BLACKMAIL SIMPLICITER -- MORE BITTER TRUTHS ABOUT OROP.

   I may be out of step with the times, but I am convinced that what has been happening at Jantar Mantar in Delhi over the last two months exemplifies neither discipline nor loyalty nor patriotism, notwithstanding the vaunted claims by the Ex-servicemen League( ESM). There is a regular torrent of abuse( of the government, the civil services and politicians) and vilification flowing from senior ( retired) defense officers, and they have not spared even their Supreme Commander, the President of India- just yesterday he was sent a letter by the ESM holding him responsible for " any damage or mishap" that may occur to the hunger strikers, and accusing him that "under your rule a soldier's life is at stake....". So much for devotion to the country.

   There is more. The tone and tenor of their statements ( and that of some retired Chiefs who, having compromised themselves earlier by quietly accepting OROP for themselves and dumping their " boys", really have no moral right to protest now) are becoming noticeably menacing and threatening. One day we are warned that the ESM is in touch with serving soldiers and heaven help the country if disaffection spreads to the armed forces. The next day we are told that helping the civil administration in case of natural disasters is not the army's job, and what will the govt. do if this assistance is denied? A retired Chief cautions the govt. on television that these guys are not trade unionists but soldiers, that they know how to fight and will not back down. To me this is coming uncomfortably close to incitement and downright blackmail.

  And then there is the final irony- a group of ex-soldiers who claim to be totally apolitical now indicating that they could jump into the Bihar election to muster support for their cause ! Make up your minds, gentlemen- are you ex-soldiers or an aspiring political outfit, which is what you are increasingly looking like with your rebellious statements and open defiance of the govt.?

  As I've categorically stated earlier ( THE BITTER TRUTH ABOUT OROP) there is a strong case made out for compensating soldiers for their early retirement but this is limited to the jawans and ORs, not the officers. The former retire between the ages of 35 and 38 and constitute 85% of the total strength of the armed forces. The officers have it much better- every commissioned offer retires in the time scale of a Colonel at 54, and then has the option of 4 years of reemployment within the force itself. He effectively retires, therefore, at 58 ( as against 60 for the civil services, not such a significant " discrimination" as the ESM is making it out to be), with the full notional benefit of 33 years service for computing his pension. Even these two years are the result of the doctrine of having a " young army" and not because of any conspiracy by the govt. to keep the army subjugated, as is being constantly made out by ESM. The sheer nature of their job demands a degree of physical fitness that declines with age. Take the converse- Doctors and Professors in higher medical and educational institutions retire at 65 because in their case the primary consideration is not physical fitness but intellectual ability and acquired expertise. Nobody- not even the IAS!- grudges them this because the rationale is reasonable. It is the same with the armed forces.

  The ESM has been very economical with the truth when it talks about discrimination with the armed forces in the matter of pensions. It fails to mention, acknowledge or accept that the govt. has already provided them with a massive advantage over the civil services. Civil service officers who have joined service on 1.4.2004 and thereafter are no longer entitled to assured pensions from the govt. They are now enrolled in the NPS ( National Pension Scheme), a fund to which both the employee and the govt. contribute a fixed percentage of salary every month. The pension payable depends on the profits generated by the NPS fund. In other words, there is no longer an assured percentage of pension for civil employees. BUT THE GOVT. HAS KEPT THE ARMED FORCES OUT OF THE NPS-THEY CONTINUE TO ENJOY THE BENEFIT AND SECURITY OF ASSURED PENSIONS. Be honest to yourself at least, Generals, if not to the country.  

  Another myth that needs to be busted is that armed forces officers are denied the promotions that their civil counterparts are entitled to. I personally agree that the promotion bandwagon in the higher civil services has gone berserk and this self serving policy needs to be drastically pruned. But this does not render the ESM's claims for a similar absurdity in their case legitimate. For the same reasons of operational effectiveness the army perforce has to have an acute pyramidal structure, which naturally puts limits on promotional avenues. This is an imperative of the service which all the members of the ESM were doubtless aware of when they joined NDA or IMA. Why try to smuggle this demand through the backdoor when you entered from the front?

  The same logic applies to the constant outcry about hardship postings, non-family stations, casualties etc. It goes with the territory and the uniform, which is why the armed forces are respected. These conditions are not peculiar to the Indian army either but are part and parcel of all armies across the world. In fact, service conditions are much worse in the police and the CPMFs. The govt. has been making attempts to compensate for some of the harsher conditions by providing generous allowances, which the ESM is not factoring in in the discourse. It does not behove a fine and proud armed force like ours to constantly wail about these things. After all ours is not a conscripted armed force but a voluntary one, and if you can't take the heat don't enter the kitchen.

  In fact, it is now clear that the officer cadre is riding piggy back on the jawan to extract the maximun benefits for themselves. It now appears that the jawans and ORs( including the NCOs and JCOs) have seen through this game: it was reported yesterday in the Hindustan Times that the ORs have now decided to float a separate body called the All-India Ex-servicemen ( AIE), and this is what their co-ordinator Bir Bahadur Singh had to say: " The OROP movement has been hijacked by the officers who normally have been given lots of advantages. It is our legitimate rights that have never been taken into consideration."

  This is a significant development, and the central govt. should take note of this, because it brings the spotlight exactly where it should have been focussed all these days- on the jawan. It is precisely at this level that the healing touch and correction/ rectification measures need to be applied ( and not through OROP, which is a diversionary smoke screen). Not that the govt. has not made attempts to do so in the past. A little known fact is that till the Third Pay Commission a jawan served only for 5 years and was not entitled to any pension. ( INDIA TODAY, August 17, 2015). It was only in 1973, on the recommendations of the TPC, that he was not only given a tenure of 15 years but also made entitled to pension. But much more needs to be done, because he still retires at 35.

  The solution, as I've been maintaining, does not lie in the easy and financially disastrous OROP formula. A country which gives 50% pension to an individual for 50 years for having served for 15 years cannot but be both intellectually and financially bankrupt. The best solution to this vexed problem is already on the table before the govt.- lateral induction into the police and CPMFs. In fact this was suggested by the Sixth Pay Commission but the central govt., no doubt under pressure from the police and CPMFs, chose to ignore it. Opposition from the latter is to be expected for a number of sordid reasons for which one does have the time here, but Mr. Modi has to override his bureaucracy and political colleagues and implement this recommendation of the SPC. It will at one stroke remove the just grievances of the ORs and jawans, improve exponentially the image and effectiveness of the police and CPMFs, eliminate the need for any OROP, prevent a similar agitation by the civilian employees, save the country thousands of crores and ensure we do not go the way of Greece.

  It is time for the ESM to back down and enter into meaningful dialogue with the central govt., show some flexibility, and cease putting themselves on a pedestal. They say they are not trade unionists but are behaving exactly like them. Stop this blackmail, for it is engendering indiscipline and tarnishing the image of the Indian soldier which we hold in high esteem. Discuss with the govt. the real issues that bedevil the jawan and do not try to feather your own nest by using him as a proxy. Don't try to bankrupt a country you have sworn to protect.

  As for Mr. Modi, we have been waiting for 16 months for him to show some real leadership. His time starts NOW.

