THE FINAL WORD

 

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

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

     In the mid eighties in Shimla a powerful Principal Secretary to the CM (Chief Minister), whose wife wished to devote all her time to disciplining other IAS wives and thus delegate her culinary responsibilities to a cook, moved the Finance Department for the creation of a Class D post. The file duly reached the JS (Joint Secretary)  in Finance. Now a Joint Secretary, compared to a Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, occupies a slot in the bureaucratic food chain comparable to the position of the plankton in relation to the sperm whale, and in the normal course the file should have been cleared without a whimper, or whatever sounds the plankton emits. In this case, however, this humble organism ( born and bred in the badass corridors of Hindu College) refused to accept his lowly station in life and rejected the request ! A livid Principal Secretary to CM, accustomed to worms squirming before him instead of turning, returned the file with the noting: "Has this file been seen by the Finance Secretary? If not, it may be put up before him." ( Senior Secretaries belong to the same lunch club and are usually more adept than the macaque monkey in scratching each others' backs). The Joint Secretary returned said file after recording on it the standard default noting of all Finance Departments ever since Moses refused to sanction funds for the purchase of a golden calf : "FD regrets to reiterate its rejection of the proposal." In the Queen's ( now the King's, English) this means: Get lost- nothing doing! An epileptic Principal Secretary to CM decided to teach this callow fledgling a lesson. Confident that he now had this amoeba cornered, he put the ball back in the Joint Secretary's court with a thunderous ace: "At what level has this decision been taken?" The Joint Secretary, having dealt with seven foot Jats on a daily basis in Jubilee hall, was unfazed and responded with a classic cross-court of his own: "Secretary to CM is respectfully informed that the decision has been taken at the competent level." Game, Set and Match. No actionable information revealed. no one to hang. The sperm whale retired shortly thereafter, sans cook.

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

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

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

A PERSPECTIVE ON THE HIMACHAL ELECTIONS : SINGLE MALTS, DOUBLE ENGINES AND TRIPLE TALAQS

   Last month the editor of a leading newspaper asked me to do a piece on the elections in Himachal and the prospects of the various parties. I politely declined, and with good reason- when it comes to elections I am an inveterate loser. I never get my analysis/ predictions right, and I am pretty consistent at this failure. I have voted in every election, including my RWA elections where a Donald Trump type always wins, and I have got it wrong every time: the chap I vote for invariably loses, and the guy who wins loses no time in conning those who voted for him. Which, I suppose, sums up our democracy succinctly.

  But though I have given up predicting outcomes, leaving it to those who make a good living by conning the unsuspecting voter, I continue to follow developments and observe the low life, in the manner of the superannuated barn owl who sees everything but doesn't give a hoot anymore. And since, to quote Oscar Wilde, the only thing to do with unsolicited advice is to pass it on, I'll share some of these with those who have made the fatal mistake of logging on to my blog.

  Tell me, folks, aren't you sick of those stock photos after every polling day, the ones showing various VIPs showing off their finger with the indelible ink stain on it? They may intend to show that they had cast (caste?) their vote, but to me it always looks like they are giving the finger to someone. It's a good thing that our rules mandate the forefinger for inking, and not the middle finger which is universally regarded as the sign of the crossed (no religious innuendo here, trust me). But a finger is a finger of speech, as it were, and I can't help but wonder to whom are these guys giving the finger- the government, the opposition candidate, the rebels, the party President? I personally feel it's the voter, who is in the position of the proctologist's patient and better get used to it. 

  On a more serious note, I am afraid (but not surprised) that the Supreme Court has let us down again, on two counts. It has kept mum on the govt's brazen opening of a window for donations to the Electoral Bonds scheme on the 7th of November, just before the elections to Himachal and Gujarat, in a departure from the notified scheme. It has also, by a happy(for the BJP) coincidence kept the next date for hearing on the Electoral Bonds case as the 6th of December, one day after the Gujarat polling. Surely it should have intervened and stayed the opening of this window since the matter was sub-judice? It is also a violation of the Model Code of Conduct but it appears that the Election Commission has also buried its head in the saffron coloured sands of Kutch. No points for guessing who's showing the finger to whom on this one.

