Anniversary celebrations cannot be called a recent phenomenon. However, it seems like you see more of them nowadays, especially of a whole bunch of self-important people celebrating their achievements, purportedly at the wish of a bunch of sycophants. Recent celebrations, all in Kerala, that comes to mind are the 25th anniversary of a movie starfs acting career, 50th b'day of a lady guru, and if I remember correctly, some b'day celebrations of a couple of political figures.
Mohan Lal is arguably one of the most natural actors we have out there and he probably has earned millions in the last 25 years. Does that make it necessary to celebrate it with a whole bunch of people singing his praises in sycophantic shows? Perhaps he is a big time philanthropist and gives away 95% of his wealth for charitable purposes. Even then, you don't expect this level of sycophancy. Next thing you know, he'll be doing an MGR or a Schwarzenegger on us, a phenomenon, which we thought, was restricted to Tamil Nadu and USA.
Amma's 50 years of existence in this world is probably a blessing for Kerala. Not many people have a living, touchy-feely God in their midst. The spiritual industry that caters to the affluent is one way of getting more development. Her hospital in Kochi is the best in Kerala (it always makes me wonder why gods need hospitals. Saibaba also has a few). I read somewhere that last year her hospital treated about 4,000 poor people for free. That works out to about 11 people a day. If you go to any government hospital in Kerala, you get more than that in any given hour. People waiting in line to get the wonder drug called 'mitcher'. For people who are not familiar with mitcher, it is a transparent pink liquid (mixture is the original word) that is given out as a cure all for everything from warts to brain infarctions. And it works! On a percentage scale of effectiveness of cures, including godly hugs, I think it would come out on top easily. For instance, look at the tribal woman who claimed that Mother Teresa cured her tumour. Could be true. Mother T must have at least a million devotees. Out of which at least a hundred would have had some kind of cancer (I'm taking a wild guess there and being generous about it). One got cured after praying to her. That gives us a 10% success rate. I'm sure if 100 people with cancer take the mitcher, we will have an equal or better performance. Now, isn't that a pretty low standard the pope is having for sainthood. I'm going to start a mitcher cult once I go back to Kerala.
In addition to the aforementioned anniversaries, we have the usual jamborees by Jayalalithaaaaa (no idea how many a's at the end. I put 5 just to be on the safe side), Mayavati and their ilk. Jayalalithaaaaa and her followers are all dressed in green nowadays, because an astrologer told her that 'green' was the in-colour. Since when did astrologers become fashion designers? Our 'did the customary resignation act for a week' Human resources minister M M Joshi wants to include astrology in our University curriculum. His deputy minister Sanjay Paswan was walking around with a snake in his neck and wants to propagate tantric studies. Interestingly, he says (read in a magazine) that there is no scientific basis to Sri Sri Ravishankar or Mata Amritanandamayi. You know what? I rue the day my mother, a staunch believer in astrology, sent me to study engineering instead of astrology. I could have had Jayalalithaaaaa walking around in fluorescent canary yellow saris and the PM or President in shocking pink underwear (with a 'Maine Pyar Kiya' logo on it) over their dhotis a la Superman, instead of sitting in front of a PC telnetting into routers. The one thing I'd like to do if given a chance is to telnet into and read the minds of these gurus and astrologers when they dish out these things.
Having said that, I still think that spiritual industry is the mainstay of our economy. We produce enough gurus to sustain the steady stream of foreign exchange into the country and also many other positive by-products like hospitals. The gurus also go abroad to sell, sorry, spread spiritualism and love around the world. However, if you look at the itinerary of any of our gurus, you see that the destinations are limited to USA, Canada, Europe (western) and Japan. This is a very intelligent move. There are a vast number of people in these countries who have problems and worries that need to be addressed and they worry in terms of dollars, euros and yens. A Ghanaian who worries in Ghana Cedi giving 10,000 Cedis (about 1.2$) to the spiritual cause is not much of an incentive to travel to Ghana, is it? By the way, Kofi Annan is from Ghana. Paul Holmes, a NZ TV guy, recently called Annan a 'cheeky darkie' and said the world was not going to be told how to live by a Ghanaian. Annan should have been grateful to the white men for their benevolence in putting him in that seat instead of uttering things against them. Isn't it nice when you hear people talk from their heart about these things like race and caste? Though they do give out fake apologies later, it shows for a fleeting instant, that all the talk about human equality and love are, well, just talks.
PS: Madhu, an actor who turned 70 recently, got angry when a meeting he attended turned out to be a celebration of his achievements (secretly organized by a friend who must have been motivated by other such events). It was heartening to see that we still have a few people with enough decency left in them to disapprove such acts.