THE BITTER TRUTH ABOUT OROP

   The current debate about OROP ( One Rank One Pension) has become infused with too much passion, emotion, recriminations, frustration and downright prevarication. This, though perhaps understandable, is not healthy because it tends to blur and take the focus away from the hard issues involved, and prevents a rational analysis of the problem. The plain fact is that OROP is just not implementable, and the sooner the Govt. comes out with an open admission on this, and stops leading the defence forces down the garden path, the better.
   The govt. consists of scores of departments( of which the armed forces are also a part), thousands of categories of posts and hundreds of pay scales/ ranks. Their remuneration, promotion avenues, pensions have been arrived at after decades of deliberation and many Pay Commissions. There are intricate linkages between them ( called " equation" in govt. parlance): the whole structure is like a huge spider web in which all the strands are inter-connected, and disturbing just one cobweb destabilises the entire structure. The demand for OROP threatens to do exactly this, and this is why the govt. is unable to take a decision on this controversial issue.
   The basic premise of OROP is inherently flawed. One's pension is inextricably linked to one's salary at the time of retirement and not to the salary of the same post twenty years later. That is why Pay Commissions, every ten years, do not link past pensions with current salaries but provide a percentage growth to those pensions. This is true of not just the armed forces ( as some may think) but of the entire govt. structure, including ALL civilian posts- with one exception.
   This exception is the " causus belli" or the root of the problem. Many years ago the IAS contrived a sleight of hand( at which we are past masters) to ensure that the highest echelons of the elite civil services, at least, get the benefit of OROP ! This is how it was managed: the highest pay scale in govt. ( currently) is Rs. 80000/ fixed. ( only the Chiefs of the three defence forces and the Cabinet Secretary are in the fixed scale of Rs. 90000/.) It was decreed that all who retire in this scale( known loftily as the Apex Scale) would get OROP- that is, their pensions would always be linked to whatever revised Apex Scale the subsequent Pay Commissions decided. Since every single IAS( or IFS) officer retires in the Apex Scale this forever ensured OROP for themselves. To reduce any opposition to the strategem, some Apex Scale posts were also made available to other All India services.
  The top brass in the armed forces were also party to this decision, for they also got a share of the pie. Take the Army. The Apex Scale has also been provided to the VCOAS, Army Commanders, Lt. General( NFSG) and one third of the total strength of Lt. Generals in the force. The same applies to their counterparts in the other two forces. This may perhaps explain why we have not heard the top echelons of the forces coming out in public support of the demand for universal OROP.
   Giving OROP to just the Apex Scale was a bad and inequitable decision, and all the elite civil services and the armed forces were party to it. So, don't just blame the " babus" please.
  The chickens have now come home to roost and they're making quite a racket over it, as chickens will do. Extending OROP to just the defence forces is neither fair, nor possible. It is not fair because, emotive claims apart, they are not the only ones serving the nation- the primary school teacher in a Naxal village in Dantewada is also doing so, the coal miner spending twelve hours every day in the pitch darkness of a flooded mine in Jharia is also doing so, the fireman rushing into a burning building in a Mumbai slum is also doing so. Nor does it help the cause to quote statistics about the number of caualties- the para military forces and some state police forces have consistently had higher casualties than the army over the years. Demanding a special dispensation on the basis of an exclusive claim to patriotism is never a good idea- it has tinges of a hubris that does not go well with the concept of selfless service.
  The acceptance of the OROP demand is also not practically or legally possible, because it cannot be limited to the armed forces only, and any extension to other services and departments will bankrupt the govt. for all times. The stirrings have already started- the Central Para Military Forces, the Railway unions, some Associations of central govt. Ministries- have already given ominous hints that if OROP is allowed to the armed forces it cannot be denied to them. So we're no longer talking of just 22 lakh ex-servicemen and 6 lakh widows- we're talking of tens of millions of central and state govt. employees. We're no longer looking at a financial implication of Rs. 8000 crores but ten or twenty times that. Its a no brainer.
  And yet there are some aspects of the demand of the armed forces that are legitimate, that are peculiar to them, and which any sensitive govt. has to consider sympathetically. The primary one for me is their early retirement ( especially for the jawans and ORs) and subsequent unemployment with relatively low pension rates. The solution to this vexed imbroglio has to come out of the box and not from any manual of the finance department. Although it is certainly presumptuous of me I would make so bold as to suggest the following steps as an alternative to OROP:

*  Eradicate the root and genesis of the problem--- abolish the OROP benefit provided only to the holders of the Apex Scale and cover them under the same formula of pension as applicable to others. This may occasion some resistance from about twenty thousand or so of our plastic frame and a few defence brass but it would remove the heart burning of many millions of others and restore equity.
*  Provide higher pay scales to members of the armed forces to compensate them for their shorter service tenures and lack of promotion avenues. In order to do this the bureaucracy should once and for all give up the specious notion of maintaining "equations"- there are no equations between apples and oranges.
* Increase the gratuity available to ORs and jawans.
* Provide 50% reservation for jawans and other ORs in all central para-military and state police forces at appropriate levels. Not only would this single measure provide gainful employment to them for another 25 years, it would also considerably enhance the image and effectiveness of these forces because of the sterling qualities of discipline and integrity which these ORs would bring with them. I calculate that there would be about 30000 retirees from the army every year- the annual vacancies in the para-military and police forces would be many times this number, so adjusting the former should pose no problem. Ex-servicemen Directorates already exist at the Centre and in the states and they can maintain the data of retirees and forward the names against requisitions.

  OROP is a mirage which will never materialise. If the lot of our ex-servicemen is to be improved and their obvious career disadvantages compensated, suggestions like the above have to be considered. Mr. Modi should learn a thing or two from the armed forces- instead of a head-on confrontation with them he should execute a flanking manoeuvre. 

INDIA'S DYSFUNCTIONAL LEGAL ECOLOGY CANNOT SUPPORT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

     This is not an article about the religious, moral, retributive or utilitarian basis for opposing the death penalty. This is also not about Yakub Memon or the arguments for and against his hanging. This is not about terrorism, or Pakistani/ Isis  inspired terrorists. It is not about the Mumbai riots or the Mumbai bomb blasts, either. It is not about Islamic terror or Saffron terror or about other convenient labels that make for animated discussions in TV studios or Parliament. It is about our legal eco-system and its fitness and professional integrity to qualify it for putting people to death. Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.

     Such a health check is necessary, because at this very moment 1617 condemned human beings are awaiting death in our prisons. I'm guessing that the majority of Indians would say that they are dangerous to society, like a cancer, and like any cancerous growth must be excised from our body. An apt simile, no doubt, but it must be remembered that carcinomas are removed on the basis of irrefutable, scientific, proven evidence- not on assumptions, subjective surmises and arbitrary guidelines. If I could have the same faith in our legal system that I would have in a diagnosis of cancer by a competent medical institution, I would not be having the doubts about capital punishment in our country that I have today.

     Added to this is a mounting pile of evidence across countries that makes the sheer finality of this sentence blood-curdling, forcing us to think again whether we are omniscient enough to play God. The latest findings of the National Law University, Delhi clearly prove that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to the marginalised, the poor and the minorities. This is also the evidence in the United States where a black is three times more likely to be executed than a white. And the real chilling finding, by the National Academy of Sciences in the USA: that at least 4% of capital convictions were found to be totally wrong! This figure is bound to be many times higher in a country like ours ( for reasons given later in this article), and therefore is bound to raise the question: is our legal system so perfect as to permit us to kill other human beings in cold blood ?

     A legal eco-system consists of three layers: the LEA( Law Enforcing Agency), the Judicial System and the Government. The first carries out the investigation, the second conducts the trial, and the third legislates the laws, including mercy petitions and pardons. It is my submission that all three are so badly flawed in India that we might as well toss the ( loaded) dice to decide who gets to hang.

