THE SMALL TOWN BOY.

    Shashipal was a small town boy and proudly remained one till the end. He breathed his last on the 24th of this month, ending- I hope it's only a hiatus- forty years of a close and undemanding friendship. Shashibhai (as he was popularly known) was born and brought up in Bilaspur in Himachal, his family were evacuees of India's first "modern temple", the Bhakra dam. They were given land in exchange for that which was inundated by the Gobindsagar lake, and on this plot overlooking the lake in an area known as Luhnu ground Shashi built himself a simple but well designed two storey house. I have spent many pleasant evenings there, even though nothing stronger than " kadha" (a kind of hot herbal tea) was allowed to be served there by Bhabiji.

    I first met Shashi in 1980 when I was posted as Deputy Commissioner in Bilaspur; he was two years older than me. We had very little in common to begin with, but as time progressed we became close friends and discovered that we shared a lot of interests and values that are not visible but are perhaps more foundational than the exterior trappings we judge people by: a desire for a simple life, a passion for trekking, love of nature, a sense of humour (especially the risque type), a low opinion of politicians, and an inability to play good bridge. It was the unlikeliest of friendships but it persisted through the next forty years: even as I moved to different places and postings, Shashi stayed rooted in Bilaspur, looking after a small food processing unit he had established under the brand name " Shashibhai". It did modestly well, his wife Surekha was/is a school lecturer, he himself was content to remain a small town boy and so life was good. 

    Bilaspur is very centrally located, sitting astride all routes to just about anywhere from Shimla, and I invariably used to drop in and see Shashi whenever I passed the town on my tours, which was about once every two months. He even constructed a guest room, especially for me, within his small processing unit where I've spent many a night: I was allowed to have a drink here! Shashi himself was a strict teetotaler and vegetarian, though his treasure trove of jokes were mainly non-vegetarian. His favourite was about the chap who made expandable suit cases out of foreskins... but I'll keep that for another day.

    Given our system I was in a position to do many favours for Shashi even within the rules. But not once in these past 40 years did he ever request me for one. When I was Education Secretary, Surekha was posted to a school a few kms out of the town; I asked Shashi if I should post her to a school in the town itself so that she would not have to take those long bus commutes. He refused. He explained that the day he let my official status enter our relationship, our fellowship would get tainted and would never be the same again. I learnt my lesson and stayed clear of the subject thereafter. But have you ever noticed- the smaller the town, the bigger the values its residents represent?

    Shashi was my constant trekking companion over 30 years, and I will always treasure those evenings together by the campfires, forest huts and tents spent in remote thatches, valleys and passes: Pin Parbat, Kinner Kailash, Bara Bhangal, Kugti, Srikhand Mahadev, the Great Himalayan National Park, Dodra Kwar, Choor Dhar, Hamta pass, Chandratal lake and many others. He even had the dubious distinction of having saved my life on Pin Parbat: we were crossing a glacier, all roped up, when I fell into a crevasse. Shashi was the guy on the rope just behind me: he immediately fell flat on the ground to prevent himself being dragged over too, dug his heels into the ice and used all of his eighty kilos to pull my sixty kilos out. One doesn't quickly forget these things.

                             

                                 

                                   [ The author with Shashibhai( right) below Pin Parbat.]

    Once, in 1997 I think it was, we had trekked to Dodra Kwar over the Chanshil pass, and at the rest house we were told that the annual chess tournament was being held that evening in the village. It was a gala event and hundreds of villagers from all three panchayats were there. Shashi was a very good chess player and decided to take part too. After three rounds he reached the finals, in which he was pitted against a lad from Jakha panchayat. He had watched this youngster play and had no doubt that he could beat him hands down. So I was greatly surprised when Shashi lost the match and the boy was crowned the chess champ of Dodra Kwar, among much band-baja and dancing. Later, Shashi explained: he could have check mated his rival (he told me) in a dozen moves, but whereas the win would have meant nothing to him (who knew him here?) it would have meant so much for the local boy and for local pride, to have defeated a burra sahib coming from Shimla! To lose was more honourable than to win. See what I meant about small town values?

    On another occasion, in 2002 or 2003, we reached the Bara Bhangal village after an exhausting and dangerous descent from the 18000 feet high Thamsar pass. Totally exhausted, the party collapsed in the forest hut, unable to move any limb. After some time I noticed that Shashi was missing; a search revealed him sitting with the Patwari in the Patwarkhana, preparing a "tatima" or map of a plot of land. Apparently, my friend had become so enamoured of the savage beauty of this remote village in the Ravi valley that he wanted to buy some land here! It took me the whole night to convince him that it was an insane idea. I reminded him that it had taken us four days of perilous trekking to reach the village, that he would never be able to haul his arse here in his dotage, that Surekha would feed him to the fishes in Gobindsagar lake when she heard of this. He finally relented, but kept the tatima with him anyway, just in case he changed his mind at a later date.

    He never did, of course. A few years ago Shashibhai's kidneys began failing, he had to go on dialysis, his eyesight also deserted him because of diabetes. I had moved on to Delhi after my retirement but spoke to him every couple of months. I last visited him in Bilaspur in 2018, and had planned to go again next month. Guess I left it too late, for now Shashi has left for ever the small town which had shaped him. Keep walking, my friend, and explore your new world with the same unusual sense of passion, sense of humour and contentment with which you did this one. Why, you may even find a Patwari there and settle down  permanently in the Elysian fields! But keep a place for a friend or two, for:

                " From too much love of living,

                   From hope and fear set free,

                   We thank with brief thanksgiving

                   Whatever Gods there be:

                   That no life lives for ever,

                   That dead men rise up never,

                   That even the weariest river

                   Winds somewhere safe to sea."

