A BIRDIE IN HAND IS WORTH AN EAGLE IN THE BUSH - MUSINGS ON GOLF

 The ever effervescent PG Wodehouse once said that golf, like measles, should be caught young as it builds character. For it takes a strong character to hit the ball on to the wrong fairway and yell FORE instead of F--K ! Unfortunately, I missed the bus on that one and discovered the game quite late in life, which goes some way in explaining my many failings. I have been playing golf for the last fifteen years now, give or take a year or two when I ran out of balls. The word "playing", however, should not be taken literally but as a figure of speech, denoting intention rather than accomplishment. As in: going shopping without actually buying anything, or going fishing without catching any fish, or going electioneering without winning any seats (also known as the Rahul Gandhi SOP), or, as as in the case of Joe Biden, speaking without saying anything. So has it been for me. According to my life-caddy, Neerja, who accompanies me to the golf course to ensure that I don't do any bodily harm to myself with my wild swings, I spend roughly 10% of the time on the fairway, the rest of the time being spent in the bushes looking for-you got it- my balls.

I'm a human compass: it doesn't matter in which direction I aim to drive the ball-it always goes north, usually causing some minor damage, like a Hezbollah rocket. Once I almost decapitated two tourists  at the Naldehra course in Shimla, and I've clobbered my good friend Yatish Sood so many times that he now goes off to his lovely retreat in Kangra whenever I'm slotted for a game. The flag on the greens is lowered to half mast whenever I'm playing. The informal economy of the Naldehra Golf Club, which is surrounded by dense forests, ravines and gullies, is largely dependent on me: I usually lose ten balls every time I stride on to the fairways, these are retrieved by the caddies at night, and sold back to me the next day at heavily inflated prices. I am proud to have created the circular economy which economists have been striving for for so long!

I have a handicap of 18, but that's only because that's the maximum of the scale; without any capping I would go off the scale, like the soprano Maria Callas when she has dined well. Which brings me seamlessly to what I've actually been meaning to write about- the peculiarities of this ancient game.

                                      

Golf was apparently invented in Scotland in the 16th century, purely by accident: a Scotsman was hitting small round stones with a stick one day and one of them went into a rabbit hole and killed the rabbit. The wife was so impressed with the free meat for dinner that she encouraged her husband to whack stones the whole day; it also got him out of her hair, and wives all over the world have been grateful to this far-sighted lady ever since. Because now golf has spread globally, it is played in 206 countries, more than the number of countries in the United Nations: the remaining ones are too small to fit in a golf course. Contrary to popular belief, it is golf and not scotch whiskey which is Scotland's biggest export. It was called golf because the Scots had used up all the other four letter words to describe the English.

As is to be expected, golf is just as peculiar as the country of its origin, where men wear skirts (you can get kilt if you laugh about it), dragons are unapologetically named after women, and the sausages are square shaped; Scotland is also the only country which is happy about global warming and rising sea levels: you see, they can sit on their cairns or sgurrs (mountains) and watch the English drown. The Mecca of golf is St. Andrews; Neerja had visited it once to watch the burly Scots playing there in their kilts. She told me that she saw more balls in one hour than what one can count in a day in a rugby locker room full of jocks. She brought me a St. Andrews golf cap; I've never worn it, it's too precious. 

There are other strange aspects of this game. Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at it. If you hit the ball to the left it's a hook, if to the right it's a slice, if by some chance you hit it straight it's a miracle. It's the only game I know of where the chappie with the lowest score is the winner. The lower your handicap the better player you are. The more books you read about golf, the worse your game becomes. A hole-in-one is  rarer than a triple century in cricket, and far more expensive because then you have to pay for the drinks. Shots are named after birds, the larger the bird-name the better the shot- birdie (one under par), eagle (two under), albatross (three under), condor (four under). I've never heard of anybody hitting a condor, because that would mean hitting a hole- in- one on a five par stretch- an impossibility. But miracles do happen, you know- who thought, for example, that BJP would win the Haryana elections? Or that the Ayodhya judgment was written by God, not judges?

If you're thoroughly confused by now, dear reader, you will realise why I hit more cows and fire engines than birdies. But I'm not giving up-didn't someone say that the greatest oak was once a little nut which held its ground?