     The LEA first, which means the police. Today in India NO ONE trusts  police investigation- not the govt., not the opposition, not the public, not the judges. The trend is to demand a CBI investigation into every major crime, and not without reason, for state police investigations are perceived to be guided by money, political expediency, career progression and increasingly now by TV debates. The whole effort is to quickly nail the most convenient candidate, and not to get at the truth: this is not a hypothesis but a fact, as the abysmal conviction rates demonstrate. They can ( and do) steer investigations into letting the guilty off the hook ( as the unfolding Vyapam case and the burning to death of a journalist in UP, allegedly at the instance of a Minister, shows); or in framing innocent persons, as evidenced in the Pandher and the Arushi murder cases. The most blatant example of this, of course, has to be the Hashimpura mass murder of 40 Muslims by the PAC- after 33 years all 21 accused policemen were let off for want of evidence! Evidence is created or destroyed, witnesses are intimidated or bought off or even killed, as the Vyapam and Asa Ram cases have shown, post mortems are manipulated, records are conveniently lost. What ultimately lands up in courts is either a deliberately weakened case or a concocted one. To condemn someone to death on the basis of these types of investigations is, to me, a crime no less than the one the person is accused of.                                                                                                                                                                The LEAs are ever willing to pander to political influence and go slow in the investigation of cases the govt. of the day finds inconvenient, even cases involving terrorist activities and large number of deaths. The Samjhauta blasts, the Malegaon bombing, the Mumbai riots of 1993, the massacre of Sikhs in 1984- these are prime examples of how the police can be used to protect mass murderers from the death penalty. Inevitably, in a few more years all evidence will have disappeared ( this has already happened in the Sikh killing cases) and everyone can live happily ever after.

 This is not to say that that all police investigations are tainted or flawed; many convictions must be correct- but that is not the point. The point is that, once the credibility and fairness of a process is irretrievably damaged, all its outcomes become suspect.

Our judicial system is only marginally better. The growing perception among the citizens ( one voiced by many eminent jurists also of late) is that the kind of justice you get is dependent on your political clout and wealth, which only can ensure the marquee lawyers who can sway the courts. How else does one explain a Salman Khan getting bail in a matter of hours, a Jayalalitha's conviction being stayed with the same alacrity, a Nanda walking free after only a couple of years inspite of deliberately killing a number of people and destroying evidence, an eminent lawyer continuing to practice inspite of being caught on tape suborning and influencing witnesses in an important murder case ? The list is endless.

The fairness of our trial system is tested in other ways also, and found wanting. One expects judges to be proactive in sifting through the quality of evidence in at least important cases relating to murder and rape, especially given the stratagems adopted by the police. One rarely sees this happening, or any application of mind. The most telling illustration of this were the Jessica Lal and Nitish Katara cases, in which the accused would have just walked away had it not been for the sustained pressure by the media and civil society. Thousands of other similar cases probably just drop through the cracks in the judicial system, unnoticed.

Equity is lacking also in the manner in which cases are taken up for hearing, leading to justified suspicion of pick and choose. Why is there still no closure in the Uphaar fire case in which dozens died due to established negligence, even 18 years later ?- the Ansals got a paltry one year sentence ( yes, for proven negligence leading to the death of 67 persons!), and even that is being appealed in courts and there has been no date given for two years! Why is the Supreme Court unable to find time to dispose off the appeals of the Nirbhaya convicts, a case which the govt.had promised to fast track, even though it has time for the Chautalas and Sahara Shris ?  I suppose justice is being done but it certainly does not appear so, and perception is all that matters in the dispensation of justice.

These murky waters have been further muddied by the Supreme Court in a few judgements relating to capital punishment. I refer to the " rarest of rare cases" doctrine and automatic commutation of death to life imprisonment in cases of delay in deciding mercy petitions. Though well intentioned, these orders display a tint of hubris and confound an already confused subject. They introduce a discretion, subjectivity and arbitrariness into a process already lacking in transparency and equity. And they're not working. The Supreme Court has itself admitted that seven of its death penalty orders were erroneous, contrary to the rule of the rarest of rare and were incuriam. If death penalty is to be given only in the rarest of rare cases then how come 1617 people have been condemned to hang in just the last fifteen years ? Why should my life depend on the discretion of a judge who may be having a bad day, or just doesn't like my face ? A Supreme Court or a High Court judge may use his discretion wisely , but can we expect the same from every Sessions judge holding court in a hinterland steeped in casteism, family rivalries, criminalised politicians and obscurantism ? It is precisely this kind of subjectivity which enabled Dara Singh to escape the gallows even though he had locked up a missionary and his two minor sons in a car and then set it on fire, roasting them alive. This cold blooded murder cum infanticide was not deemed to be a rarest of rare case. Some degree of discretion in law is inevitable but the constant effort should be to minimise it, not increase it as the Supreme Court has done.

Even more subversive of justice is the doctrine that delay in deciding mercy petitions shall lead to commutation to life. This short-sighted fiat has thrown open the doors of discretion to the govt., one agency which can NEVER be trusted to use it wisely or fairly.

The govt. is the third layer in the justice system and one more concerned with the politics of justice than its equity or fairness, It has used the doctrine of delay to the hilt for its own political ends, whether at the centre or in the states . Its shameless misuse for political ends has ensured that the killers of an ex- Prime Minister have been granted commutation( and may even be released prematurely if the Tamil Nadu govt. has its way), and that the killers of Beant Singh may well receive the same relief. Furthermore, the govt. has the discretion to decide one mercy petition and keep the others pending, depending on who it wishes to hang and who it wants to save. Petitions should be disposed off according to their place in the queue, but that's not how the system works: the petitions of Kasab, Afzal Guru and Memon were all made to jump the queue and quickly decided( rejected) with the last being taken PERSONALLY by the Home Minster to the President at night, while other, older ones are still pending. This is unscrupulous manipulation of a dubious doctrine to begin with.

    This then is the reality of the larger criminal justice eco-system in India. It is plagued with inconsistencies, corruption, opaqueness, subjectivity, discretion, cronyism, hubris and plain gutter politics. It shows no mercy or compassion to the poor and disadvantaged, indeed, it singles them out for its own brand of justice. Even in the best of societies, as Faiza Mustafa noted in a recent article, " human judgements are never so certain as to permit society to kill a human being judged by other human beings." To permit it in a fractious and dysfunctional society like ours is an abomination. All reasonable Indians should strive to ensure that we join that group of one hundred nations which have abolished Capital punishment. We should not play God, especially when there will never be a consensus on whose God is the right God.   

SOCIAL CHANGE: SUPREME COURT AS THE DEFAULT OPTION

      It is typical of our sensation-hungry and morally bankrupt times that a recent judgement of the Supreme Court, delivered earlier this month by Justice Vikramjit Sen, has attracted little or no notice at all. This path breaking order, emanating from SLP ( Civil) no. 28367 of 2011 against an order of the Delhi High Court dated 8.8.2011, decrees that an unwed mother cannot be forced to disclose the name and particulars of the father of her child. What makes this judgement so momentous is that it recognises the rights of a woman( and her child) in a society that is still essentially patriarchal. It is a huge leap forward in reaffirming the right of privacy of  women and in accepting, without being sanctimonious, the emerging phenomenon of the single mother. Justice Sen's further achievement in his judgement has been the bringing together of the threads and tenets of different religions to confer further legitimacy on his order. He has eloquently demonstrated how his conclusion conforms to Hindu thinking ( The Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956), Mohammedan precepts and Christian law ( Indian Succession Act 1925), and therefore removes any jingoistic challenge to his findings. For me, however, the real significance of this matter goes beyond individual judges and judgements: it lies in an analysis of the forces that shape the evolution of a society- upwards to enlightenment or downwards to the darkness of ignorance.

