THE SPIDER AND THE FLY- HOW NOT TO NEGOTIATE.

    "Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly,

    " Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy."

   [ Mary Hewitt. 1829]

     

The road to the Hindu Rashtra, along with that other place most of us are headed for, is paved with good intentions. I refer, of course, to the August meeting which five noted Muslim members of civil society had held with Mr. Bhagwat, the RSS (Rashtriya Sewak Sangh) Sarsanghchalak. I have no doubt at all that Mr. Quraishi, Najib Jang et al had no ulterior motive, that their intentions were honest and that they sincerely wished to act as bridge between the minorities and the Hindutva forces. But it was a horrendous error of judgment nonetheless, both strategically and tactically.

   As a strategy it was short-sighted and surprisingly naive, given that these gentlemen are experienced in public life and have risen to the top of their professions: they should have known better. Firstly, why talk to the RSS at all ? It has no official standing, functions as an extra-constitutional force, and has no formal role in our governmental structure. When this question was put to  Quraishi by Karan Thapar he replied that the RSS was already a legitimate force and that therefore there was nothing wrong in talking to it. I would beg to differ with my senior colleague: the RSS may be a legal organisation, it may be the power behind the throne, but its larger legitimacy is in doubt, and has always been. It has been repeatedly banned, is suspected to specialise in stirring the communal pot, could be behind many of the excesses of the present regime, is distrusted by the minorities. There is a difference between legality and legitimacy- the former is a function of law, the latter of social acceptability across the board and not by just one community.

  The second strategic mistake was to talk with an organisation primarily responsible for the ongoing subjugation of the community to which these five gentlemen belong, beginning with the movement against the Babri Masjid. How could they have trusted the Sarsanghchalak, given his record of double speak? He had said, after the SC (Supreme Court) judgment on Babri Masjid, that the RSS would not campaign for "restoration" of any other temples- but has launched a movement against the mosques at Kashi, Mathura and God knows where else. He talks of a common Indian DNA but insists that Muslims in India should be known as Hindu Muslims. He talks of treating Muslims as bona fide citizens of India, but does nothing to stop his own govt. from practically disenfranchising them at every turn. Going to talk to such a person with his stated position, at HIS behest and in HIS office, amounts to abject surrender (not "appeasement" as another commentator has termed it, in my view). And those who surrender, or are seen to be supplicants, cannot set the terms of any treaty or agreement.

   Tactically too, it is apparent that our five friends have had the tables turned on them: it appears that there was no agreed upon agenda for the meeting. Consequently Bhagwat got the two assurances/ clarifications he wanted ( for whatever they are worth) on "kaffirs" and beef consumption, whereas our five interlocutors got nothing in return. The RSS Supremo had cleverly prepared his exit suit in advance: according to Quraishi/Jung, he expressed his helplessness by stating that he lacks support, that he has his limitations, that his word is not law, that he is subjected to criticism. Why then talk to him at all? A question asked by Karan Thapar, without any satisfactory reply.

The discussion seems to have been at a dialectical, almost philosophical, level and therefore doomed to failure. No attempt was made to take up the real life issues that matter to Muslims today, their serial persecution: CAA (Citizen Amendment Act), NRC (National Register of Citizens), hijab bans, Dharam Sansads, bulldozers, hate speech, demolition of madrasas. On none of these has  Bhagwat uttered a word in the past. Surely, any meaningful discussion should have posed these subjects to him, if only to know where he stands on them. Sadly, the opportunity to do so went abegging- why?

  I am loathe to say so, but after watching the interview with Karan Thapar, it seemed to me that, in order to justify their meeting, Quraishi-Jung sounded like apologists and interpreters for  Bhagwat. They excuse him for his non-committal stance, they would "like to believe" him even though they "can't read his mind", they find his body language reassuring(!). The fact that he listened to them with "rapt attention" and without any interruption, we are told, shows his sincerity. They even admire his sense of humour (though I don't in the least find that reassuring). The duo are constantly interpreting what the Sarsanghchalak said- or, more important, did not say- in order to extract from the ore a nugget of hope which is just not there.

   It is important to note that, (as far as I am aware), Mohan Bhagwat has not said a word about the meeting in public, or confirmed any of the conclusions/ interpretations of it that Quraish-Jung have revealed in their interview with Karan Thapar. He does not have to, he has got what he wanted. As far as he is concerned the meeting has served its purpose as a PR exercise. Our five friends have burnished his fading international image and given him a fresh lease of life as an ideologue sensitive to the concerns of the minorities, willing to engage with them, and willing to revisit his beliefs. None of that has been proven or even demonstrated. Which is why this meeting, a masterpiece of double speak on the part of  Bhagwat, should never have taken place. A fly should think twice before venturing into the spider's parlour.