                   [ Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909 ]

   

DOCTORS SHOULD LEARN TO BE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH.

        This year approximately 56 million people will die globally, roughly 2/3rds of them in hospitals. More people are dying today of chronic diseases, and the average person can expect to spend the last decade of his life being seriously ill and under constant medical treatment. This is the unfortunate downside of extended life spans: the life expectancy in 1900 was 32 years, today it is 71.80 years. Studies world wide, however, have shown that end of life medical interventions are largely unnecessary and ineffective, as, of those who die in hospitals fully 1/3^rd will do so in ICUs and 1/5^th will have undergone redundant operations in the last month of their lives. The conventional aggressive interventions at this stage do not help. How have things come to such a sorry pass with all the advances in modern medicine?

   Today, end of life care has become synonymous with hospitalisation; in more seriously terminal cases a second alternative is gradually emerging- assisted dying, what we in India erroneously term euthanasia. These are the only two choices available. But it need not be so, for there is a third choice – palliative care. This option means engaging with the terminally ill to provide care (not just medical interventions) outside hospitals, at home or in a hospice. Studies world wide have established firmly that those who die in hospitals experience more pain, trauma and depression than those who pass away at home. Studies also show that palliative care increases terminal life spans by as much as a third compared to hospital care. Why, then, does medicine continue to dictate the last days of our lives?

  The answer lies partially in the way our doctors are trained and conditioned. Their education and the Hippocrates oath conditions them to save lives at all costs, even when they are acutely aware that this is futile. This blind spot is compounded by the fact that, ever since the demise of the institution of the “family doctor” and its substitution by corporate hospitals, doctors have forgotten the fine art of having a conversation with their patients. The “consultation” today consists of peering at the medical records of the patient on the computer and unilateral prescription of medicines or tests. There is no effort made to find out what the patient’s fears are, what he wants. Doctors now talk AT their patients(if they talk at all) rather than TO them.                                    There has been no better exposition of this dilemma and changed paradigm than in the books of two Indian-American doctors: “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande and  "When Breath Turns to Air” by Paul Kalanithi, both being presented with this quandry in their personal lives (Kalanithi succumbed to an incurable neurological condition before he could complete his book). Both realised that aggressive medical interventions at the end of life stage, and the lack of any meaningful dialogue, does grave injustice to patients by lowering the quality of their final days, traumatises and pauperises families, that such terminal patients should be allowed to exit life with dignity, surrounded by family and friends, spiritually at peace. Gawande has formulated the “Serious Illness Conversation Guide”- a compendium of questions/ issues that he feels all doctors should use to have a conversation with end of life patients, to ascertain what they want. This is now being adopted as standard protocol in many hospitals abroad, including Britain’s NHS. The medical fraternity, they plead, should accept that mortality and death are a fact of life, of living itself, that doctors should learn to stop fighting at some stage , to be humble “ambassadors of death” and not just its enemy. As Gawande writes: “ Death is not a failure. It is normal.” The real failure lies in our responses to it- and this has to change.

   The second hurdle to a more humane approach to end of life care are the policies adopted by governments and insurers. All of them fund, and reimburse, only treatment procedures in hospitals and nursing homes, and not prevention or palliative care at home. They do not pay for conversations that do not result in medical procedures. But even this rigid attitude is beginning to change. In 2014 the World Health Organisation has recommended that palliative care at homes or hospices be included in health care systems. Medicare in the USA has now started paying for doctors’ conversations with terminally ill patients, treating them as legitimate consultations. Both governments and insurers are also beginning to realise that paying for palliative care or minimal treatment at  home may be cheaper than hospitalisation, and that this is perhaps what their patients want.

   There is a third dimension to this issue. One reason why the demand to make  euthanasia- whether passive or assisted- legitimate is picking up globally is the sheer prospect of almost mandatory hospitalisation, with all its attendant pain, trauma, expense and depression. The end of life patient really has no choice today. Incorporating palliative care as a part of health care systems and medical protocol will not cure him, but it will certainly enable him to spend his final weeks and days in the comfort of his home, his family around him, without aggressive medical interventions that cause more pain than good, and without having to opt for euthanasia. Standardising palliative care and mainstreaming it as legitimate “medical treatment” would offer a third option to the terminally ill and obviate to some extent the desperate need to opt for euthanasia. Society and families could then be spared a difficult moral choice and there would then perhaps be no need for “death clinics” like the one in Belgium where patients come for the sole purpose of being able to legally kill themselves.

   The medical establishments in India- both governmental and private- need to initiate a dialogue on the subject so that we could adopt a more humane approach to the inevitability of death. The Insurance Regulator should mandate palliative, end of life care as a permissible item for reimbursement under Health insurance policies. In terminal cases the medical fraternity should not regard death as a challenge but as a release, and should prepare their patient for it. That final battle should not be fought at the cost of the patient. Medicine and mortality should not be implacable foes.