India today appears to be on the downward spiral, especially over the last few years. Intellectually and morally we seem to be regressing to the dark ages when all individualism, non-conformism, intellectual exploration and liberal thinking are frowned upon and even persecuted. Any attempt at changing out-dated customary practices or social reforms is shouted down by religious bigots, self-appointed guardians of public morality, khap panchayats or ante diluvian politicians. And their opposition is not limited to just " shouting down" any proponent of change- they have also devised an administrative and legal structure that enforces their rabid intolerance. This pernicious structure has to be dismantelled-the question is: who will do this?  The essence of the problem is that the country has ceased to produce visionary thinkers or social reformers after Raja Rammohan Roy, Gandhi and Vivekenanda. I am 64 years old and I have not seen in my lifetime the emergence of any such intellect that could act as a beacon for social change. Nehru had a vision of sorts but he was more of a synthesiser of divergent views than a genuine philosopher, Sardar Patel was too caught up in the here and now, Jaiprakash Narain was a well intentioned flash in the political firmament, Ram Manohar Lohia was an existentialist socialist not a social reformer, VP Singh was a divisive not a uniting force, and the God men of today are nothing but spiritual entrepreneurs. There is no hope either from the current crop of politicians who may call themselves " leaders" but are actually being led by the nose by base considerations such as appeasement of the forces of caste and religion, the instinct of self-survival, an insatiable appetite for money and the naked craving for power. How then can our society progress to join the other nations who are leaving us far behind on the scale of " civilisational values"?

    Events in the recent past lead me to believe that it is only active judicial intervention- through the forum of the Supreme Court- that can bring about much needed social changes in a society rapidly regressing into the age of darkness. The decriminalisation of suicide ( by the scrapping of Sec. 309 of the IPC), upholding the right of free speech by striking down Sec.66   of the Information Technology Act, the repeated quashing of cynical , caste and religion centric laws, attempts to clean up an electoral system weighted heavily in favour of criminals and black money, forcefully declaring that the LGBT community and transgenders have all the rights of other citizens in this country- these are some of the achievements of the Court in the recent past. They are important because they are essential stepping stones to a society based on the rule of law and premised on the humane values that define civilisation. And each of these successes have come in the face of stiff opposition from governments, political parties, religious leaders and pressure groups who do not want the status quo to change.

   But even the Supreme Court has not covered itself in glory on all occasions, and at times has shrunk back from acknowledging that in this putrid milieu its responsibility as THE agent for social change is inescapable. It is imperative that the Court acknowledge this role and not see itself merely as the arbiter of disputes and final judge of criminality. Through the decades, by an aggressive and pro-active interpretation of the Constitution, the Court has carved out for itself an increased role in the affairs of the state; but this should not be limited only to issues such as the determination of who will appoint judges, or how judges cannot be arrested without prior approval of the CJI, or who is qualified to sit on Tribunals. The real canvas should be much larger( as the Supreme Court has demonstrated on many occasions, as mentioned earlier). The immediate test for the Court is staring it full in the face even today, in the form of four landmark cases pending before it for adjudication:

Decriminalisation of homosexuality:  

Section 377 of the IPC, which makes homosexuality a crime, is an abomination in the legal system of any progressive society. Inserted by Macaulay in the 19th century in deference to the then existing Victorian mores in Britain it has been repealed long ago in the country of its origin, but continues to torment people in this country even today. It bears mentioning that even the Catholic church, which for centuries has opposed homosexuality, is having a rethink on the matter: questioned about it recently, the Pope was reported to have said:  "Who are we to judge.....?"                                                         Out of 193 nations in the United Nations homosexuality is not a crime in 114 of them- we belong with the remaining 79, but it is not company we should be proud of- Burundi, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Pakistan, Yemen, Quatar, to name just a few. Except large parts of Africa, the Middle-east and South-east Asia the rest of the world has recognised the injustice of treating millions of people as criminals simply because they have a different sexual orientation. On 2.7.2009 the Delhi High Court, in a judgement remarkable for its sensitivity, scientific reasoning and world view, struck down Sec. 377 as unconstitutional. Unfortunately, this was overturned by the Supreme Court on 11.12.2013 in a timid order that for me will always be a blot on the Court's record. The specious argument for doing so was that it was for Parliament to legislate on the matter. Why then is the Supreme Court entertaining challenges to another legislation passed by Parliament, viz the NJAC( the National Judicial Appointments Commission) ? No, sir, this is no defence for having developed cold feet in the face of opposition from Neolithic elements- the same court has on innumerable occasions in the past quashed or read down legislation which was unconstitutional: it could have done the same by upholding the enlightened verdict of the Delhi Court. Fortunately, the matter is before the Supreme Court again in a bunch of revision/ curative petitions and we hope that it makes amends now for its earlier decision.

Marital rape:

If it is at all possible to have a bigger abomination in law than the one mentioned above, it is the government's/ law breakers' refusal to recognise that marital rape is a crime just as much as rape simpliciter is. Although the latter is a crime under Sec.375 of the IPC there exists in it an exception which specifically provides that rape in marriage is not a crime! There can be few things more abhorrent and repulsive to the rule of equality of sexes. Based on the ancient premise( still prevalent in some religions, not all of them Semite) that women are chattel and the property of men, any society that still tolerates this provision of law cannot possibly call itself either humane or cultured. This matter is also being heard by the Supreme Court now. The government has opposed the scrapping of the exception clause on the grounds that marriage is a sacred covenant with which the court should not interfere, that societal customs should be respected and that rape in marriage is difficult to prove. This, to me, is an astounding and incredible position for a government to adopt- marriage is a legal covenant and governments have always made laws to to ensure it is practiced fairly: in matters relating to dowry, divorces, custody of children, maintenance, division of property and so on. Why should it not intervene in one of the most pernicious practices within the closed doors of a bedroom? Surveys have shown that more than 60% of wives are subjected to this form of rape at some time or the other- is this a " societal custom" that the government wants to condone and continue to legalise? And so what if it is difficult to prove?- so is dowry harassment, and sedition, and blind murders, and Lalit Modi's embezzlements and Shivraj Chauhan's complicity in Vyapam. It does not, however, lead to the conclusion that anything which is difficult to prove should be legalised! I hope the Court laughs the Attorney General out of court while scrapping this exception in law. And while doing so, I sincerely hope it also throws out another scandalous, anti-women provision- the law that allows courts to order " restitution of conjugal rights" on a woman. What this amounts to is ordering a wife to have sex with her husband, even if she doesn't want to ! Can this be anything but the legalising of rape within marriage ?

Assisted suicide:

The constitutional right to life is incomplete without the concommitant right to die. Our own Supreme Court has held that the right to life includes the right to live with dignity. In that case if a person can no longer live with dignity owing to his physical condition- no control of his bodily functions, comatose, dependent on others, tubated from every orifice in his body and a few others surgically created, in unbearable pain, kept alive only by a battery of machines- should he not then have the right to decide whether he wishes to end this vegetable existence? No, said the Supreme Court in another extremely disappointing judgement in December 2014, in the case of the unfortunate Mumbai nurse Aruna Shanbaug, who had been in a vegetative state for more than thirty years. The Court refused to allow the withdrawal of medical interventions that alone kept her alive. ( The lady died this year, a living- dead?- example of how even the best legal brains can falter.) By the same judgement the Court has allowed " passive euthanasia" but not " active euthanasia" which in more sensitive nations is called " physician assisted suicide ( PAS)."

PAS is legal in four countries, Quebec in Canada and at least four states of the USA. Legislation to permit it is pending in the UK and France. Though the details vary, PAS basically allows a physician to prescribe the terminal dose to the recipient, though the latter has to administer it himself. Of course, at least two other Doctors have to certify that the patient is terminally ill and has no hope of recovery. Public opinion in developed countries is now veering around to the view that PAS should be allowed subject to a mechanism to prevent its misuse. Along with this, the concept of the " living will" is also gaining acceptance- a document which a person makes out while still in control of his senses, to the effect that if he is incapacitated at some future date, in agony and unlikely to recover, no life prolonging medical interventions should be made to keep him alive. A " living will" makes it easier for PAS to be applied.