THE BHARAT JODO YATRA- RAHUL GANDHI'S LONG WALK TO VINDICATION

    The BJP, as a political party, is many bad things in one, but it is not stupid. And right now its canny instinct is telling it that Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra is not good news for 2024 or the coming state elections. The party's discomfiture and subdued sense of alarm has been evident in the desperate attempts to reduce the padyatra to Tee shirts, containers, shoes, and to mock it as Bharat Toro or Congress Jodo yatra. But the mockery and lampooning is not working this time, at least not over the one week that the procession has travelled so far in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This is what is confounding the BJP and explains its desperation.

    The BJP has invested a lot of time and hundreds of crores over the last eight years to caricature Rahul Gandhi as a Pappu, a fumbling idiot, a part time politician, given to gaffes, incapable of the 24x7 exertion required in politics, an entitled dynast. It has been getting votes from this deliberately created falsehood, whereas the real fiction lies in the hyped up persona of none other than Mr. Modi himself. The Pappu was used to hide the fact that the emperor had no clothes, only his Mont Blanc pen, his Bvlgari dark glasses and  Movado watches.

   But Rahul Gandhi had no way to counter or dispel this viciously manufactured image of himself, because the BJP had also bought over practically the entire print and television media. In effect, he has been left with no effective channel of communication with the people. He can neither explain his policies to them, nor show that he is a quite different person from what the saffron party has painted him to be.

   A lesser man would have given up, like the Mayawatis, the Navin Patnaiks, the Jagan Reddys and the Naidus. But Rahul Gandhi has decided instead to leap frog back into the past and draw on one of India's most potent weapons of struggle- the padyatra or foot march. It was used with great effect by Gandhi, in the sixties by Vinoba Bhave for his Bhudan movement, and in the more recent past by Chandrashekhar and Jaiprakash Narayan. India- and, ironically, Hinduism itself- has always had great reverence for the padyatra, for it symbolises sacrifice, repentance, renunciation and austerity. It is associated with pilgrimages, holy men, non violent struggle against oppression. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is therefore drawing on hundreds of years of hoary tradition, memories of the freedom struggle, even one of the essential elements of Hinduism. No wonder the BJP is worried !- it has been hoist on its own petard, in a way.

  The Emperor is never without his royal plumage and trappings, he is afraid of being seen without them and keeps a distance from the people, visible only on distant stages, LCD screens and holograms, the distance bridged by TV cameras, teleprompters and trucked in supporters. In his new avatar he can never do what Rahul Gandhi is now doing through his Yatra- exposing himself to the crowds one on one, rubbing shoulders with the ordinary citizen, touching skin, tying a little girl's sandals, dancing with  tribal women. What perhaps has the BJP worried is that the Yatra will highlight in sharp contrast the difference between the Emperor and Rahul Gandhi. The voters will get to see for themselves Gandhi's innate qualities which the darbari  media has so far obscured- his basic decency and sincerity, the lack of any posturing or pretensions, his compassion, the non-oratorical conversations, his accessibility, the moral core which, paradoxically, makes him unfit for the Machiavellian politics of today.

                                   

                                  

  This, I feel, is the real message which the Bharat Jodo Yatra seeks to convey; the problems of inflation, unemployment, cronyism, Chinese intrusion, social discord will of course follow and will now sound more plausible to the people. And the strategy appears to be succeeding. It is being reported that 50000-70000 people are participating in the Yatra everyday, and the numbers keep going up everyday. At this rate, over 150 days, Rahul Gandhi will be able to personally connect with about 60 to 70 million people, a prospect that should take the BJP (and some obdurate, short-sighted Opposition leaders too) back to the drawing board.

  And I have no doubt that the midnight oil is being burnt in the BJP's war rooms to prepare a toolkit to counter the Yatra and disrupt it or at least to put the brakes on its momentum. Troglodytes like Sambit Patra and congenital dissimulators like Smriti Irani are already on the job. This tool kit will  contain both legal and extra legal machinations, including denial of police permission for the march, imposition of Sec. 144 CRPC, concocted security threats, instigated violence, organised counter protests. A couple of old cases (National Herald?) may be reopened so that Rahul Gandhi could be summoned again to Delhi and forced to leave the march. The process has already begun, with the NCPCR (National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights) issuing a notice to the Congress for "using" children in the march!

