IT'S NOT ABOUT DOGS - IT'S ABOUT US AND A MORALLY DECAYING SOCIETY

 I for one was not surprised-shocked yes, but not surprised- by the 11th August order of the Supreme Court (since partially reviewed by another bench on the 22nd) on incarcerating stray dogs for life in non-existent dog shelters, condemning them to a sure and miserable death. For, given the downward trajectory of our social, legal and ethical path over these last ten years, this was a judgment waiting to happen. The inhumane response of the executive and RWAs in some states subsequent to the order only confirms the inevitability of our deteriorating civilisational values. In fact, both the first order and its aftermath faithfully reflect the components that are the hall mark of governance and society in general in this New India. To explain, let me list out some of them.

Justice today is not based on general and established juridical principles, as it should be (and used to be), but on the proclivities and biases of those who administer it, be it a judge, a District Magistrate, a Minister or a cow vigilante. It is either not applied at all, or applied selectively, or interpreted as per convenience. We witness this daily when a judge affirms that the majority view must prevail, when the police demolish houses of accused (not convicted) persons, when language and religion become the determinant for citizenship, when tribals are forced to make way for corporate cronies - all against the established law of the land. This is the context in which the two-judge bench disregarded a previous ruling of the same court, the ABC (Animal Birth Control) Rules 2023, and Article 51-A (g) of the Constitution when ruling against the stray dogs this month. It is part of a growing trend of bending the law to suit one's personal opinions or agenda.

Secondly, the country is rapidly abandoning the scientific temper, without which we shall descend into the dark ages (a process which has already begun). History is being replaced with mythology, Yuri Gagarin with Hanumanji, medicine with quackery, real data with fudged-up figures, astronomy with astrology, facts with lies, the legal processes with vigilantism, both state and private. The instant SC judgment suffers from the same malady- it is based, not on science and global experiences, but on charged emotions, irrational anger, media driven populism, and perhaps personal proclivities. One finds no science in it, except for the mention of figures of rabies cases, which too can be misleading because they are neither examined for cause, type, geographical spread or historical trends and patterns. There is no regard for the ecology or psychology of these defenceless community dogs, planning preparedness, finances involved, availability of other resources for providing "shelter" to 30 million dogs, good practices internationally. Personal prejudices and instant judgments have replaced science, which too is in complete sync with modern day India.

The judgment rides rough-shod over animal rights too, such as they are: a species which was the first to have been domesticated by man, and which has lived with us for 10000 years ("man's best friend") is suddenly stripped of all rights, evicted from its habitat and condemned to a lingering death. But then this too is part of our new ethos; when basic human rights-to life, food, education, of speech, dissent, religion etc.- no longer matter, what chance does animal rights have of being recognized or enforced? This is the age of "kartavya" and not "adhikar", remember?

There was no worthwhile consultation with any stakeholder- animal welfare activists, NGOs, municipal authorities, veterinarians, communicable disease specialists, RWAs- before announcing the judgment. In fact, it was stated that the first two would not be heard at all! This element of arbitrariness is again a sign of the times and in complete sync with an authoritative government which promulgates new laws every day, issues diktats with confounding regularity without any consultation, not even with Parliament. This is sadly now being reflected even in our courts which appropriate all wisdom to themselves and see no need to confer or obtain the advice of those who may be better informed of the subject being dealt with.

And finally, of course, this order is further evidence of how brutalised we are becoming as a society. Compassion has been one of the first victims of New India, as evidenced daily by draconian laws and rules, the treatment of minorities and the poor, the frequent use of bulldozers and an increasingly brutalised police, the manner in which millions of daily wage labourers were expelled from our towns by heartless RWAs during COVID, the hate which runs like a current on social media. The days following the August 11th order provided clinching evidence of this- the cruel manner in which hundreds of community dogs were picked up (without waiting for the final order of the three judge bench) and incarcerated in hopelessly unprepared or non-existent shelters in Delhi, the treatment meted out to them in areas like Rohini (of which the videos have become viral), the merciless beating to death of a stray by a police constable in  of Delhi. On e MLA from the south even boasted that he had himself killed a thousand dogs and buried them under trees! As expected, this barbarism was amplified and justified by ill-educated anchors on TV channels who started a "dog jihad" of their own, literally baying for blood.

