IT'S NOW OFFICIAL-- WE ARE A NATION OF PARASITES

 A long, long time ago when people still read books and were not educated exclusively by Whatsapp forwards or Tik-Tok reels, Nirad Choudhry, the last Englishman in India, claimed in his book of the same name that India was a continent of Circe, where humans were turned into beasts. Now, 70 years later, he has been vindicated by no less an authority than the Supreme Court of India itself. In a recent judgment a bench of the Court termed the under privileged and poor of the country (there are 230 million of them, and 800 million get free rations) as "parasites", thereby improving upon Nirad Babu's formulation of mere beasts. It said, in effect, that the poor, the jobless, the homeless, the landless- the most vulnerable and helpless sections of our 1400 million people- were unjustly consuming the resources of the state through subsidies, doles and "freebees" and implicitly castigated them for their sorry fate. "Are we not creating a class of parasites?" it asked, going on to lament that "they are getting free rations without doing any work!" A demonstration of empathy not seen since the times of Nero.

The Court, in its zeal to sound both learned and neo-liberal, has unwittingly provided its imprimatur and endorsement to the insensitive, cold hearted and callous attitude of the present government to the ordinary citizen of the country, whose fate it is to be counted at election time and then to be consigned to the dungeons of oblivion. Public suffering, hardship and grievances does not matter to it so long as it continues winning elections. This has been amply demonstrated in the last ten years on numerous occasions when the government has not batted an eyelid to provide relief or redress wrongs, or to even display some compassion: the interminable queues at banks and ATMs, in the rain and cold, during the disaster of demonetisation; the year long protest of farmers resulting in more than 600 deaths, the ill-conceived and sadistic Covid lockdown forcing millions of the urban poor to WALK back to their distant villages in the searing heat, being de-contaminated and beaten by police on the way; the messed up Covid policies resulting in more than 40 lakh deaths according to WHO and international observers, the hundreds of corpses floating in the Ganga, the dead in the Kumbh hyper marketing. Even as I write this the Railways are herding Mahakumbh pilgrims into trains like sardines, 5000 in a train meant for 1200, simply so that Mr. Vaishnaw, the Railway Minister can notch up a few records like his Chief Ministerial colleague in Uttar Pradesh. The fact that people are dying in this pursuit of Guinness records and brownie points from an uncaring Prime Minister is, of course, of no concern. For aren't these pesky people parasites who deserve nothing better?

 The Hon'ble court would do well to realise that mere obiter dicta of this type only dehumanises people and brutalises an already brutal government. A solution needs a deeper understanding of the origins of the problem. If people do not work it is because there are no jobs for them. If they need free rations it is because they do not have the money to buy them, if they are homeless it is because millions have to forcibly migrate to cities for employment. The Court would have done well to reflect on where these hundreds of millions of "parasites" came from. For they did not have an immaculate conception, my lords, but were birthed by consistently unwise, avaricious and exploitative policies of past and present governments. They are not poor out of choice, or dependent on governments because they are lazy, but because they have been reduced to this state by governments they have elected over the years, by policies that have consistently favoured just the top ten percent of the population. Consider some of them:

* More than 50 million people have been displaced by projects- dams, cement plants, power projects, urbanisation, highways, mines, airports.  Rarely do these projects improve their lives, for the benefits flow to cities, industrialists and politicians. They are not parasites, they are internally displaced persons, refugees in their own country.

* The destruction and denudation of the environment which accompanies these projects has immense adverse impacts on the livelihoods of the rural population, forcing more and more to migrate to urban areas. This is particularly true of the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan states. Just the havoc of reckless dam building has displaced 16 million people.

* The worst effected are the category who most need the state's help- tribals, forest dependent communities, and indigenous people. In an article by Roshan Varughese and Soumen Mukherjee in the journal Nature.com (23.5.24), 40% of the victims of development induced displacement are Adivasis, even though their share of the population is only 8%. Thousands are being evicted on an almost daily basis because of state governments' unwillingness to implement the Forest Rights Act: only 3 states have implemented its provisions, but that too only partially.

* Short-sighted, compliance based, propaganda oriented policies are being rammed through a system where its stakeholders are unprepared to navigate their rules. A prime example is the ubiquitous and pernicious tyranny of the KYC process for banks, ration cards and MNREGA. This is a nightmare for even the digitally aware, but for the uneducated poor it has become a matter of survival and a cause of destitution. According to a report by the NGO Lib-Tech, more than 80 million workers were removed from MNREGA rolls in just two years, 2022-24, because of KYC issues. A Down to Earth magazine report of 28th October 2024 quotes a study carried out in two districts of Jharkhand (Latehar and Lohardaga) which revealed that bank accounts of 60% of the families had been frozen for want of completed KYC verification, depriving them access to whatever little money they had, MNREGA wages and Direct Benefit transfers, leaving them at the point of starvation. Similarly, millions of the poor are being denied ration under the PDS because they are unable to complete their KYC. It has been reported that 7 million and 6.9 million beneficiaries in Odisha and Tamil Nadu, respectively, have had their cards frozen for want of KYC verification.

