Ask Aakar Anything: How much attention should we pay to the 2016 US Presidential elections?

If you were stuck on a desert island, which five things would you keep with you (other than communication and travel equipment, of course!)?
Tamanna Bhattacharya
The first thing I would ask for is another human being, and preferably five of them. If we were not to consider them things, and I had to actually pick out objects, I would say: all the books in the world, all the booze in the world, and that would do me just fine — I wouldn’t need the other three things. To be alone, to be in solitude is to be contemplative, and the one way to look inwards is through alcohol and the one way to look outwards is through literature and history. I think beyond these two, not much else is needed. My wife had a very interesting answer when I asked her something similar, which is that if you had only one thing that you could eat for the rest of your life, what would it be? She thought about it for a minute, and said: Cyanide.
 
America votes for a new President in 2016. How much attention should we pay to these elections? Do you think they’re likely to affect us significantly?
Nikita Mehta
Not in any significant way, but I think we still ought to pay attention because they are so entertaining. I think US elections, after the ones in India, are the most fun to observe, particularly if you have people like Donald Trump in the race: a total nut-job, but very entertaining.The US doesn’t have too many  natural friendships apart from Europe and Israel. It tends to have transactional ones. It calls India a “strategic partner”, but I don’t really know in what sense that is — we are a very small player in the global economy, we can’t really be a balance to China no matter how much we think of ourselves. The threats to the US, on the other hand, come mainly from China and Russia. So India is neither a threat nor particularly a large ally, so I think that no matter who becomes President, the relationship – the sort of bonhomie – we have with the US will not change. But, it will be entertaining!

What is your personal policy on beggars that approach you? To give or not to give and why?
Shreya Singh
Let me start with a story. Twenty years ago — in 1995 — I read in a newspaper that I was working for, a little piece that had come from R.K. Laxman, the cartoonist for The Times of India. He was asked what he did when confronted by beggars. He said this: he said he liked travelling in the Ambassador, and the reason was that in the modern low-slung cars the beggar looked down on you. In the Ambassador, he looked down on the beggar and that made him feel in charge. I thought that was quite petty of the man. I have never really liked him or his work and I have always wondered why he has been so revered. So far as I go, I have the same dilemma as you do and many of us do: which is, what is to be done given the fact that we are confronted by beggars almost every day. I try and keep some change in the car. I think air-conditioning in cars has more or less changed the way that beggars operate at traffic stops. They can’t really access people and plead with them too much when the window is up. When I don’t have change, I don’t give the money. But it is a question that never really leaves me, and I know why you are asking it: should we give and go down the route of the old middle class tale (“you’re spoiling them for life”), or should we be humane and give the money? At this point, I would say, ‘Give the money.’ I hope I remember that the next time a beggar comes to me. 

(This is an extract from Ask Aakar Anything, a weekly podcast. You can listen to the rest of the show here: www.audiomatic.in. DNA readers can send their questions for Aakar Patel to aaa@audiomatic.in with DNA in the subject line.)