   The real test for Rahul Gandhi and his team will come when he enters BJP ruled states like Karnataka, MP, Maharashtra, Haryana and UP. It will be a two fold test: gauging the people's support, and the BJP's unscrupulousness. The latter will be in direct proportion to the former- the more the popular support, the more desperate the measures which will be adopted by the state administrations. The opposition will not be from the BJP alone- other "Opposition" leaders with egos larger than their vote shares will not welcome Rahul Gandhi upstaging them before 2024, and will try their utmost to revile and undermine the Yatra. The opening salvos have already been fired by Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee. And then there are the opportunistic weevils within the Congress itself, the likes of Azad, Anand Sharma and Manish Tiwari playing their own one-upmanship games. The Congress is on the cusp of a watershed moment, and should not be provoked into reckless responses. It should be restrained, not respond in kind, like the forgettable "khaki nickers on fire" tweet. It should never take its eyes off the central and visceral message of the Yatra.

   What is this message, people ask, some derisively ? I think it was best answered by Rahul Gandhi himself when a journalist asked him this question:

" The message of the Bharat Jodo Yatra is humility, compassion and respect for people. We are not abusing anybody, not threatening anybody. We are walking with humility."

  I feel that was very well put. More than anything else, India needs a healing touch. It needs a compassionate leader, not an Ozymandias. This, I believe, is the message of the long walk. Rahul Gandhi is the messenger AND the message.

   It remains to be seen whether, 150 days from now, Rahul Gandhi's trust in himself and the people of India will be vindicated or not. But, whatever the outcome electorally, this reviled "dynast" is doing what no other politician in the country today has the guts to do: step out among the people, sans any filters or trappings, and live WITH them for five months. He stands head and shoulders above his peers in his unrelenting opposition to the Supreme Leader and his cohorts, and in his refusal to compromise with his core beliefs. Five months from now, I don't think Rahul Gandhi will have anything left to prove: it will be the citizens of India who will have to prove themselves, and where they stand.

REVDIS ARE FINE, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE JALEBIS ?

    Irony just died a thousand deaths, and Double-Speak became our third official language, with the launch of the Freebie jumla last month. It was, of course, no surprise that Mr. Modi would resort to this red herring in a game where the AAP was running away with the ball. Ball tampering is, after all, part of the BJP's SOP; the irony, however, lies elsewhere.

   It lies in the fact that the Supreme Court decided to examine the " Freebie culture" precisely at a time when it was being showered with a new lot of freebies itself ! Even as it issued notices to all and sundry to explain how it could be stopped, the govt. amended the Supreme Court Judges Rules rules to  make life a wee bit more comfortable for retired judges of the Court. Instead of the current fixed allowance of Rs. 39000/ and Rs. 70000 per month for retired Judges and Chief Justices of the SC, they would now be given a chauffeur and domestic help from the SC staff pool; in addition, the CJIs would also get one secretarial assistant and a six month extension of the official residence- free, of course.

   The ostensible reason is that old chestnut, expounded upon eloquently by the late Arun Jaitley in Parliament many years ago and since repeated ad nauseam to a nodding public- that judges (of the apex court particularly) should be put beyond the pale of temptation by ensuring their financial independence after retirement: if their material wants are taken care of, the argument goes, their integrity would be assured and they would be less inclined to favour the government ( or any other litigant) while on the bench. I don't buy this for a moment, no disrespect intended.

   Integrity is like virginity- you either have it or you don't. You can't buy it with sops or freebies. Judges too are public servants at the end of the day and get a generous pension of 50% of last pay drawn, plus periodic Dearness allowance, which add up to roughly Rs. 1.50 lakhs per month. Unlike other public servants, they also have plenty of Constitutional protection from the executive. So why should there be special favours for them ? If a government has to pay extra to any govt. employee for him or her to honestly do a job he/she is recruited for then it may just as well pack up and hand over charge to ASSOCHAM or FICCI or to the double A's. Trying to buy honesty or integrity is a zero-sum game in which the price keeps going up and the quality of the product keeps going down.