I would not blame the government and its institutions alone for our civilisational decay- they tend to have their moral ups and downs, and a compassionate and humane leadership can retrieve them from complete perversity. But a society which loses its sense of empathy for other living beings, which fails to realise the imperative of co-existence, which sees only its own selfish desires as the focus of the universe- such a society cannot last long as a civilisation, and does not deserve to. We are a far cry from becoming the Homo Deus envisioned by Yuval Noah Harari.

THE ABIDING MYSTERY OF INDIAN CITIZENSHIP-- IS IT ANOTHER LEGAL FICTION ?

So you think that the issues uppermost in the minds of those who rule us, or those who tell us what the rules are, would be the landslides in the Himalayas or Trump's tariffs or our global isolation? Well, you would be wrong, but you can be forgiven for thinking so, for that is how a rational, logic-driven nation should think. But we have lost that status for a decade now and have become a Blunderland of nonsense. We are now firmly in the position of Lewis Carrol's Alice:                                                                                                                            " If I had a world of my own everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it is. You see?"

You probably don't, so let me explain. The flavour of the season is none of the issues mentioned above: it is Citizenship, something we thought had been decided 75 years ago by a liberal Constitution which allowed citizenship on grounds of Birth (Jus Soli), Descent (Jus Sanguinis), Naturalization and Registration. But, as Ambedkar said, any Constitution is only as good as those who are charged with implementing it- and that is why we are a Blunderland.

For the Constitution, though unamended in this respect, is being spray-painted in many parts of the country to ensure that certain sections of our vast population are denied citizenship. An attempt to do so through legislation some years back (the Citizenship Amendment Act) hangs in limbo, or the deep freeze which is the Registry of the Supreme Court, where inconvenient carcasses are kept for revival at a more appropriate time. So now it is being done through a game of smoke and mirrors- a Bangladeshi here, a Rohingya there, an encroacher here, a Bengali speaking person there. But the message is loud and clear- we are the new India, we no longer brush a problem under a carpet (which sometimes is the more prudent course)- we now push it into Bangladesh in the dead of night, or into a detention center under the gavel of a Foreigner's Tribunal.

But there's a problem: the Constitution has been shoved into the background, and a new set of (con)founding fathers have replaced it with their version of what constitutes citizenship. The ball was set rolling in 2019 by the Home Minister himself who, through the CAA, implicitly propounded the theory that only a Hindu was entitled to citizenship of India. This doctrine has come in handy in Assam to include the few lakh Hindus excluded from the NRC there.

The RSS, not one to be left behind in the Hindutva sweepstakes, proclaimed that Hindustan was for Hindus alone, that an Indian citizen should possess both "Bharatiyata" and Bharati "swabhav" ( no prizes for guessing who would define these terms!). The BJP's eminence grise, Ram Madhav, went a step further and demanded that India should have, not a democracy, but a "dharmacrocy". That would in effect transform us to a twin of a country like Iran, presumably with a different religion at the helm, of course. Believers of other religions could lump it, as second class citizens. In short, as Seema Chisti opines in an article in THE WIRE ( 30.07.25), Indianness would be defined by faith and belief, notwithstanding the Constitution.

Enter the Deletion Commission of India (formerly the Election Commission of India), which finds conducting elections a boring job and so has now decided to identify citizens instead, something it is neither qualified nor mandated to do. Not knowing which document to rely on for proving citizenship, it has prescribed an a-la-carte menu of 11 documents to choose from. It is another matter that 90% of Indians do not possess these certificates, including (by his own admission in open court) a sitting Supreme Court judge! Many experts estimate that this could result in the disenfranchisement of as many 20% of voters in Bihar. This shortfall will, presumably, be made up by importing voters from U.P and Madhya Pradesh, as a recent report by the Reporters Collective seems to indicate. 

