THE BEAS TRAGEDY-HOW MANY LIVES IS ONE MEGAWATT WORTH?

    The death of twenty four students owing to a sudden surge in the Beas at Thalout by the release of waters from the Larji Dam yesterday is another instance of how the hydel projects in Himachal just don't give a damn about safety-whether it is of the environment or of human beings. And this time the HP govt. can't just wash its hands off the whole matter because the Larji Project is its own, and is operated by the HPSEB (Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board).
    The HP govt. has for years been warned of the heavy price that it is paying-and will continue to pay-for the reckless stupidity and cupidity with which it has been devastating its river and mountain systems. The environmental degradation in all its four major riverine valleys has been well documented and has reached a point of no return. Local villagers from Kinnaur to Bharmour have for years been protesting against the threats that these projects hold out to their lands and lives. NGOs, social activists and nature lovers  of all shades have been petitioning the govt. and the courts to stop this wanton destruction. But the politicians and bureaucrats ensconced in Ellerslie can count only the megawatts and hear only the ringing of the cash registers.
   That was bad enough, but as the tragedy at Larji demonstrates, these hydel projects have also severely compromised human safety in order to cut costs and make even more money. It is an internationally mandated and accepted practice that all dams and reservoirs are required to install warning systems- advance proclamations, sirens, flashing lights-that have to be activated BEFORE releasing any unusual quantity of water. Shockingly, this is not insisted upon in Himachal. Similar accidents have happened in this state in the past also: in the Sutlej by the release of waters from the Nathpa-Jhakri project, in the Ravi valley and elsewhere, and lives have been lost before though not on the colossal scale as this time. But the Larji HEP is a govt. project and the HP govt. and its HPSEB cannot hide from the question- why did it not issue an alarm before releasing the waters, and did it even have an advance warning system in place? I am given to understand that HPSEB had been repeatedly advised by environmental and safety experts to install these systems but it took a conscious decision NOT TO DO SO BECAUSE IT FELT THAT IT WAS AN UNNECESSARY COST! If this is true-and this aspect needs to be thoroughly investigated-it was an unpardonable, and a criminal, error of judgement and all those who were a party to it must be proceeded against. The ire of the local villagers after the incident, who blocked traffic to protest against the callousness of the project authorities, lends credence to the suspicion that no alarm system existed, or even if it did, it was never activated. They have complained of similar flash releases of water in the past. This just begs the question- how many megawatts is a human life worth, in the estimation of our project administrators?
   An immediate safety audit of ALL the hydel projects in the state must be carried out because with the monsoons approaching more such sudden releases from dams will become necessary.
   The Larji project is also responsible for another piece of engineering which is another disaster in waiting- the Larji Traffic Tunnel on the national highway between Mandi and Kullu. This 3.50 kilometer tunnel was constructed by the project as an alternative because the original stretch of the highway was submerged by the Larji reservoir. There are no checkposts at either ends of the tunnel and not a single telephone inside as an emergency instrument which could be used in case of an accident. If any accident happens inside the tunnel-car crash, tunnel collapse, landslide-those inside have no means of contacting anyone for help. (There is no cell phone connectivity within the tunnel). Once again, it needs to be reiterated that all global practices stipulate that such long tunnels should compulsorily have such communication systems, but Larji again appears to have cut corners. This also needs to be rectified immediately.
   The Himachal govt., whose undertaking is the prime mover of this tragedy, cannot be entrusted with an inquiry into this incident. Furthermore, this is not an isolated incident and the larger issue of safety/ warning systems in ALL hydel projects in the state needs to be investigated properly. It is therefore only proper that the govt. constitute a judicial commission to enquire into the matter and all its related aspects.

THE MODI EFFECT-- ONE NATION, ONE INDIA, ONE INDIAN.

    Ever since independence, when Sardar Patel cajoled and coerced more than 400 princely states to join the Indian union, our politicians have been assiduously trying to undo his work. They have been carving up this great country into personal fiefdoms based on caste, class, language, religion, the ubiquitous " cultural identity", unapologetic regionalism and so on, widening and exploiting fissures that have always existed in Indian society. The smarter ones-like the Congress and the Samajwadi party-CREATED fissures where none existed in order to manufacture constituencies for themselves. The most odious example of this in the recent past has been the Mandalisation of an already fractured society by VP Singh, a failed Prime Minister best forgotten. The Muslim community, whose thread is so interwoven into the fabric of India or Hindustan, call it what you will, that it is colourless and incomplete without it, has been driven into a ghetto from where it is milked for votes every five years and then left to fester in poverty , ignorance and fear.

   These scavengers have done their job well. For the last twenty years India's unitary and federal structure has been progressively weakening. Regionalism had begun to threaten the very basis of our constitutional stucture and the Central government had ceased to exercise control even over subjects that were its exclusive domain. Powerful Chief Ministers began to dictate foreign policy and defence strategy, sabotage central programmes, even defy the Center on matters of internal security. One aging ex-Chief Minister of a border state who himself borders on senility even threatened that his state would cede from the Indian Union if a particular party won the elections!

    Opportunistic coalitions based on the sole ideology of grasping power further fragmented a crumbling polity. Governance was replaced by corruption, malfeasance, financial profligacy, appeasement and the politics of entitlement, not responsibility or accountability.

   In a democratic India the vehicles of its democratic aspirations-the political parties-have themselves ceased to be democratic or representative. They have been appropriated by a handful of fat cat families-the Gandhis, Karunanidhis, Pawars, Abdullahs, Mulayam Singhs, Paswans, Laloo Yadavs, Hoodas, Badals. There is little to distinguish them from the Mughal satraps except that  even the latter had to possess some competence to survive whereas the former need nothing more than the bank balances  and the network of cronies built up over the years. The priority of these feudals has always been their own advancement, not that of the country.

   This is the backdrop against which the results of the recent elections has to be seen. Their biggest triumph is not the ascension of Narender Modi but the coming of age of the Indian voter, long regarded as expendable cattle who could be led by the nose. ( refer to my earlier article IS THE INDIAN VOTER A MORON?). In one sweeping verdict he has reaffirmed his identity as an Indian and rejected the labels the politician had stuck on him. He has proclaimed that he wants to be governed, not diminished by appeasement or blandishments. He now expects his politician to be chosen on merit, not dynasty. He wants to re-define the two most distorted and falsified words in the Indian political lexicon- " secular" and " communal".

   This metamorphosis of the Indian voter's mind set is evident from an analysis of the voting patterns in the 2014 Parliament elections. Let us consider a few of them.