   Secondly, this is all window dressing and I am sure the government too doesn't believe for a moment that these additional freebies for judges will do the job. Not that it wants an independent or impartial judiciary, either- that would be disastrous! But symbolism is good optics, and concern for judges' welfare will go down well with the gullible, of whom there's one born every minute. It also helps that this might make our judiciary a little better disposed towards the executive. Meanwhile, of course, the real inducements remain with the executive: appointments to Tribunals, Commissions, Governorships and the Rajya Sabha. Nobody is looking at these freebies ( they come at tax payers' expense), not even the Supreme Court. For these offerings are the real challenges to integrity of judges (and other public servants), not the lack of a chauffeur or domestic help.

   Financial doles to the public are not the only freebies handed out by the govt. The bureaucracy is also favoured with freebies, what I would call Jalebis ( a term used by the noted economist Swaminathan Aiyer)- the revdis may or may not get you the votes, but it's the jalebis that keep you in power. The jalebi, a more convoluted and twisted item than the revdi, serves the same objective as the revdis- sugar coated inducements to ensure the retention of power by suborning the bureaucracy. In this category fall extensions of service, diplomatic appointments, out of turn promotions, appointments to Regulatory and other bodies post retirement. The competition for them among bureaucrats on the verge of superannuation ensures the ever- lasting loyalty of the chosen few subsequently.

   There is only one nostrum to remove temptation and inculcate integrity and probity among serving civil servants and the judiciary, and it is a simple one: discontinue the appointment of retirees to any position. There is no reason why serving judges and bureaucrats cannot be appointed  to all government bodies, be they Tribunals, Commissions, Regulatory agencies. Selection can be done by the UPSC through open competition. There should be no extension of the retirement age. No one is indispensable or irreplaceable: if the country could survive the assassination of two Prime Ministers it can cope with the retirement of a Cabinet Secretary or an ED or CBI Director. Strictly enforce the two year cooling off period for bureaucrats and judges before they can take up private jobs, join political parties, be appointed as Governors or MPs or take up arbitration cases. Take away this power of patronage from the Executive/ leveraging of one's past position in government, and much of the rot will have been stopped.

   I hope the Supreme Court will take the freebie issue out of the "welfare versus sops" straitjacket in which the government wants to put it, and look at the larger issue, including its own indulgences. It is not only the humble revdi which should be examined (if at all), but the more important jalebi, which is becoming the staple diet of our judiciary and bureaucracy. The court might even like to look at the other sweetmeats like pensions and subsidies to MPs and MLAs, grandiose but worthless statues, Rs. 7000 crore planes and Rs. 8 crore cars for their eminences, corporate tax cuts and loan waivers, thousands of crore spent to bolster one man's image, and other assorted dishes on the jalebi platter. Moral bankruptcy is perhaps even more dangerous than financial bankruptcy and selective sanctimoniousness is abominable to any rational mind. As Confucius said: watch your jalebis and the revdis will take care of themselves.

   

THE CHRONOLOGY OF AGING

 My chronology, unlike Mr. Amit Shah's, is fairly straight forward and transparent: I was born in December 1950, joined the IAS in 1975 ( someone had to) , plighted my troth  (and blighted Neerja's life, according to her mother) in January 1977, retired in December 2010, and am therefore a senior citizen, aka the Walking Dead. I am sure, going by the sometimes garbled comments I get on my blogsite, I am in good company. But ( and this is the difference between me and Mr. Shah) I have no wish to overthrow elected govts and am happy with my lot, and so should my fellow Johnnie Walkers be.

  Look at it this way, and be grateful, all you ghosts-who-walk the Phantom trail: you were just one of millions of spermatozoa- and you made it ! We are among the fortunate 8 in 100 persons who live to see 60 years. And so, even though Mrs. Sitharaman ( she- who- doesn't- eat- onions) has withdrawn our gas cylinder subsidy and our railway concession, there is still much to be happy about. Our birth certificates may be approaching their expiry dates, and we may be alive still only because we have missed our, uh, deadline, but look at the positive side- we will shortly be spared the hassle of renewing the certificates. I had to renew my driving license last year and it was an ordeal. Even the RTO was sceptical about it- he renewed it for only five years after taking one look at me. And so I welcome the joint pains when I get up every morning and the dressing down I get from Neerja when I don't match my tie with her saree, for they prove that I am still alive and kicking. Well ok, not kicking perhaps, more like hopping, but you get the drift, I hope.