As if these versions of citizenship were not enough, the Supreme Court too has entered the fray by prescribing the test for a "true citizen" or "Indian"- not questioning the government on any matter relating to defence. This novel definition has been provided in a defamation case against Rahul Gandhi. The Mumbai High Court has also pitched in by declaring that Aadhaar and EPIC do not confirm sitizenship, adding for good measure that any protest relating to matters of any other country-such as the genocide in Gaza by Israel- does not behove any patriotic Indian citizen, who should be protesting on domestic shortcomings such as pot-holes and piling up of garbage etc. In other words, any protest which does not toe the official line is not the hallmark of citizen. 

So here's what all this pontificating boils down to: although there appears to be no dearth of definitions as to what constitutes citizenship, there is no official single document which can prove one's citizenship! (The govt. conceded as much last week in Parliament when, in response to a question as to which document establishes citizenship the MOS (Home) evaded any answer on this specific point). We now need a bouquet of documents, with the lotus being the center-piece.

And so, while you and I shuttle between the RSS, judiciary, Election Commission and Ram Madhav, it is no wonder that, in the last 13 years, more than 18 lakh Indians have decided that they have had enough and have surrendered their notional citizenship and migrated to other countries, more than 2 lakh in just 2024. They have obviously decided that a PIO card in the hand is worth two citizenships in the bush. And more will continue to depart our eroding shores, unless the PM's new "Demography Mission" isolates that particular Indian gene which defines Bhartiyata once and for all. Meanwhile, don't give up on your dreams: keep sleeping, for did the Bard not insist that "sleep knits up the rav'lled sleeve of care?"

THE SUPREME COURT ORDER ON STRAY DOGS LACKS BOTH SCIENCE AND COMPASSION

 

[This piece was published in the TRIBUNE on 14.08.25 under the title A RECIPE FOR CRUELTY, NOT COMPASSION]

Today's nations and societies, with their massive challenges- social, political, environmental and technological- have to be governed by a scientific temper and compassion. Unfortunately, the SC order of 11th August on stray dogs in the NCR lacks both. By directing that ALL strays should be rounded up and housed in dog shelters, the Hon'ble judges have mandated a quick-fix not based on science and one that ignores practical realities. It is not in the spirit of Article 51A(G) of the Constitution, which enjoins compassion for all living beings. It contradicts an earlier judgment of a two judge bench of the same court which had asked municipal bodies to follow the ABC (Animal Birth Control) Rules and treat strays with compassion. It is also in conflict with an existing law- the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules of 2023, framed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act- since these Rules have not specifically been quashed by the ibid order. These Rules lay down in detail how stray dogs are to be vaccinated, sterilised, medically treated and released back into their old localities: the Rules are based on science, experience, compassion and practicality. In contrast, the order of the SC is a quick-fix, perhaps based on personal predictions, and issued without hearing any stake-holder.

Apparently, the impulse behind this order are the incidences of dog bites and rabies: these indeed are important issues, but the solution does not lie in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Firstly, not all rabies cases are caused by dog-bites- other culprits include rodents and monkeys, especially in rural India. Secondly, figures by the NCDC (National Center for Disease Control) indicate that rabies has been showing a declining trend since 2019. Thirdly, the answer to dog-bite induced rabies is vaccination and not culling of dogs, which is what the practical implications of the SC order amount to.

There are an estimated 10 lakh stray dogs in Delhi alone. The MCD has no dog shelters, there are just a few run by under-funded NGOs. Has the SC even considered the impossibility of the MCD creating shelters for a million dogs? According to animal rights activist Ambika Shukla, it will cost a minimum of Rs. 3000 per dog per month to house a dog, including diet, manpower, medicines etc. That means a budget of Rs. 3600 crore would be needed every year to implement the SC order. The capital cost of constructing these shelters would run into another few thousand crores. Is that even within the realm of possibility? Without these funds the dogs would be packed in like sardines in a can, denied food,  become diseased and would eventually kill each other or have to be euthanised. This would be institutionalised and legally mandated cruelty, which should shock anyone's conscience.

