Masai Warriors, On Duty at Pune - a Satire

Masai is a tribe of Kenya and some parts of Tanzania. Both Masai men and women are tall, strong and lanky. They live in their tribal ways and follow the tribal rules and laws. Masais are very strong and fearless warriors. An able-bodied Masai boy becomes a warrior (or may be used to become) only after killing a lion alone with just a spear.

Masai Warriors

Masai warriors are required to defend their clan from enemies and their livestock from predators like lions of savannah grassland. Readers must be thinking, what does Masais of Kenya doing in Pune and that too on duty.

Two Masais, a male and a female, tall well built and fit, in form of two wooden statues came with me from Mombasa (when my ship INS Delhi visited Mombasa somewhere in 2004) obviously without any passport and visa. They were picked up last minute from the handicraft sellers in Mombasa Port on the insistence of my friends to pick up some souvenirs as till then I did not pick up anything.

Mr Masai From Mombasa, Lost his Spear and Shield in last 13 years

Mrs Masai from Mombasa. She has managed to retain her Cooking tool for all these years

Upon their arrival at Mumbai, into our Fauji household, they were welcomed and appreciated. Prominent space was created in our drawing room (Fauji houses anyway look like a museum with showpieces picked up from far and wide, hence space creation was required) and Masais were asked to set up their own place there. Thankfully they enjoyed living outdoors and did not build a Masai Hut in our drawing room.

The Masais generally guarded one of the corners of our house passively

As our companions, they moved houses with us from time to time during our transfers and finally came with us to our Permanent abode at Pune. All along, they had no other task to perform but to merely stand in our drawing room and observe the happenings there. They were witness to My daughter becoming a CA, Son becoming an Architect and I became a Captain and then Commodore. They also witnessed my wife's best days as a teacher loved by children. They, however, were uninvolved and unmoved like a stoic Masai.

Somewhere during 2016, we picked up a dog. A cross of Doberman and Indian Dog. We love our pet Cookie (a boy named Cookie by Johari family who rescued him originally). With this kind of name everyone mistook him to be a girl and then we coined a new name for him and told everyone he is Cookie Singh to denote his gender.

 As a Pup, he did not have a reach to climb sofas. When we reached Pune, after a few months he was big enough to climb up on sofas. While we love him, asking a guest to be comfortable on a sofa which has hair on it (dog hair are all over if any dog keeps climbing and sitting on a sofa), was becoming embarrassing. We tried to put back-cushions on the seat but he would pull them down and climb on the sofa. We tried many such methods to dissuade him from doing so and failed. We were at our wit's end and did not know what to do and then we remembered the Masais, Mr and Mrs by a sheer act of God.

It so happened that while playing with him one day we noticed that when his ball reached the Massais and hit them, they moved and shook and that put a scare of mighty Masais in his mind.  Then on, when his ball or toy reached anywhere closure to these Masais standing in a prominent corner of our hall, he begged us to remove the toy or ball from their vicinity and give back to him.

That was our Eureka moment. That was also the moment when our Masais finished their peaceful time and started getting their duties off and on. Following the law of gender equality (and also because we had two sofas), both the Male Masai and his wife were placed on duty. The saving grace was, they are placed on duty only when we go out during the day but their night duty is always there as this boy has a habit of getting up in the middle of the night and go and plonk on one of the sofas.

See for yourself how they hold the fort for us and prevent  Cookie the Great from ravaging our beautiful sofas.

Mr Masai Guarding one Sofa

Mr Masai Guarding one Sofa - Second Post

Mrs Masai Guarding the  other sofa

Mrs Masai Guarding the  other sofa - Sleeping but doing the duty

We are happy that Masais have found a new role, Masais are happy that their boredom has ended and they have an active role now and the guests are happy that despite the household having a dog the sofas are clean. Only person who is unhappy is our Cookie the Great since he is scared of Masais and has realised that even when he barks at them, they are unmoved.

The victim of Masai Atrocities (LoL) - Cookie

Long live antics of Cookie and the sense of duty of Masais from Mombasa, happily performing their duty at Pune.

Sinking Economy of Pakistan and its likely impact on India

   Pakistan has many internal and external problem. Its citizens are getting killed by terrorists of all hues. Baluchistan is fighting for its freedom for many years. Pak Occupied Kashmir and Sindh are fed up with oppression by the federal government. Fundamentalists dream of Sharia Rule in Pakistan and Final Battle for India, so-called “Gajwa e Hind”. However, that is not being discussed in this article. This article discusses a very vital aspect of a nation that can destroy it without a single shot being fired, that aspect is Economy. The Sinking Economy of Pakistan and its likely impact on India is the main thrust of this article.

