A DIFFICULT TIME FOR CAESAR'S WIVES.

A   DIFFICULT  TIME  FOR  CAESAR’S WIVES.

   Julius Caesar had three wives but only Pompeia, the first wife, is remembered by history, and not in flattering terms. A nobleman called Publius was accused of trying to seduce her at a party, was arrested, tried and acquitted of the charge. But Caesar nonetheless divorced Pompeia with the justification: “My wife ought not to be even under suspicion.” Pompeia subsequently disappeared into history, and Caesar’s words into exhortations that are often quoted but rarely followed. But it is worth reminding our arrogant rulers of this little anecdote, for by definition they have to be held to a higher standard.

   Modern, democratic India has many wives, all consorts of the government of the day: the judiciary, constitutional and statutory bodies, Commissions and Tribunals, all well looked after and well fed, enjoined only to be faithful to their duties. And I daresay most of them are. But that is not the general public perception, and over the last few years especially, questions are being raised about their objectivity, transparency, loyalty and accontability. Whether it is the Raj Bhavan, the Election Commission of India, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the dozens of Regulators, the Reserve Bank of India, a central university like JNU, or even the Supreme Court after the double sacking of the CBI Director- never before have so many doubts been raised or muted questions asked about their elevated occupants. And not without reason- if a Governor can sack an elected Assembly instead of allowing a claimant party to prove its majority, if electoral decisions are perceived to be partisan to favour the ruling party, if inconvenient RBI Directors can be discarded as so much chaff and be replaced with proven acolytes, if a premier investigative institution can be upended to ensure that only the pliable can preside over it, if heads of learning institutes are appointed with the sole purpose of killing the spirit of inquiry, if even a respected judge can abandon the principles of natural justice to seemingly oblige a government- then indeed the people are entitled to ask: if there is smoke, but apparently no fire, then where is the smoke coming from? For today the entire country is trying to find its way through this smog.

  There have always been whispers about the other wives, but the first wife, like Pompeia, has always enjoyed a preeminent and unquestioned status: this is, of course, the Supreme Court. But today even she has become the subject of gossip in the market. Ironically, its credibility was questioned by none other than its own judges on the twelfth of January last year in that famous press conference in Delhi. Since then it has been downhill all the way: none of the issues raised then have been addressed in any meaningful way so far: transparency, structural reforms, the assurance of judicial independence, accountability. Consequently it has become the order of the day for political parties and even governments to cock a snook at its judgments, as the Sabarimala, Judge Loya, Cauvery and Padmavat cases show. So called political and religious “leaders” even have the temerity to issue ultimatums to it on the Ramjanambhoomi matter! And the lady doth not protest.

  Unfortunately, its handling of the Rafael and CBI cases has inevitably added more grist to the anti-Pompeia brigade. Much has already been written about the former case so we need not concern ourselves with it. But the misgivings it raised have now been reinforced with the second sacking of the CBI Director Alok Verma by the Selection Committee. The Pompeia baiters have pointed to the obvious lacunae- a mild term, surely- in its decision: the undue haste to remove Verma from office when the Supreme Court itself dithered for almost two months; the exclusive reliance on the report of the CVC, himself under a cloud; the non-consultation with Justice Patnaik who is now singing a contrary tune, much to the discomfort of the Committee and the govt.; the denial of the basic principles of natural justice to Verma. All these negatives we have come to accept from the government, but how and why did Justice Sikri condone them, when he was on the Committee precisely to ensure that the best judicial principles are not given short shrift in the matter?

  Mr. Verma has resigned and the Selection Committee’s order is final. As Mr. GopalKrishna Gandhi points out in an article, however, the order lacks conviction, it does not convince but commands, it is perhaps legal but not legitimate, it has authority but no credibility. And whatever iota of credibility it had has been thoroughly demolished by the subsequent revelation that Justice Sikri was actually the beneficiary of government largesse even as he was deciding a matter that was a make or break issue for the government. It would be unfair to infer a quid pro in the matter, but then why even allow the thought to cross our mind?

