THE FINE ART OF LOSING FRIENDS.

  There are two certain ways to lose a friend: one, have an affair with his wife;  two, start a discussion on politics. The first can occasionally be a tempting prospect, for as the wise guy said: all good things in life are either illegal, immoral, too expensive or married to someone else. Having an affair just got easier too, with the Supreme Court (SC) ruling that adultery is not a crime. But a word of caution for my friends in the army who may be breaking out the champagne bottles - the Ministry of Defence has filed a review petition in the SC asking that it should continue to be illegal for army types.

  Apparently (the government feels) that the Army operates in peculiar conditions and the guys at the borders cannot really keep their sights on the Chinese and the Pakis if they are looking over their shoulders all the time to see who's inviting their spouses for a drink in the oui hours of the night. I agree. The SC does appear to be making things difficult for our Army Commanders- first it amends Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, and now it decriminalises adultery, which is certainly a fair, gender neutral balance of sexual proclivities; but we can't convert our LAC and LOC into Sodom and Gomorrah, respectively, for God's sake! We're supposed to be screwing the  Chinese PLA, remember?

  Nearer home, I'm happy to confess that I've never lost a friend by "stealing the affections" of his wife, though I may have stolen a look or two at times when Neerja was looking the other way. And now it's too late, at 70 years any woman beyond ten feet looks like an abstract Henri Matisse  painting, and I've forgotten those lines from Shelley and Keats that made for good bait in one's Delhi University days. These days it's bhajans and the Hanuman Chalisa for me. The focus is on living longer, not living it up.

  So that leaves politics. I've been blogging now for a few years, partly as a reaction to the extremely limited scope for displaying my literary talents while in government. In those halcyon days my efforts were generally limited to inscribing  "For orders, please" or "Approved as proposed" on files. A longer sentence such as  "Hon'ble Minister may pass suitable orders in the light of noting above" was highly unusual and was considered a magnum opus by bureaucratic standards, causing much envy among colleagues.

 So now, like the lady of pleasure released after a two week quarantine, I'm letting it all out. During service one didn't meddle in politics, primarily because it was difficult to predict the winner of the next elections, and backing the wrong horse ensured a lifetime cleaning out the horse shit in the sarkari Augean stables. Post retirement, however, things have changed. As Pericles said in 430 BC: just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean that politics won't take an interest in you!

  And so, battered by one surgical strike after another- Aadhar, demonetisation, KYC (Know Your Client), Fast Tag, HSRP ( High Security Registration Plates), CAA (Citizen Amendment Act), NRC (National Register of Citizens), Farm laws, Lockdown- the worm turned and I started inflicting my thoughts on an unwary public and friends. I tried making sense of the political chaos around us, what with 2000 political parties headed by saints, dynasts, carpet baggers, crooks and rapists out on bail, godmen, megalomaniacs, and so on. I quickly figured out why India had so many parties: you see, no one political party can fool all the people all the time, that's why we have so many of them. Actually, it was Bob Hope who said that, but it was a good starting point.

  I make no secret of the fact that Mr. Modi would not be my candidate for the Nobel prize, or any other prize. I firmly believe that the BJP is responsible for all the ills of this country, except malaria, polio, and tuberculosis which, as we all know, were the result of Mr. Nehru's incompetence and a foreign conspiracy in the last century to malign us. Rihanna and Greta Thunberg may have had a hand in that too, but as the Delhi police are still investigating this bit, we may need another century or so to finally know. In my view the BJP is like a time machine which is taking us back to the primeval sludge from which we emerged with great difficulty. Which is why I have very few friends left, or relatives who are willing to admit that we share the same DNA. Statistics show that Mr. Modi enjoys the support of 40% of the voting population, but he has the support of 80% of the guys I know. And they are not happy about having nursed a viper in the family bosom all this time. Batch mates, when I phone them, prefer to listen to Amitabh Bacchan' s covid caller tune rather than talk to me; childhood friends from school have burnt all class photos where my mug scars the immediate landscape; the wife has moved into the guest bedroom; my younger son refuses to share the wi-fi password with me; my sister has decided against giving me the Glenfiddich bottle she had bought for me for Raakhi till I stop intoning  "Modi hai to bumpkin hai." There have even been times when I have caught my son's dog looking at my ankles in a thoughtful way: I am sure he is waiting for inspiration from the next "Man ki Baat" before launching a surgical strike on them- " When he goes low, I go lower!" as one of our diplomats famously didn't say in the UN.