*  The two deepest faultlines in the Indian psyche have been the minority( read Muslim) and Dalit identities. These cultural cracks have been exploited by generations of politicians who have widened them into what appeared to be unbridgeable chasms. Mayawati claimed one, Mulayam claimed the other and the Congress claimed both. Modi claimed neither as Muslim or Dalit, but asked for their votes as INDIANS-and succeeded. Out of 34 seats( all India excluding J+K) with more than 20% Muslim voters BJP won 19( against 11 in 2009) whereas the Congress got only 2( down 12) and the Samajwadi party only 1. The BSP and the RLD got none. Even more telling, in UP the BJP won in ALL 25 seats where Muslims constitute 25% or more of the voters( except Badaun).

   A desperate theory is being floated by the self-appointed gatekeepers of the Muslim vote that the BJP won these seats because the Muslim vote got fragmented and dispersed over a number of parties in multi cornered contests- in other words " the index of opposition unity" was low. While this is a fact it is not the whole truth. For one, the Muslim vote has always got divided; this time, in fact, the Modi fear factor was hyped up so much by all non-BJP parties that it should have, in theory, got consolidated like never before! This obviously did not happen. Secondly, at the national level the BJP's share of the Muslim vote has actually GONE UP- from 4% in 2009 to 9%. Thirdly, this is further confirmed by the figures for Delhi: in the 9 Assembly segments where Muslims dominate the BJP's share of the Muslim vote has increased by 106490 votes as compared to the 2013 polls, from 256686 to 363173, an increase of 40%.

   There can be no doubt that the Muslims are beginning to accept the BJP under Modi, are willing to try him out and are moving away from the parties that have utilised them for decades. One wall that divides India has become to crumble......

*   Another bank where divisive political parties have traditionally put their ill-gotten electoral gains is the Dalit vote " bank" (which constitutes 14% of our population) and the OBC bank, an artificially created repository of votes post Mandal. Whereas Dalits Inc. has reached a saturation point and no fresh capital can be infused into it, the OBC is a growing business for the politician-in fact the shameless opportunism of the Congress plumbed new depths when, just days before elections, it notified Jats- the most feudal, prosperous and expolitative community in western UP and Haryana- as OBCs! But a tethered falcon can never fly, no matter how many crumbs it is fed- this was Modi's message and it appears to have got through to both these communities. In these elections the BJP has garnered 26% of the Dalit votes, highest of all parties, not excluding even the BSP which received 20%. Further confirmation that the Dalits are breaking out of their stifling mould is provided by the fact that out of 84 seats reserved for the SCs as many as 68 have been won by the NDA, and of 43 ST seats 30 have gone to the NDA! Continuing this trend the BJP also claimed 45% of the lower OBC votes and 33% of that of the upper OBCs.

*   Modi is beginning to do the unthinkable- he is consolidating the Hindu vote across India. A pan-Hindu consolidation across caste and class lines is taking place and the space for the Mulayams, Mayawatis, Ajit Singhs and Laloo Yadavs has shrunk rapidly. Nothing else can explain the 9% increase in the BJP vote share, the 73 seats won in UP, the decimation of the four worthies mentioned above, the fact that the Congress has not won even one seat in 9 states, that 178 of its candidates have lost their deposits.

   Modi has reawakened and united a Hindu psyche that had somehow, by some twisted political logic, been bludgeoned into a state of self reproach and self-denial by mercenary politicians , an effete, English speaking, ersatz liberal intelligentsia and secular fundamentalists. He has rekindled a pride in Hinduism as a way of life and culture, not a religion. He has brought about a realisation that India cannot survive as one nation if its Hindu constituents continue to fight each other. He has gone a long way in convincing the minorities that his version of secularism will deliver them the safety and progress that sixty years of Congress secularism has not.

*  Modi has decisively breached another citadel-that of regionalism, which had increasingly been putting narrow, parochial interests above that of the nation. ( I have written about it earlier in a piece titled WHO WILL SPEAK UP FOR INDIA?). ALL regional parties, with the exception of three- AIADMK, TMC AND BJD- have been reduced to insignificant rumps-all non-NDA  parties( except  Congress and the three above ) have a combined vote share of just 22.8%. The combined vote share of AIADMK, TMC and BJD too comes to just 8.8%. Regionalism survives now in only a handful of states and even there Modi and the BJP have now made in-roads for the first time: Nagaland, West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir. This can only be regarded as a positive development, one that has reversed the destructive trend of the last few years. It can only make us stronger as a nation.

*  Concommitent with the decline of regionalism has been the withering away of dynasties, that scourge of our democracy. The Maran/ Karunanidhi family of Tamil Nadu, the Yadavs of Bihar and UP, the ( Ajit) Singhs of western UP, the Pawars of Maharashtra, the Abdullahs of Kashmir, even the Gandhis- all have been dealt mortal blows, and it needs only five years of good governance by Modi to ensure that they will go the way of the dinosaurs. A few still remain, some of them allied to Modi-the Thackerays, the Badals, the Paswans- but even their days are numbered and they too will have to change their ways or perish.

   It took only a tea-seller to change the course of a nation. We now have a strong hand on the tiller, one that can perhaps take us into the future with greater confidence. Yes, he has faults and perhaps weaknesses, but at least they are visible and can be improved upon, unlike our previous rulers. Remember these lines from King Lear:

             " Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all."

          

THE ELECTION COMMISSION-- CLUELESS, TOOTHLESS AND SPEECHLESS.

    Campaigning has now concluded for the most fractious, abusive and divisive elections this country has witnessed. Belying all expectations, our politicians have just done the impossible- they have plumbed new lows in human behaviour and language. Standing in the middle of all this carnage of values and moral standards has been the Election Commission of India, ostensibly a redoubtable referee, but actually an unwitting, though active, participant in the gross devaluation of the basic principles of civilised debate that has just taken place. Never before has the authority and impartiality of the Commission been challenged in this manner, never before has it been WARNED by a candidate to behave itself, never has it been defied by a state government to do its worst, never before has it been warned of retribution by a state govt, rarely has its officials been obstructed as this time. It will take a long time for the Election Commission to recover from the mauling it has been subjected to in the last month or so. And the saddest part of it all, for me, is that the Commission has no one to blame but itself for the most part.

   Merely being a " constitutional authority" is no guarantee of immunity from political slander in this country, as even our Presidents and Supreme Court judges have discovered in the past. Excessive demonstrations of one's powers, without backing it up with equally demonstrative action on the ground, also does not generate respect. Complete and arbitrary distrust of other constitutional authorities, such as state governments, only erodes one's own effectiveness. And maintaining a monarchical silence when all kinds of half-truths and allegations are being bandied about on all TV channels is, simply put, stupid and self defeating. The Commission has been guilty of all these in this election.

