Kusum Choppra

Elections 2014 Issues Amidst all the noise over the order banning a pulp and actually going ahead to pulp the copies (what were the publishers who agreed and the judge who ordered, thinking off?,) wonder how many will consider another violation of democracy. Newspapers report on the humongous amounts spent trucking people in for massive rallies with other tech attractions the prime-minister-in-the-running of the opposition party. Favorable publicity, true or false, is another must. Security concerns demand packing off of everyone in the vicinity, locals, hawkers, transport – everyone to make room for security sanitization of the rally premises!! (Will this mean news of an incident to garner sympathy and support!) Issues in this exercise by the opposition party, to protect the candidate: =       what was the need to select a candidate believed to be favorite target practice for trigger happy terrorists? =     ...

Feminists have, all along,  demanded an level playing field and fought against ‘victim’ labels.   Have tables been turned, with raucous baying against the rapacious desire of Indian media’s Christian Grey (from  Fifty Shades of Grey, for whom elevators were a favorite hotspot)?    Don’t get me wrong.  I have been labeled a ‘feminist’ as I write usually for women, by women and of women.   During earlier rapes cases that outraged all of us, I pleaded repeatedly for public exposure of rapists – which happened in the Nirbhay case --   and for all of us to move away from that dratted “Mera Raja Beta” syndrome, to teach boys to respect women from babyhood. A stage comes when one has to wonder what it’s all about?   Hard on the heels of those gory gang rapes, TV channels blared the hounding of a woman by state agencies for their ‘Saheb’. Then L’affaire Tejpal took center stage!  To shoo ‘Saheb’ and his lady i...

In the old days, there used to be War Correspondent courses for journalists. I don’t know if they still have them. Perhaps such need to be reinforced and made absolutely compulsory for our loquacious TV commentators.  These ‘journalists’ fall over each other to make revelations of what is happening on the front, hoping to later claim credit for having sparked off another Indo-Pak war …... complete with hectoring of the Armed forces and the administration  on how they should handle situations that they have been trained for, cocksure in their belief that they and they alone know how any and every situation should be handled!!  Obviously opposition leaders cannot afford to be left behind  in hectoring and making absurd demands which, if anything, exhibit how far from reality they actually are. This morning’s Indian Express Op-ed page (August 13, 2013) carries a very very rationale argument “A Competitive Pseudo-Patriotism”  by Rtd. Lieutenant General ...

  www.facebook.com/kusum.chopppra ?s around couples ….. “Palaces have a strange virus. They echo, quite maliciously, the unspoken word.” The author of a book that recounts a unique relationship in an ancient tale in poetry format, that is highly evocative and passionate, questing and loving, acknowledged his wife in the writing of the long, long poem during long winter evenings.  Twenty years down the line, the same author lives up to his bureaucratic biases to bring out learned tomes, dry as dust on assorted suggestions for policy change.   There is no mention of the wife any more.  What does that hint of the relationship two decades on? Couples, especially long lived ones, do evoke unspoken queries in our times with its rising sensitivity to man-woman relationships at all levels.  Question marks often surround senior couples seen in public parks and gatherings: Is that eternally smiling grandma faking it? Or that smirking hubbie? ...

“The analogy of the car and the dog makes the riot sound like an accident when it was as much a designer event as Modi’s career …….” This sentence made its way into the consciousness like few others have in recent times, for a simple reason --  the realization  that kudos is due to a professional for actually facing reality, when seasoned writers seem to have been taken in by rhetoric not backed by reality. Or perhaps ……. ? Recent weeks have seen a … call it, trumpeted campaign, media overhype, infotainment,  adverpleading  or whatever new name may be coined for what passes for the long playing comments seen on news and edit pages. Is India doomed to be drowned in media hype?  Or are, hopefully, our masses wide awake and able to read between the lines?  Especially our newly minted young voters?   Is history all that old a lesson to be so easily forgotten? Since Time Immemorial, writers, poets, bards have been paid to sing paeans ...

Many years ago, I wrote a piece titled “Are we raising a generation paupers?” In that I had argued that with all the proposals being made for investments in insurances of all sorts, SIPs, mutual funds, housing, luxury vehicles, savings for children’s education and marriages   plus the enticements of clubs and holidays etc etc,  how much did  the ordinary middle class  family have left to actually live on after all those putaways? This morning a wealth management CEO told readers that he put 20,000/- a month in two SIPS since she was born, for his  daughter’s graduation and post graduation. And then another for her marriage. Now if you are putting away thirty grand a month in three SIPs for your presumably only kid, how much must you earn to maintain the lifestyle while bringing her up, clubs, holidays, jewelry for the wife plus health insurance and life insurance and other investments, plus purchase of properties and cars? Suppose another kid came...

Was medical insurance brought to India only to fatten the already fat insurance moneybag, or to provide some relief from soaring medical costs to the general populace? Let’s face it: the profit margins are cannot be the only considerations in medical insurance. The American example is a recent good one. Here we have a classic fat-cat situation with medical insurance companies planning to elbow out senior citizens from medical cover from their offspring’s policies, without offering any suitable package that will benefit the seniors with a reasonably priced cover.   Are they so unaware of ground realities that they do not know that the majority of those covered belong to a generation when retirement planning was virtually unheard of?  Those generations earned and spent it all on a house, if possible and the education of their children that they may live better than them.  Whatever little was saved was spent on higher education and marriages. A tiny majority qualifie...