  And that precisely is what lies at the heart of this darkness: the government’s limitless patronage in handing out pre and post retirement assignments and sinecures to high functionaries, especially those from the higher judiciary. For Caesar’s wives to have any credibility this absolute and discretionary power has to go. We should move to an American style of appointments where the government nominates but the Senate has to approve them. A vetting by Parliament would usually still result in the govt. nominee getting the nod, but the transparent process would enable a closer examination of the nominee’s credentials, antecedents, loyalties, past performance and connections with the establishment. A person who emerges through this process would command greater credibility and acceptance than the partisan and opaque appointments made today, and would not necessarily be obliged to the govt. of the day. Incidentally, this process should apply to Supreme Court judges too, for the Collegium system stands discredited: it may suit a Freemason lodge or a Chinese tong but it does not behove a mature democracy like ours. There is an aura- haze, actually- over such appointments today and only the sunlight of complete scrutiny and transparency can dispel it and restore confidence in our institutions. Let us not forget our own mythology: even the wife of a God had to go through a trial by fire to prove her fidelity- why should Caesar’s wives be treated any differently?

                         

KANPUR DIARY (II) : THE "HALF ENCOUNTER"- HALF DONE IS WELL BEGUN.

   I find that whenever I visit Kanpur, my hometown, I am able to think more clearly and penetrate to the heart of any matter, as it were. In days of yore I would go to the Himalayas but they are now crawling with tourists and people following the Prime Minister's advice of spending five days every year in a forest to develop leadership skills. So Kanpur it is, but I am still not able to fathom why the place opens my third eye quicker than a Rakhi Sawant video : it may be the lifting of the toxic shroud of malevolence that is Delhi, it may be the spiritualism of the Ram Mandir that pervades all of UP these days along with the stench from the tanneries, it may be the Yogi's rousing exhortations to send a large percentage of the state's population to Pakistan, or it may simply be the divine taste of the kachauris and jalebis of Double Hathras, unchanged for the last hundred years. Whatever it is, it works, and on my last visit in December it provided me with a singular revelation.

  It  relates to UP's finest, the cops of Uttar Pradesh: I know these last four words do not rhyme with the gangs of Wasseypur, but believe me the similarities are mind blowing. Languidly observing six prize specimens of the force trying to round up an uncooperative cow near the district courts, it suddenly occurred to me that these guys are not as dumb as they look. Nor do they lack creative skills, for recently one police station explained the disappearance of 1000 litres of seized liquor by insisting that it had been imbibed by rats. Their writing and drafting skills are admittedly not of the Sashi Tharoor level for they are likely to make the victim the accused in an FIR, confuse buggery for burglary and believe that NIA and NDA are the same organisation. They are also wont to think that an FIR is essentially a work of fiction, to be accompanied with the statutory disclaimer: "Any resemblance to any person, dead or alive, is purely coincidental." But- and this is my discovery- they read Chetan Bhagat novels! And have picked up from him the revelation that the part can be greater than the whole, and are applying this new found knowledge with a vigour that has surprised their colleagues, the real gangs of Wasseypur.

   You folks no doubt remember Mr. Bhagat's last bestseller, Half Girlfriend : it sold like rolls of toilet paper, in the millions, because readers realised that a half GF is better than a full one: it provides deniability in case one is questioned ( "What! A girl-friend? I swear I don't have even one!"), makes it easier to jettison the baggage when things get too hot or demanding, and the paper work is less too- no pre-nups, no marriage license, no divorce papers. Another big plus is that a half GF is less likely to file a rape complaint if the guy refuses to marry her because any such promise would, by definition, be only half hearted, see ! It doesn't take too many brains to read a Chetan Bhagat novel, but cottoning on to the significance of this fraction did; that's what makes the UP cops smart in my book. They took the idea ( it's a pity Mr. Bhagat didn't patent it) , relocated it in their police stations and voila!- we have the "half-encounter!"

  The "encounter", of course, is UP's signal contribution to the science of policing and the art of cinematography, since occasionally the press is also"invited" to record the actual coup d' grace bestowed on a criminal. Since the present govt. came to power in the state there have been more than 1000 encounters in which about 60 people have been killed and 300 injured. This abattoir like efficiency by a force more accustomed to rounding up cows and buffaloes had always invited the ire of human rights organisations, but now the Supreme Court has also expressed its concern at this assembly line style of liquidation, and has admitted a PIL on the matter. Suddenly alarmed at the prospect of the girl friend being unmasked, and without the fig leaf of deniability, the police have now ditched the encounter and embraced the "half encounter."