A LEGACY THAT IS BEST FORGOTTEN

 These days Mr. D.Y. Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India,  is talking of, and worrying about, the legacy he will leave behind when he retires from the job next month. And well he might. He was elevated to this position at perhaps the most critical juncture in the nation's recent history, when every democratic and humanist principle was being crushed under an unstoppable electoral machine and a government on steroids. When his last four predecessors had let down the country and had walked away into an inglorious sunset with their sinecures and post retiral benefits. Never before had the nation nurtured such high expectations and vested so much hope in an heir apparent to the Chief Justice's chair. The legacy of Mr. Chandrachud will be that he too let the nation down.

Honesty, said Shakespeare, is the best legacy; sadly, his Lordship has been less than honest, with us, and to himself. At seminars, key-note speeches, valedictory functions, convocations- even in his obiter dicta- he has always hit the right notes: stressing on individual liberty, freedom of speech, religious pluralism, constitutional safeguards, the responsibilities of the court to hold the executive accountable. But within the sanitised confines of his courtroom he seemed to lack the courage of his convictions, leading many to wonder whether he had any convictions at all. In the words of Alexander Pope: he was willing to wound but afraid to strike. That is not the proper foundation for a judge's legacy.

The Supreme Court's records will speak for themselves in times to come. Justice Chandrachud had many opportunities to do the right thing, to restore the autonomy of institutions (appointment of Election Commissioners), to reign in rampaging state governments (the bulldozers of U.P., Nuh and Uttarakhand), to prevent the illegal surveillance of citizens (the Pegasus "inquiry" where the Union govt. dared to tell him that it would not cooperate!), the restoration of statehood (in Jammu and Kashmir), to restore legitimately elected governments brought down by totally illegal means (Maharashtra), to restore faith and credibility in the electoral process (the repeated petitions to return to paper ballots or do a hundred percent verification and matching of VVPATS), to question an unaccountable Election Commission on its dubious actions and decisions ( delay in uploading voter counts, non-issue of Forms 17C, mismatch in the votes cast and votes counted, failure to take action under the Model Code of Conduct against high functionaries of the government).                                                                                                                                                   Perhaps the worst of all was that, under his Lordship's watch, thousands of social activists, journalists. dissenters, academics continue to languish in jails without a trial or even bail. Omar Khalid's bail petitions have been adjourned, I believe, 14 times with a succession of judges recusing themselves without any explanation. The Koregaon accused are being released on bail in instalments, as if justice is a divisible commodity. Some of them have even died under these conditions (the 80 year old Stan Swami), or as a result of the inhuman treatment meted out to them while in custody, the most recent being Prof G.N. Saibaba, a man with 90% disability who was kept in jail for almost a decade without being convicted of any offence. And the most outrageous of all these stains on the court is that, when he was acquitted by the Bombay High Court, the Supreme Court took the unprecedented action of convening the very next day on a holiday, and stayed the High Court order! And which historian can ever forget the Ram Janam Bhoomi order, in which faith of the majority community, not legal evidence, was made the basis of a judgment that should shame any country or its judiciary? Or the photo of the Hon'ble judges celebrating the judgment with a dinner and wine at a five star hotel, a judgment which (as per press reports at the time) none of them signed- another first in our sorry history.

Under Justice Chandrachud's watch the Center was allowed to defenestrate the Collegium even further, with its tactics of delays, pick and choose, or simply sitting on the recommendations: he did make some noises initially, but then adopted a strategic silence. The same fate has met the dozens of habeas corpus petitions now interred in the registry of the court. The SEBI (Hindenberg) and Pegasus inquiries were never followed up to their logical conclusion, and the can of worms opened up with the Electoral bonds judgment was hastily shut again, an enforced closure of what had begun to look very much like a sovereign extortion racket. 

For all his high oratory about the majesty of the court and accountability of the executive, not a single govt functionary has actually been punished, to the best of my knowledge, not even the Returning Officer of the Chandigarh mayoral election who was caught red handed in an electoral "flagrante delicto" in an official video. Not the encounter specialists, the bulldozer bureaucrats, or the regulatory agencies, even when the Court held the arrests to be illegal both procedurally and on merits. It is true that Mr. Chandrachud himself was not directly responsible for all these commissions and omissions, dictated by other benches, but as the Chief Justice of the court he has to share the blame. He is, after all, the head of the institution, its chief administrator, the primus inter pares, and most important, the Master of the Roster. If you take credit for the thunder you must take the blame for the drought.