  My views, as expected, have evoked radical responses which, unfortunately, Twitter has failed to censor. One Group Captain cast doubts on my paternity and even sent a complaint to the Prime Minister's Office (I will not divulge his name as such a man deserves to remain anonimo, as they say in Spain for a pain in the nether regions). But I will give him the benefit of doubt: it is possible that his mother dropped him on his head when he was a baby or his parachute failed to deploy on one of his jumps and he landed on his head, resulting in partial  damage to what passes for his brain. Others have questioned how I made it to the IAS, which is not new for me since this is the exact question the Director of our Academy asked me in 1975, and has been repeated by many Chief Secretaries since then. Kangana Ranaut has not yet tweeted on the issue, but that's probably because she is too busy dissing Rihanna and Greta Thunberg and comparing herself to Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise to read my blogs. She will find the time some day, however, and so I've cancelled my trip to Manali this summer- never depilate a lioness in her own den.

  Many curious readers have inquired about my contribution to the public good while in service, which is highly unfair, because the IAS was never intended to deliver that. One particularly rude chappie advised me to "Get some balls, Mr. Shukla!" I of course ignored him since I have plenty of golf balls, thank you, as also a few marbles. A few well travelled types have helpfully suggested that I move to Pakistan. There are even some who have sympathised with my family for having had to put up with me all these years- this one did strike a chord with my immediate descendants but as I still pay some of their EMIs nothing further has been said about it at the dinner table.

  The unkindest cut, however, was delivered by a gentleman whose name sounds like it came out of a superbike exhaust- Mr. Vroom. He wrote that my writings lacked sense, that he was not impressed with my style or vocabulary, and that "this much English even Chetan Bhagat can write!" That last bit really hurt, folks.

  Blogging, therefore, is a lonely profession (as you would have noticed from the above). Perhaps then I should switch to the micro-blogging sites? After all, how much trouble can one get into with just 140 words? But should I twitch on Twitter or coo on Koo? To consider this methinks I shall now betake myself to a cave near Kedarnath (if it has not been washed away by another glacier) and meditate on where I have been going wrong. It didn't enlighten Mr. Modi but it might just do something for me.

 

HIMALAYAN BLUNDERS, TRAGIC IRONIES, RETREATING GLACIERS.

 

   Never underestimate the power of human stupidity, says Yuval Noah Harari in his book " 21 Lessons For The 21st Century". If anyone doubts this truism he has only to see what we have been doing to the Himalayas for the last three decades, particularly in Himachal and Uttarakhand, in the name of development. This stupidity also involves ignoring the pleas of local residents/ villagers, the advice of experts, and the science of global warming, seismology, forestry and glaciology. It is a stupidity based on faulty economic models that deliberately ignore the disruption of local livelihoods, fail to account for the value of the natural environment or the ecological services it provides, the costs of destruction of life and property ( Rs. 50000 crore and at least 5000 lives in Kedarnath 2013, 221 dead in the Malpa landslide in 1998, 768 dead in the Uttarkashi earthquake in 1991; we are still counting the losses and the dead in the Rishiganga flood this month). Nobody has even begun to estimate the losses to the environment, which in any case cannot be compensated or replaced by legal tender.

 We should also not fail to notice the many ironies implicit in the latest tragedy and environmental disaster in Utttarakhand. Just one day before the flood the NITI Aayog called for an " economically responsible approach by the judiciary" to projects, and a study on " the unintended economic consequences of judicial decisions that have hindered or stalled big ticket projects on environmental grounds." Seriously? What is actually needed ( as Rishiganga proves) is just the reverse- a study on  "the unintended environmental consequences of judicial decisions- or the lack of them- that have promoted big ticket projects on faulty economic grounds."

  The second irony is that, contrary to the NITI Aayog's whining, the judiciary has done precious little to protect the natural environment from the govt's "big ticket" depredations: the utterly irresponsible Char Dham Highway marches on, even as the SC takes its own time to decide on the width of the road; in Mumbai's Aarey forests hundreds of trees were cut at night because the courts did not deem it fit to issue a stay order; it has been almost five years since Mr. Ravi Chopra of the People's Science Institute Dehradoon, appointed as an expert committee by the Supreme Court, submitted his report recommending cancellation of 23 out of 24 proposed hydel projects on the Ganga and its tributaries but the Court has yet to take a final decision on the matter even while it has stayed them; a report submitted by me to the Himachal High Court in 2010  recommending a moratorium on all hydel projects in the state until the listed vital issues of environmental protection were addressed, remains more or less unimplemented. Roads and railways through Protected Areas, de-notification of wild life sanctuaries, violation of Coastal Zone rules, mining in no-go areas and pristine forests ( Western Ghats, Dehang Patkai in Assam, Hardeo Arand in Chhatisgarh, Saranda and Chaibasa in Jharkhand) - all continue more or less on the whims of governments( central and states ) with very little check by the judiciary. And still NITI Aayog behaves like Oliver Twist!

