THE MALLYA EXTRADITION- EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

    [ This piece was published in The New Indian Express on 20.12.2017, with some minor changes, under the heading BRINGING BACK MALLYA NOT EASY. ]                   

    T he government has pulled out all the stops to extradite Mr. Mallya from the UK but it would be well advised not to put its prestige on the line. It’s unlikely to happen, primarily because of the dismal state of our criminal justice system and our poor human rights track record. The developed world sets great store by both these factors and the past history of our extradition requests clearly show that they are not applauding us for either.

    India has extradition treaties with 38 countries and since 2002 only 61 accused have been extradited to this country. Currently, 121 extradition requests are pending with 24 countries. We signed a treaty with the UK in 1993 but till now only one person has actually been extradited, and that too because he consented to it! Ominously for the govt., the latest rejection was in October this year: one Sanjeev Chawla, a UK based bookie, was given the reprieve even though the judge found prima facie evidence against him for match fixing in 2000. The reasons cited for refusing the request were our poor human rights record: abysmal conditions in Tihar jail, overcrowding, lack of medical provisions, risk of being tortured, violence from other inmates and prison staff which, the judge noted, “is endemic in Tihar.” And it’s not only the UK. In February 2016 a Canadian court rejected the extradition of Surjit Badesha and one Mrs. Malik wanted for an honour killing in Punjab in view of the “appalling human rights record of Indian prisons.”  And therein lies the rub.

    Statistics prove that these judges were right. With more than 450,000 persons in jail( most of whom are undertrials and shouldn’t be there in the first place), our prisons are horribly overcrowded: Tihar has three times the population it was designed for. Corruption and violence are rampant. Quoting NHRC figures, the Asian Centre for Human Rights has revealed that between 2001 and 2010 there were 14231 custodial deaths in India- 1504 in police custody, 12727 in judicial custody. 99.99% of the deaths took place within 48 hours of the person being taken into custody. This is damning enough, but what the international tribunals will find even more inexplicable is the govt’s refusal to do anything about it. India signed UNCAT ( United Nations Convention Against Torture) in 1997 but we have not yet ratified it. We are only one of 7 countries not to have done so, and they are not elevating company: Sudan, Gambia, Comoros, Brunei, Bahamas, Angola. Unlike other countries, we have also failed to enact an anti- torture law: the draft Bill has been pending in the Lok Sabha since 2010. The recent murder of a woman inmate by warders in Arthur Road jail in Mumbai does not help our cause.

   We have not improved our credibility with the developed world by failing to adopt or implement the Standard Minimum Rules ( for prisoners), also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, adopted by the UN unanimously in 2015. This signals a disregard for prisoner welfare and rights.

    The British court will also note our pathetic conviction rate- 45%- which will raise doubts about the genuineness of the charges made in most of the cases, including, naturally, Mallya’s. The independence of India’s investigating agencies will come under close scrutiny, with the Supreme Court itself labelling the CBI a “ caged parrot.” Ironically, the CBI is the investigating agency in Mallya’s case! The manner in which only opponents of the ruling regime are being prosecuted will lend credence to Mallya’s defence that he is a “political victim”. The clogged judicial system is another major area of concern: as on October 2017 there were almost 40 million pending cases, of which 1.62 million and 743000 cases had been pending for more than five and ten years, respectively, with the various High Courts. These figures raise serious questions about our judicial system’s ability to provide justice in time. Taken together, all these dysfunctionalities feed into a perception that human rights cannot be assured in the country. Even the 2017 report of Human Rights Watch notes that India “has serious human rights concerns.”

   Certain recent events in the Supreme Court will further erode the perceived image of our higher judiciary- charges by senior lawyers against the Chief Justice himself concerning his integrity, inaction on the suicide note of the Arunachal Chief Minister in which he had accused senior judges of bribery, corruption charges against a retired judge of the Odisha High Court. In fact, according to a press report on the 13^th. October 2017, Mallya’s lawyers have already seized on this- his defence has already brought to the Magistrate’s notice a research article by a scholar in Portsmouth Law University about corruption in the Supreme Court. It does not help matters that the Court is locked in a bitter battle of attrition with the Central Govt. over appointments and “judicial overreach,” or when its coherence is suspect when it appears to be internally divided, with judges overruling each other on important matters.

    There is also the question of whether Mallya’s failure to repay loans justifies criminal prosecution or is a matter for civil action. We do have a propensity to arrest people at the drop of a hat, whether it is for someone’s foot accidentally touching a woman on a plane or a cartoonist lampooning someone in power. All these factors will coalesce into a powerful defence for Mallya, and his lawyers have already started using them. A lot of our dirty linen shall get washed in public but the outcome is still not certain as most of the cards are stacked against India. It is difficult for a civilised society to extradite a man to a country with a dysfunctional legal system, a thoroughly compromised police and a strident media which appears to be the final arbiter of guilt and innocence.

THE GUJARAT ELECTIONS : PAPPU PASS HO GAYA !

    At times there's more glory in defeat than in victory, and the results of the Gujarat elections demonstrate this. Congress may have lost, the BJP will form the government for the sixth successive time, but the real winner is Rahul Gandhi. He fought an honourable battle, which is something of a rarity in these devalued times, against a party which has made the gutter its own, and a media vying with each other in singing hosannas to the presiding deity. His was an impossible task, taking on the most efficient and unscrupulous election machine the country has ever seen, a Prime Minister who appears to have cast a spell over most Indians, a partisan Election Commission and unlimited money power. And this with a non-existent Congress apparatus, a party which had been out of power for 22 years!

   Rahul Gandhi went to Gujarat as an underdog- the much reviled and lampooned poodle ranged against the powerful mastiff, scorned and reviled daily by the apopleptic  sycophants of TIMES NOW, REPUBLIC and  NEWS-X type of venom spouts. Not only did he lead from the front, it was almost a single-handed battle as very few other national level leaders of the Congress were around- whether by design or default, one will never know. For a person whose public speaking skills are limited, as is his knowledge of Hindi, he addressed more than 150 rallies over six weeks and by the end had matured into an accomplished word spinner. The style, manner and substance of his public interactions could not have been more different from that of Mr. Modi.

   Whereas the Prime Minister was his usual haughty, distant, table-thumping, talking-down self Mr. Gandhi came across as much more informal, relaxed, accessible, exuding an almost school-boy kind of openness and honesty. Where Mr. Modi came across as contrived and scripted, the Congress  (then) Vice-President appeared to be much more spontaneous and natural. The former did not mingle with the crowds, no doubt befitting his SPG endowed aura, but the latter( also an SPG protectee) had no hesitation in doing so at every opportunity, even stopping at the odd wayside tea stall to have a cup and a gossip session with the locals. This contrast in demeanour and attitude could not have gone unnoticed by the people and the results show this.

   The contrast between the two in the content and substance of their electioneering was even more stark. Mr. Modi stuck to his time tested formula of Hindutva, the Muslim card and the Pakistan bogey, playing the cliched poor chai wallah victim and personal attacks on the Gandhis- starting from Jawaharlal Nehru to Rahul ( he has not yet picked on Mr. Vadra's children but that is only a matter of time). The common thread uniting these sub-texts was a liberal dose of falsehood and innuendo. Development, economics and welfare were almost totally absent from his discourses- again, something that the electorate did not fail to notice. He stopped at nothing- he questioned Mr. Gandhi's temple visits, his religion, and his pedigree; he dug out the four year old chai-walla jibe of Mani Shankar Aiyer, spicing it with the latest " neech" appellation to further buttress his humble credentials as against Rahul Gandhi's privileged upbringing, forgetting that after 12 years as Chief Minister and 3 years as Prime Minister this plaint is wearing rather thin; setting the bar of decency at its lowest mark, he went on to accuse a former Prime Minister, a former Vice President and a former Army Chief ( among a dozen or so of India's most distinguished diplomats and journalists) of conspiring to remove him; he even hinted that Mr. Aiyar had issued a " supari" in Pakistan to get rid of him. As usual, he did all this with his customary mastery and the virtuoso performances must have got him the votes, but all this rabble rousing is becoming predictable; he needs to write a new script.

    In refreshing contrast, and to the pleasant surprise of many, Mr. Gandhi came across as much more would-be statesman like. He publicly announced at the start that he would not repay Mr. Modi in the same demonetised coin, that he respected the office of the Prime Minister and would never use inappropriate words for Mr. Modi, that he would campaign with love in his heart, not hate; that  (unlike the PM's stated view of the Congress) he did not want a BJP mukt  India for a strong Opposition was essential for a functioning democracy. He perhaps overdid the projection of his Hindu credentials, and failed to publicly condemn the horrific murder of a Muslim labourer in Rajasthan to avoid sullying these credentials, and this is something he needs to avoid in future- he should not try to win the Hindu vote by espousing the  BJP's ethos. He would do much better by emulating his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru. who, in the first election campaign after partition in 1951 when the wounds of the religious conflagration were still fresh, had the political courage and vision to proclaim his unambiguous article of faith at the Ramlila grounds in the following words: " If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both at the head of the government and from outside." It is this kind of leadership we need in these critical times.

