THE ALTERNATE SOCIAL MEDIA IS RESTORING THE BALANCE OF NEWS

   In the 2014 and 2019 elections every dimension of the news and social media was completely dominated by the BJP. The so-called mainstream print and television sector had already been or more or less bought out or intimidated into a hallelujah mode. As for Facebook and its subsidiaries, Whatsapp and Instagram, one has only to read the book THE REAL FACE OF FACEBOOK by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Cyril Sam to realise how complete the BJP's control over these mediums had become. This well researched volume exposes fully the complicity of Facebook in blatantly favouring, and working with, the BJP in furthering its political agenda. There is, of course, nothing new in this: increasingly, Facebook seems to prefer extreme right wing ideologies across the globe, and to consort with its purveyors, who tend to be autocratic or semi-autocratic governments. No wonder Mr. Amit Shah could boast, before the 2019 U.P. elections, that " we are capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake." This was no idle boast: the BJP had 3.20 million group members in just UP alone !

  Today, nothing has changed for the print and television media. A leading newspaper just dropped Karan Thapar's weekly column because he dared to point out that the Muslims had also been victims of the partition riots in Jammu. Television will still not show you Rahul Gandhi's press conferences or discuss the recent hate crimes in MP; they will instead spend hours on Sidhu's shenanigans in Punjab. But what is changing now is social media. Not Facebook and its instruments, not Twitter whose so-called " confrontation" with the government is nothing but a vaudeville act which should fool no one. The BJP needs these platforms before the 2022 elections and cannot afford to antagonise them. As the previous IT Minister found out too late. 

  The new, and fresh, faces of news are the channels on YouTube and digital news platforms. They are independent, not beholden to either the government or the corporates for financial support, get their funds directly from subscribers. These platforms are run either by small outfits or individuals who enjoy a lot of credibility among the discerning public, including senior journalists whose integrity was not to the liking of television channels, and academics and intellectuals who believe that keeping quiet is not an option any longer. These channels and platforms are making a commendable effort to redress the balance in Indian journalism. I myself watch just one hour of television news in a day: the 7.30 PM news bulletin of BBC to get the international news, and the 8.00 to 8.30 PM Newshour on NDTV to get the latest Covid figures, since Sonia Singh seems to be besotted with them ! For actual news and its analysis I turn to YouTube and the digital news portals.

  Lest you cock a snook at them, let me tell you that these are not chicken feed: some of them have subscriber bases running into millions. THE WIRE was part of the consortium of 16 global publications which investigated the Pegasus case. The other portals which still have the guts to take on the government are THE CITIZEN, HW NEWS, THE PRINT and QUINT. Their strength is that they not only present news responsibly, without any bias, but provide their viewers with rational and objective analyses, which is almost totally missing from other media.

  The YouTube channels are in a category by themselves, and may their tribe increase ! Most of them are in Hindi, which is a good thing because this increases their reach and catchment area. The better ones include Ashutosh's SATYA HINDI, NEWS CLICK, ARTICLE 19, LIVE TV, THE PRINT, TV NEWSANCE. Unlike the jaded and repetitive TV channels they are not dependent on biased wire news feeds like ANI for their information, nor do they have to depend on the same faces (the G-37) of recycled " experts" or party spokespersons for their analysis of events. They thus bring a freshness and a 360 degree perspective in their reporting.

  Even better are a number of outstanding individuals who regularly post their videos on YouTube to analyse specific events, policy decisions and trends. They go BEHIND the news to make better sense of it and provide a depth of analysis that is missing from mainstream media. It helps that they are all experts in their fields ( law, corporate matters, international affairs, defence ) , or coopt experts whose credentials cannot be questioned. Included in this list are Parakala Prabhakar , Punya Prasun Bajpayi, Faye D'Souza, Sujit Nair, Faizan Mustafa, Ravish Kumar, Akhilesh Bhargava, Abhisar Sharma, Pravin Sawhney and Dhruv Rathee ( who has 5 million subscribers!) Karan Thapar is another YouTuber whose regular THE INTERVIEW routinely attracts a couple of lakh views: it is the nearest we will ever get to a HARD TALK type of show in India.

  All these channels and individuals provide an invaluable service to the citizens at a time when all news is either censored or fake, when the BJP's IT Cell has replaced Reuters and PTI as the biggest dispenser of ( fake) news, and it has become impossible to distinguish between paid and genuine news. Granted that they are not camp followers of the ruling party or the government and are generally critical of them, but that too is an essential ingredient of a democracy. They are performing yeoman's service in attempting to set the balance right.

