THE SECRETS OF HIMACHAL'S HAPPINESS QUOTIENT

    Notwithstanding 88 episodes of Man Ki Baat and the chanting of Hanuman Chalisa at every street corner, India continues to be one of the unhappiest nations on earth: it is ranked at 136 out of 146 countries. But till now we were not aware of the inter-se ranking of our individual states. Now, however, we have a survey that does so, conducted by the HR firm Happy Plus Consulting . According to this report, Himachal is the happiest state in the country, and Uttar Pradesh the unhappiest. That last bit is no surprise, actually. What else can one expect in a state where a man of holy orders is wont to issue unholy orders, where the IPC has been replaced with the JCB and where the state spends more resources on concealing deaths than on preventing them ?

   But coming back to my state. I have spent 46 years in Himachal and fully endorse the finding about its pre-eminent happiness quotient and, having little else to do, will reflect on why the "pahariyas" are such a joyful lot. One reason could be found in another report- a survey by the online platform AMBROSIA, which tracks all things pertaining to liquor consumption in the country. According to Ambrosia, Himachal is among the seven top states in the country in terms of per capita liquor consumption. And this does not even include the "angoori" and "ghanti" brewed by just about every household in its tribal districts! The connection between boozing and being happy is difficult to dismiss. And it surely cannot be a coincidence that Punjab, the creator of the Patiala peg, is the second happiest state in India. Himachalis are aware, of course, that alcohol does not solve any of life's problems, but then neither does water or milk, so why not give it an, err, shot? And it appears to be working.

   There are other founts of happiness too. Notwithstanding the tippling, your average Himachali is a sensible chap and regards politicians like he would a canker in his apple crop. He changes the party in government every five years lest the blighters take up permanent abode in his orchard. These two fungi- the Congress and the BJP- have been exchanging power alternately for decades: not that there is anything to distinguish the two parties from each other, other than the Himachali caps they sport: the BJP cap is of a maroon shade (soon to become saffron, I learn) while the Congress one is green (soon to change to rainbow colours if Prashant Kishore has his way). This limited tenure in power ensures that the bulldozers are used only for road construction, illegal mining and deforestation.

   Himachal has been blessed in that the it has not had to suffer the likes of the Bulldozer babas and mamas, or "khela hobe" didis or disappearing behenjis so far in its short history. It is also fortunate that the chameleon does not figure among its abundant wildlife- as yet. Your typical high altitude villager here, deprived of oxygen from a young age, is a simple creature and likes to see things in just two shades- black or white. A chameleon would confuse him, and detract from his happiness quotient. Which is why the imminent entry of that archetypal chameleon- Mr. Kejriwal- and his party into the state is not good news. The Aam Aadmi Party's smoothie of soft Hindutva, xeroxed nationalism, fake probity, and opportunistic secularism would be too complex a blend for the unsophisticated Himachali mind. Methinks the good burghers of the state may have to augment their tippling to ensure that a different coloured cap- white- does not enter the state.

   The businessmen and contractors here, unlike their counterparts in Karnataka, are a happy lot too. The payola and hush money has been kept at reasonable and affordable levels and is linked to the RBI's repo rate to negate any volatility in the market. It was not always so, till in the early 80's a frustrated contractor from Mandi wrote to the government demanding to know what the approved rate of bribery in the state was, and requested for a copy of the relevant government notification. Since then the rates have been standardised, which has done much to improve the ease of doing business in the state. Now everyone is happy- the contractor or vendor knows by what percent he has to inflate his bills, the babu can better plan his retirement corpus, and the public knows exactly how many potholes to expect in every kilometer of road. Predictability makes for a sound business environment.

