AN APOLOGY MAY BE IN ORDER, YOUR LORDSHIP.

 Hon'ble Chief Justice,

May I, a humble member of the Blatta (Oriental)  genus of cockroaches, make so bold as to express my utter stupefaction at your recent statement in open court in which you termed unemployed youth, RTI activists, media personnel and social media activists as "cockroaches" and "parasites"?  Posterity will record these uncalled for and demeaning words as the nadir of judicial propriety and gravitas. Kindly allow me to explain why.

It appears, from what is available in the public domain, that you were at the time dealing with the issue of proliferation of lawyers with dubious degrees. Your desire to identify and weed out such elements from the legal profession is understandable, and even commendable, and should be supported by all. But your subsequent "leap of hubris", not faith, was totally unwarranted and a step too far even in these dismal times when the vocabulary of public discourse has plumbed new depths. The contemptuous characterisation of our youth and civil society is something we have come to expect from our politicians, but not from the senior-most judicial officer in the country, the custodian of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, whose every word is engraved in time, the beacon and conscience keeper of the nation.

Which is why, my Lord, it pains me to say that your  unfair and insensitive obiter dicta has dimmed the glow of the beacon and induced a perception that the keeper has not been true to his charge. It has at one fell swoop insulted and humiliated these sections of society, cast on them aspersions which are neither true nor justified and, even more dangerous, exposed a heart of darkness in the country's judicial anatomy which does not bode well for a liberal democracy. Your Lordhip's subsequent "clarification" does not dispel the apprehensions your comments have generated.

A  democracy remains healthy not only on the basis of institutions of the state, but on the shoulders of a vibrant civil society and non-state actors. These participants- activists, NGOs, social media, RTI applicants, fact checkers- are the benign bacteria in our body politic that maintain our immune systems, keep in check those organisms that would destroy us, and ensure that democracy and a liberal order survives. By castigating them in such derogatory language, My Lord, you have exposed a side of the higher judiciary we did not imagine existed. It has left us confused, apprehensive and fearful.

Are you aware, your Honour,  that there are 28 million educated unemployed youth in the country, and an additional 100 million who have stopped looking for jobs? (The WIRE, 23.5.2025). 67% of the unemployed youth today are graduates, as compared to 32% in 2004 ? ( Aziz Premji Univ. State of Working India Report, published in the Deccan Herald 1.5.2026). 80 million workers have left the cities owing to lack of job opportunities and gone back to their villages: the government classifies them as employed in agriculture! This worsening position is not due to the indolence of these unfortunate youngsters, but because of faulty govt. policies in education, industrialisation and economic "growth" which promote inequity, concentration of wealth and capital intensive projects, and have decimated the MSME sector. They deserve our empathy, not an elitist condemnation.

Finally, my lord, heed the power of language and choose carefully the patois you employ. For language is a double-edged sword, it can soothe or it can wound, it can demean or it can dignify, it can sustain or it can destroy, it can be a paean or it can be a dog-whistle. It is dangerous to employ words loosely. History is replete with instances where carefully chosen words have preceded, and laid the ground for, mass persecution, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. The killing of a million Tutsis in Rwanda was preceded by a campaign that classified them as "inyenzi" which, coincidentally, means cockroaches; in Hitler's Germany the Jews were called parasites  and rats; the Zionists later termed the Palestinians as "vermin" and "animals" ; nearer home minorities from Bangladesh are stigmatised  as "termites" and protesters as " andolanjeevis". All such branding is invariably followed by dehumanising of entire sections of society and their persecution on a large scale.

It is possible your unfortunate vocabulary may have the same effect in India, for your words feed into the executive's own narrative: the segments of society you have, perhaps unwittingly and unintendedly, vilified are precisely the ones the government of the day considers its enemies and obstacles to its authoritarianism. It may now be emboldened to move against them even more aggressively, confident that it now has your your institution's support. That would be a disaster, an opening of the floodgates that shall eventually consume all the pillars of democracy, including the one over which your Honour presides.

At the end of the day, your Lordship, this unnecessary disparagement of the youth, civil society activists and social media may lead to a loss of credibilty in the institution you head, in its ability (or even willingness) to confront an authoritarian executive, to protect the rights of the minorities, and to uphold the letter and spirit of a liberal and inclusive Constitution. A democracy cannot long survive such a loss. Which is why, sir, you may consider a more explicit retraction and withdrawal of the statement made by you, not just a clarification. An apology to the nation at large will go a long way in restoring the confidence of the citizenry in an institution which is, after all, the last bastion of rights and liberty. To err is human, to admit it is divine. 

