THE PURANIKOTI DIARIES : EAST OF MASHOBRA

   Many years ago, when the bad moon of superannuation was beginning to edge worryingly above the horizon, I decided to improve my chances of reemployment by obtaining a diploma in Marketing Management. I poured the midnight rum for many months and got my diploma from IGNOU. Unlike the 14 day Yale diploma of Mrs. Smriti Irani which made her a union Minister, however, the IGNOU one didn't work for me. Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with the diploma itself; the fault, dear reader, lay in my stars. As a friend in the private sector confided in me: the effect of degrees on IAS chappies is not to be trusted- without a diploma they are only half-wits, with one they are complete nitwits.

   But the late night swatting did impart an important lesson to me in the form of a basic management principle which Rahul Gandhi appears to have mastered, viz. do not let your area of concern exceed your area of influence. In other words, don't waste your time on things you cannot change. Or, as my late lamented Golden Retriever would have put it in his lingua franca - if you can't hump it or eat it, then just piss on it and walk on. Eminently sensible words, which I have decided to follow. I have written reams on our deteriorating politics, economics, justice system, environment, but the only effect it seems to have had is that I get pissed on more often than a fire hydrant outside an all night bar . And so, as the Raven said: No More. I shall write now about more salubrious subjects, beginning with my village, Puranikoti, a safe 12 kms away from Shimla.

   The state PWD has put up a board in the village saying- PURANIKOTI. JAN SANKHYA: 190 . The problem is, I have been counting the folks here for the last 15 years and never get beyond 49, or at the most 50 if you agree with Neerja that I have a split personality. There can be only one of two explanations for  the PWD's figure: either this is their normal practice of inflating all estimates and figures by three times, or we are missing the significance of the word JAN SANKHYA . Perhaps this word is imbued with a historical perspective and the PWD is referring here to all past residents of the village too and is counting also their long departed souls. Which, naturally, has me worried: are they counting me among the living or the dead, or among the living dead ( which is the state of  most retired IAS officers once their commuted pensions are restored after fifteen years of retirement )?

 

                                   

                                 [ Photo of Puranikoti in 2002. Author's house is in the center.

                                   Image by Sidharth Shukla. ] 

                                       [ Puranikoti today 2020. Photo by Sidharth Shukla ]      

 When I bought my land in Puranikoti in 2002 it was a verdant, gently sloping ridge of green fields, ghasnis and thick forests. There were only two old, traditional village houses there. No more ( the Raven again, unfortunately ). Today the village resembles an aspiring West End or Sainik Farms. The plots of cauliflower and peas have all gone, as have the open grasslands. Fortunately, most of the trees remain ( I myself have added about 100 to compensate for Neerja's carbon footprint, which resembles that of Godzilla's when she is let loose in Delhi with her mother and sister). Puranikoti now has three hotels, four home stays and 32 private buildings, of which 17 have been lying unsold for the last five years: their builders obviously did not factor in either Mr. Modi or the pandemic. And since both are here to stay for the foreseeable future the pigeons have moved in to these houses, assured of a tenure till 2024 at least which is more than what Mr. Skittish Kumar of Bihar is likely to get.

  Fortunately, the money-bags of Delhi and Punjab have not yet discovered Puranikoti ( which is why I have cunningly not given its location!). But I do have impressive neighbours; there are four Additional Chief Secretaries ( two retired and two still yoked to the wheel ), a well known member of the Rajya Sabha, one retired ex- Ambassador and novelist, one ex- Advocate General, one corporate honcho with Bollywood connections, one international level Iron Man athlete, a top Punjab politico whom Kejriwal is very fond of during election times. There are no defense guys here yet, but they are not far away: they are camped at Mashobra, just four kms away, in full brigade strength and spend all their time looking for lost golf balls and single women. Since there are no golf balls in Puranikoti, only tennis elbows, and since most of the single women here are all approaching triple digits in age, the veterans have stayed away. But all that may change if Kangana Ranaut , the iconic " beti " of Himachal, decides to shift here from her demolished Pali Hill house. She has not so decided yet but one cannot find fault with the poet who said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Even if it's  one that measures only 36 inches and not 56 inches. And I'm not referring to Ms Ranaut here, folks.

                                                   [ More about my village next week ]

  

LIGHT - OR GARBAGE ?- AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

   The 9 km long Atal Tunnel below the Rohtang pass has been inaugurated, the foundation stone laid by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi ten years back has disappeared and Mr. Modi has taken the credit for another project initiated by the Congress. More important, however, we are told a new dawn has risen for the tribals of Lahaul and Spiti district, one of economic prosperity and seamless connectivity with Manali and the rest of Himachal. The experience of the last three weeks, however, seems to belie this: this pristine and fragile landscape, situated at an average altitude of 3000 meters may just be waking up to the nightmare of an unplanned  mass tourism which has blighted most of the rest of the state. 

   Reports are already coming in of as many as nine hundred vehicles entering Lahaul everyday via the tunnel, garbage and plastic being dumped indiscriminately everywhere, tourists relieving themselves by the roadsides, fruit trees being stripped bare, traffic chaos a-la the Rohtang pass, haphazard parking, potato bags stored on the roadsides being stolen, even cases of misbehaviour with local girls. The locals are extremely agitated for neither their pristine environment nor their traditional culture have prepared them for this kind of vagrant behaviour. But, given that this is precisely the face of mass tourism which the rest of Himachal has been subjected to for years, this was inevitable and should have been expected.