   The primary cause of unhappiness in other states- the police- are a benign lot in Himachal. Their only "encounters' are with the occasional bear in Bharmour, the last lathi charge was in 1982 in Bilaspur ( when I was Deputy Commissioner there and had mis-read some provisions of the CRPC), and they abhor any kind of violence like Amit Malviya abhors the truth. To prove this last point: one evening, when I was still in service, I was loitering on Mall road in Shimla, trying to decide whether I should buy a book from Minerva or have a plate of chhole bhatura in Baljee's. Suddenly a violent fracas broke out in front of Gaiety Theater, a bunch of Haryanvi tourists expressing themselves in their lingua franca- fisticuffs, kicks, brickbats and the traditional references to mothers and sisters. Three patrolling women police constables observed the scene placidly for about five minutes and then one said to the others: "I think we should call the police", and off they went to the police post! If at all Himachal police indulge in violence, it is usually against their own kind, not the public, as was demonstrated last year when the Kullu SP (Supdt. of Police) roundly slapped the Head of the Chief Minister's security detail. Peace and brotherliness was restored when the SP allowed himself to be walloped in return. Such understanding is rare and the citizens are a happier lot for it.

  Another reason for Himachal's happiness is that it is confident of itself as it is well represented in the country's power structure : in Anupam Kher it has a pre-eminent bhakt (if a doubtful Kashmiri pundit); the Great Khali was breaking heads and stones in Sirmour district long before he made it to WWF; Mr. JP Nadda, the BJP President belongs to the state; Priyanka Gandhi owns a lovely cottage near Kufri; Mr. Vajpayee used to frequently visit Prini village near Manali where he had built himself a farm house; Mr. Modi claims to have spent many years in the forests and mountains here, though nobody remembers seeing him, just as nobody recollects seeing him in college. But here, folks, is the clincher- would you not be ecstatic if you had Kangana Ranaut or Preity Zinta as your next-door neighbour ?

   I rest my case.  

MOVE OVER, ECONOMICS-- CRONINOMICS IS HERE !

   I've always had a sneaking suspicion that my father-in-law always doubted my educational credentials and felt that there were significant gaps in my education. This was based on the fact that I did my Masters in English from Hindu college. I can see where he came from: the English in this Jat citadel was something even Chetan Bhagat would despair of. What we did to the Queen's language should have attracted various sections of the IPC, in particular 303, 376 and 377. But he was wrong- what I missed out on was not English but Economics.

   I know all the basic rules of Economics, of course: that we are all dead in the long run (and in the short run too, if you happen to be in Ukraine or Lakhimpur Kheri), that every economist has an equal and opposite economist, that when the government wants to rob Peter to pay Paul it can always count on the support of Paul, that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money, and with capitalism that you run out of people to rob. I've even read Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and flagellate myself every week by plodding through Swaminathan S Aiyer's articles and reading Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman's lips. Nothing works, because I just can't make sense of this dismal science as practiced in our country.

  Take the stock market and its baffling tumescence: it keeps rising and rising even while every financial indicator around it keeps collapsing. It was at about 40000 in March 2020, and then Covid happened. In the next 18 months the bottom dropped out of our GDP, hundred of millions became unemployed, 120 million were forced into poverty, more than 5 lakh people died (50 lakhs, according to a stalled WHO report), 4 lakh businesses shut down. But the Sensex kept rising, crossed 60000 last year and is now at 58000. Dalal Street has to be hallowed ground because here even the dead would rise from their graves. I guess somebody is making money out of all this legerdemain but is anyone counting the bankrupted? I can't for the life of me explain how this happens because I myself stay away from shares- gentlemen prefer bonds, you know. But I know of someone who explained this insanity very well, being the head honcho in one of these lunatariums: John Meynard Keynes it was who said: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

   Consider next our Unicorns, of which we have about 130. Less than 30% of them are profitable, the others naturally pay no dividends to their star-struck shareholders, and yet their market valuation is all above one billion dollars ! How can a loss making company be worth Rs. 7500 crores, for God's sake? The basic laws of economics do not apply to them, however. Every time a Unicorn floats a public issue the market goes ga-ga and dances begin in the TV studios. This, even though a recent Economic Times article reveals that 543 IPOs have been listed in the last ten years, of which 85% have either stopped trading, or dropped below the issue price or turned into penny stocks ! And yet, whenever a new IPO is announced the riot police have to be called out to curb the enthusiasm of the lemmings who want to pour their life savings into it. The most recent example of this virus of capitalism was the PayTM IPO fiasco: the company raised Rs. 18300 crore just four months ago by listing the issue price of its shares at Rs. 2150. It was over subscribed three times. The shares are now trading at just Rs. 659.00 or thereabouts- 70% below the issue price ! Millions have been ruined. As the Kingston Trio sang: when will we ever learn?

