INTIMATIONS OF STUPIDITY

   These last two weeks have been pretty confounding and humbling for me, both as a generic Indian and a stand-alone Shukla. It's bad enough to be treated as an idiot by the government of the day, but it's worse when you start suspecting that the government may be right after all. I no longer get Wordsworth's  intimations of immortality, what I sense now are Sambit Patra's  intimations of stupidity , thanks to Mr. Modi . His government has conveyed to all of us in no uncertain terms what it thinks of us citizens: that we are a gullible bunch, with an IQ lower even than the current rate of GDP growth, that we can be led by the nose and collared by the scruff of our neck, that we don't know what is good for us and can eat out of his hands whatever trash he deigns to offer in place of the truth.                                                                            And so his minions can tell us that nobody died of oxygen shortage in the second Covid wave even though we could see them dying on television screens, that no illegal snooping has been carried out by Pegasus even as all  "persons of interest" named so far are clearly of great interest to him and his Sancho Panza, that the Yogi of Ulta Pradesh excelled himself in controlling the second wave even as the corpses in their thousands lined the Ganges like accusing fingers, that the raids on a certain newspaper had nothing to do with the government even as the entire press community ( well, almost entire as the others can no longer claim to be the press ) condemned it. It's pretty humbling to be considered an idiot by your government.

  This government thinks we are lobotomised cretins, and it's probably right, given the percentages that vote for the BJP. But that's not all: I am further humbled by the knowledge that this powerful government and its judiciary have jurisdiction over me even after I am dead and buried six feet under or wafted into the stratosphere from an electric chimney. Not only can I be denied bail in life, I can also be remanded into custody in death! This is the message in the most bizarre drama being played out in the Mumbai High Court these days. The late lamented Father Stan Swamy passed away a month ago in custody; he was not granted bail while alive, but the Hon'ble judges continue to "hear" his bail plea at great length ! One had heard of the long arm of the law, but this is much longer than I suspected; we are familiar with posthumous awards and citations but a posthumous bail ? Surely, this can happen only in a country where not only the law but everyone is an Ass ! I am reminded of an LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) advertisement which proudly boasted "Zindagi ke saath bhi, Zindagi ke baad bhi" (We are with you in life and after death too ).  Since this sounds more like a warning by the Delhi police, it didn't do much for LIC's turnover, and is probably the reason why its now being disinvested in. 

  But why blame only the government? My own choices confirm my idiocy (and I'm not referring here to my decision to vote for Mr. Modi in 2014 ). Till last week I believed I was the cat's whiskers, having made it to the IAS at the age of 25, retired at a level much higher than my accepted level of incompetence, and now receive a pension cushioned against everything except Mrs Sitharaman's epiphanies and the recently amended Pension Rules. And then it all came crashing down when I read two newspaper reports.

  The first stated that film star and celebrity wife Anushka Sharma's bodyguard (a hunk called Sonu) receives a salary of Rs. 1.20 crore per annum, simply to ensure that no admirer practices his Braille on her. The article further stated that Salman Khan's bodyguard, Sheru, was paid Rs. 2 crore per annum, primarily to prevent him from black bucks. These guys make in five years more than I've earned in a lifetime, even if I include the Diwali gifts. They also get to meet glamorous people all the time whereas I'm still trying to google Sunny Leone's address, without any success. Though I must admit, in all fairness, that I did pump some iron during my college days in Calcutta so that I could persuade one of those Park Street beauties to  share an ice cream with me in Trincas. But I had to give it up when my biceps refused to grow beyond 11 inches and my chest fell far short of 56 inches. I had to acknowledge that  I was built more on the lines of Mr. Bean than Charles Atlas.

  The second piece was a statement by the Income Tax Department to the effect that 256 "Chat-wallahs" operating as vendors on Kanpur's roads were found to be millionaires! They owned property worth crores, drove luxury cars, lived in plush houses but never paid a paisa in income tax. It is humiliating to admit now that these entrepreneurs, who have probably never heard of the UPSC, are smarter than all the 142 guys in my batch put together , including Jawhar Sircar ! Why, it galls me to have to admit that maybe Mr. Amit Shah was right when he had stated that selling samosas is also regular employment. Actually, it's even better, because you don't pay any taxes on it. Hats off to my favourite Munna Chat Wallah opposite the Reserve Bank on Kanpur's Mall Road, who has apparently made it to the millionaire's list without ever joining Rau's Study Circle. 

  You get it, don't you ? Pumping iron is better than burning the midnight oil. Selling "aloo tikkis" and    "pani puris" is more profitable than pushing files. I therefore leave you with this thought: is the government right, after all, in treating us all as idiots? Be honest, and welcome to the Club. And don't worry about your political affiliation- idiocy runs across all ideologies. This is a good time in India to be stupid. Remember the words of Issac Asimov: "When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent."

INDIA'S PANDEMIC CAPITALISM

   In his best-selling book, TEN LESSONS FOR A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD, Farid Zakaria makes an interesting point. He says that since the early 1990s, global inequality had been showing a marked decline, both between countries and between people in a particular country. This, he says, " was caused in large part by sustained economic progress in China, India and other developing countries, which grew much faster than developed countries.....narrowing the gap and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty." Globally, the number of people in extreme poverty dropped from 1.90 billion in 1990 to 650 million in 2018.

