THE CRUELEST MONTH

T.S. Eliot had dubbed April as "the cruelest month" in one of his poems; I am sure he had his reasons for doing so, but it does reveal that he was not one of the 40 million odd Indian taxpayers. For, had he been one, he would have vehemently disagreed- in India, the cruelest month is July, and it has nothing to do with a delayed monsoon or a pensioner's annual ordeal of submitting a Life Certificate to prove that he is still alive and kicking. The cruelty of the month derives from the fact that it is the month when we have to render unto Caesar what is definitely not Caesar's- a large part of the wages of our toil have to be handed over to Ms Sitharaman as income tax, along with an ITR which is as decipherable as the Dead Sea Scrolls and needs an expensive CA to do the job. 

I have just shelled out one fourth of my annual income, comprising of pension, interest from fixed deposits, a dash of capital gains, and a drizzle of royalties and remuneration for my books and articles from grudging editors and publishers. The wolf is not at my door yet, but it is getting closer every year. And, for the life of me, I cannot see the justice in the government looting a large portion of my coffers every year, without doing anything for me in return. Whatever happened to the adage No quid pro, no quid? 

I can understand a tax on my pension, since the government is entitled to recover some part of what it paid me for doing nothing for thirty-five years. I can also see the logic in taxing the interest on deposits etc.- they are passive income, unearned moolah I have not laboured for. But why capital gains?  If property prices go up it's not because of the government, it's because of relentless population growth, rapid urbanisation because the villages continue to languish in poverty and lack of development, because of the dismal failure of the Smart Cities programme.  The government's only contribution is to ensure that the cities keep deteriorating but it will take its undeserved cut of any price increase. Take shares: they go up, inspite of a failing economy and declining FDI and FPI (the government's contribution!), because of insider trading, price rigging, cronyism, and a gullible retail investor. The inexplicable rise of the Sensex has nothing to do with economic logic and the government's contribution again is zero, if not negative. So why should Ms Sitharaman get a share of this gain?

Taxing what the editors and publishers pay me (after many reminders!) is a raid on my intellectual, if not personality, rights. Writers are doing a public service by keeping alive the habit of reading, an activity (or lack of it) which is on ventilator support. Nobody reads nowadays, lacking the attention span to read more than 140 words, preferring Tik Tok reels and emojis. A recent study by the Booker Awards Institute reveals that only 4% Indians read books (about the same number as pay income tax- is there a connection here?). Nobody other than Shashi Tharoor or Chetan Bhagat make any money by writing, the rest of us get by on crumbs from the Amazon toast. We also take a huge risk every time we put pen to paper, not knowing when we might be hauled off to a police station for sedition, criminal defamation or contempt of court. I learn banks are now offering special FDs termed as Bail Deposits: the interest on them starts at a low 4% but goes up by one percent for every year you stay out of jail; the full amount can be redeemed after eight years or whenever you are arrested, whichever is earlier. Even the interest income from these deposits shall be taxable, with an "Anti-National" surcharge. There are rumours that insurance companies, sensing a great market opportunity, will shortly launch insurance policies to provide financial cover for arrests under UAPA and deportation under the Citizenship Act. Now that the Passport has been shown its place they expect this market to grow at a CAG of 20%. 

There used to be a time (which I can barely recall now) when the best things in life were supposed to be free. No longer. They are now taxed at 28% GST. It is no coincidence that the words "taxidermist" and "taxman" have their first three letters in common. The only difference between them is that the taxidermist skins you after you are dead, while the taxman does so while one is still alive. And the final question: now that it has been officially declared that no Indian has a document which provides  "conclusive" proof of his citizenship, how come we still have to pay taxes as Indians? 

" ARE YOU FLETCHER ? "

 It has been my experience that every District Collectorate is usually haunted by its own resident lunatic, somewhat like ancient mansions possessing their resident spectres who do not look kindly on new arrivals. These benignly deranged persons are usually quite harmless, and in them the spirit of violence is replaced by the litigatious and bureaucratic urge, as is perhaps to be expected considering the nature of their demesne. They are generally persons who, during their days of sanity, were closely involved or connected with the functioning of some wing of the Collectorate- usually the Collector's court pertaining to land disputes- and can never forget the connection thereafter, even when they drift into the twilight zone. Even in their muddled mental state they are well informed about the Collectorate's hierarchies and functioning.

     I still recollect quite clearly my first few minutes in the Deputy Commissioner's office in a district bordering Punjab, my first posting as DC, at the age of 28 . I had barely lowered my UPSC vetted posterior into the hallowed upholstery when there was a shout from the orderly outside, the door was flung open violently and a veritable salamander of an old silver- haired woman rushed inside, eyes blazing and a thick bundle of papers under her skeletal arm. A vigorous two year training at Mussoorie had not prepared one for an encounter of this kind and I wondered whether I should call out the army or impose section 144 CrPC.

    Just then the old harridan addressed me in an imperial tone. " Are you Fletcher?" she asked. Now, the only Fletcher I had heard of was an ICS officer who had been Financial Commissioner of undivided Punjab in British times, a proper Koi Hai who had made quite an impression with the local yokels by doing stupid things like intensively touring the villages, settling disputes on the spot and generally keeping the revenue officials on a tight leash- something we IAS types frowned upon. He was-hopefully-long dead. I therefore surmised the reference was to this blister.

    " No," I ventured, " but can I help you?" The aged crone gave me a withering look.

   " You!" she exclaimed, "these papers are worth ten lakhs and I shall give them only to Fletcher! I wouldn't trust you to even sign the attendance register!" And with that she left in a huff. Notwithstanding my bruised magisterial pride I made inquiries and discovered that this old lady had been quite mad for over a decade. She had seen better times and once possessed 20 acres of irrigated land but had lost it all in litigations. Fletcher had apparently tried to help her out, so her poor addled mind constantly harked back to him, and she used to haunt the collectorate looking for him, especially whenever a new Collector joined the post.

   This particular district was/is the most litigatious in the whole of Himachal. A boy from Una is not considered worthy of manhood till he has filed at least two FIRs and submitted three complaints against a government officer. The local residents have a better knowledge of the law than most High Court judges, and when making a complaint also helpfully suggest the precise sections of the IPC/CRPC/Prevention of Corruption Act, etc. that should be applied. One such libelant was perpetually parked at the gate of my residence, noting down the details of all visitors and anything that was brought into the house (vegetables, groceries, sweets, et al). Every evening he would send the list to the Chief Minister's office at Shimla, seeking an inquiry. Apparently, some like-minded gnome at Shimla used to read them, because I was once asked to explain why I had accepted two kilos of mangoes from the MLA of Amb ! This particular MLA was one Mr. Hansraj Akhrot, peace be upon him, and he was the biggest miser I have ever met. I informed the govt. in my reply that getting a kilo of anything from Mr. Akhrot was equivalent to getting back the Kohinoor from the British queen, and I should be commended for inspiring him to part with anything. The gnome in Shimla must have agreed with me because I never heard from him again.

   My second Collectorate in Bilaspur also had its own mad-hatter-in-residence. He was allowed the run of the place and could walk into any room. An orderly could stop him only at great bodily risk. The first time I tried to stop him (being new to the place) he quietly left. He came back five minutes later and handed me my transfer orders, signed and sealed by himself ! Thereafter I gave up.

   Bhagat Ram (that was his name) had a passion for obtaining signatures. He somehow managed to lay his hands on all kinds of official forms (for telephones, gas connections, driving licences, ration cards, cement permits, etc.) and would diligently make the rounds everyday, getting them signed from a clerk to the Collector: he desired nothing else. A simple scrawl made him so happy that no one had the heart to refuse him. In return he took it upon himself to maintain discipline and law and order outside my office. He especially disliked politicians (can one blame him ?) and many were the MLAs who were not allowed to enter my office. He once even disallowed the Supdt.of Police, because the latter was not in uniform! He always had a crackling salute for me, however, every morning and evening. I sometimes miss it, even today.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE DRAGON-FLIES GONE ?

 Biodiversity is perhaps the most unacknowledged component of the natural environment, and the attention of policy makers rarely goes beyond trees and animals, if even that. But biodiversity is much more than just trees and animals. It is the building block of nature, without which there would be no nature, or an inhabitable planet. Biodiversity is the extraordinary variety of all living things on earth. It encompasses plants, animals, micro-organisms, fungi and even pathogens, the genetic information they carry, and the complex eco-systems they create. I've learnt this the hard way, and am only just beginning to understand it.

When I acquired my half acre of land in Puranikoti village in 2002, there were only two houses here; the landscape comprised rolling, grassy hillsides with a few apple trees and some deodars and blue pine. My own plot was carpeted with wild daisies, buttercups, lilies and primroses. The place was practically overrun with bees, butterflies, cicadas and dragon-flies, and there was a continuous buzzing sound on sunny days. The birds formed the next level on the foodchain, and were in turn subordinate to the feral cats and pine martins. Purani Koti was a biodiversity hotspot!