  Spare a moment to reflect on the magical properties of our Bankruptcy Code and its prime instrument, the NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal). You would expect that a bankruptcy law would protect the interests of the investors and creditors of the company which goes belly up. You would be disappointed- it actually serves the interests of the promoters and their ilk. And the magic?- it lies in converting public money into private profits. Ruchi Soya is a shining example of this: a Rs. 31900 crore company which owed Rs. 12146 crore to the banks was acquired for just Rs. 4350 crores by another jholawalla; to make payment of this latter amount he took a loan of Rs.3250 crores from the same banks who were owed money by this company; he then paid off this loan by issuing an IPO for Rs. 4300 crores and getting the funds from the public. The bottom line- said mendicant now owns 95% of a Rs. 40000 crore company by putting up just Rs. 1000 crore of his own funds. And, oh, one more small detail: the banks have lost about Rs. 6000 crore in the whole deal. These are financial contortions worthy of a Houdini.

  This is not an isolated example, it is the norm, and explains why our NPAs (Non Performing Assets) continue to increase by a few lakh crores every year. Banks  (read you and me) lose thousands of crores, the promoters who siphoned off the moneys get away scot- free to build on their expertise and float other companies, the banks' directors get cushy sinecures in these new ventures. Here is a short illustrative list of companies which have gone through the bankruptcy/ NPA process and the haircuts taken by banks:

LOAN TO       LOAN AMOUNT- NCLT SETTLEMNT-  LOSS TO BANKS- BENEFICIARY

DHFL                       91000 crores           37250 crores                53750 crores         Piramal Group

Bhushan Steel          57505 crores            35200 crores                22305 crores        Tata Steel

Essar                        54000 crores             42000 crores                12000 crores        Arcellor Mittal

Bhushan Power        48000 crores             19350 crores                28650 crores        JSW Steel

Lanco Infra               47000 crores             5300 crores                  41700 crores         Kalyan Group

Videocon                  46000 crores             2900 crores                   43100 crores        Vedanta Group        

   Do you notice the delicious irony in the above figures? One fat cat exits with his pockets bulging and another moves in licking his chops.  You and I get another 100 bps less on our savings because the bank has taken another haircut and has to recover its loss from its depositors. This perhaps explains why private sector investment has been declining- a promoter can make make more money by bankrupting his existing company than by starting a new one! One cannot but suspect that these bankers and industrialists are part of the country's most exclusive club, relegating Parliament to second place. There is just one eligibility requirement for admission- one must possess a degree in Croninomics . It's high time the UGC introduced this in its syllabus, for the old style Economics is now as obsolete as decency and honesty.

PURANIKOTI DIARY- OF TOURISTS AND WATER WOES

  CATCH  THE  RAIN  WHERE  IT  FALLS,  WHEN  IT  FALLS.

   We came up to our home in Puranikoti village in Mashobra ( near Shimla) on the 8th of this month, as we have been doing every year these last 13 years. And realised, with a shock, what the Doomsday clock is all about. I have never seen our village as dry, scorched and parched in April as it is this year, and that too after an unusually wet winter with record snowfall. Clearly, something is not right. The terrific heat has made nature skip spring and go straight into summer. The apple and rhododendron trees are at least a month ahead of their normal schedule- the former have shed their flowers and the setting of the fruit has begun. the latter are already ablaze with red like a lady of pleasure on her night out. The willows already have a full canopy, the rock begonias have bloomed and shed their flowers long before their time. The bees and butterflies are no longer taking flight in my garden.