  He regrets, however, that with Covid-19, " much of this progress could be reversed." We can see this regression playing out in India: with the contraction of the economy, massive job losses and ruinous medical expenditures, it has been estimated that as many as 220 million people in India have dropped below the poverty line in the last 18 months, adding to the almost 200 million already there. This has wiped out the gains of the last two decades in combating inequality.

  But there have been huge gainers during ( and because of ) the pandemic: high tech firms, e-commerce entities, pharmaceutical and serum production companies, pathology labs, hospitals and nursing homes. In India this gain has come with the added and familiar flavour of cronyism. The latest Bloomberg Billionaire Index revealed that MS Ambani, Adani and four other Indian billionaires added US $ 44.75 billion to their wealth in the first half of 2021, when the vast majority of the population was simply struggling to survive. The Sensex, which adequately represents that 1% of our population which owns 54% of all wealth in the country, rose more than 11000 points during the pandemic ! ( From 41,385 on 1.1.2020 to 52,445 on 1.7.2021). There is more good news: according to the Swiss National Bank, deposits by Indians in Swiss banks, which were Rs. 6625 crores in 2019, went UP to Rs. 20,700 crores during the pandemic! It was business as usual for Big Capital, and should have been good news- except for a couple of factors.

  This grotesque inequity- obscene islands of prosperity in a sea of penury and misery- represents what Noam Chomsky, the American philosopher, terms the face of "savage neo-liberalism." He goes on to state that the script of this " has been dictated to governments by their corporate masters" and that "authoritarian states are quite compatible with neo-liberalism." This fits in squarely with the economic policies adopted by the NDA government, both before and during the pandemic.

  The government, by the admission of its own Finance Minister, is in dire straits. It has told the Supreme Court it has no money to compensate for Covid deaths or to implement the Swaminathan formula for payment of MSP to farmers, it has no money to pay its employees the arrears of the three DA instalments it had frozen last year, it has no money to disburse cash relief to those rendered unemployed by the pandemic, it can extend only credit guarantees and not subsidies to millions of suffering MSMEs and small traders. And she is not wrong: GST has failed to live up to its promises, the guaranteed GST compensation to states is in huge arrears, and central tax revenues as a percentage of GDP has declined from 10.1% in 2013-14 to 9.9% in 2020-21.

  In such circumstances, what would any sane economist expect a government to do to make up for these losses ? TAX THE PROFITS OF CORPORATES AND THE WINDFALL WEALTH OF OUR BILLIONAIRES AND MILLIONAIRES. Right? Wrong. Our government is doing just the reverse.

  Under the garb of " Ease of doing business", which is a fig leaf for rank cronyism, the government is introducing policies which blatantly enrich corporates, while the fiscal burden is passed on to the common man. In 2019 it reduced corporate taxes, losing annual revenues of Rs. 200,000 crores. This was an inexplicable decision because, as Aunindyo Chakrabarty points out in an article in THE TRIBUNE, in the last ten years the share of Corporate tax in the total tax receipts has gone down from 36% to 23%, while that of indirect taxes has gone up from 45% to 53%. As any economist, even one educated in Nagpur, will tell you- the higher the contribution of indirect taxes to an economy, the more inequitable it is. ( The "justification" was that the companies would invest these savings in increasing production. This, as expected, never happened: the money was used to clear balance sheets or squirrelled away in some foreign tax haven).

  Thereafter, the pandemic provided the perfect opportunity to further enrich the corporates. Interest rates were kept deliberately low to help industry and divert savings to stock markets, whereas the middle classes were forced to witness a sharp drop in their Fixed Deposit rates. Capital gains taxes from shares were also kept low, benefitting the big investors and the handful of companies which control the bourses. Labour laws were quietly amended in order to reduce their security of service and bring them in line.  EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) Rules were amended to make it easier to set up industry at the cost of the environment, without even an EIA approval ! Farm laws to corporatise agriculture were promulgated in the middle of the second wave of Covid, hoping this insidious move would go unnoticed. Disinvestment proposals are being floated on a large scale ( Rs. 200,000 crore estimated receipts in this fiscal) knowing fully well that we are in a recession, quotes will be depressed, and there are only a few buyers in the market. The predictable result will be that the same favoured cabal of corporates will corner these public assets at throwaway prices. The writing off of corporate NPAs has become an industry in itself: Rs. 2.54 lakh crores were written off in 2018-19 and another Rs. 1.53 lakh crores in 2020-21. This is the public's savings subsidising private profits.