THE PRASHANT BHUSHAN CASE-- AN ORDER THAT DIMINISHES DEMOCRACY

                                THE PRASHANT BHUSHAN CASE-- AN ORDER THAT DIMINISHES DEMOCRACY
                                                               A LAY CITIZEN'S PERSPECTIVE

   So Mr. Prashant Bhushan stands convicted of contempt. It was expected because the Supreme Court had painted itself into a corner and the only way out was to play the victim card. In the process it has denuded itself of even more credibility in the public perception.
   But judges do not always have the last word. There's a joke about a pompous judge who was trying a robber, standing in the dock. The judge , pointing a magisterial finger at the accused, roared: " Do I see a scoundrel at the other end of my arm?" The criminal replied: " Depends which end of the arm you are looking at, my lord." But a joke, as George Orwell said, can be the beginning of a revolution. The contempt petition against Prashant Bhushan makes me think again of that robber's riposte- who exactly was on trial here- Bhushan or the court itself?

   The Supreme Court may just have committed a grave strategic and tactical error by letting its hurt feelings get the better of its good sense. Relying on a Constitution which has given them a status and a protection they do not appear to have lived up to of late, the honourable judges may have decided to muzzle once and for all an irritating lawyer, send a signal to others inclined to speak the brutal truth to power, and perhaps get brownie points from the government in the bargain. After all, what is one lawyer against the majesty of 32 wise men who by law always have the last word? But they forgot two important caveats to their power. One, as Robert Jackson said, Judges are not final because they are infallible, they are infallible because they are final. Two, they would have done well to have remembered Mark Twain before getting into this scrap: " It's not about the size of the dog in the fight, it's about the size of the fight in the dog." And Mr. Bhushan has plenty of fight in him, even though he may not ride a superbike, as the Chief Justice of India does. This contest is not over yet by a long shot.

   Mr. Bhushan has an unmatched record for probity and for fighting for the rights of the citizens. He is a pro bono warrior who has consistently held power to account, regardless of who is wielding that power. By invoking against him a law which the rest of the civilised world has discarded - the law of criminal contempt- our judges have not shown due respect for the most important component of a democracy- the right to criticise. It was perhaps an inevitable reaction by a court which increasingly gives the impression that it has become extra cautious about its own right to criticise an overarching executive, but that does not justify their action. Especially as they have done it in their own cause. But perhaps this too was inevitable, following in the footsteps of another Chief Justice who presided over a bench to consider a complaint of sexual misconduct against himself.

   But I am not on the wisdom or correctness of Mr. Bhushan's claims or charges, even though that part of India which still retains the capacity to think and not be led by the nose by Whatsapp or a bought out media will find a lot of merit in them. The very fact that as many as 18 retired superior court judges and hundreds of intellectuals, lawyers and eminent citizens had asked  the SC to drop the proceedings against Mr. Bhushan lend a lot of credibility to his allegations. My point is this; we all have felt for some time now that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark; the combined might of the executive and its various institutions has prevented us from doing anything about it; but can we not even voice our opinion about this, complain about an ever growing perception that judicial independence and the protection of human rights is no longer in the cause list of the court? Are we not even allowed to bleed when you stick a knife in our innards? To me, Mr. Bhushan's tweets are an indication of how highly we value our judiciary, his criticism reflecting the anguish of the citizens when our courts are not perceived to be living up to the high standards we expect from them. They reflect disappointment, not disrespect, and it is unfortunate that the hon'ble court was unable to discern this difference.

  Judges are the only category of government servants who are allowed to criticise the executive and the legislature; in fact, I would go so far as to say that they are MANDATED to criticise them. Other govt. employees can, and have, been punished and even dismissed for doing so. It is a precious and invaluable right which the higher judiciary is perceived by many to have foregone in favour of the executive in recent times , to have become " more executive than the executive." A judicial officer who does not have the courage to confront the executive in deserving cases is not doing justice to his calling.  Just as, for an ordinary govt. employee criticism of the govt. amounts to misconduct, I would venture to say that , for a judge, the obverse should be true: failure to criticise when it is warranted amounts to misconduct.

   Pride goes before a fall, and by failing to realise this the Court has allowed Mr. Bhushan, and the civil society he undoubtedly represents, to exhume the corpses long buried, corpses which were denied a fair forensic examination by the govt. of the day before they were consigned to history. And there are almost as many corpses buried here as in a graveyard. In his 162 page reply to the contempt notice Mr. Bhushan had submitted a list of omissions and commissions which is longer than the creative list of charges in the Bhima-Koregaon case, and far more credible: assignment of sensitive cases only to particular judges, judges sitting in their own causes, delay in hearing habeas corpus petitions, Judge Loya's death, the suicide note of Kalika Pul, police violence and complicity in the JNU/ JamiaMilia and Delhi riots cases, reluctance to curb the executive's excesses in Kashmir including denial of internet and 4G, covering up of the sexual harassment allegations against Ranjan Gogoi, unconscionable delay in hearing cases pertaining to Electoral bonds, abrogation of Article 370, abolition of statehood for J+K, the medical college bribery case and denial of permission to prosecute Justice Shukla, an accused in the PIMS scandal, the Sahara Birla case, nomination of Ranjan Gogoi to the Rajya Sabha, the failure to protect the human rights of the "accused" in the Bhima Koregaon case, the sudden midnight transfer of Justice Muralidharan from Delhi to Chandigarh when he castigated the Delhi police, the perverse concept of " sealed cover jurisprudence".  There are more instances pointed out where the SC has been perceived to be  more papal than the Pope, but this list is enough to appreciate the minefield which had been laid out for Justice Arun Mishra and his brother judges. And let us not forget that sealed cover list of corruption charges against previous Chief Justices submitted in the 2009 case, waiting to be opened some day.

