Some advice on Arranged Marriages

I was married eight years back. It was an arranged marriage; people think (especially abroad) that arranged marriages are very easy and that you do not have to make any effort. Let me narrate my experience and you can judge for yourself:

The very first problem I faced was managing my hair. I had it all nicely turned and everything so that I had the 50s samathu payyan (good boy) look. I spent atleast two hours before the mirror trying to adjust every individual strand of hair. I had no idea how my potential future wife would judge my looks. I knew vaguely that they did not like the Albert Einstein hairstyle.
Well, after this struggle, I got into the car and sat, stupidly, in the window seat. So my hair ended up looking, indeed, like Einstein. I hoped that the woman liked physics.

It is best, in my mind, to keep the affair as low-key as possible. I was sure that the girl would not like me. I would be lucky if she did not throw up on seeing me and hated every word that I spoke. So, I did not want one of the huge movie style episode in which a bunch of my relatives and a bunch of her relatives, plus all her neighbors show up to watch me getting rejected.
I actually wanted to meet her in a restaurant in a remote corner of the city so that only the waiters would know, but no one would leak the matter to the press. But when I asked for this specifically, I was accused by my parents of being an un-Indian brat. Her parents did not like the idea either - they thought I would kidnap their daughter. They wanted the full glory.

Thus, my ONE attempt at trying to influence the course of my own marriage and life failed. I stopped trying after that.

So, we ended up at her home. Luckily there were not too many people around. I got out of the car and ran in before the tabloids could take photographs.
I sat in a nice elevated chair and kept my head down. Her brother sat in a corner and kept looking at me with an impassive face. Let me tell you what he reminded me of: In American movies they show a secret CIA interrogation room where one inscrutable American sits silently in the corner while they try to get information from the terrorist. At the end he usually walked over and banged the terrorist's head on the table until he revealed the location of the bomb.
Her brother never took his eyes off me the whole time and never said anything. He rarely says anything to me even after 8 years of the marriage.

Her mother and sister buzzed about and we all tried to make conversation. I tried a few jokes. But I was waiting for my future wife to show up.
I had spent a lot of time (the previous day) in front of the mirror trying to see the angle in which I looked good. I was sure that there must be atleast one angle out of the 360 degrees where my face would show up handsome. So I tried each one of those angles until I found that there was one particular way, if I raised my head and bent my face to the left - I looked absolutely dashing. Turn a little bit to the right or left and the "effect" was gone. I could see myself only from a corner of my eye in the mirror, but I was sure I had hit upon the ideal way to present myself to my future wife.

Now, sitting in front of her whole family, I tried to find that angle again. I was almost there when the door opened and my future wife walked in. She did not look at me at all. She sat in a chair and studiously avoided looking at me.
So we both sat like statues while the rest of them had fun.
The one advice I would give you, the future arranged marriager, is to AVOID eating mixtures (this is a south-indian dish), while you are on a "girl-seeing" episode. It is a nasty trick played by the bride's family. They are trying to judge your mechanical competence. There is absolutely NO way to eat the mixture without a)looking uncool or b) spilling most of it on oneself. If they offer you the mixture, politely say no. If they insist, tell them you know their dirty trick.
Do not drink coffee either. They will offer a very full cup of coffee and figure out how scared you are when your hand shakes. Ask for half a cup; if they offer anymore, throw it on your brother-in-law. That will teach them.

There are several misconceptions about arranged marriages. Movies show the guy and the girl falling in love immediately; then pining for each other while the evil villain takes the girl to a mountain cave. The truth is that you don't really feel anything when you look at her. Your goal at that point is to get out of a really awkward situation. There is no place for love. It is a tough world out there.

After some time, they suggested that we talk to each other. This is the most liberal advancement in the institution of arranged marriages in the last two thousand years - they allow us people to talk.
So, me and her went to the terrace. It was evening time and the terrace was cool. It was very romantic except for the airport close by. There were flights zipping over us every five minutes.