  This is the time, as I said, to tax these corporates and billionaires who are milking this man-made calamity for all it is worth, and to use these funds to provide succour to the vulnerable sections of  society. Most countries are following this precept. In the USA, Joe Biden is funding his revival package by a $ 3.60 trillion tax hike on corporates and High Net Worth Individuals. Top Income Tax rate has been increased from 37% to 39.6% , Capital Gains tax on persons earning in excess of $ 1 million per annum has been increased from 20% to 39 % ; taxes have also been hiked on income from sale of investments and transfer of assets on death ; Corporate Income Tax has been increased from 21% to 28% ; tax breaks will no longer will be available for polluting industries. The G-7 group of the world's richest countries at its recent conflab has also resolved to maintain a minimum level of Corporate tax. The UK has announced measures similar to that of the USA. But our government is doing nothing in this direction and continues to tax the common man instead.

  The economic path being followed by Mr. Modi and his onion eschewing Finance Minister is absolutely incomprehensible. If they are devoid of any ideas of their own they can certainly pick up a few from other, better governed countries. For the last thing we need after the pandemic is a double dose of post-Covid capitalism.

 

DEATH BY TOURISM ( II )

                                                    ( Concluding part of the article )

                                                         THE WAY FORWARD

  The pandemic has provided us some important lessons for a sustainable world, the most important being that preservation of the natural environment is not just a matter of landscape aesthetics but an imperative for our own health and survival. This is also a warning for tourism whose ever-enlarging footprint is becoming unsustainable for mountain states like Himachal. And the first step the state has to take is to regulate the rising numbers of mass tourists.

  Himachal receives about 18 million tourists every year, about three times its population. This number is not excessive, but for the fact that almost 60% of it is concentrated in just a handful of destinations: Shimla, Dharamsala and Kullu-Manali, which simply do not have the infrastructure or carrying capacity to handle these numbers. The rush to these places has to be regulated and one way to do this is to adopt the pandemic instrument of E-passes as a standard method ( and not just a pandemic measure) throughout the year. The Tourism Deptt. should determine the number of vehicles/ tourists the present infrastructure of these places can absorb, and limit the issue of passes to these numbers. For example, Shimla should not allow more than 2500-3000 vehicles for any day, considering its road capacity, parking, water availability and hotel beds. A similar exercise needs to be done for other major destinations, including the Tirthan and Sangla valleys, Kasauli, Chail, Palampur, Bir-Billing and Barot which are becoming the new choke points. Internationally, countries have begun putting such caps on the numbers- Amsterdam, Venice, Dubrovnik, the Phillipines, Barcelona among others. It is significant that a new word has entered the English language as a fall-out of overtourism: " Venetiatisation". It means the destruction/ attrition of cities, cultures, native populations, natural assets by hordes of tourists.

  A second way to reduce  over-tourism is to disperse the rush to other destinations. But this too has to be done with care so as to prevent the abuse of land and resources of local communities. The Home Stay scheme ( 2008) of Himachal was a welcome step in this direction, but it has now run amok as the govt. has failed to enforce its provisions. Intended to augment local livelihoods, it has now been hijacked by outsiders from Delhi and Punjab; instead of the maximum of four rooms envisaged, home stays are now thinly disguised hotels, offering ten to fifteen rooms; the cap on room tariffs ( Rs. 2000) is now a joke, with units charging as much as Rs. 10000 for a night; the scheme allows home stay units only in rural areas, but hundreds are operating in the towns. Most are unregistered and illegal: the Department has approved about 1700, but at least three times that number are functioning.

  This unregulated mushrooming of home stays creates three types of problems. One, it deprives the registered hotels of a level playing field: home stays are exempted from any tax and enjoy domestic tariffs for water and electricity ; unlike hotels, they are not subject to regulations pertaining to land-use,  building constructions, pollution, garbage, labour, fitness, sewerage, etc. They thus have an unfair advantage over the hotels. Second, they have added to the over-crowding in cities. Third, their unregulated growth is over-burdening and despoiling the rural communities and landscapes with water shortages, garbage littering, traffic congestion and unruly behaviour of their guests. The government needs to put a check on their proliferation urgently and to enforce its Home stay rules, or otherwise the tourism mess will simply transfer itself to rural Himachal with even graver consequences for the environment and native populations.

  The economics of tourism have not been studied in depth either. Tourism is perhaps the only industry that monetizes assets that do not belong to it: natural landscapes, culture, historical monuments are all public assets but are utilised by the hospitality industry to make money. But if tourism becomes extractive- imposes costs not commensurate with the revenues it provides- it is not a fair bargain. I feel this is happening in Himachal. The average tourist spend is only Rs. 6500/, and a Mckinsey study of 2015 found that the average tourist belongs to the lower middle class bracket, with an annual income between Rs. 100,000 and Rs. 500,000.

  This needs to be upgraded. This may sound elitist but, as Christopher de Bellaigue stresses in an interesting article in The Guardian ( 18.6.2020) tourism is a luxury and must pay its way, it must cover both the direct and indirect costs it imposes on nature, climate, cities, civic services, natural resources and rural communities. Internationally, countries are beginning to grasp this fact and are changing their policies accordingly: Spain, New Zealand, Thailand, Srilanka, Indonesia have all stated that their objective is to attract a " better class" of tourists so as to maximise revenues and minimise numbers.