   Contrary to the vacuous " Pappu" image of Rahul Gandhi created by the social media trolls, he showed remarkable ability in strategising vital alliances and weaving the noose of failed economic policies and development with which to choke the BJP's narrative of specious claims. He appears to have correctly read the electorate's pulse, a departure from previous elections. He increased his party's seat tally by 19 ( 21, if one includes the two supported Independents), a 30% increase, and vote share by 5%- an astounding feat for a party which has lost just about every election since 2014. To put this in perspective, one should recollect that in the Parliamentary elections of 2014 the BJP had won in 165 constituencies; Rahul Gandhi has brought this down to 99. Let us also not forget that Mr. Amit Shah had arrogantly announced that his party would win 150 seats! He also showed great courage in accepting the Presidentship of his party just two days before counting and declaration of results, signalling that he was not afraid of accepting responsibility if things went horribly wrong for his party. They didn't, and in the process we have a new leader who has been through a trial by fire, has shed his "reluctant politician" image and can perhaps provide the counter balance to a powerful Prime Minister whose militaristic/corporate style needs to be tempered with compassion and tolerance. The BJP may not admit this in public, but Rahul Gandhi has given it plenty to chew over: if he can almost upstage the BJP in the Gir lion's den, he can inflict much more damage in the states going to the polls next year- MP, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh. He has seized the initiative and the BJP will no longer be the sole driver of the electoral agenda.  Pappu pass ho gaya !   

INDIA'S HEALTH SECTOR NEEDS MORE GOVERNMENT, NOT LESS.

    The conventional wisdom is that the less government we have, the better. In fact, that was precisely what Mr. Modi had promised us in 2014 with his rousing " Maximum governance, minimum government." Of course, he confused governance with intrusion into our private lives, but that is the subject of another column some other day. My assertion here is that there is one sector in India to which this policy should not apply- the Health sector. If proof were needed to validate it, it has been provided by two shocking incidents  in just the last month, both in Delhi. The first was the case of the little girl who was treated for dengue in Fortis Hospital, Gurgaon; she could not be saved but her parents were nonetheless presented with a bill for Rs. 16 lakhs: this was after the parents had turned down a preposterous suggestion to do a whole body plasma transfusion at a further cost of Rs. 45 - 50 lakhs ( on a patient who was already 80% brain dead!). An " inquiry" has been ordered ( the classic cover up) but the affair is a good as closed: we shall hear no more about it. The second case occurred on the 30th of November: twins born to a mother in the Max hospital in Shalimar Bagh were declared dead immediately, packed up nicely like an Amazon prime parcel and handed over to the parents. On the way to the cremation ground, one of them was found to be moving-he was alive! ( This baby also died subsequently a week later). The AAP govt. has now cancelled the hospital's licence after an inquiry ( the order will probably be stayed and the matter will  drag on in the courts for years). The callous insensitivity of the medical fraternity was revealed on prime time TV  when the President of the Indian Medical Council put the onus on the patient/ relatives- he advised us that we should not assume death if the patient has a low body temperature or hypothermia! Why should WE assume anything, Doctor Aggarwal ? Isn't it for the people like you and the hospital to do all the assuming, specially when you charge us hundreds of thousands for it ?

    These are just cases that found their way to the news: similar stories are playing out in their hundreds everyday, in hospitals and nursing homes all over India. A sting last week by CNN-TV18 exposed how doctors and path labs collude to fleece patients and share the spoils.. Profiting has now degenerated into profiteering. The list of malpractices indulged in by the medical profession is menacingly imposing, and has been revealed by whistleblowers and NGOs such as SATHI ( Support for Advocacy and Training in Health Initiatives): commissions, failure to prescribe generic drugs,  "sink tests" by path labs where all the samples are thrown into the sink without testing and false reports generated, corporate hospitals' unwritten rule that 40% of OPD cases should be converted into admissions, unnecessary and expensive tests. Even diagnoses are deliberately distorted in order to milk a patient for all he is worth: a report by Medi-Angels, a Mumbai medical centre that offers second opinions has reported that 44% of 12500 patients advised surgery for stents, joint replacements, cancer etc. were advised against it by the second consultants. ( Most of us have our own personal horror stories about this.)

    There are reportedly 4.50 million cases of medical negligence in India every year. But the citizen has little recourse to justice, except to go the Consumer Courts which is both expensive and time consuming. Govt. policy, till now, had visualised that the medical profession would regulate itself and had established the Medical Council of India for the purpose by statute. This body, however, like most internal regulatory bodies, has been a spectacular failure; it has become the protector of the practitioners that it was supposed to regulate and monitor. I have googled incessantly to find out how many doctors it has disbarred or deregistered for negligence or malpractices- I have been unable to get any information, because in all probability it hardly ever does so. All it does is lay down ethical guidelines, conveniently forgetting that it has legal obligations to the patients too. In contrast, in the USA about 450-500 doctors lose their licence EVERY YEAR, and in the UK the figure is between 150 and 200 ( incidentally, most of them are of Indian and Pakistan origin !- not an export we should be proud of).

    The medical profession has consistently resisted any attempt by the govt. to discipline them or to cap their exorbitant charges/ fees. But ( after the Kunal Shah case in 2013 where Rs. 13.00 crore was awarded as compensation to a patient) they have been demanding a cap on the compensation award! So far they have manged to get away every time by arm twisting the govt., their strength lying in the fact that the private sector provides 80% of health care in the country. Successive govts, both at the centre and the states, are responsible for this dismal state of affairs: the state spends barely 2% of GDP on health, whereas the WHO recommendation is a minimum 5%: he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that is why doctors and corporate hospitals are humming all the way to the bank. But this has to change. Govts. have to drastically increase outlays of the health sector: the 2.50- 3.00 % promised by the Union Health Minister by 2022 is just not good enough. Self regulation has failed, the cupidity of doctors shows no sign of abating, and corporate hospitals are medical vampires who suck your blood and make you pay for it! This is one sector that requires maximum government. It is high time that the National Clinical Establishments ( Registration and Regulation) Act 2010 and the Clinical Establishment ( Central Govt.) Rules 2012 are implemented and enforced by the Center and all states . Currently only a handful of states and UTs have done so, and that too for mere registration purposes only. If implemented sincerely the Act empowers governments to deregister clinical establishments, entertain complaints, award compensation, initiate criminal cases where needed, cancel licences of  doctors, hospitals and other health related commercial facilities, fix the rates of various medical procedures ( as it already does for CGHS and EGHS members), lay down minimum standards of treatments. The MCI's mandate should be limited to advising on medical education issues, and issuing ethical guidelines ( the only thing it is good at). The health consumer has been betrayed by the medical profession and the govt. must now step up to the plate and do the right thing. It must protect the ordinary citizen and not be seen to be siding with, or succumbing to the blackmail of, these corporate profiteers. As the poet lamented:

" Inquilab-e-aasman se kyon na ho uljhan mujhe,

   Main pukaru dost ko, awaaz de dushman mujhe."    

ALLOW US TO DIE WITH DIGNITY

         [ This article was published in the New Indian Express on 6.12.2017 ]

    Responding to a PIL by the NGO Common Cause in the Supreme Court asking that the right to die with dignity be declared a fundamental right, the Union govt. has opposed the concept of a Living Will. The reason given by the  Additional Solicitor General was that “ it could be enormously misused.” This attitude is extremely regrettable, though not surprising since it is consistent with the government’s backward looking and obscurantist stand on some other progressive and liberal reforms. It had opposed the declaration of sex with a child bride as rape, it still refuses to delegitimize marital rape, and it supports the odious Section 377 of the IPC which criminalises homosexuality. It justifies this antediluvian mind-set by claiming that the peculiarities of the Indian ethos sanctify these practices or beliefs, and that Indian society cannot be trusted not to abuse good laws. This is a strange position to adopt for a country which seeks to be a superpower and leader of nations.

    A Living Will is the ultimate assertion of privacy and the desire for dignity on the part of an individual. It is an “advance medical directive” to a physician or one’s next of kin by a person of sound mind, stating his wishes for end- of- life care, in case he is unable to communicate his decisions at that point in time owing to illness or incapacitation. It specifies the type and extent of medical care he desires and appoints a person( power of attorney) to carry out his wishes or take medical decisions on his behalf. It can state, for example, that no aggressive interventions such as attachments of ventilators, heart-lung machines, intubation, dialysis, tube feeding etc. be made to keep him alive.

    The Living Will is a response to advances in medicine which can keep a person “alive” indefinitely even though he may be in a coma or in a vegetative state, brain dead, with no hope of recovery. This life support comes, however, at great financial and emotional cost to the next of kin, unnecessarily prolongs the suffering of the patient and also blocks scarce health care infrastructure which could be used for someone with a better prospect of recovery. The only gainer is an avaricious hospital system which makes more money by aggressively keeping a patient going even where there is no hope. Can we ever forget the tragic case of Aruna Shaunbag of Mumbai who remained in a coma for 42 years before God mercifully intervened? Even the higher courts did not allow the hospital to withdraw the useless life support systems and denied her the relief and release her tortured body and soul were entitled to.

    The concept of a Living Will was first mooted in the USA in 1969, and has  been accepted by most of the developed world:  USA, Australia, Canada,  UK, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland- all have framed legislation to permit it, and some have even devised standardised formats  for it to make them more legally acceptable. Adequate safeguards have been built in to avoid the kind of “misuse” our govt. is apprehensive of. A recent study in the USA revealed that 80-90% of respondents would refuse aggressive medical intervention if they were in an incapacitated state with no hope of recovery. The figure would be higher in India, given the dismal state of our health care; India is one of the worst countries to die in- the Quality of Death Index places us at 67 out of 80 countries.