   One cannot help but feel that the Tourism Department of the state has been caught napping. The government had ten years to prepare for and plan for the influx of tourists into Lahaul when the tunnel was commissioned but has failed to come up with a comprehensive road map to navigate it. One wonders if even now it is working on one. Fortunately, it still has some time to formulate a proper policy for the district will be shutting down for the winter soon. But if there is no policy in place by next April then the unmatched splendour and unique character of Lahaul and Spiti will be doomed for ever. For this district is extremely vulnerable to environmental abuse and cultural vandalism. Its total population is only 31000, with a density of 2 per square km, perhaps the lowest in the country. Its people are trusting and friendly, their lifestyles are simple and traditional, evolved over centuries in complete harmony with nature. This sub-culture is easily disrupted and is  just not equipped to withstand an onslaught by the hordes from Karol Bagh, Kotkapura and Kaithal. 

   The interregnum should be used by the Tourism department to consult widely with the locals; fortunately this tribal district possesses a very close knit society, the residents are fully aware of, and proud of, their culture, they are fiercely protective of their natural environment and wish to live in complete harmony with it, as they have done for countless generations. There are a number of non-governmental bodies to articulate the views and concerns of the valley's residents. The govt. should engage with them, keep their needs and desires paramount in the planning process, and not impose its own ideas of "development", urban tourism or revenue generation on them. Here are a few suggestions to begin with:

* Lahaul and Spiti does not have either the infrastructure ( roads, parking, hotels ) or the natural resources ( like water or electricity) or the powers of natural regeneration to sustain large numbers of tourists, and mass tourism will simply destroy it. Therefore, the first step should be to carry out a study to assess the carrying capacity of the valley and then fix the number of tourists and vehicles that should be allowed in everyday. The government should do its job and not pass the buck to the National Green Tribunal, as was the case with the permissible traffic to the Rohtang pass a few years back. Till it does so, not more than 300-400 vehicles should be permitted every day.

* An environmental cess should be imposed on all ( except local ) vehicles/ tourists entering the valley, on the pattern of the Green fee in Manali. "Chhola bhatura tourism" has no place in this unparalleled and delicately balanced landscape, and those who wish to see its beauty must be prepared to pay for it; otherwise they could go to Goa. This fund should be exclusively ear- marked for creating the required infrastructure such as roads, parking spaces, wayside amenities such as toilets, developing camping sites, installing garbage collection and disposal systems, sewage treatment plants, educating both locals and visitors. The money should not be diverted for extraneous purposes such as furnishing government offices, buying cars or utilised as a discretionary fund by the DC or local politicians, as was allegedly done with the Manali Green fee.

                              

                         [ Resplendent colours of Pin valley in Spiti . Photograph by the author. ]

* Lahaul and Spiti is almost virgin territory for tourism, and the Department needs to do some out of the box thinking and not let events take their own natural and destructive course, as in the rest of Himachal. The valley should not be allowed to become another Shimla, Manali or Mcleodganj. For starters, urban tourism should be discouraged and large hotels should not be permitted. I would go so far as to say that only Home stay , B+B units and Eco- Tourism should be allowed: the district should be declared an exclusive Eco Tourism zone . This is necessary to disperse the number of tourists over a wider area, avoid concentration of numbers and strain on resources, ensure improved livelihood options for the locals. There should, however, be stringent safe guards in the policy to ensure that all these units are owned and managed by the local people, and that outsiders do not appropriate them as has happened in other districts. The state's Home Stay policy of 2010 was intended for locals, but has been hijacked by outsiders who take buildings on rent and start  their hostelries. Little benefit accrues to the locals.

*  The state Pollution Control Board and the Town and Country Planning Department need to activate themselves immediately. Building Bye-laws should be formulated for all the urban areas and tourist centers, with special emphasis on provision for parking and solid and liquid waste management. The two beautiful rivers of the area- the Chandra and Bhaga which merge at Tandi and ultimately become the Chenab- should not be allowed to become polluted as has happened to the rivers near Leh.

* Eco-Tourism has to be at the heart of any tourism policy for Lahaul and Spiti. And for this to happen the Forest Department has to be closely involved as almost all govt. land here is forest land. The Forest department's Eco-Tourism policy of 2009 has been a great success, even though the department has not expanded its scope since then. The 6 sites leased out by it to private entrepreneurs fetch it Rs. 98.00 lakhs each year. The Forest Minister recently revealed that about 108 additional sites have been selected for tendering; I hope some of them are in Lahaul and Spiti. If not, then locations in that district must be identified immediately and tendered; if necessary, funds from the suggested Environmental cess could be utilised to develop some sites or improve forest rest houses which could also be leased out for eco-tourism purposes.

  Lahaul and Spiti is the final frontier in Himachal for nature and its dream cannot be allowed to become a nightmare. We should not give in to populism and the temptation to make quick bucks. In fact, there is much the Himachal govt. can learn from the " less is better " tourism model adopted by Bhutan. The Atal tunnel had posed two challenges for us. The first was its design and construction which has been successfully met by the engineers. The second challenge now confronts Himachal's administrators- using the tunnel for the development and prosperity of Lahaul and Spiti, not for its environmental and cultural degradation. In the coming days will we see light at the end of the tunnel or only garbage?