                                       

                                                 

                                                  [ Flowering rhododendrons. Photo by author ]

   The biggest impact of this month long dry spell, however, has been on the water sources in the whole Panchayat of about seven villages. The IPH Department supplies water through tube wells sunk in the forests, the latter acting as a sump for storing the rainfall underground. There are also natural sources in the forests which the villagers have traditionally tapped at their own level for their homes and irrigation of the vegetable cash crops grown here. The system worked well so far but has been thrown out of balance this year. The sources have almost dried up, IPH supply has been reduced to once in two days, the hoteliers and homestay owners are tearing their hair out by their shallow roots, and water wars are looming on the horizon.

   The dry spell this year has exposed the huge deficiencies in the state govt's planning and policies, something which many concerned citizens and conservationists have been flagging for many years. Puranikoti this April is a microcosm of what happens when state govts don't listen and prioritise short term gains over sustainable planning.

   The balance which had been struck between demand and supply of water in our area over decades has been disturbed. On the demand side, the govt has allowed mushrooming of hotels and homestays without considering water availability. In Puranikoti itself we have added about 80 hotel rooms and 25 homestay rooms, meaning an additional demand of at least 50000 to 75000 liters of water every day. This is just not available. These days the place is just crawling with tourists, every room booked, even the nooks and crannies in the rocks occupied by laggards who had forgotten to make reservations!  Private tankers are selling water at Rs. 1000/ for 1500 liters, and God only knows from which contaminated nullahs they are lifting the water. This rate is bound to go up exponentially as summer advances. Local villagers do not take kindly to " outsiders" ( read hotels and tourists) trying to lift water from their already depleted natural sources, especially at a time when they themselves need it the most to save their stressed vegetable and apple crops. There is tension in the air, as palpable as the suppressed sexual undertone in a striptease show.

   As I see it, there are two prime culprits responsible for this mess. The first is the Tourism Deptt. which has been permitting/ registering hotels and homestays all over the state with gay abandon, without considering the carrying capacity of the areas or villages and towns, or without coordinating with other departments to enhance the capacity wherever needed. This short-sightedness has already ruined all of Himachal's towns, without exception, and it is the turn of the villages and rural areas now, to get a taste of "development".

   The second culprit is the state's Forest Deptt. which seems to think its only job is to levy fines rather than prevent a forest violation, or to plant trees of which 70% do not survive, or to grant permission for felling of trees. Given that water scarcity is looming large in the Himalayan states according to every study on climate change, one would have expected that this department would have taken proactive steps to manage its forests with a view to conserving water. But its dozens of PCCFs, Addl PCCFs and CCFs clearly think this is a waste of time. Not only have they not initiated any forward looking programmes, they have let even the existing programmes run to ruins. Once again, I have to go no further than my own village to find proof of this.

   Puranikoti ( indeed, the whole panchayat of Moolkoti) is surrounded by thousands of hectares of the most dense and lush forests of deodar, blue pine and oak trees- an ideal sponge for absorbing rainfall and snow- melt. This is proven by the dozens of nullahs and water courses that snake through the forests, supplying water to the villages and charging the many natural springs here. All that is needed by way of human intervention is to construct a few check dams on these nullahs to impound the flow- off and allow the ground/ forests to absorb the waters.

                                          

                                              [ Lush forests of Puranikoti. Photo by the author]

  Not only is the department not doing this, but it has also failed to maintain the few check dams that existed. Barely a hundred meters from my house is a watercourse that till a few years ago had a stream that flowed happily the whole year round, thanks to three check dams built on it. Today it is dry and waterless except for a few hours when it rains, because all three check dams have collapsed into rubble (see photo below). My personal requests to the Forest Secretary, DFO Shimla and the Range Officer have had no effect. Just this one nullah could have met the needs of a whole village throughout the year- and did, because the villagers had laid their own rubber pipes from it to their homes and fields. Today they are all useless, and this is the story of all the nullahs in Puranikoti ( and, no doubt, the whole state).