  According to a very readable report in the Hindustan Times of Jan.20 this year, the half encounter consists of shooting below the abdomen, between the knees and ankles. This  ensures that the "criminal" is incapacitated, not killed ( though he will probably die of the treatment in one of the state's hospitals, which also suits the cops fine). It's a brilliant idea, a win-win for everyone: the cops have got their man and he'll probably never be able to walk again, the victim is happy to be alive at least, the NGOs have nothing to complain about since no one has been killed, and the judges can go on their vacation in the confident belief that God's in his heaven and all's well with the world, except for that little hiccup about the Collegium. And so the UP cops have been half-encountering criminals with a gusto: according to the same HT report, in the last four months there have been 120 cases in Gautam Budh Nagar, 255 in Meerut, 66 in Ghaziabad, Allahabad, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Varanasi and Agra; 29 chaps have been shot in Kanpur. This is what the govt. probably means when it claims that UP is " limping" back to normalcy after five years of Samajwadi rule.

  But here's the catch which these creative policemen had not bargained for- the Chief Minister of UP also reads books, though of a more venerable type compared to Mr. Bhagat's mathematical formulations. It appears he has just finished reading Animal Farm because now the cops have been given the task of rounding up thousands of cows, buffaloes and bulls and locking them up! Reading books in UP is now fraught with all kinds of danger. I dread to think of what would happen if the DG Police chanced to happen upon The Godfather.        

DISTORTING THE FACTS IS A ZERO SUM GAME.

   The BJP is a party obsessed with figures: 56 inch chests, 15 lakhs in bank accounts of all citizens, 400 years of foreign dominance, 7.4% of GDP growth, 21states under its belt, 40 lakh ghuspaitias identified in Assam. It also regularly trots out figures of gas connections under Ujjwala, villages electrified, kilometers of highways built every day, number of Jan Dhan accounts opened, Mudra loans distributed, and so on. Which then makes one wonder why it is so coy about releasing figures related to employment during its four and a half year rule. It has steadfastly refused to give out any figures after 2014-2015, either those of the NSSO or of the Labour Bureau, on the grounds that the earlier methodology was faulty and it is now getting a fresh survey conducted with new parameters.
  Which makes one smell a rat. The last time the govt. did  something similar it revised the methodology for calculating GDP retrospectively from UPA II times and , unsurprisingly, came to the conclusion that the growth of GDP during the UPA years was actually less than what was projected, and during the NDA years it was more! Of course, no reputed economist or international agency is comfortable with this sleight of hand which is modelled on the Chinese statistical practices, especially as these figures have been given out, not by the Indian Statistical Organisation, but by the NITI Ayog, the govt's prime troubleshooter and go-to agency for subterfuges and dotty ideas. But it's difficult to keep the cat in the bag for too long: the latest CMIE report states that as many as 11 million jobs were lost in 2016-17, post demonetisation and GST, and this is confirmed by a govt. report which too the Ministry has kept under lock and key. According to this report ( the 6th Unemployment Survey of the Labour Bureau, not yet officially released) the unemployment rate has gone up from 3.4% in 2013-14 to 3.9% in 2016-17. The actual figure would be much worse because this survey was conducted in April-May of 2016, much before demonetisation in November that year. This has been confirmed by the Estimates Committee of Parliament: its report states that the NDA's National Career Portal ( the revamped employment exchange) managed to find only 707000 jobs during that year for the 39.1 million persons registered on it, a miserable 1.8%.
  The BJP govt. refuses to accept these figures and at the same time will not release any figures of its own officially. This, of course, is part of its overall strategy to block the supply of any information, or, in order to claim credit where none is due, supply information only selectively. It took more than a year to tell us how much money found its way back into the banks after demonetisation, it has stopped releasing the figures about farmer suicides after 2015, it will not disclose the final price on the Rafale deal or the actual amount disbursed to farmers under the much hyped crop insurance scheme. In Kashmir, it gives only selective statistics in order to prove that  its "muscular" policy in Kashmir is delivering results. It only keeps telling us of the number of terrorists killed there, but is silent about the civilians and security personnel killed, because that would expose its lie. Yes, the casualties of the militants has increased: 257 in 2018 as against 110 in 2014- an increase of about 140%. But this is small consolation because the number of civilians killed has gone up by 210% ( 30 as against 14 in 2014) and security personnel by almost a 1000% ( 29 as against the earlier 3.) The ever- rising dissatisfaction and hostility of the local Kashmiris is reflected in another set of figures, those of incidents of stone pelting, which has since seen an equally sharp escalation- from 779 in 2014 to 1666 in 2018. Other figures also confirm that the BJP govt. is headed down a disastrous if not suicidal slope in the state: incidents of terror have gone up from 222 to 614, and cease fire violations from 583 in 2014 to 2140 in 2018. And yet the govt. keeps claiming success for its policy. Where, for God's sake, is there even a glimmer of success in these statistics? How can any democratic govt. claim that increase in the number of deaths of its own citizens and security personnel, and blinding of its own children, is an indication of success?
  Statistics, distorted or imagined, are the last refuge of someone losing touch with reality, a condition that has completely engulfed the present govt. Its strategy appears to be to draw a straight line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion and consider that the truth; it will, however, soon find out that that is the shortest route to failure.