  Himachal should start thinking along these lines. Some measures it can implement:

* Make E-passes mandatory for ALL tourists and impose a fee for it, say Rs. 500 for each tourist and Rs. 1000 for each vehicle. This will also discourage the day trippers ( who are the worst of the lot): people who bring their own food and booze, spend the day drinking at Kasauli and Barog and depart in the evening leaving their garbage and al fresco human waste in the forests.

* Tax all Home Stays at par with hotels: the initial incentives and exemptions of 2008 have served their purpose, there are now more Home Stays than can be handled, they are doing good business and they must now pay their way.

* Drastically increase the entry fees for National Parks, Wildlife sanctuaries and other Protected Areas. Hike the charges for trekking and camping in forest areas. These are our most vulnerable areas and the footfalls there must be controlled. For example, I was horrified to read the other day that 50000 people visit Chandratal lake every year! This is an unmitigated disaster. Even worse, last week it was reported that the track ( barely motorable, deliberately) from Batal to the lake has been widened by a bulldozer to enable buses to ferry tourists to Chndratal. Buses at Chandratal!- is this what the future holds? This increase in numbers is the last thing we want in a very fragile environment. It is also a violation of the Wildlife Protection Act and the Forest Conservation Act since this falls within a sanctuary area. The DFO who allowed this vandalism should be proceeded against for dereliction of duty.

            [ Chandratal lake ( 14000 feet). Do we want 50000 tourists here ? ] Photo by author.

  Let us not confuse tourism with equity and misplaced socialism. Tourism is not a fundamental right, it is a consumer product and must be priced like one. A premium product should command a premium price. What Himachal offers is unique and we must not be apologetic about asking the tourist to pay for this experience. If people can shell out Rs. 500- 600 for a movie ticket or Rs. 300 for a pizza they should not cavil at having to pay proportionately for a unique experience that will last them a lifetime. If the Himachal product is to survive into the next decade the government must shape and channelise its tourism through a mix of tariffs, regulations, enforcement and infrastructure upgradation. Above all, however, it must develop a vision and a cogent strategy.

DEATH BY TOURISM ( I )

                                [ This is the first of a two- part article on this subject. ]

   Mr Vir Sanghvi has just sealed the fate of Mashobra, a once idyllic Shimla suburb where I live after my retirement. In an article last week he claimed that Mashobra was " the new Maldives" of India. Now, Mr. Sanghvi must be having thousands of followers and fans, and if even half of them take him at his word and decide to visit Mashobra then we, the domiciled residents of this suburbia, are doomed.

  I am perplexed at how he came to this conclusion: he never stayed at Mashobra but at Wildflower Hall, a seven star Oberoi hotel near Kufri; it appears from his article that he didn't even visit Mashobra. My guess is that he looked out from his window at Mashobra sprawled out far below, framed by the deodar forests and the snow capped ranges behind it, counted the unending number of tourist vehicles on the roads, and concluded ( like all birds of passage experts ) that it made alliterative sense to compare Mashobra with Maldives. It also made good headlines. Unfortunately, he was wrong. He was right in only one respect- that Mashobra, like the Maldives, is also drowning. But whereas the Maldives is gradually drowning in the rising waters of the Indian Ocean, Mashobra is drowning in the rising numbers of tourists and mounds of garbage, and will go under much quicker than the former. Along with the rest of Himachal, thanks to a somnolent state government and utter lack of vision or planning.

                                             Mashobra, not Maldives. ( Photo by the author )

  Tourism was always an uncontrolled blight for the state, but in the post- lockdown phase, it has become almost as destructive as the pandemic itself. According to the government's own figures, the state's main destinations are swamped by the sheer numbers of tourists: 2.57 lakh vehicles entered the state in just the last two weeks, 10000 came into Shimla in just one day, 9000 into Kufri. Even worse, 7500 vehicles crossed the Atal tunnel into Lahaul in 24 hours ! This is tourist Armageddon, for we have neither the roads nor the parking or other related infrastructure to cope with such humongous numbers. There are hours- long traffic jams everywhere- Parwanoo, Kasauli, Kufri, Mashobra, Mcleodganj, Atal tunnel.

  And the typical north Indian tourists we are favoured with are perhaps the worst specimens of tourists anywhere in the world. They have no civic sense, enter into frequent brawls with the cops, park wherever they want to, litter the forests with their waste, are aggressively loud and foul-mouthed, show no sensitivity or responsibility towards local cultures and traditions. They consider it an adventure sport to trespass into private properties to pick flowers and pluck apples: in Lahaul there are reports of potato bags stored by the roadside by farmers being pilfered ! The permanent residents of the state, especially in the rural areas, are a harried and besieged lot, and resentment is building up against their vandalising behaviour. Earlier their depredations were confined to the towns, but now with rural homestays becoming popular, this pestilence is spreading all over the state. The hitherto tranquil and pastoral ambience of the state is taking a hit.