All the deficiencies and heartlessness of the SC order stem from a complete lack of consultation with those who are better informed, and work, in this field- animal activists, NGOs, vets, agencies like NCDC, pet owner Associations, RWAs. Had the court not been in such a hurry to pass this order, it would have learnt, or been informed, of other related issues that have a bearing on this matter: how the problem of strays is compounded by many pet-owners simply abandoning their pets on the roads (these, having no fear of us, can be more dangerous than the genuine strays); why it makes more sense for the govt. to assist and fund NGOs working in this field to establish shelters rather than to take on the responsibility itself; that most street dogs are not, in fact, strays, but "community dogs" who are well looked after by communities and animal lovers groups: in my own RWA in Noida at least a dozen such dogs are cared for by the residents- they are wonderful to watch, happily greet our children when they get off the school buses, accompany us elders on our morning walks, and are no threat at all. If only the Hon'ble judges had invited wider inputs, they would perhaps have seen this whole issue other than through the prism of dog-bites and rabies. They would have realised that, in fact, there is no need to imprison all these dogs, that they can be managed with a mix of practices prescribed in the ABC Rules.

Street dogs are the creation of man and have become an issue because of the incompetence, lack of vision and apathy of our municipal administrations. The risks posed by them are highly exaggerated and the judicial solution proposed is unscientific, cruel, impractical and is bound to fail. It is still not too late for the court to hold wider consultations (rather than shut out the animal activists completely) and arrive at a solution that is just, humane and has a chance of succeeding. But most important- remember: a society that can't protect its voiceless is a society that has lost its soul.

HIMACHAL'S ENVIRONMENT DOESN'T NEED MORE STUDIES- IT NEEDS FIRM ACTION- NOW!

 Governments never cease to surprise me, but they occasionally intrigue me, as in the two recent announcements by the Himachal govt. The first, in the middle of the devastating fury of the ongoing rains which has already claimed more than a hundred lives and inflicted damage worth more than 2000 crore rupees, stated that a Central team would be arriving soon to assess the causes for such disasters every year. The second was the revelation that the World Bank has approved a Rs. 2000 crore project to study the environmental impacts of hydel projects, particularly in the Beas river basin, and to suggest mitigating measures.

This is not just an example of shutting the stable doors after the horses have bolted, this amounts to opening the spillway after the dam has burst, to use a phrase appropriate to what is happening to the hydel projects in the state. For the fact is that the devastation, ruin and deaths that are occurring with frightening regularity every year now are something that experts and environmentalists have been warning about for more than a decade, but successive governments have refused to heed.

It is no coincidence that the so-called "cloudbursts" always occur in areas where there is, or has been, extensive and unscientific cutting of hills, deforestation, ramming through of roads, unregulated building activity, and construction of hydel projects. The most egregious and destructive has been the epidemic of four-lane highways- a goldmine, no doubt, for the NHAI, contractors and general officialdom, but highways to hell for the residents of the state. The millions of cubic meters of excavated earth and debris inevitably find their way to the rivers and water courses, constrict their flow and carrying capacity, and result in flooding and the misnomer "cloudburst". Continuous subsidence, erosion, landslides, building collapses follow in its wake. These activities, along with denudation of the green cover, have robbed the mountains of their capacity to absorb and hold the rainfall, which thunders down the slopes as run-off, with horrific consequences.

We don't need expert committees, hosted at the expense of a bankrupt state, to identify what is going wrong with the environment: the reasons are there in plain sight, carved on the denuded, crumbling mountain sides- stop the rape of the rivers, give up this maniacal fascination for more and more roads, cancel all four-lane projects, protect the green belts and forests, regulate construction with an iron hand (and Yogi's bulldozers, where required). Pay attention to the fact that GSI has identified 17000 landslide-prone zones in the state. Recognize that climate change is now a reality which has arrived, it will exacerbate rainfall patterns, there will be more EWEs (Extreme Weather Events). Concentrate on sustainable planning and not reckless development at all costs. Send back the central expert committee, Mr. Chief Minister- the answers don't lie with it, they lie in your office, in your files. Listen to the local citizens- those who have been opposing needless road construction, airports, hydel projects and multi-storeyed commercial projects, denotification of green belts, those whose lands and houses are getting washed away by your obstinacy, those whose family members are entombed in mud in the middle of the night.  Trust them, not your mercantile advisors..