    The Commission's first mistake was the stretching of the election process over an interminable sixty days. This betrays nothing but the classic bureaucratic addiction for power( remember, all the three Commissioners are dyed-in-the wool bureaucrats or they wouldn't be where they are, after all!), regardless of the mayhem it causes to governance generally. The longer the election period, the longer the Commissioners remain all powerful-combining the powers of the President, the Union govt., ALL state govts.,even the Supreme Court! The reason always given- Security considerations- is simple balderdash and nonsense.

    Other than the Naxalite affected districts, where the central para-military forces could have been concentrated exclusively for two days and polling in them completed in that period, all the other states could have gone to the polls in one day itself under security provided by the state police itself, supplemented again by the central police in the " sensitive" booths or constituencies. The whole polling process could have been completed in two phases spread over a week only.

    By over hyping the security situation successive Election Commissions have done a great dis-service to the image of the country, making us look like a tin pot republic where voting can only be ensured under the barrel of a gun. By stretching the period over two months the Commission has only made its own job, and that of millions of govt. employees in the field, more difficult. The Commission may claim that a long period enables it to marshal its resources better( doubtful, in my opinion); what is indisputable, however, is that it certainly enables the trouble makers to marshal their resources even more effectively! A single day polling all over the country would tie down these people to their own constituencies, and limit the scope of their mischief or potential for creating trouble. But a nine phase polling( as we have had) enables them to move from one state/ constituency to another, optimising their nuisance value. And so we have thousands of party workers landing up at Amethi one day and then moving en mass to Varanasi three days later, and so on. This provides a multiplier effect for trouble, making life that much more difficult for the law and order agencies.

    A modified Murphy's Law will also be at work here- the longer the time allowed, the more the chances that something will go wrong. We have seen this happening all too often. Given the abysmal standards of our politicians, more time can only mean more abuses, more intimidation, more cocking the snook at authority, more attempts to generate hatred and instigate violence. Nine phases may give you a power trip, Mr. Sampath, but it doesn't work for the rest of us ordinary folks.

    The Commission's second mistake stems from its showpiece notification-the Model Code of Conduct which is actually an archaic, unenforceable piece of officialese that creates ninety percent of the controversies it gets embroiled in. By seeking to muzzle and edit candidates' speeches it intrudes into the realm of free expression and lets loose the genie of disaffection which cannot be shoved back into the bottle. Consider the comments of Azam Khan( that Kargil was won by Muslim soldiers), Amit Shah( that voters of Muzzafarnagar should take revenge through the ballot box), Giriraj Singh( that those who do not vote for Modi should go to Pakistan), Kejriwal( that voting for BJP or the Congress is a betrayal of the country and of God). Now, these statements can be insensitive, untrue, in bad taste, even scandalous: but are they of such a criminal or felonious nature that warrant issue of notice by the Commission? Should it not be for the voter to judge these utterances and their speakers and make up their minds? In an election all kinds of opinions will be expressed but so long as they don't openly incite violence should the Commission play the role of moral policeman, especially in this age of 24X7 news channels and the internet? By unnecessarily trying to do so the Commission has descended into the messy pit whereas it should have kept itself aloof from this daily wrangling.  By lying down with the dogs it has acquired their fleas too.It has exposed itself to allegations of favouritism, selective interpretation, timidity, and lost its credibility. Most of its time has been taken up by dealing with these controversies, at the cost of real issues such as booth capturing and distribution of money and liquor.

   When Antony was leaving with his armies to conquer Egypt he was advised by Caesar: Look after your army for it is what makes your laws legal-sane advice the Commission too could have benefited from. The Commission has lots of laws but not the resolve and determination to enforce them in an even-handed manner. Having descended into the lion's pit it should have acted acted more firmly in dealing with politicos who broke them: it should have ordered the immediate arrest of the TMC MLA and his goons who assaulted EC officials in Bengal. It should have defended its beleaguered field officers with more boldness: initially backing the DM of Varanasi ( for an impeccable administrative decision, in my view) it quickly developed cold feet and appointed a Special Observer to monitor him, instantly branding him as untrustworthy. Mr. Sampath and co. certainly did not get any brownie points from the BJP for this spinelessness, but the damage done to the morale of field officers was incalculable.

    This timidity( Mr. Arun Jaitley's words) was further exhibited in the response to  large scale complaints of booth capturing and rigging by the TMC in some constituencies of Bengal. Every single party-Congress, BJP and the Left- other than the TMC made this charge-they also added that the Commission's Observer was not available on the polling day, refused to answer his phone, took no action on their complaints and should be immediately shifted. Given the TMC's earlier lawless conduct this near unanimous complaint should have been taken more seriously by the Commission, but it dismissed them in less than twenty four hours, basing its decision on the report of the same Observer who was derelict in his duties in the first place!

   This widespread impression of the Commission's faint-hearted and timorous ( if not also partisan) conduct gets further strengthened by other instances of inexplicable inactivity on its part. Mamata Bannerji has openly threatened and challenged the Commission which maintained a Sphinx like silence. Rahul Gandhi was photographed in the EVM enclosure of a polling booth talking to a voter, an absolute no-no: the Commission did nothing for four days and then came out with a statement exonerating him on the grounds that the EVM was not working! Priyanka Gandhi's PS was caught loitering within the polling area without any authorisation but not even a notice was issued to Priyanka.

   Once a body like the Election Commission, which for two months dons the mantle of God, loses its credibility and respect it also loses its effectiveness. I suspect that has happened with this Commission-major political parties are challenging it on a daily basis, some are sitting on dharnas against it, the TMC goons are back to bashing up EC officials in Bengal, Mulayam Singh is daring the EC to take action against him, Arun Jaitley is openly saying on prime-time TV that the EC has compromised itself.

   The Commission has not helped matters by generally maintaining a Delphic silence. It was only two days ago that the Chief Election Commissioner appeared on TV to explain his position, but by then it was almost too late. A poorly done job was made even worse by failure to communicate or to explain. In an election of such a massive scale there are bound to be flash points every day, incidents, charges and counter charges, violations, controversies. Their impact is amplified by TV and social media, which political parties have learnt to exploit to their advantage. At the centre of it all is the Election Commission, maintaining an imperial reticence and making things worse by its speechlessness. Why can the Commission not hold A DAILY PRESS CONFERENCE and share with the nation all news related to the election process? This would immediately scotch mischievous rumours, answer charges against the Commission on a real time basis, keep the public informed of the Commission's decisions and the reasons for them, and so on. The Commission should have learnt from Mr. Manmohan Singh's experience the damage that silence can do.