  A third irony : just a week after the Uttarakhand tragedy on the 15th of this month, the Supreme Court cleared the diversion of 614 hectares of forest land in Himachal for the execution of 138 big projects, including hydel power plants. Why are we unable to read the writing on the wall, or in this case, the Himalayas 

The fourth irony: Reni village in the Rishiganga valley, where the maximum damage and deaths took place on the 7th of this month, was the heart of the Chipko movement in the 1970s to save the forests and environment of this unfortunate state! A tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.

  Here's another one : in 2019 one Kundan Singh of the same village Reni had filed a PIL in the Uttarakhand High Court against the Rishiganga project alleging unsound environmental practices, operations which endangered the river and the wildlife, deprivation of traditional villagers' rights by the project. The Court had issued notice to the centre and the state for a response within 3 weeks, and the case languishes in judicial limbo. A timely decision, or even a stay order, might have prevented this catastrophe. What their lordships now decide is irrelevant- Nature has delivered the judgment they could not, vindicating Kundan Singh, but at a terrible cost.

  There is more than enough empirical evidence, scientific studies and expert committee reports to establish the detrimental effects of hydel projects in mountainous, particularly the para-glacial, terrains. They cause damage in two ways: one, the blasting, tunneling and road construction result in landslides, permanent loosening and fracturing of the strata, deforestation, drying up of aquifers and water sources; two, the monstrous quantities of muck produced by these activities ultimately find their way to the rivers, raising their beds and squeezing them, reducing their capacity to carry water and debris, causing massive floods downstream when extreme events occur. This is what happened at Rishiganga.   

  The magnitude of the destruction which the central and state governments contemplate inflicting on the Himalayas in these two states is staggering. According to a 2019 report of the Natural Heritage Division of INTACH there are 1000 dams blocking the flow of the Ganga ! In Uttarakhand 76 hydel projects are already commissioned or under construction on the Ganga and its tributaries  and 70 more are planned. Himachal has planned to exploit 24000 MW of its identified potential of 27436 MW. In pursuit of this it has decided to spare not even the high altitude ( 3000 meters +), snow bound Chenab valley where it has sanctioned 49 projects with a capacity of 4032 MW, never mind the irreparable ruination  of this most fragile of para glacial landscapes. One such project- the 300 MW Jispa project with a dam height of 200 meters at an altitude of 3245 meters which will submerge 12 villages- is at a distance of just 10 kms from the Gepang Gath glacier, the state's largest.

                        

                          [ Mountainside denuded for power-house site in Sainj valley in Kullu district]

  The Ganga, as well as Himachal's rivers, all originate from glaciers. These are retreating at an increasing rate, creating glacial lakes which are multiplying and increasing in size due to global warming. An ISRO report ( findings of which were published on 22.1.2019 by the Hindustan Times)  revealed the startling pace of melting/ retreat of the Gangotri glacier and its three main tributaries- the rate of Gangotri was 12.10 m., and the Chaturangi, Satopanth and Thalu were retreating by 22.84, 22.88 and 30.66 meters per annum, respectively.                                                                                                                                                 It is no different in Himachal, as the increasing number of glacial lakes there prove. There are 958 glacial lakes in the state, each of an area in excess of 500 sq.m, and most of them are moraine dammed, which are fragile. A State Council Of Science and Technology report reveals that in just two years ( 2013-2015) the number of glacial lakes went up by 103; in the Sutlej basin alone, 352 more lakes were formed in the 20 years between 1993 and 2013. Some years ago the then MLA of Lahaul-Spiti told me that when he was a student the Bada Shigri glacier used to extend to the banks of the Chandra river; today it is not even visible from there. Surely the Himachal govt. has not forgotten the cataclysmic floods in the Sutlej at the beginning of this century when a glacial lake had burst in Tibet?

