A CITIZEN'S WISH LIST FOR A BATTERED HIMACHAL AND SHIMLA

   Now that the rains have mercifully abated in Himachal, the various Whatsapp groups have offered their anodyne prayers for the state, donations have been made to the CM's Relief Fund to assuage consciences, and bureaucrats have made the right noises to cover up their silence when  the environment was being raped over the years, it is time to step back, take stock of the situation and take hard decisions for the future. I have been in Himachal since 1976 and have never witnessed the kind of devastation that has occurred over the last one month. A few landslides, road collapses and some flooding has always been par for the course in this mountainous state, but the extent, intensity and ferocity of nature's backlash this year is unprecedented and should be an eye-opener for not only the officials and politicians, but also the citizens of the state, who are just as culpable for the disaster.

   It would be fair to state that no Chief Minister of this state has ever had to confront the situation that Mr. Sukhu now has to face. The challenges before him are enormous, his resources limited, the attendant politics bound to be opportunistic and vicious: nothing brings out the worst in an Indian politician as a natural calamity. He is up to his eye-brows in monitoring the rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts, but it is now time for him to start taking some tough decisions too, in order to demonstrate his resolve to correct the horrendous mistakes of the past. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he is already late in taking these decisions.

  The Chief Minister needs to announce, and implement, the following measures immediately to show that he means business:

[1] Repeal the Shimla Development Plan 41 (SDP 41) and withdraw the state's appeal against its rejection by the NGT/ HP High Court. This SDP 41, which proposes to double Shimla's population by 2040 (!), allow construction in the city's 17 Green Belts, prohibited Core and Heritage Zones, and permit 5+1 floors (as against the existing 2+1) in the rest of the city, is nothing but a suicide note or a death warrant for Shimla, and probably the worst policy document ever produced by its government. Shimla has been brought to its knees even without these calamitous liberalisations, and the SDP 41 will take it the way of Pompei. The SDP should go immediately, and not await a Supreme Court adjudication (which in any case does not inspire much confidence on environmental matters). The Executive conceived this monstrosity, the Executive should bury it.

[2] Make a public declaration that there shall NEVER be any regularisation of illegal buildings in the state (of which there are reported to be about 17000). It has been frequent regularisation policies in the past (six at last count) by all governments which have allowed this monster to grow in the womb of expectation, and led to the explosion of the type of buildings which have been collapsing in the recent rains, taking a toll of human lives. This includes many government constructions too, which have been at the fore-front of these violations, confident in their sovereign immunity. This must stop, and this dangling electoral carrot must be banished for all times.

[3] Begin the process of decongesting and deconcretising Shimla and Manali NOW. Impose a complete ban on all construction in Shimla, Manali, Dharamshala, McLeodganj, Solan, with immediate effect, even the ongoing ones. Given the negligent and complicit manner in which building plans have been passed, and the total failure to monitor their implementation by the TCP Department, all must be treated as suspect and subjected to a rigorous review and physical inspection before being given a green signal: for this to happen, a suspension of all building activity in the town is necessary. No new construction should be permitted. A separate policy for repairs only could be formulated thereafter. This harsh measure may infringe on the rights of an individual, but it is in the larger public interest and protects the right of the majority.

[4] Stop the registration of any new hotels, home-stays, holiday homes and guest houses in Shimla and the towns mentioned above, forthwith. They have neither the structural, traffic, space or infrastructural capacity to cater to any more tourists or vehicles. The "chhola bhatura" kind of tourism we have been promoting so far cannot be allowed to destroy the environment, livelihoods and economy of the rest of the state any more: let us not forget that though tourism contributes about 8% of the state's GDP, there remains the other 92% which has been held hostage for far too long to tourism interests. This imbalance has to be corrected.