  The state Tourism department needs to get a handle on this soon. Tourism is a very important economic activity in Himachal: it provides about 7% of the GDP and one in ten jobs. It is further destined to grow significantly in the post pandemic phase: with international destinations difficult to access, domestic tourism is bound to grow; more people will now prefer to avoid the congestion of urban areas and opt for rural settings. Ironically, these are precisely the areas where the uniqueness and beauty of the state reside, and therefore need to be protected from the ills of over-tourism. To do this, the state government has to be pro-active in developing a vision and a strategy for making tourism sustainable. It needs to study the international experience and learnings in this sector. Its present business-as-usual approach will no longer work. It needs to concentrate on, and formulate plans, in five broad areas: control the numbers of tourists, disperse the tourists away from urban centres, protect its natural assets, regulate the industry with an even but firm hand, and ensure that the tourist pays proportionately for his ever enlarging footprint. The state has to consciously move away from destructive mass tourism and graduate to high-paying, quality tourism. Otherwise the cost-benefit analysis will not favour the state, its natural environment, or its residents. In fact, it will be hugely detrimental to them.

  The pandemic, and its attendant lockdowns, restrictions and fear, had briefly given us a beautiful picture of a world without tourism ! That was, however, too good to last and now "revenge tourism " is making a comeback. But for about fourteen months we were given a glimpse of how the world would look without the rampaging hordes, how quickly natural landscapes and wildlife recovered from the earlier depredations of 1.40 billion international tourists and ( in India's case) 1600 million domestic tourists. Many countries are learning lessons from this and rethinking their tourism policies and objectives. Himachal also had fourteen months to do so, but it has squandered the opportunity. If it does not wake up even now, it will soon be in worse shape than before the arrival of Covid.    

                                   [ To be concluded in Part II of this article next week. ]

  

A TOOLKIT FOR THE ASPIRING BLUEBEARDS.

   There has been no bearded specimen in the Shukla family for the last hundred years at least, including my cousin Madho. He occasionally does present an untidy hirsute look  which could be mistaken for a fuzz, but a closer examination reveals that his facial fallicles do not conform to the dictionary definition of a beard (as extracted from the logic of the Supreme Court judgment in the Godavarman case of 1998 defining forests): they denote instead a failure to shave on some days, primarily because of a temporary diversion of the budget to the purchase of Old Monk instead of shaving cream and razors. And since Madho is not a multi-tasker- he can entertain only one thought at a time, preferably in single syllables - at such strained moments the Monk wins hands down.

  And therefore, since I have now crossed the average life expectancy of an Indian and can expect to bump into the Grim Reaper any day now, I have decided to rectify this omission and grow a beard. I am aware of the pitfalls of tinkering with fallicles, of course. A batchmate of mine, Satya Prakash Nanda from the Odisha cadre, whose thin strands on the scalp were classified as "open scrub" rather than "dense forest", once decided to completely shave his head to stimulate a fresh, lush growth of the type promised by that "educated literate" paragon Mr. Hardip Singh Puri for the Central Vista grounds. Unfortunately, even now 45 years later, not a single hair has sprouted on his dome. He is now known to his friends as Satyanash Nanda. But I am hopeful that history will not repeat itself: I may even start looking like Ernest Hemingway, which would be a bonus. Conversely, I may start resembling our saintly Prime Minister, or Omar Abdullah post his detention, but that's a risk I'll just have to take. As Confucius said: No risk, no mane.

  You may well ask: but why a beard at all ? Well, one reason is that  bearded men are more attractive than bearded women. Two, a man without a beard is like a lion without a mane, which is why all the loins of Punjab are bearded. Third, shaving comes with its own risks; a recent study has found that the average man spends 3350 hours of his life shaving. The average bearded bloke uses that time to have fun with the wife of the man who shaves! And so, even though I have pure Observer status in such matters now, I can put my remaining hours to better use than lathering my face every morning.

  But growing a beard is no mug's game, it has to be approached with a certain amount of planning. I have devised a tool kit for the purpose which I am willing to share with the reader, even at the risk of being branded a male Disha Ravi.

  The first step is to wait for the wife to exit the stage for some time. Wives don't like beards, because the salt and pepper in them indirectly betrays their ages, see. And when you have more salt than pepper in your beard (like me) it also reminds them of their cooking. In my case I waited for my wife to make her 47th visit this year to see her mother, and when she returned after a couple of weeks, my beard had taken roots and was even sprouting branches. This then is the secret of success- present her with a fait accompli, as the Modi government does to the Supreme Court constantly, and its then too late to change the status quo. Or, as Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth: "returning were as tedious as go o'er..." Trust me, if it works with our Hon'ble judges it will work with the wife.

  It's important to keep your visage hidden till the beard has reached a respectable and presentable stage, and the scrub has become foliage. No wife (or pet dog, for that matter) can bear the sight of an unshaven man day after day, and the boss in office won't even need the pandemic as an excuse to sack you. In more poetic analogy, you must emerge fully bearded, like the goddess Athena who emerged from a skull fully formed. Fortunately, the pandemic and the lockdowns are  great facilitators in this respect: the mask will hide the sprouts and the enforced isolation will keep prying eyes away till you are able to reveal your facial vegetation in all its glory. The living proof of this is our Prime Minister's cascading fuzz : one day he had a stubble, and suddenly, when we saw him next he was giving Rabindranath Tagore a run for his money.  In fact, I firmly believe that the lockdown in March 2020 was imposed primarily in order to give Mr. Modi the opportunity to grow his beard away from prying eyes. It almost won him Bengal. Maybe, if Mr. Amit Shah had used the time to grow one too instead of sharpening his knowledge of chronology and termites.....who knows?