    To conclude. We have never had an election where the relationship between the Election Commission and the major political parties has  been so adversarial as in the current one: this does not bode well for the future. The two have to work together. Times, politics, voters-all are changing very rapidly and the Commission has to reinvent itself. It cannot work with an adversarial relationship with state govts either( which is the case presently) and cannot order them about peremptorily - the Commission has to realise that state govts. are equal partners in the exercise. The Code of Conduct should be consigned to the same dust bin where Rahul Gandhi threw the MPs' Disqualification Amendment Bill, and should be rewritten. The Commission should not be God anymore but should restrict its role to a manager of elections-not Commander-in-Chief, Mother Superior, Daniel and Moses rolled into one. And it should learn from Arnab Goswami how to have the last word!

LAST TANGO IN SERVICE--THE GREAT REEMPLOYMENT GOLD RUSH

    The only good thing to emerge out of the questionable comments of Shri RK Singh (ex-Home Secretary) and the indiscreet writings of  Sanjay Baru is the spotlight that has been thrown on the post retirement conduct of senior civil servants. I do not intend to analyse whether or not the actions and utterances of these two gentlemen conform to the highest traditions of a neutral, a-political civil service, or why their motives are so self evidently self serving. But this is a good opportunity to examine another element of the post retirement phase- a chapter in the book on Cronyism no one likes to talk about.

    There may be a life after death, but for a civil servant there is no life after retirement. Oh, to be sure he continues to subsist, but without the power, the flunkeys, the invitations, the red beacon, the Diwali gifts; he is just a zombie, one of the many walking dead. This is perhaps understandable- our society and polity have evolved in such a distorted manner over the last twenty five years that one's relevance is judged by only two indicators- power and/or money. The bureaucrat is no fool, he is a survivor (its the second oldest profession in the world, remember) and the last ten years of his service, therefore, are devoted to either perpetuating the first or acquiring the second. The politician and big business are not fools either-they know this, and from here springs the cronyism that is destroying the bureaucracy from within. Don't blame Hooda or Akhilesh Yadav alone- if a Shakti Nagpal or a Khemka or a Sanjeev Tripathy are hounded by the system it's because of their seniors in the service who will not rock the gravy boat that is heading for a post retirement harbour.

     Other than walking into the sunset when he superannuates a civil servant has three options: reemployment within the government, joining the private sector or joining a political party. Let's examine each, in the reverse order.

    It's probably an indication of the increasing interest of the nation in things political, and of an awareness that every citizen can contribute to governance issues, that more and more retired bureaucrats are now joining political parties. This has attracted some criticism, mainly on the grounds that such officers would be partial to that political party even while in service, and that therefore this should be disallowed for at least two years after retirement. I find it difficult to agree. Firstly, even a bureaucrat is entitled to have a political preference as a citizen (after all, he does vote for some party or the other, doesn't he?). Second, no sensible officer will let such preference colour his actual actions or decisions, if for no other reason than to protect his impending pension, especially as he knows that once he does join an outfit all his previous decisions will come under microscopic examination. He may be able to help in small matters (issue of a driving licence, admission in a school and so on) but to imagine that he would scuttle Congress's programmes because he is an admirer of Modi, or put the Delhi police under the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government because he is smitten by Kejriwal, is to completely misunderstand the role and limitations of a civil servant within this elaborate framework. This fear therefore is unfounded. On the other hand, given how the lumpen elements are taking over the political space like a horde of hungry locusts, there is a dire need for educated, experienced, broad minded, thinking people to join political parties, any and every political party. In the long run this can only have a beneficial effect on their ideologies, their conduct in Parliament, their value systems. As proof one simply has to observe what a difference people like Pavan Verma, NK Singh, Shashi Tharoor etc. make to the public discourse whenever they appear on TV, as compared to the likes of Muthalik, Togadia, Azam Khan. We need many more of the former type in our political parties, and therefore talk of imposing restrictions on them will be counter productive (apart from treading on shaky constitutional ground). After all, as Plato said: " One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." We have allowed this for far too long.

    The devil lies in the the two reemployment options. Let us take first the one which is generally talked about- joining the private sector. The rot really began with Rathikant Basu, the then Secretary Electronics, joining Star TV in 1997 (without prior permission of the government or the requisite two year cooling off period, to the best of my knowledge) and things have got steadily worse since then. The opening up of the infrastructure and natural resources sectors-coal and mining, power, roads, communication, telecom, petroleum and natural gas- and adoption of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model created a demand for two types of professionals: technical managers and fixers-the civil services provided both. As many as two dozen senior engineers of Coal India Ltd. and its subsidiaries have joined private firms in recent years. Perhaps not so well known is the amazing fact that  Reliance Industries has reemployed practically the entire top echelon of the Petroleum Ministry over a period of time. Kejriwal is not wrong when he maintains that the government is in Mukesh Ambani's pocket- at least a large number of its erstwhile top bureaucrats are, parked in Foundations where they do little substantial work other than figuring out how to spend their fat pay packets.

    Now, there is no problem with technical personnel joining the private sector. Given the vast backlog of qualified people in the rapidly expanding sectors mentioned above, this brain drain is inevitable till such time the supply from technical institutes catches up with demand. In fact I would go so far as to say it fulfills a national need. Moreover, these officials are essentially sought after for their technical experience, not (as in the case of most reemployed civil servants) for favours rendered while in service, or their continuing ability to influence policy while out of it. Take, for example, senior Doctors at the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, Delhi (where I have a few friends, to take care of my old age)! I don't know a single one who has not been inundated with offers from Apollo, Max, Medanta etc. to join them at salaries ten times what they currently draw. Senior electrical engineers in every State Electricity Board on retiring can just walk into any one of the many companies taking over our generation and distribution responsibilities. This, to me, is a good thing, because without these professionals the expansion of such crucial sectors would suffer. These people, moreover, are simply selling their specialised skills to the highest bidder- they are not cashing in on favours rendered. There are bound to be a few exceptions (as perhaps in the case of the Directorate of Hydro-carbons) but then again they only prove the rule. 

    My problem lies with the reemployment of "bureaucrats" by the private sector, because here the stench is unbearable. This is the point where this second oldest profession comes closest to the oldest one, but without the latter's candour in admitting it or the skills that accompany it! Rarely is a retired bureaucrat engaged for his technical or professional skills-he doesn't have any of the conventional ones, notwithstanding the degrees he may have acquired under the Colombo Plan or from Harvard. What he does have (and it's something at which he excels), is a mastery over public administration and the management of public welfare. This is something which the private sector does not need. Why then is he engaged by them, at salaries which make even the foregoing of pensions in some cases a viable option?