     In its draft bill- The Medical Treatment of Terminally Ill Patients ( Protection of patients and medical Practitioners) Bill- the govt. expressly forbids recognition of a Living Will by providing that “ every advance medical directive( called living will) or medical power of attorney executed by a person shall be void and of no effect and shall not be binding on any medical practitioner.” Therefore, if a family of an incapacitated patient wishes to refuse life support in deference to the latter’s wishes, it will have to apply to a High Court for permission . Clearly, the govt. is confusing the Living Will with euthanasia, and not recognising that what is involved in a Living Will is not withdrawal of life support when the patient is comatose but an advance  refusal to permit it , a decision made when in full control of one’s senses and faculties. The distinction is critical, because it is the person himself deciding, not someone on his behalf. And the right to privacy and the right to a life with dignity gives him this entitlement.

    The govt’s position is just not right or compassionate. Approaching the courts (as suggested in the draft Bill ) could take months as evidenced in recent cases of abortion of rape induced pregnancies. The apprehended “misuse” of the Living Will is no justification as just about every law in India- dowry, domestic violence, sex selection, Sec. 377- is misused: that can never be a reason for rejecting a progressive legal provision. Not just constitutional, moral and ethical considerations are involved here too. One, if I can legally decide ( in a normal will) what to do with my worldly possessions, why can I not be allowed to decide what to do with a useless body that has become a curse and a source of intense suffering? Two, if the law allows me to tell a doctor to cut me open to remove a tumour or cancer to alleviate my pain, it should also allow me to tell a doctor not to touch me, and to let me die, for precisely the same reason- to end my agony. These are two sides of the coin, and I should be the one to decide which one to flip- not a disinterested government, doctor or judge.

    Medicine or law should not always be active protagonists in the process of dying- there are times when they should be simple bystanders.

THE MISSING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

    The Indian Constitution gives us six Fundamental Rights: right to Equality, right to Freedom, right against Exploitation, right to Freedom of Religion, Cultural and Educational rights, and the right to Constitutional Remedies. The Supreme Court has recently given us another one: right to Privacy. It sounds pretty impressive on paper. Now, I'm no legal expert- for a long time I was under the impression that "corpus delicti" meant a beautiful body, and till recently I thought that RIP on a judge's grave meant Recused in Perpetuity, in deference to a common practice in inconvenient cases. But even I can see that these fundamental rights are not available to large sections of society, and of late they are being denied with renewed vigour.

    Equality still eludes millions of dalits, tribals and the poorest of the poor; our push for a digital India with Aadhar as its trumpet call is further disadvantaging these sections and denying them access to public welfare services such as pensions and food rations. Talk of equality is a farce when 200 million people go to bed hungry, when 15% of the population in under nourished( FAO figures), when 34% of the children are stunted, when the top 5% of Indians own 65.5% of the country's wealth while the bottom 50% have to make do with only 4.5%. Freedom is still a dream for millions of bonded labour and child workers, and for those who are indiscriminately arrested by the police, for the more than 400,000 undertrials in prisons, most of whom will be acquitted if their cases ever come up for trial in a system as clogged as a railways toilet. Freedom of religion did exist for some time, but is now being threatened by new conversion laws in some states that require the approval of a District Magistrate before one can exercise that option. The sporadic demands for a Uniform Civil Code and a muscular assertion of majoritarianism constantly haunt the minority psyche. Educational rights consist of mere statistics of enrollment figures; in actual practice, so dismal is our govt. educational system that a Class 6 student lacks the ability of a Class 2 student; 27.51 of every 100 children who join school drop out by the time they reach Class XI. Those who pass out of college are unemployable. The hardest hit here are the physically disabled: of 28 million not even 0.1% have access to schools and 0.01% to higher education. The courts are waging a valiant but losing battle to enforce our right to Constitutional Remedies, hamstrung by an adversarial central govt. and its own internal shortcomings. How, for instance, does one enforce one's constitutional right to freedom of expression when the govt. will not act against those who murder it ? Seventy journalists have been killed in the last 14 years, hardly anyone has been punished. How can this right be exercised when draconian laws- criminal defamation, sedition- are used to muzzle any contrary voice ? These remedies, unfortunately, are available only to the rich and powerful, usually to save their own skin.

    There is, however, one Fundamental Right that the Constitution has not given us, but one which is being enforced these days on a daily basis- the Right to be Offended. " Hurting the sentiments" of any one of the country's seven religions and 7331 castes/communities is an offence under the IPC and is the trigger for claiming this right. This legal oddity has always existed, right from the days when the film Kissa Kursi Ka and Rushdie's Satanic Verses were banned by the Congress, but over the last three years it has acquired an accelerated virulence and a violent character. Organisations- mainly perceived to be of the far right- have sprung up whose sole purpose in life is to feel offended. Anything which does not conform to their regressive ideology or can help them win the next election is a legitimate source of causing offence, and therefore for raising the demand for a ban, criminal prosecution, apology or mindless violence. Offence is taken at girls wearing jeans or a young couple going out in public ( Valentines Day ?), MS Dhoni appearing as a Hindu God on a magazine cover, Kamal Hassan's comment about Hindu terror, any form of sympathy for a Kashmiri or for the Kashmiri perspective, support for a  Pakistani cricket team, any questioning of the Indian Army ( sedition), possession of cattle or meat, intercaste marriages. Creative work- films, books, paintings- the very mediums which advance civilisation and its best values, are the primary founts of imagined offence and hence the primary targets for the proponents of this right.

    Taking offence has de facto become a fundamental right these days and is being practiced on a daily basis. The latest instance is that of the film PADMAVATI. Official Rajput organisations have joined hands with criminals and louts to ransack theatres, offer Taliban type of rewards for beheadings, hold up trains and threaten to maim the artists. As the furore over this film has demonstrated, two factors are conferring legitimacy on the sinister assertion of this right to be offended. One, neither the central govt. nor the concerned state govts are taking any action against these criminal elements for violence, criminal intimidation, destruction of public and private property, wrongful confinement, instigating public disorder, contempt of court, etc. Second, and even more telling, is the fact that this manufactured disturbance is being supported by these same govts, directly or indirectly. Union Minsters have done so by proclaiming that film-makers should  be "sensitive to cultural feelings" and to the "status of women", state Ministers have lamented that the feelings of the Rajput community have been "hurt", the UP, Punjab and Haryana CMs have asked for a ban on the film, the MP and Gujarat Chief Ministers, in their attempts to out Herod all other Herods, have actually banned it ( even though the Supreme Court has refused to do so!), the Rajasthan CM wants it to be censored, the Union Home Minister declares that even if the film is cleared by the Censor Board the govt. can always review it. The Congress and other opposition parties maintain a psephological silence, for this is the age of votes, not values. Only Mamta Banerji has had the guts to speak out in support of the film.

    Other constitutional rights be damned. The only fundamental right which matters in India today is the Right to be Offended, and this has become the new clarion call for the self appointed custodians of the country's culture and national pride. The govt. appears to agree and has legitimised it by its inaction, bans and statements. It may as well take the next step and legalise it: amend the Constitution and provide for it as the seventh fundamental right. We may as well end this "willing to wound but afraid to strike" charade and reveal ourselves in all our regressive glory. Then our country can officially become the kind of unfortunate place WB Yeats had written about , a place where

    " The ceremony of innocence is drowned,

       The best lack all conviction, while the worst

       Are full of passionate intensity."
Welcome to the New India of 2022. 

THE LANGUAGE OF GOVERNANCE

     In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And then God committed one of his periodical goof-ups, the first after the original mistake of creating Eve and involving us for perpetuity in sexual molestation cases: he created the Bureaucracy and the Bureaucrat took over the Word. Originally intended to convey meaning, the Word now became a means to conceal!- a mechanism which even the Right to Information Act has not been able to dent. But let’s not scoff at this, for concealment is an art- given the sheer scale of goof-ups and gerrymandering constantly going on in the labyrinths of power, concealing them behind just a few words requires far more skill than merely revealing to us that our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Shelley may well have been right when he said that, but could he have hidden behind words a hefty kickback in danger of disappearing? That's what one Minister was once required to do, without Mr. Vinod Rai finding out about it.

    Having successfully negotiated the required payola from a contractor, a Minister called for the file and wrote on it "Approved". The contractor, secure in the false illusion (like Lalu Yadav a-la Nitish Kumar) that the Minister was now committed and could not go back on either his word or file noting, refused to pay up. Unfazed, the Minister requisitioned the file again and simply added the word  "Not" before "Approved". The now chastened contractor, acknowledging defeat at the hands of a master, prostrated himself (like Nitish Kumar a-la Amit Shah) before the icon of democracy and begged for his contract back, wondering at the same time how the worthy would find a way around the neological cul-de-sac. The Minister, a wordsmith par excellence, extracted the file from his drawer and just added the letter "e" to the word "Not". The final noting read "Note Approved"- two simple words that concealed twists worthy of a Saki or an O'Henry !