  That being said, old age has come a bit sooner than I expected. It may be due to some of Mr. Modi's policies, but to be fair to him ( a difficult task, I must admit) I feel that I may have missed a trick or two myself. Douglas Coupland was spot on when he said that when you are young you always feel that life hasn't yet begun- that it will begin next week or next month or next year. But then suddenly one day you have become old, and the scheduled start never happened! When one is 30 or 40 one thinks one is immortal, and takes things for granted: that one's parents will live forever, that there will be time enough to indulge oneself once the career and success are secured, that one can reconnect with old friends and lost relatives someday in the future, that there is still plenty of time to express regrets or endearments to those one has wronged or ignored. Wrong- the doomsday clock moves much faster than we imagine. It is only when you reach my stage in life that you realise that time has to be seized by the forelock and not the tail. 

  There are some other downsides too. When in service I attended dozens of meetings every month, and so had to maintain a wardrobe full of suits and ties. These days the only meetings I go to are condolence meetings where the prescribed dress code is kurta-pyjama and a hang-dog look (the Aam Aadmi caps are optional). The suits are no longer needed and occupy precious wardrobe space in my small flat, the carpet area of which would give an XL bikini a run for its money. It's the same with my books: I have about 500 of them, lovingly collected over 60 years. The problem is, I can't now remember which of them I have read! So I'm reading all of them again: I've started with SNOWWHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS and intend to work my way up to the latest bestseller, BAL NARENDRA. You can find it on Amazon under the category Fairy Tales/ Mythology. If you don't want to buy the hard copy you can read it on Swindle.

  Mark Twain, of course, had a different take on the chronology of aging. It was his view that " Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18." The more I think of this the more sense this reverse chronology makes. Instead of dreading the approach of old age we could quickly get over the Alzheimers, enlarged prostate and blocked arteries in the first fifteen years or so of our lives, and then get down to really enjoying life, secure in the knowledge that our worst days are behind us. There would be fewer divorces too: marriages would begin by ignoring and shouting at each other, and then gradually we would fall in love again, progressing in time to the passion of our teenage years and the original sin of the proposal. This would disprove another of Mark Twain's less cheerful remarks: " Both marriage and death ought to be welcome; one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it."

  There is a practical side to Twain's insight too. How often have you felt that a reversed chronology of life would make more sense?  For, as things stand today, the first half of our lives are spent in relative deprivation- tiny flats, low salaries, no household help, no surplus for vacations or for giving gifts to the wife. This is precisely the time when your kids are growing up, the Missis wants to make a splash on the social circuit and you need the space, money and spare time to cater to these requirements. But you don't have the wherewithal for all this- you are too young, not senior enough. By the end of your career, on the other hand, when you are CEO or Secretary to Govt. you live in a five bedroom house, receive an obscene salary you don't know what to do with, have a half dozen serfs waiting on you hand and foot, can finally take the kids surfing in the Maldives, and can now afford that Sabyasachi outfit she always wanted. But it's now too late, time has passed you by. The children are gone to live their own lives, the wife can't fit into that gorgeous lehnga, you can't eat anything that doesn't taste like sawdust because of the cholestrol. Reverse the chronology, as Mark Twain recommends, and life becomes much better- you get what you need when you need it, not when you no longer need it, or when you cannot enjoy it.

   There you have it then- two models of life to contemplate: coffin to cradle, or the other way around. Very similar to the two models of development in our country- the Gujarat model and the Delhi model. It doesn't matter which of these  models you choose or like, for at the end of all of them you're dead and buried anyway. But it's a point to consider.

  So this is what I've learnt after 72 years: You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old. As the lyrics in that Clint Eastwood song go: Don't let the Old Man in. And there are two time tested ways of keeping that old geezer out of your house and life: retain a sense of humour and a liking for Bacchus. I have the first on the authority of George Bernard Shaw who said: " You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing." When I meet a person of my age the first thing I look for are wrinkles and crow's feet on his or her face, for these are evidence of smiles and laughter- if you have them you are not old.

  A dedicated fondness for liquor is the other secret, as every centenarian will tell you. Of course, they will also tell you that sex is part of the mix too, but we'll leave that bit for another blog sometime and for now dwell on the spirits. I have this on good authority too, from Swami Unknownananda of Whatsapp University: Exercising, cutting down on alcohol, avoiding non-vegetarian food will certainly add some years to your life. But remember, it will be your old age and dotage that will get extended.... not your youth. So think before quitting. A peg a day keeps that old man away, and nothing says it better than a country- western song sent to me by a friend recently on Whatsapp. It goes like this:

" Sip your whisky, nice and slow

 Just relax, enjoy that glow;

 No one knows when its time to go,

 Sip your whisky nice and slow.