With profound regards and my own humble apologies for intruding on your valuable time,

I remain, your Lordship,

A.C.Roach.

"TIGER ABHI ZINDA HAI !"-- BUT ELECTIONS ARE IN THE ICU.

  [It was reported by the Satya Hindi news channel, and reiterated by a Congress spokesperson, that after the declaration of the West Bengal results, the CEC Gyanesh Kumar told a group of reporters: "Tiger abhi zinda hai !"]

My faith in the Chief Deletion Commissioner, Mr Gyanesh Kumar (may his tribe decrease), has been fully restored and vindicated: he has lived up to the trust I reposed in him. I fully expected the Election Commission to win the elections in West Bengal, even though it is not a registered political party but only a kind of I-Pac for one of them. And it has won handsomely. Mr. Kumar can now look forward to greener pastures in the days to come, a Governorship, perhaps, or even (as is being whispered in some shady corridors) a Presidentship. The latter post will suit him admirably because a President can only act on the advice of the Council of Ministers, which is precisely what he has been doing for the last many years.

Which brings me to a larger point: why have elections at all, now that ONOE (One Nation One Election) has been converted to ONNE (One Nation No Elections)? After much deliberation and consultations with the divine forces a-la-Chandrachud, I have come to the conclusion that the country would be much better off without elections. There are both macro and micro reasons for my view.

At the macro level, elections are an impediment to the march of democracy: every now and then the government is distracted from its usual job of handing out contracts to cronies, devastating forests, lynching people, building temples, garlanding rapists, bringing down opposition-ruled state governments, etc. in order to get the endorsement of the voters. Why is it necessary to get the voter's consent when it already has the support of the Election Commission, the Supreme Court, the President and the AA twins? It is this unnecessary distraction which has made us amongst the worst performing countries in global indexes related to Equality, Pollution, Press Freedom, Democratic rankings, and so on. ONNE would solve all these problems at one fell stroke.

It would also bring to an end that unique feature of Indian politics- sovereign bribery. Now, bribery is an offence, except when the state does it, and with your money to boot! In our elections ideology, development, social justice etc. have now been replaced with doles, gold mangalsutras, gas cylinders, washing machines, bicycles, sarees and anything else that can rake in a couple of more votes. And it is bankrupting states: Himachal has already started cutting salaries by 30%, Vijay's TVK has promised subsidies and freebies worth more than Rupees one lakh crore per annum, Bengal will now have to borrow money from Bangladesh to keep the bhadralok happy. Our elections are more like auctions now; scrap them and we'll become the second largest economy in the world before you can say "Jai Shri Ram!"

At a micro- that is, personal-level the benefits of ONNE cannot be ignored, either. For one, your domestic staff will not abandon you: during the Bengal election I was orphaned for weeks. My driver went off to Calcutta to vote, the maid to Malda and the washerman to Bankura. They will return in due course, minus a few who may be shoved into Bangladesh, but for those weeks life was not worth living; no amount of democracy is worth it.

And then there's the evening news, of which I am an addict. I like my news hot and spicy- a couple of murders, a rape or two, the occasional encounter killing, a politician caught in a flagrant delicto act, a Judge's outhouse stuffed with moolah, a bulldozer mounted on a masjid. But during elections I get none of these- only Yogendra Yadav or Jawhar Sircar or SY Quraishi talking about EVMs, SIR or the Model Code of Conduct. On a bad day I'll have to be satisfied with Mr. Modi or Mr. Shah on the stump. Life loses all charm, but with ONNE one can get back to the daily dose of violence, sex and Kangana Ranaut's earth-shaking one-liners.

Elections play havoc with relationships. Familial and social intercourse has, for me, been teetering on a knife edge since we gained our independence in 2014: my vocabulary is limited so I tend to call a spade a spade, a fascist a fascist and a bhakt a bhakt. This has not endeared  me to most of my family, colleagues and friends for whom a Hindu Rashtra is the Holy Grail and Mr. Modi its delivery service. Elections, and the inevitable discussions about them, only add fat to the fire: whenever elections are announced my wife moves into the guest bedroom, morning walkers in my Housing society stop wishing me, I'm unable to make a foursome at golf, even my dog refuses to go for a walk with me! With ONNE there will be a sea-change-no opposition, no political discussions, no rallies, no elections. Dinners will become convivial once again, without Republic TV type of debates. Peace will descend again on our twice blessed  nation. Silence will prevail, the silence of the grave. Or, as Omar Khayyam wrote: Thou shalt be- Nothing-thou shalt not be less.