    In the mid eighties in Shimla a powerful Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, whose wife wished to devote all her time to disciplining other IAS wives and thus delegate her culinary responsibilities to a cook, moved the Finance Deptt. for the creation of a Class D post. The file duly reached the Joint Secretary (JS) in Finance. Now a JS, compared to a Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, occupies a slot in the bureaucratic food chain comparable to the position of the plankton in relation to the sperm whale, and in the normal course the file should have been cleared without a whimper, or whatever sounds the plankton emits when under stress. In this case, however, this humble organism (born and bred in the badass corridors of Hindu College) refused to accept his humble station in life and rejected it ! A livid Principal Secretary to CM, accustomed to worms squirming before him and not turning, returned the file with the noting: "Has this file been seen by the Finance Secretary? If not, it may be put up before him". (I may mention here that senior Secretaries belong to the same lunch club, operate on the principles of the Cosa Nostra, and are usually more adept than the macaque monkey in scratching each others' backs). The JS returned said file after recording on it the standard default option of all Finance Deptts.: "FD regrets to reiterate its rejection of the proposal". An epileptic Secretary to CM decided to teach this callow fledgling a lesson. Confident that he now had this amoeba cornered, he put the ball back in the JS's court with a thunderous ace: "At what level has this decision been taken?", thinking that this would expose the lack of jurisdiction of the JS. The latter, however, having dealt with seven foot Jats on a daily basis in Jubilee hall of Delhi Universit, was unfazed and responded with a classic cross-court of his own: "Secretary to CM is respectfully informed that the decision has been taken at the competent level." Game, set and match. No actionable information revealed. The sperm whale retired shortly thereafter, sans cook.

    Another story which comes to mind is that of a  young Deputy Secretary (DS) in Shimla , now grown long in the tooth and safely parked in the USA, whose newly acquired wife happened to be in Delhi. He kept applying for leave to spend some time with her, especially during those long winter nights in Shimla when a quilt is not enough to keep one warm. His applications were invariably rejected by the Chief Secretary (CS) who had long ago replaced his wife with a bottle of triple XXX rum. The DS then changed tack: he requested for leave on  "compassionate grounds", stating that he had to check up on his aging parents in Delhi. Even this crap did not cut any ice with the CS (the mixed metaphor may be excused). The increasingly desperate DS then made his final gambit, taking a huge chance: he applied again, this time on "passionate grounds" viz. that he was only recently married and had not seen his wife for many months and would not be able to recognize her if he did not see her soon! It worked! Off he went to Delhi and he has not left her side since then- much to her annoyance, of course. The power of the word- the deletion of three letters- made all the difference between marital bliss and enforced "vanprastha". Why, he may even have joined the RSS if denied leave again, left his wife and become a Chief Minister !

    My own favourite is the one about the officer who wanted a bigger garage built in his official residence to park his two cars. He sent a note to the Secretary PWD requesting that the "garrage be constructed immediately.'' The latter's response revealed his stout English Literature background:  "Request approved. However the officer may be informed that while a garage can always contain two cars it can never contain two R's "!

    The good Lord need not worry- His Word is in good hands.

THE LITTLE KNOWN SUB-CADRES AND ROHINGYAS OF THE IAS.

    The week before last I had written an article for the New Indian Express disagreeing with the govt's move to introduce lateral induction in the IAS (Privatising The IAS Would Be A Mistake, 14th Oct. 2017) . The feedback from the readers was interesting and has prompted me to analyse at least one part of it in some detail. Those in favour and against were equally divided, about 50:50, but what surprised me was the anger, vitriol and contempt for the IAS among those who favoured privatisation. They gave three primary reasons for this: the IAS was a service which had developed a cosy nexus with politicians, it was self-seeking, and it had made itself completely unaccountable to both the govt. and the public. How much truth is there in these not flattering charges?

   Plenty, I'm afraid. But for the purposes of this piece I'll concentrate only on the first one, the parabiotic relationship that the IAS shares with the politician, to mutual advantage.

  The IAS has occupied all the commanding heights of government over the years, but in order to remain there it has had to strike a Faustian bargain with the political executive. It is now the gate-keeper to the political authority, controls all Cabinet Committees and Ministries, policy making and all postings, promotions and appointments, even those of judges and military commanders. No one- but no one- is allowed to breach their hallowed portals. The armed forces, for example, have been trying for years to gain meaningful entry into the Defense Ministry and to have a COAS (Chief of Armed Services) but have been thwarted time and again. The IAS has consistently, and fiercely, protected its payscales and promotion avenues in all Pay Commissions and even awarded itself the "Apex Scale", an HR monstrosity, which has subsequently cost the govt. tens of thousands of crores in extending it to other services. It has cornered all post retirement sinecures, except where the judiciary has staked its claim first- but even that is smart give and take! It has had to pay a price for this, however. Unlike the "YES, MINISTER" model, where the astute civil servant controls the politician through deft tactical manouevers, team spirit and by thinking one step ahead of the politician (without compromising either his service or the public interest), the IAS has been lazy and has surrendered to the politician. This capitulation is of two types. The vast majority of officers have no political loyalties, try to be neutral but generally flow with the current, taking the easy way out. They are not "politicised" but merely compliant. A small minority, not more than 10%-15% of the cadre, however, become active camp followers of one political party/ politician or the other and promote only their interests, whether they are in or out of power. They represent a spoils system within the service and are the main reason why the IAS is seen to be politicised. And thereby hangs a tale.

    One of my readers, Mr. Duggaraju Srinivasa Rao from Andhra Pradesh, has sent me an interesting postulate. The IAS, like the other two All India Services, is structured into state cadres: an officer is allotted to a state which then becomes his cadre for life and he is expected to be loyal to that state. Mr. Duggaraju's thesis is that over time an unofficial sub-cadre has emerged in all states- these are political sub-cadres where the officer is allied with some political party or the other and subserves its interests  (rather than the public interest.) I find this postulate fascinating- and true!

 Such sub-cadres are an inevitable progression when officers, for purely personal gains, attach themselves to a political party, preferably the one in power, and swear allegiance to it. Over time they become "branded" and rise and fall with the fluctuating fortunes of that party and constitute a distinct sub-cadre within the state cadre. Thus the UP cadre of the IAS has its Samajwadi, BSP and BJP sub-cadres, Tamil Nadu its DMK and AIDMK sub-cadres, West Begal the TMC and CPI sub-cadres, Himachal has the BJP and Congress sub-cadres, and so on. No state is exempt from this Duggaraju rule, except perhaps Delhi where Mr. Kejriwal is too hot for any IAS officer to touch, especially with Big Brother watching from North Block!

  Readers from Himachal can see this thesis playing out right before their eyes! Both the BJP and the Congress have a bunch of IAS officers in their sub-cadres (and most readers from the state can probably name most of them too!) When their parent party is in power they occupy all the important posts and hound the officers of the other sub-cadre with transfers, departmental action and even police or vigilance cases. When their party is in opposition they lie low, go on long training assignments, study leave or central deputation. If none of these escape routes are available then they maintain a low profile, leak official secrets to their mentors or sabotage the current government's programmes. When they retire they get plum supernumary assignments, but for this the timing has to be perfect. It is important that they retire when THEIR party is in power, or they won't bag the sack of oats. If the timing does not match then they take premature retirement to avail of the sinecure in advance- a bird in hand is always worth two in the bush, especially if the bush may not be around for much longer!

  To extend Mr. Duggaraju's analogy, there are other types of sub-cadres also. To continue with Himachal, there is the Regional sub-cadre (do you belong to Old Himachal or New Himachal ?), tribal sub-cadre (officers from Kinnaur, Lahaul-Spiti, Bharmour and Pangi), Outsiders sub-cadre (allottees from other states marooned on this mountain), Reserved category sub-cadre (SC, ST, OBC). When I joined service in what now feels like ancient India there even used to be Delhi University and Allahabad University sub-cadres !

    To an extent, such groupings are not bad per se in that they promote an espirit d'corps, like in an Army regiment, for example, which only strengthens the organisation. But when they get overtaken by politics, and their only raison d'etre is self seeking aggrandisement (as the IAS sub-cadres have become) then they vitiate the service and weaken it. Incidentally, it would not be fair to only tar the IAS with this brush- it exists in all govt. services, including the Indian Police Service, the Indian Forest Service, the state services, and down to the clerk in the Secretariat or the patwari in the field. That the government still manages to hobble along is due to the other 10% who subscribe to no sub-cadre and still abide by the oath they took when they joined service. They are the Rohingyas of the civil services- stateless persons allied to no party, squeezed between opposing forces and unwanted by the powers that be, perpetually under threat of deportation to Delhi or Pangi or the north-east- but THEY are the real civil service, not the time servers and camp followers of the political sub-cadres.

   To conclude, Mr. Duggaraju's law is playing out right now in Himachal, which goes to the polls on the 9th of November. Since the BJP is widely expected to replace the Congress, one can now see the Congress sub-cadre chaps frantically digging their burrows and packing in the provisions to weather the long winter ahead. The BJP sub-cadre, on the other hand, is now coming to life like  grizzly bears after a long hibernation. And like the bears, they are hungry- for power, the loaves of office they have been denied for the last five years. They are already busy short listing their preferred postings and preparing a Schindler's list of the damned. Like homing pigeons, they will soon start returning from central deputation, study leave or wherever they were in hiding, and head straight for the house of the likely Chief Minister nominee. Incidentally, I have always believed that pollsters and psephologists predicting election results spend a lot of unnecessary money and time in doing opinion and exit polls. Instead, they should simply watch the bureaucrats- the weather vanes, as it were- who always know who will form the next government. Watch the sub-cadres and you will never go wrong.  

