WORSHIPPING FALSE GODS IN GOD'S OWN COUNTRY.

   They are still doing the maths in Kerala, and will for some time: the number of dead and displaced, houses and public property destroyed, quantum of funds/ aid needed for the restoration and rehabilitation. Once that is over the blame game will, as usual, begin in right earnest. Lost in the din of " experts", panelists and politicians will be the the admission that Nature is being blamed unfairly for the destruction and havoc. Yes, the rains in August were about 46% above the average, but Kerala's rivers could have handled most of it if the landscape had not been subjected to gang rape by politicians, administrators, mining barons and the builder mafia. There would have been some damage, certainly, but this kind of apocalypse could have been avoided.

   If only the Centre and the state govt. had paid heed to the recommendations of the Madhav Gadgil report of 2011. After a painstaking, two year ground survey of the Western Ghats Gadgil had identified the main activities which were destroying the natural balance of the Ghats: mining, quarrying, illegal construction, deforestation and encroachment of the flood plains of the rivers. He noted that 25% of the 1,64,248 sq. kms of the WG had already been lost and recommended that 64% or 120,000 sq. kms be declared an eco-sensitive zone where none of the above activities, plus hydel projects, should be permitted. All six states trashed the report and the centre appointed another committee- the Kasturirangan Committee - to give a fresh report. The gentleman was a strange choice to begin with and it gave the game away- a distinguished space scientist he probably knew even less about environmental matters than Mr. Javadekar and Harsh Vardhan, the previous and current union Ministers for Environment. It was clear that what was expected from him was a "political" report and not a scientific one, and he obliged. He reduced the ESZ to 37% or 60000 sq. kms, half of Mr. Gadgil's recommendation. This was further reduced by executive fiat to 45000 sq. kms. by Mr. Javadekar and he also allowed mining, construction and hydel projects to continue. And here's the shocking clincher- even this eviscerated decision has not yet been implemented ! Is it any wonder then that Kerala's lovely rivers ( all of which originate from the WG and flow westwards to the Arabian Sea) have been choked with debris and landslides from denuded mountain slopes, its floodplains strangled with all kinds of unregulated construction development, its dams silted ? The correct nomenclature for the current floods is neither Man- made Disaster nor Natural Disaster but Politician- Made Disaster, with Virappa Moily and Javadekar being the presiding deities.

   There is a second cause for this calamity which has not yet been emphasised but will in the coming days: indiscriminate construction of dams and their incompetent operation. Kerala, I learn from reports, has 80 dams of which 39 are major ones. Of the latter, 36 opened their flood gates almost simultaneously precisely at the exact moment when the rainfall was at its most intense, releasing tens of lakhs of cusecs into rivers already drowning in their own waters. The contribution of these dams to the flooding of the state should not be underplayed or passed off as a routine operational hazard- by some estimates they may have been responsible for 40% to 60% of the floods. These dams were meant to prevent floods but have done just the opposite. The last great flood in Kerala was in 1924 when there were no dams at all, but the damage was much less than now. This one fact itself speaks for itself.

  Why does a small state, with abundant water availability, need 80 dams ? Second, why did the govt. or those operating these dams not heed the warning of the IMD that very heavy rains were expected in the second week of August ? The last intense spell of rains had subsided by the end of July and the dam reservoirs were already full to capacity. The New Indian Express has reported on 23.8.2018 that Tamil Nadu had warned the Kerala govt. both in May and June that the reservoirs were filling up and a phased release of water should be initiated immediately. This, along with the IMD forecast should have prompted the dams to gradually release some of the stored water during the ten day window of relatively fair weather in the beginning of August, if not earlier. Not doing so was a criminal error of judgment, and the panic driven opening of the floodgates later was an inevitability.