Not any more. Most of the land in the village has been built over, the trees felled, the buzzing of dragon-flies replaced with the rasping of jack hammers and saws. To compensate I have planted more than 200 trees on my land, of the fruit and jungle varieties. But it has been of no avail, for trees alone on just one plot cannot create biodiversity. For the lowest tier of natural growth in the area- the grasses,  bushes, ferns, wild flowers, creepers - have all gone, the soil has lost its capacity to store rain and snow or to retain moisture. With the disappearance of this living building bloc of nature, the insects that depended on it have also started vanishing. A few, very few butterflies and bees still delight us but I have not seen any dragon-flies this year: I fear their niche has disappeared and they are gone for ever. In a year or two the bees and butterflies will also abandon this biodiverse wasteland. Which, along with global warming, probably explains why we can no longer grow the fruits- apple, pears, apricot, cherries- that we used to: with the biodiversity gone, there are no insects left to pollinate their flowers or birds to spread the seeds. 

This loss of precious biodiversity is rarely factored into our planning and developmental processes. What is reluctantly considered (at most) is forest or green cover- i.e. number of trees to be felled. These are quantified and valued, the amount paid by the project proponent and twice that number planted as compensatory afforestation. The loss of biodiversity is completely ignored and never compensated for. Some figures from Himachal may better illustrate the point: Himachal's forest area is 37000 sq kms (37 lakh hectares), and  a 2024 study by the Bhopal Institute of Forest management  quantifies its biodiversity value at Rs. 33000 crore PER ANNUM. In other words, the biodiversity contribution value of every hectare of the forests is Rs. 89000/ per annum. Working out its NPV over a typical 25-30 year life cycle of any project, the state should be charging at least Rs. 30 lakhs for every hectare of forest diverted for non-forest use. But this is not done because no value is attached to biodiversity.

This may, however, be changing globally, even as we in India continue to fell millions of trees every year on grandiloquent schemes that will displace the livelihoods of thousands of forest dependent communities but enrich crony oligarchs by a few trillion dollars more. Peru, for example, has become the first country in the world to give legal protection to insects (in this case its famous stingless bees). Recognizing the ecological importance of these tiny pollinators of the Amazon forests which pollinate 80% of the Amazon's tropical fruits, just this month it has enacted a law that recognizes their right to exist, to a clean and intact habitat, to regenerate, and to receive legal representation if pollution, deforestation and projects threaten their survival. Anyone, company or individual, who threatens these rights can be sued and prosecuted.

Similarly, in Wales the river Wye has received legal protection of its "rights of nature" from its catchment to the sea. The new charter recognizes the river as a living ecosystem with intrinsic right to exist, i.e the right to flow, the right to its biodiversity, the right to be free from pollution, the right to regenerate and to a healthy catchment. Any citizen can now go to court to enforce these rights. New Zealand too has given legal status to the Whanganui river. Mount Taranaki has been given legal guardianship through an 8 member Guardian Council consisting of four govt. experts and four tribal representatives: no project, govt. or private can be sanctioned there without the approval of this Council. In the Canadian province of Quebec a town, Terrasse Vaudreuil, has passed a "Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree" which recognises that trees are living beings with rights, that life on earth depends on them, and that humans must act "in solidarity and fraternity" with them. This lays the legal groundwork for protecting them in future. In India, the Uttarakhand High Court in 2017 had recognized the Ganga as "a living entity" with legal rights but the ruling was inexplicably stayed by the Supreme Court, and the matter continues in limbo.

The Peru, New Zealand, Canadian and Wales laws are small beginnings in realising the importance of protecting ecosystems and biodiversity as a whole, not just trees and forests in isolation.  One hopes our governments, courts and the NGT take note of these developments, dispel their sense of omniscience, and rouse themselves from their  slumber, sloth and lack of understanding of ecological issues. Then-and only then- will the dragonflies perhaps return to Puranikoti and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.  

BOOK REVIEW - INDONESIA, THE BEAUTIFUL ARCHIPELAGO.

           INDONESIA- THE BEAUTIFUL ARCHIPELAGO

           BY   AFTAB  SETH

               PUBLISHED BY BIRCH BOOKS, 2026.

                            

There are two types of diplomats, as Mani Shankar Aiyar points out in the review appended to the book. The first are the wolf warriors, of the type so ably represented by Mr Sibi George of the recent press-conference-in- Denmark fame, who have no interest in their host country and are full time proselytisers of their own. The second are the sensitive, scholar type diplomats who are deeply interested in the country they are assigned to, who wish to understand its cultural, historical, political and administrative facets, so that they can project their own country's interests in a proper context and not in a vacuum. Aftab Seth, mercifully, belongs to this second, old school, and this book is the result of his efforts to understand Indonesia: he served there as Chef-de-Mission for two years in the mid 80's, and this book gives his perceptions from that time.

Indonesia- the beautiful archipelago- is the largest Muslim country in the world ( 87% of its population-240 million-are Muslim), and yet it is not an "Islamic" nation in the sense that Pakistan and Iran perhaps are. Though Islam entered the archipelago in the 13th century (on the back of trade, and not conquest, as in India) and had spread throughout Sumatra, Java and other islands by the 16th, it was never able to supplant the strongly entrenched tenets of Hindu, Buddhist and Javan mysticism elements that preceded it. As such, Islam here has become an "assimilative" and syncretic religion, and not a revolutionary one. Two other factors also encouraged this remarkable adaption of an essentially rigid religion: one, it  helped that 150 years of  Dutch colonial rule had created an elite that was "secular" and whose traditional privileges distanced them from the austerity and fraternal egalitarianism of Islam. Second, that the first two Presidents of the country- Soekarno and Suharto- who laid its foundations, both kept political Islam at arm's length. They did not consider it's divisiveness as a sound platform for the nation to build on, and instead opted for nationalism. The result was the Panchsila doctrine- one Supreme God, civilised humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy, social justice- which cuts across religion and cultures and is acceptable to all. It is not only a guiding compass for the nation but also a force that unites. Aftab says it has worked , for Indonesia rarely witnesses the kind of communal confrontations that we do in India.

The book provides informative thumb nail portraits of the bricks and mortar that make up the Indonesian edifice. The Bureaucracy (more Indianised than Islamic in its origins, dominated by the Javanese, drawn from secular and missionary schools, cosmopolitan and secular in outlook); the Armed forces (more aligned with the bureaucracy than with Parliament, the real repository of political power); Parliament (more representative of the country's ethnic, regional and religious diversity than the bureaucracy) ; Political parties (so structured as to rule out the revival of Islam in any disruptive form); the Legal System (which still shows the influence of colonial period racial and social inequalities, one where secular courts exist side by side with Islamic ones (albeit with limited jurisdiction), one in which there exists a tension between adat or customary law and Islamic law; Media and Press (flourishing but tightly controlled-not through proscribing or censorship but through hints, nudges and discreet phone calls). What I found particularly fascinating is the competitive jostling between the major religions- Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism- as also between the ethnic groups, persistent but  without any violent animosity. The government plays an important role in maintaining this equilibrium; one can't help but feel that there is a lesson here for our own Indian establishment and society. 

Of particular interest to the Indian reader would be the chapter on Education because it shows how Indonesia has been able to bridge the contentious chasm of competing religious pedagogy. The state's education policy, observes the author, seeks to foster a tolerant, plural and multi-polar society. Towards this end religious instruction is an integral part of its education system, but care is taken to ensure that Islamic education is balanced with secular faculties. As in India, there is a parallel structure of madrasas, but these teach secular subjects too in equal proportion. In fact, says Aftab, the madrasas are a force for the modernisation of Islamic education and the loosening of ritualistc teachings. This is borne out by the fact that the orthodox ulemas oppose the madrasas! Just as the Islamisation of the nation's society was a gradual process, so too will the modernisation of Islam be an incremental process, feels the author, and education will play a big role in this. Surely, our own ulemas and leaders of the Muslim community can learn from this example instead of resisting reform at every stage.

A few pages are devoted to describing the various political parties in the country, its  relations with other nations (including India), the author's interactions with prominent Indonesian leaders, the shared attributes of our two civilisations. This may not interest the average Indian reader, but these pages contain precious nuggets of reflections and observations for the ones who wish to better understand the complex genetic structure of Islam and how it has adapted itself to different domains: the brand of "Gandhian Islam" (Islam with a human face) espoused by President  Abdur Rahman Wahid, the concept of Indonesia as a "non-secular but non-theocratic state", the legitimacy or otherwise of relocating mosques as provided in the Quran and the Hadith, the competitive "neo-orthodox" and "neo-modernism" trends in Indonesian Islam. These teach us not to regard the religion as a monolithic one but one with many variations.