The issue of both, the living will and " mercy killing" ( as we call it in India!), is pending before a constitution bench of the Supreme Court, and it is to be hoped that the Court will examine it rationally, bereft of the religious, " cultural" and ersatz compassionate jingoism that it will inevitably attract from various quarters. We hope also that the Court will take into account the fact that alternative mechanisms which can support life and obviate the need for PAS are completely lacking in India. Quite often the extreme medical conditions that drive families or individuals to opt for suicide are the result of massive deficiencies in a country's health care systems. A recent survey by AIIMS itself revealed that 40% of its trauma/ paralysed patients died within two years of discharge because they had no access to post hospital care. It takes 9 months to get an MRI done at a govt. hospital in Delhi, and a year to obtain a date for a major operation. India spends just 2% of its budget on health care, less even than Srilanka, Bangladesh and Cuba. We do not have a system of " hospices" or home based nursing care which could improve the last days of a terminally ill patient and thus remove the need for PAS. In this connection, every single judge of our Supreme Court should read the remarkable ( for a Doctor) book by Atul Gawande, " BEING MORTAL". This is a book which highlights the lack of compassion in a medical profession dedicated to prolonging life rather than in improving its quality, especially in the last few days before an inevitable death. In the USA the focus is rapidly shifting to the latter and there are now more than 17000 institutions that do so. In India our medical apparatus, especially the state apparatus, is not even good at prolonging life; the private sector only partially succeeds in order to milk the maximum moneys from the soon to be departed. Until this context improves there will be an inevitability about the need for PAS, and it should be allowed, both to preserve the dignity of the suffering and the sanity of the living. One hopes that the judges will realise that this is not merely an arid legal issue but one that reflects a social reality and demands a compassionate response.

Criminal defamation:  

A social order which puts a man in jail for saying something which another man does not like cannot be called civilised and is not likely to progress beyond a banana republic stage. In practically all developed countries defamation is a civil offence, not a criminal one, but in India we persist in demonising it. It happens because the moment something is categorised as criminal the police step in with their fearsome powers. This eminently suits our politicians, the wealthy and the well connected who can use the police apparatus and the even more intimidating legal system to brow beat and persecute those who dare to utter anything unpalatable or accusatory about them. There can be no freedom of speech if we have to look over our shoulder at the nearest police station or magistrate's court everytime we write an article or utter something in public about someone. By criminalising defamation we provide a handy tool to the powerful to muzzle dissent, and for this reason alone it has to go. Increase its civil penalties by all means but take it away from the police.

The matter is before the Supreme Court as the criminality part of it has been challenged by a number of people including Subramaniam Swamy and Arvind Kejriwal. The government is,naturally, opposing it in its usual ham-handed manner. It argues that the monetary compensation for defamation( if it is treated as a civil offence alone) can never be adequate as we do not have a law of torts in India, and that most people in India do not have the capacity to pay any damages imposed! In other words, lock up the 190 million people in India who live below the poverty line if they commit any transgression at all ! We already have more than 450000 undertrials in our jails who do not have the money to post a bond- the govt. should be thinking about how to get them out, instead of devising means of getting more in! Secondly, by all means legislate a law of torts- we need one in any case to compensate consumers for the rampant cheating and misrepresentation that is the standard business model of most companies ( and the government too) in this ancient country of ours.

These then are some of the legal perversities hidden in the Augean stables of our republic, and how the Supreme Court cleans them out will determine our future path to a modern, rational, liberal and compassionate society. Those that prefer the status quo will no doubt throw up a host of legal challenges and try to complicate matters by all manner of legerdemain , but my hope is that the Court will hack its way through this juridical thicket to the simple truth that lies beyond it, the truth that Socrates enunciated so well: There can be no greatness without simplicity. 

DELHI DESERVES A REFERENDUM

[  In an article titled THE DELHI IMBROGLIO- A REFERENDUM IS THE ONLY WAY OUT published on the HILLPOST site on 25-5-2015 I had argued why Mr. Kejriwal should demand a referendum on the Delhi statehood issue instead of just agitating the question on the streets. On the 5th of July AAP has now formally raised this demand and has asked its Urban Development Dept. to work out a proposal for this.]

There used to be a time when it was believed that politics was the last refuge of scoundrels: that has changed-today its their first refuge. On a similar note, it is becoming evident with each passing day that the first refuge of politicians is the law, or the legal process. ( One cannot, of course, miss the delicious irony in the fact that a force which was meant to punish them has ended up being their strongest shield!). Of course, this applies equally to scoundrels too, and in any case its becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the two.

Indian politicians are perfecting the art of hiding between the terminology or the processes of law. A legalism a day keeps the prosecutor away. And so a Shivraj Singh Chauhan avoids his own implication in the Vyapam scam by saying he cannot order a CBI investigation because it is for the High Court to do so. Smriti Irani deflects all criticism of her thrice- born affidavits by saying that she has not yet been summoned by a court ( which has taken cognizance of the complaint against her); Sushma Swaraj suo-moto reversed the government's policy on a wanted fugitive but can legitimately claim that she has not broken any law; Akhilesh Yadav refuses to register an FIR against a Minister accused of burning to death a journalist( in his dying confession, no less) and then wards off journalists by saying that he cannot be arrested because no FIR has been filed against him! A serious FIR against a Governor is quashed because the law gives him immunity. Lalit Modi continues to evade the law by claiming that he has not yet been declared an absconder by a court.

It therefore doesn't surprise me at all that Kejriwal's proposal for a referendum on the Delhi question has been met by a synchronised howl from both the BJP and the Congress condemning it as " illegal ", " unconstitutional " and " anti-national". It is none of these, but these two parties realise that they cannot let Kejriwal run away with this bone in his mouth, and for a number of reasons: one, a referendum in Delhi will set a precedent for similar demands elsewhere; second, it will be a second nail in the BJP's national coffin and a personal defeat for Mr. Modi; third, it will relegate the Congress to the Wazirabad garbage dump for the next twenty years; four, it will upset the loaded applecart of Loot-yen's Delhi where everybody has his or her nose in the feeding trough ( the mixed metaphor may be excused in the interest of conveying the precise meaning!).

The referendum is a useful and legitimate tool of democracy, and the sooner these politicians realise this the better it will be for the country. It is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to vote on a particular proposal, the vote usually being a precursor to a new law or policy. Unlike voting in Parliaments and legislatures by elected representatives, a referendum is an expression of DIRECT DEMOCRACY: it complements the system of  REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY. There are certain seminal and foundational issues in any country which are either extremely divisive, or such that they cannot be left to the decision of a government which is loath to give up its own powers ( as in Delhi), or to elected representatives who are constrained by their party lines or own self-interest. Some questions can only be decided by popular sovereignty and not by politicians.

The term " referendum" is believed to have originated in the Gaubunden canton of Switzerland in the 16th century. It is a process which has been used liberally by democracies: more than 500 referendums have been held world wide since the end of the 18 th century in countries such as the USA, Australia, Switzerland, Bolivia, Kenya, Norway, Hong Kong, Serbia, South Africa, Canada, Venezuela, UK, Ireland, Poland to name a few. The subjects they addressed have been equally diverse: congestion tax, devolution of powers, electoral reforms, prohibition,, accession to EU, redrawing of boundaries of political units, constitutional changes and so on. The most recent ones were the referendums on the independence of Scotland and the financial crisis in Greece. Referendums, by correctly gauging the popular will, always strengthen democracy and governance and not weaken it as Mr. Maken and Upadhyay mistakenly believe. It also acts a safety valve in volatile situations. So the path Kejriwal wants to tread on is a well travelled one though we in India may be stepping on it for the first time.