  Finally, it's important to choose your beard style. Do not aspire to be a Bluebeard or a Methuselah- leave that for the politicians. My research reveals that there are more types of beards than types of fake news in Amit Malviya's bag of dirty tricks (which is saying a lot). You can choose from goatee, mutton chops, Van Dyke, chevron, chin strip, royale, Balbo, hipster, Garibaldi, whaler, etc. I myself have gone in for the Uniform, which should not exceed two inches in length. I am into phase two trials, and , like Covaxin, do not intend to wait for the phase three data to reveal myself to the world. At the moment I look a bit like a colobus monkey peering from behind sparse undergrowth, but I'm told most women find that very cute. I would have preferred the mutton chops but one can't take unnecessary risks these days with so many bhakts on the loose. Safer to have a vegetarian style.

  So, dear reader, go for it. There are good chances that your wife may dump you in the process, but then just think what all you could do with those extra 3350 hours ! Remember, a beard is to character what diamonds are to ornaments. Or, to put it in language easier to understand by the Netflix generation, beautiful women have curves, real men have beards.

IT'S TIME TO BE OUTRAGED , MY LORDS.

   The Supreme Court has disappointed again. While not interfering with the bail granted to the three student activists- Natasha, Kalita and Asif- in the Delhi riots and " conspiracy " case, it has, vide its order of 18th June 2021, effectively stayed the Delhi High Court order on UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). To my mind, the court had no option but to confirm the bail for to do otherwise would have been to legitimise the lawlessness of the state and to throw all legal principles to the winds. But it has undone this good work by once again adopting a balancing act  (becoming all too familiar now) to keep the executive in good humour, by decreeing that the Delhi High court decision of 15th June 2021 cannot be quoted as a precedent for other UAPA cases. This is as perplexing as it is unfortunate.

  The court has given no reason for the virtual stay, other than to express " surprise" that the bail order is of one hundred pages, and that it has " pan- India" implications. The surprise we can live with ( nothing surprises us any more) but the pan- India part is more difficult to swallow. And this is the reason: UAPA is a pan- India legislation so obviously any judgment on it will have pan-India implications too. Which is a very good thing: for far too long have our courts avoided questioning the draconian and unconstitutional provisions of this law. If one High Court has finally done so, its judicial impact SHOULD be felt all over the country. Why is the apex court so uncomfortable with this ?

The Supreme Court's order is also self contradictory. By confirming bail to the three accused it implicitly accepted the rational and reasoning of the Delhi High court order which resulted in the decision to grant them bail. But by " staying" the order and deciding to " examine" its correctness it seems to be suggesting that it is not sure of its legality! This is a legally untenable position, shows a certain waffling on the part of the Hon'ble judges, and perhaps a desire to accommodate the sudden panic in the Home Ministry and Delhi police.

  Legal luminaries can argue about all this till Mr. Adityanath's cows come home; I am no luminary, not even a 9 watt LCD bulb. But I do know a few adages, one of them being: War is too important to be left to generals. Similarly, I would venture to postulate that Justice is too important to be left to lawyers and judges. For these worthies are the bone crunchers, endlessly chewing on lifeless words, phrases, rulings, ratio decindi and what not. In the process they forget about the flesh and blood of human reality, of the lives being tortured by their unending, academic and arcane arguments. They forget that at the end of the day law and justice is nothing but common sense, and that it is high time they extricated themselves from the thicket of legalese they have lost themselves in, back to the straight, wide path of common law and common sense. As the eminent British jurist and writer John Mortimer said: " No brilliance is needed in the law, nothing but common sense and relatively clean finger nails."

  And it is nothing but common sense which the Delhi High Court has displayed in its order, clothed in unassailable legal principles. It is common sense to demand prima facie evidence of wrong doing before locking up someone for years without trial. It is common sense to distinguish between a common crime and terrorism. It is common sense to insist that dissent is not sedition. It is common sense to rule that if an accused cannot be granted a speedy trial then he is entitled to bail, as Justice ( Retd) Deepak Gupta pointed out in an interview the other day. It is common sense to declare that the Advisory Board of UAPA cannot be the final word or arbiter of a person's guilt and that the courts are entitled - nay, duty bound- to look into its decisions. It is common sense to pronounce that inferences and speculation cannot take the place of hard evidence and proof. What is there to " examine" in these self-evident truths, as the Supreme Court proposes to do?