                                        

                       [ The dry watercourse and its broken check dam. Photo by the author ]

   In 2008, when Mr. J.P. Nadda ( the BJP President) was the Forest Minister, we had launched a conservation scheme called the Van Sarovar programme. Its aim was to dig/ construct thousands of baoris ( water bodies) in the forests, along the natural contours, to impound and collect the rainwaters, with funding from CAMPA and MNREGA. They would have manifold benefits: provide water holes for wildlife, recharge the groundwater and streams, prevent erosion from the runoffs, make available water to fight forest fires. It was a low cost ( only local stones and earth was to be used), low gestation, employment intensive and immensely beneficial scheme- just what Himachal needs in the times to come. But for some unexplained reasons, the department has allowed this programme to wither away like its plantations.

                                        

                     [ A Van Sarovar structure in Khorli Poi area of GHNP -2017. Photo by author]

   It is time the Himachal govt. wakes up and adopts this and similar conservation measures to preserve and harvest its ample rain and snow precipitations. The Jal Shakti maxim " Catch the rain where it falls, when it falls" should not remain a mere slogan but should be acted upon urgently. Very soon, the annual " water crises" will become a regular and permanent feature, and the first sector to be hit will be Tourism. Already, Shimla has received a big jolt last week with the Tour Operators of Gujarat and Kerala ( which provide 60-70% of the tourist bookings here) announcing that they are boycotting Shimla because of traffic congestion and lack of parking spaces.

  Tourism is Himachal's biggest revenue earner and employment generator. But even a milch cow needs to be carefully nurtured and should not be taken for granted. Right now our milch cow is running on near empty.

                        

  

  

  

DON'T BLAME THE IAS , A NATION GETS THE CIVIL SERVICES IT DESERVES

    Mr. D. Subbarao, a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and ex- Governor of the Reserve Bank of India has, in a recent article in The Times Of India and in an interview with Karan Thapar, castigated the IAS in no uncertain terms and accused it of betraying and failing the country. His tirade (what prompted it?) goes beyond the usual quick fixes many retired officers are fond of advocating. It's a bit of a fashion these days for superannuated IAS officers to run down the service and to distance themselves from it. But Mr. Subbarao is a sober and moderated person, and so his harsh views need to be examined with some seriousness.

  To encapsulate his words, he says that the IAS has become corrupt and incompetent, that 25% of its members are corrupt, 50% are incompetent, leaving only 25% to shoulder the brown man's burden: what delivery there is, is owing to this last fraction. This, he says quite rightly, was not so in the 1960's and 1970's and he ascribes the rot to flaws in recruitment, training, lack of specialisation and proper career planning. The cure, he continues, lies in overhauling these processes and lateral induction on a much larger scale than the token numbers attempted so far.

   I am in agreement with him on some aspects, but disagree on most. Mr. Subbarao is right about the corruption and incompetence (though one may quibble on the percentages which may differ from state to state) but his diagnosis is superficial and not very different from the groove already carved out by other retired IAS officers like Deepak Gupta and Anil Swaroop. They all make the mistake of peering at the IAS under a microscope but not seeing the larger picture, the context in which it functions. They all concentrate on the obvious-training, career planning, performance evaluation, promotion, etc. Admittedly, there is scope for improvement in these areas, though I emphatically disagree about lateral entry. A huge and diverse country like India can only be managed by a "generalist" civil service with a 360* vision, not tunnel visioned specialists. I have explained this perspective in great detail in an earlier piece :

 [ https://avayshukla.blogspot.com/2017/10/privatising-ias-is-mistake.html]   

and will not dwell on it here. For none of these factors/ problems address the primary issue, which is one of national character and values, and the effect they have on the civil services.

   If the IAS has failed it is because the country has failed (or is failing, at an accelerated rate). In terms of character, values and ethics India is no longer the nation it was in the 1950's, 1960's and early 1970's. This is true not only of its polity but also of its society in general. The post- Independence leaders and influencers like Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Ambedkar, Madan Mohan Malviya, T.T Krishnamachari, Acharya Kriplani, Jyoti Basu, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jaiprakash Narayan (to mention just a handful), industrialists like JRD Tata, Jamnalal Bajaj, Dinshaw Petit and GD Birla, editors like Desmond Doig, Arun Shourie, Sunanda K Dattaray, Kushwant Singh, Frank Moraes and Russi Karanjia have been mostly replaced by pygmies and carpet baggers. These people may win elections, make 29 billion US dollars in one year or run up huge TRP ratings, but they are incapable of promoting public values or morals, or establishing ethical corporate standards, or writing an editorial (let alone investigating a story). In fact they do the reverse, and have contributed hugely to the deterioration of the national ethos and character. In short,  for the last five decades or so the country has had no principled leadership worth the name in any sector of social, political or economic activity- there have only been Pied Pipers who have strutted on the roads for some time, played their tune, and led us over a cliff to moral bankruptcy and worse as a nation.