  Water is an inventory for dams, whether it is used for irrigation or for power generation, or both, as is usually the case. Dam authorities therefore do not want to waste this inventory, for every cusec of water has a monetary value. But water stored in dams is also a potentially massively destructive force if released in an unplanned and uncalibrated way ( as it was in Kerala). Scientific management of dams therefore demands that there must be proper, real time meteorological and flood forecasting data which could help in deciding on water releases. Unfortunately, Kerala has access to neither: IMD data is patchy at best and , even worse, the Central Water Commission or National Flood Forecasting network has no stations in Kerala. I believe they have NOW decided to set them up.
   The bare fact is that there was criminal mismanagement of Kerala's dams. A CAG audit report quoted in the 20th August issue of Down to Earth magazine pointed out that none of the dams have either an Emergency Management Plan or even an O+M manual. Siltation had hugely compromised the storage capacity of the dams. Kerala is naturally flood prone: the Rashtriya Barh Ayog has estimated that 8.70 lakh ha. ( or almost 25%) of its total geographical are of 38 lakh ha. is susceptible to flooding. Experts believe that the flash floods in Wayanad, Chalikudy, Palakkad and Raani are mainly attributable to the opening of the flood gates.
  Not that the mismanagement of dams is unique to Kerala alone. A 2016 CAG report reveals that of the 5254 dams in India Emergency Management Plans exist for only 7% of them; in 8 out of 17 flood prone states there are no integrated flood management plans for river basins either. Most dams are managed by State Electricity Boards, not flood control departments, and the former are naturally reluctant to release any water at all if it is not used for generation of power. There is a clear conflict of interest here, which has played out in Kerala with devastating consequences. The 72 hour weather forecast of IMD is not used to create simulation models for water releases; instead rule of thumb and gut instincts is the normal practice, which is incomprehensible when advanced scientific tools are available.                                                              The whole country and its policy makers should learn lessons from this calamity. There is no point complaining about " unprecedented" rainfall. Every shred of evidence about climate change indicates that EWEs ( Extreme Weather Events) shall now be the norm and we can throw the old logs out of the window. We need to prepare for these paradigm climate changes and not, like our Science and Technology Minister Mr. Harsh Vardhan, trash them because they are " carried out by foreign, not Indian agencies." We need to stop this corporate and mendacious assault on nature, if for nothing then for just the bloody economics of it. How much did Kerala earn out of all those real estate developments, mining, quarrying and power generation accruing from the serial rape of nature all these years? Whatever it was it wouldn't be a fraction of what the state will now have to spend on reconstruction, rehabilitation and lost productivity for years to come. And this does not even factor in the deaths and human misery, even if our rulers treat them as collateral damage in the cause of  "development." Tampering with nature is increasingly becoming a zero sum game.
  I hope Himachal and Uttarakhand are watching.

WHAT IS THE LEGACY OF ATAL BEHARI VAJPAYEE ?

   I'm no astute politician, nor am I a political commentator, just a retired bureaucrat who had the privilege of meeting Mr. Vajpayee only once. It was sometime in 1990, in New York in the UN Plaza hotel in the suite of Mr. IK Gujral, then our External Affairs Minister. We were there to attend a session of the UN General Assembly; as is the practice Mr. Gujral had taken along with him a group of MPs. One evening he had convened an informal meeting of the MPs to discuss his statement to be made the next day at the UN; Mr. Vajpayee was one of the invited MPs. We were all sitting around, the discussions in full flow, when he arrived, about fifteen minutes late. I immediately got up and offered him my chair ( all had been taken). He patted me on my shoulder, asked me to continue sitting, and went and perched on the window sill ! On being queried by Mr. Gujral on his unusual choice of a seat he said: " I can make a quicker exit from here!" His lack of ego and sense of understated humour were his abiding hallmarks.

  Much will be said and written about him in the coming days by people far more qualified than me to do so. But as a citizen who has as equal a stake in this country as the politicians, perhaps more so because I pay my taxes honestly, I can't help but wonder: what is the legacy of this great man? Is it the Pokharan nuclear blast, or the bus ride to Lahore, or the improvement of relations with the West, or the failure to dismiss the then Gujarat Chief Minister in 2002 ? These are certainly important milestones in his career as PM, but somehow they do not describe the man, only the politician. And that is inadequate to chronicle the life of a statesman. A colossus has to be remembered for what he was, not just what he did; for abiding values, not transactional achievements.