   There are some parameters and their present values which are important for every economy. The current figures of these parameters indicate the state of that economy. It is important to understand these values and its implications to understand where is that economy heading. These important parameters are Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Balance of Payment and Current Account Deficit.  Let us examine these parameters of Pakistan Economy.

   It is interesting to note that post-independence, Pakistani Economy was better than the Indian Economy as they had opted for the free market economy while India followed the path of Socialist-Communist kind of state-controlled economy. Things have changed over the years. India has become an important and powerful economy while Pakistan Economy has weakened owing to lack of large Industries, Wrong policies and unnecessary military competition (and 4 wars) with India. The weakening economy should have made Pakistan worried but the non-stop American aid on one or the other pretext (without any need of accounting for it) continued to help Pakistani economy and that resulted into a false sense of economic well being.

   Every nation runs itself (and its government) on the income it earns from the exports, investments abroad and its internal direct and indirect tax collection (just 1 % of Pak citizens pay Income Tax). It is true for most of the nations but not for Pakistan. The collection of Direct and Indirect taxes is meagre in Pakistan and their imports outstrip export by a huge ratio. Due to the inflow of American aid, Pakistan never felt any need to increase internal accruals despite such a dismal collection of taxes.

   With this primer on Pakistan Economy, let me analyse its present position. The growth rate of GDP of Pakistan is 5.7% which is the best in the last five years (it was f5.3 % last year and is forecasted to drop the next year). A good growth rate of GDP indicates that this economy is a  good economy but only and only if other vital indicators (as mentioned above) also corroborate the trends. Analysis of other parameters does indicate that all is not well with Pakistani Economy. It will be further elaborated in the next paragraphs.

   The internal and external income of Pakistan is low. Few efforts have been made in the last few years to improve internal income without much success. The only other source they had of income was American unrestricted aid. That has also stopped due to direct and indirect support that Pakistan gives to the terrorist.

   Another major aspect of any economy apart from the GDP growth figure is Balance of Payment. BOP is the annual account of a country’s trade with other countries. It also indicates the availability of World (trading ) currencies with a nation or lack of it. If a nation is doing more export than import they have surplus Forex and if the imports are more than exports, there is a dearth of Forex with that country. The Balance of Payment, as the name suggests, is supposed to be balanced but it generally does not happen automatically.

  To balance BOP, if a nation has surplus earnings from exports, those earnings are retained as Forex Reserves and if there is a shortage of Forex due to higher imports, that country needs to obtain Forex by other means like Loans, etc. The question is, is the BOP of Pakistan satisfactory? Not really. Their imports outstrip their Exports by a huge margin and thus there BOP is not healthy. They have been surviving using external loans and they are neck deep in the loans. There  Forex Reserve is playing a game of See-Saw. When Asian Development Bank or China gives a loan, Forex Reserves of Pakistan go up and then they use it for Import and the Forex Reserve drops.

   Pakistan’s Balance of Payment is in negative, Forex Reserves are in the doldrums. They must be recalling olden days when” Uncle Sam” used to give unlimited aid with no strings attached and must be thinking, “those were the days”.

   If the world had faith in Pakistan they would have invested into Story of Pakistan and Pakistan’s Forex Reserves would have swollen with inflow from Foreign Direct Investment but that is Pakistan and not India in whom investors have confidence. No one wants to invest there. The remittances by Pakistani Diaspora are also nothing to write home about. In simple words, Pakistan is neither earning Forex by commerce nor by remittances and they have no other way except for taking loans to get any Forex.

   Pakistan’s Current Account Deficit (CAD) is unbelievably high. It has gone up from $ 12 Billion in 2017 to $ 17 Billion in the current year. The dichotomy is, they don’t have money for imports worth 3 weeks of necessities but the import of luxury cars continues unchecked.

Pakistan had recently received a loan of $ 2 billion from China but that amount is inadequate for them. Their only hope is an IMF bailout but America has warned IMF from advancing to Pakistan as America feels that Pakistan would use the IMF advance to pay back China. There are no signs of improvement in Pakistani economy in foreseeable future. This is the biggest challenge facing the new government of Pakistan. The question that begs answer is, what are the implications of worsening economic situation of Pakistan for India?

   Raison d’etre of Pakistan’s existence is opposing and hating India. It is a very difficult task to check the economic slide whereas it is easy to give a dose of Anti India sentiments to their population and fool them. After all the Pak governments and the Pak Army has been doing this for decades. Despite economic difficulties and a shortage of Forex, the anti-India activities by Pakistan are likely to go up and so are the terrorist activities at the border and in the countryside of India. In these trying times that is the only and time-tested method  Pakistan government has to keep their folks together.

   In light of the above, India needs to be extra alert because what will this unpredictable nation do is difficult to predict. As such it is easy to distract its own citizens from worsening economic situation by fanning the Anti- India sentiments rather than taking and implementing tough decisions to improve their sinking economy.