The latter part of the book takes us on a tour of the islands and regions that make up the country- Aceh, West Sumatra, Yogyakarta, Java and Bali, the last two bastions of Indic influence. Of them, Bali appears closest to Aftab's heart, perhaps because its rich artistic culture- dances, masks, wood carving, stone cutting and sculpture, paintings, museums and monuments- appeal to his own refined senses and tastes, or perhaps because his wife, Nilima, had trained in Balinese dancing! Incidentally, Aftab does not forget to remind us of the love Rabindranath Tagore had for Indonesia, his visits to Yogyakarta, Java and Bali, and his own efforts to promote Tagore's message of assimilation of cultures and humanism.

This book is a more than welcome effort to get us to know more about a country with which we have a lot in common, one which at its nearest point is only 90 kms  away from us (less than the distance between Delhi and Karnal!) but about which we know less than nothing. Quite clearly this book is a labour of love for Aftab Seth, among the last of a vanishing breed of scholar- diplomats.

GYMKHANA CLUB AND THE POWER OF MYTHS.

Delhi's chatterati, who always need something more than just fried peanuts with their gin and tonic, are abuzz these days with the latest canapes: the Modi government's hostile take- over of Gymkhana Club. It's not a done deal yet, but rest assured that our higher judiciary, with judgments like Ram Mandir, SIR, Umar Khalid, Aravallis, Hindenberg/SEBI, Pegasus, etc. under its belt, will finally approve non-passive euthanasia for  this last watering hole for the drones of South Delhi.

No one, of course, believes the reason cited by the govt. itself for the action, viz, that the 27 acres is needed for security/defence purposes: this is the default position of the govt. for all decisions which push the boundaries of legality and/ or good sense. Hence, there is much feverish speculation about the real motives for this surgical strike: the Club's administrative and financial mess, non-payment of dues to the government, turning the entire area into a semi-militarized zone so that a Bangladesh, Nepal or January 6th type of incident never happens, fear of the Cockroach Janata Party, a real estate operation which will ultimately benefit the Melodi loving leader's cronies. But all this assumes that this govt. acts rationally, which past decisions do not bear out. I have, therefore, a different take which matches the leopard's spots, as it were.

The BJP is a party which is founded on, and which survives on, myths- past, present and future. It originates from the myths of ancient India-our epics, Akhand Bharat, the existence of plastic surgery, aeroplanes, nuclear missiles thousands of years ago, etc. In the present it rules on the strength of other myths- Vishwaguru, fastest growing economy in the world, leader of the Global South, wolf warrior diplomacy, "ghar me ghus ke maarenge", developed country by 2047, Net Zero emissions by 2075, and so on. None of these myths are based on facts or have a rational basis, but constant reiteration has converted them into legal fiction and have kept the BJP in power for more than a decade.

Gymkhana Club is a victim of two such myths-  Lutyen's Delhi/ Khan Market gang (which work actively against the BJP), and Colonial Legacy (which diminishes our own glorious culture). Both are fake, or at least selectively applied to suit the government's narrative.

The BJP believes that the privileged residents of Lutyen's Delhi are inimical to the party and conspire against it, and that Gymkhana Club is its hub. Wrong. There is no such thing as Lutyen's Delhi and the Khan Market gang became the Khanna Market gang in 2014. The 2800 hectares known as Lutyen's Delhi is occupied by politicians, mostly of saffron hue, who subsist on subsidies many times that enjoyed by the members of Gymkhana: serving bureaucrats who cannot even take a toilet break without written approval from their political masters; and industrialists fully house-trained by the ED, CBI and Income Tax. They ARE the BJP!

The retired bureaucrats and defense forces officers who haunt the Gymkhana bar also did a "ghar wapsi" years ago. I am a member of various groups of retired officers, and I can confidently state that the vast majority of my brethren- 75-80%- support the BJP ideology, 10-15% may not but will not open their mouths for fear of jeopardizing their pensions. the rest are so soaked in gin-and-tonic they can't press their own doorbell, let alone an EVM button. Those who possess the courage and the conviction to criticise the government are few and far between, and getting fewer with each successive election.

Lutyen's Delhi (and the Gymkhana) are, therefore  de facto BJP territory, as both Sanjay Jha and Vir Sanghvi have also pointed out, and the BJP knows it. So why take over the Club? Pause that question for the nonce, dear reader, we shall come to it later.

The "Colonial mind-set" myth is used as an alibi for this govt's failures, to distract attention away from them, and to find a convenient whipping boy to rally the troops, or voters. Gymkhana is the whipping boy this time, to burnish the BJP's non-existent credentials as the champion of the poor, and to divert the voters' attention away from the goodies being gifted daily to the crony oligarchs. How can this bunch of effete elites and their colonial era club ( so goes the specious argument built on a false myth) be allowed to grab valuable govt. land and live a subsidised life when 800 million have to be fed on doles? Such a narrative, refined by Mr Amit Malvia, contains all the ingredients of the Colonial myth- alibi, distraction and scapegoat. That it is patently false (like the Khan Market gang myth) is beside the point- myths appeal to us precisely because they provide an escape from reality.

Gymkhana Club is a victim of these two myths. But it is just the beginning: this narrative, perhaps a counter to the Cockroach movement, will be rolled out across the country- the Maharashtra govt. has already served notices to 16 prominent clubs in Mumbai. For what an authoritarian or fascist govt. needs at all times is an "enemy" to rally the nation behind it. Voltaire had said "If  God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him". Replace "God" with "Enemy" and you have the reason why colonial era Clubs are the new enemy, and why 6000 members of Gymkhana will now have to find another watering hole in this urban jungle. Never underestimate the power of myth making.

Am I sad ? I don't really know. I was not a member of Gymkhana- my application was rejected after a waiting period of ten years without assigning any reason. But I shall miss its nonpareil mutton cutlets- they don't make them like that anywhere in India. They probably WERE a colonial hand -down, but then not all legacies are bad, are they?

A BRIEF GUIDE TO OFFICIAL DINNERS.

 

 

The IAS, unlike its progenitor the ICS, will bequeath few memories other than those of Chief Secretaries being voted the most corrupt by their own colleagues or launching inquiries against their predecessors. But as the service now heads for an inevitable merger with either the Vivekananda Foundation or the Observer Research Group, it is heartening to note that it will leave behind at least one innovative institution—the Official Dinner ( or OD). There are two major practitioners of the OD: the Army and the IAS. The former has an advantage in the matter of finding funds (and reasons) for justifying ODs, because it can debit all expenses to Raising Days, Regimental Days and Shobha Des, but the IAS has to be more inventive because it is under the ever watchful gaze of some whistleblower or CAG just waiting to ambush them with a book titled THE ACCIDENTAL INVITEE or NOT JUST A DINER-THE DIARY OF  A NATION’S AUTONOMOUS GOURMET. It is for this reason that the IAS is given a higher pay-scale than the Armed Forces: explaining the loss of a dozen tandoori chickens from the pantry of Hotel Holiday Home requires far more management skills than accounting for a dozen missing jawans on the LOC.

Recruits to the IAS are initiated into the arcane ritual of the OD in the Academy at Mussoorie. Its presiding capo di tuti capi (or Director) hosts mock ODs frequently where the basics are spliced into the probationers’ DNA. I still remember two of them: one, “never open your mouth till the food is near it”, which perhaps explains why the IAS is so reluctant to open its collective mouth and speak out. The second rule stipulated that one should never speak ACROSS the table, but only to the persons on either side, even if the guy on the left happened to be a carbuncle from the IFS or the bloke on the right a blister from the IPS, and one was desperate to chat up the lady across the table with a view to marrying her because she had been allotted one’s home state ( UP, in most cases) while said one was exiled for life to Nagaland.                                                                                                                     We were also taught the difference between a butter knife and a fish knife (the former for marinating one’s political bosses and the latter for gutting colleagues), between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon ( the former for raking it in and the latter for being politically correct). The uses of the versatile “chamcha” is something we discovered for ourselves later, and adopted as the most valuable of all cutlery.                                                           The most draconian rule was that when the Director stopped eating and put down his knife and fork, everyone stopped eating too. Since the Director, as befitted a Godfather, was the first to be served and the 400th probationer served about twenty minutes later, by the time the former finished masticating and had begun the excavations with his toothpick, about 200 of us had not even sniffed the soup. This accounts for the fact that the IAS is always first in line at the feeding trough: it’s a hard lesson learnt well.

   Since the IAS controls 600+ districts, 100+ Ministries and a few thousand programmes, finding a reason for throwing an OD is never a problem. There are a few, however, that deserve special mention:

THE PSU (PUBLIC SECTOR UNDERTAKING) DINNER: held after every Board meeting, it is meant to console the officers for the huge losses they have notched up. Intended to occupy the commanding heights of our economy, our PSUs were dislodged from there even quicker than the Pak soldiers from the heights of Kargil. Now in the valley of death, their officers will not go, however, without a fight- sorry, bite- hence the dinners, slotted under “ Any other item” in the agenda.