TRPs, CORPORATES, AND MORAL BANKRUPTCY

    Even for a country which is perpetually in outrage mode, the brouhaha over the TRP scandal takes the cake if not the bakery, as a colleague of mine who knows a thing or two about hot spots would put it. Experts- lawyers, advertising gurus,  doyens of journalism, film stars, celebrities ( everyone, that is, except Amitabh Bacchan who has too many bones in his mouth to be able to bark)- have been vocal about condemning something they all knew about ( and did nothing about) for decades. And as usual with TV experts, they have got it all wrong.

   The likes of Arnab Goswami, Rahul Shivshankar and Navika Kumar will now stew in their own juice for sometime, and one hopes the steaming will result in at least some of the toxins in them being flushed out. But they are not the only villains in the current TV eco-system of fake news, communalism and bigotry which masquerades as news in India today and which drives the TRP system. They are like brainless, amoral viruses which know only one thing- how to replicate and amplify their hate. The real villains are the hosts who provide shelter and sustenance to these viruses, but nobody is talking about them. I speak, of course, about their corporate sponsors, the companies which give them millions of rupees of advertising revenue, thereby enabling them to continue injecting their deadly poison into the social fabric of the nation. Hatred and bigotry gets TRPs, which in turn gets advertising revenue, which keeps this vicious cycle going. Without this money the cycle could not sustain itself.

   This last couple of weeks I've been indulging in a bit of masochism, watching Republic TV and Times Now, something which makes me sick. But I've been watching, not their programmes, but their ad breaks: the idea was to find out who their advertisers and sponsors are. As expected, it's a Who's Who of Indian industry, a veritable Rogues' Gallery of honchos who put money above conscience, perversely justifying something I've always noted- that in a sewer line it's the muck that floats at the top. Here's an illustrative list, compiled after hours of self inflicted torture:

REPUBLIC TV/ BHARAT: Raymonds, Muthoot Group, Jio, Max Bupa, Kent, Air India, Star Health Insurance, Nissan, Dabur, Mahindra, Amazon, Samsung, Sony, Maruti, Nerolac, Toyota.

TIMES NOW: Cadbury, Toyota, Hyundai, Nerolac, Birla Group, Amul, Skoda, Mercedes, Ceat, Samsung, Bluestar, HDFC, Sony, TCS.

   These are the corporates ( and others like them) which fund the toxicity, the hatred and bigotry, which our news channels spew out 24x7 and which has led to the TRP race. The total TV advertising spend is about Rs. 70000.00 crores every year, of which roughly 2% goes to the news channels. TRP determines which channel will get how much of this Rs. 1400 crore pie; according to current ratings, most of it goes to Republic, Times Now and India Today, all three of whom are these days waging an incestuous family battle to apportion blame, reminding me of a sight I witnessed in Masai Mara many years ago- a pack of hyenas turning upon each other. But this battle is throwing up enough of a dust cloud to conceal the culpability of our corporates.

   Why do these companies continue to fund these renegade channels? Surely they cannot  be unaware of the toxic and divisive content which is the mainstay of these channels? A corporate entity has the same legal rights as an individual, surely it should then have the same moral and social duties as an individual- to condemn immoral ideology, to abjure hate and communalism, to not incite one community against another, to distinguish between the truth and falsehood? And yet our corporates are blind to these responsibilities, just so long as they can get maximum eyeballs and continue to get a healthy return on investment. They are not bothered about the real return on their investment- a society and country being torn apart by the channels they fund.

   Our corporates aspire to be global entities but fail to espouse global values. In the developed world companies are increasingly taking positions on tech/ media platforms that spread fake news and incite hatred or violence. Facebook has been boycotted by the likes of Adidas, Diaggeo, Ford, Honda, HP, Hershey's, Coca Cola. Inexplicably, however, in India these same companies continue to do business with sections of our electronic media which are even more toxic and strident than Facebook. What is missing here is perhaps the pressure of a more active civil society.

   All responsible companies should boycott these venomous channels and civil society should mount pressure on them to do so, or face a boycott of their own products. A stirring of their conscience appears to have begun- just last week Bajaj and Parle announced that they will no longer advertise in some of these channels/networks because, as Rajiv Bajaj stated, I " do not want my children to inherit an India built on hate." Brave words, but then he is not known for mincing his words. The French car maker Renault has also been boycotting Republic TV and its Hindi mutant since May this year. But it did not do so out of any pricking of its conscience, but because of a campaign launched in France by Indian Alliance ( a group of diasporic Indians) with the hashtag  #RENAULT FUNDS HATE. The crusade was joined by Stop Funding Hate, another activist group in London, and by the French chapter of Sleeping Giants, a US based group which has been responsible for as many as 4000 companies withdrawing from BREITBART, a channel which is Mr. Trump's preferred purveyor of hate and racism.

   Unfortunately, the good work of these corporates has been somewhat undone by the Tatas and Tanishq this week by their withdrawal of an ad promoting inter faith marriage. This mighty conglomerate did not have the spine to stand up to the communal trolling for even one day! This supine surrender will only encourage the religious retards to further intimidate anyone who stands up for religious harmony. Notwithstanding his tall claims to philanthropy, Mr Ratan Tata always knows which side of his bread to butter, and this is usually the winning side. His action in not standing up for his convictions ( if he has any, that is ), along with the fact that his group continues to fund these toxic channels, has demolished all the principles that his predecessors stood for. But I'm still hopeful that not all of Indian industry belongs to the invertebrate genus and that more will follow the example of Bajaj, Parle and Renault.

