since then except for a bizarre news story that surfaced around 2008, alleging a suicide attempt gone wrong she remained unheard off, until a story earlier this week in the Mumbai Mirror, about Varsha Bhosle, Asha Bhosle's daughter and chairman of a Pedder Road Housing Society, Prabhu Kunj and her dispute with the residents of the housing society.

The story isn't much-- a minor dispute about parking rights but its interesting to know what Varsha Bhosle is upto. If only we know why she stopped writing altogether....

Of a 180 Missing Parliamentarians, and plugging the gaps

The mistake most often made with Indian politics, is assuming that ideologies matter more in India than individuals when it is quite clearly the opposite. We have had politicians admit, with pride that they had no ideological moorings at all whatsoever, and profess a general horror of ‘isms. The few that actually do have an ideology, mostly those with assorted Communist parties, or worse, the CPI-ML have political beliefs that were barely fashionable in the 1970s, and are not likely to ever make a comeback…

Yet in a space where individuals matter there is very little easily accessible information available about most politicians in India, beyond a prominent handful. Sure, we all know who Jairam Ramesh is and what his opinion about tigers, deforestation in Orissa, mining (legal or otherwise), global warming, forest rights, or anything else at all for that matter is thanks to his persistent TV presence, but how many of us can even recognize Sri Kanti Lal Bhuria, the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs or Panabaka Lakshmi, MOS for Textiles—both elected Lok Sabha MPs, unlike Jairam Ramesh I must add?

Part of the reason for this is the deliberate sarkari obfuscation and lack of accountability that these politicians hide behind and, part of it their hesitance to expose to the world their lack luster abilities. Looking at any of their official Lok Sabha website profiles should be evidence enough.

These are simultaneously an exercise in opaqueness, while also serving government notions of ‘transparency’ by regurgitating a deluge of useless, irrelevant information. Farooq Abdullah and M.K. Azhagiri both list (to be fair, along with almost 400 other MPs) Occupation as ‘Social Worker,’ something one associates with NGO types. Meanwhile Jitin Prasada, who looks like he has clearly never ridden a tractor in his life is listed as “Agriculturist” (an even more opaque and nebulous term).

The typical Lok Sabha profile also has a wealth of other irrelevant information such as “Attended as delegate Cartagena UN Summit 1992,’ ‘work for rural and social uplift, especially of backward classes and widows’ and “ College participation in Badminton and other sporting activities.” Even important information such as “short-term imprisonment several times in Ayodhya and other movements” that could help understand the politician’s ideological moorings, is often buried midway through an otherwise tediously written profile.

So why this talk now of Kanti Lal Bhuria, and Panabaka Lakshmi?

In the excerpt of his new book, India: An Intimate Portrait published in Outlook India, dated Jan 17th Patrick French, previously known as Sir Vidia’s biographer details a hilarious account of trying to round up information about various Lok Sabha MPs, and some of the material it threw up about the background of some MPs--- retired Naxalites, dam labourers turned doctors, and wives of Reliance honchos,

However, what is really interesting is how when he set out to uncover information about how members of the 15th Lok Sabha entered politics, he kept drawing a blank

"The Internet, which I had presumed would have the answers hidden away in one
of its corners,was of marginal use. Suprisingly, around 1/3rd of India's MPs
were almost invisible online except for their page on the Parliament website,
which detailed matters such as their name, party, constitutuency, state and
postal address."

If you don’t know anything about Kanti Lal Bhuria, or Panabaka Lakshmi beyond the sarkari drivel, its because nobody does—They are invisible online.

The Drain Inspector’s Report over the next few months hopes to correct just that, by finding out and posting online everything there is to know about these missing politicians—from their pet projects, to how they miserably botched them up and more…

So stay tuned, if you are interested in finding out more about the people that govern you, and 545 faceless, unmemorable people you helped vote in…