I had prepared a long speech to her. It went something like this:
"I do not have much experience in this. I like your family. Let me say something about myself. But before that, I want you to be assured that you may say no to me without any reservations. You do not have to marry me out of compulsion. But that does not mean that your family compels you. I am just saying, if your family is of the type that comples daughters, then if they compel you to marry me, you can freely say no. This does not mean that I suspect your family of tyranny. No, no, on the other hand I like your family a lot. But it is all circumstances. Instead if you say yes to me because of compulsion, then our life may not be that happy. No, I am not saying that I will torture you. But I am just saying that if I do...."

I forgot most of the speech when I sat there. It sounded like a PhD dissertation.
Anyway, I started with "I don't have much experience in this"
My wife said, "It is not as if we are all sitting here with lots of experience."

That was it. We ended up chatting for an hour and by the end of it, I wanted to stay at their home.

PS: Apparently there is a rule as to the decent time when you can get back to the girl's family and let them know you like her. Say you see the girl on Monday evening at around 6 PM. Then the decent interval is to let their family know Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM. If you do it any sooner, they think you are too needy. If you do later, the girl may be married off to someone else. The optimum time interval is the above.
I did not know this. We got into the car and I started badgering my family about the marriage date.

Encounters in "A Wednesday"

I watched the movie "A Wednesday" very late, last week. I had heard much about the movie and Kamal Hasan had remade it in Tamil.
I did not like the movie at all. This is a belated analysis of the movie. This is just my opinion, I am not claiming to be a connoiseur of fine movies.

(By the way, if you have not seen the movie, please be aware that this is NOT a proper review. It reveals everything about the ending. I am taking this liberty because I think the movie has been out for more than six months now. Don't read further if you want to watch the movie. This analysis is more about political beliefs than anything else.)

Before you stat reading this post, please visit the link - The Hindu -Ishrat Jehan's encounter.

The Story
The Police Commissioner of Mumbai gets a call warning him about five bombs set to explode at 6 PM unless he fulfills certain demands. We are introduced to a couple of second level police men. One of them is Arif Khan, who seems to enjoy bashing up people. He is with the ATS and the police themselves call him a psycho and a problem guy.
The guy who set the bombs, Naseeruddin Shah, then proceeds to demand the shipping of four terrorism suspects to the Juhu airport. In an abandoned runway, amid lots of drama with cell phones, three of the suspects are killed by Shah's bombs. The fourth one escapes, but then the police shoot him on the request of Shah.
Why did Shah do this? He explains in a lengthy dialog with the commissioner that he is just a common man and is tired of being killed by terrorists.
In the final shot of the movie, the commissioner does find Shah, but then leaves him free after shaking his hand.