The second announcement about environmental impacts of hydel projects in the Beas basin is even more mystifying. Firstly, such a study should have been carried out BEFORE, and not AFTER, allotting the 359 hydel projects (operational and planned) on the Beas and its tributaries. Secondly, the environmental impacts of such projects are already known, and have been for the last 15 years. In 2010 the then Addl. Chief Secretary(Forests), on the directions of the High Court, had submitted a detailed report, listing out the deleterious and damaging impacts being witnessed today: muck dumping, unscientific cutting and blasting, weakening of the mountain strata, deforestation, reduction in carrying capacity of rivers, the need to restrict the number of hydel projects on a particular river, the necessity of cumulative impact assessments for the whole river basins instead of for just individual projects, declaration of no-go areas for hydel projects. The report was accepted by the High Court but was fiercely opposed by the state govt. and was quietly buried. Thirdly, no further study is required to identify these environmental impacts- they have been happening with frightening regularity every year- the whole stretch of the river from Manali to Mandi has been  devastated and looks like Gaza- and are self evident. There is little point reinventing the wheel at a cost of Rs.2000 crore- exhume the 2010 report, get additional inputs from geologists and hydrologists, and implement the recommendations. The World Bank study appears to me to be just a smokescreen for avoiding any substantive action, and is simply kicking the can further down the river.

Neither of the two studies or inquiries is needed, and the state govt. certainly doesn't have the money to pay for them. Instead, the govt. should commission studies on factors which have grave portents for the future of the state: the changing precipitation patterns, changed hydrology of the rivers, melting of glaciers, formation of glacial lakes which pose a danger to downstream areas, carrying capacity of major tourist destinations, a Cumulative  EIA of the Chandrabhaga basin before proceeding to sanction another 4000 MW worth of projects on it. These studies will reveal  how our geology and environment are being altered, and are necessary for all future planning. It should also heed the dire warning issued by the Supreme Court last week on a PIL, having ignored everyone, including its own citizens for decades: "Entire Himachal Pradesh may vanish soon; Revenue Earning can't be at the cost of the Environment." 

Translated into simple English, that means that the time for post mortems is over, what is needed now is immediate and decisive action.

WHEN ONLY LOVE REMAINS

 I have just returned from my hometown, Kanpur, after severing the last remaining physical link with my late parents, with the tangible legacies of my dad and mom. My mother passed away in 1994, my dad joined her in 2017. He left behind a lovely flat in a multi-story development, in which he had spent the last years of his life, lonely most of the time, but content and at peace in his otherwise downsized world.

This flat contained the possessions he and my mom, and we (as children), had accumulated over the years, and not one of them was less than fifty years old! These included British time crockery, a Garrard music player with vinyl records, hundreds of books (mostly mine), furniture from Calcutta and Assam, an assortment of walking sticks. He had hoarded them lovingly, getting them cleaned and polished regularly, for would his children not inherit them some day? They were precious to him, not just because he had laboured to acquire them over a lifetime, but because they would go to his children after him.

That was never going to happen, of course. The flat was being sold, and we all had enough bric-a-brac of our own, accumulated over our own lifetimes, for our own children! Where was the space to take over my dad's stuff in our metro flats in Mumbai and Noida, where each square foot of space cost Rs. 100,000 and  Rs. 10000/-, respectively? So we gave everything away- the records whose music had once suffused the flat with lilting tunes, the books which had made holidays in Kanpur so pleasant and relaxed, the table at which I had prepared for the civil service exams, the dining table on which my mom used to serve the delicious "atta ka halwa" and "gobhi ki subzi" which were, and still are, my favourite fare, the harmonium on which my late younger sister learned her music. All big slices of our past, all indelibly associated with my mom and dad and our childhood. All now gone. I have retained only a few books, one of Papa's walking sticks, his battered briefcase, and a set of crystal Johnnie Walker glasses, which I had bought for fifteen rupees from the Jama Masjid Sunday market in 1971 and had gifted him for his birthday. They will have to suffice till I retain my memory of him.