THE EAP (EXTERNALLY AIDED PROJECT) DINNER: EAPs are a kind of international CSR where other countries give us moneys as aid, and then take them back through consultancies, technology transfer and equipment. We are usually left with only enough money to host a dinner every quarter, on which we spend every remaining dime lest they take that back too.

THE CENTRAL TEAM DINNER: when Secretaries in Govt. of India can no longer stand their wives’ cooking they usually take off to a state to “ review progress” on various schemes. The review consists of visits to temples, golf resorts, shopping on the Mall and a seven course dinner at night. The strong batch- mate network and an innovative menu ensures glowing reports for the state govt.

THE FAREWELL DINNER: modelled on the Last Supper, it is given for senior officers who are about to kick the waste-bin- i.e., retire. It even has a Judas in attendance- the guy who is hoping to succeed the retiree. There is, however, a notable departure from the Biblical allusion: whereas Christ went on to a glorious crucifixion and rose again on the third day, the IAS worthy rises again the very next day, reemployed in some Commission or Tribunal. The farewell dinner is usually organised by Judas himself to ensure that the retiring potentate is artfully estopped from coming back into the service. It is not surprising, therefore, that on occasion officers have to be brought screaming and shouting to their farewell dinners. In my case the Chief Secretary had to send a bulldozer to ensure my presence ( actually, the roads were snowed in, but I have a sneaking suspicion the CS was covering all contingencies!).

THE RAJ BHAVAN DINNER: no IAS officer ever wants to attend one of these ghastly death-watches, but an invitation from the Governor is actually an order. We go to such dinners half choked by “ bandh galla” coats originally tailored in the Academy when we were chinless wonders, now wrapped around Adam’s apples of the extra large variety which would have shocked both Eve and the serpent. These dinners are solemn, if not funereal, affairs; the victuals are really quite good though the only spirit in attendance is one of nationalism. Ministers bump into senior bureaucrats, the Governor bumps into the furniture and everybody escapes as soon as he can after the national anthem has been played for the third time.

   All ODs share two traits. One, there has to be a Chief Guest, who is generally the Chief Minister or the Chief Secretary: although having either dampens the evening, it is a tactical necessity to ensure that Finance doesn’t object to the bill when presented. The Chief Guest in Himachal, which I haunted like Banquo’s ghost for 35 years, just HAS to wear either a maroon ( BJP) or green ( Congress) Himachali cap, depending on which party is in power. The smarter ones have now started investing in Aam Aadmi caps, just in case.

   Second, and this is something Mr. Vinod Rai may like to look into when he has time from his six current assignments, is a peculiar feature in all OD bills: the number of chickens consumed ! The per capita average is two, which appears high even if we factor in the disappearance of all other shades of meats post Yogi Adityanath. Are IAS chaps such solid trenchermen, what with their selection grade ulcers and apex scale haemorrhoids ? Not really. The answer lies in the fact that since all liquor is impermissible at govt. dinners, and cannot be so billed, therefore this Hippocrene beverage is billed as chickens. A peg of single malt is worth a whole chicken, a scotch two legs, a shot of rum is equivalent to a wing, a glass of wine equals a breast (its for the ladies, see) and so on. Quite ingenious, and definitely deserving of the two additional increments the IAS gets over its peers. And this  also provides the answer to that much asked question: Why did the pair of chickens cross the road? Answer: they didn’t want to become a single malt !

   Now that I live on a pension and am unable to cross that road too often I generally make do with KFC chicken nuggets. 

AN APOLOGY MAY BE IN ORDER, YOUR LORDSHIP.

 Hon'ble Chief Justice,

May I, a humble member of the Blatta (Oriental)  genus of cockroaches, make so bold as to express my utter stupefaction at your recent statement in open court in which you termed unemployed youth, RTI activists, media personnel and social media activists as "cockroaches" and "parasites"?  Posterity will record these uncalled for and demeaning words as the nadir of judicial propriety and gravitas. Kindly allow me to explain why.

It appears, from what is available in the public domain, that you were at the time dealing with the issue of proliferation of lawyers with dubious degrees. Your desire to identify and weed out such elements from the legal profession is understandable, and even commendable, and should be supported by all. But your subsequent "leap of hubris", not faith, was totally unwarranted and a step too far even in these dismal times when the vocabulary of public discourse has plumbed new depths. The contemptuous characterisation of our youth and civil society is something we have come to expect from our politicians, but not from the senior-most judicial officer in the country, the custodian of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, whose every word is engraved in time, the beacon and conscience keeper of the nation.

Which is why, my Lord, it pains me to say that your  unfair and insensitive obiter dicta has dimmed the glow of the beacon and induced a perception that the keeper has not been true to his charge. It has at one fell swoop insulted and humiliated these sections of society, cast on them aspersions which are neither true nor justified and, even more dangerous, exposed a heart of darkness in the country's judicial anatomy which does not bode well for a liberal democracy. Your Lordhip's subsequent "clarification" does not dispel the apprehensions your comments have generated.

A  democracy remains healthy not only on the basis of institutions of the state, but on the shoulders of a vibrant civil society and non-state actors. These participants- activists, NGOs, social media, RTI applicants, fact checkers- are the benign bacteria in our body politic that maintain our immune systems, keep in check those organisms that would destroy us, and ensure that democracy and a liberal order survives. By castigating them in such derogatory language, My Lord, you have exposed a side of the higher judiciary we did not imagine existed. It has left us confused, apprehensive and fearful.

Are you aware, your Honour,  that there are 28 million educated unemployed youth in the country, and an additional 100 million who have stopped looking for jobs? (The WIRE, 23.5.2025). 67% of the unemployed youth today are graduates, as compared to 32% in 2004 ? ( Aziz Premji Univ. State of Working India Report, published in the Deccan Herald 1.5.2026). 80 million workers have left the cities owing to lack of job opportunities and gone back to their villages: the government classifies them as employed in agriculture! This worsening position is not due to the indolence of these unfortunate youngsters, but because of faulty govt. policies in education, industrialisation and economic "growth" which promote inequity, concentration of wealth and capital intensive projects, and have decimated the MSME sector. They deserve our empathy, not an elitist condemnation.

Finally, my lord, heed the power of language and choose carefully the patois you employ. For language is a double-edged sword, it can soothe or it can wound, it can demean or it can dignify, it can sustain or it can destroy, it can be a paean or it can be a dog-whistle. It is dangerous to employ words loosely. History is replete with instances where carefully chosen words have preceded, and laid the ground for, mass persecution, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. The killing of a million Tutsis in Rwanda was preceded by a campaign that classified them as "inyenzi" which, coincidentally, means cockroaches; in Hitler's Germany the Jews were called parasites  and rats; the Zionists later termed the Palestinians as "vermin" and "animals" ; nearer home minorities from Bangladesh are stigmatised  as "termites" and protesters as " andolanjeevis". All such branding is invariably followed by dehumanising of entire sections of society and their persecution on a large scale.

It is possible your unfortunate vocabulary may have the same effect in India, for your words feed into the executive's own narrative: the segments of society you have, perhaps unwittingly and unintendedly, vilified are precisely the ones the government of the day considers its enemies and obstacles to its authoritarianism. It may now be emboldened to move against them even more aggressively, confident that it now has your your institution's support. That would be a disaster, an opening of the floodgates that shall eventually consume all the pillars of democracy, including the one over which your Honour presides.

At the end of the day, your Lordship, this unnecessary disparagement of the youth, civil society activists and social media may lead to a loss of credibilty in the institution you head, in its ability (or even willingness) to confront an authoritarian executive, to protect the rights of the minorities, and to uphold the letter and spirit of a liberal and inclusive Constitution. A democracy cannot long survive such a loss. Which is why, sir, you may consider a more explicit retraction and withdrawal of the statement made by you, not just a clarification. An apology to the nation at large will go a long way in restoring the confidence of the citizenry in an institution which is, after all, the last bastion of rights and liberty. To err is human, to admit it is divine. 

With profound regards and my own humble apologies for intruding on your valuable time,

I remain, your Lordship,

A.C.Roach.

"TIGER ABHI ZINDA HAI !"-- BUT ELECTIONS ARE IN THE ICU.

  [It was reported by the Satya Hindi news channel, and reiterated by a Congress spokesperson, that after the declaration of the West Bengal results, the CEC Gyanesh Kumar told a group of reporters: "Tiger abhi zinda hai !"]

My faith in the Chief Deletion Commissioner, Mr Gyanesh Kumar (may his tribe decrease), has been fully restored and vindicated: he has lived up to the trust I reposed in him. I fully expected the Election Commission to win the elections in West Bengal, even though it is not a registered political party but only a kind of I-Pac for one of them. And it has won handsomely. Mr. Kumar can now look forward to greener pastures in the days to come, a Governorship, perhaps, or even (as is being whispered in some shady corridors) a Presidentship. The latter post will suit him admirably because a President can only act on the advice of the Council of Ministers, which is precisely what he has been doing for the last many years.