Ah, the comfort of being Nothing!

BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL THAN SERVE IN HEAVEN

 Since these are tricky times, let us begin this week with a trick question: what do the following events have in common with each other ? :

* The huge, and sometimes violent,  protests in NOIDA last month by factory workers and domestic help over increase in minimum wages.

* The refusal of a High Court judge to recuse herself from a case in which her children are employed by one of the parties, and she herself is reported to have attended functions organised by that party's affiliates.

* A "gherao" of judicial officers (appointed as adjudicators in appeals by deleted voters) by thousands of such disenfranchised voters in a district of West Bengal.

* The deletion of names of almost 3 million voters in West Bengal, who had voted in previous elections and possessed all the required documents, because of an opaque, algorithm driven "logical discrepancy" feature not provided in any law or used in any other state.

* The holding of polls without deciding the pending appeals of these 3 million unfortunates, and the callous indifference of the Supreme Court to their constitutional right to vote, saying that they could vote in the next election!

* The imposition of a casteist bail condition on Adivasi Dalits accused (but not convicted) by an Odisha court to the effect that they should clean police stations every morning for two months, demeaning their dignity and making a mockery of the law.

* The defection of seven Rajya Sabha MPs, led by one Raghav Chadha ,from the AAP to the BJP.

* A poor tribal in Keunjhar district of Odisha being compelled to carry the corpse of his dead sister to a bank in order to prove her death, just so that the meagre balance in her account could be transferred to him as the heir. The KYC converted from Know Your Customer to Know Your Corpse.

* The dismissal of cases of hate speech against leaders of a political party by a court on the grounds that their utterances did not amount to expressing hate or inciting violence. One of these speeches included the now infamous exhortation: Desh ke Gaddaron ko, goli maro salon ko. The other was a video of a Chief Minister pointing a rifle at a target with a picture of a Muslim man.

The incidents noted above differ in context, content, import and location, but they all contain one common element: the complete collapse of what makes a developed country- of governance, common law, societal values, empathy, the rule of law, trust in the government or its institutions, the idea of equity and even-handed justice. Taken together, they point to the breakdown of something cumulatively more precious- democracy itself. They vindicate the far-sighted and cautionary words of Dr. Ambedkar: that democracy in India was only a thin layer of top soil which could be blown away easily and should not be taken for granted.

A Devil's wind is blowing through the country these days, removing Ambedkar's top soil and exposing the outcrop of powerlust, greed, religious bigotry, casteism, violence that have always under-pinned our society. We had expected that progressive governments, democratically elected, would over time erode and disintegrate these negative features of our civilisational landscape, but the opposite has happened. Successive governments, more so the one we have had for the last twelve years, have only reinforced these flaws and fault lines; they have been made the driving force behind national (even international) policies, they are being embedded in laws and educational curriculum, they have become unapologetic instruments of state policy, they are the agenda on which elections are now being fought.                                                                                                    The defection of Raghav Chadha only confirms this terminal decline because it shows that a liberal upbringing and London education is no shield against the unscrupulousness of India's politics, and it  vindicates the mounting distrust of politicians in general. The executive has even managed to brutalise our society to a point where the top 10% care only for their own comforts and privileges, leaving the other 90% to survive as best as they can. We are among the most inequitable countries in the world, and proud of it. Democracy is the last thing which can emerge from this witch's cauldron.

We had naively expected that when the executive went on a rampage our judiciary at least would reign it in and preserve the rule of law. That hope has been belied and now lies trampled in the dust, as some of the above episodes demonstrate. We have today plumbed depths lower even than the ADM Jabalpur moment of Emergency days. Then at least there was a constitutionally legitimate state of Emergency in place, today we do not have even that fig leaf to cover the government's naked pursuit of absolute power. Then there was one ADM Jabalpur judgment, today we are being shredded by a thousand judicial cuts every day, whether it be on denying bail, allowing elections to be stolen from under magisterial noses, redefining hate to suit a particular ideology, spurning any notion of accountability, throwing overboard any restatement of judicial values.

A Constitution alone cannot make a democracy, or ensure that a democracy survives. For that to happen the top soil has to be tended carefully, its nutrients lovingly added and preserved, the negative infestations and weeds kept away; the gardeners have to be men of wisdom and empathy, people who love what they are doing, not mercenaries seeking the maximum payouts. Sadly, it is the mercenaries and carpet- baggers who own our patch of land today. What remains of the top soil will be blown away soon, leaving a rocky outcrop, a civilisational desert of no value to anyone but these rapacious seekers of power and their hirelings. They will rule over a wasteland, but then, as Satan mused: "It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven." 