   And things are getting worse every passing day under the present government. Over the decades just about every institution has been hollowed out and is on the point of collapse- autonomous bodies, Parliament and state Assemblies, Regulatory agencies, all governmental services, even the judiciary and the defense forces. In none of them is there any inspiring leadership worth its name, almost all are compromised by power, pelf and their biases. The message this sends to the bureaucracy and public at large is that unscrupulousness, sycophancy, corruption pays.

  The average Indian has become completely transactional and self centered, without morals or scruples. Everything is seen in terms of personal benefit and convenience, for which we allow the corrupt state a long rope. Morals and ethics be damned so long as we can make a few more bucks, buy another car or house, evade some more taxes, cheat a few more idiots. This was particularly evident during the Covid lockdowns when the poor and the vulnerable were left to fend for themselves while we watched Netflix in our barricaded housing societies. And now of course we have the ultimate Viagra- minority bashing. We can overlook just about every wrong or mistake of the government- inflation, joblessness, cronyism, covid deaths, police brutality, purloining of our basic rights- provided we can teach Muslims and Christians and their supporters a lesson.

  The perfect proof and demonstration of this was Lakhimpur Kheri, where a Union Minister's son allegedly ran over four farmers and a journalist deliberately. The state allowed five people to be ruthlessly killed in broad daylight, did every thing to cover up the crime. It refused to dismiss a Minister who is the father of the main accused and himself mentioned in an FIR. The judiciary appointed an SIT in a half hearted manner and then released the prime accused on bail! (The bail was later cancelled on appeal after a huge public outcry). And what did the good people of Lakhimpur do just months later in the polls in 2019 ? They elected the same party that did all this back to power, giving it all eight seats from that area ! Lakhimpur exposes, in microcosm, all that is wrong with India today.

   The IAS is rooted in the Lakhimpur Kheris of this nation, and its members come from there. Why should we expect it to be any different, or better, than any of the other governmental institutions or the rest of a sick society ? Why should we expect its members to be guided by a moral compass that is any different from the one that guides the rest of society to its perdition? A six month semi- vacation in Mussoorie is not going to change substantially the values and code of ethics they have picked up in their families and social circles, or to make them unlearn the fundamental lessons they have picked up- that nothing else matters other than money and power, that one should do unto others before they do unto you. They cannot but be influenced by the unprincipled and amoral environment in which they function. The deterioration in the IAS is the inevitable result  and reflection of the degradation of our society, polity and principles, the lack of any pathfinders. No amount of tinkering with recruitment, promotion, training or evaluation processes is going to change this basic reality, Mr. Subbarao, and the IAS will not change for the better unless its external environment changes for the better first.

   Ironically, this external environment is only getting worse under the present BJP regime. The IAS's constitutional status as a federal, not central, service is being eroded everyday, its inconvenient members being hounded by central agencies, attempts being made to reorient its loyalty from the states to Delhi, all independence of thought or action being crushed, even the All India Service Rules being amended to establish complete control by the Center over its officers. It won't be long before that 25% (officers with integrity) plummets to 5%. The service is doomed if things continue in this manner. At the end of the day a country gets the government- and the civil services- it deserves for (as the old adage goes) what you reap is what you have sown. In India's present context, to expect a civil service which is upright, independent, just, empathetic and honest while the rest of the country is going to the dogs is a pipedream.