Delhi itself is sharply divided on the issue of statehood, and this fault line runs across class lines, unfortunately. Some people have benefitted from the present unique hybrid status of Delhi which is under the Center's thumb- the politicians, bureaucrats, all residents of South and Central Delhi who have historically been consuming a disproportionate proportion of all assets : power, water, funding, police presence, infrastructure and superstructure; traders and businessmen with contacts in the central govt. agencies and organisations such as DDA, Municipal Corporations, CPWD and so on. On the other side of the divide are the residents of a lesser Delhi- the low income groups, residents of unauthorised colonies, migrant labour, petty shop-keepers who rarely feature in the planning processes and priorities of the powers that be. This latter group outnumbers the former and constitutes the bulk of Kejriwal's support base. If a fair referendum were to be held, the result would be a foregone conclusion in favour of statehood. This is why the mainstream parties are resisting it and will deploy all tactics to ensure that it never happens. What they wilfully ignore for pelf and power is the fact that Delhi's present administrative structure is antiquated and cannot meet the challenges of its cancerous growth or the rising expectations of its citizens. The arbitrary division of powers between an elected Chief Minister and a domesticated Lieutenant Governor, between officers who report to the Center and those who report to the state govt ensures that there is no accountability or sense of responsibility. The Center deliberately choking Delhi of its fair share of funds in favour of discretionary grants is an insult to the citizens. The police have run riot because they can play both sides against the middle and have consequently become a law unto themselves. It is no wonder then that Delhi is the worst metropolis in the world.

Things have to change and a referendum would decide it one way or the other: this stasis in governance cannot be allowed to continue. Kejriwal's bold initiative is a step in the right direction and deserves to be supported by all who have the genuine interest of Delhi at heart. But I foresee a bitter struggle for him where even the courts will be ranged against him. This is a battle he cannot win in Parliament or in a judicial chamber- but he will win it on the streets of Delhi. It will be a Pyrrhic victory, and India will be the better for it.

ARE WE AN OLIGARCHY MASQUERADING AS A DEMOCRACY ?

 Lets first define the terms I am talking about.
OLIGARCHY-- a small group of people having control of a country or organisation.
PLUTOCRACY-- a form of oligarchy. Defines a society or system ruled and dominated by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens.
NETOCRACY-- a perceived upper class that bases its power on net-working skills.

Any observer of the events that have been unfolding over the last few weeks in this country could not have failed to notice how deep the rot has spread in our polity and society. Its no longer a question of Congress or BJP, government or business, judiciary or media- the cancer has metastatised through all the organs of the state. As Lalit Modi regurgitates dirty secrets on the twitterverse on an hourly basis and our rulers and erstwhile conscience keepers retreat deeper into their carapaces, a distinct pattern appears to be emerging of how a few individuals and families have taken over this country by manipulating the processes of democracy, and are now sucking it drier than the East India Company ever did. And the inevitable question that arises in my mind is: are we a democracy at all, or have we been hijacked ?
It is becoming clearer each day that the BJP refuses to take action against its errant Ministers that our democracy is just a facade. All the four pillars of a democratic dispensation- the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, the press- have developed deep fractures and have been taken over by termites and weevils who have hollowed out the innards of the edifice. They have been fattening themselves at our cost all these years; once in a while one of these insects tumbled out but we took little notice, and suspected no real danger. But now the Queen Bee itself is talking( or tweeting) and as the secrets tumble out the extent of the infestation is becoming clearer.
It is my contention that a few families and individuals in our four vital organs- executive, judiciary, legislature, press- have taken them over and have moulded and disfigured then to suit their own purpose, and the country be damned.
Consider first the political executive. State after state has been commandeered by the likes of the Badals, the Dhumals and Virbhadra Singhs, the Yadavs and Mayawatis, the Patnaiks, the Karunanidhis and Jayalalithas, the Pawars, the Hoodas and Lalls of various denominations, the Abdullahs, Raos and Naidus. The states have become privately owned businesses. It is impossible for anyone not owing allegiance to one or the other of these sicilian-style families to enter the power structure. Parliament itself is the personal fiefdom of a few dozen families, a franchise of the dominant families; and the franchisees are doing very well, thank you: according to the website of the Association for Democratic Reforms the average wealth of an MP in the current Lok Sabha is now Rs. 15 crore, up from Rs. 9 crore in the last one. And this is only the declared assets! The state legislatures are no different, packed with sons, daughters, their spouses etc. of the Dons. And so we have the scandalous situation of the Badal family having twelve Ministers in Punjab, and Mulayam Singh has so many of his family in the government that even he probably can't remember the number.
The judiciary too is not exempt from a few question marks, the biggest of them being: why is it so keen to retain its choke-hold on appointment of Judges ? In no other genuine democracy do judges appoint judges, but here we have a circus playing out on a daily basis in the Supreme Court where a perfectly reasonable NJAC Act is being scrutinised for its constitutionality, and in the interim all appointments have been put on hold- and that too when as many as  251 posts of judges are lying vacant and more than 40 million cases are pending in the courts. Why? Maybe the answer lies in the following statistics which a Mumbai lawyer M.J. Nedumpara recently submitted to the Supreme Court, based on information gleaned from the websites of the SC and 13 High Courts: 33% SC judges and 50% of High Court judges are " related to higher echelons of the judiciary", which translates to 6 in the former and 88 in the latter. This has been the result of the existing Collegium system of appointments ( which the NJAC seeks to replace) in which vacancies are neither notified/ advertised nor is there any transparency in the appointments. Further, a succession of judgements in the past has ensured that retired judges have almost complete monopoly over appointments to various Commissions and Tribunals, guaranteeing them post retirement sinecures. If this does not smell of an oligarchy or netocracy I am not sure what does.
Take our so called " free" press or media. Most of our leading newspapers and News Channels are owned/ managed by business interests ( Bennet Coleman, Mukesh Ambani, Bhartiyas) or politicians( Jayalalitha, the Marans, Rajeev Shukla, Chandan Mitra, the Badals, Karthikeya Sharma). Their agenda is naturally set by these behind-the scenes puppeeteers whose sole objective is to preserve the oligarchic status quo. They will not tolerate any change or any " outsider" trying to crash the party. That explains their almost vitriolic hatred of Narender Modi when he first made his bid for Delhi, or of Arvind Kejriwal even today. Mr. Modi is now acceptable to them partly because they have no choice now that he is the Prime Minister, and partly also because he is gradually getting co-opted into the cosy club himself. But Kejriwal is still fair game for a disgustingly biased reporting because he will not abide by their rules.
Consider next India Inc. as our world of business is grandly termed. They are the real plutocrats who pay the piper and call the tune. Protectively nurtured in the licence- raj nursery they have now attained adulthood and have claimed their legacy. There are 180,000 of them- dollar millionaires. But the real barons of the business world, the dollar multi-millionaires number 14800 ( India Today, 10th November 2014) and they are the real oligarchs. According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report of October 2014 the top 1% of Indians own 49% of the country's wealth, and this continues to grow: in 2000 the figure was 36.8%. The top 5% own 65.5%. In contrast the bottom 50% Indians own just 5%! And this in a country where a quarter of the world's destitutes reside, more than 400 million people still live below the poverty line- now we know why they are there. Even in a far wealthier country like the UK the top 1% own only 23.3% of the wealth.
These then are the four sub-oligarchies which coalesce into a grand whole which is the democratic republic of India. The four guard their turf zealously,both individually and collectively, and also network with each other to ensure that no harm befalls any of them. They do not allow any meaningful action to be taken against any of them and ensure that wrong-doing is never punished. The Radia tapes exposed the most venal complicity between politics, media and big business but were quickly erased . 2G and coal allocations were not a one-off mistake or malfeasance: they were part of a mutually beneficial public policy, and many more names than those charge-sheeted are involved, but the lid has been hastily lowered on the investigations. It is common knowledge where the SAHARA moneys came from and where they went, but our oligarchs are certainly not interested in the truth becoming public, so Subroto Roy remains in jail: he will pay the bail amount some day and walk free and everyone will breathe easier. Jayalalitha's bail application is heard in record time while the victims of UPHAAR still wait for their application to be heard even after one year. Convicted members of our privileged netocracy can get bail within hours while unconvicted undertrials rot in dungeons for years. A High Court judge passes a patently illegal order and threatens to register an FIR against his own Chief Justice; another defies the law by refusing to sentence a convicted rapist and instead ordering a " mediation" between the rapist and the victim (!!)- and both continue to serve in the courts, no doubt to pass similar illegal orders in the days to come. Five thousand poor farmers have committed suicide in the last one year under pressure to repay their loans, but one of our high flying( literally) multi-millionaires who owes more than Rupees seven billion to the banks continues to party in his private jets and Mediterranean villas and produce movies for his son. The country's banking system is collapsing under the weight of Rs. 300,000 crores ( US$ 50 billion) " non-performing assets" which is just a euphemism for loans taken by big business which they just refuse to return, with no consequences for them: of course, you and I have to pay for it by more expensive loans and lower returns on deposits. Official secrets are stolen from central ministries and the companies doing so identified ( yes, they belong to our 1% club) but only class four employees and middle level managers arrested: the long arm of the law in India shrinks in direct proportion to the moneys and oligarchs involved. ( I can guarantee that we will hear no more of this case). No less than four retired Supreme Court judges give ( paid) legal opinions to help an absconding Lalit Modi, knowing fully well that his case is sub-judice and is likely to come up before the same court they were a part of till the other day. Can money speak any louder?
One can go on ad-nauseam but I think I have made the point intended-viz. that our oligarchs look after their own. In the first place laws and policies are made to suit them. If they still fall foul of them, then the laws are bent to breaking point. If even that doesn't help then perverse legal interpretations are floated ( such as drawing a distinction between an " affidavit" and a " disposition" and " absconder" and " evader" and so on.) And if, by some miracle, even that is of no avail then the final frontier stares us in the face: an impenetrable thicket of laws and lawyers, judges and judgements, adjournments and appeals that somehow ensures that the innocent is incarcerated and the guilty is freed.
Is it any wonder then how the present Lalit Modi burlesque is playing out? The Congress may be shouting " thief!" now but it took no action against Lalit Modi when it was in power itself- how could it, when it has been feeding at the same trough in our own Animal Farm?  In fact, Mr.Lalit Modi has rendered a great service to this country- he has exposed the putrefied core of our democracy and revealed how every institution meant to strengthen it has actually been undermining it from within. It would appear our tryst with destiny has been postponed indefinitely, for surely it cannot be our destiny to be an oligarchy? To take another metaphor from " Animal Farm":
    " The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which."
   The bestial transformation is complete. 