* Not only has the present government failed to create new jobs in adequate numbers, it has destroyed millions of existing jobs through demonetisation, GST and neglect of the SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) sector. Employment, under-employment and disguised unemployment are at their highest levels in 45 years, even as 12 million new job seekers enter the market every year. Who do the poor turn to if there are no jobs for them? And how do they eat if they get no wages?

* We may tom-tom that we are the fifth or fourth largest economy in the world but that offers no succor to the poor, for we rank 140 in per-capita income, below Bangladesh. In a shocking analysis of Household consumption data, T. Muralidharan in an article in Telengana Today (Nov. 13, 2024) has revealed that the bottom 30% of our population ( 420 million people) spend just Rs. 50 on food per day per capita, whereas a vegetarian thali costs more than Rs. 50 (Economic Survey 2020). Worse, the poorest 5% of the country lives on just 2/3 rds of a thali per day!

One is left wondering if the Hon'ble court had informed itself of these facts before terming these unfortunates as parasites. Quick-fixes are okay for joining shards of broken Dresden pottery, but will not repair the broken edifice of a nation's conscience or a government's splintered feeling of compassion, or faulty neo capitalist policies. Judicial quick-fixes are particularly dangerous for they impart a legal legitimacy to half baked ideas. Yes, there are plenty of undeserving people benefitting from these welfare schemes and they should be weeded out. The court would have rendered yeoman's service to the nation if it had focused on this aspect and directed the government to prepare a time bound plan to do so, instead of using a broad brush to castigate and condemn the poor. We have robbed the country's poor of their lands, jobs, food and health; let us not strip them of their right to be called human beings. It is all they have left.

AAP IS ALIVE AND KICKING--IT'S THE ALLIANCE WHICH IS ON (CONGRESS) ASSISTED DYING

 Yes, Kejriwal has lost the Delhi elections. But make no mistake- the AAP put up a valiant and courageous fight, and came to within inches of winning. Don't let these sold out media platforms and sundry Yogendra Yadav clones tell you otherwise, look at the official figures. The BJP at 46% of the vote share was only 2% ahead of AAP at 44%- it is the oddity of the first-past-the-post system that converted this into a 26 seat lead for God's Own Party. In a proportionate system both the parties would have been tied at 35 seats apiece. By no means has the AAP been "wiped out", as some commentators and bhakts would have you believe: in Delhi AAP remains a potent force which can still take the fight to the BJP over the next five years. Don't look at the size of the dog in the fight, look at the size of the fight in the dog.

Nobody in his right senses expected the AAP to win, the odds against it were overwhelming- relentless persecution by the Center over the last five years, jailing of all its top leaders on trumped up charges unsubstantiated by any evidence even after three years of arrests, raids and investigations, blatant sniping and sabotaging by the Lieutenant Governor, blocking of all its popular schemes on one pretext or the other, a partisan police force, a defiant bureaucracy with loyalties to the Center rather than the elected government of the state, an Election Commission which is now a player in the game rather than an umpire, the deletion and injection of thousands of dubious votes before the elections, a somnolent judiciary which has failed to curb the executive or deliver timely justice, a Corporate India rooting for the BJP in the hope of churning out more billionaires, an announcement of major tax breaks just four days before polling in a condemnable violation of the model code of conduct.

And yet, it is testament to the resilience of the AAP that it almost won. For the first time in any state the BJP was forced to modify its electoral strategy, as Harish Khare has pointed out in an article: the BJP was compelled to soft pedal its communal tool- kit and adopt a leaf out of Kejriwal's welfare book. No other political party could have come even close to matching AAP's performance. Certainly not the Congress with its recent track record of being annihilated in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Haryana.

That being said, one hopes that Kejriwal and his advisors are also doing some deep reflection and soul-searching. For their mistakes too are many: a will o' the wisp ideological opportunism, embracing of a copy-cat "soft" Hindutva, keeping silent on Muslim persecution at Shaheen Bagh and the NE Delhi riots, uncalled for hounding of Rohingya refugees, excessive welfarism at the cost of Delhi's crumbling infrastructure. These have contributed to the 9% away swing of its vote share, but they are not the prime reason for its loss. The death blow was delivered by its Alliance partner, the Congress.