[5] Stop immediately the construction of any more four-lane highways; even for sanctioned projects, where work is yet to start revert to improved two lane highways to avoid further cutting of mountains and dumping of muck. The recently tendered Kaithlighat- Dhalli four lane project should be converted into a two lane highway.We don't need expert committees of the NHAI to examine this issue- the massive destruction which these four lane abominations have caused can be seen all along the length of the Kiratpur-Manali, Pathankot-Mandi and Parwanoo-Solan highways. The Himalayas are no place to carve out 35 and 45 meter wide roads: let Mr. Gadkari earn his place in the Guinness Book of Records by ravaging the plains- the mountains are too fragile too accommodate his ambitions.

[6]  The conceptual process of reducing the environmental and infrastructural load on Shimla must commence immediately, without waiting for the promised Supreme Court Expert Committee. There is no time for that, there already exist enough reports of competent specialists, there are enough collapsed buildings, denuded hillsides, fallen trees and dead people to conclude that Shimla cannot support a population of 250,000 people, 100,000 cars and 70000 tourists a day. Appoint a committee under the Chief Secretary to suggest ways to reduce the city's population by at least 25% by 2035. This objective could be dove-tailed into the plan for creating a satellite township in Jathiadevi recently announced by the govt. This could even become a model template for other groaning towns like Manali, Solan, Mandi and Dharamshala.

[7] Consider seriously the idea of creating a Beas Valley Regulatory and Development Authority, in order to bring some administrative coherence to this ravaged valley, especially the stretch from Palchan to Pandoh. The Beas valley (including its tributaries, the Parbati, Sainj, Jiwa Nal and Tirthan) , is a multi sectoral hub of Himachal's economy, catering to tourism, adventure sports, horticulture, hydel power, mining. It is also a strategic gateway to Ladakh and the district of Lahaul-Spiti. The uncoordinated approach of different departments has currently made the valley a ruined mess; this beautiful valley needs a comprehensive development plan which supports the economy and simultaneously preserves its unmatched natural environment, and an agency which can also act as a regulator. This is not possible with different departments lacking an overall view and working in their own silos. The Deputy Commissioner cannot discharge this function, given his multifarious responsibilities.

This is my bucket list for the immediate future; much more will need to be done in the medium and long term, like; stopping this frenzy of tree felling in the towns, using them as alibis for our own greed and cupidity; removing encroachments and even sanctioned buildings on the water-courses and traditional nullahs without fear or favour, even if they are govt. buildings; reviewing the hare-brained proposal to channelise rivers; legislation to ban any construction below the HFL (High Flood Level) of rivers; reining in the mushrooming of hotels and home-stays; assessing the carrying capacities of various towns and regions; imposing blanket bans on mining in rivers and streams, imposing a moratorium on new hydel projects, especially in geologically sensitive areas such as Lahaul-Spiti and Pangi, and so on.

Mr. Sukhu, the Chief Minister, has a challenge on his hands which no Chief Minister before him had ever had to contend with. But it is also an opportunity for him to show that Indian politics can still throw up leaders. The govt. must demonstrate unequivocally that it has the political will to be a part of the solution, not the problem. At stake is, not his career, but the very survival of his state.

START-UPS AND SCREW-UPS

    These are challenging times for government pensioners, of which horde I am one. One suspects that the government resents the fact that we now live much longer, notwithstanding the tender care dished out by the CGHS. Pensions, or at least parts of them, are denied to us on the grounds that we have not submitted timely proof of being alive, or that we are brain dead (most unfair, since being brain dead was a condition of our service and an essential requirement for being promoted to the Apex scale), or that Covid merits a cut in our pensions in the unfortunate event of our surviving it. And now the government has armed itself with another reason- misconduct. It has amended the rules to authorise it to withhold/ cut our pensions if we commit any grave misconduct.

   Misconduct has not been defined in the rules, so it can extend from any criticism of Mr. Modi's suits to asking Mrs. Sitharaman why she doesn't eat onions to blowing a flying kiss to any of our population of 140 crores, especially large ladies in colourful saris. Now, this last one is an issue for pensioners specifically. Our days of French kisses, Butterfly kisses and even the Eskimo kisses are now mere memories, with the wives having moved on to bhajans and discourses by Sadhguru; flying kisses, therefore, are our only fall-back option (though a risky one, since it involves a hand-eye-lip coordination which may be a Kate- walk for Rahul Gandhi but stretches our Alzheimer effected faculties to the limit). And yet, it may lead to a loss of pension.