THE TALWARS ARE INNOCENT, BUT ARE WE ?

         

We may attribute the grotesque miscarriage of justice implicit in the conviction ( now set aside) of the Rajesh and Nupur Talwar to one judge and one investigating officer, but we would be deluding ourselves. This case represents a colossal failure of our entire system where every institution intended to safeguard a citizen’s rights- the executive, judiciary, Parliament and the media- has turned rogue like an auto-immune disease and turned upon itself. The checks and balances have not worked and the lives of two respectable members of society have been destroyed while their murdered daughter is just another statistic in our cavernous hall of shame.

The UP police and the CBI should of course hang their heads in shame. The former destroyed most of the evidence and could not proceed beyond besmirching the character of a dead girl. The CBI had no real evidence against the Talwars: the Allahabad High Court has painstakingly demolished their fabricated house of cards, Joker by Joker. The most important elements in proving guilt in a murder case are motive, murder weapon, and the chain of circumstances: the High Court could find none of them. Neither the SP Mr. Kaul nor the then Director of CBI Mr. Ashwani Kumar could be bothered with this nicety, however: they went ahead and prosecuted the Talwars without any evidence against them, or evidence that was concocted by pressurising a maid and intimidating forensic experts. They let suspicion and personal bias take the place of scientific evidence: this was the first failure. The second was the failure of the CBI’s legal wing/ Prosecution branch to point this out while vetting the case. Or did they do so and were overruled by the gentleman who went on to the luxury of a Raj Bhavan while his victims were rotting in Dasna jail?

The CBI trial judge who convicted the Talwars is the third failure. It frightens me to think that there are, in all probability, many more such judges in our judicial system who hold the lives and freedom of millions of citizens in their hands. I have rarely read a worse judgement in my life, even if we discount reports at that time that the first part of the order was written by his son and that the worthy judge had started writing the judgement even before final arguments were made in the case! Equally, I have rarely come across such scathing remarks by a High Court against a judge, describing him as a “film director” who was “prejudiced” and whose reasoning was “vitriolic”. It says that Mr. Shyam Lal’s approach was “ parochial and partial”, he tried to “give shape to his own imagination stripped of a just evaluation of the evidence and facts of this case,” and that he was “unmindful of the basic tenets of the law.” The fourth systemic failure ,therefore, is simply this: how could such a judge ever come to occupy a position where he could, literally, send a man to his death?

The Allahabad High Court has rectified somewhat what the CBI and Mr. Shyam Lal had perpetrated on the Talwars, but it took them four years to do so, and this too has to be a failure of the system. Why could they not have been released on bail pending their appeal? After all, sometime back the Patna High Court had granted bail to the notorious Mohammad Shahbuddin who has three life convictions and two dozen other criminal cases pending against him. Did the two dentists pose a greater threat to society, with their scalpels and drills, than the don with his assault rifles and guns and goons? The double standards of our courts is part of the reason our system is breaking down.

The media- particularly the electronic media- provides the next malfunction of the system. A TV studio these days is the Colosseum of Roman times where panellists, led by rabid anchors, bay for blood- it does not matter whose, just so long as it keeps flowing on prime time. Without any investigation or facts they brand people guilty, hound the police till they do likewise and create a malevolent public pressure which the Kauls and Shyam Lals of the world are only too happy to appease. These anchors have played no small role in railroading the Talwars.

Parliament too has failed us, and the Talwars. It has done nothing to legislate some of the corrections into the system: creation of separate Directorates of Prosecution to stop the predatory tactics of the police, introducing an All_india Judicial Service to improve the quality of our trial judges, allow more liberal bail laws considering that of every one hundred persons arrested, fifty-five will be ultimately declared innocent in our country, mandate fast tracking of appeals where the accused are already behind bars, bring in stricter gag laws for the media to prevent them influencing investigations and trials.

Most important of all, given the rapacious aptitude of our police, the whimsical nature of court judgements and the sheer enormity of miscarriage of justice in our country, it is high time Parliament and the Supreme Court considered introducing a system for compensating citizens wrongly imprisoned by the govt. Most progressive and rule based countries have them : 29 states in the USA have Wrongful Conviction statutes under which unfortunate detainees are given compensation ranging from US$ 50000 to 100,000 per year of wrongful detention. The UK too has the Criminal Justice Act. The logic for this is clear: the citizen has voluntarily given the state enormous powers over his life and liberty in the interest of a cohesive social order; when the state betrays this trust it must offer reparations to the people it has wronged. This trust is the bedrock of a democratic order.

We betrayed this trust and covenant with the Talwars. Do we have it in us to rectify these shortcomings before the canker pervades all ? 

PRIVATISING THE IAS IS A MISTAKE.

     The NITI ( National Institution for Transformation of India) Ayog has recommended to the Prime Minister that “lateral entry” from the private sector should be introduced in the civil services at all levels, from Secretary to Deputy Secretary. The PMO (Prime Minister's Office) is reportedly considering the matter seriously. A bunch of reemployed bureaucrats are seeking to undermine the vision of someone like Sardar Patel who had cautioned the Constituent Assembly that India would disintegrate if it did not have a strong and independent civil service.

    To be candid, the premier civil service of India, the IAS has not lived up to the Sardar’s expectations. It has, to an alarming degree, become politicised, slothful, complacent, venal and self serving. But that is not the whole story: the IAS has also delivered significant results in terms of quality of life indicators, human welfare index, the economy, preserving federalism, developing basic infrastructure, reducing poverty. Its officers are still chosen by the most rigorous, objective and fair selection process in the country. If it has faltered this is primarily due to the deteriorating quality of the political executive, particularly after Mrs. Gandhi’s Emergency and its credo of a “committed bureaucracy.” It has not been allowed the independence and the freedom to “speak out its advice” which Sardar Patel had stipulated as an essential condition for its effectiveness. Political governments have used the tools of postings, transfers, reemployment, charge-sheets, and of late tickets to elections, to subvert, entice, and intimidate the members of the service to conform. That it still functions most of the time is a tribute to its resilience, selection and relevance.

   But instead of attending to the problems mentioned above (which have been flagged time and again by various Administrative Reforms Commissions and Expert Committees) the government is , as usual, opting for a quick-fix which will further erode the efficiency of the IAS and destroy for ever its special character. The ostensible reason being trotted out is that the IAS lacks domain knowledge in a fast evolving, technology driven world, and hence “ domain experts” from the private sector need to be inducted laterally to make it a modern institution. This is specious and mischievous too, as I will explain in a moment.

    The word “domain” here is synonymous with “technical”, meaning that the  IAS needs technically qualified people from the outside. Not true. It already has enough. In the 2017 batch itself out of 264 selected candidates , 118 ( 44.69%) are from an engineering background; if one adds on the Doctors , IT graduates etc. the percentage comes closer to 50. Among the 20 toppers in this batch, 19 are engineers and one is a doctor! There is enough technical expertise in the IAS and this is no reason to get more from the private sector.

   Secondly, the “domain” argument is misleading sophistry and betrays a complete lack of understanding of what the role of a permanent civil service in a democracy should be. The civil servant is not required to be a technical expert. He stands at the point where technology intersects with the development needs of the common man, which can vary from village to village. There can be no one size fits all solutions, no matter how good the technology, as both demonetisation and GST have recently demonstrated. The civil servant’s role is that of the synthesiser- to assimilate a technology or idea, adapt it to the local context, and then extend it to the hundreds of millions, making mid course corrections wherever required. The limited, one dimensional vision that technocrats have would make them unsuitable for this role.

    To fulfil this role an officer needs to have deep grass roots experience, and an IAS officer is uniquely qualified for this. On an average he spends the first ten years of his career in “the field”, getting to know the dynamics of the actual workings of government at the village, panchayat, tehsil and district level. This is an invaluable input for him when he moves on to the Secretariat or Delhi to a policy making level, and one that any lateral entry recruit would completely lack.

    In government nothing is purely technical. Take, for instance, the construction of a dam, which the proponents of lateral entry would regard as a job for a domain  (engineering) expert. It is much, much more for it involves areas an engineer would have no clue about: acquisition of land, resettlement and rehabilitation of oustees, diversion of forest areas, preparation of Environmental Impact  and Social Impact Assessments, formulation and implementation of Environmental Management Plans, financial closure for the project, negotiating PPPs with the buyers, etc. Building the dam is only a small part of the project. It is here that the IAS officer’s role as a coordinator becomes indispensable: he has typically worked in a dozen different departments, his knowledge of administration is both deep and eclectic, he does not exist in a silo like all domain experts do. He is supremely qualified to coordinate the functioning of a government that works through a hundred Ministries at the Centre and in the states.

     An IAS officer IS a domain expert, in the most difficult and complex of all domains- Public Administration, which is a witch’s brew of policies, demographics, politics, social imperatives, religion, law and order. He is an expert at balancing all these, sometimes contradictory elements, and still moving the nation forward. A private sector whizz kid, whose only focus has been on maximising of profit, can never understand the dynamics involved or get the balance right.

    Lateral entry will be a regressive move towards the spoils system, which is perhaps why the government is keen on it. It will give it the freedom to appoint loyalists, fellow travelers, favourites and ideological compatibles. But these birds of passage will have no stakes in the service. In one generation there shall be no permanent civil service left. The PPP (Public Private Partnership) model may work for commercial projects, but a permanent civil service cannot function on this model. Government should instead address urgently the issues highlighted above. By all means throw out the bath-water, maybe even a baby or two, but for God’s sake don’t discard the bath-tub itself!