  No matter how you look at the Delhi High Court order- from a layman's or a legal eagle's perspective- it fully meets the requirements of both the law and of common sense. The principles and law enunciated by it require no further " examination ", which is why the Supreme Court's freezing of it boggles the mind. It is high time time our judges took their noses out of their legal tomes and felt the pulse of the people. They should not have an exaggerated sense of their infallibility, should not confuse real justice with their love for didactics , should understand the unending trauma of the public. The judiciary would do well to remember that all great legal and social reforms have been driven by the people, not by the courts or governments- the suffragette movement for voting rights for women, the anti- slavery campaign, the right to abortion, the acceptance of gay rights, the abolition of apartheid, the right to privacy. Law and justice follow in the wake of what is right, not the other way around.                                                                                                         And every time our apex court has been insensitive to such deep feelings of the populace it has had to eat its own words and revise its orders very soon. Just in the recent past it has had to quash the infamous ADM Jabalpur order; it had initially set aside the brilliant Delhi High court decision of 2013 on decriminalisation of gay sex but had to revise its position in 2018; in 1962 it had ruled that privacy is not a fundamental right but has since upheld it in a number of judgments; in 1985 it had held that adultery was a crime but just last year it held otherwise. I have no doubt at all that in this case also, the Supreme Court will have to ultimately lift the stay: as they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

  A sensitive and responsive judiciary should anticipate, and be one step ahead of,  social and legal changes and reforms; it should not be merely reactive; it should not live in awe of the executive. This is especially true of the India of today where judges need to step out of their book- lined studies and sterile chambers and smell the stench of repression in the streets, see the accumulating debris of a collapsing criminal justice system., the 45 million pending cases, the indiscriminate use of UAPA and sedition laws, the 2% conviction rate in UAPA, the 500,000 incarcerated prisoners of whom 70% are undertrials, the increasing number of people acquitted after years in jail without bail ( Ilyas and Irfan in Maharashtra have just been found not guilty after spending nine years in jail under terrorism charge, 115 persons have been granted bail in Karnataka, Akhil Gogoi , an MLA in Assam has been acquitted just this week in one of the two UAPA cases lodged against him ). The increasing number of acquittals/ bails in UAPA demonstrate vociferously the illegal manner in which such cases are fabricated simply to incarcerate those activists whom the government finds inconvenient. The Delhi High court order goes a long way to stem this rot, and by staying it the apex court has undermined not only the sanctity of the High Court but also the expectations of the citizens. All without citing any cogent reason for doing so.

  I sometimes wonder: what will it take for our superior courts to grasp the fact that, in their obsession with technicalities and legalese, they are smothering the real spirit and essence of justice- common sense and compassion ? Is it that they feel that they themselves are immune from the state sponsored savagery being inflicted on the common public outside their sanitised ivory towers ? Was Benjamin Franklin right, after all, when he said: " Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are ?"

  It's time to be outraged, my lords.

    

BABA RAMDEV vs THE INDIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION : A SHAMBOLIC WAR

  

   Baba Ramdev is nobody's fool, as the IMA (Indian Medical Association) seems to think. Anyone who started life by churning his stomach like a washing machine and ended up with a multi billion dollar empire has to be a smart cookie. And just marvel at his latest coup: the acquisition of the Rs. 40000 crore Ruchi Soya in insolvency proceedings. The company owed Rs. 12146 crore to the banks, and the Baba took it over by paying just Rs. 4350 crore, the beauty of the "package" being that he put up only Rs. 1000 crore of his own money, the remaining Rs. 3350 crore coming as loans from the same banks who had taken a "haircut" of Rs. 8000 crore on earlier loans to the same company! Post the take- over, the company is now valued at Rs. 35360 crores. How's that on an investment of just Rs. 1000 crore ? It takes years of Kapal Bharti and Alom Vilom to rise to such strategic brilliance.

  One is also bemused at the manner in which the Baba has suddenly become the mascot, champion and spokesman of Ayurveda, a traditional school of Indian medicine, courtesy the IMA's fulminations. For the fact is that he is as much of an Ayurvedic doctor as Kangana Ranaut, even less so, because she at least can improve your testosterone levels. To qualify as a doctor in this discipline one has to have passed BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) which Ramdev has not done. Why then is IMA engaging with him so seriously? By doing so it is conferring on him a legitimacy he cannot claim or deserves.

  Which is why I find his ongoing spat with the IMA so amusing, like a Spy vs Spy episode in those comics we read as kids. Ok, let us admit upfront that the Baba's comments about doctors- that, since they could not even save themselves from Corona, how would they save others?, that they are responsible for thousands of deaths - were not only distasteful but also showed no respect or gratitude for the hundreds of doctors who had died in the line of duty over the past fifteen months. But to demand that he be arrested for sedition or to escalate it into an Ayurveda vs Allopathy battle does no credit to either Patanjali or the IMA. In fact, the escalation has reached ridiculous levels- according to a complaint in a Delhi court the IMA President, by advocating Allopathy, is trying to convert Hindus into the Christian faith ! And in a tit-for-tat an FIR has just been filed against the Baba in Chattisgarh by the local chapter of the IMA !

  Because the simple fact is that neither has emerged from the pandemic smelling of roses. Both these hoary disciplines- Ayurveda and Allopathy- have created confusion, doubts and misgivings in the public mind and have sought to monetize the crisis for their own respective benefit. In the process the casualty has been the scientific temper, the faith of the people in medicine- and perhaps many lives.