   The lesson which emerges from the TRP implosion, therefore, should be that it is not only that channels like Republic and Times Now should be boycotted, but that the pressure and the boycott should extend also to those members of India Inc. who continue to support them with advertisements. For corporates too are citizens of this country and should be judged as such. It's bad enough for them to cosy up to the government, but must they also jump into bed with bigots, mercenaries and fanatics? Surely, there are better ways of making money than by pandering to the mob on prime time TV. Our captains of industry may do well to harken to the words of John Ruskin:

" You may either win your peace or buy it; win it by resisting evil, buy it by compromising with evil. "

IF HATHRAS DOESN'T MAKE US THINK AGAIN, THEN NOTHING WILL

    The voters of this country (or at least 37% of them) have given Mr. Modi and his party a long rope. They have kept the faith and have even tolerated the wholesale reneging on his lofty promises. He has not delivered on even one of them- the economy, federalism, relations with neighbours, raising India's international status, the safety of women, jobs. Instead, the damage caused these last six years has been immense: the country has never before been so divided socially, its institutions so dysfunctional, its judiciary so compromised, its politics so confrontational, its borders so threatened, its Parliament so irrelevant. But things are about to get even worse and Hathras is showing us the direction in which we are headed. For it is not a stand alone incident: it follows the pattern of Kathua and Unnao.

   It's not just the alleged rape and murder of a poor, helpless Dalit girl which should worry us, horrendous as that is. Sadly, we are now immune to them, what with 32000 rapes reported every year. What should alarm us is the response of the state government and the lack of any response from the PM himself to this human tragedy. For they confirm that this government lacks any compassion, and will not even allow society to express any empathy with a girl who was ravaged in  life and stripped of her rights and dignity in death. It will use sovereign violence to suppress legitimate protest, lodge FIRs to stop questions being asked, target the victim instead of the perpetrator of the crime. A country can live with incompetence but how does it survive as a civilised entity when its government has no heart or has a heart of darkness where the rays of compassion do not penetrate?

  The manner in which the girl's dead body was treated is beyond heinous, it calls into question whether our bureaucrats are in fact barbarians. It takes a special kind of sadism to deny the grieving parents a last look at their murdered daughter, or a cremation according to her religious rites. The actions of the police even thereafter- locking up the girl's family, confiscating their phones, threatening them to change their statements, cordoning off the village, beating up anyone, including elected representatives and journalists, trying to visit the village- make us wonder whether we are dealing with a Gestapo or with the police of a democratic country. And it is now following the script initially written by the equally brutal Delhi police- instead of admitting and rectifying its sins, it muddies the waters by alleging an "international conspiracy" to spread caste divisions and "defame" the government. At last count 21 FIRs had been lodged and cases registered against 600 persons. The witch hunt shall now commence. The UP police is only following the well trodden path first carved out at Bhima Koregaon, cemented in the anti-CAA protests and declared a national highway of fabrications in the Delhi riots- make the victims the accused, hide the crime behind a smokescreen of ridiculous conspiracy theories, bury the courts under 17000 page chargesheets.

   The Supreme Court has to emerge from its apathy and use its vast powers. It must intervene immediately, not tentatively and reluctantly but decisively, and exercise its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution. There can be no question of a CBI enquiry any more, or of an SIT: the khaki uniform is no longer trusted by the people. Only a judicial commission headed by a sitting judge of a High Court ( with at least three years of service left so that he is not led astray by the blandishment of reemployment, a-la the Gogoi) can be trusted to unearth the sordid truth and the inhuman players in this tragedy. But the Court needs to go beyond this minimum: the UP police can no longer be trusted with the statutory powers the law gives it, for it is using them to nullify the law of the land and the basic rights of the citizens. The Court should immediately prohibit the UP police from registering any case related to the Hathras incident and the protests that follow it, without the approval of the court or the judicial commission. Criminal cases  (including for destroying evidence by the midnight cremation of  the victim's body and for atrocities against a Scheduled Caste person/s) should be registered against the District Magistrate,  the SP and other officials. It should get to the heart of the matter immediately and not be led astray by the crocodile tears of a Solicitor General hand in glove with the government. What is clear in this case is not just lapses but institutional failure if not complicity. Granting repeated opportunities to the UP government or seeking affidavits on "witness protection" programmes is simply playing into the hands of that same government: every additional day granted will mean more vindictive FIRs, more journalists and activists arrested, more pressure on the parents of the girl. There is little point asking the administration for a witness protection programme when it has already established its true credentials by allegedly threatening the victims' families, treating them practically as the accused, spinning a canard that no rape ever took place, attempting to discredit the family by insinuating they had contacts with the accused. The court has to go beyond merely expressing shock, it has to reassure an apprehensive nation that it has what it takes to contain, and punish, an administration which has gone rogue.

   Comparisons in such matters are distasteful, but sometimes they are necessary to show us how far we have fallen. Hathras cannot but evoke painful memories of the Nirbhaya case of 2012. But then the state and central governments behaved quite differently and with compassion. Throughout the protests then the victim was provided all possible medical care, and was even flown to Singapore for specialised attention; her family was treated with compassion, the media and the opposition had full access to them, no attempt was made to create an alternative narrative of conspiracy and what have you. The Prime Minister and Mrs. Gandhi went to the airport to receive Nirbhaya's body. Need one contrast this with what is transpiring today?