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PIOUS, THE WEALTHY AND THE PLAIN STUPID.

    So the cat's out of the bag. The marquee appearance of UP Chief Minister Swami Adityanath in the Jan Suraksha Yatra Kerala last week, his strident call to deport the Rohingyas notwithstanding the Supreme Court's observations, and the announcement that he will also campaign for the HP and Gujarat elections is a clear indication of the BJP's election narrative. Hindutva will be the clarion call, not development, for hoovering up the votes. There can be no other explanation. Adityanath's only visible appeal, in his saffron attire and tilak on a shaven visage, is as the flag bearer of a new and aggressive brand of Hindutva. Being the head of the Gorakhpur math adds to these credentials, and he has just reaffirmed this by spending a week during Dussehra at the math instead of the CM's office. He has nothing else to speak for him: his six month reign has been a disaster, what with the anti-Romeo squads, targetting of madrassas, rising crime graph, near destruction of the beef, cattle and leather industry, the infant deaths at Gorakhpur, the violence against girl students at BHU. His only achievement has been that he has more or less dismantled the Yadav mafia of the previous regime, but only to replace it with his own Thakur-Brahmin- gaurakshak version. And yes, he has stated that the Taj Mahal does not represent Indian culture and therefore has been omitted from his Tourism department's brochure! His next big achievement will be the construction of a hundred meter high statue of Ram in Ayodhya: funds for the hospital in Gorakhpur where more than 1500 children die every year will have to wait till his religious fervour is doused by a couple of electoral losses, I guess.

    Unlike the Congress, the BJP does its homework thoroughly. It has realised that its development plank of 2014 will not work because it has collapsed under the weight of too many hasty "reforms", a Prime Minister who loves to police rather than govern with empathy, and a Finance Minister who refuses to get out of the barrister mode of scoring debating points rather than keeping an open mind. And so it is now evident that Hindu nationalism and minority bashing will be the primary agenda for the coming state elections- the opiate of the masses is still a potent force. More poison will be injected into the already ailing body fabric of a tired and confused nation. And herein lies the real danger. Regardless of who wins these elections, the poison will be here to stay. In the three and a half years it has been in power the BJP has altered our cultural fabric of inclusiveness for ever: the mutual suspicion, distrust and animosity between communities and religions it has engendered will persist for a long time, if not for ever. In a way, it has already won the cultural battle- it remains to be seen if it wins the political one too.

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    Are you still wondering how tens of millions remain unemployed and undernourished, and thousands commit suicide out of economic distress, even as our economy continues to be the fastest growing in the world? Well, wonder no more. Its because all the gains are being cornered by that 1% of Indians who own 55% of its wealth, or the 10% who have collared 74% of it ( Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report)- the rich are getting richer while the poor are rotting where they were. I refer you to the latest Forbes  Annual India Rich List 2017, which contains some revealing figures. The combined wealth of the 100 richest Indians increased by a whopping 26% to US$ 479 billion. or Rs. 31 lakh crore. To put this in perspective, their wealth is more than the country's forex reserves, it is almost three times the total NPAs of our banks, it is about 20% of our GDP, it is equivalent to the annual incomes of 310 million Indians ! Heading the list, of course, is Mr. Mukesh Ambani whose wealth went up by 67% to US$ 38 billion or Rs.2.5 lakh crore.

    Now, one does not grudge these financial wizards their wealth, but one is certainly entitled to question the economic model which permits this scandalous inequity in a country where 40% of people go to bed hungry. It shows us that a high GDP cannot be the end all of economic planning, because its gains are siphoned off by a privileged few who possess the wherewithal to exploit the policies and systems which in any case are tailor-made for them. The distributive aspects of growth are even more important than its absolute numbers. A 5% GDP growth, whose gains go down to the lowest levels, is much more preferable than a 7% growth which is cornered by the few. Our economists have not yet realised this , but the politicians are beginning to if the results of elections in the UK, USA and now even Germany are anything to go by: the mantra of globalisation and growth for growth's sake is getting increasingly discredited ( I have no doubt that Mr. Modi too, notwithstanding his PT Barnum type of soap-box skills, will also discover this in the coming polls). He is enamoured of the western, neo-classical model which is driven by unrestrained consumerism, a dog-eats-dog market place where the richest are lauded and the devil takes the hindmost. It will not work. Perhaps the time has come to go back to that old man whose spectacles are used only for promoting govt. programmes . Maybe we should also look through them once in a while and try to understand his vision of a country where the  "daridranarayan"- the poorest of the poor- would be at the centre of all policy making, and not just the Ambanis and the Azim Premjis. Do you detect a delicious but tragic irony in this- that our rulers take the votes from the poor but deliver the wealth to the rich ? Isn't that vote laundering ?

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    My earnest advice to Mr. Chetan Bhagat is that he should stick to what he is good at: churning out assembly line pulp fiction and bilge. He should not don the universal expert's hat, and in particular should desist from projecting himself as the champion of Indian "traditions", which appears to be his new avatar while lashing out at the Supreme Court judgement banning the sale of firecrackers in Delhi NCR till Nov.11 this year. This order has not come a day too soon. Only a nitwit or a bhakt would fail to admit that Delhi becomes an Auschwitz during and long after Diwalis and the hospitals are packed with respiratory cases for weeks afterwards. Last year the quality of air index reached 999 and then packed up because the scale stopped at a reading of 1000!  (the WHO norm is 60) . And this happens at the precise time when the city is already engulfed in the acrid pollution caused by burning of 35 million tonnes of stubble in neighbouring states. Nobody- not Chetan Bhagat, not Shekhar Gupta, not Sehwag, not the RSS- has the right to inflict this on hapless citizens in the name of tradition, livelihoods or religious freedom. or whatever. The Supreme Court had given us enough time to stop the practice voluntarily, but as usual the average Delhi-ite doesn't give a shit. Mr. Bhagat can lock himself in his air conditioned house, switch on his air purifier and write his best selling rubbish, but the ordinary citizen does not have the luxury of this protection. Every right thinking resident of the NCR should welcome and support the decision of the Supreme Court. As for Mr. Bhagat, since he is so fond of a numeral in the title of his books, may I suggest a title for his next one- THE HALF- WIT. ? It could be an autobiography.

    

LAST RIGHTS

    Notwithstanding the hundreds of babies who die every year in hospitals of the Gorakhpur and Farrukhabad variety, rates of both infant and maternal mortality have been consistently declining. One of the main reasons for this happy development is the govt's push for Institutional Deliveries as against the age-old practice of home deliveries, presided over by midwives. The former, by ensuring better hygiene and medical care, has led to improved survival rates for both, mother and child. Strangely, however, the opposite appears to be happening for older people! More people are nowadays dying in hospitals than at home, at least in urban areas. " Institutional deaths" anecdotally outnumber "home deaths". ( Try to recollect how many people you know who have died at home in the last few years- I can't think of even one). There are many reasons for this but we will not go into them as that is not the subject of this piece. But what it has done is left me with a insurmountable problem!

    At a sprightly 66 I am uncomfortably conscious of the fact that I am now just two years short of the average life expectancy in India and may not live to see either Rahul Gandhi or Arvind Kejriwal become Prime Minister of India. As things stand today that may require the said average to go up to about 90 or perhaps require even a second rebirth. But you can't fight with averages, and since I am  about as average a Joe as any you'll come across in a week of Sundays, its time for me to start thinking about the grand exit and the family pension for the long suffering wife. And that's where the problem arises.

    You see, I don't want to be told Bon Voyage or Happy Landing (or whatever they say in Sanskrit these days) in a hospital, attached to more pipes and tubes than a vat in a distillery, with a ventilator pumping air into me as if I was an old, retreaded tyre with a dozen punctures. It is my fervent wish to board Yamdoot's busy shuttle service ( the last mile connectivity) from my home, surrounded by the few family and friends whom I have not yet managed to annoy, gazing wistfully at the " Aam Aadmi" cap I had promised to wear when Mr. Kejriwal became Prime Minister. Since that doesn't appear likely anytime soon, I may as well not hold my breath, if you see what I mean. I have written all this in my will for my sons to read and carry out. However, since they are products of Bishop Cotton School Shimla, I can't depend on their ability to decipher words with more than two syllables, hence this public statement.

    But I digress, as usual, from the main point, which is this: Who will issue my Death Certificate if I cop it at home? I am told that only a govt. Doctor or Hospital can issue a DC. Now, I can hardly hope that a sarkari doctor will deign to come to my house in Puranikoti village, considering that they rarely go to even their places of posting! Please press the Save button on this problem, dear reader, while I move on to the next one.

    The second, even bigger problem for me is this: I am a non-practicing Hindu ( i.e. not a gau rakshak) but do not wish to be cremated at Benaras or Haridwar, for the simple reason that I do not want half of my torso floating around in  polka dot Jockeys till I land up at the Ganga barrage in Kanpur- though, I must confess, since I belong to Kanpur this will be my final "ghar wapasi" of sorts.