The Writer and his stand
I have seen that in India, directors create movies with dubious moral stands (such as demeaning women). Then when questioned about such stands they ask us to enjoy the movie as a story. That is, they ask us not to attach any "meaning" to the movie.
Thus, a director like Parthiban can show a movie in which a raped woman ends up seeking and marrying her own rapist. Rajinikanth or Surya or Vijay can insult women's dresses and teach women how to behave all the time. But when confronted, they claim that it is just a story.
So, the first question to ask is if writers take stands about social issues or not in movies. It is recognised throughout the world that this is, indeed, the case, most of the time. A story in a movie is a point of view. It is somewhat like an argument. The writer positions characters around the argument and shows them in a bad or good or gray lights. This is particularly true of "commercial" stories. It is certainly true that when a shrew is shown to be slapped in a movie, the writer is guiding you towards certain judgements about women.
This is NOT the case with every story. I am not saying that stories are written with bad and good people in mind. But I think we are all intelligent enough to know when a writer is trying to guide us.
In this light, who are the "heroes" in "A Wednesday" and who are the bad people? What does the writer guide us toward?
The movie is not at all subtle in this regard. Naseeruddin Shah is shown as a "common" man again and again. He calls himself as a represntative. At the end of the movie, the commissioner lets him go (in spite of him killing three people) with a proud handshake.
So, the writer expects us to identify with Shah. He wants us to sympathise with the commissioner. And he wants us to spare no thoughts to the men killed for "terrorism".
Now that we are clear about what the writer is saying, is that a moral stand? I will not ask this question of every movie, but this movie, clearly, tries to make a political statement. It is not "just" a story. The writer is writing about contemporary events and asks us to judge a consequence of that.
This is where I had a big problem with the movie (I had other, more aesthetic issues which I discuss later).
The idea that some vague "terrorist" can be encountered at any point of time, without a trial, is morally abhorrent. And in this movie there is not enough shown to "judge" these guys.
At one point, Naseeruddin Shah says that people are kept in jails for ten years without a judgement - but that happens with EVERY case in India. By that logic, why shouldn't we be killing murder suspects? Why only "terrorists"? There have been serial, mass killers who have killed more people than some terrorists. Shouldn't we be killing people in the streets?
Once you have decided that a trial is just a bureaucratic requirement, then why stop with terrorists?
In fact, the cruel arm of the Indian state punishes more innocent people, by keeping them without trial in jails for as much as seven or eight years. Why didn't anyone make a movie out of THAT?
If Shah, the common man, has to be angry with someone, anyone at all, it should be the delayed justice system. Instead focussing on a formless "terrorist" who can be killed just like that, how morally repugnant is that?
To me, it is clear that Shah is the murderer in the movie. At least he should have been showed as deranged. This is why I could like the Tamil movie "Evano Oruvan" ("Dombivli Fast" in Marathi) better than this movie.
The director is not required to give a solution - but at least do not PERVERT the original issue.
The most revolting scene in the movie was the policemen killing Ibrahim in cold blood. Do people really think encounters are fun hunting of "terrorists"?
If you have not visited the link above yet, here it is, again: The Hindu -Ishrat Jehan's encounter.

The Revenge story
Now, we all enjoy revenge movies, of course. We all like it when a single man takes revenge for his family or lover. But there is a difference between that and this movie.
You see, in a revenge movie, the director has already shown US the viewers, who is responsible for the crime. At that point there is a direct, personal line of connection between the crime, the murderers and the vigilante.
In "A Wednesday" I saw no such connection -
1. There was no personal connection between Shah and the "terrorists"
2. There is no connection between the CRIME and the terrorists either.
So what the hell?
This is why I felt that the movie was deeply dishonest. I felt they had made it to exploit the resentments of people after the Mumbai attacks while really coming up with no innovative stand.

The Aesthetics of the movie
1. I told my friend that this could have been made as a telefilm or something more appropriate for television. The big twist in the movie was just the revealing of Shah's intentions. I did not think that was so mind-blowing that they make a movie out of it.
2. There are ZERO other innovations in the story. The entire "detection" process was a cop-out with a contrived "cool" hacker solving everything.
3. What is with Hindi movies and pretentious characters? I have heard NOBODY in my entire life saying "I love you" and "I love you too" over the phone. Only American television characters talk that way.
4. The movie also shows people in very predictable wooden stereotypes - the hacker, for example. This idea of a "cool" young computer geek is so stupid. I am in the industry and I can tell you I have never seen such people.

I would actually suggest that these guys make real Indian movies instead of thinking they will make an "almost Hollywood movie" as they say in reviews.