He watched in silence the creeping politicisation of some of the High Courts, their judges openly expressing allegiance to religions, the religious biases in their judgments, judges joining political parties and even standing for elections immediately after retiring, retired judges attending religious conclaves. The issue here is not about the legality of these predilections but about the spirit of the constitutional values they are supposed to uphold. As Justice Chandrachud himself was wont to remind us often, the spirit of a law is just as important as its letter. And therefore it was important for him to have spoken out loud and clear, to remind his brother judges of the inappropriateness of their behaviour, of the judiciary's own Restatement of Values of Judicial Life, which the Supreme Court had issued in 1997. The Chief Justice of India occupies a position on the country's moral pedestal much higher than his position on the  Warrant of Precedence- his every word carries weight and has the capacity to influence the nation's discourse. Given his fondness for preaching from the pulpit, it was incumbent upon him to have reiterated the moral and ethical red lines for the conduct of judges. By not doing so, he has, by default, become a party to the judiciary's decline during his tenure. 

To be fair, he has passed some praise-worthy judgments, as on decriminalising homosexuality, rights of transgenders etc. But the true test of a superior judge lies in his ability to stand up to the executive, and in this respect his judgments have been few and far between; in fact, it requires an effort to recall them. Far too much time was spent in grandstanding, wasting the court's time on issues it had no business getting into- the farmers' protest and the RG Kar Medical College cases are just two instances where he seemed to be playing to the gallery. Both cases have diminished the court's image- the farmers refused to heed its suggestions in the first one, and the doctors summarily rejected the orders to return to work. Perhaps someone should have reminded the Chief Justice of the first law of public administration- do not seek to expand your area of concern beyond your area of influence.

And even while he is on his way out, Justice Chandrachud will not give up his penchant for empty symbolism: just this week he has inaugurated his version of the statue of Justice, he calls it Lady Justice. The lady now does not have any blindfolds ( "justice is not blind"), and instead of a sword she now holds a copy of the Indian Constitution. I for one am unmoved by these histrionics, for to me the three monkeys of the Mahatma are today more reflective of the state of our justice system- blind, deaf and speechless.

One does not write this piece with any joy, but with a deep sense of regret at what could have been. Here was a man, a judge, who is a scholar, a decent human being, a compassionate individual, a penetrative legal acumen who could have done much to bring the country out of the morass it is being shoved into. The tragedy is not that he failed to do so, but that he chose not to. If only he had learnt from the words of that exemplar of virtuous service whose legacy will live on for generations, Mother Teresa: 

The world is changed by your example, not your opinions.

Farewell, your Lordship; we wish you well, notwithstanding your betrayal of the nation.    

VOODOO ECONOMICS - DON'T ILLEGALISE THE BRIBE- TAX IT !

 Many years ago, more years than I care to remember, I was posted as a probationer under district training in Mandi district of Himachal. On two days every week I had to sit with the Deputy Commissioner (DC) in his court when he heard grievances and received petitions from the public. The purpose was to give me an idea of the issues which concerned the public and how to deal with them on a one to one basis. One day a distraught PWD contractor presented himself before the DC and wanted to know what the officially approved rate for a bribe was in the department! He explained that he could not balance his budget for various works with any predictability as different officers wanted different amounts as bribes. He requested the DC to give him a copy of the G.O ( Government Order) in which the rates were specified. The DC assured the poor chap that he would try to get the order but in the interim he should not pay any bribe to anyone.

That was 50 years ago and nothing has changed during this period, it would appear, except that now the rates have gone up manifold under the effect of demonetisation, GST, digitisation of all transactions and PayTM. It is an axiom of the financial underworld that, the more difficult governments make the process of bribery, the higher the rates. Especially if most of this undeclared wealth is sucked out of the system by one entity through sophisticated and sovereign instruments like Electoral bonds and PM Cares!

Who says there's no transparency in this government? Last year local papers published an alleged rate list of the prevailing "baksheesh" in one of the police stations of a western UP district. Now, this is exactly what that supplicant in Mandi wanted, as an important element of ease of doing business. In another reported case in our most progressive state, this year itself, the peon or "chaprasi" of a Naib Tehsildar wrote a letter to the District Magistrate complaining that he was not being given his fair share of the bribes received in that office! He stated that it was his job to extract/collect the bribes, for which the going rate for peons was Rs. 1000/ per day, but he was being paid only Rs.500/- He also demanded that the going rate should be enhanced to keep pace with inflation. Both legitimate grievances, to my mind, when even the Finance Minister cannot afford to eat onions. ( Predictably, the said minion denied that he had written such a letter).