   The danger today is not to our economy or to GST collections or to the Current Account Deficit, as some commentators would like us to believe. These are transient and can be fixed by sound policies and professionals. The real danger is to our very existence as a civilised nation, to our 72 year history as a functioning democracy, to the integrity of our institutions, our ability to continue as a diverse but coherent society, to our age-old values and traditions of humanism, fellow-feeling, compassion and charity. These are what define a great nation, not Ease of Doing Business or dubious international awards: once gone it will take many millenia to restore them. And these have been fast eroding these last few years under state patronage, under the cover of legal violence and persecution.

   Our tryst with Mr. Modi"s New India has failed miserably and is fast becoming the kiss of death. The long rope has run out and only the noose remains. All of us need to introspect seriously whether we have been making the right choices, and whether the time to scoff at Rahul Gandhi, believe the BJP IT Cell handouts, give credence to the likes of Times Now and Republic TV, fondly hope that the acche din are just another election away, is now over. Whether a country of 1300 million people with a 2.50 trillion dollar economy can be run simply on a lust for power and majoritarianism. It was tried in Europe in the 1940s and ended in destroying a nation.  Hathras may just be the last opportunity to do some introspection.

THE FIVE RUPEE NOTE

    Most people think that an inheritance and a legacy are the same thing. In a way they perhaps are because they are bequeathed to us by our parents, but there is a significant difference- an inheritance is the tangible part of what our parents leave us and is soon subsumed into our lives, perhaps improving it a bit, and is soon forgotten. But a legacy is the intangible- the "soft"- bequest and stays  with us forever. It connects us with our departed parents till we too go to join them. It consists of memories and regrets, it is both sweet and painful, and the proportion of each depends on us.

   I am a bit of a minimalist, a frugal consumer of resources (nowadays known as a "nonsumer"), and continue to wear, or use, something till it falls apart in despair. And so it was that the other day I had to buy a new wallet because the old one had padded my posterior for thirty years and could no longer contain the dozen or so testimonials an Indian citizen needs to carry these days lest he be locked up under the NSA (National Security Act) or UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act)- the cash itself Mr. Modi had taken away long ago. Emptying the deceased wallet in the manner of a fisherman gutting a shark, I came upon a crumpled, faded five rupee note nestled in one of the leathery folds. It took me a half second to recognise it for what it was, a memory from 26 years ago. It was both an inheritance and a legacy from my mother.

   She passed away in 1994, to the end a simple, God believing woman for whom her family was the universe of choice. She was content to live in a dilapidated old bungalow in Kanpur which my dad had bought in 1964, and which his meagre pension did not allow him to renovate. He valiantly tried to sell it (it was valuable real estate by the 80's) but my mother would have none of it, the one subject on which she steadfastly opposed my father.  But she did keep one secret from my Dad: she would save a few rupees every month from her shopping budget, a rupee at a time, and give it to her children when we visited her. Nothing substantial, you understand, maybe ten or twenty rupees, but it was HER money, to do with as she wished. When we checked her cupboard after she left us, I found that five rupee note beneath a saree. I have kept it with me ever since, I dare not spend it because for me it is both a precious inheritance and a legacy.

                                  

                                      [ The five rupee note I found in my mother's cupboard ]

   Unlike inheritances, legacies come with memories and regrets attached. And the memories here are of a woman with simple wants and no interests beyond her family. My mother had only two indulgences: cheap Hindi detective novels which invariably began with a woman shrieking in some dark alley, and  "zarda supari". As long as my Dad could fund these minor vices, she had no use for money: her two sons were well settled, her only daughter was married, she had her extended family in Kanpur: what did she need money for? She had set the bar of life quite low and saw no need to raise it- an instinctive piece of wisdom, long before COVID 19 reminded us of it.

   That humble five rupee note is my continuing bond with my mother, every time I touch it I touch her, sometimes I like to think that I can even smell the fragrance of her perfume on it, nothing expensive or new fangled, just the time- tested eau de cologne of yesteryears. It is also a vicarious repository of fond memories of her: how she would bring me innumerable cups of coffee when I was preparing for my IAS exams, her staunch belief that one day more people would know of me from my writings than for my administrative skills, the honest and trusting warmth with which she embraced Neerja into her household without the usual mother-in-law type of sparring. In any argument between my wife and me she always took Neerja's side, not on the merits of the case,  but on the unflinching principle that a girl who leaves her own mother to join another family is entitled to unquestioning support from her mother-in-law! She was an ailing woman from her thirties, with multiple medical conditions, but never imposed them on us: she and my dad handled her condition quietly by themselves. She never complained, she trusted everyone to the point of gullibility, her life was an understatement.