    The answer is obvious. Reemployment in such cases is either repayment for past favours or a means to ensure that the corporate continues to exercise influence within the govt. The civil service is a fairly hierarchical structure where seniority and batch espirit-de-corps still command some adherence (although it is eroding rapidly), and a retired officer can still pull quite a few strings. Secondly, his domain knowledge of governmental processes (the reason why no major deal can be executed in India without  "middlemen") is also an asset. And finally, no one knows better than a bureaucrat how to beat the system, to bypass or twist the rules, to find loopholes in the best intentioned laws - after all, he is the one who created the system, drafted the rules and left the loopholes! It is no coincidence therefore that the services most in demand are the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Revenue Service (IRS).

    Most disturbing is the fact that both the corporates and the bureaucrats are becoming more blatant: earlier the latter prostituted their dubious talents after retirement, now they don't even wait that long and quit in mid service, sometimes even taking along a few crucial papers, as has been alleged in the KG Basin oil price fixation imbroglio. This proliferating practice is seriously compromising the civil services and is perhaps one reason why so many scams are occurring in the first place. There are some anemic rules to oversee such reemployment such as seeking prior approval from the government, a two year waiting period, loss of pension for any violation etc. But they are too feeble to have any meaning. I have never heard of anyone being punished for disregarding them. Most don't even seek any permission, and in any case I am not aware of any instance where such permission has been denied. The government has to devise a way-quickly-to stem this rot.

   The third exit door, and one in which the governments-the center as well as each and every state- are themselves fully complicit, is the most damaging because this door has been carved out of valid laws and legislation. I refer to the pernicious practice of post retirement appointments to government's own organisations-Commissions, Tribunals, Regulators, Boards, Authorities and so on, of which there are hundreds. (Incidentally, it must be mentioned that the higher judiciary has also claimed a substantial slice of this  particular cake, even to the extent of ruling that certain posts have to be ear-marked for it)!

    The reason why the existing system of making these appointments is so deleterious to the civil services and to governance as a whole is that there is no objective or merit-based method of making selections to these important posts, many of which are constitutional and autonomous. The choice is the sole prerogative of the Chief Minister (sometimes the Chief Justice) or the Minister concerned at the Center. Oh, to be sure Search Committees are set up, but their mandate is to sign off on the dotted line-everyone knows in advance who is to be selected! The effect of this is to compromise the integrity and uprightness of the senior bureaucracy whose last few years in service are consequently spent in lobbying for these posts and doing whatever is necessary to please the Minister. Disinterested and even-handed administration is the last thing on their minds. But from the politician's point of view he has acquired a powerful tool to  reward and to shape matters the way he wants. And, even worse, the effects of this patronage and rent seeking are felt long after the favoured few assume office because there are no free lunches and the appointee is forever obliged to do his masters' bidding. The result is to be seen in the dubious selections made by Public Service Commissions, Regulators bending backwards to accommodate either the government of the day or influential corporates, rather than the consumers they are meant to protect; Commissions and Councils more responsive to the interests of institutions they are meant to oversee than to their clients, patients, students and users. In fact, this has rendered most of these bodies ineffective, corrupt or irrelevant to the extent where they do not enjoy the confidence of the public at large. We only have to look at the state Public Service Commissions, the Indian Medical Council, the All India Council for Technical Education, the state Education Boards, the various sectoral Regulators(especially the Electricity Regulatory Commissions), the State Administrative Tribunals etc. to understand what I mean. One reason for this can also be that loyalty, and not merit, is the basic criteria for these selections. And so we have a situation where U.P. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav appoints two unknown journalists and his father-in-law as Members of the State Information Commission, the aide to the Haryana Chief Minister who facilitated the alleged land scams in the state is now a member of a central Commission, and the HP Chief Minister has appointed his loyal retired officers as Advisors (who certainly don't appear to be doing their job very well given the mess he is in). This regal distribution of largesse is befitting a potentate or a sovereign but has no place in a law driven democracy.

    This faulty system of appointments is harming all concerned institutions-the government, the civil services, the organisations themselves- and ensuring that the public good is not being served. The only gainers are the politicians and the favoured few. This is not an acceptable cost-benefit ratio in a democracy. What strains credulity is that if the appointment of a peon or a safai karamchari (sanitation worker) is made only after a thorough merit based selection process, how can posts of the level of Secretaries or Judges of the High Courts be filled up on the basis of personal whims and fancies? This is a spoils system gone amock and should not be allowed to continue. ALL such appointments should be regulated by a dispassionate, objective, transparent methodolgy based on merit alone and processed by an independent agency. 

   This particular gold rush has gone on for far too long: we cannot allow our administrative ecology and environment to be devastated by just a few. The whole issue of reemployment of government servants needs to be looked into in depth and safe guards provided to protect the public interest as well as the individual rights of the civil servant. It is time for the government to set up a Commission on the lines of an Administrative Reforms Commission to examine the matter and to save the civil servant from becoming another object in a Pavlovian experiment.

   Of course, this will never happen in my lifetime.

[ NOTE: The author would be the first to admit that there are also fine, upright officers reemployed in various governmental and private organisations, but they are aberrations and  because they made it through the same dubious process, they unfortunately get tarred with the same brush. ]

WHY KEJRIWAL AND AAP CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO FAIL

      So now the din and the dust of electioneering is beginning to settle and the bookies, who usually get their numbers more right than the Planning Commission, the RBI, the TV channels and the psephologists combined, are predicting a win for the BJP and Narender Modi. This is indeed the right direction for the country to go as the Congress stands totally discredited, the regional parties have no national vision and are more fractious than a bunch of Kilkenny cats, and the Aam Aadmi Party has yet to develop a national presence or profile. The country desperately needs a strong, assertive leader with a clear agenda, an able administrator who will focus on implementation of policies rather than on " manufacturing consent" as Chomsky terms it.

    Mr. Modi's utterances over the past few months, read with the BJP manifesto released yesterday, have spellt out quite clearly their views on reviving the economy, the new direction to be given to our foreign policy, the ramping up of our defence preparedness, the prescription to improve centre-state relations, and the consultation process to be followed on more contentious issues such as Article 370, the Uniform Civil Code and the Ram Mandir. Its a clear road map, the experience, will and ability to follow it is there and I have no doubt that Mr. Modi will do a much better job in five years than the Congress has managed in the last ten.

   But is that enough?