THE " BATTLE OF CIVILISATIONS" IS ONE BETWEEN ALGEBRA AND HAMBURGERS

 Civilisations are created by poets, writers, painters, architects, but are destroyed by politicians and their armies. We would do well to remember this truth at a time when an existential civilisational war is taking place almost on our borders, in West Asia. Make no mistake, the illegal assaults on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran are not just about Greater Israel or oil or uranium enrichment: these are just the cover for a new Crusades against the non-Christian, non- Caucasian world, a new religio-colonial imperialism by the USA and Israel, given wink-wink support by most of Europe. Large numbers of Christians in these countries appear to have embraced the spirit of Zionism too.

The sheer temerity and audacity of this is hard to grasp. Here we have two countries, one barely 75 years in existence and the other whose cultural pillars are hamburgers and Kentucky fried chicken, presuming to destroy genuine civilisations thousands of years old. As the Iranian Foreign Minister reminded Trump: the Persians were inscribing the laws of human rights on the Cyrus pillar when the Europeans and Americans were still living in caves. The blood thirsty Zionists of today are probably not even aware that it was a Persian mathematician who invented Algebra in the 9the century AD, that the Jews exist today because Persian kings like Xerexes ( 6th century BC) and Cyrus (5th century BC) had ordered that the Jews should be allowed to live in peace in their kingdoms and should not be harmed in any way. That today's Jews should now to seek to slaughter the descendents of these Persians says all that is needed to be said about true civilisations and barbarians.

The evidence for this attempted civilisational supremacy is mounting by the day. This policy was officially declared by that Cuban immigrant who, like a snake which has lost its bearings, tries to devour its own tail; I speak of Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State. At the Munich Security Conference in February this year  he unashamedly laid out Trump's new Maga Carta, to the accompaniment of a standing ovation by other European leaders. He expressed nostalgia for the past, when Europe's "missionaries, pilgrims, soldiers, explorers poured out from its shores to settle new continents". He called for "a new age of western dominance", to reverse the decline of the West since 1945, in effect proclaiming the launch of a new era of neo-colonialism. USA, he stated, is "fixing" the problem, and in doing so will have no hesitation in rejecting the core elements of the existing international order.

This has been amply demonstrated by the fact that the USA has between 750-800 military bases in 80 countries to maintain its hegemony; by the bombing of 41 countries  in the last 80 years, and all but one of them (Serbia) are in either Asia or Africa. One expert estimates that these assaults, and the sanctions that have accompanied them, have killed at least 32 million people. Gaza, Lebanon and Iran are only the latest expressions of this attempted neo-colonialism. Trump has openly boasted that he has taken the Venezuelan oil, that he wants Iran's oil reserves and a share in the toll revenues from Hormuz. He has shown utter racial contempt for one of the oldest civilisations in the world by killing its leaders, calling them bastards who belong to the stone age. The Israeli Defence Minster has described Palestinians as "worse than animals" and called for their extermination.

The West Asia genocide by Israel and the USA has been fully, though more quietly,  supported by Western Europe and the G7, with the exception of a couple of countries like Spain and Ireland. Their continued trade with Israel  hovers at about US$ 50 billion annually, they have sanctioned Iran and Venezuela but will not dream of sanctioning Israel, they continue to arm the rogue terrorist state to the teeth, they have formed a coalition of 12 European states to open the Straits of Hormuz but will not do so to protect either Gaza or South Lebanon. Even worse, they will not allow their own citizens to protest against Israel: UK has arrested thousands of protesters and France has just introduced the YADAN law that criminalises any anti-Israel public protest with a five year jail term! The West's war of civilisations is being waged in full earnest.

This is the context in which we should view Iran's tenacious defence of its sovereignty and its peoples. Iran is fighting to DECOLONISE the Global South. It has effectively reversed and turned on its head the western narrative of the southern nations being the "barbarians" and "terrorists": the emerging global perception is that Israel and the USA are the biggest terrorist nations, that it is they who constitute the biggest threat to peace and the world order, that its leaders are declared war criminals. The barbarians have lost this war but by definition are too stupid to admit it.

POLYTICKS, DEMOCKRAZY AND MUMBOJUMBO---BABUS, MANTRIS & NETAS (UNMAKING) OUR NATION.