Airtel Super Singer 2009 Junior

Is this the group of singers that they selected after going through every city in Tamil Nadu? Most of these young singers should not be on TV singing - they need lots of training.
Zee Tamil had a far better show last year.
Chithra as a judge is too much for this show. She is carrying on gamely.
I only like the girl Alka's singing - she is a star. There are a couple of others who are good too.
Anyway here is a classy performance:

History, Race and Politics

A couple of years back, one of my friends wrote a post on logic, science and nature. I commented on that post and in the ensuing discussion, my friend mentioned that the Rig Veda could be 6000 years old! You can read the whole exchange here.
To support this he mentioned a few authors.
I also used to participate in debates in the forum at karuthu.com. Most discussions veered into history automatically. I noticed that people had lots of historical theories of themselves. One guy posted an image of a Babylonian bronze statue and said it looked like Thiruvalluvar and therefore Dravidians were Babylonians or some such weird theory. Many of the forums devolved into wild theories about Aryans and Dravidians. (Many of these threads are still active in Karuthu - for three years!).
I have always wondered about a couple of things:
1. Why do people have a need to invent dates more and more ancient for their cultures? I read a Tamil language history book long back which basically said Tamils were some of the earliest descendants from apes, and they were the first civilization. It also linked with the debunked "Lemuria" continent and so on. And this is a history book. Of course, Hindu fundamentalists keep tracing their history to Harappa, even though that civilization shows no traces of ancient Hinduism. Tamil fanatics trace to Harappa too.
2. Why do people think a thousand years is a short time? The Rig Veda's earliest parts are dated to around 1200 BC. Isn't that ancient enough? Why dump another 5000 years on top of it?

History is a Science
I believe one of the reasons we see this kind of extensions to timelines is this: people think anyone can reason out history. That is, the perception is that History is not as exact a science as, say, Physics. I don't think a non-physicist would go in and say one day, "Oh, special relativity is really wrong.". They don't dare to because in their minds Physics needs rigour and mathematics.
On the other hand, the way we are taught History, historians seem like a bunch of imaginative people who can just sit around cooking up theories. We do not see any rigour in History, even though historians go through as much peer review as other scientists.
(If you want to explore rigour in history, just take a look at the books dealing with Microlithic era(Later Stone Age). The level of detail and scholarship is amazing).
If we are asked about specific heat capacity or photoelectric effect, we do not volunteer our own theories. We refer to text books.
The text books say that the Rig Veda is 3000 years old. Why don't we just accept that?

History and Identity Politics
There is of course, another reason, the primary motivator: amateur intellectuals in India are not really happy about our present condition. We tend to glorify our past so that the recent humiliation of colonialism goes away. We blame our present condition on obscure historical roots and try to trace history to a "Garden of Eden" long back.
I noticed that RSS and VHP supporters think we were enslaved a thousand years back - that is, even before the British, they say, the Muslims were "occupying" our country. Thus their freedom struggle started in 1000 AD, not after 1857.
Believing this is a stretch - because these people are corrupting the definition of colonialism. The British were colonialists, who (because of reasons related to economics), kept the relationship suited for exploitation. The Muslim invaders, on the other hand, were basically migrants. Their system of exploitation was no different from, say, the Mauryans or the Guptas. India had endured such waves of migration - the north-west border was porous.
To call Prithviraj Chauhan's fight against Ghazni as a freedom struggle and equate it with our fights with the British is just not accurate.
Yet this myth has a very profound impact for Hindu nationalists. It fueled crazy acts such as the Babri Masjid demolition.

The Tamil Political Tool
One of the worst uses of history as a political tool was the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) propaganda in Tamil Nadu.
when I was in college, I asked one of my friends what he wanted most to clean up the country. He said he wanted to clean up the Aryan people from Tamil Nadu.
I was surprised by this, because I had no idea what he meant by Aryan people. Then one of my father's colleagues visited home and ranted for a long time about how Aryans worshipped Vishnu, while Shiva is a Dravidian god. A brahmin friend of mine said he wanted to learn German because that is where Aryans were from!
Now, if you took any standard reference book (such as Romila Thapar's Early History of India), you would understand that Aryan is a language grouping. For example, Hebrew is an Aryan language. NOBODY would call Jews an Aryan people. In fact six million Jews were killed during WWII because they were considered NOT Aryan.
Both the term Dravidian and Aryan are used as language groupings. Yet nobody can deny that they have been used as racial terms - without any basis.
I have read several books on Tamil History. Anna, a former CM of Tamil Nadu wrote an entire book on the "Aryan Maya". Almost none of these people were historians! That is, these people were doing the same thing that Hindu fanatics were doing - using History as a political tool, and basically revising history to suit their needs.


