Jug Suraiya on Anna's fast and FDI in retail

Motu, one of the non-persons who didn't make the news in 2011, is very disgruntled. He is disgruntled about all the hoo-hah being created about foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail and how it will force small kirana shops in India to close down. Motu is the owner of a neighbourhood kirana shop and he is rightly displeased with the UPA Government. He is displeased not because the Government proposed bringing FDI in retail; he is displeased because the Government didn't push the proposal through.The reason that Motu is so keen on FDI in retail is because of his cujjin-brother who lives in Trahnto (Toronto). On a recent visit to India, the cujjin-brother dropped into Motu's kirana shop and was highly impressed by the business model that the enterprise was run on. He was particularly appreciative of the special weights and measures that Motu has devised to ensure that the dal and sugar and cooking oil and other commodities customers purchase are measured by the Motu Scale of measurement, which is based on the creative principle of andaaz, and not on the Metric scale, which is based on boring, noncreative units called kilograms and litres.Then there is the value addition that Motu imparts to his wares by the simple expedient of adding dhoola, which is free, to the atta he sells, and small stones, which also are free, to the dal and rice. And last but not least is the method of double-entry book-keeping that Motu has perfected, and which consists of keeping two sets of accounts: one for the tax authorities in the unlikely event that they'll ever come snooping around, and the other set for his own personal record.So impressed was the cujjin-brother from Trahnto- where Motu's innovative ways of doing business are unheard of-that he wanted to invest in Motu's shop and become a partner. Think what expansion plans Motu could have implemented with this infusion of foreign funds! But now, with FDI in retail put in cold storage, the deal with the cujjin-brother is off. Yeh gormint hai yah gobarmint hai? says Motu disgustedly.Another individual who slipped through the news in the year gone by is Bhookha Munda. A tribal from the Bastar region, he is perplexed by all the media coverage being given to someone called Anna Hazare. From what little Bhookha has been able to glean from far-away Bastar is that this Annaji has become famous because every now and then he stops eating in public. For generations now, Bhookha and his fellow tribals have frequently stopped eating, in public or in private. They stopped eating for the simple reason that there was nothing to eat. But this cessation of nourishment did not make Bhookha and his community famous, as it has in the case of Annaji. Indeed, if anything, Bhookha's enforced habit of not eating-or conspicuous non-consumption, as it might be called-served only to prompt media to avert their collective gaze from him.Finally we come to the most non of all the many nonpersons of 2011: the satirist. Asked by the editor of a wellknown news magazine to do a satirical round-up of all the people who were left out of the news in the past year, the satirist submitted his contribution. Which was returned with a polite note saying "The Editor regrets". The note added that what the publication had wanted was a satirical piece and not a factual report of things as they really were, which is what the faux satirist had produced.Dashed, the satirist first contemplated hanging himself. Then he decided instead to join the Planning Commission, of which he became a spokesperson. In his first public statement he said runaway inflation would be brought under control in three months time. He won the Funny Bone Award for being the best stand-up comic in the country.- Jug Suraiya is a senior journalist, author and columnistPublished By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 30, 2011 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

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Jug Suraiya on Anna's fast and FDI in retail

Motu the kirana shop owner who missed out on FDI in retail, Bhookha the starving tribal and the satirist-turned-Plan panel member: all slipped through the news in 2011.

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