   Take me. I subsist on my pension, and whatever I can cadge from the good wife between visits to her kitty parties. It's not that I have not tried to supplement my income after retirement. I tried for a good two years to get the government to offer me some reemployment as a consultant, advisor, side- kick or assorted hack. Getting a ticket to fight elections was also explored through some Shuklas in U.P currently out on bail in various cases . None of it worked, not even the last one, and for a good reason: why should any political party offer a ticket to a retired joker when there are so many serving ones lining up for the lottery? Can't argue with that impeccable logic, folks.

  So now, on the off chance that one of my flying kisses lands on the wrong tarmac, I have decided to start a consultancy of my own- as a divorce consultant. The idea occurred to me last week when I was reading Anurag Mathur's book The Department of Denials, where the protagonist considers it briefly as a career option but rejects it for journalism as offering more potential since divorces in India were few and far between.

  But that book was written in 1998, and times have changed. Thanks to Facebook, Instagram and Beti Padhao (we'll forget that bit about Beti Bachao for the nonce), divorce rates in India are now showing a healthy increase, for which the NDA govt. has yet to take credit. Doubtless, Mrs. Smriti Irani will do so as soon as she gets over her obsession with Rahul Gandhi, silly soul. Meanwhile, I've done my research on the subject. Divorce rates in India are about 1% of marriages, which is of course a cause for worry for Niti Aayog: the USA is at 50%, which is what we must aspire to if we wish to become the world's third largest economy by 2040, or whenever Mr. Piush Goyal decrees. But things are looking up of late: nowadays Gen Next is marrying young so that they can get divorced early and live happily thereafter. 

  Why divorce counselling, you may well ask, why not marriage counselling? Well, I've tried my hand at the latter, but soon discovered that I needed some serious marriage counselling myself: in other words, the devil can hardly go around preaching scripture, what? Secondly, as a responsible citizen of Kartavayakaal (Amritkaal is now history) it is my duty- kartavya- to divide rather than to unite. The government is doing this efficiently at the macro level but we citizens have to do our bit too at the micro level, and what better way to do so than to divide families ? Since families are the bed-rock of societies, begin by dividing families, and very soon we will have attained the ideal Kartavyakaal. And what better way to split families than to hasten them to a speedy divorce?

   I do feel that I am supremely qualified to offer consultancy on divorce matters. After 46 years of wedded bliss I have realised that though marriages are made in heaven, so are thunder and lightning, and every marriage needs a lightning rod. Secondly, the IAS has taught me that when you have dug yourself into a hole and hit rock bottom, you should stop digging and haul yourself out by the scruff of your pants. Invaluable knowledge that should be the basis for a successful post pension career.

   Sceptics may say that, given the existing abysmal divorce rate in India, there is no scope for a divorce consultant. To them I cite the case of BATA entering India in 1932. At the time Tomas Bata, from Czechoslovakia, sent an officer to explore the potential for setting up a shoe manufacturing company in India. This chappie went around the towns and villages and reported that there was absolutely no scope for a shoe company in India as no one here wore shoes. Excellent, said Tomas, this means we have an unlimited market for shoes in India, and no competitor! The rest, as they say, is history with a capital H, and I'm a good student of history.

  The current rate of divorce in India may be 1.1% but it's going up by 50% per annum, thanks to Netflix, Zomato, flavoured condoms, and the Supreme Court ruling that adultery is no longer a crime. I believe that incompatibility (he wants to watch Arnab Goswami while she wants to watch Anjana Om Kashyap) is now adequate grounds for a divorce, as is denial of sex, which is now a fundamental right. More and more people are now discovering that their gender at birth had been wrongly classified and that they are married to the wrong sex! Therefore, as long as the institution of marriage exists, divorces will flourish, for, as Groucho Marx noted: " the main cause of divorce is marriage."