  The second issue on which one is disappointed with the Supreme Court is its judgment of 7th November, 2022, clearing the govt's amendment for reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections from the "forward" castes. This has provided another arrow in the BJP's quiver to further target and win over the forward castes in the elections to the two states. Could the Court not have waited for another month, considering that the case was pending since 2019? If the Electoral Bonds case could have been deferred till after the polling, surely this EWS order could also have been similarly deferred. The so called "level playing field" is beginning to look more and more like the foothills of the Himalayas, where, don't forget, our venerable Prime Minister spent much of his formative years. He knows how to take advantage of the terrain.

  Coming to my own state of Himachal, it appears that the BJP launched its campaign with the familiar Hindutva artillery barrage of Uniform Civil Code, National Population Register, Triple Talaq and the Ram mandir, but quickly realised that this was not getting much traction. And not without reason: Himachal is the second most literate state in the country and its citizens are not the gullible fodder of the cow belt. Which is why, like Kerala ( the most literate state), Himachalis sensibly change their govt. every five years. Secondly, though they are Hindus, yet they set more store by their local devtas and devis, who command absolute devotion. Institutional Hinduism takes a back seat here. Thirdly, Muslims comprise barely 2% of the state's population so any attempt at polarisation is doomed to failure. No wonder the BJP quickly fell back on their default battle line- Mr. Modi himself.

  Mr. Modi predictably positioned himself as a son of Himachal, drawing on his stint as Himachal in-charge for the BJP during his salad days. But here he has come up against the daughter of Himachal- Priyanka Gandhi- who has a more valid claim since she actually has a house in Charabra, near Kufri. It is nowhere as grand as the Rs. 300 crore house being built for Mr. Modi on the Central Vista in Delhi, but it is, after all, in Himachal, and a matter of some pride for these mountain folk. They will now decide who they prefer as a neighbour.

  The BJP has tried its best to keep the focus of the election on national issues, whereas the Congress has played it close to the ground, reiterating local concerns and resentments: Old Pension Scheme, exploitation of apple growers by corporates, unemployment, Agniveers, persistent corruption, bureaucratic ineffectiveness as exemplified by the fact that the state has seen seven Chief Secretaries in five years. Mr. Modi's frequent rallies were part of the plan to retain the national focus. Rahul Gandhi has been criticised for not campaigning in Himachal, but I feel this was a smart move. Had he confronted the Prime Minister in Himachal it would have become the old Modi-Rahul fight all over again, and these contests have never favoured the latter. It's difficult to hit the target when you don't have one to begin with.

  One factor going for the Congress is the virtual exit of the Aam Aadmi Party from the hustings. The arrest of Mr. Stayendra Jain, the AAP in-charge for the state, may have actually helped the Congress because it is only after that that the AAP went cold on Himachal. This arrest may yet prove to have been a grave miscalculation on the part of the double- engine in Delhi because, had Mr. Kejriwal stayed the course, he would have hurt the Congress more than the BJP. It doesn't always pay to be too clever by half.

  The rebels are going to be a determining factor in many constituencies because, with its small constituencies, seats are won and lost in Himachal by tiny margins. In 2017, almost half the seats had victory margins of less than 5000 votes. Rebels, therefore, can influence the elections even if they garner just a couple of thousand votes. Here again the BJP is at a disadvantage: it has twice the number of rebels than the Congress does. It is an open secret that quite a few have the silent backing of Mr. Dhumal, the ex-C.M, who was denied a ticket ( along with many of his putative candidates) as part of the old tussle between him and Mr. Nadda. This is payback time for Mr. Dhumal and the internecine warfare may yet cost the BJP dearly. But a codicil: if the BJP rebels win this would not pose a problem for the party- they would be welcomed back into the fold before you could say Jai Shri Ram and would add to the BJP's tally. But if they lose they would have ensured the defeat of the BJP in those constituencies as they would have taken away priceless votes in what will be a tight election. In that case the cry may well be: Good Bye Jai Ram!

  A word of caution, however, for the Congress, in which the bugles already appear to be sounding for the Chief Minister tourney: if it does get a majority its margin must be at least 15 seats. Anything less and Mr. Shah will make short work of it with his grinder, washing machine and RO ( his reverse osmosis technique ensures that those who ooze out of one party quickly get absorbed in the BJP and live happily ever after).