 

This book of mine, containing political satire and lampooning our social peccadillos and pretences, was first published by PIPPA RAN BOOKS AND MEDIA in 2020. It has now been republished by AUTHOR'S UPFRONT/ PARANJOY THAKURTA this year. I am reposting this brief introduction to it on my blog for the benefit (or mortification, as the case may be!) of those readers who have discovered me after 2020. Six years is almost a generational space nowadays in this fast-paced world, where you have to register your presence on social media everyday lest you are consigned to internet oblivion.

The sixty odd pieces in this book cover subjects as varied as high society dinners, judicial oddities, the arcane mumbo jumbo of economics, politicians and their misdeeds, social peccadillos, the absurdities of governmental policies, the inanities of our media and TV channels, and a lot more. But rarely is there a frontal assault: the battle is waged with humour, irony and satire; the intent is to both inform and amuse!

                                

The book has a fabulous Preface by the evergreen Shashi Tharoor, and I cannot blow my own trumpet better than by quoting from it:

"Avay Shukla is no ordinary blogger. He is a former senior bureaucrat... now retired but armed with a formidable (nearly) four decades of experience administering the complexities of Indian governance. He was clearly no ordinary bureaucrat either, for he wields an incisive pen, a highly effective vocabulary- and a style so original, so witty and often so devastating that his file notations must have been classics in their own right!"

"Every subject is tackled with a command of both subject and language that make his conclusions both impossible to resist....Some of his writing is satirical, but much of it is infused with a burning passion for issues that matter in India, tinged perhaps with the tinge of disillusionment of one who has seen it all and found it wanting."

"The talent for brevity makes him the ideal blogger-somebody who has something to say, and does so readably and pithily....I hope (Avay Shukla's) work finds the wide and discerning readership it deserves, well beyond the transience of its original medium in cyberspace."

The book has merited a number of reviews, and I am happy to share  one of them, by Jawhar Sircar, IAS (Retd) and ex-MP of the Trinamool Congress. Jawhar is a batchmate and even otherwise a kindred soul! Here are excerpts from the review, published in the Statesman Literary Review:

Few bureaucrats are endowed with a great sense of humour, or else they would not be bureaucrats in the first place. And, a profession that claims to be the world’s second oldest surely lacks the excitement of the first. There are, however, certain similarities and Avay Shukla’s PolyTicks, DeMockrazy & Mumbo Jumbo lifts the hemline to reveal saucy bits, but leaves it to the reader to fantasise. We benefit from his insider’s ring-side views about “babus, mantris and netas (un) making our nation”. His wit has surely not deserted him even after cohabiting for thirty five long years with dull, dusty and musty files. Behind his satire and flippant delivery, however, he displays his utter seriousness with facts and figures, as is expected from a senior administrator.

Shukla’s blog, View From (Greater) Kailash, is immensely popular among his former colleagues and a large band of other readers. They love his flippantly serious dissection of earth-shaking problems and eagerly wait for their weekly fix. One is reminded of RK Laxman’s apparently innocent but sarcasm-loaded gaze as he spoke for the common man whose one-liners were more devastating than gnashing one’s teeth or tearing precious hair. Most of his 58 articles tackle one problem at a time and he keeps smiling even as he rips through its abdomen for the world to see. .....

Let us sample his fare. Discussing the growing trust deficit, his opening comments are: “Many decades ago when I was growing up in a simpler era when crooked people were called cheats not “ethically challenged”; when a “face lift” was generally given to a building, not to a visage ravaged by time; when “silicone valley” was understood to refer to Pamela Anderson’s cleavage not to a techie wonderland, it was easy to have trust in people or things. The only objects that were universally not trusted were politicians, bureaucrats and shop-keepers, something, by the way, which holds good today.” He plunges thereafter into the serious business of analysing some notable professions to show how “the trust factor gets more invidious” with time. “Beauty”, he sighs, “does (not) lie in the eye of the beholder, it lies in the scalpel of the plastic surgeon.”.........

Delhi’s forever upwardly mobile society and its inescapable humbug are obviously targets of his acid tongue. He tries to figure out why nobody but a nobody ever arrives in time. “To do so ensures you will not be invited again (because) such aberrant behaviour reveals........that you are unemployed or (God forbid) retired, that you have no other place to visit that evening , that you are trying to save on your AC charges in your home, that you are unimportant flotsam”. Then, after listing a long series of mandatory fake behaviour that one has to suffer and keep grinning, Avay Shukla explains that “exiting a South Delhi dinner is also an art which needs a lot of practice and panache”. He suggests a good exit line like “Sorry, I must rush — Mr LK Advani is waiting for me”. He has no qualms about this fast one, as “the poor guy has been waiting for years now for anyone to call on him”.