The compulsions of "modern" life have no time for the sentiments of the past, these are weaknesses that detract from our algorithm based, market driven vision of a material valhalla. And that precisely is the point of this blog: there is a lesson in my experience, for all of us, all those adrift in the 70+ boat, most of us in sight of the harbour, or the reef, as fate would have it. As parents we spend too much time, resources and emotional capital, and deny ourselves, in collecting things to leave behind for our children. It's a waste of parental love, a mortgaging of  present needs for an envisioned but uncertain future. For nothing we leave behind will endure- the house will be sold (if not fought over), the money in the bank will be divided ruthlessly by some chartered accountant or lawyer and spent on trips to Bali or Biarritz, the clothes will go to charity, everything else will be given away. Nothing will remain but memories, and it is on those that we twilight dwellers should concentrate.. I am reminded of these haunting lines from an anonymous poet:

If I take nothing with me,                                                                                                            May I leave behind something beautiful-                                                                                    A memory, a kindness, a warmth in the hearts of those I've met.                                                So that, even when my road ends,                                                                                                Love remains.

POST SCRIPT.

I make it a point never to end any piece on a somber note, lest the reader fling himself off his 22nd floor balcony in despair; and so I must confess that I did take one other object from my dad's flat- the album of photographs of my marriage with Neerja. (That was in 1977, I think, but I can't be sure since my long term memory is no longer what it used to be). There were no digital albums in those primordial days, no smart phones; only "still" photos which had to be pasted in bulky albums. I've appropriated my wedding album, not just for sentimental reasons, but as an abundant precaution to prove my marriage with Neerja. In these days of "certificate raj" there is no saying when proof will be demanded that I am not living in sin with her. Hotels and OYO have already started demanding this, and the time is not far off when banks, landlords and RWAs shall follow suit. "Marriage vigilantism" will be the latest addition to cow and citizenship vigilantisms. Didn't someone say that eternal vigilantism is the price of freedom? Better to be prepared, no?

But I'm taking a big risk bringing this album home and reminding Neerja about our marriage. She has had many second thoughts about these nuptials over the last 48 years, about the wisdom of having plighted her troth to me in an LSR moment of weakness. How will she react to my bringing home documented proof of what she sometimes considers the "biggest mistake of her life"? Maybe I'll hide the album under the dog's bed. As they say in the Pakistan Punjab - "Better to be Saif than Suri."

THE WRITER'S CURSE-- AND BLESSING.

[This piece was published in the TRIBUNE on 27.07.2025 with some minor editing.] 

It's a tough time to be a writer or wannabe author in India these days. If you write against the government you are likely to be stripped of your citizenship, and if you support it you'll be in Arnab Goswami's B team, or sharing a room with Sambit Patra in Gujarat Bhavan.. Or , even worse, you could end up like Ms Tavleen Singh whose sacerdotal efforts at the altar of the presiding deity of Indian politics didn't pay off- her son lost his citizenship anyway. So what is one to do? The safest course, I feel, is to do a Chetan Bhagat and write only about " The Girl in Room 105" or  pen motivational stuff with misleading titillating titles, like that other bestseller "The Subtle Art of not giving a "F--k." You will, of course, find neither the girl nor the "f--k" but your persistence in trying to do so till the last page will ensure that a couple more million copies of the books will fly off the shelves, quicker than you can say Man Force. 

   The other problem I've encountered is this: what does one write about ? History is a prohibited zone, because the RSS and Mr. Dinanath Batra have already started re-writing it, with novel inputs provided by the Supreme Court, no less, in some of its judgements. Mythology is no longer available as Mr. Amish Tripathi has already mined this seam till there is nothing left to explore there but the question: was the live feed of the battle of Kurukshetra conveyed to Dhritrashtra via Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu? Sardar jokes are a no-go area, like the area around Parliament Bhavan, as those poor chaps from JNU found out a couple of years back; the mountains have been denuded of all their tales by Ruskin Bond; the British era has been subjected to repeated biopsies by Shashi Tharoor and William Dalrymple; nobody reads about sports these days because everyone is hooked on to biopics; romance is nowadays confined to Twitter and Instagram and has to be compressed into 140 words: who has time for a novel? War books are unlikely because even though Messers Modi and General Munir both threaten it nobody is actually pressing that blue button anytime soon. Moreover, no two Indian generals can ever agree on whether we won or lost a war, including Haldighati. One potentially promising area is memoirs by bureaucrats, and quite a few are now rushing to the printers, having suddenly remembered their stellar contributions in pushing us onto a 8% growth path. But they are bogged down with their training, confusing "penal" with "penile" ( as in the Indian Penile Code), conclude each chapter with " submitted for approval, please" out of sheer habit, and think that "analogy" is the study of assholes. Their tomes do seem to bear out the unkind observation of Christopher Hitchins that everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay!