  We shall find out on the 8th of December which cry- Jai Shri Ram or Goodbye  Jai Ram- will resonate through the valleys of this beautiful and idyllic state. I have my own guess, but that is strictly between the bottle of Glenfiddich and me, folks. Let no one tell you that a single malt cannot talk.

WORRY ABOUT THE IQ, NOT THE AQI

   I've been a liberal arts type all my life, both by education and aptitude, and avoid numbers like Queen Camilla avoids Meghan Markel, except when the numbers come in a sequence like 36-20-34. But one has to admit that at times they make sense, in a fascinating way, and so this week I've decided to delve into some of them.

  I have a good friend in Switzerland who sensibly quit the IAS and the country 40 years ago and now spends his retirement playing the alphorn to frolicking sheep on the mountain slopes. But not before sending us a Whatsapp message every morning giving us the AQI of his adopted country on that day. It usually hovers between 13 and 18. For those who are slow on the uptake, or up on the slowtake, I'll repeat that- between 13 and 18. ( This figure used to be about 8 before my friend and about 16500 other Indians decided to take up residence there in preference to Malerkotla and Kotkapura). The average AQI in my NCR area is about 400. And for once this can't be passed off as a foreign conspiracy to "belittle our image" since this is our own, make in India, data.

  Now, we are a Vishwaguru, the fifth largest economy in the world, ruled by the largest political party in the world, presided over by a Prime Minister who ( by his own declaration) is at the forefront of the war against climate change and has even "won" international awards like Champion Of The Earth. So why is our ambient air quality 45 times worse than Switzerland's, even allowing for the fact that my Swiss friend doesn't smoke, while I do?

  This question has no doubt been answered by experts, politicians, Baba Ramdev and Mr. Kejriwal, but we are still inching up to the 500 mark. Why, you may well ask, like Zelensky did when Putin frog- marched into Ukraine. Because, dear reader, no one has grasped the real reason, except me ( or is it 'I' ?) The real reason, according to me, is the fact that we mistake AQI for IQ and so believe that the higher the AQI, the better it is. ( This, incidentally, is what happens when you ditch the Queen's English for the King's Jumla, and don't learn how to watch your ' Q's' and dot your 'I's').

  After my epiphanic discovery I decided to dig deeper into this IQ business to see if there exists a co-relation between IQ and AQI, and found, to my Archimedian delight, that such a relationship does exist!  But it's an inverse one- countries with lower IQs usually have higher AQIs and vice versa. Here are the figures for India , Switzerland and the top three countries of the world for good air quality ( the AQI figures are for their capitals as at the time of writing this piece):

COUNTRY      AQI     IQ

Switzerland       13      100.4 

Japan                 41      112

Taiwan              38      106.47

Singapore         34       105.89

India                 400      82

So there you have it, the cause and effect, the smoking gun literally. One would think that the solution to our AQI problem is now obvious- raise the average IQ of India. But that. folks, is harder than raising the Titanic.

For one, our intellectual eco-system is not conducive to that at all, and its getting more lobotomised every day. It's hard to improve intelligence levels when students are taught that we attained our independence in 2014 and not 1947, or when we are told that Maharana Pratap won the battle of Haldighati, or when Nehru, not China, is blamed for the 1962 war, or when the govt. of the day regularly attempts to wage a linguistic colonialism on states, forgetting that the colonial age has been long dead and buried, or when Universities are sought to be turned into indoctrination centres, the "slaughter houses of intelligence", as Madhusudan Das had famously said, or when the Minister for Environment proudly claims that "India is the solution, not the problem" to tackling climate change even as he approves the diversion of 140sq. kms of evergreen rainforest land and felling of 8.50 lakh trees in Greater Nicobar for construction of a port, airport and power plant ! (Incidentally, you don't need a high IQ to guess who will get these projects). It would appear that history is indeed written by the victor, whether the victory is obtained in war, or at the hustings, or by purchasing the winning horses. But a country in continuous Derby mode does not guarantee a sound intelligence quotient. It also does not help the cause of promoting intelligence when a country reserves 60% of its jobs and college quotas ( in some states it's even higher) for various castes and classes under the guise of "affirmative action", relegating merit to the back benches. Merit has now become  non-merit goods, in economic parlance. As my late Professor, P.Lal, would have said- I am what I think, and if I can't think, then I am nothing. 