His remarkable wit notwithstanding, Shukla is deadly serious when examining his issues — that range from police excesses, bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, citizenship disasters to smart-phones, smart cities and India’s rapidly-plunging GDP and international ratings. He lays bare hard, internationally-acknowledged data for his readers to mull over. Like “1% of Indians own 55% of its wealth” or how “10% have collared 74%” of the country’s resources. But even these need updating, as in two quick years, they have become worse and more skewed. Berating the regime-encouraged or caste-inspired agitations and violence against certain films, launched mainly by uninformed goons, he laments that “all film production will cease”. And he rues: “Sunny Leone will regrettably go back to Canada, Amitabh Bachchan will become Baba Ramdev’s brand ambassador and Salman Khan will resume shooting black bucks and chinkaras which is a far safer occupation in India than shooting films.”

Lampooning Rahul Gandhi’s sudden hugging of the Prime Minister, Shukla comments “I don’t think he was expecting any reciprocal cleaving to the bosom by the PM. It is well known that Mr Modi never, but never, hugs an Indian: his expansive embraces are reserved for foreign dignitaries, preferably on foreign soil.”  Shukla take on the IAS is quite true, mercilessly so, and he aptly compares their service years with Russian dogs, who are “well fed but not allowed to bark”. “When the muzzle comes off after 35 years”, he notes that “they tend to be a rather chatty lot”. 

In this apparently flippant vein, he tosses various persons, societal ailments and governmental goofing around. To Avay Shukla, there are no holy cows that can’t be tickled, despite unpleasant consequences that have befallen several outspoken critics who went too far. He is, however, quite even-handed with all political parties and if ever people are curious how bureaucrats put up with the largely-obnoxious political class, the answer is that they “faked it” most of the time. Mercifully, Shukla does not pontificate or compare his bravado with the antics of the ‘lowly specimens’ who populate his service since he left it. He laughs at himself all the time and that, by itself, proves that he has achieved something that is very difficult for most of his colleagues. That is: to remain plainly human and simply normal.

The paperback version of the book is available on Amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.in/dp/8199353686

or simply type the name of the book. Kindle version should be available soon.

SHOULD I PROTECT MY PERSONALITY OR INSURE MY LEGS ?

 I've been feeling a bit low these last few months, enveloped in a feeling of missing out on something, what the acronym generation would term FOMO- Feeling Of Missing Out, but is actually more of FOBLO- a Feeling Of Being Left Out. Somewhat like Sanju Samson being left out of the team for the first few matches of the T20 World Cup. Let me explain.

The author and blogger Manu Joseph is someone I admire; he has an innovative mind, an imagination that soars like a hypersonic missile, and he thinks out of the box. In a recent blog he explained how hard it now is for the "uber wealthy" to maintain their distinct social status above the humbler "very wealthy". Till now this was done by buying status symbols like designer and bespoke cars, flats in Dubai, annual trips to Biarritz, bouncers in black Tee shirts, luxury yachts and arm candy from Italy. Economists call these Veblen goods, where the higher the price the higher is the demand for them. They confer status. Not any more. With  ordinary millionaires now mushrooming like bhakts at a Modi rally in Houston, the uber rich billionaires have now lost their exclusivity or uniqueness. Anyone from Karol Bagh who does not pay his GST (which includes everyone in KB) can now buy what was once the exclusive preserve of the billionaires. Let me pursue Manu Joseph's idea.

 The bar for the uber rich is getting higher with every turn of the cronyism cycle. Therefore, to maintain their social distance and snobbery, they are resorting to outlandish strategems, indulging in extreme ventures. Like paying 55 million dollars for a trip to space on SpaceX or Virgin Atlantic, or 5 million dollars for diving down to the Titanic in a submersible, or buying a plot of land on the dark side of the Moon (which Trump will probably acquire once he has had his Joline moment with Cuba.) So strong is the pressure to be "different" that it does not seem to matter that they may not survive these ventures!

But-and here's the interesting part- the uber wealthy celebrities in Hollywood and other red carpet bastions of showbiz want no part of risking life and limb to be different. In fact, they go to the other extreme- they insure their limbs instead, for mind boggling sums! Julia Roberts's smile is insured for US$ 30 million, Ronaldo and Beckham have insured their legs for 117 and 70 million respectively, Taylor Swift for 40 million (quite under priced, in my view). But this pales into spindly insignificance in front of Mariah Carey's legs which command $ 1 billion. Really, are those legs or ATMs? Bringing up the rear, however, is this piece de resistance: Kim Kardashian's buttocks are insured for 21 million, but even this is not within touching distance of  Jennifer Lopez's derriere which is insured for 300 million. Gives an entirely new flavour to that immortal Americanism: "Kiss my a**e !"