Which brings me to a larger point: why have elections at all, now that ONOE (One Nation One Election) has been converted to ONNE (One Nation No Elections)? After much deliberation and consultations with the divine forces a-la-Chandrachud, I have come to the conclusion that the country would be much better off without elections. There are both macro and micro reasons for my view.

At the macro level, elections are an impediment to the march of democracy: every now and then the government is distracted from its usual job of handing out contracts to cronies, devastating forests, lynching people, building temples, garlanding rapists, bringing down opposition-ruled state governments, etc. in order to get the endorsement of the voters. Why is it necessary to get the voter's consent when it already has the support of the Election Commission, the Supreme Court, the President and the AA twins? It is this unnecessary distraction which has made us amongst the worst performing countries in global indexes related to Equality, Pollution, Press Freedom, Democratic rankings, and so on. ONNE would solve all these problems at one fell stroke.

It would also bring to an end that unique feature of Indian politics- sovereign bribery. Now, bribery is an offence, except when the state does it, and with your money to boot! In our elections ideology, development, social justice etc. have now been replaced with doles, gold mangalsutras, gas cylinders, washing machines, bicycles, sarees and anything else that can rake in a couple of more votes. And it is bankrupting states: Himachal has already started cutting salaries by 30%, Vijay's TVK has promised subsidies and freebies worth more than Rupees one lakh crore per annum, Bengal will now have to borrow money from Bangladesh to keep the bhadralok happy. Our elections are more like auctions now; scrap them and we'll become the second largest economy in the world before you can say "Jai Shri Ram!"

At a micro- that is, personal-level the benefits of ONNE cannot be ignored, either. For one, your domestic staff will not abandon you: during the Bengal election I was orphaned for weeks. My driver went off to Calcutta to vote, the maid to Malda and the washerman to Bankura. They will return in due course, minus a few who may be shoved into Bangladesh, but for those weeks life was not worth living; no amount of democracy is worth it.

And then there's the evening news, of which I am an addict. I like my news hot and spicy- a couple of murders, a rape or two, the occasional encounter killing, a politician caught in a flagrant delicto act, a Judge's outhouse stuffed with moolah, a bulldozer mounted on a masjid. But during elections I get none of these- only Yogendra Yadav or Jawhar Sircar or SY Quraishi talking about EVMs, SIR or the Model Code of Conduct. On a bad day I'll have to be satisfied with Mr. Modi or Mr. Shah on the stump. Life loses all charm, but with ONNE one can get back to the daily dose of violence, sex and Kangana Ranaut's earth-shaking one-liners.

Elections play havoc with relationships. Familial and social intercourse has, for me, been teetering on a knife edge since we gained our independence in 2014: my vocabulary is limited so I tend to call a spade a spade, a fascist a fascist and a bhakt a bhakt. This has not endeared  me to most of my family, colleagues and friends for whom a Hindu Rashtra is the Holy Grail and Mr. Modi its delivery service. Elections, and the inevitable discussions about them, only add fat to the fire: whenever elections are announced my wife moves into the guest bedroom, morning walkers in my Housing society stop wishing me, I'm unable to make a foursome at golf, even my dog refuses to go for a walk with me! With ONNE there will be a sea-change-no opposition, no political discussions, no rallies, no elections. Dinners will become convivial once again, without Republic TV type of debates. Peace will descend again on our twice blessed  nation. Silence will prevail, the silence of the grave. Or, as Omar Khayyam wrote: Thou shalt be- Nothing-thou shalt not be less.

Ah, the comfort of being Nothing!

BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL THAN SERVE IN HEAVEN

 Since these are tricky times, let us begin this week with a trick question: what do the following events have in common with each other ? :

* The huge, and sometimes violent,  protests in NOIDA last month by factory workers and domestic help over increase in minimum wages.

* The refusal of a High Court judge to recuse herself from a case in which her children are employed by one of the parties, and she herself is reported to have attended functions organised by that party's affiliates.

* A "gherao" of judicial officers (appointed as adjudicators in appeals by deleted voters) by thousands of such disenfranchised voters in a district of West Bengal.

* The deletion of names of almost 3 million voters in West Bengal, who had voted in previous elections and possessed all the required documents, because of an opaque, algorithm driven "logical discrepancy" feature not provided in any law or used in any other state.

* The holding of polls without deciding the pending appeals of these 3 million unfortunates, and the callous indifference of the Supreme Court to their constitutional right to vote, saying that they could vote in the next election!

* The imposition of a casteist bail condition on Adivasi Dalits accused (but not convicted) by an Odisha court to the effect that they should clean police stations every morning for two months, demeaning their dignity and making a mockery of the law.

* The defection of seven Rajya Sabha MPs, led by one Raghav Chadha ,from the AAP to the BJP.

* A poor tribal in Keunjhar district of Odisha being compelled to carry the corpse of his dead sister to a bank in order to prove her death, just so that the meagre balance in her account could be transferred to him as the heir. The KYC converted from Know Your Customer to Know Your Corpse.

* The dismissal of cases of hate speech against leaders of a political party by a court on the grounds that their utterances did not amount to expressing hate or inciting violence. One of these speeches included the now infamous exhortation: Desh ke Gaddaron ko, goli maro salon ko. The other was a video of a Chief Minister pointing a rifle at a target with a picture of a Muslim man.

The incidents noted above differ in context, content, import and location, but they all contain one common element: the complete collapse of what makes a developed country- of governance, common law, societal values, empathy, the rule of law, trust in the government or its institutions, the idea of equity and even-handed justice. Taken together, they point to the breakdown of something cumulatively more precious- democracy itself. They vindicate the far-sighted and cautionary words of Dr. Ambedkar: that democracy in India was only a thin layer of top soil which could be blown away easily and should not be taken for granted.

A Devil's wind is blowing through the country these days, removing Ambedkar's top soil and exposing the outcrop of powerlust, greed, religious bigotry, casteism, violence that have always under-pinned our society. We had expected that progressive governments, democratically elected, would over time erode and disintegrate these negative features of our civilisational landscape, but the opposite has happened. Successive governments, more so the one we have had for the last twelve years, have only reinforced these flaws and fault lines; they have been made the driving force behind national (even international) policies, they are being embedded in laws and educational curriculum, they have become unapologetic instruments of state policy, they are the agenda on which elections are now being fought.                                                                                                    The defection of Raghav Chadha only confirms this terminal decline because it shows that a liberal upbringing and London education is no shield against the unscrupulousness of India's politics, and it  vindicates the mounting distrust of politicians in general. The executive has even managed to brutalise our society to a point where the top 10% care only for their own comforts and privileges, leaving the other 90% to survive as best as they can. We are among the most inequitable countries in the world, and proud of it. Democracy is the last thing which can emerge from this witch's cauldron.

We had naively expected that when the executive went on a rampage our judiciary at least would reign it in and preserve the rule of law. That hope has been belied and now lies trampled in the dust, as some of the above episodes demonstrate. We have today plumbed depths lower even than the ADM Jabalpur moment of Emergency days. Then at least there was a constitutionally legitimate state of Emergency in place, today we do not have even that fig leaf to cover the government's naked pursuit of absolute power. Then there was one ADM Jabalpur judgment, today we are being shredded by a thousand judicial cuts every day, whether it be on denying bail, allowing elections to be stolen from under magisterial noses, redefining hate to suit a particular ideology, spurning any notion of accountability, throwing overboard any restatement of judicial values.

A Constitution alone cannot make a democracy, or ensure that a democracy survives. For that to happen the top soil has to be tended carefully, its nutrients lovingly added and preserved, the negative infestations and weeds kept away; the gardeners have to be men of wisdom and empathy, people who love what they are doing, not mercenaries seeking the maximum payouts. Sadly, it is the mercenaries and carpet- baggers who own our patch of land today. What remains of the top soil will be blown away soon, leaving a rocky outcrop, a civilisational desert of no value to anyone but these rapacious seekers of power and their hirelings. They will rule over a wasteland, but then, as Satan mused: "It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven." 

THE " BATTLE OF CIVILISATIONS" IS ONE BETWEEN ALGEBRA AND HAMBURGERS

 Civilisations are created by poets, writers, painters, architects, but are destroyed by politicians and their armies. We would do well to remember this truth at a time when an existential civilisational war is taking place almost on our borders, in West Asia. Make no mistake, the illegal assaults on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran are not just about Greater Israel or oil or uranium enrichment: these are just the cover for a new Crusades against the non-Christian, non- Caucasian world, a new religio-colonial imperialism by the USA and Israel, given wink-wink support by most of Europe. Large numbers of Christians in these countries appear to have embraced the spirit of Zionism too.