Our rulers and "influencers" do not inject much wisdom into the ecosphere either. In fact, they do precisely the reverse and flush out what little national IQ there remains every time a Minister says that Einstein discovered gravity, or when another Minister scoffs at Darwin's theory of evolution because none of his ancestors had ever seen an ape turning into homo sapiens, or when the Finance Minister claims that the rupee has not weakened, it's the dollar which has become stronger, or when the IIT educated Mr. Kejriwal says that the rupee will recover if images of Hindu gods are printed on it. (My own personal view is that the only force which can make the rupee rise is Sunny Leone- her touch would make the dead rise in their graves- but that will not amuse the flaccid mandarins in South Block so we'll let that slide). 

To conclude, therefore: I am no meteorologist or climate scientist, but I can confidently predict, like Baba Venga, that, going by the inverse theory established above ( for which I generously claim no patent),  our AQI will only continue to rise in the days to come. But I am not complaining. According to another set of statistics released recently in a Berkeley Earth Scientific paper, the pollution in Delhi is equivalent to smoking 20.4 cigarettes a day. After reading this I've now stopped smoking- why should I spend my money on something which the govt. is giving away for free? The savings almost make up for the denial of those three instalments of our DA during the pandemic period.  As the Chief Economic Advisor would doubtless claim, Delhi's smog is revenue neutral. Or, to put it in the more easily comprehended language of our Finance Minister, our IQ is not falling, our SQ ( Stupidity Quotient) is rising.

MAN'S BEST FRIEND DESERVES BETTER

    There are certain acknowledged attributes of a civilised and humane society and these have nothing to do with GDP or Per Capita Income or how many billionaires a country can boast of. Yes, prosperity does, or should, take a country up the civilisational ladder but it is not a given, and New India is the living proof of this. Even as we edge towards becoming the fourth largest economy in the world, as a society we are fast losing our gentility and becoming more brutal, to each other and to other living things.

   One of the markers of a humane society is the manner in which we treat animals, and in this respect our track record is dismal. I will not talk here about the horrendous slaughter of wild animals for "bush meat", or of the rampant, illegal trade in exotic wild species: these are distant from the lives of the average Indian. I will talk instead about animals that are closer to us, have been living with man for thousands of years, and have earned the description of " Man's best friend." I will talk about that one animal which has abandoned its wild and free roaming ancestry in favour of living with homo sapiens, and how we are returning that trust by betrayal and cruelty. Yes, dear reader, I am talking about the humble and loyal dog.

   India will have an estimated 30 million pet dogs by 2023, and the pet care industry is valued at half a billion dollars per annum. It is harder to arrive at the number of stray/ street dogs, the figures varying between 15 million and 60 million, depending on whether you want to believe the government or independent researchers/ animal care activists. Our treatment of both categories can be appalling, lacking in compassion, a scientific approach or even a cause and effect co-relation.

   Most pet/ dog owners are caring and responsible, but of late a new breed of nouveau-rich owners has appeared, for whom dogs are as much of a status symbol as their cars and villas. They have no real love for animals, haven't the foggiest idea of how to care for their pets, but will think nothing of spending upto Rs. 100,000 for an exotic breed they can flaunt in their club or kitty party. But they will not bother to train them or bestow any personal attention on them, leaving them to the careless care of their minions. A dog for them is not a loving companion but a status symbol, to be cruelly discarded when they tire of them or when they have served their shallow purpose. We have all seen numberless videos of these types abandoning their dogs on roads or just throwing them out of their houses, with no thought of how these poor domesticated animals will survive on our callous streets.

   The problem with the stray/ streets dogs is more complex because it involves a govt.-public interface. It is a man made problem, as most civic issues are. Street dog numbers keep increasing because of uncleared garbage on the roads and public places, because hardly any urban body has a proper, science based sterilisation policy, or thinks it necessary to allocate resources for dog pounds or shelters. Hundreds of crores are spent on gaushalas but not even a pittance for dog shelters. ( I am not against the former, but surely all stray/abandoned animals need a humane shelter policy).