  Other than the environmental damage and the hardships imposed on local populations, does it even make economic sense to continue to build hydel projects in mountainous regions? Firstly, the regular disasters caused by these projects cost thousands of crores in restoration/ compensation/ rehabilitation, negating much of their financial benefits. Secondly, are these projects even viable in the long run, the 30-50 year life cycle of such projects? At the rate the glaciers are retreating there will probably not be enough water for them in a couple of decades: with the failure to meet the global warming targets of the Paris Accord, half of them would have disappeared by 2050. And finally, the cost of solar power is now less than half the cost of hydel power, so why persist with destroying the mountains and endangering the future of hundreds of millions who depend on them?

  Surely, the power of human stupidity cannot be boundless.  

THE VACCINE AS METAPHOR

   The metaphor is a useful literary and cognitive tool; it can, in just one image, idea or phrase convey more than a historian or writer can in a thousand words. To take some examples from our own country: the white Gandhi cap in the 1930s and 1940s reflected our collective desire for independence; in the 1950s the Bhakra Dam became the metaphor for modernisation; the Green Revolution in the 60s reflected our efforts at food self sufficiency; the Emergency in 1975 was a synonym for political overreach; in the 80s and early 1990s the Maruti 800 was a metaphor for our industrial resurgence; the cell phone was the symbol of our coming of age in the digital world in the first decade of the new millenium; Vijay Malya and Nirav Modi encapsulated the corruptness of our political and financial eco system in the second decade. Each was a symbol of the times they pertained to.

  And now, as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, we have a new metaphor: the Covid vaccine. It signifies the beginning of the end of a period which brought homo sapiens to its knees as nothing had done before- not the plague, not two world wars, not Hiroshima or Nagasaki, not Krakatoa, not SARS or Ebola. But, as usual, our sub-continental creativity and genius has imbued this metaphor with a wealth of variety and sub-sets, to such an extent that it has become a very mirror of today's India. I give below some of the subsidiaries of the parent Vaccine Metaphor.

  Mr. Shashi Tharoor has identified eight types of nationalism in his latest book, The Battle Of Belonging, but he has missed out on one: Vaccine Nationalism. Our government has sought to make it a metaphor for "atmnirbharta" and elevated the vaccine from a curative to a nationalist status, perhaps hoping to milk from it not just antibodies but also a few votes. The vaccination campaign has been billed as " the world's largest " such exercise, forgetting that, with 1350 million people, anything we do will be the world's largest. Just as the migration of labour post the lockdown was the biggest global migration after the Partition, and the ongoing farmers' protest has been the largest such agitation in the world in recent times. So, while size matters it is not always something to crow about.                                                                                           It has been announced that we will save the world with our vaccines ( which is probably right too) but we must remember that  even before the pandemic, we were already supplying half of the world's global vaccines. We can, of course, be more than justifiably proud of our achievements in this field ( achieved, incidentally, long before the present govt. came to power in 2014), but to use the vaccine to further promote a party's political agenda is egregious at best.

  It is the same Vaccine Nationalism which has resulted in the approval of a second vaccine even before the results of its Phase 3 trials are known. The essential ( and mandatory) Phase 3 trial results are supposed to be available only in November 2021, so the hurry to approve it ten months prematurely can only be ascribed to a misplaced " atmanirbharta". But the decision has inevitably produced a lot of Vaccine Politics, with the opposition questioning the govt. and and dubbing it as the BJP vaccine; some states have announced that they will not accept this particular formulation. The central govt., however, is offering them the same deal it has offered the protesting farmers-- take it or leave it. Covaxin or no vaccine, appears to be the message.

  In the last six years we have lost all our neighbours to the MEA's bumbling incompetence and China's billions, so now Vaccine Diplomacy is expected to reverse the tide. We have decided to supply the India made shots to all our disgruntled  neighbours such as  Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar,  Srilanka and Mauritius, and also to the gruntled ones like Mauritius, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Seychelles . Pakistan too is standing in line, with its sleeves rolled up for a jab but we have yet to decide on this second surgical strike. The question which our spin doctors ( not medical doctors) are asking, however, is this: how long will the beneficial effects of the vaccine last in our neighbouring countries? Will their antibodies prevail over the BJP govt's antibodies and the virus of arrogance? For the time being, however, our vaccines will do more for friendly external relations than six years of blind man's bluff by the Ministry of External Affairs. Maybe it's now time to merge the MEA with ICMR.