   But these memories come with a whole baggage of regrets, too. Could I have spent more time with her? She refused to move out of Kanpur and I was all over the place in Himachal and could visit my parents only once a year on my annual leave. But (I now ask myself) was this just an excuse to console myself, or could I have made more of an effort? Should I have brought her to AIIMS (when I was posted in Delhi) for better treatment, even though she was unwilling to be subjected to the rigors of a sarkari hospital? In the early 1990's I was travelling all over the world, but never took her with me because these were official visits. Could I not have tempered my code of ethics a bit and taken her to just a couple of countries, shown her a little bit of the world beyond Civil Lines of Kanpur? Why did I not make it to her bedside two days before she went into a coma and passed away, unable even to say good bye to the person who had given so much of herself to her family, unquestioning and always believing in us? I can't even remember when was the last time I told her that I loved her. Of course, I have a rational explanation for all these doubts but of an evening, when I am sitting alone with a drink in my hands, they sound hollow. But not to her, I'm sure, because for her I could do no wrong. 

   I know that all mothers are special and I'm not stating anything new or unique, but sometimes it has to be said, for all too often we leave it till it's too late, as in my case, and have to live with the consequences of the silence.

   In her last years my mother had only two wishes. One, that when the time came she be spared the traumatic hospitalisation that is the fate of so many in their final days. Two, that her mortal remains be taken for the last rites from the house she clung to so fiercely, which my dad had named after her and which was her only fiefdom. God likes short bucket lists, because he granted both the wishes.

   There is a lot of data embedded in that faded five rupee note, you know. It's not just a piece of legal tender, it's worth a fortune to me in remembrances and remorse, a legacy which keeps renewing itself every day, a reminder of what I had and what I've lost.

DEMOLITION DERBY

 I've never believed in the adage that learning is a continuous process. According to cognitive experts, a human being learns 80% of everything he will ever learn by the age of five years. (In my case it took a couple of more years because I have always been a bit slow on the uptake, or, as my wife who always looks at the more positive side of things, says, up on the slow take.) The remaining 20% is useless drivel, the kind of balderdash you pick up on Republic TV and Times Now, which tends to negate Darwin's evolutionary process. And I have exemplary role models to prove my thesis that successful people stopped learning anything the moment they changed their diapers for a "katcha".

Take our own resident sage, the Prime Minister, who never learns from experience and keeps inflicting on us one surgical strike after another without the benefit of any anesthesia: demonetisation followed by the Lockdown, Article 370, NRC, CAA and now the Farmer's Bills. Or take his colleague the Railway Minister who has yet to learn that a foot is meant for walking and not for inserting in one's mouth: his epiphany that Einstein discovered gravity was swiftly followed by his declaration that high unemployment indicates growth in self employment. Barely had we recovered from this stupendiotic  (my word, not Mr. Shashi Tharoor's!) assertion than he informed Mr. Bezos that he could keep his billions because India (which is looking at a 15%  drop in GDP this year) didn't need his shekels. And now a certain glamour and dash has been added to my theory by none other than the redoubtable Ms Kangana Ranaut who has not learnt when to let a good thing be. Having equated Mumbai with POK, you would think she had made her point. You would be mistaken, because she then decided to widen her canvas, as it were, and proceeded to call another actress a "soft porn star"; to maintain a gender balance she then categorised all agitating farmers as terrorists. It appears that she has convinced herself that what India needs today is another Rani ki Jhansi, and that what she herself needs is a Rajya Sabha BJP ticket from Manali. I am informed her film MANIKARNICA is now being retitled as MANALIKARNICA, much to the discomfiture of the sitting BJP MP from Manali. 

But I am not one to stand on prestige, and therefor must confess that I was wrong- one can still learn something new, even at the age of 70, in our New Bharat. For in recent months I have been made aware of yawning gaps in my erudition, wide as the Depsang plains, through which you could drive a Ram Rath if not a Chinese armoured brigade. Some of these are worth sharing with the reader, especially those whose cognitive growth also hit a road block at the age of five.

I have discovered, for instance, that whereas to build is human, to demolish is divine. The urge to demolish is what drives our current civilisation. It began, I suspect, with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 as an apt expression of our glorious culture, but has since then become the mainstay of good governance. We now demolish what we cannot resolve and hide our failures beneath mounds of rubble. Dozens of apartments in Ernakulam were ordered to be razed to the ground in 2019 by the eminently forgettable Justice Arun Mishra, who spent his spare time singing elegies to the Prime Minister and his bench time distributing relief to corporates. These poor middle class apartment owners were thrown on the streets overnight. Even though the buildings had every conceivable required approval, this law abiding judge found them in violation of environmental regulations. Perhaps they were, just like every second building in Shimla . So punish the guys who gave the permissions and the builder who was less than honest with his buyers. But why take on Big Government and Big Money, right? The height of these buildings, presumably, also obscured from the good judge's view the rape of the environment by the govt's own coal, hydro and highway projects in Chattisgarh, Arunachal and Uttarakhand, and so they escaped his attentions. Selective demolition is the name of this game.

But he established the principle that demolition, not development, lies at the heart of good governance. And so the Supreme Court proceeded last month to order the demolition of all "jhuggis" and jhopris" on Delhi's railway tracks, no doubt in furtherance of the promise of Sabka Saath Sabka Vinash. There was no concern felt for the 50000 who would be rendered homeless as a result, just as in slightly earlier times the same court ignored the tens of millions of migrants trudging back to their villages among a hail of police lathis and sprays of disinfectants. Mr. Kejriwal, smelling electoral blood, immediately announced that all the displaced would be rehabilitated. But no one took him seriously since he still has to rehabilitate Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.