   At one point in the interview Mr. Subbarao compares the image of the IAS (quite unfavourably)  with that of the British civil services, pointing out that people there trust the British Cabinet Secretary's inquiry into the 10 Downing Street covid parties, whereas no one today reposes any credibility in any inquiry by an IAS officer. Absolutely right, but I wish he had also mentioned the factors which ensure the upright reputation of the civil services in the UK, and that the Cabinet Secretary's report will be impartial and independent: the high standards of public life, a free and fearless press, a watchful and unforgiving citizenry, a Parliament that does much more than just sing paeans to its leader, an independent judiciary that does not seek sinecures, a govt. sensitive to public opinion, rock solid protection for civil servants which no errant and vengeful Prime Minister can dismantle. None of this is available in India today to motivate a civil servant to behave like his British counterpart. A spine is only as strong as the bones, tissue, muscles and ligaments which surround it, like a protective sheath and keep it in place. The IAS has been losing this sheath for sometime now, a few more years and the "spine" will only be fit for mounting in a natural history museum in the nation's capital. If we have a nation still left that is, or one that is worth preserving.

  Blaming the IAS is a cop out, an alibi which may make some of us feel good. What we all need to do instead is some serious soul searching, for the rot lies within.

  

REVERSE GEAR

    I've just bought a new car (in Neerja's name, naturally, since she uses it 90% of the time, my 10% quota consists of taking it for servicing, refueling and getting the punctures fixed), and that has primed me to talk about cars this week. It's a much more interesting subject, you will agree, than our politics which has settled into a groove not unlike the exit drain from your septic tank and (pardon me) is the same old crap every morning.

   I started driving in the sixties; that was about when I started using after-shave since no girl would give me the time of day, forget about a slice of the evening. These initial forays were in my dad's cars, he replaced the old one every four or five years because his job involved extensive touring and the roads those days were more like the pock marked cheeks of Om Puri than that of the lady from Mathura. My dad was Calcutta born, bred and toasted (he played for Mohun Bagan before HIS dad reminded him that he was running out of free lunches like I run out of a free reading of the New Yorker articles these days), and so naturally bought only Landmasters and Ambassadors. No tougher cars have ever been built- with these rugged pioneers one didn't even need these ubiquitous XUVs, SUVs, MUVs and CUVs of today. In later years, however, my dad gravitated to the Maruti, in recognition of the fact that the Ambassadors were becoming outdated and obsolete, like their All India Service namesakes in South Block today. Maybe the latter too need a bit of Japanese expertise, like the Maruti did. Just a suggestion for Mr. Jaishankar once he gets over the waffling on the Ukraine issue.

   Those were the days of simple basics and innocence: a car was supposed to get you from place A to place B in reasonable comfort and hopefully in one piece. It consisted basically of three components- an engine, a body and four tyres. I've bought four cars in my entire mis-spent life (if that sounds a lot like "entire political science" I can't help it)- a second hand Fiat in 1982, a second hand Maruti 800 in 1991, a Hyundai I20 in 2010 and now the Venue referred to earlier. That amounts to a car every decade: it's no coincidence that the Pay Commission is also set up every decade, what?

   My problems started with the I-20 and have reached total fruition with the Venue. For starters, I have paid more for just the insurance last month than I did for the whole ruddy Fiat in 1982. More to the point, I thought I was buying a car, not a variant of a Boeing 747. There is so much instrumentation these days that the whole thing looks like a cockpit rather than a dashboard, the only thing missing is the arm waving air-hostess on the jump seat (though Neerja provides a fair substitute when I take a wrong turn). They even have an auto-pilot called cruise control. One spends more time looking at the dials than the road: little wonder our road accident rates are going up every year, notwithstanding Mr. Gadkari's 38 kms of new expressways built every day. Or maybe because of them, our drivers inspired by the landings and take-offs of fighter jets on the Yamuna expressway- if a Squadron Leader can do it so can a road hog from Punjab.