Race as a Social Construct
Modern historians consider Race as a social construct. Romila Thapar calls Race as an European concept.
Let us think about that for some time.
When people talk about race, they usually mean biological distinctions - when we call white people or black people as a "race" we mean they are identifiable by looks. Or atleast we imply a genetic distinction.
When Karunanidhi talks about the Tamil "race" he is not talking about Tamil speaking people. When the DK leader Veeramani or Periyaar talk about the Dravidian "race" what they mean is a biologically distinct set of people. If they just meant Dravidian language speaking people, there is no reason to exclude Brahmins from it.
Yet, NO such biological distinction exists in nature.
The whole idea of a biological race - whites or blacks or mongoloid or semitic or Aryan is a concept created by European society in the 17th and 18th centuries to deal with differences. It has no independent "scientific" meaning.
The only meaning race has is as a social idea. Because we all believe in race, it has an effect on society. It has no independent biological role.
Mind you, I am not saying that the caste system is good (people tend to make such jumps in reasoning) or that the Brahmin caste is an innocent bystander. By all means, let us condemn the caste system; let us undo this brahmanical order. But let us look for sociological reasons for such differences (if at all we are concerned about the origins). Caste has an independent social meaning - it is not necessarily identical as race. If you picked up a standard sociology text book, you will see that caste system is given a separate section. That is because it is a unique oppressive system.
The idea that "race" exists is very deep in our psychology. The first time I read about race being just a social construct, I had difficulty assimilating what that means. I had been trained to see the world as composed of different races, some of which "achieved" while others were also-rans. It took me some time to get my brain around the fact that this whole view is a myth.

Tenth Standard Exams

I will write more about our examination system later. I am trying to inteview one of my nephews.
Meanwhile, someone wrote in my comments (among lots of abuses), that the Indian education system is ideal because it separates good students from bad students.
That is, of course, not the goal of an education system. The goal should be to educate, not eliminate people from the job pool.
But then I remembered a few details about the 10th standard exam when I took it, back in 1987. I don't think much has changed till now.

You start preparing for the 10th standard exam when you are in the 9th holidays. From then on, if you go out to play, neighboring aunts frown at you and complain to your mother. So you stay at home the entire year.
Here was the list of things we had to endure going into the exams:
1. Geography - you had to remember the imports and exports of a dozen countries. Most of them had the same imports and exports except for one particular item. For example Cambodia would export rubber, rice, teakwood and coffee while Laos would export rubber, rice, teakwood and tea. So you had to remember that little change. Somehow the question paper writers loved to ask about the imports and exports.
So you ended up preparing acronyms and match them like this:
Laos - rrtt
Cambodia - rrtc
and so on. The day of the exam you tried to mug all these down.
Doesn't this sound pathetic? I have more below.

2. Apparently the guys who were correcting the answer papers were paid by how many papers they corrected every day. So, their incentive was to zip through your paper. So, you wanted to convince them by using - wait for it - color pencils. You had a bunch of color pencils and you had to underline key items in your answer. Supposedly the paper evaluator would then just look at the key words and award you marks.
Let us say the question was:

Write about the weather conditions in North America

You could write a learned tract about how the weather is shaped by the Rocky Mountains and the North Atlantic warm current. You could explain that weather moves from West to East in the plains and all that. Or, you could do this:

Weather of the Rocky of the Mountains of the Atlantic Ocean of the North of the America..of the.

And then underline the key words with red pencil and you will get full marks.
I am not sure if this was a myth or not, but we ALL had color pencils. All of them were sharpened and kept in boxes where the tip would not break off. Our own teachers said this was true and they should know.