    In pure materialistic or IMF terms, India has already been where Mr. Modi and his BJP now propose to take us. In the period 2001 to 2009 we were, in sheer economic terms, among the fastest growing countries in the world, foreign investment was coming in in a flood, millions of jobs were being created, 240 million people were lifted above the poverty line, social welfare schemes like NREGA, Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rural Health Mission were changing the rural landscape, and our international stock had never been higher. And yet, within five years, we have slipped back down the ladder to such an extent that even Bangladesh, Srilanka and Nepal now compare more favourably on most parameters. Economically we are now a country where industry prefers to take its moneys abroad, where we have actually LOST six million jobs, industrial growth is negative. Socially, we are a mess: we continue to slaughter each other at the altar of politics and religion, farmers are continuing to kill themselves by the thousands, women are getting raped by the tens of thousands. Practically all our institutions have collapsed-the judiciary, the police, all 36 of the sectoral Regulators, Parliament, the media-and those which have not collapsed have been so compromised that they have become, in Salman Khurshid's now famous words, " impotent." Internationally, we are now fair game for any country to cock a snook at us, be it Italy, the USA, Sri Lanka or even the Maldives!

   What went wrong?

    Its simple, really. India lacks a moral underpinning. Our society lacks that honest and principled core, the nucleus of compassion, humaneness and tolerance around which ultimately all civilised societies are built-without it, all success is built on shifting sand. Any achievement, if it is founded solely on lust for power, avarice and gratification of the baser senses, will in time crumble. It happened to the UPA, it will happen to Narender Modi too for he and the BJP too lack that essential core. Their ( expected) path to power is littered with examples that prove my point: the hubris of the proclamation that the elections are irrelevant as the people have already decided, the corruption of Yedduyrappa and the Bellary brothers and a host of crooks inducted into the party, the generic hostility to Muslims, the rabid intolerance of a Muthalik or the Bajrang Dal, the silence on the Ambanis and the Adanis, the sheer opportunism of the " winnability" criteria over all other principles. Make no mistake, at its core-shorn of the gift wrapping of the manifestos- ALL political parties in India are the same in their essence, in their lack of the values and virtues that make successful civilisations.

    EXCEPT ONE.

    KEJRIWAL'S  AAM AADMI PARTY

   For all its faults- and just like a child, it has many- the perceived and proclaimed core of AAP is a compassionate and principled one. It is completely transparent about raising money, it has not given a ticket to a single known criminal, it has had the courage to field unknown people with proven track records of social service as its candidates rather than go by the winnability factor or star endorsements, it has never sought votes on the basis of caste or religion, it has had the fearlessness to ask questions no one in public life even dared to whisper, it is so far the only political party to have openly supported decriminalisation of homosexuality, its leaders demonstrate a simplicity of life style which is an essential corollary of honest values. The people of India have noticed this and have sensed a welcome harbinger of change, just as a marooned sailor gets the first whiff of land far out to sea. They gave Kejriwal 28 seats and 30% vote share in the Delhi elections.

   And then the criticisms and condemnation-skilfully orchestrated by the BJP and the Congress, past masters both at the Symphony of Deceit- started. I will not go into the merits of the various charges levelled against the AAP as I have addressed them in a couple of previous articles. I would, however, like to list out the major charges so as to later put them into perspective:

* Holding a dharna against the central government.

* Somnath Bharti's mid-night raid in Khirkee.

* The Law Minister calling a meeting of judicial officers.

* Kejriwal occupying a four room official bungalow.

* Kejriwal's resignation after failing to get support for his Jan LokPal Bill.

    To me, as an Indian sick of the cynicism and opportunism of all our figures in public life, these so called " charges" only reinforce my belief that here is a party which has the guts to be different, to break the twisted mould of traditional politics and fashion a new one " closer to the heart's desire" as Omar Khayyam puts it so beautifully. They reaffirm my faith that this party acts out of a moral conviction of what is right rather than what is expedient: when was the last time that a Chief Minister slept on a road in 4* celsius temperature? Can you remember any Chief Minister who resigned because he lost a non- money Bill in the House? Can you recollect even one Chief Minister who openly took on his own police? ( The invariable norm is for the two to have a sleeping partner relationship). Can you remember any government challenging the Ambanis, or the Robert Vadras?

   Are we really expected to take THESE charges seriously? Or should we be worrying about the thousands killed in communal riots presided over by both our major, and many of our minor parties? Or about the lakhs of crores funnelled into Swiss bank accounts by leading lights of the present regime? Or about whose twenty thousand crores was Sahara playing around with? Or about the 164 criminals in our Parliament, all blessed by their respective parties? Or about the nexus of Arun Jaitley and Rajiv Shukla with the BCCI? Or about what Saint Anthony has done to our defense forces? Or the manner in which Mr. Patel has castrated Air India to benefit private air-lines? Or about how the Delhi police collects Rupees five crores PER MONTH from just street vendors? Or about why two lakh cases are pending in our High Courts alone? THESE are the charges and questions we want answered, not  why Kejriwal moved from Kaushambi to Tilak Lane.

    The Congress and BJP, abetted by sections of the media who do not see any ad revenues flowing to them from the AAP, have done their best( with some measure of success, I must admit) to give a spin to the whole matter and to convert Kejriwal's strengths into his weaknesses! And yes, Kejriwal and AAP have made mistakes. They should have been less strident, in some cases they should have collected more facts before making accusations, they should have curbed their ambition to go national so soon. Perhaps Kejriwal should have been less impetuous in contesting against Modi in Varanasi. But these are errors of strategy, not substance or conduct or morals. They pale into complete insignificance before the monumental malfeasance of the other parties, they can at worst destroy the party not the nation. And that for me is the difference, and the reason why we should not give up on the AAP now.

    Kejriwal's is the only party today which holds out the promise of returning us to our moral roots and the ideal of social equality. He will not win more than ten or fifteen seats given his organisational weakness. But these seats HE MUST WIN. He MUST get ten to fifteen percent vote share in as many constituencies as he can. These votes and these seats will then be the platform for him to exert his influence on the other parties, to act as some kind of conscience keeper, to convey to Parliament what the people actually desire, to set standards and benchmarks which other parties will have no option but to follow under public pressure. If Kejriwal fails today we may as well give up hope of any substantial change in our moral compass for the next forty years. One analogous government will replace another, each leaving behind their slimy desiderata , covering, perhaps for ever, the soul of a nation that could have been great.

IS THE INDIAN VOTER A MORON ?

    An odd question, I admit, but it must be asked in the light of all that is happening nowadays. The Indian voter stands proudly at the heart of the biggest democratic exercise the world has seen but all the other major agents involved- the political parties, the government, the Election Commission, the media and even the courts- behave as if he is either a mentally challenged halfwit who can  be manipulated or a helpless pawn who needs to be protected and molly coddled. As an average voter I resent this attitude because it reeks of contempt and seeks to patronise me.