  I'm on to a good thing and have already started looking for a domain name for my start-up (which should more appropriately be called a "screw-up", given the nature of the business). I applied for <divorce.com> on the lines of <matrimony.com> but that's been taken up by Larry King who fully deserves it with his eight divorces, and counting. Maybe I'll settle for < fangs and claws.com > in honour of the dentist/ manicurist couple who fought tooth and nail to get a divorce. As Confucius said to the Director of Star Wars: May di vorce be with you.

HIMACHAL-- "PLANNING" FOR MORE DISASTERS ?

    As I write this on the 9th of August the famed Kullu- Manali National Highway has been closed since the 11th of July, and the much hyped Parwanoo- Solan one has also been shut down since the 2nd of August, with no prospect of it being reopened in its original form for quite a few weeks. The Manali (right bank) highway might take months, if not years, to restore. The Pathankot- Mandi highway is also blocked. The mountains, and their rivers, have shown who is the boss in these terrains.

   Everyone is (naturally) blaming the rains, but the real villains are our policy makers-politicians and bureaucrats- and the engineers of the NHAI and PWD. The former have for years been ignoring the pleas of environmentalists and locals to stop this reckless road and dam building, and the latter have either given short shrift to basic engineering principles or a long rope to their contractors for reasons which are obvious. In the process not only have thousands of crores of tax-payers' money gone down the khad, literally, but hundreds of private houses, buildings and cars have been either washed away or damaged, and dozens of lives lost. 

   The state PWD Minister, Mr. Vikramaditya Singh, has written a piece in THE TRIBUNE on the 4th of August in which he has asked for a paradigm shift in road planning and construction in the Himalayas (without actually calling for a halt to this epidemic of four-laning which has swept the state of late). He has stressed on criminal accountability for the lapses which have resulted in  500+ roads being damaged/ destroyed in the recent rains, causing a loss of Rs. 5000 crores to the state, which cannot even pay DA instalments to its employees and pensioners on time. Is this a mea culpa moment for him, or is he simply passing the buck to others, mainly his predecessors? For the fact is that any accountability must begin with the politicians and policy makers of the state who have been sanctioning and funding road projects on a scale which would impress even Mr. Gadkari, without any concern for geology, engineering principles, the need for so many roads(especially the four lane monstrosities), the interests of ecology or the welfare of local residents.

   The evidence of cupidity, stupidity and worse is now beginning to pile up faster than the silt in the Gobindsagar reservoir. The Chief Minister himself has claimed that it was the faulty four-laning of the Mandi-Kullu road which has resulted in the flooding of the Larji HEP, stoppage of generation of power for months: he has demanded compensation of Rs. 650 crores from the NHAI. It now emerges that while four-laning this stretch the NHAI intruded 4 metres into the riverbed of the Beas! A criminal case of negligence and corruption has been filed against the NHAI and its contractor for the collapse of the Parwanoo- Solan highway. The High Court has taken cognizance of the unscientific cutting of hills for road construction and has summoned the Attorney General of India to offer some explanations. The NHAI Director has admitted that they have made many mistakes as they had no previous experience of building in the Himalayas, and that this has been a "learning experience" for them. I wonder if this provides any solace to the thousands who have paid the price for being treated as guinea pigs by incompetent engineers with degrees from dubious institutes.

   Himachal's best known environmental NGO, the Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, has written to the President of India protesting this kind of "development" and demanding a high powered committee to probe the causes for the multiple disasters. It has maintained that hydel projects and road construction, with their consequential deforestation, weakening of the mountain strata, silting of rivers and raising of river beds, are the main reasons for the damage. The destruction in Pandoh and lower Mandi, the market at Sainj, the village of Kasol are now proved to have been caused by the sudden and belated discharge of waters from the Larji, Parbati III projects and the Pandoh Dam. Thousands of trees and sleepers carried by the flood waters reveal that large scale and illicit felling of trees has been taking place under the cover of these projects- more than 1000 trees have been retrieved from just the Pong dam reservoir!

