Opinion If not for September 11
Look at how that one clear,fateful autumn morning put so many folks in business.
Airports have become even more impossible than before. Long queues and lots of new scanners. The scanner industry is certainly a great beneficiary! There may be a great deal of unemployment among factory workers and real-estate salespersons. But the tribe of security guards has increased. Every building in Mumbai has almost as many security guards as residents,especially if you count the fact that these guards work all three shifts. Understandably,most of the guards seem quite clueless and ineffective,apart from being quite unconvincing in uniform. They look like fancy-dress cops,not real ones. But all of us can feel good that we have lots of guards in our buildings. So the companies who supply us these guards are the second beneficiaries!
Every time you pull up at a hotel in a car,at least two guards inspect you. One of them carries a fancy metal stick with a mirror at one end. He shoves it below the car and checks out the undercarriage. The makers of metal sticks with mirrors are the third beneficiaries!
In recent times,fancy hotels have made us even more unwelcome. They have tiny metal pillars that mysteriously come up from the ground. I assume they have a hydraulic mechanism that brings them up and down,but I have not been able to spot it. You guessed it the manufacturers of small metal pillars that pop up and down hydraulically have been the fourth beneficiaries!
If you happen to visit any fancy office building in Manhattan,or in Bandra-Kurla for that matter,there are two or three smartly-dressed persons who ask you which floor you are going to visit. They then take a photograph of yours,take a printout and give it to you to pin on to your jacket. Now I dont know about you but I am not photogenic and I dont like this procedure at all. But who will listen to me? The companies that make these intrusive cameras have far more clout than I can ever dream of having. So,then,they are the fifth beneficiaries! I have on occasion wanted to cheekily stick out my tongue when being photographed just to prove the point that I am equally ugly with my tongue out or in. But to tell the truth,I have been scared. They might arrest me and send me to Guantanamo. So I stare worshipfully and obediently at the divine camera.
Of course,all these beneficiaries are bit players when you compare them to the CCTV industry. If I had possessed even a fraction of Warren Buffetts abilities,I should have used all my paltry savings to buy the shares of CCTV companies. I would be a really rich man today. There are more CCTVs in London than there are married couples (thats easy the once staid British have given up on the institution of marriage unless its a royal wedding staged primarily for the benefit of tourists). To paraphrase Tennyson: CCTVs to the left,CCTVs to the right,CCTVs in front,CCTVS behind CCTVs everywhere. And London is not an exception. In the old days,one could go to Europe,stand at a street corner and kiss a girl. There was no Indic cultural police force to worry about. But now,if you kiss,remember the CCTV could be recording your action. So beware of blackmail,if your kiss is an illicit one.
The Global CCTV Manufacturers Association must,of course,be very angry with the Public Works Department of Delhi who have diligently refused to buy these glorious snoopers and install them even after being told to do so. But we who know,should let them into a secret. The Public Works Department in India is a contradiction in terms. Its name is completely inappropriate. It has nothing to do with the public. It is run for the very private benefit of its employees. The question of work does not arise. The last time,I am told,that our glorious PWD actually worked,as revealed in an official response to an RTI query,was on the third Thursday of October in 1958 and that too was an accident. The concerned PWD employees were severely admonished and their pensions were reduced to punish them for their offence!
So if the members of the Global CCTV Manufacturers Association want to sell something in India,they are better off ignoring the PWD and lobbying with the BCCI,the CWG and other sports organisations of high and unimpeachable integrity,of which we have many in our country.
Among the individuals who have benefited from 9/11,I have great admiration for the experts on Islam,Islamism,Salafism,etc who have suddenly appeared on the scene. I wonder where these worthy academics were hidden before 9/11. These folks appear on American and European television channels where in 30-second installments they tell us all that there is to know about Jihad,Ijtehad,Hashashin,Wahhabis and other exotic subjects. I am sorely tempted to get myself a Ph.D in Islamic/Islamist studies from Azamgarh International University (if there isnt one,surely I can start one under our governments glorious Right to Education Act) so that I can join this bandwagon. And let me assure my readers,that while I dont photograph well,I am very telegenic.
And then there is a whole tribe of Afghan writers,Pakistani satirists and Somali feminists who must be thanking the people who pulled off 9/11. They have received royalties they never dreamt of and are well on their way to becoming global celebrities. Last heard,the Af-Pak Writers Union holds annual parties to celebrate the opportunities that 9/11 has given them.
I wonder if Osama and his friends ever thought that their actions would have so many beneficiaries!
jerry.rao@expressindia.com
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