    Most, if not all, political parties and politicians don't really give a damn about the voter or about what principles and values he seeks in his MP or MLA, or what aspirations he himself has. Confident in their calculations of caste, religion and community backed by muscle power and black money, they have traditionally treated him as bonded labour who can do nothing else but their bidding when it comes to pressing that button. Nothing else can explain their unprincipled and degenerate actions leading up to the current elections: giving tickets to people charged with or suspected of serious crimes, crossing over from one party to another shamelessly like a dung beetle moving from one odorous pile to another, foisting pimply faced sons and daughters on the public in a caricature of a rudrabhishek ceremony, expertly avoiding any specific commitment on the daily problems of their constituents. There is not even an attempt to explain how practically all of them become multi-millionaires in just one term and thereafter multiply their mysterious wealth by a factor of five or ten every succeeding term. What hurts and angers me the most is the assumption, behind these actions, that the voter can be taken for granted, that he is a simpleton who can be herded in any direction they wish, that he completely lacks the capacity to critically analyse their performance in the last five years or their unholy antics leading up to these elections, and that he will be eternally grateful for the privilege of being allowed to vote for them.

    The media also shows little respect for the average voter, a trend which has become more pronounced since the proliferation of the electronic media. It does dis-service to itself and the voter by seeking to influence news instead of honestly reporting or analysing it. The practice of planting " paid news" has been confirmed and documented in a report submitted to the Press Council of India by its own committee headed by Pranjoy Guha Thakurta( though the Council has discredited itself by not making the report public), the manner in which opinion polls are sold to the highest bidder( read political party) has been exposed by a media channel itself in a sting operation, the conduct of some channels in circulating doctored video footage to discredit inconvenient personalities has been amply exhibited in the incident concerning Shazia Ilmi just before the Delhi elections, and the attempt to blatantly shove a preconceived view down the voter's throat is amply demonstrated by the biased and  slanted panel "discussions" ( sometimes also termed " debates" to give them more respectability) of the Arnab Goswami variety. The ownership of media channels and publications is something which is not openly discussed, though it deserves to be, for it shall expose the industry-media-politician connection, the tainted tip of which has already been revealed by the Radia tapes.  And when someone raises the issue( read Kejriwal) the Editors' Guild and the News Broadcasters' Association come down on him like a ton of bricks. The voter certainly has the right to the truth but large sections of the media conspire with the politicians to deny him this fundamental right. What makes the media act in this manner is nothing but the same sentiment that drives the politician-viz. that the voter is a gullible idiot who can be eye-balled into a voting position.

   The government too uses every opportunity to try to con the voter, from trying to ban opinion polls( instead of regulating them) to postponing elections( in Delhi) to a more favourable time, to offering sops to targetted sections in a desperate race to beat the Code of Conduct( declaring Jats as OBCs, raising the LPG cylinder cap to twelve, seeking to withdraw cases against potential allies like Lalu and Mayawati). All this is based on the presumption that the voter cannot see beyond his nose( or through these obvious strategems). Occasionally a well intentioned judiciary, seeking its own share of fashionable activism, also falls into the same trap of under-rating the voter and issues orders that defy logic. The 2013 order of the Allahabad High Court that prohibited caste or community based rallies falls in this category. The ( wholly erroneous) presumption behind this judgement was that such rallies would inflame caste/communal passions and that the average citizen could not be trusted to behave in a rational and law-abiding manner. But it ignored the constitutional right of any section of society to come together for any legal purpose, including the voicing of grievances and demands. Fortunately this order was set aside in appeal but it scares me that a High Court can even have a thought process that results in such orders.

    The organisation that has the poorest opinion of the voter, strangely enough, is the Election Commission of India! Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood-I sincerely believe that over the last twenty years or so the ECI has done a fantastic job of conducting elections, minimising electoral malpractices, increasing voter participation and giving the most deprived sections of our society access to the ballot. It has demonstrably strengthened the election process and mechanism. Where it has erred, in my view, is in going overboard in trying to needlessly insulate the voter from any corrupting " influence" of the government of the day or any other political party ( based on the same faulty premise that the others are guilty of-viz. that the voter cannot be trusted to think for himself and needs Big Brother to decide what is good for him.) In the process it has taken on far too much, has become what Jairam Ramesh rightly calls a " parallel government", and has actually ended up harming the very citizen and system it has sought to serve.

   At the heart of the Commission's overreach is its belief that the government must be brought to a standstill

to ensure a " level playing field" and prevent any " influencing" of the voter. I shall discuss these terms later, but in simple terms what it means is that the government( state or central) cannot take any policy decision, award any contract, make any appointment or promotion or transfer of a govt. employee, sanction any funds etc. once elections are notified. Simply in order to understand how damaging for the country this dictum is, consider only some of the decisions which the government has been prevented from taking over the last one month. The Indian Navy is in a mess which compelled the Navy chief to resign three weeks back, but the government cannot appoint his successor. Forty percent of India's villages have no banking penetration, we desperately need new Banks, the govt. has finalised the selection of new licencees but it is prohibited from issuing the licences. The Delhi Metro is ready to roll out its next phase in the NCR areas but it cannot begin work till elections are over: it cannot even award work contracts( and when it hopefully does so after May 16 the bidders would in all probability have revised their prices, causing a cascading delay and price escalation to the project). Air Asia will have to wait another few months before it can obtain approvals to begin operations. KG Basin gas prices had been notified to go up from 1st April but the Commission has stayed this. ( I am no supporter of this increase but what I am concerned with here is the principle- how can an executive decision of an elected govt., taken BEFORE notification of elections, not found to be illegal by a court, be stayed by the Commission?). In all probability the Commission shall also stay the notification of the RBI's Monetary Policy Statement due on 1st April 2014 because it may( in fact, is bound to) have an effect on interest rates and CRR and money supply.

    These are only some instances that come to mind. A govt. which was already in a state of stasis has now been completely paralysed. The economy has been effectively shut down for four months. What kind of signals are we sending to the international investors? How can the growth rate for the next fiscal improve if all major economic decisions are put in limbo for the first quarter? Will all this not eventually impact on the common citizen in terms of national security, employment, access to financial services, more competitive airline fares, urban connectivity? How does the voter gain by this draconian overreach of the Election Commission? 