  One would have expected the state government, NHAI and other policy makers to have taken a step back from these "learning experiences", pause these projects and review the disastrous direction in which they they have been taking the state so far. Only one Minister so far, Shri Harsh Vardhan, Industries Minister, has issued a statement on 9th August asserting that four laning of roads is not suitable for the mountains. This is heartening, but the government as a whole appears to have doubled down on its mistakes and seems intent on repeating them even more aggressively.

  The Chief Minister has announced that, to bypass the sliding mountainside on the Parwanoo- Dharampur stretch, the NHAI will now bore tunnels into the mountains. Is he serious or does he have a macabre sense of humour? Having devastated the mountains from the outside he now proposes to disembowel them from the inside, making matters worse and generating more millions of tonnes of muck to choke the rivers and water courses? Doesn't the obvious occur to him and his team of advisors- stabilise the sliding portions of the highway, stop cutting into the hillside any further, restrict this stretch of the road to just the original two lanes. This applies to all damaged portions of all four lane highways, including the almost obliterated Kullu- Manali road. Instead, reports and visuals now indicate that the NHAI has begun "restoring" the Kullu- Manali highway by repeating its earlier mistakes- dumping more earth and rocks on the river bed in the classic "cut and fill" method to restore the damaged portions !

  Even more mind boggling was the announcement by the Deputy Chief Minister on the 8th of August that the government has prepared a DPR for channelising the Beas river along its entire length from Palchan (above Manali) to Kullu, a linear distance of about 30 kms. He has sought Rs. 1650 crores from the Centre for the purpose. This is the best indication that the government has learnt nothing from the recent (and earlier disasters) and is hell-bent on inflicting even greater environmental calamity on the state just to keep some voters happy. The Dy CM should know that the Beas is no tame waterway like the Gomti in Lucknow or the Sabarmati in Gujarat; it is a mountain river, a torrent that roars down thousands of feet with a velocity that carries thousands of tonnes of silt, rocks and boulders that obliterates every thing in its path. The river is erratic, rises and falls abruptly with the rains in its catchment area. It cannot be channelised: the sheer force of the waters will erode the embankments in no time (as it did with the four laning), the detritus it carries, unable to spread out, will raise the river bed in the channel and reduce its capacity, leading to even more flooding inevitably.

  Furthermore, any hare brained channelisation scheme completely ignores the portents of climate change and the increasing EWEs (Extreme Weather Events). Here is just one statistic to prove this point: according to official data the rainfall in Kullu district this year between 7th to 11th July was 280.1 mm against the norm of 30.7 mm- an excess of 812%, the highest in the state. (The state average, incidentally, was 436%). During this same period the Beas rose even higher than its historical HFL ( High Flood Level) which, I learn, was recorded in the 1950s. No channelisation can adequately provide for such fluctuations (which are bound to increase with global warming); moreover, by constricting the natural flow of the river, the channel will further raise the level of the waters to even more dangerous levels. It is no coincidence that the left bank road between Manali and Kullu, which was spared the attention of the NHAI and not widened, still functions with only minor damage. Surely there's a lesson here staring us in the face ?

  Why can't the government accept the changing realities and learn to live with this river instead of trying to tame it with the inadequate forces of obsolete engineering? Allow the rivers of the state to flow in their natural channels, stop the encroachments on their flood plains by prohibiting any construction upto HFL and completely banning any mining activity in them, stop throwing muck into the rivers, stop obstructing the rivers by building dams. These dams have become lethal weapons as we have seen year after year in Uttarakhand and Himachal, and as has been predicted by any number of expert committees and environmentalists. Their destructive power will only be amplified with the EWEs which are gradually becoming the norm. It is time to also review their protocols and SOPs for release of waters: the discharge should be dictated by considerations of safety of people and property downstream, not by calculations of profit and units generated.

  Right now, unfortunately, every politician, bureaucrat and engineer is using climate change as an excuse to deflect their mistakes and to avoid accountability; it should instead be used as a trigger to change their mindsets, policies and templates of development. They don't have much time left.

THE EVIL THAT MEN ( AND GOVERNMENTS ) DO LIVES AFTER THEM......