In India, however, our crorepati showbiz celebrities in Bollywood are more pragmatic and parsimonious. They have started acquiring their exclusive status by a less expensive method- by claiming "personality rights" which no one else can usurp. All it requires is a ten rupee stamp paper and an unemployed lawyer. No wonder these days there is a virtual flood of these petitions in courts. Personality Rights (PR) protects an individual's public persona and identity- voice, image, likeness, mannerisms- from unauthorised commercial exploitation. This list of protectees now threatens to exceed the protectees under the Z category of the Home Ministry, and includes Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Anil Kapoor, Karan Johar, Shahrukh Khan and Daler Mehndi. So now you can't sing like Asha Bhonsle, build biceps like Salman Khan, smirk like Karan Johar, bat your eyelids like Aishwarya Rai or say KHAMOSH like Shatrughan Sinha (I'm not joking- a court has just ordered that he has the rights over that expression). Very soon, you'll not be able to hug like Mr. Modi or do a padyatra like Rahul Gandhi, cough like Kejriwal, employ MS Dhoni's "helicopter shot", deliver sermons like Mr. Jaishankar or expose your six-packs like the King Khan while spreading your arms in the Titanic pose. The message going out is simple and clear- if you've not had your PR protected by a court, you don't count.

It goes without saying that our courts are going overboard on this matter, which is a tussle between the right to privacy and the freedom of expression. The point is: if Salman Khan flexes his pectorals in a Pan masala ad, or Shilpa Shetty swings her derriere down a ramp, or KR Rehman croons in an auditorium - all this is done in public, is in the public domain. They voluntarily gave up their right to privacy to earn a few millions, so how can emulating them, talking about it or making memes or sarcastic comments about them constitute a violation of their PR? Next we'll have Keshto Mukherjee seeking PR protection for acting drunk in public, or Mr. Nitish Kumar claiming a patent for political defection, or Kangana Ranaut claiming that no one is allowed to speak English in that delightful  Pahari- Convent school accent!

But I'm not waiting for the courts to get their act together: I've decided to apply for protection of my own personality rights so that my editors and publishers treat me with some respect. Problem is, my wife Neerja says I have no personality except that of a proboscis monkey, these monkeys are already in zoos (maybe a few in some forests too), and therefore these looks belong to the Great Apes, not homo sapiens, and so they cannot be protected. But I disagree. From certain angles, and in subdued lighting, I have an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Bean, and can therefore seek protection as a Mr. Has- Been. Cheaper than insuring my legs or patootie, what? 

Did I hear someone titter? KHAMOSH !

BOOK REVIEW. JUDGING THE JUDGES.

              

                                          

                   [Published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. 2025]

  Before we get into this thought provoking book two things need to be said about it. One, it reaffirms that courageous journalism and writing still breathes in India, notwithstanding the utter capitulation of most of the shameful media to power and commerce. Second, the book raises troubling questions about our higher judiciary, based not on allegations and charges, but on facts available in the public domain and easily verifiable. The authors lay out the carcass of our judicial system, wounds and all, and leave it to the reader to make up his or her mind.

The central character is Justice Arun Mishra:  appointed to the Supreme Court in July 2014 by the Narendra Modi government, even though the previous UPA government had twice rejected his case. On his retirement from the SC in  September 2020, he was appointed as Chairman of the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) in June 2021, where he did not distinguish himself : for the first time ever, NHRC was downgraded by GANHRI (Global Alliance of National Human Rights Commissions) from category A to B for its failure to investigate human rights violations and its police- led approach. He retired from the NHRC in January 2025 and was, unsurprisingly and ironically, appointed  as Ombudsman and Ethics Officer of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).                                                                                                            In this book fourteen of his most controversial judgments are subjected to a forensic analysis the media, or any legal scholar, have never had the courage to do. And in each one any reasonable person would find him wanting, feeling that he was prone to riding rough-shod over High Court judgments, fashioning previous judgments and precedences to suit his interpretations of the law, displaying complete lack of empathy for human rights , failing to acknowledge conflict of interest in some cases and refusing to recuse himself from them, intriguingly ruling in favour of the government, the rich and the powerful even though there was much evidence to support a contrary decision. 