   It would have been difficult for the Hon'ble justices to negotiate this minefield without serious outcomes. As I see it, the Court had only three options. One, drop the contempt notice and close the case after creating some facing saving formula. Two, proceed with the case under the impulse of their hubris. To do so in a fair and judicial manner, every instance of inappropriate conduct or questionable judgment mentioned by Mr. Bhushan would have had to be investigated and anatomized. To have done so would have been a blunder of suicidal proportions by the court, for once you start probing there is no saying what darker secrets might emerge. Three, find Mr. Bhushan guilty on purely technical grounds ( eg: calling a judge "corrupt" is itself contempt, even if there is proof to show that he is, in fact, corrupt: in other words, truth cannot be a defence against contempt- an abhorrent postulation.) None of these options would have done much for the stature of the Supreme Court, it would stand diminished in any case because our judges have not heeded the wise words of Lord Denning, perhaps the greatest jurist England has produced, refusing to use the power of contempt as a shield:

" The jurisdiction (of Contempt) undoubtedly belongs to us. But we will never use this to uphold our dignity, that must rest on surer foundations. Nor will we use it to suppress those who speak against us."

It would appear that the Court has chosen the third option, cloaking itself in some kind of "lese Majesty" formula, assuming a divine right to be above questioning. It states that Mr. Bhushan's two tweets have " brought disrepute " and "scandalised" the Court. Two tweets? Is that all it takes to bring disrepute to a court of almost 75 years' standing? In which case, our judges should seriously ponder about the next question that inevitably follows- how is it that its reputation, credibility and independence have become so fragile that it feels threatened by one man's tweets? Surely, its foundations are- or should be- stronger than that? By refusing to examine Mr. Bhushan's charges on their merit before convicting him the Court has not rendered true service to itself and the nation.

   In the ultimate analysis independence, conduct and conscience cannot be legislated or assumed on the basis of an oath taking ceremony, nor can legislation conceal the lack of them. Like justice itself, not only must they exist they must be seen to exist. True legitimacy does not come from a legal tome but from a favourable public perception. That, I think, is what Lord Denning was talking about.

   

LAST MAN STANDING ?

   I am fully aware that the subject I am about to broach is a touchy one, as any good word, even a muted one, about Rahul Gandhi is considered unfashionable these days and runs counter to the howling of the mobs. However, I put my faith in the wisdom of Thomas Carlyle who famously said:  "Popular public opinion is the biggest lie", and proceed to say my bit. But some disclaimers are in order. Firstly, I write this as an ordinary citizen of India, a privileged one perhaps, but as susceptible to the slings and arrows of today's violent forces as the poor chap who was beaten to a pulp with hammers in Gurgaon the other day for carrying buffalo meat, which is legal: it can also happen to me the next time I pick up my favourite kababs from Meatz. Secondly, I am no apostle or faithful of the Congress party and  have not voted for it in the last decade. In 2014 I was conned by the P.T.Barnum type showmanship of Mr. Modi; in 2019 I was again taken for a ride, this time by the chameleon- hued Kejriwal who is yet to figure out whether he is a nationalist fish or a liberal fowl.  (He needs to make up his mind soon because right now he is beginning to look like a poorly xeroxed copy of Nitish Kumar, and we know what happens to blurred copies- they end up in the waste bin.).

  Nor am I a Rahul Gandhi acolyte or camp follower; in fact I dislike his vacillation on critical issues, I thoroughly disapprove of his WFH ( work from home) approach to politics even before the pandemic made this popular, I am frustrated by his "will he- won't he?" attitude to the Presidentship of the party, I am puzzled by his strategy of trying to be all things to all men, which is obviously not working, at times I am even incensed at his inability to strike a chord with other opposition parties, and even his own colleagues. The astute reader would have noticed by now that I find a lot of faults in Mr. Gandhi.

   And yet today, when India is perched on the precipice of an unthinkable abyss, I admire him and the lonely courage he has been displaying even as the "rough beast" of the Second Coming slouches ever  closer. Courage, because it is displayed in the face of "Pappu" memes by Whatsapp boneheads, courage despite being the derisory butt of jokes in Delhi's fashionable salons, the prime time whipping boy of auctioned anchors, the single-point target of the BJP- and yet he has held his course and has not taken his eyes off the ball, a ball which has been tampered beyond recognition by an authoritarian govt under the watch of an umpire in judicial robes which too are beginning to fray.

  I doubt if any political figure in recent times has been calumnified and vilified so much, with so little justification and such pronounced double standards. When the BJP loses an election it is the party's fault, but when the Congress loses one it is Rahul Gandhi's fault. Mr Modi can flaunt a tilak on his forehead but Rahul Gandhi cannot wear his janau on his shoulder. Mr. Modi as Chief Minister could raise questions on the country's security but Mr. Gandhi as leader of the largest opposition party cannot. Just about every political party in India is headed by a "dynast", or is crawling with them, but only Rahul Gandhi is singled out for condemnation. The BJP is no exception to dynastic urges either, it's just that it has not been in power long enough: give it another term and it too will fully conform to the golden rule of our politics- that politics is not public service, it's just another business, and like all businesses succession should always be from within the family. No, sir, the reason the BJP has sold the dynast theory to the media is simply this: the Congress, even in this, its darkest hour, still has a committed vote bank of 20% which must be prised away from the Gandhis to secure the Hindu rashtra. The other parties are small fry, not one of them has even 5% vote share.