BLENDING THE MILLENNIA WITH THE MILLENNIAL.

   As a father of two millennials I am acutely aware of the universe they occupy, caught between two worlds, one dead and the other still in the throes of labour and yet to take final shape. Belonging to the Instagram generation, their lot is not an easy one for they  no longer reside in the safe, predictable and familiar world of their parents where relationships were permanent, expectations were reasonable, careers were well defined, needs were limited and the rhythm of life was easy paced. Their present age, on the other hand, is one in which the future is like an all devouring black hole from which nothing escapes; old traditions, principles and values have disappeared; feelings have been replaced with algorithms, the human element has given way to artificial intelligence, true creativity has been substituted with 3D printing and Google search , literature has surrendered to texting, friends have been replaced with Alexa and the only relationships that matter are those of the anonymous and pseudonymous pages of Facebook and Ashley Madison. They are achieving much, yes, but are clueless about where they are headed: having stolen the flame from Olympus they do not know what to do with it.

  But what I find most distressing, and sad, is that the millennial generation has almost completely turned its back on its past, that wonderful capital accumulated over the centuries by the interplay of civilisations which we loosely term "culture"- our poetry, dance forms, music, literature- a culture so sublime that it was difficult to separate the human from the celestial. I am not blaming them for this, for the Anthropocene age has no space or time for anything other than annual targets, I-phones and gross turnover. But it is heart breaking nonetheless. Another generation or two and we would have lost for ever the cultural endowment of the ages. But, as I discovered last week at a function in the India Habitat Centre, there may still be a glimmer of hope, a thin sliver of light winking defiantly in the gloom.

  Meet Ananya Khosla, a millennial with a difference. This tall, elegant, beautiful young woman is a graduate in Mathematics and an MBA, an environmentalist to boot, working with the multi-national company, Schneider, in Gurgaon. But it is what she does outside of her office hours that makes her special: she is a Kuchipudi dancer who has been pursuing her passion since childhood and has emerged as a leading proponent of this centuries old art form. But what makes her unique for me is not just her divine dancing but the ease and grace with which she has synthesised the two worlds she lives in: the modern and the traditional, the contemporary with the past, the confidence of youth with the devotion of the acolyte. Her discipline and commitment to her chosen passion is remarkable: after a full day at the office she doesn't repair to the e-cafe or the many parties her peers make a bee-line for, but to the foundation established by her gurus- Drs. Raja, Radha and Kaushalya Reddy for strenuous training and practice. She has been doing this now for twenty years, and obviously she has been doing it well: watching her is to watch poetry in motion, for, in the transliterated words of Robert Frost: poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found its dance form.

                               

     [ Ananya Khosla performing at the India Habitat Center, Delhi. Photos courtesy Neerja Shukla.]

  I know nothing about classical dances and even less about Kuchipuddi, but that is the beauty of art: you come to scoff, but remain to pray. Ananya's ninety minute solo performance was riveting, her expressions, emotions and movements encompassing the full range of devotion, love, despair and ecstasy. How a 27 year old can capture all this without uttering a word is the wonder of this dance form. The show stopper for me was her fifth item: a sculpted rendition of Amir Khusro's Sufi song made famous by Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan- "Chhap Tilak sab chheen lin mohe naina milai ke." This brilliant fusion of two of the greatest religions and cultures of the world makes a mockery of the politics of the day which ranges them as adversaries. And it makes me wonder whether we have not lost our way somewhere: should we not be promoting this- the culture and art  symbolised by Ananya's dance- as the real face of Indian tradition and achievements, instead of pushing vedic surgery, demolished temples, conversions, Aryan supremacy, pseudo-scientific theories and the unsuspecting cow as the elements that define the splendour of ancient India?

  So don't give up on our millennials, they can still teach us a thing or two and perhaps make us think deeply. And in the meantime keep an eye on this young lady as she builds this much needed bridge between the millenniums and the millennials.  You will hear and see much more of her in the days to come.