   Why do chaps persist with writing, given the hardships involved? You just have to attend every literary festival to be noticed, which is pretty tough considering that they have now started organising them even in dumps like Jhumri Tilaiya and Kotkapura where the infant mortality rates are probably higher than the literacy rates. Nobody there will recognize you anyway because they are too busy either drooling over Shashi Tharoor and "Pyjamas" Dimple Kapadia or shouting slogans against Salman Rushdie. You'll never make it to any best seller list because of Amish Tripathi: he's the BJP of the Indian literary universe with an almost two-thirds stranglehold. What is the Competition Commission doing, and why is he not being hauled up for monopolistic practices, or at least for forming a cartel with Chetan Bhagat who takes up most of the remaining slots? Both should be banned from writing for at least three years so the rest of us can keep the wolves, if not the cows, from our doors.

   Ruskin Bond once said that India has more writers than readers, which explains why the publishers act like capos. Influenced by our TV channels, they insist on the seamier stuff. One guy in Daryaganj I submitted a proposal to did to my manuscript what dogs down the ages have been doing to lamp posts, and then advised me instead to write a kiss-and-tell book about politicians I have worked with, replete ( he suggested with a wink) awards of dubious contracts, girls in rooms other than just 105, booth capturing techniques (this was before the age of the EVM which has rendered all previous practices obsolete) and other such staples of governance. It would, he assured me, sell like   "Hot Kates"- I presume he meant  hot cakes but I'm not sure: maybe he wanted a hot Kate in there between the pages if not the sheets. It appears that my books are as popular as ice cubes in the North pole: the royalty cheques I receive once a year look like Yogi Adithyanath's compensation cheques for UP's farmers, rarely exceeding double digits. Sometimes I wonder, did they even print the books ?

   But maybe I'm being too harsh on them, going by my own family and friends. Now, I have a fairly large extended family, even if I were to discount the guys who are either in judicial custody or have

 jumped bail, and they can also read though writing requires more effort. Members of my social circle are more law abiding and some of them even pay their taxes. But very few of them want to buy my books- they expect them to be dished out as gifts, never mind that it's nobody's birthday or wedding anniversary! I guess it's the effect of this new Amazon/ Swiggy culture of getting every thing at discounted prices or totally free, and I should be happy that nobody is demanding "cashbacks" ! But really, I don't mind giving them away- nobody's buying them anyway- but then I rarely get any feedback either. Nobody tells me whether they liked the book or used it as printed toilet paper. Except, of course, from the good wife who is never lacking an opinion or the urge to express it. I asked her about my last book and Neerja replied:
 " Uh, you really want to know?"
 " Sure," I replied cheerily, though not very truthfully, " I've always valued your advice."

 " OK, then, two comments: one, there are far too many conjunctions."

 " What's wrong with that?" I queried, "the idea is to stitch the story together. Conjunctions are good."

 " Nope, the road to Hell is paved with good conjunctions."

 I digested this Sadhguru type statement: " What's your second observation?" I asked, hoping for a more positive review this time. I was about to be disappointed.

 " Your style belongs to the coitus interruptus school of writing," she intoned.

 " Huh? What exactly is that supposed to mean?" I shouted.

 She was calmness itself, like a school teacher talking to a naughty child.

 " See," she explained," you use too many punctuation marks, especially the exclamation mark. It disrupts your rhythm, interrupts the flow, and delays the gland- sorry, I meant grand- finale."

    I'm still trying to figure that one out. Was she talking about my writing style, or did she have something else in mind? You never know with women ! ( Sorry for that exclamation mark).
   So why do I keep writing stuff that no one reads and not seek reemployment as an Advisor to the Minister for Open Defecation Free Himachal? Well, its partly because my net-working skills resemble those of Obelisk, and partly because the queue of retired Chief Secretaries lined up for the job is longer than the line outside the Moolchand metro's Sulab Sauchalaya, but mainly because , as some wise man once said: You are what you write. He was spot on, you know: writing bilge is better than advising about it!