  For the fact, unpalatable to many in the media, the elite and the brain-washed multitudes is that the only Opposition in India today is Rahul Gandhi. All the other so-called opposition " leaders" ( the Mayawatis, Naidus and Akhilesh Yadavs) have gone to ground, hoping to make themselves invisible to the ED, CBI and Income Tax chaps. Some of the others ( like Sharad Pawar, YSR and KCR) have either kept their back doors open for a quick exit to the BJP when the hounds get too close, or are too busy dousing their own kitchen fires, like Mamta Bannerjee, or have buried their heads in the sands playing dead, like Navin Patnaik. No one else speaks about, or questions the government on, the visceral issues that are tearing this country apart: the iron curtain drawn around Kashmir, police excesses, CAA, the Delhi riots, the desecration of universities, the mishandling of the pandemic, the destruction of all constitutional institutions, the environmental vandalism of the proposed new EIA, the sorry state of our higher judiciary, the auction of public properties to selected cronies, the capitulation to China in Ladakh and elsewhere, the brazen lying on every subject? The  silence of the Opposition parties is only emboldening a dispensation which genetically cannot have any respect for any other point of view, and is contemptuous of the public's right to be informed.
   One of the biggest casualties of political intercourse in these last few years has been the language in which politicians conduct it- full of hatred, anger, contempt and abuse. Mr. Gandhi has brought a certain decency and civility to the political discourse, in manner, conduct and language, qualities to which the ruling party and its spokesmen are total strangers. We may not agree with what he is saying but we cannot fault him for the manner in which he speaks.  

  This is not to say that every question raised, or every inference drawn, by Mr. Gandhi is correct or justified. It is to emphasise that he is the only one at least asking the questions, who is not maintaining an opportunistic silence, and for this I am prepared to walk the extra mile to forget, if not forgive, his many real and imagined deficiencies. His is the only voice to remind us of all of that is going horribly wrong in our country, and to caution the government and the voter. It is axiomatic that for a democracy a strong government is optional, but a strong Opposition is essential. Democracy can live with a weak govt. and a strong Opposition, but it will not long survive a strong govt. and a weak Opposition. It is not my argument for a moment that Mr. Modi should be condemned, my argument is that he should be held accountable and asked questions, whether or not he deigns to answer them. To the extent that Mr. Gandhi is at least attempting to do so, he is discharging his dharma as an opposition politician while the others are cowering in their well padded dens. For this he should be commended, not vilified or mocked.                                                                 History is usually a reliable guide to the shape of things to come, if only we would pay attention to it and tear ourselves away from those ubiquitous Whatsapp forwards. Turn back the pages of history to this extract from perhaps the most authoritative book on the fall of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930s and the events leading up to the Second World War, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, by William Shirer:

   " No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic .......... The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. At the crest of their popular strength in July 1932, the National Socialists had attained but 37 percent of the vote. But the 63 percent of the German people who expressed their opposition to (it) were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, however temporarily, to stamp them out."

Do the vote percentages ring a bell, dear reader?

   

THE DUFFER ZONE

   These days I find myself inclining more and more to the poetic. And therefore, like Wordsworth, my heart leapt up with joy the other day on seeing a photo of our Defense Minister in  Ladakh: it was reported that he was near the Line OF Actual Control (LAC), but since no one these days has even a clue where the LAC is, he could have been anywhere within two hundred kms of it. The cardiac calisthenics, however, were not due to his GPS coordinates, but the rifle in his hand. Finally, I exulted, an Indian is carrying a weapon on the border with China, even though it took the deaths of twenty of our finest to achieve that. But then, very soon, poetry reasserted itself and I felt, like Shelley, bright reason mocking me like the sun from a wintry sky. Was he, I asked myself, in the buffer zone? If so, then was it the Indian or Chinese buffer zone? If the latter then was it on the Indian or Chinese side of the LAC? Valid questions which Col. Ajai Shukla has answered, as has our Prime Minister, and for once both agree- that the buffer zone is on the Indian side, though as usual the Prime Minister's Delphic utterances can be interpreted only by Republic TV or Times Now. But then why are the bhakts cheering if the Chinese are on our side of the LAC? I am reminded of the story of Lady Godiva riding side saddle, completely naked, through a Coventry street and the guys on the side of the street exposed to her derriere, screaming:  "Hurray for our side!" I guess it all depends on how one is inclined.

   Regardless of where our buffer zone lies, however, it is clear that the Indian side of the LAC is one big duffer zone, all the way to Kanyakumari. And this is not something we can blame the Chinese for. It's all "made in India." Just look at some of the events that have been playing out these last few weeks, like a C grade Bollywood movie produced by Dawood Ibrahim and directed by Karan Johar. It is an invasion of the asinine.

  In which democracy(we will give India the benefit of doubt and call it a democracy) is a Chief Minister prevented from proving his majority in the Assembly? Even the wily Goebbles of the Third Reich fame could not have come up with a better formula than the one perfected in Rajasthan by the BJP and its ancillary institutions: use the courts to prevent the CM from acting against the defectors, and use the Governor to prevent him from proving that the majority are still with him! Heads I win, tails you lose.