CAN WE TRUST MR. JAVADEKAR WITH OUR ENVIRONMENT ?

The short answer is: no, we can't.

Mr. Javadekar has donned the mantle of India's Minister of Environment and Forests at a critical moment, when time is running out for the preservation of our once abundant natural assets, and environmental disaster is staring us in the face. His NDA government took over from the UPA, which, notwithstanding its many failings ( and there were many of them) at least was sensitive towards the need for conserving the environment, and had taken many steps in that direction. We had expected that Mr. Javadekar would be equally responsive and would build on these initiatives to repair and reverse the degradation that mindless policies of the past had caused. A few facts about the current state of our environment and forests, as reported from time to time by the UN, WHO, IPCC and our own agencies, deserve mentioning as a context for assessing Mr. Javadekar's performance in the last one year:

*  13 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in India: Delhi heads the list.

*  76 of our 150 major rivers are polluted; the waters of 3/4th of them are not fit for drinking.

*  Our groundwater reserves are in a critical state, thanks to the 21 million borewells dug in the last 50 years: 30% of them in western India alone have dried up. 50% of underground water sources in the Indo-Gangetic plain are polluted.

*  Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2050, effecting 400 million people.

*  Climate change has arrived: it will eventually lead to a 36% decline in food production in South Asia, and a 5.8% loss in wheat production post 2030 in India.

*  The IPCC report of April 2014 predicts a 4* C rise in temperature for India by 2100. A trailer of this was witnessed in peninsular India this summer, where average temperatures rose by 1.4* whereas the normative increase was only 0.8*C: more than 2000 people died in this " heat wave"

*  Environmental degradation costs 5.7% of our GDP, or US$ 120 billion every year.

* 620000 people die every year just from outdoor air pollution.

* 60 million people have been displaced by projects till 2000. These " GDP refugees" are primarily from the most marginalised sections, including tribals and landless labour.

* The World Bank Environment Quality Index rates India at a terrible 155 out of 176 countries.

* We have now become the third largest emitter of carbon in the world.

* As per estimates of our own Zoological Survey of India the list of endangered species of animals has DOUBLED in the last two years- from 190 in 2010 to 443 in 2012: in other words, 253 more species of mammals, amphibians and reptiles are destined for extinction very soon. ( I don't for a minute believe the govt's figures of a 30% increase in tiger population: this appears to have been contrived by a change in the earlier method of conducting the count. This doubt is lent credence by the govt's own recently released figure of 23 tigers having been poached in just the last year.)

*  830, 244 hectares of forest land , or an area which is seven times the size of Delhi, has been diverted for projects in the thirty years from 1981 to 2011. The tempo of diversion has been increasing instead of slowing down: 210,000 ha. has been diverted in just the four years from 2007 to 2011. 12000 ha. of forest land has been sacrificed by the present NDA govt. in just THE LAST SIX MONTHS.

* 50% of the country's wetlands have been lost to urbanisation.

* 67.3% of urban sewage flows directly into our rivers.

*  Our cities generate 60 million tonnes of waste every year: only 30% of it is treated or re-cycled- the rest of it continues to contaminate our rivers and forests. This quantum of waste is predicted to go up by 243% by 2025, according to a World Bank study.

This is not the picture of a " developing" country, as our govt. would like to believe: this is an image of an Elliotsian wasteland. This is what Mr. Javadekar inherited, and with the kind of mandate which his govt. has, one expected him to get down to some hard policy making and ruthless implementation to reverse this slide to ecological perdition. We have seen little so far of this: yes, there is the Clean Ganga campaign, but it has not yet gone beyond the chest thumping stage and it is in any case doomed to failure if Mr. Jadavekar goes ahead with his plan to construct another 150 dams on the upstream Ganga and its tributaries. Yes, there is also the Swacch Bharat programme: its success can be gauged by the 20000 tonnes of garbage that had piled up on Delhi's roads last week because Mr. Modi wished to tell Mr. Kejriwal who is Bossman in Delhi- evidently, garbage conveys a stronger message than votes.

Mr. Javadekar's Ministry has become a hand-maiden of Modi's industrialisation vision. Its mandate is not to conserve the environment but to dismantle the checks and balances that had been put in place to maintain the equilibrium between GDP and natural assets. I cannot think of one single policy or decision by him in the last one year which has promoted the cause of sustaining the environment. To the contrary, however, there have been dozens which will cause long lasting and irreparable devastation to our natural resources and ravage the environment for ever. Here is an illustrative list:

*  Under Mr. Javadekar's prodding a truncated National Wildlife Board. at just one sitting in August 2014, cleared 130 projects related to mining, power, defence, all within 10 kms of protected wildlife areas( which had hitherto been a no-go zone). These PAs include Mukandra Hill Tiger Reserve( Rajasthan), Kanha Tiger Reserve( MP), Dudhwa Tiger Reserve( UP), Kapilash Wildlife Sanctuary( Odisha), and an Olive Ridley turtle nesting site in AP's Krishna district. Diversion of forestland of the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala has been allowed to enable an increase in the height of the Kunnar Dam. And, most shocking of all, a four-lane National Highway has been approved over a 23 km. stretch of the Sariska Tiger Reserve ( all of it in the core area) over the protests of the state forest department. It is clearly of no consequence to our Minister that more than 600 rivers and streams originate from tiger habitats, supplying water to the teeming millions in the cities. A case in point is the Ramganga river which flows from the Corbett National Park and provides Delhi with 190 million cubic feet of water. By chipping away at these habitats, therefore, we endanger not only the ecology but also the future of these cities.