  Therefore, for me, Mr. Vajpayee's true legacy is that of a gentleman politician in an age when they had already started transmuting to a lower species; a sensitive soul with the heart of a poet; an aesthete who loved literature, fine wine, good food; an orator par excellence who killed with kindness, not invective and abuse; a gladiator ( he was that too, make no mistake) whose weapon of choice was the rapier, not the bludgeon; a man of rock solid principles ( ask the RSS) in an era of opportunists; a man who assimilated, not fractured; joined hearts and minds, not sundered them. His was the perfect fusion of head and heart.

  He left a second legacy too, unfortunately. This was his single handed achievement of making the BJP a mainstream party, giving it a respectability and acceptability it had unsuccessfully striven for since 1947. LK Advani may have got them the votes after his Rath yatra but it was Mr. Vajpayee who gave them legitimacy and brought the BJP to power, not only during his own tenure, but even after he was rendered incapacitated. Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah owe him this debt of gratitude: I doubt if they will concede this, however.

  It is a tragic irony that Mr. Vajpayee's first and preeminent legacy- that of a noble human being- has been squandered by those who followed him and all that is now left of it is a tattered rag or two, hanging limply in a Devil's wind. The second legacy lives on, and is perhaps even prospering. I do not think that would have made him happy for it runs counter to every grain in his DNA. On the sorry ruins of his first  bequest has arisen an ugly edifice cemented together by power, money, egos, invectives, vindictiveness, intolerance and worse. It is a cold, heartless and inhospitable  fortress he would not have been comfortable in, for it is dedicated to war and strife, not peace and harmony. And this is true of not only his own party but of all political parties in the country- the BJP is the Pied Piper and the others are rodents happy to follow the music of discord.

  Two legacies, then. One already dead, the other following the unintended course of Frankenstein's horrible creation. It must pain the great man's soul to see how his legacy is playing out.
  These were Mr. Vajpayee's words as a tribute to Nehru on his death:
" Bharat Mata is grief stricken today. She has lost her favourite prince. Humanity is sad today. It has lost its devotee. Peace is restless today. Its protector is no more... The common man has lost the light in his eyes."
  One noble human being recognizing another. Deja  vu ?

   

THE NATIONAL CITIZENS REGISTER OR A SCHINDLER'S LIST ?

    The BJP. it would appear, has just hit upon the mother lode of votes for 2019. I refer, of course, to the final list of citizens ( it is not a draft, as being misreported)- the NRC, or National Register of Citizens- released last week for Assam. It proposes to declare four million people as aliens and illegal immigrants, more than 10% of the current population of Assam. Just how shoddily the enumeration has been done is self evident from the glitches that are now piling up. People whose names appeared in the first draft, or who had been declared Indian citizens by the Foreigners' Tribunals, now find their names missing. A father is included, but his children are missing. One brother is a citizen, the other is not. A retired soldier who served in the Indian army for 30 years is now deemed an alien. There are unconfirmed reports that the Chief Secretary's wife also finds her name missing. An ex- President's family members are missing too. A sitting BJP MLA is no longer an Indian citizen. The central and Assam govts. may try to hide behind the subterfuge that " everything is being monitored by the Supreme Court" but it just won't wash. It is govt. functionaries at the ground level who are doing the actual verification, not the Court, and it's quite clear that they have made a mess of it, either by the usual ineptitude or prodding by the ruling party. Little wonder then that almost all political parties other than the BJP and the serial fence sitter in Odisha are up in arms against this suspect version of the NRC. Thankfully, the community wise figures have not yet been made public, but even a cretin  (not all are in the ruling party) knows which community will form the majority of these new aliens.