   

THE CASINO IS RIGGED, LONG LIVE THE CASINO !

The oldest (and most disregarded) secret in the world of gambling is that you cannot win against the house. The decks are stacked, the cards are rigged and the slot machines are fixed. Oh yes! the casino will let you win once in a while, just so that you swallow a little more of the bait and keep returning to be ripped off. The house, folks, always wins. Which describes perfectly the state of our elections these days, after 2019.

What is happening with the SIR in Bihar, even as I write this, is the final turn of the roulette wheel: the Opposition (the real Opposition, I mean, not the Mayawatis, Owaisis, Kishores or Naveen Patnaiks of the world) will henceforth never be allowed to win an election, general or state. A few seats here and there, yes, maybe even a few inconsequential states, to keep the dumb charade going, but never a House- Vidhan Sabha or Lok Sabha: the House belongs to the croupier. No amount of petitions, meetings with the Election Commission, writs in the Supreme Court, grandstanding photo-ops outside Parliament, or threats ("We are coming after you") is going to change this inevitability. Maharashtra and Haryana were the prototypes and appropriate lessons were learnt from them- adding spurious votes is not enough, stuffing EVMs after 5.00PM is not enough, deleting a few thousand votes is not enough, the judicial pusillanimity regarding VVPATs is not enough; more work was needed to make matters fool proof.

And so the final product-the electoral Bramhastra, as it were- is on display now in Bihar. Make the nationalistic Citizenship issue the mechanism and excuse for getting rid of those pesky communities and classes who don't vote for the BJP and its allies, be selective in the desired documentation; Aadhar will do in the right wing areas, thank you, but in Seemanchal we need to see your birth certificate, and that of your parents. The motto being: show me the face and I will show you the document. Five million have already been disenfranchised, according the the ECI's own figures.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter on the 28th of this month, but don't hold your breath- the jurisprudence of the "fait accompli" will come into play and the loaded dice will keep rolling. The Election Commission knows this- it has already asked all states to prepare for an all-India roll-out of this grand larceny of democracy. At the most the Court may mandate the acceptance of a few more ID markers, but it's always the dealer who calls out the cards and numbers, and they are usually tucked up his sleeve. In the Supreme Court the SIR will go the way of the EVMs, VVPATs, paper ballots, procedure for appointments of Election Commissioners.

The Opposition will never win again. It has only one path before it in order to save democracy-drink of the poisoned chalice and boycott all elections until this casino is shut down. It must take the bull by the horns, and not by the tail as it has been doing so far. As Debasish Roy Choudhury says in an interview with Karan Thapar on Friday (which should be compulsory watching for all who value our democracy), by continuing to participate in elections which are rigged and which they know they cannot win, it is only legitimising the elections and the winning regime. A boycott will take away this moral legitimacy, in the eyes of most countrymen and the international community. That will the first step to restoring the old sanctity to the whole process.

The Opposition has failed, thanks to its own ineptitude, avarice, lust for power and out-size egos, and the abject surrender of all our constitutional institutions, including the courts. The Opposition, therefore, is no longer a player in this game-it can at best now be a coach. The actual players have to be the citizens of India, whose right to select a government of their choice is being stolen. They must be persuaded to boycott the elections too, to show the world how the elections in India now resemble those of Rwanda, where the President Paul Kagame, won with 99% of the votes. The world, of course, doesn't give a damn about Rwanda, but can it ignore India, the world's largest democracy which has historically been the beacon of democracyfor the post colonial world?

Country-wide boycotts may lead to civil unrest, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as Jayaprakash Narayan's Sampurna Kranti movement against Mrs Gandhi had shown-it finally led to her being ousted from power. A boycott could be a curtain raiser to something similar. This applies equally to civil society organisations like ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms), CCG (Constitutional Conduct Group) and others- they too have to espouse and campaign for the cause of the boycott. They have written enough letters to the Government and Prime Minister and Election Commission, and issued their fair number of press releases, to no effect: they too have to change course. As Debasish says: when your house is burgled, you don't write a letter to the burglar, you go to the police! And the police here are the people of India- We The People. It is time to turn to them.