 The authors rarely, if ever, give their opinions on these cases ( in deference, probably, to the prevailing climate of self-censorship, laws of contempt and subdued criticism); they meticulously lay out the facts, invariably supported by citations and references, and leave it to the astute reader to draw his own inferences and conclusions. Most conclusions will do no credit to Justice Mishra. It is not possible to discuss each of these cases in a book review, but a few common threads that run through them become self-evident, enough to justify the title of this book.

Justice Mishra's propensity to favour the government's/prosecution version in just about every case is the first thing one notices, whether in the Elgar Parishad case where a scholar-activist like Gautam Navlakha was allowed to be hauled out of the jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court by the NIA (National Investigation Agency) for no reason and in the face of Delhi High Court orders, just so that he could not be granted bail for another couple of years; or in the case of Sanjiv Bhatt, an IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre who fell foul of the powers by revealing details of a meeting taken by Mr. Modi (the then CM of Gujarat) during the riots of 2002, and for alleging that he was pressurised by Modi and Shah to "withdraw a report he had prepared on the murder of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya." Bhatt's writ petition in the SC for constitution of an SIT to probe anew the Gujarat riots  was heard by Justice Mishra who dismissed it, placing implicit faith in the version of the government, accusing Bhatt of misleading the court, of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi, and of not coming to the court "with clean hands." This judgment effectively sealed Bhatt's fate, the authors say: he was subsequently convicted on another, decades old case and is now serving life in prison (appeal is pending in the Gujarat High Court, for whatever it is worth).

This book makes the reader wonder whether Justice Mishra was ever interested in the search for either truth or justice. In Judge Loya's case he inexplicably refused to allow a court monitored probe into the mysterious death of one of his own. (Loya was trying a case in which Amit Shah, the Home Minister, was an accused in a murder/false encounter). In the Sahara-Birla bribery case, he refused to allow in evidence a handwritten note in which payment of bribes were recorded (including allegedly to Mr. Modi, the then CM of Gujarat). The rejection was based on a technical definition of what constitutes a "diary"! Justice Mishra held that since the so-called payments were recorded in loose sheets of paper and did not have a spiral or permanent binding, they could not be considered as admissible in evidence! The case, naturally, fell apart in the absence of this crucial piece of evidence.

Hearing the constitutional challenge to the Forest Rights Act (FRA) which sought to confer land rights on traditional forest dwellers, Arun Mishra, instead of addressing the constitutional issues involved, peremptorily ordered the eviction of millions of tribals at the second hearing itself, without ascertaining whether their claims had been adjudicated according to the law or not. It was only when the BJP govt. in Delhi (which had done nothing to defend its own Act), fearful of an electoral backlash, requested the court to reconsider that Justice Mishra stayed his own order in 2020. The case remains in limbo till this day.

Brandishing his authority like a cudgel, the Hon' Judge, taking suo moto notice of two tweets by Prashant Bhushan, noted activist and SC lawyer, about the  role of four past Chief Justices in the dismantling of democracy, convicted him of contempt of court. This, in spite of advice to the contrary by the Attorney General of India and a legion of legal luminaries and civil society members. This judgment itself has done much to tarnish the image of the SC as a protector of free speech.

The book meticulously documents how, in the 18 months prior to his retirement Justice Mishra delivered a series of judgments (eight, to be precise) in favour of the Adani group and Reliance Industries, by which they benefitted  by thousands of crores of rupees and effectively reducing the telecom sector to a duopoly. Once again, the rub lies in the manner of interpretation of laws, facts and precedents. Without going into the intricacies of the judgments (the reader can peruse them himself and draw his own conclusions), the sheer coincidence of timing and disposal is intriguing. As Ian Fleming famously said: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action!"

The other cases/ judgments analysed in this book only reinforce the misgivings about Justice Mishra's credentials as an impartial purveyor of justice. Sadly, one cannot discuss them all in this review. Suffice it say, however, that by the end of this book, one cannot but struggle with four troubling questions. One, are we over-hyping the bit about "independence of the judiciary", seeing that the virtual immunity proffered to them is not serving its stated purpose? Two, it is being demonstrated daily that judicial independence without a corresponding accountability can only lead to judicial tyranny. Therefore, should there be more focus on the other doctrine-"accountability of the judiciary"? Third, is the country being let down by the manner in which we appoint and promote our judges? Four, should reemployment of retired judges not be banned entirely, as it seriously compromises their loyalties? Inconvenient questions, but ones which will have to be addressed sooner rather than later. If the fourteen judgments in this book  compel the reader to reflect on this, it would have done its job.