 

              THE EVIL THAT MEN ( AND GOVERNMENTS ) DO LIVES                  AFTER THEM…….

 

The run up to the 2024 elections has begun. Motivated pre-poll surveys are popping up everywhere and confuse us on a daily basis, the Opposition has formed the I.N.D.I.A alliance whose future looks as precarious as that of the country it is named after, the BJP’s own 38 party alliance (not including the ED [Enforcement directorate], CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] and IT [Income Tax Dept.) appears to be more F.I.R based than ideology based, Rahul Gandhi is girding up his loins and sneakers for Bharat Jodo Yatra 2, Mr. Modi has already declared himself a winner in 2024, and the Supreme Court has just made his job easier by giving the redoubtable Mr. Mishra of the  Enforcement Directorate another extension of 45 days. The “satta” bazaar, our indigenous political stock exchange, has not yet started giving odds on the winner, but the nation is in for a tough time even if the opposition alliance were to form the government. Let us consider some of the implications if this last possibility were to come true.

Every predecessor government invariably leaves behind some desiderata that the succeeding regime has to clear up. But what the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) will bequeath is a veritable mountain of debris, not only in metaphorical terms, but also in terms of demolished houses, mosques, laws, basic rights, unemployed youth, forests and cars under the scrapping scheme. Removing this debris to revert to the status quo ante will be no less arduous than the twelve labours of Hercules or asking the Chinese to revert to the pre Galwan days. The danger, however, is that the new government may not want to reverse some of the NDA’s disastrous contributions to our shaky democracy! Let me explain this peculiar dilemma with reference to two observed phenomena.

First, in the last ten years the NDA has knocked federalism out of the ball park like a Babe Ruth homerun. It has done so by the coercive use of central regulatory agencies like the ED, CBI, NIA (National Investigative Agency) and Central Armed Police Forces, the creative mis-use of Governors, the unholy exercise of executive discretion through institutions like the Reserve Bank of India and Finance Commissions, amendments of rules to subvert and intimidate the All India Services, arm twisting the judiciary to have its way in intruding on state territory, figuratively and physically.

Second, Constitutional and autonomous institutions- the Election Commission; various Commissions relating to human rights, women, scheduled caste and tribal welfare; Regulatory Authorities; Universities and other education related Councils; Union Public Service Commission, banks - have all been packed with fellow travellers of the ruling ideology and have been brought to heel. They serve the interests of the hegemonic ruling party, not the citizens of the country, ensuring it continues to have a stranglehold on power from which dislodging it becomes almost impossible.

This twin-track policy has made it easy for any ruling dispensation to impose its ideology and policies on the entire country, even to insidiously shape the future. The NDA has done all the dirty work in developing this template- will the new dispensation be able to resist the temptation to forego this power?  Will it be tempted to continue these policies to keep the BJP, in turn, at bay? The temptation to do so would be great; the saving grace could be that a coalition government would be inimical to practices that tend to centralise power.

It may not be easy going even where the new government wishes to roll back some of the more pernicious elements of the present regime. Take those three pillars of administration: the civil services, the police and the judiciary. All three have been corroded to the point where they bow to the dictats of the ruling party and not that of the Constitution or the rule of law.

The civil services, state and central, especially in the cow belt, have drunk deep of the majoritarian potion and have begun believing in the insidious narrative of Hindu rashtra, a Vishwaguru super power, a plutocracy driven economy, putting the minorities in their place, the erosion of rights as a necessary concomitant to “progress”. (Remember Mr. Amitabh Kant's "too much democracy" obiter dictum?) Being a member of various IAS groups, I can see this happening before my eyes. These are the bureaucrats of Amritkaal, not Patel’s India. Can they be re-programmed by a new dispensation?

The police, under the present regime, have only reaffirmed their status as the last potent vestiges of colonialism, whether it be in JNU (Jawahar Lal University), AMU (Aligarh Muslim University), Kathua, Hathras, Bhima Koregaon, Manipur or a score of other places. Their disregard of laws, rights, empathy and even orders of the courts has been encouraged by the governments of the day and reluctance of the judiciary to assert itself. They have become a power unto themselves: is it possible to rein them back now?