                                             
  

KANPUR DIARY: NO MORE WAITING TILL THE COWS COME HOME.

  I always visit my home town, Kanpur, a couple of times a year to refresh my roots and to check whether my Brahmin community has been declared as OBC yet. Just back after an exhilarating and kabab imbued visit, I am happy to report that my roots are thriving, but sadly the Brahmins have not yet been admitted into the hallowed portals of reservations. The reason for this is two-fold: one, there is some confusion about the caste status of Hanuman after the Yogi's claim that he is a Dalit, and there is also a dispute over whether the crucial determinant is gotra or Godhra. The community itself is a divided lot, with some preferring a 10% commission over a 10% reservation, arguing that while the latter might get you into the Sachivalaya the former will get you to Davos, and a photo-op with the Prime Minister to boot!

  And so while the Brahmins argue among themselves, the cows have quietly taken over the state, in their own docile but persistent way. As I discovered during my visit, the Cow dominates all policy making in UP nowadays( the Kumbh mela comes a close second). This was only to be expected after the banning of slaughter and sale of cattle by the BJP government, and Mr. Yogi's single minded enforcement of it has turned a problem into a disaster. The facts speak for themselves.

  According to the UP govt's own 2007-2012 cattle census the state has 6.46 crore ( 64 million) cows and buffaloes. Going by the national average, about 64 lakhs male calves are born every year, and approx. 60 lakh of the existing population either become unproductive or die every year. That means there are about 1.20 crore unproductive cattle generated each year, practically all of them belonging to farmers. Before the ban they were sent to abattoirs to feed the meat and leather industry. The farmer received one fourth of his original investment on an animal, which he used to acquire a new animal. This was a well established ten year cycle of rural UP. This cycle has now been broken, with disastrous economic and social consequences.

  The Indian leather and meat industry is worth $16 billion or about Rs. 110,000 crores. It has lost 40% of its worth in the last two years. Agra alone manufactured 1 million pairs of footwear EVERY DAY. Kanpur has more than five dozen tanneries: its supply of hides has now dropped by 40% and the tanneries have shed some 400,000 jobs. ( It is estimated that in UP as a whole almost 3.50 million jobs may have been lost in these twin industries). While this may well have served the BJP's objective of striking at the economic roots of a particular community, it has had an unintended consequence on another, multi-religious, numerically vast, politically vital community: the Indian farmer.

  It wasn't that the agriculture economists had not sounded the warnings. In an article in January 2017 Mr. Vikas Rawal, a Professor of Economics in JNU, had cautioned that the cost of looking after 27 crore unproductive cattle in India would cost the nation Rs. 5.40 lakh crore per annum- five times the defence budget. It would require five lakh acres of land to house them, there was not enough fodder in the country to feed them, and they would need more water than what is consumed by all Indians put together. Others calculated that it costs a farmer about Rs. 30000-40000 a year to maintain a cow, bull or buffalo and that there was no way he could bear this expense for an unproductive animal: he would have no choice but to let the animal loose and abandon it. They warned that, if allowed to roam free, these cattle would devastate farmers' crops and create an agrarian crisis. The then Chief Economic Advisor to the govt. maintained a pregnant silence, but the pregnancy was noticeable.

  Exactly this has now come to pass in Kanpur and the rest of UP over the last month and the whole govt. is running around in circles like a headless chicken. Farmers in Kanpur, Aligarh, Meerut, Agra and elsewhere do not need this additional burden on top of all their other woes, and have decided to take matters into their own hands: they have started rounding up the stray cattle and driving them into schools, govt.offices and police stations, and locking the gates. District Magistrates are dung- founded, students have been sent home, and policemen have been forced to give up their favourite sport of "encounters" and look after these cattle. In one district all govt. employees- 15000 of them by last count- have resolved to adopt one cow each! A panic stricken state govt. has allocated Rs. 10 crores and Rs. 1.50 crore to big and small districts, respectively, to build gaushalas. In order to raise funds for this losing battle it has last week imposed additional cesses on excise duty, highway tolls, agriculture market committees etc. But the Chief Minister still will not read the fine print: it will cost the state at least Rs. 40000 crore every year to take care of these stray cattle, even if the appalling logistics of the exercise could be tamed. He doesn't realise ( or admit) it, but he has dug himself into a deep hole, and, in accordance with the first rule of all diggers, should now stop digging and reverse this pyrrhic article of faith. The alternative, of course, is for him to keep praying at his Gorakhpur Matth till the cows come home. They are on their way.