  We no longer use the left hand to move the gear lever; cars now have automatic transmission, releasing the left hand for texting on the cell or scratching our testimonials in the time honoured north Indian manner. For those who don't want to scratch there's something called IMT (Intelligent Manual Transmission), but that's only for those who have an IQ of more than 70 , which means that this variant is not available in UP, Bihar and Haryana. We no longer twist our scrawny necks (an essential physio routine for those above sixty) to reverse the car: there are now rear cameras for that. Parking used to require that we mentally calculate the available space to wedge the car in the slot: this is now done by something called Park Assist. In my time we were happy to have a stereo for music, with two speakers; now there just has to be a small TV screen, six speakers and surround sound, even though one is surrounded by the sound of blaring horns, shrieking sirens and the wife getting the worse of an argument with her mother on the phone. There's a thingy called Bluetooth which I'm afraid to even touch lest it bite.                                                                                              In my halcyon but simple days if one lost one's way one stopped at a chaiwalla or taxi stand and asked for directions. No more. For one, all the chaiwallas have become Ministers in government; two, the taxi chaps have also disappeared, they have become "business partners" of Ola and Uber and communicate only through their Apps and QR codes; and three, there's now something called  GPS and Satnav- two charming ladies who sound like Girl Guides and guide you to Meerut when you actually want to have parathas in Murthal. They also turn deaf when you need them most, no doubt powdering their noses, or turning them up at you wherever they are, in Palo Alto or Guggenheim, while you're stuck in a traffic jam under the Ashram fly-over.

   Consider, if you will, the biggest scam of all- the sunroof, which is gradually becoming de rigueur. Do we need this? Really ? It makes sense for a meerkat in the Kalahari desert or a marmot in the More plains of Ladakh to occasionally stick his neck out for fresh air and so to sternly tell his dealer: No sunroof, no car! But a dude in Delhi or Mumbai or Kanpur? Who needs a sunroof in a country where the daytime temperature is 40* celsius for seven months in a year, it rains incessantly for three months and for the remaining two months the outside air contains more PM 2.5 particles than fake news in an Amit Malviya tweet ? And yet we have hordes of wannabe Great Gatsbys shelling out twenty thousand bucks extra for a sunroof they'll probably use only when their son wants to take a leak into the wind.

   I can understand the flexible, powered rear view mirrors- they are needed for Neerja to pat her hair and to apply a fresh coat of lipstick before she takes to the wheel like Tom Cruise in TOPGUN, to check out those Nicole Kidding-You looks from various angles, but what about those other desiderata of insane minds, bent upon stripping us of our few remaining faculties- ADAS  (Advanced Driver Assist System), Brake Assist, Hill Start Assist, Highline TMS, Auto Driving IRVMs, SMS (Stability Management System)? Apart from the fact that a driver now has to decipher more acronyms than there are in our PM's speeches, the question that arises is: how come then that our road accident rates continue to go up by 7% every year in spite of all the "safety features"? Proof, if proof were needed, that the more gizmos you add the more atrophied the human brain becomes; what we have on our roads now is not drivers but distracted zombies.

  I don't know much about law: I can't tell the difference between a habeas and a corpus, or between a solicitor and a procuror , but I do feel that it is now time for our courts to apply their famous "essentiality doctrine" to these accessories and save us from being ripped off of tens of thousands of our unearned shekels. They should forget about applying it to hijab, triple talaq, Jallikattu or Sabarimala- India has too many of these windmills for even a Solomon to tilt at. Bring the doctrine to bear on these gizmos instead - are they essential to the purpose for which a car is built ? Can a car reach its destination without Breathless Voice telling you to take a U-Turn at a T junction? Can you press the clutch, or brake, without three pinging reminders ? Can you have a stable keel without being told by another dismembered voice to shift your amply endowed wife to the back seat? I for one would be willing to submit my considerable research on the subject to the court in a seat cover- sorry, sealed cover- for the perusal of My Lords. Can we please get back to driving a car by the seat of our pants and the out-sized brain God gave us with such high expectations ?

   Mark Twain, who has said just about everything that needs to be said, famously remarked:  "Civilisation is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."  Kind of hits the nail on the butt, doesn't it? And so I've decided to intensify my search for my old 1982 Fiat Padmini so that I can find a car which I can actually drive myself, without the dubious benefit of artificial intelligence or natural stupidity. Neerja won't mind as long as it has a rear view mirror somewhere.