 There have been a few surprises too. It was expected that the army, or at the very least General G D Bakshi with his arsenal of four letter words, would have to be called out to control the mobs once distribution of the vaccine started. That has not happened, and the queues outside my local " theka" are longer than the ones at the vaccination centre. This is the result of an unexpected reaction called Vaccine Hesitancy, which in turn is a consequence of Vaccine Scepticism. The latter stems from the usual reluctance of the govt. to share any information with the public: The EUA ( Emergency Use Authorisation) data for both the vaccines, the efficacy data for the Covaxin, and why the second vaccine which was supposed to be a " back-up" vaccine is now being distributed in the first phase itself along with Covishield. This opaqueness, which is now a familiar SOP of this govt., has resulted in justified scepticism and hesitancy.

This reluctance to put it in the arm has been accentuated by the hesitancy of our political leaders, Ministers, even the Prime Minister to practice what they preach. The biggest question being asked these days ( other than "Where is Arnab Goswami hiding?") is- Why are our leaders not taking the shot? Just about every other important head of government has done so- Biden, Kamla Harris, Boris Johnson, Bolsanaro, Netanyahu, Putin, the UN Secretary General, the Saudi prince to name just a few. Why are our worthies hiding behind the "tehzeeb" of Lucknow- "pehle aap"- when they are otherwise first in line for all the goodies of life? It has been officially announced that they will take the jabs in the second phase, after the 20 million or so frontline workers are covered. At the current rate of innoculations that may take more than a month. How about leading from the front, gentlemen, and inspiring some confidence among the serfs?

With international tourism hitting rock bottom, the leisure industry is now setting its sights on Vaccine Tourism, a variant of medical tourism, the moment the govt. allows vaccines to be sold privately in the open market. This should not take long, given that Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson are all lining up for approvals. Once these are available in the market, expect chartered flights from the Gulf countries by the dozen- a quick jab in Delhi or Mumbai, a week in Goa to recover from the traumatic experience, and back to the souks and oil-fields. The Tourism Ministry, I am told, is holding its breath and licking its chops behind the masks.

And finally, this being India, how can we not have our own brand of Vaccine Humour ? Here are two specimens, circulating as widely on WhatsApp as the virus itself:

Now, I always was a sucker for smart pitches, even though my brand recognition skills are somewhat limited- for quite a long time I thought that cunnilingus was the name of the Irish national airline. But I've looked up Viagra on Google and have felt considerably uplifted since then. I've decided to wait till they bring the Pfizer vaccine to India, with or without the Pfizz.

Here's the second example of Vaccine Humour, though I suspect unintended. Now, one was aware that our journalism had descended to Mariana Trench depths in recent times, but this takes the lemon tart. The article refers, of course, to the vaccine wall being figuratively built by the govt. to protect its citizens, but the terrible pun is an error of phallic proportions. It is certainly not a printing error- one prick can be a printer's devil, but two pricks has to be the editorial board! One has read of arm in arm friendship, hand in glove chicanery, ball by ball commentary, but a prick by prick wall is a first for me. 

  And finally, of course, there are all those questions about Vaccine Immunity: how long will the antibodies last ? A friend of mine informs me that the only chaps who are not bothered about this are our judges: you see, they already have plenty of immunity- from accountability, prosecution and criticism. Which is why it makes no sense for them to stop physical court hearings- nothing can touch them, for if a virus were to attack them that would be ultra vires, wouldn't it ?

ARE THE FARMERS MAKING DELHI IRRELEVANT ?

 

  The irony of this is lost on a government drowning in its testesterone: with every nail studded barricade installed at Tikri, Ghazipur or Singhu, Delhi is making itself progressively redundant to the ongoing course of events, and perhaps even to the future shape of things in India. A subterranean tsunami is slowly building in the country and the power elite, the pampered middle class and wheeler dealers of the capital are blissfully unaware of it.

  The farmers do not need Delhi to survive or even to prosper, they are creatures of the soil and the elements and know how to live in harmony with them. They have been at our borders for almost three months now and have taken nothing from Delhi except perhaps water, the internet- and a lot of abuse. Now the rulers have stopped even the supply of these essentials, having practiced the art for a long time in Kashmir. But the farmers are unfazed- they now get them in abundance from their villages.