    There are other reasons too for avoiding the barbeque. I don't wish to be converted to CO2 or methane or whatever gas ex-bureaucrats are composed of and burn another hole in the ozone layer. I'd much rather become top soil and end up as a begonia or a daisy and, if my luck holds out, perhaps be plucked by a pretty young girl some day ! My desire, therefore, is to be buried- and that too on my own land in Puranikoti village, and not in a cemetery which is probably an encroachment on forest land. ( Having served for almost four years in the Forest department, I certainly cannot become a party to this, you will agree). It took me two years of bending and genuflecting to obtain permission from the govt. to buy this land, and another three years of scraping and begging to build the house on it, so I don't intend giving it up so easily. I fully intend to hang around there- as a daisy, if you will but more likely as a cactus shrub- to further ensure that the DC Shimla does not resume the land on the grounds that , since I don't have an Aadhar number, I never existed officially. But the problem of that damn Death Certificate remains, now worse confounded. You see, one also needs a certificate from a crematorium or burial ground authority that the body has been properly disposed off ! Without this the police are likely to dig me out again, register an FIR against me and then I'll become case property. And we all know what happens to case property in police stations- it gets buggered-sorry, burgled!

    Maybe I should just convert to Jainism, climb into that hole in the ground, and take "samadhi". That will solve all these problems. Or maybe I should just listen to the Beatles and Let It Be. But there's reason to worry here too: what if my sons decide to be like the chap who, having just lost his wife and being asked whether they should bury, cremate or embalm her, shouted: " Don't take any chances- do all three!" That would be too much of a good thing.

     

LIFE BEYOND PRIME TIME NEWS

    Taking a break from the bedlam and super heated sauna that is Delhi these days, I have just returned from ten tranquil days spent in my cottage in a little village four kms. from Mashobra, beyond Shimla. It was a heart rending sight to have observed the massacre of thousands of trees and the dismembering of the hills on the Kalka- Solan stretch, where the on-going four laning work marks another victory of the internal combustion engine over plain common sense. And there's worse to come- by this time next year the NHA would have started its assault on the Solan- Shimla stretch ! But thankfully the forests that lovingly enclose my village have not yet fallen prey to the various Mafias and demented ideas that have taken over Himachal these days.
   Nature still rules here, and we co-exist comfortably, notwithstanding the "developers" and "builders" of Delhi who have started making inroads even here. Sometime back a hot shot lawyer from Punjab ( who occupies a high office in that govt.) did try to install an illegal borewell in his new house which looks like the USS Enterprise of Star Trek fame. This would have tapped into the only water source that is the life line of seven villages, and depleted it. The villagers naturally protested, and the govt. predictably sent a police force from Mashobra thana to help the lawyer ! But the simple folks of Moolkoti did not give up: they blocked the drill machine and even threatened to burn it. The lawyer finally went back with his machine, his brief between his legs. Moolkoti has just learned an important lesson in real- politic: don't depend on the govt. to protect the public interest- this has to be a DIY job.
    Puranikoti-my village- gets no newspapers, and I did not activate my Tata Sky connection. I do not have a smart phone so social media has passed me by a long time ago. I rarely go into town because I can never find space to park my car, and in any case most of my contemporaries are at various stages of Alzheimers and do not recognize me ( nor I them, and for the same reason). My erstwhile juniors do not visit me because I don't write their ACRs anymore. So-as planned- I was all by my lonesome self. I could have been in the depths of the Amazon forests, as cut off from the outside world as Mr. Jaitley is from reality. It was sheer bliss! It was epiphanic. The reason ? I got no news of the outside world for ten full days !
   The daily news- and not just Arnab Goswami- is the biggest tyrant of the modern world, and its foot soldiers are the newspapers, television, social media, e-mails, forwards and the two million apps in the Google play store. "News" today has to be, by definition, something which is bad: destruction, corruption, violence, disease, sexual perversion, political venality, famine, war. Do you ever see anything else on TV or read about in the tabloids ? Journalism has become a scavenging beast which can survive only on carrion- give it something which is healthy and wholesome and it will starve to death. It promotes only a venomous mix of distrust, hatred, anger, discontent and adversarial emotions.
    And so we are bombarded from morning till night, from womb to grave, by the worst aspects of human   exertions and thought- godmen who rape, politicians who plunder, dictators who massacre, trains that derail, man-hole covers that disappear, builders who decamp with buyers' hard earned moneys- I could go on and on with this Swindlers' list, but I'll only end up in tears of rage and frustration, and perhaps put you too, dear reader, in a similar frame of mind. Our daily fix of toxic "news" will never tell us about the farmer in Kerala who, fed up of waiting for the govt. to do something, finally dug a two acre pond with his own hands; or about the amazing experiment in the USA with parabiosis that has succeeded in slowing aging and mitigating Alzheimers; or about how the introduction of a pack of wolves into a national park in the USA has rejuvenated the ecology and geography of the whole landscape. News channels have given us all the gory details in the Ram Rahim saga, but did they spend even 60 seconds on the two brave women who struggled for 15 years to bring him to justice, or on the intrepid CBI officer who doggedly pursued his investigation inspite of being told to go slow ? But the purveyors of dismal news are not to be blamed alone, for we too have developed a taste for carrion, and find anything else stale and bland.
   This was my epiphany. The bliss came from the fact that, deprived of this toxic diet for ten whole days, the world again became a beautiful place, sans distrust, anger and abuse. The mornings were bright and fresh since I had no means of knowing their SPM or C02 content. The labourer in the fields did not strike me as a potential rapist or bag snatcher. The shop keeper in Mashobra bazaar did not look like a GST evader. The queue outside the only ATM in Mashobra failed to evoke unpleasant memories of demonetisation. The cow next door did not remind me of gau rakshaks. Even Mr. Modi's poster did not stir dreadful apprehensions of his next surgical strike!
   The absence of "news" had, in a way, restored the balance of life: there will always be some rain along with the sunshine, but that is not reason to despair, to post an outraged tweet, to rush to a shrink or doctor or lawyer. Life is beautiful here in the tiny village of Puranikoti, playing out to the unhurried rhythms of hundreds of years past. It remains untouched by the venom of news anchors, the untramelled ambitions of Presidents and Prime Ministers. the materialism of a digitised world. It will survive this Plastocene Age too, if left alone. It will always be a refuge from the madding crowd. Hence the bliss.
   I'm concluding this piece as my Shatabdi is pulling into New Delhi station( forty five minutes late, as usual). My next seat neighbour, who has spent the last four hours buried in his smart phone, informs me that Mr. Jaitley has just imposed a penalty on all bank accounts with a balance less than two thousand rupees. I am back in the world of the " Breaking News!" 

OSCAR WILDE AND INDIA'S GODMEN

 [ This piece was published, with a few minor changes, in the New Indian Express on 20.09.2017 ]

                          

Frankly, I’ve been surprised no end by the ruthless ferocity with which the Indian state has been carpet bombing the centres of the Dera Saccha Sauda in the aftermath of its leader’s conviction and its followers’ violence. Surprised, because this is the same state apparatus that took fifteen years to investigate the rape charges against him, that lined up outside the Dera gates for a holy “darshan”, that begged him for its votes, that squandered public resources to pamper him. Surely there must be a deeper explanation for this epiphanic volte face ?

There is, and we need look no further than Oscar Wilde to identify it. Wilde was a pitiless observer and trenchant critic of societal hypocrisy and one of his aphorisms supplies the answer: We dislike people for having faults we do not have, but we hate them for having the same faults which we have. Never was a truer word said.

We do not like to see a reflection of our own vices and weaknesses, and the Dera Saccha Sauda has done precisely that: held up a mirror to our rotten society and polity, exposed to full public glare the superstition, cronyism, exploitation and crass mendacity which define our social and political structures. And of course this makes us very angry, as Wilde had said it would.

Consider this : there is little difference between the empires of our God-men and of our politicians. Both aspire to just one objective- naked power. Both exploit the latent insecurities of people. Both use caste and religion to cement their support base and divide those of their rivals. Both lack any pretensions to democracy and are run by individual dynasts, family or coterie. Both acquire humongous quantities of money from sources that are opaque, dubious and undisclosed. Both are exempted from paying taxes. Both have cadres which have full licence to indulge in violence and hooliganism when the occasion or supreme leader so demands. Both are patriarchal and misogynist. Both are above the law.

God-men and politicians are like peas in a pod, conjoined twins in a parabiotic relationship, traditionally living off each other and prospering together. This is true of not just the BJP only: ALL political parties have, deplorably, been bed partners of various Babas at ALL times. The Congress had its Chandraswamy, the Samajwadi party had the infamous Ramvriksha Yadav who in June 2016 created mayhem in Jawahar Park in Mathura, resulting in the death of 29 people, including two  policemen. This misplaced reverence is a societal aberration; it is fashionable to think that these Babas are revered only by the less privileged classes, but this is not true. The upper crust have their own designer Babas who too can get away with anything- witness how the Art Of Living and its poster Baba Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was allowed to rampage through the Yamuna flood plains last year: the only time when Mr. Modi and Mr. Kejriwal have ever agreed on anything ! Baba Ram Rahim himself has been paid obeisance by just about every politician in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana. The BJP is only the latest suitor. That is why neither Mr. Khattar nor Mr. Rajnath Singh did anything substantive to prevent the ugly situation developing in Panchkula, till the shit hit the fan there-literally, if we are to believe the residents of this quiet suburbia. So what went wrong ?