The sheer temerity and audacity of this is hard to grasp. Here we have two countries, one barely 75 years in existence and the other whose cultural pillars are hamburgers and Kentucky fried chicken, presuming to destroy genuine civilisations thousands of years old. As the Iranian Foreign Minister reminded Trump: the Persians were inscribing the laws of human rights on the Cyrus pillar when the Europeans and Americans were still living in caves. The blood thirsty Zionists of today are probably not even aware that it was a Persian mathematician who invented Algebra in the 9the century AD, that the Jews exist today because Persian kings like Xerexes ( 6th century BC) and Cyrus (5th century BC) had ordered that the Jews should be allowed to live in peace in their kingdoms and should not be harmed in any way. That today's Jews should now to seek to slaughter the descendents of these Persians says all that is needed to be said about true civilisations and barbarians.

The evidence for this attempted civilisational supremacy is mounting by the day. This policy was officially declared by that Cuban immigrant who, like a snake which has lost its bearings, tries to devour its own tail; I speak of Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State. At the Munich Security Conference in February this year  he unashamedly laid out Trump's new Maga Carta, to the accompaniment of a standing ovation by other European leaders. He expressed nostalgia for the past, when Europe's "missionaries, pilgrims, soldiers, explorers poured out from its shores to settle new continents". He called for "a new age of western dominance", to reverse the decline of the West since 1945, in effect proclaiming the launch of a new era of neo-colonialism. USA, he stated, is "fixing" the problem, and in doing so will have no hesitation in rejecting the core elements of the existing international order.

This has been amply demonstrated by the fact that the USA has between 750-800 military bases in 80 countries to maintain its hegemony; by the bombing of 41 countries  in the last 80 years, and all but one of them (Serbia) are in either Asia or Africa. One expert estimates that these assaults, and the sanctions that have accompanied them, have killed at least 32 million people. Gaza, Lebanon and Iran are only the latest expressions of this attempted neo-colonialism. Trump has openly boasted that he has taken the Venezuelan oil, that he wants Iran's oil reserves and a share in the toll revenues from Hormuz. He has shown utter racial contempt for one of the oldest civilisations in the world by killing its leaders, calling them bastards who belong to the stone age. The Israeli Defence Minster has described Palestinians as "worse than animals" and called for their extermination.

The West Asia genocide by Israel and the USA has been fully, though more quietly,  supported by Western Europe and the G7, with the exception of a couple of countries like Spain and Ireland. Their continued trade with Israel  hovers at about US$ 50 billion annually, they have sanctioned Iran and Venezuela but will not dream of sanctioning Israel, they continue to arm the rogue terrorist state to the teeth, they have formed a coalition of 12 European states to open the Straits of Hormuz but will not do so to protect either Gaza or South Lebanon. Even worse, they will not allow their own citizens to protest against Israel: UK has arrested thousands of protesters and France has just introduced the YADAN law that criminalises any anti-Israel public protest with a five year jail term! The West's war of civilisations is being waged in full earnest.

This is the context in which we should view Iran's tenacious defence of its sovereignty and its peoples. Iran is fighting to DECOLONISE the Global South. It has effectively reversed and turned on its head the western narrative of the southern nations being the "barbarians" and "terrorists": the emerging global perception is that Israel and the USA are the biggest terrorist nations, that it is they who constitute the biggest threat to peace and the world order, that its leaders are declared war criminals. The barbarians have lost this war but by definition are too stupid to admit it.

POLYTICKS, DEMOCKRAZY AND MUMBOJUMBO---BABUS, MANTRIS & NETAS (UNMAKING) OUR NATION.

 

This book of mine, containing political satire and lampooning our social peccadillos and pretences, was first published by PIPPA RAN BOOKS AND MEDIA in 2020. It has now been republished by AUTHOR'S UPFRONT/ PARANJOY THAKURTA this year. I am reposting this brief introduction to it on my blog for the benefit (or mortification, as the case may be!) of those readers who have discovered me after 2020. Six years is almost a generational space nowadays in this fast-paced world, where you have to register your presence on social media everyday lest you are consigned to internet oblivion.

The sixty odd pieces in this book cover subjects as varied as high society dinners, judicial oddities, the arcane mumbo jumbo of economics, politicians and their misdeeds, social peccadillos, the absurdities of governmental policies, the inanities of our media and TV channels, and a lot more. But rarely is there a frontal assault: the battle is waged with humour, irony and satire; the intent is to both inform and amuse!

                                

The book has a fabulous Preface by the evergreen Shashi Tharoor, and I cannot blow my own trumpet better than by quoting from it:

"Avay Shukla is no ordinary blogger. He is a former senior bureaucrat... now retired but armed with a formidable (nearly) four decades of experience administering the complexities of Indian governance. He was clearly no ordinary bureaucrat either, for he wields an incisive pen, a highly effective vocabulary- and a style so original, so witty and often so devastating that his file notations must have been classics in their own right!"

"Every subject is tackled with a command of both subject and language that make his conclusions both impossible to resist....Some of his writing is satirical, but much of it is infused with a burning passion for issues that matter in India, tinged perhaps with the tinge of disillusionment of one who has seen it all and found it wanting."

"The talent for brevity makes him the ideal blogger-somebody who has something to say, and does so readably and pithily....I hope (Avay Shukla's) work finds the wide and discerning readership it deserves, well beyond the transience of its original medium in cyberspace."

The book has merited a number of reviews, and I am happy to share  one of them, by Jawhar Sircar, IAS (Retd) and ex-MP of the Trinamool Congress. Jawhar is a batchmate and even otherwise a kindred soul! Here are excerpts from the review, published in the Statesman Literary Review:

Few bureaucrats are endowed with a great sense of humour, or else they would not be bureaucrats in the first place. And, a profession that claims to be the world’s second oldest surely lacks the excitement of the first. There are, however, certain similarities and Avay Shukla’s PolyTicks, DeMockrazy & Mumbo Jumbo lifts the hemline to reveal saucy bits, but leaves it to the reader to fantasise. We benefit from his insider’s ring-side views about “babus, mantris and netas (un) making our nation”. His wit has surely not deserted him even after cohabiting for thirty five long years with dull, dusty and musty files. Behind his satire and flippant delivery, however, he displays his utter seriousness with facts and figures, as is expected from a senior administrator.

Shukla’s blog, View From (Greater) Kailash, is immensely popular among his former colleagues and a large band of other readers. They love his flippantly serious dissection of earth-shaking problems and eagerly wait for their weekly fix. One is reminded of RK Laxman’s apparently innocent but sarcasm-loaded gaze as he spoke for the common man whose one-liners were more devastating than gnashing one’s teeth or tearing precious hair. Most of his 58 articles tackle one problem at a time and he keeps smiling even as he rips through its abdomen for the world to see. .....

Let us sample his fare. Discussing the growing trust deficit, his opening comments are: “Many decades ago when I was growing up in a simpler era when crooked people were called cheats not “ethically challenged”; when a “face lift” was generally given to a building, not to a visage ravaged by time; when “silicone valley” was understood to refer to Pamela Anderson’s cleavage not to a techie wonderland, it was easy to have trust in people or things. The only objects that were universally not trusted were politicians, bureaucrats and shop-keepers, something, by the way, which holds good today.” He plunges thereafter into the serious business of analysing some notable professions to show how “the trust factor gets more invidious” with time. “Beauty”, he sighs, “does (not) lie in the eye of the beholder, it lies in the scalpel of the plastic surgeon.”.........

Delhi’s forever upwardly mobile society and its inescapable humbug are obviously targets of his acid tongue. He tries to figure out why nobody but a nobody ever arrives in time. “To do so ensures you will not be invited again (because) such aberrant behaviour reveals........that you are unemployed or (God forbid) retired, that you have no other place to visit that evening , that you are trying to save on your AC charges in your home, that you are unimportant flotsam”. Then, after listing a long series of mandatory fake behaviour that one has to suffer and keep grinning, Avay Shukla explains that “exiting a South Delhi dinner is also an art which needs a lot of practice and panache”. He suggests a good exit line like “Sorry, I must rush — Mr LK Advani is waiting for me”. He has no qualms about this fast one, as “the poor guy has been waiting for years now for anyone to call on him”.

His remarkable wit notwithstanding, Shukla is deadly serious when examining his issues — that range from police excesses, bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, citizenship disasters to smart-phones, smart cities and India’s rapidly-plunging GDP and international ratings. He lays bare hard, internationally-acknowledged data for his readers to mull over. Like “1% of Indians own 55% of its wealth” or how “10% have collared 74%” of the country’s resources. But even these need updating, as in two quick years, they have become worse and more skewed. Berating the regime-encouraged or caste-inspired agitations and violence against certain films, launched mainly by uninformed goons, he laments that “all film production will cease”. And he rues: “Sunny Leone will regrettably go back to Canada, Amitabh Bachchan will become Baba Ramdev’s brand ambassador and Salman Khan will resume shooting black bucks and chinkaras which is a far safer occupation in India than shooting films.”