3. If you skipped a question, you wanted to REALLY bring that to the attention of the evaluator. So, if you answered question numbers 1, 2, and then skipped 3 and went to 4, then unless you did something drastic, the evaluator would assume your answer to question 4 was really an answer to 3 and so on. So you would FAIL!!!
So when you skipped a question, you wrote the question number down and then struck through the paper twice. And then you pray.

4. The worst thing was the Science exam in 1987. It had 40 "one word" answers as the first section of the question paper. Since we were all focussing on saving time, our teachers suggested a classic method.
You see, as soon as you get the blank answer sheets, you have to draw margins. You should do this BEFORE they give you the question papers, because then the bell will ring and your countdown starts. You don't want to be drawing margins when the clock is ticking.
So you draw the margins. During the exam, you should write the question numbers down and then draw lines after every answer.
Well, our teachers taught us ANOTHER way to save time. You see, you know that there are going to be 40 "quick" questions in the Science exam. So, why not write the question numbers down and then draw the lines BEFORE they give the question papers?
So we were all trained to do that. Most of us got the answer papers and drew lines next to each other with the question numbers.
Unfortunately, that year the science paper setters wanted to create a "tough" question paper. Their idea of doing this was to ask questions that required long answers in the first 40.
So, we got completely messed up when we were given the question papers. Some of us bravely tried to "fit" the long answers within the existing lines. Some others started erasing the lines. But these left black marks on the white answer sheet and your answer sheet did not look "neat".

5. Again the science paper was supposed to be tough - so the idiot paper setters asked questions from remote corners in the text book. For example, there is a small "Do it yourself" section at the end of each lesson. They asked questions from that section, because no one notices it.

This is what passes for examinations in our education system. It is simply a way to play mind games with the students and torture them to paranoia. I do not remember a SINGLE thing I was taught in 10th - other than the sheer terror of the exams.
Remember we all have "exam nightmares"? The ones in which you dream about ending up in an exam without preparing? These are only next in horror to the "naked sprint" dreams in which you are walking outside nude.
(The worst dreams are ones in which you go to an exam unprepared AND nude).
I wonder if only Indians get these dreams...after our exam freak shows.

The left-behind majority

I hear often that racism or casteism cuts both ways. That is, it affects the perpetrators as much as the victims. I have often wondered about that - how does majoritarianism affect the majority and how does casteism affect the forward castes?
Some clarity came when I was reading this excellent series of blogs by Joe Bageant, the American author of the book "Deer Hunting with Jesus". Going through the letters in his site makes it clear how assumptions of white superiority affects whites themselves.

You see, the majority of American poor are white people. The majority of social security recipients in America are white people. Yet, whenever people in the United States talk of a "welfare queen" what they typically mean is a reckless black single mother. At least that is the image they conjure up.
This has come to mean that debate about health care reform or "entitlement" programs have sought to revolve around subtle racial messages. When Republican voters in America protest "socialism", what they are protesting is really their money benefitting black people.
Yet, blacks are not the major recipients of welfare.
Thus liberals and conservatives in the United States are locked really in a fight about benefits to black people and Hispanics - with liberals accusing of racism and conservatives of socialism.
Meanwhile the white poor in America receive no attention.
You see my point here? It is as if the myths of racial superiority of the white people actually end up making poor white people INVISIBLE to the media and activists. While debating back and forth over racism, people have forgotten that not every white person is an investment banker with an Ivy League degree. For example, the trade policies of the past 20 years in America have devastated manufacturing jobs held by whites as well.

Back to my first statement above, THIS is how racism, casteism and cultural hegemony affect the perpetrators' cultures themselves. Racism ends up hiding the poverty of white people. Untouchability practiced in India hides the plight of middle and forward caste members with little or no land. It makes such members subservient to their own rich caste members.

That is, racism and casteism rarely benefit anyone other than the creepy people who directly make money out of such antagonisms.