The failure of Baba Ram Rahim to follow the prescribed code of conduct. In secretive and closed organisations ( like Deras and political parties) contentious and problematic issues are resolved in-house and not exposed to public gaze. There is a well established protocol for handling awkward, and perhaps illegal, predicaments. Cases are not registered, investigations are prolonged, loyal officers are deployed in critical posts, witnesses are won over or intimidated, court orders are challenged ad-infinitum, judges are recused, judgements are reserved, enquiry reports are buried deeper than the Mariana Trench. If all else fails and conviction becomes inevitable then there is the parole ( a-la Sanjay Dutt and Mr. Chautala) or the VIP ward in jail( a-la Sasikala and Sahara Shri), and the show goes on notwithstanding the occasional hiccup.

The mistake that Saccha Sauda made was in not observing this SOP and thereby endangering the entire carefully contrived web of deceit and its many powerful denizens. By taking to the streets the Baba broke the holy code of Omerta. He would have done better by following the Asa Ram model- although in jail now for four years he is yet to be convicted, he appears to be having a fine time behind bars, the case against him has got nowhere, witnesses are vanishing into the ether with great regularity, and there is a more than even chance that by the time he comes up for trial there will be little worthwhile evidence left against him. Most important, however, is the fact that his empire remains intact and his co-parceners do not feel threatened.

Baba Ram Rahim departed from this time-tested script and is now paying the price. The sheer ferocity of the state’s vengeance- raids, arrests, seizures, lock-downs, confiscations- is in direct proportion to its collusion with the Dera earlier. The effort now is to obliterate from public memory all reminders of their earlier partnership- Mr. Modi’s deep obeisance to the “mitti” or soil of the Dera before the last elections in Haryana, Mr. Khattar’s smirking photo with the now arch-villain, the long queues of politicians and Babus waiting for darshan and favours, the tax exemptions for his glitzy silver screen monstrosities, the Z category security at state expense, the 50 lakh rupees cheques by Ministers paid as premium for electoral insurance. These reminders of a now embarrassing past must be made to disappear, along with the Baba himself. There is a diabolical genius at work here: earlier the ruling party got votes by supporting the Dera; now it hopes to get votes by dismantelling it and burying Ram Rahim along with all evidence of their parabiotic partnership. Shakespeare was wrong, after all- it is not just the good that is often interred with a man’s bones, the bad is too.

But Oscar Wilde was right.

REST HOUSE CHRONICLES--III

    Rest Houses can occasionally offer bizarre experiences, often educative but always interesting. Sometime in 1996-97 I was consigned to the dog house for some misdemeanour and, quite appropriately, posted to the boon docks of the Animal Husbandry Department. I decided to visit the department's institutions in Dodra-Kwar, an area dependent on subsistence agriculture and sheep rearing. Dodra-Kwar is a remote tehsil, tucked away in the north-east corner of Shimla district, bordering Uttarakhand. History records that it was given to the Rampur Bushair state as dowry by a principality in present day Uttarakhand. Ever since then, the joke goes, Himachal has been trying to return it but Uttarakhand is having none of it ! It too, like Bara Bhangal, was landlocked till very recently, but  is now connected- a road was constructed in 2009  over the 12000 feet high Chanshil Pass to connect it to the road head at Chirgaon/Larot. In 1997, however, there was no road to Dodra-Kwar and so I, along with a Veterinary Doctor and a couple of pharmacists, trekked from Larot, over the Pass (probably the most beautiful one in the state), through the dense forest on the other side known as Kala Van, and by evening arrived at the first village, Kwar.

    Dodra-Kwar lies in the valley of the Rupen river (a tributary of the Yamuna) and is so named after its two villages, Dodra and Kwar (there is also a third village further up towards the Rupen Pass named Jakha, taken over by the Radha Soamis !) Kwar lies in the shadow of Chanshil and appears to have acquired the grim ambience of the bordering Kala Van: it has none of the cheerfulness and geniality of the typical mountain settlement, and is a forbidding place. The FRH (Forest Rest House) is some distance from the village and was quite decrepit at the time. Lacking any choice, however, we settled in for the night, beginning with the customary drink on its lawns while the chowkidar (a local) cooked dinner inside.

    After some time I noticed that the two pharmacists had also planted themselves in the kitchen and were watching every movement of the cook like a hawk! I suggested to the doctor that maybe he could ask them to come and join us for a drink too. He made no effort to call them, so after sometime I repeated my suggestion. The doctor flatly refused and, on my looking offended, finally explained to me the reason for his reluctance- and what an extraordinary explanation! According to him there existed a legend that the natives of the valley had historically distrusted outsiders and considered them fair game for plunder, sometimes even murder. Their SOP had been to administer a poison with the food at night and dispose of the body in the Kala Van. The pharmacists were in the kitchen to ensure that did not happen to us!

    I  certainly cannot vouch for the authenticity of this fable: all the local people I asked denied it vehemently, while the outsiders(mostly government employees) maintained a discreet silence. But it persists, and all I can speculate is that it may perhaps have been true in the distant past (most remote areas have these sinister myths) but improving connectivity and expanded intercourse have immutably changed such attitudes and practices, if they ever existed. I certainly found the residents of the other village,Dodra, very welcoming and hospitable- they even invited us to take part in a local chess tournament! I was eliminated in the first round, but my friend Sashi from Bilaspur made it to the finals.

    Never underestimate the chowkidar of a rest house! Having served hundreds of guests, and being privy to their conversations and worse, he is a deep repository of institutional knowledge and instinctive wisdom, as I found out in an amusing way. In June of 1980 I was hustled off as Deputy Commissioner, Bilaspur: soon it was the start of the annual planting season and in August I was invited by the Conservator of Forests to preside over the Van Mahatsov function at Ghumarwin, thirty kms from the district headquarters. I left for Ghumarwin the night before and landed up at the PWD rest house there. It was (and is) located adjacent to what was then a huge barren field, above a khad, or ravine. (Nowadays, of course, the field is covered with buildings and staff quarters of varied descriptions). I was received by the Tehsildar who soon left after ensuring that the dinner arrangements were in order. After a solitary dinner, enjoying my nightly cancer stick on the lawns, I asked the chowkidar where the Van Mahatsov planting  was to be held the next day. He looked a bit puzzled, and then pointed to the empty barren field next door:  "Here, sir. This is where the planting has been done every year for the last ten years!"

  The patch was as bald as Anupam Kher's polished nationalistic pate.

  And there you have in a nut shell the answer to the question: why is Himachal's genuine green cover declining in spite of  Van Mahotsavs, Compensatory Afforestation , CAT Plans and what not ? Nineteen years later the wheel came full circle: I was posted to the Forest Deptt., and every time the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests trotted out the impressive figures of survival of plants, I harked back in time to that humble chowkidar and tried hard to suppress a smile. For a bureaucrat the real learning process begins when he shuts his files, opens his eyes and steps out into the wide world- preferably into a Rest House !

   If tomorrow Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim Jong Un were to stop exchanging words and graduate instead to exchanging nuclear missiles, and I was given the choice of just one place where I could live out the rest of my life in a devastated world, I know the place I would choose- Dhela Thatch ( pictured below):

                           

                          [ The Forest Hut in Dhela Thatch in the Great Himalayan National Park ]

    Dhela is a gently sloping meadow, perched just below the ridge line that divides the Sainj and Tirthan valleys in the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) in Kullu. Surrounded by thick stands of oak and deodar, with dense thickets of dwarf rhododendron and hill bamboo on one side, it is an ideal camping site: there is even a little brook which provides water. The Forest department has built a stout log hut at its upper edge for use in the winters ( at 12000 feet Dhela can get a lot of snow)- for the rest of the year one can happily pitch tents anywhere on the dale. The height, mix of vegetation and undergrowth and the open spaces make it an ideal habitat for the highly endangered Western Tragopan (Jujju Rana) and sightings are quite common. The crags below it are home to the " ghoral" (mountain goat) which can be easily spotted sunning themselves in the morning sun. The view of the GHNP landscape from here is stupendous, framed by the majestic 16000 high Khandedhar range to the north, the even higher Pin Parbat massif to the north-west, the Tirthan ridge to the south-east, and beyond that the bleak ranges on which is located the holy peak of Srikhand Mahadev. There is a small "jogni" or religious cairn at the top, bedecked with colourful prayer flags which is ideal for meditation. This is Omar Khayyam territory for me:

" Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

  A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse- and Thou

  Beside me singing in the Wilderness-

  And Wilderness is paradise enow!"

 I have been here four times and have kept my rucksack packed, waiting for the ICBMs to start flying in the Pacific.

    Which brings me to my final point. Is the Himachal Forest Deptt. aware of the priceless wealth of history. tradition, anecdotes, individual accounts, legends that reside in its hundreds of rest houses, many of them belonging to the British era ? It should be, and therefore it should immediately begin archiving them, before they are lost for ever with the passage of time. The Deptt. should commission an exhaustive documentation of each of the heritage rest houses and bring out a coffee table kind of book that will preserve their memories long after the physical structures themselves are long gone, as they inevitably will in time. The project can be funded from the budget of the Eco- Tourism Society. I had initiated the process in 2009-10 but could not see it through owing to my superannuation. A number of readers have written to me suggesting this and a friend informs me that the neighbouring state of Uttarakhand has already brought out such a compendium. We should not lose any more time in emulating them.