 For me, in fact, Mr. Modi's cat was let out of the bag by an economist friend who ( in defence of the farm laws) informed me that rural unemployment on a huge scale was inevitable as a country progressed to " developed nation" status. He sent me some charts to establish the co-relation between GDP and rural unemployment: the higher the GDP, the higher the unemployment in agricultural communities! This is the neo liberal, IMF-cum-World Bank formula which has ensured that 100 of the world's richest billionaires have more wealth than half the world's population. Mr. Modi's farm laws will be the Indian version of this formula.

  The invidious objective is to create cheap labour for industry and big Capital. This is already happening in India- 34 million farmers have left farming between 2004 and 2012 ( Census figures), 50 million have been " displaced" by capital projects and 500,000 more are uprooted every year, tribals are being evicted from forests, there are already 120 million migrant labour. It's a dismal picture but not dismal enough for our politicians and wanna-be billionaires. The farm laws were intended to speeden up this process, and the barricades are a statement that the govt. will enforce them, come hell, high water, Rihanna or Greta Thunberg.

  But our sturdy farmers, who are more intelligent than we Dilliwallahs give them credit for, have little interest in the barricades, the concertina wires, the foot long embedded nails blocking their way to Delhi, the product of the fear, paranoia, incompetence and malice of those who rule in Delhi. For the farmers have no reason to go to Delhi any more, after leaving their visiting card there on the 26th January. Every institution they appealed to for the last six months has let them down: Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Media, mainstream political parties, even the wealthy burghers of South Delhi. The lawyers are silent, the veterans are citing discipline as an excuse for their timidity, the celebrities have tucked their heads beneath their tails, the Embassies are " watching the situation", the IMF and World Bank are hopeful that Mr. Modi would carry the day. Delhi has let down the farmer, and he no longer has any need for India's capital- the word " capital" signifying many things.

  And so the farmer has decided to BYPASS Delhi and take it out of the equation: Rakesh Tikait went to Jind to attend a mahapanchayat on the 3rd of this month, he avoided Delhi and took the longer route via Haryana. The symbolism of this cannot be ignored. And at Jind he announced that he will now take the protests to other parts of India. This reminds me of two historical events. One: the Maginot line was built by France on its borders with Germany to deter any invasion by Hitler. It was so heavily fortified that it was considered impregnable. But when the time came the Germans simply bypassed it and rolled their Panzers through the Ardennes forest into France without any opposition.

  Two, and I am thankful to Punya Prasun Bajpai for pointing this out in a video, when Mahatma Gandhi saw that he was making no progress with the British in Delhi and Shimla, he decided to head in the opposite direction- to Dandi in Gujarat- to get a pinch of salt. That further helped to spread his message to the rest of India, to universalise it and give it more strength.

  By closing off Delhi, literally and figuratively, to the farmers Mr. Modi and Shah may have committed their biggest miscalculation. They have forced Mr. Tikait to change his strategy mid-way. He is doing three things now: one, he has made Western UP, not Punjab, the hub of the movement now. This is the region which enabled the BJP to come to power in the state in 2017, winning more than 100 Vidhan Sabha seats in just this belt. The BJP did so by creating a communal rift ( remember the Muzzafarnagar riots?) between the dominant communities here, the Jats and the Muslims. Now, Tikait has healed the rift, united both against the govt., and demolished the formula that won BJP western UP.

  Two, as the de-facto Supremo of the farmers' movement now, Tikait is more acceptable to the rest of the Hindi ( or Hindu) heartland than the earlier Sikh leaders and he will be able to take the protests to the other states- MP, Rajasthan, Haryana, UP, Uttarakhand, Himachal, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand- more successfully. This is precisely the belt which allows BJP to win big in Parliamentary elections, and the spread of the agitation here does not augur well for it. It would have made more sense for the BJP to have limited the protests to Delhi and its vicinity.

  Third, in India political parties have always won elections, not on the basis of their track records or manifestos, but on manipulation of identities- religion, caste, backwardness, region. The BJP has been particularly smart at this. But the farmers' movement has now begun to erase these sub- identities in favour of a larger one- the farmer identity ( which includes the landless labourer, the artisan, even the village shop-keeper). There will be only one identity now, one concern and one demand. With nothing to divide, the Great Divider will not be able to rule: it was a lesson the British had finally learnt, and the BJP will now learn it the hard way.

  The game has changed but the farmers have made it clear that the rules have not- winner takes all. This rule had been made by an arrogant and over-reaching govt. and it may just come back to bite it. The nails on the road at Ghazipur could well be the nails in the BJP's coffin. The pampered and indifferent upper middle classes of Delhi can now live in peace- the battle has been taken away from them, they no longer count.