   Street dogs are not our sworn enemies, they are our creation, but an increasingly bigger section of the public ( mainly the so called educated(?), financially well off classes who create the garbage and abandon the animals) would like to see them exterminated by any means whatever, no matter how cruel or savage the method. Their hypocrisy and ignorance are all too evident in their behaviour and selective outrage. There are about 18000 deaths due to rabies every year in India, and that is 18000 too many. But they occur not only because a dog bites someone, but because of our failure to innoculate both pet and stray dogs, or to control their population, or to create dog shelters. I wish there was a similar outrage over the 31000 rapes every year or the 150000 traffic deaths or the 12000 deaths in railway related accidents every year. More people die every day in Mumbai from falling off overcrowded trains than from rabies, but I don't see any outrage against the Railway Board or the Railway Minister. The helpless dogs are easier targets, aren't they ?

   The worst culprits in this respect are the RWAs ( Resident Welfare Associations), the gate keepers of the gated communities which think they can keep the real world out by paying a hefty maintainence fee and hiring a horde of security guards. Remember, these are the same people who threw out their maids and cooks and drivers during the Covid and lockdown periods, so perhaps it's not at all surprising that they now wish to send all dogs to the gas chambers. The couple of recent incidents in NOIDA saw their savagery and inhumanity on full display, lusting for canine blood on prime time TV.

   Most RWAs are headed by people who have been irrelevant all their lives to the larger scheme of things, but now behave like petty tin-pot dictators, passing all kinds of illegal directives about pets; some have even banned pets! All these are against the orders and guidelines of courts and the Animal Welfare Board, but these worthies continue to froth at the mouth in front of TV cameras and equally ignorant anchors, whenever a dog bites someone. The residents of these RWAs are equally bad, parading their pathological hatred of dogs as civic indignation. They continue to burst crackers long after Diwali ( the pollution probably causing many more deaths than dog bites), unmindful of the suffering of these dumb animals: at least the pets can cower in their flats, but the poor strays have no hiding place. This year, a street dog was found dead in front of our Society the morning after Diwali, dead from a heart attack brought on by the crackers.

  The Municipal authorities, of course, are a class apart in their savagery and sadism. When driven to some knee-jerk action by apoplectic anchors, they become dog catchers, lassoing the poor animals and dragging them, screaming and struggling, into their vans with totally unwarranted violence. After the incident at the Lotus Boulevard Society in Noida last month, a pregnant bitch who was dragged away died of injuries a few days later; there is no news of her pups. Such behaviour is inhumane and totally unnecessary.

   There are plenty of animal welfare groups and NGOs who are willing to render their help and services in feeding, sheltering , treating and even sterilising these stray dogs, but our civic bodies have failed to utilise their services; worse, they are treated like adversaries and busy bodies. The govt. should accept that it lacks  the expertise, knowledge, motivation and mind set to tackle this problem, and should therefore partner with these voluntary bodies, assisting them financially and in other ways to resolve the issue in a humane, caring and effective manner.

   And finally, the judiciary. The courts could have played an effective role in nudging both society and the administration to act sensibly and with compassion, but they have only nibbled at the matter. Worse, their orders have at times been inconsistent, erratic and with no scientific basis. The Delhi High Court showed both gravitas and solicitude by ordering that stray dogs can be fed by RWA residents, but only at designated spots. But in a recent order that defies belief the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has banned their feeding in public. It has further compounded this by another irrational direction- that those who want to feed street dogs should first adopt them and keep them in their own houses! For God's sakes, it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that any animal which is well fed is less dangerous than one which is starving! Feeding strays is a public service, apart from being a kind act. As for mandatorily adopting them, by the same logic we should also be adopting all the beggars and vagrants we give alms to on the roads, or all the victims of man made and natural disasters for whom we make donations ! Citizens can only do so much; for the rest we pay taxes to the government.

   It's not hard to despise these cynophobic people, and the paranoia and ignorance that masquerades as public concern or judicial wisdom. But I also pity them, for they will never know the only pure and selfless love in this world, apart from a mother's love for her child- the unquestioning love of a dog for his master or mistress. They are the poorer for that, though they are probably ignorant of that too.