In my own (although limited) experience, Casteism also forces forward caste members to confirm to social rules and career paths and peer pressures that they can neither ignore nor meet adequately. I have seen this in school and college - forward caste students were expected to perform extremely well by their families; expectations that these students could not meet most of the time.
Holding up caste based or race based differences does not help anyone.

In another view of this, take the majoritarian views of the Hindu nationalists or Hindi nationalists. Both these views end up covering substantial cultural differences in North India. Telugu actor Chiranjeevi once said that entire sub-cultures in North India (such as Bhojpuri) were being disappeared by the domination of Hindi. What Hindu nationalists are attempting is not a secret - their goal is to create a lockstep mono-culture throughout India. In such efforts, they end up causing the numerous sub-cultures that make up Hinduism to disappear - thus making Hinduism itself a colorless religion.

The Myth of the Talented Few

Recently rediff.com published an article discussing economic inequality in developing countries. Predictably, anything related to reducing inequality brings out the crackpot theories in people. I reproduce below a coherent comment. I think to a certain extent this sentiment is believed in by some educated people in India. Therefore, this post is simply a rebuttal of such opinions.

Comment below
This is what the comment says:

There is a huge demand and effort to achieve "equality" among our planners, politicians and economists. They would like nothing more than to greatly reduce the wealth disparities that exist in society.

Though it would be a noble goal or objective, these people are living in a fools paradise.

God has not designed all people to achieve equally in all fields. Creating wealth is also one of them.

The only way a society can create wealth is to allow the talented few among the population to pursue their goals in a legal manner. This created wealth then dissipates into the economy following sound economic principles.

This way, the entire population gets benefited, not just those select people.

The moment you start interfering with this formula and cast a jealous eye on the wealth creators who end up with huge fortunes(at least in the beginning), under the mistaken objective of creating equality and egalitarianism, you choke the development of that society. The economy goes into decline. You can then spread poverty equally !

So, wake up. If we have still not understood this very basic economic principle, then we have no hope for the future.

Let the Ambanis, Mittals and Murthys earn their wealth. It is bound to come back into the economy in time. Till then wait patiently and dont complain.

Economics and Personality Cults
There are several things wrong with the opinion above, but the main one is this: "talented few creating wealth" is not an economic principle. Economics does not talk about talent or the absence of it. The above is simply a variation of Ayn Rand's "objectivist" philosophy as explained in her "FountainHead" and "Atlas Shrugged" Ayn Rand was a cult leader and a classic analysis of her cult is here.
I will come back to Ayn Rand later, but what the above opinion does is, it takes a personality cult of the "talented few" and tries to push it off as an economic theory.
It is informative that in the above list the commenter includes the Ambanis. He would probably include the Tatas. But the current members of the Ambani clan or the Tatas have INHERITED their wealth. What is their talent other than being BORN to rich fathers?
Talent or the lack of it only plays a very slight role in being rich in India (or as the author puts it, "creating wealth"). India is anything but a meritocracy where the "talented few" and the untalented compete in a fair playing field and the winner wins a fair fight. The myth of India as a meritocracy is dangerous - because it ignores the most fundamental reasons why we have so many people in poverty. But I will come back to this.
The closest in economic theory in the above comment is the idea of "trickle-down" economics. But as any economist will tell you, they don't teach that in economics courses because, again, it has no theoretical foundation.
Also, the commenter above is not clear on how long we should all wait sitting on our butts while "the talented few" go out there and "create wealth". I would like a timeframe.