Just last week the press was agog with reports that some thieves had stolen Rs. 65 crores from the house of a retired but still powerful IAS officer from U.P. in a north India hill station. Now, that is the quantum of alleged bribes which brought down Rajiv Gandhi's government, but it is a sign of the Ram Rajya times that it cannot now lay low even a bureaucrat. The officer has not filed any police complaint- he's not stupid, see, that's why he got into the IAS. But efforts are reportedly being made behind the scenes to get his hard earned money back; I would not be surprised if Mossad is roped in to do the job, once they have finished off killing what remains of the Hezbollah leadership, that is.

Bribery-both the giving and taking-is inbuilt into our DNA, even before we evolved from the apes. As definitive proof one just has to go to the monkey infested Jakhoo temple in Shimla. Nine out of ten visitors there will have their handbag or phone snatched by a monkey: the ape will promptly climb a tree and will return your item only after you have proffered a bribe of a banana or orange ( these days they insist on hamburgers or pizza slices.) So bribery is nothing to be ashamed of- it is an inherited evolutionary trait, like stupidity and the urge to beat up wives.

Which is why I strongly believe that the government should stop fighting it and legitimise it. Economists, as usual, cannot agree on whether corruption is good or bad for a country's economy. One group maintains that it lowers GDP growth rates by discouraging foreign and even domestic investments. The other lot differs-it opines that in a heavily regulated and policed economy (like India), corruption should be viewed as "virtuous bribery"- it acts as a deregulation instrument, greases the wheels of the economy, cuts red tape, promotes quick decision making. A third lot feels that there is something like a Laffer's curve in corruption, i.e. bribery is good for the economy up to a certain point, but beyond that it becomes extortion and its benefits to the economy start declining. The jury is still out on this, just like it is in the bail applications of Umar Khalid.

I tend to go with the second lot, after observing the phenomenon at close quarters (sometimes too close!) for 35 years. In our country, without this grease nothing would ever get done- no roads, no bridges, no recruitments, no projects, no welfare schemes. So (and I'm applying for a patent for this idea), why should the government not get a slice of this virtuous pie? According to Prof Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari in their seminal book, Corruption in India: the DNA and RNA, the total quantum of bribery in India could add up to 1.26% of India's GDP, and at current levels  would be 300 billion US dollars. My suggestion, arrived at after much burning of the single malt, is that the govt. should make bribery legal and impose GST on it. The GST rate would, of course, have to be 28% since bribery is a " sin goods". This would net the exchequer almost 90 billion dollars per annum ! More than enough to pay for the PM's planes, cars, foreign peregrinations, self-publicity, Central Vistas, statues and even the dreaded MSP. A win-win if ever there was one.

The collateral benefits would also be welcome- winding up of the Enforcement Directorate, down sizing the Election Commission and the CBI, a full stop to arresting opposition Chief Ministers, etc. And do spare a thought for that poor IAS chap deprived of his hard-earned 65 crores- he will finally be able to lodge an FIR- after paying a bribe, of course.

" SLOW LIVING" AND THE BOB DYLAN PARAPROSDOKIAN

 At about this time last year my elder son quit his very well paying job as a senior executive in a multi-national: he had had enough of the El Dorado mirage sold by the IIMs and IITs. He had been working 14 hour days non-stop for 16 years, paying Rs. 65000 a month for a flat in Gurgaon where he just went to sleep, lunched and dined exclusively on Zomato and Food Panda, could never find the time to relax in our Purani Koti retreat near Shimla, his liver was beginning to get pickled in Blender's Pride. In short, he was on the verge of a burn out, maybe a couple of puffs away from being stubbed out like a cigarette. One day he saw the light, ignored Mr. Narayan Murthy's exhortation to work 70 hour weeks, regarding with justified suspicion Ms Sitharaman's pious advice to fight work pressure through "inner strength by reaching out to God." His decision to ignore her too was made easier, he told me later, by the possibility that by "God" she meant Mr. Modi, and since he himself "worked" 18 hours, reaching out to him would be futile (as Kangana Ranaut has recently discovered).                                                                                                                                      So, one fine foggy morning in Gurgaon he pinged his boss that he was quitting (that's how they do the hiring, firing and resigning these days, no "Dear sir, it is with profound regret that ..." letters as in our days), packed his suitcase and pooch in his car and joined us in Purani Koti. He now lives off his savings, work-from-home consultancy projects, articles on the auto world, and "revdis" from my pension whenever the state govt. periodically emerges from bankruptcy and doles it out to me. He now has the time to indulge in his passion for photography and gardening, and is currently trying to grow bananas and "peepul" trees at 7000 feet in an area which gets three feet of snow every winter! I'm personally sceptical of that last bit, but who knows- after all, they laughed at Satyanand Stokes when he brought apple plants from the USA, didn't they? And today Himachal is an apple state. If my son succeeds we may yet be a banana republic soon.