One  hopes that the Congress will also do some introspection, once they are finished gloating over Kejriwal's "downfall." For it is this, now largely irrelevant party, which ensured the AAP's defeat. Figures now released by the ECI show that in 14 constituencies the Congress candidates polled more votes than the BJP candidates' winning margin, thus ensuring the latter's win; these include seats contested by Kejriwal, Sisodia, Somnath Bharti and Saurabh Bharadwaj. Rahul Gandhi (or the coterie of sleeper cells around him) have extracted their "revenge" even though the party got just 6% of the votes, did not win a single seat, and 67 of their candidates lost even their deposits! At the rate this party continues to cut off its nose to spite its face in every election, it will soon have no nose left, just a void where it will bury a hundred years of its history and achievements.

Congress apologists have been defending its contesting against AAP in Delhi by pointing out that this is exactly what the latter did to the Congress in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal, but this analogy is faulty. For in none of these states was the Congress, or any Alliance partner, the ruling party at the time of the elections, both parties were fighting against the BJP. But in Delhi the Congress was fighting against an Alliance partner and trying to dislodge one of its own. It did not have a claim to even a single seat in Delhi given its miserable 4% vote share and performance in the last ten years. And yet, for reasons that can only be attributed to a sense of entitled egotism and the thirst for revenge, it decided that "na jeetunga, na jeetne doonga."

The Congress has now become a spoiler at the national level, a clear and present danger to the restoration of democracy in India. It cannot forget its grand past and refuses to accept that it is no longer a "national party" at the state level- the brutal truth is that it is now just another regional party in a couple of states. It will not play second fiddle to any other regional party and refuses to abide by an unwritten Alliance Dharma. For the sake of the nation it must be persuaded to abandon its delusions of grandeur, to accept reality and to recognise that its first priority has to be to fight the BJP, not its allies.

The Delhi model of governance that AAP offered as an alternative to the Gujarat model worked, as two successive massive wins by the AAP proved. For the first time in our history an alternate model of politics was offered in Delhi, one based on concern for the under privileged, "life-line" services as a right, unsupported by money bags and corporates, without any communal agenda, all actively propagated by a cadre of educated, committed and idealistic workers and volunteers. This was the anti-thesis of all that the BJP stands for, and could not be allowed to succeed. The ruling party has achieved its demolition objective, and Kejriwal has to share part of the blame for this, as pointed out in earlier paras. He must now course correct, go back to the party's original drawing board, seek out saner counsel and advisors and remain true to the original vision with which his party was founded. The coming days will not be easy for him for all the dogs of war will be set loose on him and his leaders. AAP has to rediscover the gritty resilience which had brought it to power in the first place- it still has the support of the electorate (it's core vote of 44% is more than the BJP's 38%) but it has to rebuild its ideological foundations. It has to stand for something positive and unambiguous, not be all things to all people or have a negative or equivocal ideology.

 The Congress must realise that the voter must be given a binary choice only. Or else, by 2029 there will be no party left to do any fighting, and nothing worth fighting for.

BOOK REVIEW - ANANDA: AN EXPLORATION OF CANNABIS IN INDIA

                     

                             

                     [This review was published in The Tribune on 12th Jan. 2025]

BOOK REVIEW- "ANANDA- AN EXPLORATION OF CANNABIS IN INDIA" by Karan Madhok.

                                                    ON  THE  CANNABIS  TRAIL

This is a rather unusual book, grafted on the back of the author's travels in elevent states in pursuit of his research on the cannabis plant and its derivatives- ganja, hemp, bhang, hashish and charas. Most of us have a nodding, if not sniffing, acquaintance with cannabis but know little about its botanical structure, origins, history, economics, legality, religious connection or medicinal value. Karan Madhok has dug deep to educate us on these aspects, but in a manner which is personal, anecdotal and sometimes humorous. 

We learn that the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis is a chemical called THC, and the higher the THC the more potent the drug. The plant consists of the stem and the flower, it is the latter that contains the highest concentration of THC, from which the hashish and charas are produced, and hence banned in India. The stem has a very low level of the chemical, from which bhang and ganja and hemp are derived and these are legal. The hemp is used for making ropes, baskets, footwear, clothing etc. and is an important part of the economy of the Himalayan villages such as Malana in Himachal, whose Malana Cream is acknowledged to be among the finest in the world. There are also the Idukki Gold of Kerala, Sheelavathi of Odisha and Koraput Purple of the Andhra-Odisha border. Whether in its potent or weaker form, cannabis has been used for centuries for medicine, recreation, nutrition, and has a deep connection with religion.