The judiciary has more or less regressed back into the ADM Jabalpur days; it barks quite often but will not bite; as Alexander Pope said: willing to wound but afraid to strike. It flatters to deceive but in all seminal matters so far – Article 370, Places of Worship Act, Electoral bonds, EVMs, UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) detentions, habeas corpus, Manipur, extension of service of the ED Director, misuse of Money Bills, - its pronouncements and lack of firm action only appears to have helped the government, not the common citizen. I can’t explain why this should be so: if it is intimidation, surveillance and pressure, perhaps a new government can cure the rot; but if it is the same sneaking sympathy which the civil services have acquired for the ethno-majoritarian ideology then any new government has its job cut out.

However, the biggest challenge before any new government shall be: how to roll back the clock on the uncaring monster that Indian society has become in these last nine years? We have become a brutalised civilisation, under the tutelage of a government that lacks any modicum of compassion, whether it be for a victim of rape, murder or communal lynching; for the tribal evicted from his forests to enable an industrialist to make a few more billions; for the girl child denied an education because she wants to wear a hijab; for the marginalised landless labourer who cannot get the benefits of PDS (Public Distribution System) or MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Act) because he doesn’t possess an Aadhar card; for the families evicted from “encroached” lands where they have been residing for decades; for the petty criminal or accused whose house is bulldozed to rubble without sanction of any law. It is an endless list of the suffering who no longer exist for India’s elite, middle classes and what Ravish Kumar calls “ housing society uncles”. We displayed this in full measure when we threw out the migrants from our cities during Covid, when we fail to show the same level of outrage at the rape and murder of tribal women in Manipur as we had so heroically displayed during the Nirbhaya episode. This civilisational regression of the last nine years has to be reversed by any new dispensation, for a society which  lacks compassion for the poor and marginalised is not fertile ground for the growth of democratic values and the egalitarian spirit. This, however, is easier said than done, for it requires a towering paragon of moral leadership which the country sorely lacks.

There will be much more of the inequity and malevolence  that a new regime will have to contend with and vanquish- laws that have demolished our rights, despoiling of the natural environment, blatant infringement on privacy,  amendments to UAPA and Forest Conservation Act, the Data Protection Bill, the Delhi ordinance, Information Technology Act, CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and NRC (National Register of Citizens), to mention just a few. Thousands of dissidents will have to be released from jails. The armed forces will have to be freed from the shackles of a creeping ideological takeover (with, of course, the spineless acquiescence of its top brass who cannot see beyond the next star on their epaulettes) which is chipping away at their glorious traditions and espirit de corps. The media, currently a lifeless corpse which gives off more stench than news, will have to be resurrected and allowed to function without fear, favour or financial preference. Some of their hate-spewing anchors will have to be prosecuted for inciting communal animosity over the years. There will be truth and reconciliation, but there should also be accountability and punishment.

And then there are also the various financial transactions, disinvestment of PSUs (public Service Undertakings) at throw-away prices, the bad loans of Rs. 12.50 lakh crores incurred by banks during the nine years of NDA rule to oblige powerful cronies, contracts, awards, tenders- of airports, seaports, slum improvements, highways, defence purchases, mines, power projects- crying out for inquiry and investigation. There is a veritable dog’s breakfast awaiting any new, non-BJP government, if at all any such dispensation can come into being in spite of the odds stacked against it. It will need a strong digestion to ingest this smorgasbord of misgovernance, brutality and religious fanaticism. But perhaps I am getting too far ahead of myself, for the question hanging in the air is: Will all this ever come to pass? I don't really know but, as the poet said: 

" Humko maalum hai

Jannat ki Haqeeqat

    lekin

Dil ko behlaane ko, Ghalib,

Yeh khayaal achha hai !"

[ I am not unaware 

Of the reality of the universe,

But

This fantasy, Ghalib, will serve 

To comfort your heart.]