  The contempt case against Prashant Bhushan is another instance that demonstrates that the law is an ass, no matter how you spell that last word. A three judge bench of the Supreme Court first  disregards an earlier judgement of a five judge bench on the powers of the Speaker. It then elevates defection to "dissent". To add insult to injury, it then pontificates on the importance of dissent in a democracy (and refuses to permit the Speaker of the Rajasthan assembly to act against the defectors). Then why does it frown on Prashant Bhushan's dissent concerning the SC's recent judgments or his opinion of certain judges, widely shared by a large percentage of the population? Dissent for the goose should be dissent for the gander- you can't genuflect to one and have the other for dinner. And then, of course, there is the question of priorities: are the views of Prashant Bhushan on judges (one of them eleven years old!) more important than the challenges to the Citizenship Amendment Act and Electoral bonds, removal of Article 370, dismantling of a state, pending bail and habeas corpus petitions, all of which have been awaiting the court's pleasure for months? 

  My poetry takes me further. Increasingly over the last couple of years, our judiciary has been reminding us of the truth of what the black American poet, Langston Hughes, said in 1926, viz. that  "justice is blind." Finally, however, the Maharashtra govt. has decided to do something about it: its Cabinet has recently sanctioned Rs. 50000/ to every High Court judge to buy spectacles! A far-sighted decision indeed, maybe it will now encourage the honourable judges to take off those blindfolds, have another look at various bail petitions of incarcerated scholars, intellectuals and activists the govt. finds inconvenient, and convince us that all is not dark. Read the writing on the wall, as it were, with the aid of the newly acquired optic devices.

   Hallucinating is now the official policy and past time. Its onset was gradual, beginning with ascribing all the present ills of the country to Mr. Nehru, the hosannas to demonetisation and GST (Goods and Services Tax), the delusion of a five trillion dollar economy. But then it gathered pace as delusions progressed to full blown neurasthenia and dreams became psychic visions: an opposition mukt Bharat, a declaration that India was the best performing country against the pandemic even as we are overtaking one country after another in number of cases and deaths, repeated assertions that not an inch of land had been occupied by China even as its troops were dining on chopsuey and showing us the finger-what else?- at Finger 5, that India was the best investment destination in the world even as its own capitalists were making a beeline for Portugal, the Bermudas and Canada.

   Our institutions have become totally dufferised, to coin a term. The ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) has been running around like a confused streptococus ever since the pandemic started, concerned more with the politics than the pathogen. It has decreed that a vaccine will be ready for public use by the 15th August 2020, taking the world by storm and elevating science to an art- the art of fiction and fantasy- causing Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi to have sleepless nights: how could they have missed up on this as an idea for their latest novel ? It continues to maintain that there is no community spread of the virus, even as we have crossed 1.50 million cases, with the fastest growth rate in the world. Does it even matter whether it is a community spread or a committee spread or a peanut butter spread?- the fact is that almost a thousand people are dying every day, and the Director of ICMR is patting himself on the back instead of smelling the coffee. Maybe he is confusing "community spread" with "communal spread", but even here he would be dead wrong in denying it. ICMR's own sero-testing shows that herd immunity is developing in some states- how then can you have herd immunity without community spread? It's time for the ICMR to concentrate on the science and not on the politics of the pandemic.

   The CBSE (Central Board for Secondary Education) and NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) have finally lived up to their promise of making India's largely unemployable students even more unemployable, of ensuring that its much vaunted "demographic dividend" shall be getting no dividends (or jobs) in the foreseeable future. Using COVID-19 as a heaven sent opportunity to promote a particular ideology, it has suddenly decided to lighten the load of students by throwing out everything worth studying! Its new syllabus has done away with the chapters on secularism, citizenship, nationalism, demonetisation, India's plurality and diversity, gender, federalism ,social movements, relations with the country's neighbours. Even a half wit cannot fail to notice that the deleted subjects are either anathema to the ruling dispensation or inconvenient issues which it would rather not have discussed. And so the next generation will grow up totally oblivious of the very values on which our great republic was founded, they will make better fodder for the abominations which will replace them in the New India.

   But it would be unfair of me to single out just a few of our institutions for honourable mention, for the fact is that all of them have become deranged and rogue: the police were "atmanirbhar" long before the Prime Minister's clarion call, for they need neither the law, nor the courts, nor the press to arrest everyone for sedition, bumping off a few on the way to "justice"; the media will drool over  poor Sushant Singh Rajput's grave rather than find out why the Chinese were allowed to picnic on our land, or report on Amitav Bacchan's bowel movements in hospital rather than tell us about the floods in Assam. The state of our bureaucracy is well represented by the brazen sycophancy of Mr. Nageshwar Rao, IPS, ex- Director of CBI who , in a tweet just last week, accused the likes of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed of distorting our history to pander to Islamism. Here is a uniformed (also uninformed), unlettered pygmy whose stature cannot rise to the level of even the bootlaces of Azad and our late President, making a desperate bid for reemployment (he retired on 31st July), displaying his pathetic ignorance of history, of Maulana Azad's appeal from the Jama Masjid in 1947 to his co-religionists to not got go to Pakistan, for India was "their land"; of his getting the Ramayana and the Mahabharat translated into Persian so that the Islamic world could study our timeless epics. When midgets like Nageshwar Rao start vilifying  giants like the Maulana and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, with assured impunity (and possibly a fat bone as a reward), you know that the country is doomed.
  Other countries evolve for the better, we have been consistently doing it for the worse, and are proud of it.