The United Nations estimates that 4.3% of adults consume cannabis, it is the most widely used, cultivated and trafficked illicit substance in the world. But states are ramping up the pressure to legalise controlled cultivation of cannabis for medicinal, scientific and industrial purposes and to amend the NDPS Act. Uttarakhand has already done this to some extent and Himachal too has passed a resolution to this effect in September this year. Such a measure could revolutionise the economies of these states and create huge employment opportunities in agriculture, processing and transportation sectors.

Supported by statistics and independent studies, the author raises a pertinent point: is the state justified in spending humungous amounts of financial, administrative and judicial resources in enforcing the NDPS Act on drugs like cannabis? Is this even serving any purpose? The kingpins of the drug cartels are never caught, it is only the "foot soldiers"- the impoverished farmer, the carrier, the middleman- who are convicted and imprisoned. The Act gives the police and other agencies a blank cheque to harass and extort money (as in the Aryan Khan case) and breeds corruption. The draconian prohibition of these milder and organic drugs is driving the youth to harder, more dangerous, chemical formulations; (the author points to the epidemic of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is reportedly responsible for two thirds of drug related deaths in the USA and is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged eighteen to forty nine). And finally, he argues, this harsh policy is also depriving the state of billions of dollars of revenue, and denying livelihood opportunities to the poorest farmers in the most backward, forested and hilly areas where the plant thrives. We should learn from the USA where half the states have already legalised cannabis, and a state like California earns about US$ 6 billion (Rs. 50000 crore) annually by licensing its use and consumption. 

For me the most interesting part of the book is where the author details the connection between ganja/ bhang and India's syncretic culture and religion. For, as he puts it brilliantly, "much like the Indian constitution, cannabis is secular" and representative of the "Ganga-Jamuna Tehzeeb."

Religion: cannabis is associated with all major religions of India- it is extolled by Persian poets as a "heavenly guide", considered by some Muslim sects as the embodiment of the spirit of the prophet Khidr in whose honour the Sufis consume it; in Tantric Buddhism it is extolled for its medicinal powers; the Sikh Nihangs refer to it as Sukha prasad and it is consumed during the Hola Mohalla festivities (even though Guru Nanak is supposed to have opposed its consumption). It is almost at the core of Hinduism, associated with practically all its major Gods- Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Balrama, Hanuman, Jagannath in one way or the other, and its festivals-Holi, Khumb, Shivratri, Vijaya Dasmi, Trinath Puja. It is offered to the Gods, or consumed in many forms, at many major temples across the breadth of the country.

Food: bhang is to be found in many of the favourite dishes/drinks in many states- ice-cream, laddoos, gajar ka halwa, suji ka halwa, Christmas plum pudding, pakoras, panipuri, rosogolla, majaun (a confection enjoyed by Babur).

Bollywood: the Zeenat Aman song "Dum Maro Dum" in the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1973) has become the cannabis anthem for the nation,  defining the nous of a whole generation. Since then the association has stuck with the Hindi film industry, for better or worse, through Aap Ki Kasam (Rajesh Khanna, 1974), Silsila (Amitabh Bacchan, 1980), Yeh Jawaani Hai Diwanee (Deepika Padukone, 2013), culminating in the drug related controversies of Sushant Singh Rajput and Aryan Khan. As the author observes, we have a Janus faced attitude to cannabis- we both worship and villainise it, there's a thin line between spirituality and sin! 

Madhok also gives us a thumb-nail account of the history and geographical spread of cannabis, beginning with Columbus arriving in America wearing a hemp jacket! We learn that more than fifty nations have legalised or decriminalised the plant for medicinal and industrial purposes, and are reaping the benefits in terms of revenue, tourism, reduced alcohol consumption, employment and treatment of various chronic diseases. There is a huge global market for hemp products ranging from textiles, furnishings, construction materials to ropes, paints and plastic substitutes. India is not even a player in this market, with its share of the global trade at just 0.0002%. He cautions that if we do not quickly revise our NDPS centered policy on cannabis we shall miss this bus completely. Small beginnings have been made- there are about one hundred start-ups in areas such as ayurvedic medicines, wellness centers, restaurants, textiles etc.- but this is not even scratching the surface of the vast potential that this, our very own Indian plant, offers. 

The author's final message? That it is time to reclaim the cultural, religious and medicinal heritage of cannabis as our own, before it is expropriated by other countries. We have to look back to look forward, he says. But is anyone listening?