  Ramdev's version of Ayurveda as an antidote to Covid is clearly counterfeit and has no basis in science. He began by extolling the virtues of cow dung and urine; he then claimed that Pranayam exercises would counter respiratory failures and replace ventilators. He finally produced his magnum opus- Coronil- obtaining for it an ill-advised endorsement from the Union Health Minister; his attempt to claim approval from WHO was promptly shot down by that organisation itself. But not before the placebo had garnered hundreds of crores in revenue from gullible and desperate buyers. Till date there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that Coronil was subjected to any trials or that any of its claims have been scientifically verified. By conflating Yoga with Ayurveda and Ayurveda with crass commercialism, the Baba has brought this established school into disrepute and created huge confusion in the minds of millions of people.

  But here's my point- Allopathy has not done much better either. Led by the WHO, Dr. Fauci, the US CDC (Center for Disease Control) and our own ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research), its constantly changing stand on crucial issues, unrepentant volte faces on advisories, and bickering among themselves, have done a lot to promote vaccine hesitancy and scepticism. And, like the Baba, earned untold billions for pharma companies, hospitals and vaccine makers. Pfizer will reportedly make a record profit of US$ 29 billion in 2020 ! Here is an illustrative list of points on which "modern medicine" (as opposed to "traditional" Ayurveda ) has failed to provide a consistent or definitive answer:

* It was initially said that the virus is spread by heavy droplets, but later some doctors claimed it was spread by lighter aerosols, increasing the distance it could travel and infect.

* So now no one knows whether the "safe" distance is six feet or six meters or six feet under.

*  Fauci earlier advised that wearing masks is not required, but now insists on it.

* Just last year drugs like  Hydroxychloroquine and Remdesivir were being touted as miracle cures but now they have been struck off the list by WHO as being of no use. In India, people have been paying ten to twenty times the actual price for these drugs in the black market.

* No two doctors can agree on the use of steroids in severe cases. Some say it's a life saver, others are of the view that it leads to cardiac failures and cytokine storms.

* There is still no clarity on the ideal gap between two doses of the vaccine ; recommendations extend from four weeks to twelve weeks, depending on whether you are Boris Johnson or Narendra Modi.

* No medical authority or regulator has satisfactorily explained as yet why persons who have received both doses of the vaccine still get infected, and some of them die. Of what use is a 95% or 97% efficacy rate in such cases?

* Similarly, the gods of Allopathy have been just as clueless about the emerging new complications- the various types of fungus, gangrene and blood clotting AFTER vaccination. How is it that the three phase trials of various vaccines failed to alert the manufactures and regulators to this likely effect of vaccines?

* Everybody (experts as well as governments) are now hiding behind the broad spectrum excuse of  "variants" and "mutants", and busy finding names for them.

* Nobody knows by when this virus will be defeated, if ever. There is already talk of possible annual booster doses.

* The latest debate , equally confusing as the others, is whether the Third Wave will be specially lethal for children below the age of twelve. There are as many authoritative views on this as there are doctors.

What the illustrative list above indicates is that there is as much confusion in the Allopathic camp about Covid as there is in the Ayurveda camp. Which perhaps is not unexpected since this is a novel virus and research takes time to deliver results. Medicine is not an exact science and not all answers are instantly available. This is especially true of zoonotic diseases, which are only now beginning to emerge as we intrude deeper into the natural environment. But then, neither of the two have the right to occupy the moral high ground and preach to the other. Or to us, who have been ripped off of thousands of crores in medical and hospital charges and usually handed back the dead bodies of our loved ones in return. Enormous profits have been made by both the adversaries and they should now end their vaudeville act and get back to answering some of the issues listed above.

  IMA, in particular, should stop patronising and demeaning Ayurveda and tone down its hostility to it. Ayurveda is as much of a science or non-science as Allopathy, and of far older vintage. It should not treat Baba Ramdev as a representative of Ayurveda, and should see him for what he actually is: a savvy businessman who has married medicine with FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) with stupendous success. Ayurveda is far bigger and of greater consequence than he is. The real proponents and practitioners of authentic Ayurveda should, on the other hand, recognise the enormous damage that the Baba is doing to their science. They should break their silence and come out openly in its defence and denounce the Baba before he hijacks their discipline and takes it to the global stage, as he has done for Yoga. In short, if the IMA must do battle, it should do so against Ramdev and not Ayurveda. And Ramdev should stick to Pranayam, biscuits and soya and leave medicine to those who are qualified and trained for it.

   But lets end this on a lighter note. A cousin of mine (from Kanpur, naturally) has a very pertinent question for Baba Ramdev and Dr. J A Jayalal of the IMA, probably in connection with an impending marriage in the family : if a girl vaccinated with Covishield marries a boy with a Covaxin shot, will their children be immune to all variants? And my cousin, who is a bit of a persistent Kanpuria, also wants to know whether Patanjali will get to manufacture the Sputnik vaccine in India, and if so, then will it be known as Putinjali ? Valid questions for IMA and the Baba, don't you think ?

Over to you, gentlemen.