Lampooning Rahul Gandhi’s sudden hugging of the Prime Minister, Shukla comments “I don’t think he was expecting any reciprocal cleaving to the bosom by the PM. It is well known that Mr Modi never, but never, hugs an Indian: his expansive embraces are reserved for foreign dignitaries, preferably on foreign soil.”  Shukla take on the IAS is quite true, mercilessly so, and he aptly compares their service years with Russian dogs, who are “well fed but not allowed to bark”. “When the muzzle comes off after 35 years”, he notes that “they tend to be a rather chatty lot”. 

In this apparently flippant vein, he tosses various persons, societal ailments and governmental goofing around. To Avay Shukla, there are no holy cows that can’t be tickled, despite unpleasant consequences that have befallen several outspoken critics who went too far. He is, however, quite even-handed with all political parties and if ever people are curious how bureaucrats put up with the largely-obnoxious political class, the answer is that they “faked it” most of the time. Mercifully, Shukla does not pontificate or compare his bravado with the antics of the ‘lowly specimens’ who populate his service since he left it. He laughs at himself all the time and that, by itself, proves that he has achieved something that is very difficult for most of his colleagues. That is: to remain plainly human and simply normal.

The paperback version of the book is available on Amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.in/dp/8199353686

or simply type the name of the book. Kindle version should be available soon.

SHOULD I PROTECT MY PERSONALITY OR INSURE MY LEGS ?

 I've been feeling a bit low these last few months, enveloped in a feeling of missing out on something, what the acronym generation would term FOMO- Feeling Of Missing Out, but is actually more of FOBLO- a Feeling Of Being Left Out. Somewhat like Sanju Samson being left out of the team for the first few matches of the T20 World Cup. Let me explain.

The author and blogger Manu Joseph is someone I admire; he has an innovative mind, an imagination that soars like a hypersonic missile, and he thinks out of the box. In a recent blog he explained how hard it now is for the "uber wealthy" to maintain their distinct social status above the humbler "very wealthy". Till now this was done by buying status symbols like designer and bespoke cars, flats in Dubai, annual trips to Biarritz, bouncers in black Tee shirts, luxury yachts and arm candy from Italy. Economists call these Veblen goods, where the higher the price the higher is the demand for them. They confer status. Not any more. With  ordinary millionaires now mushrooming like bhakts at a Modi rally in Houston, the uber rich billionaires have now lost their exclusivity or uniqueness. Anyone from Karol Bagh who does not pay his GST (which includes everyone in KB) can now buy what was once the exclusive preserve of the billionaires. Let me pursue Manu Joseph's idea.

 The bar for the uber rich is getting higher with every turn of the cronyism cycle. Therefore, to maintain their social distance and snobbery, they are resorting to outlandish strategems, indulging in extreme ventures. Like paying 55 million dollars for a trip to space on SpaceX or Virgin Atlantic, or 5 million dollars for diving down to the Titanic in a submersible, or buying a plot of land on the dark side of the Moon (which Trump will probably acquire once he has had his Joline moment with Cuba.) So strong is the pressure to be "different" that it does not seem to matter that they may not survive these ventures!

But-and here's the interesting part- the uber wealthy celebrities in Hollywood and other red carpet bastions of showbiz want no part of risking life and limb to be different. In fact, they go to the other extreme- they insure their limbs instead, for mind boggling sums! Julia Roberts's smile is insured for US$ 30 million, Ronaldo and Beckham have insured their legs for 117 and 70 million respectively, Taylor Swift for 40 million (quite under priced, in my view). But this pales into spindly insignificance in front of Mariah Carey's legs which command $ 1 billion. Really, are those legs or ATMs? Bringing up the rear, however, is this piece de resistance: Kim Kardashian's buttocks are insured for 21 million, but even this is not within touching distance of  Jennifer Lopez's derriere which is insured for 300 million. Gives an entirely new flavour to that immortal Americanism: "Kiss my a**e !"

In India, however, our crorepati showbiz celebrities in Bollywood are more pragmatic and parsimonious. They have started acquiring their exclusive status by a less expensive method- by claiming "personality rights" which no one else can usurp. All it requires is a ten rupee stamp paper and an unemployed lawyer. No wonder these days there is a virtual flood of these petitions in courts. Personality Rights (PR) protects an individual's public persona and identity- voice, image, likeness, mannerisms- from unauthorised commercial exploitation. This list of protectees now threatens to exceed the protectees under the Z category of the Home Ministry, and includes Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Anil Kapoor, Karan Johar, Shahrukh Khan and Daler Mehndi. So now you can't sing like Asha Bhonsle, build biceps like Salman Khan, smirk like Karan Johar, bat your eyelids like Aishwarya Rai or say KHAMOSH like Shatrughan Sinha (I'm not joking- a court has just ordered that he has the rights over that expression). Very soon, you'll not be able to hug like Mr. Modi or do a padyatra like Rahul Gandhi, cough like Kejriwal, employ MS Dhoni's "helicopter shot", deliver sermons like Mr. Jaishankar or expose your six-packs like the King Khan while spreading your arms in the Titanic pose. The message going out is simple and clear- if you've not had your PR protected by a court, you don't count.

It goes without saying that our courts are going overboard on this matter, which is a tussle between the right to privacy and the freedom of expression. The point is: if Salman Khan flexes his pectorals in a Pan masala ad, or Shilpa Shetty swings her derriere down a ramp, or KR Rehman croons in an auditorium - all this is done in public, is in the public domain. They voluntarily gave up their right to privacy to earn a few millions, so how can emulating them, talking about it or making memes or sarcastic comments about them constitute a violation of their PR? Next we'll have Keshto Mukherjee seeking PR protection for acting drunk in public, or Mr. Nitish Kumar claiming a patent for political defection, or Kangana Ranaut claiming that no one is allowed to speak English in that delightful  Pahari- Convent school accent!

But I'm not waiting for the courts to get their act together: I've decided to apply for protection of my own personality rights so that my editors and publishers treat me with some respect. Problem is, my wife Neerja says I have no personality except that of a proboscis monkey, these monkeys are already in zoos (maybe a few in some forests too), and therefore these looks belong to the Great Apes, not homo sapiens, and so they cannot be protected. But I disagree. From certain angles, and in subdued lighting, I have an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Bean, and can therefore seek protection as a Mr. Has- Been. Cheaper than insuring my legs or patootie, what? 

Did I hear someone titter? KHAMOSH !

BOOK REVIEW. JUDGING THE JUDGES.

              

                                          

                   [Published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. 2025]

  Before we get into this thought provoking book two things need to be said about it. One, it reaffirms that courageous journalism and writing still breathes in India, notwithstanding the utter capitulation of most of the shameful media to power and commerce. Second, the book raises troubling questions about our higher judiciary, based not on allegations and charges, but on facts available in the public domain and easily verifiable. The authors lay out the carcass of our judicial system, wounds and all, and leave it to the reader to make up his or her mind.

The central character is Justice Arun Mishra:  appointed to the Supreme Court in July 2014 by the Narendra Modi government, even though the previous UPA government had twice rejected his case. On his retirement from the SC in  September 2020, he was appointed as Chairman of the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) in June 2021, where he did not distinguish himself : for the first time ever, NHRC was downgraded by GANHRI (Global Alliance of National Human Rights Commissions) from category A to B for its failure to investigate human rights violations and its police- led approach. He retired from the NHRC in January 2025 and was, unsurprisingly and ironically, appointed  as Ombudsman and Ethics Officer of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).                                                                                                            In this book fourteen of his most controversial judgments are subjected to a forensic analysis the media, or any legal scholar, have never had the courage to do. And in each one any reasonable person would find him wanting, feeling that he was prone to riding rough-shod over High Court judgments, fashioning previous judgments and precedences to suit his interpretations of the law, displaying complete lack of empathy for human rights , failing to acknowledge conflict of interest in some cases and refusing to recuse himself from them, intriguingly ruling in favour of the government, the rich and the powerful even though there was much evidence to support a contrary decision. 

 The authors rarely, if ever, give their opinions on these cases ( in deference, probably, to the prevailing climate of self-censorship, laws of contempt and subdued criticism); they meticulously lay out the facts, invariably supported by citations and references, and leave it to the astute reader to draw his own inferences and conclusions. Most conclusions will do no credit to Justice Mishra. It is not possible to discuss each of these cases in a book review, but a few common threads that run through them become self-evident, enough to justify the title of this book.