  Which is why the Chinese are not too bothered about Ladakh and the 220 million desh bhakts in the duffer zone. Xi just has to sit on his side of the buffer zone (and our side of the LAC) with his inscrutable smile, and wait for the duffer zone on the other side to collapse under the weight of its own idiocies. He doesn't have to destroy us- we'll do it ourselves, thank you. We are "atmanirbhar", you see.

THE LOCKDOWN DIARIES ( XVII) -- PURANIKOTI AND THE OTHER SIDE OF COVID

   Social distancing actually works! It's been more than a month since I arrived in my little village near Shimla from Delhi and my Oxymeter already shows an improvement in my pulse rate/ heartbeat. The reading used to be 82-85/ minute in Delhi and now its a rock solid 65! I attribute it to the social distancing from the Kejriwal-Amit Shah- Arnab Goswami factor, all pervasive in Delhi but non-existent here in Purani Koti. Nobody here is bothered about  them, and its all for the good. Delhi talks only politics, breathes only conspiracies, sneezes only Covid, and spreads only rumours- even a Schwarzenegger would need a ventilator there. In my village they occasionally curse the Chief Minister but that's it. The rhythm of rural life is blessedly unchanged for the most part. My oxymeter proves it. Even the come hither glances from Neerja( getting rarer by the day) don't move the pulse rate, though Neerja attributes it to my advancing years: she may well be right, for I now no longer covid my neighbours' wives, as the new Commandment prescribes.

   To be fair, Purani koti has not remained unscathed from the effects of the pandemic. We have three hotels and four homestays here and all of them have been shut since March, resulting in about 30 local youth being rendered unemployed; a couple of shops which catered to the visitors and their drivers are also practically closed. My good friend, Geetika Khanna, who runs a boutique home stay called Khanabadosh , tells me that she has received a large number of inquiries from prospective guests, but has decided to stay shut for the time being, owing primarily to the confusion about the govt's regulations and SOPs about tourists. The sensitivity of the local panchayat to the rising infections also has to be factored in, though fortunately our panchayat has not reported a single case so far.

   As can be expected, the mainstay of the village is agriculture- mainly two cash crops of cauliflower/ cabbage and peas. These days it is the cauliflower: about ten pick-up loads are dispatched to the market every day- six thousand kgs or so.

                                   

                  [ Fields of cauliflower ready for harvesting ]

    Typically, the local landowners don't farm the vegetables, they give the fields to Nepali labour on annual lease. Hard working folks who have been staying here with their families for many years, the Nepalis are as indispensable to the agricultural economy here as they are to the apple cultivation in upper Shimla: without them both would collapse. They usually pay a flat sum to the land owners, whereafter all expenses for the cultivation of the crops are their's, as are any profits. They too have been hit by the corona this year: whereas last year they got about Rs. 20/- per kg for cauliflower at the wholesale mandi, this year they are averaging between Rs. 10/- and Rs. 15/-, the down turn caused by the earlier lockdowns, disruption of supply chains and impediments to inter-state movement of trucks. But of late things have been improving. Even in the midst of the pandemic, it's a much better life than the squalor, tension and joblessness of the cities. And people are beginning to realise this. As my caretaker, whose family owns more than 50 bighas of land, told me the other day: the locals, especially the youth, now appreciate the deeper meaning of the phrase " dharti mata", that she can provide for all our basic needs like any mother, provided we do not forsake her; he tells me that the villagers are now realising that, rather than sell their lands to outsiders for their hotels and villas, they should farm it themselves and earn a decent living rather than seeking jobs in cities and living in their fetid slums. That if they look after and value their lands, the land will look after them, that this is the true "atmanirbhata" that the virus has taught them, not the empty slogan of the Prime Minister. Many of the youth now rendered unemployed are going back to their lands, tilling the fields which had been allowed to go fallow and hoping to make a life in the village rather than in the towns, as earlier. Some may return to the towns but even if a few stay back it will be a new and welcome beginning.

                                   

                                 

                        [ Evening rush hour in Puranikoti ! ]

  Puranikoti is, in many ways, a much better place today than it was before the pandemic came knocking at our doors. It has reclaimed its natural rhythms of life and its landscape: gone are the hordes of tourists who littered its forests and streams with beer bottles and plastics, bird calls have replaced the blaring music of car stereos,  the nightscape is once again illuminated by the stars and not the intruding lights of hotel rooms and the glare of car headlights, shuttling between parties. A graphic illustration of this is a little stream which runs through our forests, just about half a kilometre long, fed by the rainfall captured by the dense growth of cedar, blue pine and oak. It feeds many village houses downstream. Till last year it was choked by the plastic, bottles and rubbish generated by the hotels and picnickers. This year, I was delighted to see, it flows crystal-clear, released from the bonds of irresponsible tourism, the way it has done for decades. The only traffic jams are those caused by cattle returning from their daily grazing in the forests, another beat in the rhythm of everyday life here. Notwithstanding the economic hardships imposed by corona, the villagers appear happy to have reclaimed their rural landscape.