    The Home Minister may talk about a fair appeals process for these victims of history and politics  (a nightmare for the poor, illiterate, confused would- be deportees), forgetting about the 30 million cases already pending in our courts. How on earth can a ram shackle, proven inefficient administration decide four million appeals in a month, which is the time given? Is the Supreme Court inadvertently playing into the BJP's Machiavellian plans by insisting on short timelines and ultra quick finalisation of the names? The BJP would like nothing better than to disenfranchise these millions before the elections in 2019, and a fair procedure be damned. But my worry is that, given the majoritarian lawlessness prevailing these days, matters may even slip out of the govt's hands. It is now the vigilantes who will call the shots, reminding us of the horrors of Nellie more than three decades ago. Names will be conveniently leaked, mobs will appear from the saffron dusk, the police will look the other way, and a non-state deportation will start to take effect. The Supreme Court, of course, has directed on the 31st of July that no coercive steps should be taken against those not included in the  NRC, but the court is only a necessary nuisance for the government of the day- the idle wind of Billy Bunter books which nobody heeds. The real directions have already started coming from the likes of Mr. Subramaniam Swamy and other BJP leaders who have already demanded immediate deportation of these unfortunates. The clarion call has been issued by Mr. Amit Shah himself who in Parliament branded these unfortunates as " ghuspaithias" or intruders; this antakshri cue has been picked up by the two English news channels whose servility is descending to new depths every day. Guess whose voice will be heard loud and clear, while the Union govt. does its Uriah Heep act, pleading that it has issued advisories and that law and order is a state subject?

    But a more frightening dimension is now emerging- the rising crescendo of demands ( by BJP leaders, naturally) that the NRC exercise should be rolled out to other states, notably West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, Manipur. It will soon spread to Delhi, UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, even Kashmir, where Bangladeshis and Rohingyas are perceived to be residing. If that happens, the country will simply disintegrate and Sashi Tharoor will be proved right. The first steps have already been taken in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh where travellers are being told to prove their identity and citizenship before being allowed in- by mobs, euphemistically called non-state actors. This will inevitably spread to other states, a sure fire recipe for anarchy, mob violence and Balkanisation of the country. 

    This is precisely why I say the BJP has struck the mother lode just before election time. Its usual Hindutva suspects had succumbed to the law of diminishing returns- Ram mandir, love jihad, ghar wapasi, triple talak, Islamic terror, forced conversions- and were either losing steam or were being knocked down by the courts. The Assam NRC exercise has suddenly provided it the oxygen its diseased body needs; the new battle cry will be that " India's resources should be the entitlement of Indian citizens only", which, it is confident, will resonate pan India and sweep it back to its blood soaked throne.

    Lost in the din and screams will be the very principles of citizenship and humanity. The issue here is not one about legality but about intent and legitimacy. Make no mistake: the BJP"s NRC jubilation has nothing to do with national security, but everything to do with votes. Mr. Arun Jaitley gave the game away in his blog the other day when he said that these non-citizens were " imported votebanks." But the party has a problem even here- about one million of this four million could be Hindus, mostly from districts in lower Assam where Muslims already have a sizeable vote share. Their exclusion now will hand four Parliamentary seats to the opposition on a platter. So expect the govt. now to neutralise this by pushing hard the Bill to amend the Citizenship Act: it provides that non- Muslim illegal migrants can be conferred Indian citizenship since they are genuine refugees! This sinister game plan will become clearer with each passing day, believe me.                With all due respects to the Supreme Court, this disenfranchisement exercise lacks a wider legitimacy. As Nicholas Chamfort had said: " It's easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate." The NRC exemplifies this perfectly. No one can doubt a sovereign nation's powers to define citizenship, whether it is based on the principle of " Jus Solis" ( place of birth) or " Jus sanguinis"( blood ties), or a combination of the two ( as is the case in India). The problem with the Assam case, however, is that the NRC is being updated after 67 years, to exclude people who have been living in the country for almost five decades ( i.e. after 1971, the cut off date according to the Assam Accord of 1985). Had the updating exercise happened immediately after the Accord was signed it would not have caused so much pain and distress, and the numbers involved would not have been so alarming. A country which takes 32 years to even start implementing an accord on a subject as sensitive as this is only asking for trouble on a gigantic scale. In a similar case involving the Chakmas ( who had emigrated in large numbers from the Chittagong Hill tracts and Mymensingh in Bangladesh to Arunachal Pradesh) the Supreme Court had ruled that they could not be deported or denied citizenship as they had been living here for decades. This was a recognition of the Jus Solis principle. Something similar needs to be applied here. The last thing this fractured country needs is an extension of this soulless and misbegotten policy on NRCs to other states. But the BJP has smelt blood, and will not call off the dogs of this new holy war. The cost will be paid by the nation for decades to come. That is, if we are still one nation then.