Justice Mishra's propensity to favour the government's/prosecution version in just about every case is the first thing one notices, whether in the Elgar Parishad case where a scholar-activist like Gautam Navlakha was allowed to be hauled out of the jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court by the NIA (National Investigation Agency) for no reason and in the face of Delhi High Court orders, just so that he could not be granted bail for another couple of years; or in the case of Sanjiv Bhatt, an IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre who fell foul of the powers by revealing details of a meeting taken by Mr. Modi (the then CM of Gujarat) during the riots of 2002, and for alleging that he was pressurised by Modi and Shah to "withdraw a report he had prepared on the murder of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya." Bhatt's writ petition in the SC for constitution of an SIT to probe anew the Gujarat riots  was heard by Justice Mishra who dismissed it, placing implicit faith in the version of the government, accusing Bhatt of misleading the court, of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi, and of not coming to the court "with clean hands." This judgment effectively sealed Bhatt's fate, the authors say: he was subsequently convicted on another, decades old case and is now serving life in prison (appeal is pending in the Gujarat High Court, for whatever it is worth).

This book makes the reader wonder whether Justice Mishra was ever interested in the search for either truth or justice. In Judge Loya's case he inexplicably refused to allow a court monitored probe into the mysterious death of one of his own. (Loya was trying a case in which Amit Shah, the Home Minister, was an accused in a murder/false encounter). In the Sahara-Birla bribery case, he refused to allow in evidence a handwritten note in which payment of bribes were recorded (including allegedly to Mr. Modi, the then CM of Gujarat). The rejection was based on a technical definition of what constitutes a "diary"! Justice Mishra held that since the so-called payments were recorded in loose sheets of paper and did not have a spiral or permanent binding, they could not be considered as admissible in evidence! The case, naturally, fell apart in the absence of this crucial piece of evidence.

Hearing the constitutional challenge to the Forest Rights Act (FRA) which sought to confer land rights on traditional forest dwellers, Arun Mishra, instead of addressing the constitutional issues involved, peremptorily ordered the eviction of millions of tribals at the second hearing itself, without ascertaining whether their claims had been adjudicated according to the law or not. It was only when the BJP govt. in Delhi (which had done nothing to defend its own Act), fearful of an electoral backlash, requested the court to reconsider that Justice Mishra stayed his own order in 2020. The case remains in limbo till this day.

Brandishing his authority like a cudgel, the Hon' Judge, taking suo moto notice of two tweets by Prashant Bhushan, noted activist and SC lawyer, about the  role of four past Chief Justices in the dismantling of democracy, convicted him of contempt of court. This, in spite of advice to the contrary by the Attorney General of India and a legion of legal luminaries and civil society members. This judgment itself has done much to tarnish the image of the SC as a protector of free speech.

The book meticulously documents how, in the 18 months prior to his retirement Justice Mishra delivered a series of judgments (eight, to be precise) in favour of the Adani group and Reliance Industries, by which they benefitted  by thousands of crores of rupees and effectively reducing the telecom sector to a duopoly. Once again, the rub lies in the manner of interpretation of laws, facts and precedents. Without going into the intricacies of the judgments (the reader can peruse them himself and draw his own conclusions), the sheer coincidence of timing and disposal is intriguing. As Ian Fleming famously said: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action!"

The other cases/ judgments analysed in this book only reinforce the misgivings about Justice Mishra's credentials as an impartial purveyor of justice. Sadly, one cannot discuss them all in this review. Suffice it say, however, that by the end of this book, one cannot but struggle with four troubling questions. One, are we over-hyping the bit about "independence of the judiciary", seeing that the virtual immunity proffered to them is not serving its stated purpose? Two, it is being demonstrated daily that judicial independence without a corresponding accountability can only lead to judicial tyranny. Therefore, should there be more focus on the other doctrine-"accountability of the judiciary"? Third, is the country being let down by the manner in which we appoint and promote our judges? Four, should reemployment of retired judges not be banned entirely, as it seriously compromises their loyalties? Inconvenient questions, but ones which will have to be addressed sooner rather than later. If the fourteen judgments in this book  compel the reader to reflect on this, it would have done its job.

WARS, ECOCIDE AND THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK.

 It's a disturbing sign of the times that the global levers of power today are controlled by genocidal murderers, sex offenders, megalomaniacs, war criminals and rapacious billionaires who should all be in jail. Collectively, these psychopaths are driving the human race ever closer to the seventh mass extermination, this time of homo sapiens- which is probably a good thing from a planetary perspective, for we do not deserve this wonderful orb. Any one of three forces- Artificial Intelligence (AI), Climate Change, War- has the capacity to exterminate us, but it gets even worse: the last three years has demonstrated that all these three forces are now coming TOGETHER to do the job under the guidance of the sociopaths mentioned above.

As we edge ever closer to a war-driven holocaust in Ukraine and the Middle-east, this three-way synergy is becoming more pronounced and evident. AI is being used to assassinate leaders, military chiefs and scientists, to communicate and surveil, to guide missiles and bombs, to make war itself autonomous. The fate of "enemies" is now being decided by algorithms, not rational persons. This harnessing of A.I. for war has been exposed in the tussle between Anthropic and the Pentagon, when the latter refused to accept the guard-rails which Anthropic had inserted into its algorithms to prevent their misuse. Anthropic was black-listed for taking an ethical stand, but Open AI and others quickly filled the void. AI is making even conventional/ non-nuclear wars more lethal and opportunistic/acceptable for those nations which possess the technology.

This AI is being being used by robber baron warlords, criminal syndicates masquerading as elected governments, to wage illegal wars,  driving us ever closer to climate Armageddon by destroying the natural environment, increasing the emission of GHGs (Green House Gases), and polluting the soils and waters of a dozen nations. Sadly, however, no one is talking about the environmental catastrophe unfolding in larger concentric circles, all eyeballs are fixated on missiles, drones, aircraft carriers and the straits of Hormuz.

A study has revealed that three years of the Russia-Ukraine war has released an additional 350 million tons of pollutants/ GHG/ CO2 into the atmosphere, 1% of annual global emissions, through bombings, explosions and fires. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Kherson region of Ukraine by Russia in 2023 flooded 600+ sq.kms of the downstream area, causing a humanitarian and ecological disaster on an unparalleled scale: more than 83000 tons of silt contaminated with heavy metals (lead, cadmium, nickel) has been deposited downstream, making the soil and water there toxic and poisoned for decades.

The entire 365 sq.kms of the Gaza strip has been carpet bombed by Israel to an extent that there is now no farmland or green area remaining there. Thousands of unexploded ordinance are buried in its soil and cities.  80% of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, and according to an estimate by the UN this has created 63 million tons of rubble, which will take 15 years to remove if 200 truck loads are removed every day! The cost will be more than a billion US dollars. Effectively, the entire 365 sq. kms has been degraded into a wasteland.

The environmental impact of the on-going US/ Israel war on Iran will be much worse, both for the land and the sea, especially now that oil facilities are fair game for all parties. Israel initiated this new phase of environmental warfare by bombing Teheran's oil storage tanks in the second week of March : the resultant massive plumes of black smoke which persisted for days was bad enough. Worse was the rain that fell, "black rain" containing all the released pollutants which have now leached into the soil, making it toxic and barren for decades, and contaminating the ground water. Israel's attack on Iran's Pars gas field on the 18th March is the beginning of an ecocide in the whole region: it processes 600 million cu.mtrs. of natural gas every day. With such a humongous volume being set on fire, the toxic fumes will envelop not only Iran but the entire Gulf region, and could travel even as far as Pakistan and India. Iran's inevitable retaliation by bombing the oil fields of Israel and the Gulf countries will exponentially multiply this pollution. One shudders to even imagine how much pollutants all this will add to the atmosphere.

Tens of millions of liters/barrels of oil are contained in the ships, both military and civilian. riding on the Persian Gulf, all in harm's way of the war. More than 13 million barrels of oil and 500,000 tons of gas are presently locked up in the straits of Hormuz alone in 300 ships. If even half a dozen of them are sunk, the waters of the Gulf shall be contaminated for decades, all marine life destroyed. Have we conveniently forgotten what happened during the Iraq war, when Saddam Hussein spilled millions of liters of oil in the sea? That marine area has yet to recover, even after 26 years.

A recent study quoted in THE GUARDIAN  reveals that 5 million tons of CO2e has been emitted in the first 14 days of the current war, from destroyed buildings (2.4 million tons), fuel for military vehicles ( 529000 tons), bombing of oil facilities ( 1.88 million tons), destroyed military hardware ( 172000 tons), munitions (55000 tons). This is equivalent to the annual carbon budget of the 84 lowest carbon emitting countries in the world. 

The Netanyahus, Putins and Trumps of the world are not only waging illegal wars and trashing humanitarian covenants, they are committing ecocide on a horrendous scale. This is another reminder that fossil-fuelled geopolitics is incompatible with a liveable planet. The Doomsday Clock in Chicago University, which is so set up that midnight signifies total Apocalypse, is getting ever closer to that point in time. It was at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, today it is at 85 seconds to midnight. The world is running out of time fast, and that is not  just a metaphor.