No one, however, can stop a bad idea whose time has come. The Uttar Pradesh govt., the pioneer of the Encounter school of justice, decided that convicting people it didn't approve of took up too much of its time and was anyway beyond the competence of its police. It was much more convenient to just demolish their houses. There was, of course, that little irritant of finding the law that permitted such a progressive initiative, but, as the Fuehrer famously said: I AM the law. And so the IPC has been replaced by the JCB, a much more efficient instrument for bringing about change, as the many accused of opposing the government are now finding out. It's amazing what a mere change of a few alphabets can do for good governance.

The JCB is a politically neutral and gender neutral machine, as the BMC (Bombay Municipal Corporation) soon realised. Confronted with our own home- made climate change disaster, Hurricane Kangana and her 200 km gusts of fulminations, the BMC decided to demolish her Pali Hill house: it literally left no stone unturned to convey its message to her. Kangana, who is the apple  (what else?) of Himachal's eye, was immediately designated as "Himachal ki beti" by the Himachal Chief Minister, and his BJP cadres have now expressed their intention to demolish, as a return favour, Priyanka Gandhi's house near Mashobra. Which has now got me seriously worried. My own house is quite close to Priyanka's and I once wrote an article praising her brother: that can put me on the death watch wait list if the demolition virus replaces the corona virus in Mashobra.

And so it was inevitable that, having demolished just about everything that made this country great, the government would sooner or later turn its baleful eye on Parliament. The Central Vista project is the apotheosis of this new spirit of reconstruction, by which an entire era of history and heritage will be demolished. The existing Parliament building- one of the most iconic and recognizable edifices in the world- will be put in mothballs, under a sarkari coat of pan masala. A new Parliament building will replace it. To me, this is just an ex post facto acceptance of reality. The present Parliament building is now only a hollow shell, it is no longer the sanctum of Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Ambedkar, Minoo Masani, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Vajpayee and other stalwarts who made us proud, it is now the abode of pygmies. The values, traditions, wisdom, courtesy, resounding oratory and genuine Indianism which once imbued each stone and cranny of this building have long departed along with these great personalities and true sons of India. When the life blood and very soul of the structure has been drained away, of what use is the building itself? In fact, it is only appropriate that the mediocrity of today's politics be taken to another, new architectural mediocrity instead of tainting the grand old building. It deserves better than the execrable scenes that play out inside it everyday. Sometimes demolition can be a blessing, it can preserve the truth for all times and remind us, as nothing else can, of what we have lost. Every mound of rubble has a story to tell, and it's not pretty.

 

         LAW NEEDED TO COMPENSATE VICTIMS OF WRONGFUL ARRESTS.

 

Dr. Kafeel Khan, of the Gorakhpur tragedy fame a couple of years ago who tried to save infant lives by buying oxygen cylinders out of his own pocket and was jailed by the UP govt. for it, has been freed by the Allahabad High Court which found no evidence against him. He was kept in various prisons for eight months without legal justification. Dr. Khan, however, is one of the lucky ones.

This govt. has been in an overdrive this past year to lock up anyone who can think independently of its propaganda machinery, or express himself in opposition to its anchors and spokespersons- academists, activists, the rare journalist, students, NGOs. One of its main instruments in this pogrom is the deadly legacy bequeathed it by the Congress, the UAPA ( Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) now suitably amended by the BJP to fit its image. NCRB data shows that 3005 cases have been registered under UAPA between 2016 and 2018, more than 350 in UP alone. Tellingly, however, in 2016( the last year for which data is available) 22 cases out of 33 which were decided ended in acquittal: in other words, two out of three arrested were found not guilty. And this is only at the trial court stage; after the appeals process the convicted figure would come down even further. And this exposes the government’s game: the idea is not to convict since the charges are usually trumped up and without any evidence, the intention is to harass, teach “them” a lesson, intimidate and take them out of circulation for as long as possible.But in the process thousands of innocent persons would have been locked up for months and years without reason. Anjum Zamarud Habib was in prison for 5 years,  Mohammad Amir Khan for 14 years, the Akshardham temple blast accused for much longer before being exonerated of terrorism charges. That is why Kafeel Khan was lucky, and why this is as good an inflection point as any to consider the endemic problem of malicious prosecution and wrongful arrests in this country, and whether or not the state should provide reparation to these victims of deliberate state excesses.        The guarantee that no citizen shall be deprived of his personal liberty without reasonable evidence against him is the bedrock of human rights, and the corner stone of an equitable system of justice.  As the criminal justice system heads towards total collapse and the govt. compensates by legislating more and more draconian laws stipulating arrests without any inquiry and/ or no provision of bail, such detentions shall surely increase. It is time to address the issue rationally.

  Citizens in India are being confined illegally on a colossal scale, either in police lock-ups or in judicial custody. Our prison population is about 4.50 lakhs, of which 70% (  3.10 lakhs) are undertrials who have not yet been convicted of any offence. The majority of them are not likely to be convicted either. According to NCRB data  the national conviction rate for IPC offences is just 45%; in other words, of the 3.10 lakh undertrials in jail 55% or 1.65 lakhs will be found innocent for want of evidence ! A further 25% of them will get off on appeal. But they would have spent years behind bars, deprived of their liberty and natural rights, their future blighted by the stigma of imprisonment. Why were they arrested in the first place ? Why did the courts send them to judicial custody if there was no prima facie evidence against them ?