Welcome to the world of "Slow Living", the latest concept that is catching on with Gen X (or Gen Z) across the world. More and more of them are just chucking the rat race with its slave-driving, toxic work culture and sweat shop values which just last month took the lives of Anna Sebastian in Mangalore and Sadaf Fatima in Lucknow. These bright youngsters prefer to return back to nature, renewing relationships with family and friends, and doing what they WANT to do- not what neo-capitalism, voodoo economics and the Sanjiv Sanyals of the world expect them to do. Slow Living is the next best thing to a govt. job where you can effectively retire the day you join and nobody will even notice even as Pay Commissions keep hiking your salary and pension with predictable regularity. He has my full support: it is this generation which can perhaps save our once blue planet since my generation has completely abdicated its responsibility. 

This choice of life-style, however, is not all fun and games: it requires the making of responsible choices- in consumption, expenditure, manner of living- since one's income levels drop substantially. It forces one to make an inventory of the important things in life and discard the redundant, superfluous and the wasteful materialism inherent in the "keeping up with the Junejas " South Delhi mentality. It goes hand-in-hand with another trend being increasingly embraced by planet conscious Gen X- Minimalism.

Minimalism is simply "living with less" by decluttering one's physical spaces, reducing unnecessary consumption, seeking quality over quantity, travelling less, curation of possessions to have only the essentials, focusing on personal values rather than reacting to competitive pressures. This is what Slow Living is in essence, and I am now witnessing more and more youngsters consciously opting for this life style and minimalist framework. Just to cite examples of how this works: there is the "sniff test" for clothes- do your clothes need to be washed so frequently, consuming more water, soap, power? Sniff the clothes for malodorous smells- this will probably tell you that you could wear them for another couple of days before consigning them to the washing machine. (A single washing machine discharges 480 kgs of green house gases every year). Then there's the "one in, one out" principle: don't keep adding to your possessions unnecessarily- buy an item only as a replacement, not as an addition, discard the first before buying the second. "Tiny living" is another idea that is gaining traction- small homes (why do you need five bedrooms when it's just you and your wife and maybe one kid?), away from the congestion and pollution of metros, off-grid as regards power and water, self sufficient with solar and rain water harvesting.

A  minimalist life style is good for mother Earth too- the culture of over-consumption, so assiduously promoted by economists, governments and big corporates, has led to the depletion of natural resources and ravaging of forests, rivers, lakes and mountains. Reducing this demand for goods and products and minimising possessions lowers the strain on the natural environment, reduces waste, cuts down on carbon emissions. It is a far more sustainable model of life than the blind GDP growth driven models being foisted on us; in fact, I would go further and say that it is the ONLY life style choice which can save us and the planet from another extinction.

And here's the final, clinching argument which has eluded us but has been instinctively grasped by the younger generation- you are happier as a person when you have minimised your needs. This has been scientifically captured now in a concept which is known as the Easterlin Paradox. This states that happiness does not increase with more money. Happiness is directly proportionate to money up to a certain point, but once your basic needs are met more money does not mean more happiness. After this point happiness is defined, not by money, but by meaning of life, purpose, relationships, contribution to society. (The reader is probably reminded here of Maslow's theory of Hierarchy of Needs). In fact, without the latter components, after that point more money means more worries, tensions, fears and even depression. Bob Dylan put it in a much simpler, easy-to-understand language six decades ago when he sang: "When you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose...."

I'm glad our sons and daughters are beginning to hear this music.