                                             

    [ The stream in 2019, littered with garbage]

                                     

                                           

 [ The same stream in July 2020, minus tourism ]

Villages like Puranikoti, it appears to me, do not need controversial stimulus packages or the RBI's confused monetary policies- in any case those lucrative lollipops never reach the villages, siphoned off by the double A's and the triple A's on the way. They need sensible agricultural, environmental and tourism policies, and then need to be left alone. They need basic good governance, not promises of becoming a super power or a "vishwaguru". Whether our rulers will see this light at the end of the Covid tunnel, I don't know- my guess is, probably not. After all, we live in an age when tunnel vision is mistaken, and praised, as real vision.

THE LOCK DOWN DIARIES ( XVI)- FLIP FLOPS DO NOT A TOURISM POLICY MAKE

   One of the more unsavoury, man-made consequences of the pandemic has been the almost total concentration of power in the executive arm of governments. There is now no legislative oversight, consultation with civil society, dialogue with stake holders or even scrutiny by the press. All decisions are taken by a socially distanced Chief Minister and a handful of bureaucrats. Now, the IAS may be the cream of administration ( actually, the whipped cream, but that is another story) but it does not represent the sumum bonum of all wisdom, and much of the confusion that prevails today is the result of this delusion. If any proof of this were needed, one need look no further than the current policies of the Himachal government to reopen tourism in the state.

  Given the importance of tourism to the state's GDP and its employment potential there can be no doubt that it needed to be revived. But any plan to do so had to factor in the rising graph of covid cases, the sentiments of the local population and the concerns of the local hotel and hospitality industry. What was needed was a carefully calibrated, phased out reopening, not an abrupt lifting of the flood gates, which is what the state did in the first week of July.

  Clearly, there was no urgency to immediately allow the ingress of tourists into the state. Himachal typically has two tourist seasons: March to June and then again from September to December. The first season had already been lost due to the lockdowns and the second was still a couple of months away, so there was no hurry to open up right now. As I had suggested in my earlier piece on the subject(https://avayshukla.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-lockdown-diaries-xii-himachals.html ) the government should have used this period to wait for the infection graph to decline and then to draw up a phased- out plan, opening up the state gradually: home stays, rural areas, adventure sports and outdoor tourism first and then moving to urban based tourism in the second phase. This time should also have been utilised to register all hospitality units, weed out the illegal ones, list the approved ones on its Tourism Deptt website, and insist that any prospective tourist would have to have a prior booking in one of these units to qualify for entry. I had also warned that there could be resistance from local communities and panchayats and the government would have to engage with them and bring them on board. This type of planning would have struck a balance between livelihoods and lives and would have had the endorsement of all participants.

  The state tourism department, however, appears to have taken the reckless and lazy route and has thrown open the whole state at one go last week. The consequence has been utter chaos as thousands swarmed the state's borders. It is a lose-lose situation. Hundreds of tourists, unable to comply with the stringent conditions for entry are being turned back. Those who meet the requirements encounter resistance from local panchayats. The HILLPOST has reported that entry into Kullu is allowed only if the panchayat Pradhan gives his/her consent ( something not required by the rules), and many families had to spend nights at the border in their cars because the Pradhan's phone was switched off! Hotel associations in Manali, Shimla and Kangra have unanimously refused to open their hotels, as have taxi unions, for fear of the disease spreading and in protest against the prescribed SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for them. The few tourists who have entered are a harried lot, with no place to stay and nowhere to go. Everyone is unhappy- the tourist, the hoteliers, local communities, an over worked police force. And most worrying of all, in the last few days the state's covid positive cases have increased significantly. The only ones who gain are the illegal and unregistered home stays and guest houses which the department has failed to capture on its radar.

  Even the rules and conditions for entry may not stand scrutiny. Since every tourist has to carry an RT-PCR negative certificate, what is the logic of prescribing a minimum stay of five days? Weekend tourism is the mainstay of tourism in Himachal, and the average stay is only two days. If the idea was to limit the number of tourists overall then why open up at all now? Especially if, with almost all major cities from where tourists generally come on the negative ( instituitional quarantine) list, no tourist from there would even consider coming? A leading Shimla hotelier I spoke to expressed his frustration in no uncertain terms: SOPs and rules were being changed every second day, hoteliers were caught between the panchayats and the government, the latter had offloaded its own responsibilities of verification of tourists on to the hotels, who had no means of doing so. The government had still not withdrawn its earlier threat that the hotel management would be held liable if any of their guests was caught flouting rules or tested positive. My hotelier friend was very clear that he would not open up unless all this confusion was cleared up- reopening a unit which has been shut for months requires a lot of investment in both time and money, and it would all come to naught if either the tourists did not turn up or the government again changed the rules to his disadvantage. He said that it was more prudent to wait and watch. That, unfortunately, appears to be the general attitude of the industry.

  Granted that it is not an easy job to find the perfect formula, if there is one. Other states like Goa and Uttarakhand are also struggling to discover the right protocols. But copy-pasting each others' wrong ideas is not the answer. ( Goa already appears to have conceded defeat by imposing another lock down from the 16th July). Himachal should scrap the current policy in its entirety, reimpose a ban on external tourists till end of August, and go back to the drawing board. Its tourism sector is far too important to be handled in a cavalier and ad-hoc fashion. The government should listen to all the stakeholders and first address their concerns- after all, it has been elected by the people and not by a virus. Its legitimacy comes from the former and not the latter. A lesson worth remembering in these authoritarian times.