 The answer is nothing short of an indictment of our entire criminal justice system: callous apathy, venality and incompetence of the police, failure and lack of due diligence on the part of our lower courts , and complete indifference of the policy makers. To begin with, many of our laws themselves are defective to the point of being blood thirsty- laws relating to dowry deaths,  suicide, rape, domestic violence, atrocities on scheduled castes, sedition, terrorism are so crafted that the " accused" can be arrested straightaway without the need for any corroborating evidence. This is grist to the police mill which in any case is more interested in " closing" a case by arresting someone than in ensuring that actual justice is done by catching the real culprits . Quite often public/ political/ media pressure is so intense that an arrest-any arrest- is the only way to get them off their backs. Thereafter shoddy investigation, external influences, lengthy delays, witness intimidation, frequent transfers and lack of any accountability ensure that 65 of 100 cases will inevitably end in acquittal, either at the trial stage itself or in appeal(s). Meanwhile, of course, those arrested will languish in jail.

 The same bizarre process applies to convictions after trial. In the Akshardham Temple blast case of 2002 six accused were convicted by the trial court and High Court: three were sentenced to death and three others to imprisonment ranging from 10 years to life. All six were acquitted by the Supreme Court on 16th May 2014 . But by then their lives had been destroyed as they had spent the intervening ten years in jail. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases playing out every year. Should the nation not compensate them for the miscarriage of justice even though no reparation could possibly bring back the years lost, the reputations tarnished, the families torn apart?

 There are many types of wrongful confinement: False Arrest ( detaining a person without lawful authority), Wrongful Arrest ( taking someone into custody without prima facie evidence), Wrongful Imprisonment ( confining someone without just cause or without using legal channels), and Wrongful Conviction ( imprisoning someone on grounds/ evidence subsequently found to be inadequate). The first three are blatant violations and transgressions of the law; only the last type is a consequence of a legal process, but it is nonetheless no solace to the victim. All four are rampant in India.

 The  genuine democracies have accepted that victims of a necessarily imperfect criminal justice system are entitled to reparation from the state, and have devised mechanisms for it. In the USA 29 states have legislated Wrongful Conviction Compensation statutes which provide compensation ranging from US$ 50,000 to US$100,000 for every year of wrongful imprisonment. A typical case is that of one Marty Tankleff who was wrongly convicted for the murder of his parents and had to spend 17 years in incarceration before he was acquitted in 2007. He was awarded compensation of US$ 3.4 million dollars . In the UK , Canada, New Zealand, Germany too systems exist for the state to be sued in such cases. It is next to impossible to do so in India because both, specific legislation or a general law  are missing. We have failed to enact a law on reparations even though India is a signatory to the International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights.

 The framework for having such a law exists, however. Articles 32 and 26 of the Constitution allow the Supreme Court and the High Courts, respectively, to pass orders and provide relief in such matters, and it is the constitutional right of a citizen to approach the courts. There is also a wealth of jurisprudence and case law to mandate that the state pay compensation for wrongful confinement. The relevant landmark judgments by the Supreme Court are in Bhim Singh vs State of Jammu and Kashmir, and in Rudul Sah vs State of Bihar ( 1983); in the latter case the SC laid down the legal responsibility of the State in no uncertain terms:

“ The State must repair the damage done by its officers to the petitioner’s rights. It may have recourse against its officers.”

Over the years both the Supreme Court and various High Courts( MP, Jharkhand, Kerala, Bihar, Assam, Madras) have also awarded compensation to petitioners in their writ jurisdiction, the most notable and recent one being the Rs. 13 million reparation paid to the ISRO scientist Nambi Narayan by the Kerala govt. for arresting and hounding him for 26 years on false spying charges.

But this sporadic, discretionary, pick and choose approach is certainly not adequate. Let us not forget that most of the undertrials and victims of police high handedness come from the weakest sections of society ( economically and socially) and do not have the resources to file writ petitions and engage expensive lawyers. Nor do they have the social eminence of a Nambi Narayan to motivate the media to take up their case. There should be a simple, specific legislation that can be accessed at the level of a district court or even a statutory authority like the District Magistrate. The law should, among other aspects, lay down the compensation to be paid for both pecuniary and non pecuniary damage caused to the petitioner by his illegal confinement, and the scale of reparation. There should also be a provision for recovery of the amount from the salaries of the officials involved. This is necessary to curb the growing enthusiasm of the police to carry out any illegal order of their political bosses, or even to indulge their own brutish instincts.  

   Wrongful confinement of any type by any agency of the state is a violation of human rights, and when it occurs on the scale that it does in our country it amounts to a negation of an equitable justice system. The prevailing concept of " arrest first, gather evidence later" is abhorrent to the spirit of jurisprudence. One can understand the indifference of the government and the parliamentarians, but what is inexplicable is the silence of the judiciary and the bar. Is it because the former is equally guilty through its casual approach, and the latter because this infringement of fundamental rights is good for business? Whatever the reason may be, it is high time laws are put in place to compensate the victims of wrongful arrests/ convictions and to punish the perpetrators. At the least, this would have a salutary effect on the way our police conduct investigations and the judges examine evidence. The people have voluntarily given the state enormous power over their lives in order to live in a just and lawful society; when the state errs in the exercise of this power it must offer reparation to its victims. Not doing so would be breaking a covenant that is the bedrock of a democracy.

 Here is a PIL crying out for suo moto attention of the Supreme Court, one of far more consequence for the common citizen than a suo moto contempt petition.