Economics and "Equality"
When economists talk about "equality" they are not, as the commenter above thinks, talking about suppressing "talent". Neither are they talking about "egalitarianism". They are simply talking about creating a system where every economic actor has a choice and role in making rational decisions about their investments and labor. Such an economic system is ideal, because it enables efficiency, growth and trade. It so HAPPENS that such an economic system only exists in politically free societies with a strong, fair legal administration; and where income disparities are minimized.
This is why economists focus on reducing disparity - it is the only way an ideal economic system can be created.
Let us take the top 10 countries in the Human Development Index list in the UN. I have written about this previously here. Sweden, Norway, Australia, Canada, New Zealand all figure in the top 10. All of these countries have minimum income disparity.
Thus, empirically, the world's most livable countries have minimum economic inequality. How did they get this way? Not by accident. From the early 20th century policies were explicitly designed to reduce economic inequality.
If they had sat around spewed forth about the "talented few" as an economic theory they would not be in this position today.
If a country has wide economic differences, as India does, you cannot explain it away saying the talented few are kicking butt. That is not science. That is simply a personal opinion. When an economist looks at a country like India, they talk about equality because only equality inducing policies can result in our development to a livable nation.
That is, the above commenter is putting the horse before the cart. There is no simple "economic principle" that claims that you have to allow inequality for development to occur. It is the other way round - the lesser the inequality, the more a country develops.
This is why economists focus on property rights and land reform. Most land in India is held by very few people. Did they acquire this land because they were talented? No, most of them inherited this from a colonial and feudal past where they could take over whatever they wanted by force. Land reform and redistribution in India is a focus not out of emotion or charitable reasons. That is the only way a middle class with proper legal rights over their property can be created. That is the only way an economy can become efficient.
If Tata or Ambanis can just take over private property whenever they want to with the collusion of the government, then you have a deeply flawed economic system. Such a system cannot grow.
What we call redistributive policies, such as Social Security or Universal Health Care are the MEANS to India's development. They are not discussed because of jealousy.

Is India a Meritocracy?
Fundamental to the commenter's above arguments is the idea that India is a country in which the meritorious succeed and those who succeed are meritorious. This is patently not true - our colleges or schools are not designed to tease out merit. They are mostly designed to make us pass exams. Secondly even primary education is not universally available, 60 years after independence. Most importantly lower middle classes and the poor are unable to trade freely in their labor, capital or land. They get no credit line. The rural poor are worse off - with no access to even electricity or running water.
May be all this is because the poor are untalented. May be they should have been born to the Tatas.
May we should also forget that there is this little thing caled the caste system.
Here we have running dynasties in politics and industry, yet people have no shame talking about merit.
As long as India is not a meritocracy, the very little that is done to improve economic inequality is completely justified.

The Personality Cult of Objectivism
For those of who are unfamiliar with Ayn Rand and her books:
Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant to the United States who founded the philosophy of objectivism. She expounded on this in the very popular books, "The FountainHead" and "Atlas Shrugged". Usually people read these in college and it makes a heavy impression. Then you grow mature and realize that this whole "philosophy" is a personality cult. Ayn Rand herself was a cult leader (she also believed that a woman should always be subservient to her ideal man).
In "The FountainHead" Rand writes about the idea that society has a talented few who "innovate". Everyone else is a parasite who lives off of the talented. The whole book has erotic fantasies of submission and is just a complete rant.
By no means should these books be taken seriously by an adult. More dangerous is trying to fit these ideas into economics.

To a large extent the reason some people like Ayn Rand and talk about the talented few is because they think they are one of the talented few. This is basically a syndrome where you become oblivious to class differences and support the super rich for no reason than that you think you would become super-rich one day. This idea is pushed through by the media powerfully. In the process you tend to forget that you are also harmed by inequality.

What I am afraid of is that the above is not an isolated opinion. I have come across it repeatedly in discussions. One of the fundamental indications is that entrepreneurs (company founders) are glorified beyond reason in our media. The owner of a company such as Narayana Murthy or Ramalinga Raju are given incredible glory, and all success of their company is singularly attributed to them. Everyone who works in that company is discounted before the original "entrepreneurial" vision of Raju or Murthy - even though, Infosys or Satyam were neither pioneers in their field nor do they follow a unique business model. This glorification of company founders and businessmen is also a personality cult more than anything linked with actual economics.