    This completely misplaced " Big Brother knows best" mindset keeps the Commission busy with trivial non-issues: covering all elephant statues lest it give an undue advantage to the BSP, determining that there should not be more than four vehicles in a candidate's cavalcade, attempting to ban opinion polls, monitoring of social media, ordering that poll manifestos should not contain " unrealistic" promises, acting as a moral referee when candidates abuse each other, asking a Chief Minister( Akhilesh Yadav) not to resort to tele-conferencing with his district officers, disallowing bar girls from performing at a candidate's rallies, and so on. Does the Commission really believe that in this day and age these actions influence a voter in casting his vote? It appears to me that these exertions by the Commission are a complete waste of time and money and indicative of the low esteem in which it holds the voter.

    Instead of tilting at these windmills the Commission would do better to focus on, and take bold initiatives towards eradicating, the real issues that vitiate elections. I shall mention just two. First, the Model Code of Conduct. It is a comprehensive code to ensure fair campaigning; it is also a lot of thunder and lightning signifying nothing: its violation attracts headlines and nothing else. Ex Chief Election Commissioner Quereshi admitted on a TV programme today that a large number of FIRs had been filed over the last few elections regarding its violation but not a single case had resulted in conviction! Some state governments had even withdrawn the cases after the elections! The Commission should take steps to rectify this rather than register another FIR because Hema Malini had eight cars in her cavalcade instead of four. It should press the government to set up special courts for these cases and make their trials time bound.

    The second, and perhaps the critical, issue is the criminalisation of Parliament and state Assemblies. According to the Association of Democratic Rights there are 162 MPs with criminal cases against them, of which 76 are accused of heinous offences such as murder, rape,kidnapping and dacoity. In the state Assemblies, out of about 4600 MLAs more than 1250 are similarly accused. What is the Commission doing about this? It claims to have written to the govt. many times to disqualify candidates against whom charges have been framed, but with no response. This is simply going through the motions. The Election Commission is a constitutional and totally autonomous body. What prevents it from filing a writ in the Supreme Court to force the central govt to carry out the required amendments to the Representation of People Act? Does it expect the Court to take up all such matters suo-moto or on references by civil society groups only while it itself goes about counting how many plates were served at a candidate's dinner?

    No one takes the voter seriously but perhaps that will change soon. With more than 120 million internet users and about 40 million Face-bookers, with 270 million voters under the age of 25, with the traditional urban-rural divide disappearing rapidly, the voter will soon be ready to take matters in his own hands. I have a feeling that the current Parliamentary election will give us the first preview of the better polity that lies just over the horizon. The voter is not as stupid as he looks. 

CLUELESS IN DELHI-A POTPOURRI OF RANDOM THOUGHTS(2)

                                ELECTIONS AND BLACK MONEY-GOOD ECONOMICS?



     Sometime back it was reported by an NGO tracking election expenditures that roughly Rs. 50000 crores of black money was spent on one round of Parliament/ State Assembly elections. To put the amount in perspective, this is equivalent to the combined annual expenditure of the two flagship schemes of the govt.-viz. MNREGA and Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan; to put it another way, it is almost twice the total annual budget of the Delhi govt., or twenty times the Plan budget of  Himachal. Its a fair estimate what with more than two thousand five hundred seats being contested, a minimum of five candidates per seat, and each candidate spending between five to ten crores. This reinforces the conventional wisdom that this scourge must be wiped out, that this is bad for the integrity of the democratic process and disastrous for the economy, that state funding of elections should be introduced to displace the black money currently utilised for the purpose. Now, the question as to why you and I should subsidise a bunch of crooks to grab power and make even more black money is a separate one, to which I hope to revert in the future. Right now, however, I propose to challenge the conventional wisdom and argue that black money in elections IS GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY AND THE ECONOMY and that we should stop beating our breasts and wailing about it.
    We must begin with the premise that Black Money, like Digvijay Singh or Mani Shankar Aiyar, exists-whether we like it( or them) or not, and will continue to exist even if it is eradicated from elections. Where does this money currently go? It is invested in real estate( where it drives up prices to unaffordable levels and has led to a housing shortage of more than 20 million units, most of it in the EWS category); in gold( leading to increased smuggling or/and imbalance in the Current Account Deficit) ; in money laundering ponzi type schemes like the staggering SAHARA ones ( where even the Supreme Court and SEBI have been unable to make them cough up the moneys); in Hawala operations or in Swiss bank accounts; or simply dumped in a locker or under a mattress where, I am told ( by erstwhile colleagues), it also induces a kind of Viagra-like effect. In other words black money either distorts the economy or simply lies around as an " unproductive asset", neither of which benefits anyone.
   Come the elections, however, and this same black money( or at least 50000 crores of it) is unlocked and productively injected into the economy. It use in elections is as diverse and ingenious as only an election in India can be. It is spent to employ " party workers" and hire crowds for rallies, to hire all manner of vehicles ranging from bullock carts to helicopters, to acquire publicity materials-banners, stickers, posters, caps, T-shirts, to fund arrangements for public meetings, to distribute liquor, to hand out cash as bribes to voters. True, some of these uses are illegal but that is not the point of my discussion. True, some of this expenditure is in white money and reported to the Election Commission, but every Indian knows that not even 10% of the expenditure is reported or accounted for. A recent report in the Hindustan Times stated that candidates generally reported such low expenditures that one CEC( now retired) had even proposed reducing the permissible expenditure cap! No sir, the life-blood of elections is black money and its not a bad thing at all.
    Here is just a short list of its undeniable benefits. It creates ( albeit for just a few months) millions of jobs. If even half of this Rs. 50000 crores is used for hiring people then ( assuming a daily wage of Rs.300/) the elections lead to creation of 833 MILLION man-days! The demand for various products and services would lead to the indirect creation of even more jobs and other downstream benefits for artisans, factory workers, drivers, caterers and so on. To cite just two examples: thanks to the trend set by the Aam Aadmi topi( cap) every major political party has now come out with its own version( and shade) of the Gandhi cap and a whole new industry has sprung up in the bylanes of Delhi, Kanpur and Bhopal churning out millions of these caps. The demand for( and prices of) brooms has gone up since Kejriwal took them to his bosom benefiting ultimately the poor village women who collect the material for them. Even the thousand rupee note given to the slum family in exchange for its votes is a productive use of black money.
   Elections, through the instrument of black money, achieve what most govt. policies have failed to do for the last fifty years- the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the not so well off. As long as the lucre was kept locked up it belonged to a fat cat, untaxed and unutilised. Its use in an election immediately transfers it to the working classes, without any protests from any one, or litigation: its a win-win situation because it is also the Holy Grail of all economic planning. Forget the legality of the matter, forget the Code of Conduct which is our own version of the Ten Commandments( and just as effective), and look at just the economics and you might just begin to agree with me. As Amar Singh said to Jayaprada: " If you can't beat 'em- join 'em!"
  PS--- Is it time to request the Election Commission to ban the use of White Money in elections?