* There is a strong move to replace the Expert panel on Ganga constituted in pursuance of Supreme Court orders to take a view on the number of dams that should be permitted in the upper reaches of the Alaknanda and the Mandakni, the major tributaries of the Ganga. The present panel, headed by Prof. Vinod Tare of IIT Kanpur, had recommended that only six of the two dozen odd hydel projects proposed on these rivers should be allowed, and that too after reducing their capacity by about 30%-40% to ensure minimum water flows to sustain aquatic life. A sensible recommendation, you would think. Not so Mr. Javadekar whose loyalty is to the power sector and not to his own Ministry. Unhappy with the paring down of projects, he has now proposed a new Committee headed by one BP Das, who is a known proponent of power projects, with the Joint Secretary of his Ministry as the convenor, and all the scientists being replaced by technocrats. Mr. Javadekar will get the report he wants, and the Ganga will not flow for much longer.

*  There is also a proposal in the pipeline to trim the powers of the National Green Tribunal, the only body in the govt. today which is showing some interest in protecting the environment: precisely for this reason it has become a thorn in Mr. Javadekar's " make in India" flesh. The proposal is to emasculate the NGT by making it a recommendatory, rather than a judicial, body; and to take away its autonomous status by bringing it under the Ministry. This will make Mr. Javadekar lord of all he surveys, even if all he surveys is a barren waste.

*  Mr. Javadekar is very thorough, if anything. He has also set in motion a review of the three pillars of our environmental regulatory edifice viz. The Indian Forest Act, The Wildlife Protection Act and the Forest Conservation Act. His objective is to extirpate from them all provisions which make it difficult to quickly implement Mr. Modi's " make in India" vision- in other words, environmental considerations, no matter how legitimate, will not be allowed to stand in the way of the GDP God. By the time Mr. Javadekar is through with his mission Veerappan will start looking like a saint, in comparison.

*  In order to leave nothing to chance Mr. Javadekar has also proposed to dilute the Forests Right Act to takeaway the powers of gram sabhas to reject projects in their area. He has obviously been rattled by the Niyamgiri fiasco, where( pursuant to a Supreme Court order directing that the gram sabhas be allowed to have their say) 12 gram sabhas voted to disallow the mining of minerals in their forests by the Rupees 50,000 crore Lanjigarh aluminia plant of Vedanta. Once again, this erstwhile spokesman of the BJP cannot appreciate the fact that there are more than 200 million deprived Indians living in and around forests and dependent on their eco-systems for their livelihood, and that they MUST have a say on the use of these eco-systems for other purposes. With such blinkered visions, is there any wonder that the Naxalite problem just won't go away ?

*  Mr. Javadekar is also re-defining the word " forest" ( currently the definition given by the Supreme Court in 1997-98 prevails): he finds that the present definition is not " user friendly" ( guess who the " user" is that he has in his mind ?). He is proposing that areas which do not have trees on the ground, even though they may be classified as forests; plantation areas; and areas which were not notified as forests before a particular date, even though they may have tree cover now- all these areas shall cease to be considered as forests and will not enjoy the protection of the FCA. Tens of thousands of sq. kms of forest land shall thus be made available to builders, industrialists and assorted cronies, and the people who are actually dependent on these forests shall join the millions of ecological refugees.

* Coastal Regulation Zone Rules, meant to protect vulnerable coastal areas, mangrove swamps, deltas and aquatic life in these zones, are also slated for large scale amendments to enable construction of real estate, ports and highways.

* Wherever possible, and under the garb of stimulating production, environmental and social impact assessments and public hearings are being done away with. For example, coal mines which extract less than 16 million tonnes per annum and want to increase production by 50%, are no longer required to hold public hearings. Dhanbad and Jharia are the historical results of such short-sighted policies earlier, and the reasons why such hearings were introduced in the first place. But history appears to have stopped for Mr. Javadekar with the Mahabharat and the Rig Vedas.

*  The NDA govt. suffers from a Mohammad bin Tughlaq like megalomania: nothing else can explain its insistence on going ahead with the river-linking project despite warnings from scientists and enviromentalists. It is going full steam on the project without conducting any environmental or socio-economic impact assessment studies. It boggles the mind that any country can link 58 rivers through 12550 kms of canals, build 3000 dams and divert 173 billion cu.mtrs. of waters without carrying out these basic studies! The first phase of the project-linking of the Betwa and Ken rivers- has been formally announced yesterday.

*  Having worked in both state and central governments for many years, one can say with confidence that the former are far more venal and subject to pressure; it is therefore necessary that the central govt. act a check on the states, and have the final say in environmental and forest clearances. But Mr. Javadekar, in his hurry to open the flood-gates, is empowering the states to give approvals at their level. This  will create complete mayhem in a few years.

There is much that Mr. Javadekar could have done, and even more that is just crying out for policy initiatives and interventions. The Kasturirangan Committee report on the Western Ghats, that seeks to protect just 37% of its 164,280 sq.kms by declaring them as Ecologically Sensitive Areas, is awaiting approval since 2012. The Western Ghats are a priceless hot-spot that gives birth to 58 rivers and sequesters 10 million tonnes of carbon every year; it has already shrunk by 25% in the last two decades and is screaming for some protection. But our articulate Minister just won't approve the report because the politician-builder nexus in six states is opposed to it. True to his style, he will probably keep appointing more Committees till he gets the report that he wants.

Nothing concrete is being done about reducing our carbon emissions. We are fond of quoting China as a model for industrial development but are learning nothing from its efforts in this field: China has reduced its its carbon intensity( emissions per unit of GDP) by 20% in the last five years and has set a target of 45% reduction by 2020. Mr. Javadekar continues nonchalantly in his oxygen deprived fog. 

Urban waste, which is probably the biggest polluter of our rivers, is another area of concern that is just begging for some attention, but the MOEF is a silent spectator, leaving it to the cities to sort out the mess. China has already installed 180 high volume incinerators and is setting up 200 more with a target of incinerating 60% of the waste by 2020: this shall not only reduce the land required for land fills but also prevent leaching of chemicals into the soil and produce power. We have no comprehensive plan for this.

The NGT has taken the bold step of banning diesel vehicles older than ten years in Delhi, which has 14 lakh of them. This is commendable since 27% of carbon emissions are generated by the transport sector. One would have expected that the MOEF would, in conjunction with the Transport Ministry, have by now formulated a plan for the disposal of such vehicles, instead of merely allowing them to be sold in other towns, adding to their pollution. Many countries, including Mauritius, have evolved schemes whereby such car-owners are paid a sum of money for handing over these vehicles to the govt, which then breaks them down and recycles their various components. This is a programme that could be considered under the PPP mode if only Mr. Javadekar had the inclination to attend to this. But he is more involved in addressing press conferences where he can bad mouth the opposition.

The list is endless but the scenario is clear. Mr. Javadekar not only lacks the long term vision which an Environment Minister in today's challenging context should possess but he also has no interest in preserving the environment. His only agenda is to undo the good work done in the last two decades. The country shall pay a heavy price in the years to come for his stewardship of this Ministry.