 Some friends go, and some stay,

 Children grow and fly away,

 All you'll have in your life

 Is your whisky and your wife.

 Life is short but feels so long,

 There's so much going wrong,

 No matter what, you gotta go on,

 Age like whisky and be strong.

 Sip your whisky nice and slow,

 Just relax, enjoy that glow..."

One can almost hear the music, the banjo strumming like ice tinkling in the glass. You can't ? Pour yourself another peg, friend, sit back and relax, and enjoy that glow as the light fades.....

A TIME TO SPEAK OUT, A TIME TO LISTEN.

    It is relatively rare for retired civil servants to join political parties (though the trend does seem to be increasing of late), and rarer still for those who do to retain the objectivity and value systems that they had been taught in the Academy at Mussoorie. We have only to look at the worthies in the current Union cabinet to see how quickly they have dumped their earlier oath to the Constitution in favour of the rewards of sycophancy. Which is why it was so refreshing to hear the heartfelt words of my batch mate, Jawhar Sircar, Rajya Sabha MP from the Trinamool Congress, last week.

   Jawhar, who retired in the rank of Secretary to Govt., was inducted as MP last year by Mamata Banerjee, not for his political inclinations, but for his prolific writings on current affairs, culture and history. But within a year he has gone public with his dismay at the corruption and nepotism prevailing in the TMC (Trinamool Congress), his own party, in an interview with a Bengali news channel. What he said was: "This practice of loot was absent in our culture," and went on to caution that " the battle for 2024 will be difficult with one part of the body rotten."                                 This is quite extraordinary and unheard of in the current political ethos of the country, especially coming from a relative tyro in politics. This is not the fashionable "dissidence" of the Scindias and Azads of the world, a repayment for the thirty pieces of silver, a ploy to jump ship for greener pastures, to mix metaphors. This is the absolution and "confession" before certain political death, for Jawhar surely knows the risks involved, especially with a lady like his party President who runs a tight ship, at least when it comes to people speaking their minds. Which is why he makes me proud and convinces me that there are bureaucrats and bureaucrats.

   He will probably be unceremoniously dumped by the Bengal tigress. A big mistake. Mrs. Banerjee badly needs some outstanding, honest, articulate, non-purchasable, rational people around her, for her aura is fading. Increasingly, there is little to differentiate her from Mr. Modi- the same autocratic streak, repressive instincts when it comes to free speech and dissent, loud mouthed, in constant fighting mode, inability to get on with other parties, an outsized ego. As the comedian Varun Grover had remarked some time back- she is Modi in a sari. A sari getting tainted with corruption and sleaze charges every day. 

   The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and ED (Enforcement Directorate) are almost certainly acting with political motives, but that does not change the reality: that the stink of corruption is now pervading Kolkatta and there appear to be more skeletons in the TMC cupboard than in the Bhawanipur cemetery. Mukul Roy, Suvendhu Adhikari, Abhishek Banerjee, Partha Bhattacharya, Anubrata Mondal- the list keeps growing by the day. Right or wrong, some of the allegations and dirt are bound to stick. The Chief Minister's personal probity and integrity will not be able to recompense for these corrupt doings for very much longer. And the middle class Bengali- the famous "bhadralok"- will start to wonder, sooner rather than later.

   Having spent many years in West Bengal and (the then Calcutta), I know the typical bhadralok. He is educated, loves to discuss politics, has a sound moral compass, is fiercely loyal to his party and football club, and doesn't trust New Delhi. He respects intellectual ability and the thrust and parry of a good argument. Which is why someone like Jawhar Sircar- erudite, a moderate liberal, a writer with no politically ideological baggage, a distinguished track record in government- can be an asset to the TMC. This is probably the reason why Mamata Banerjee inducted him as an MP in the first place. This justification still stands, perhaps even more so today. Having invited him in, she should now give him some leeway and listen to what he is saying. Many of my friends in Bengal think the same way. With the 2024 elections just over the horizon, Jawhar's advice could be a good opportunity for the Chief Minister to initiate a course correction, throw out the rotten apples instead of adopting a pugilistic approach and blaming the BJP for everything. Her national image has already been severely dented by these corruption charges. Expelling or even side lining Jawhar Sircar could adversely effect her image with the bhadralok too.

   Meanwhile, I laud my batchmate for having the courage of his convictions, for having spoken out in the best traditions of John Stuart Mill: " He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name....(or) will not trouble to use his mind on the subject." For silence too is a form of complicity in these dystopic times.

   There is a time to speak out, and a time to listen.