  And it's working. It appears to me that the government has belatedly recognised that its complete dominance of the social media is now under threat, notwithstanding that the Electoral Bonds will ensure that Facebook and its subsidiaries will remain in its pockets. Which explains the new IT regulations and the desperation to impose controls over all digital channels and posts. It is heartening that a couple of High Courts have struck down some of the insidious provisions of these rules, and that the Supreme Court has so far refused to interfere with their orders.

  It's time to switch off your TV and turn on YouTube.

  

LISTEN TO THE SILENCE - IT HAS THE ANSWERS

   The vast majority of us ( and I include myself in this list ) are completely unaware of the role that sound - and silence - plays in our lives and mental well being. I was made aware of this recently by a BBC documentary about an App developed by some whizz kid in response to a peculiar Covid phenomenon. People working from home apparently missed the usual buzz of office sounds and felt disoriented. Some smart kid has now developed an App that has a graphic equaliser which can stream the ususal office background sounds- the chatter of colleagues, ringing of phones, whirring of photo-copiers, clicking of typewriters- which simulates an office environment and makes the person feel comfortable and therefore more productive !

  This demonstration of how "surround sound" shapes our state of mind is telling in a number of ways, not the least of which is the manner in which we have allowed human generated sounds to replace the cadence of nature, with unhealthy effects on our mental well being. Numerous studies have proved how the tyranny of ceaseless sound- especially in cities, in which 40% of the human population now resides- causes stress, hyper-tension, high BP, and most of the time we are not even aware of this hidden killer. It is time to understand what we have given up in our fruitless quest for a materialistic Valhalla.

  It is time we began listening to the Universe again, as our forefathers ( in the not too distant past ) did. We must go back to hearing the silence beyond the background noises and cacophony of modern life. To do so, however, we must first understand the true quality of Silence.

                                                  There is music here.[ Photo by the author ]

                                      

  There is no such thing as complete silence. The universe is producing sounds all the time, and has been doing so since time immemorial. It's we who are not listening. To prove this, a famous American music composer and musician, John Cage, wrote a composition in 1952 titled 4' 33'' or Four Minutes and Thirty Three Seconds, which stunned the music world. The score consists of three movements- of complete silence. The musician sits on stage before an open piano without playing it, there is complete silence and quiet in the hall for four minutes and thirty three seconds. At the end of this period he gets up and walks off the stage.

  In this total quietude, the audience discovers the existence of sounds they had never heard before- the sound of blood circulating in the arteries, the muted beating of the heart, the soft whispers of one's breathing, even the rustling of fabric against fabric as one moves. Which was precisely the point John Cage wished to make- that sound permeates every fibre of the universe, that it does not exist only outside us, but also inside, if only we would care to listen. It is as important to listen within, as it is without.

  Every environment and soundscape in the universe has its own unique sonic signature. There are basically three types of sounds: Geophony ( sounds of the non- biological natural world- the wind, flowing water, the rustling of leaves, the creaking of tree branches moving against each other); Biophony ( the sounds made by living creatures such as insects, birds and animals ); and Anthrophony ( sounds generated by humans and their contraptions). The tragedy of modern life is that we have been allowing the anthrophonic signature to dominate and eclipse the other two, and are consequently losing touch with the natural cadence and rhythms of the universe.

  A natural environment is musically generative, it is alive with musical expression : just think of the symphony played out by the hidden cicadas in the monsoons, the honking of a wedge of geese flying overhead, the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker, the plaintive baying of a lonely pack of coyotes or wolves, the cooing of a wood dove or a " papiha", the roar of a waterfall, the moaning of the wind through the trees. This is the stuff and lifeblood of music, from the ancient bagpipes to the modern orchestra. A healthy environment has birds, animals and insects that occupy the high, medium and low frequency bands of sound, like a symphony. When we take out any of these " musicians" we forever alter the music of the symphony itself.

  The "silent" forests have other sounds too, which researchers are only now beginning to discover. Did you know that trees " talk " to each other ? In his fascinating book THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES, Peter Wohlleben reveals that scientists in the Western University of Australia have registered roots of seedlings crackling quietly at a frequency of 220 hertz ! The roots of other seedlings, when exposed to these crackling sounds, oriented their tips in that direction. That means the latter were registering this frequency, they were " hearing" it. Some day we too may hear it, if only we could escape our man made surround sounds.

  In our corrupted and degenerated modern life style we call this " silence"- the silence of the forests and nature, because we have got accustomed to hearing only the anthrophonic sounds. And to escape the tyranny of anthrophony the lucky among us escape occasionally into the realm of nature. But that is not enough. We must also learn to listen to, and preserve, this silence, which is no silence at all, but the music of a universe that is billions of years old. It is the music of " OM ", of Pachelbel, of the Buddhist chanting, of our venerable and ancient Ragas. And unlike the sounds made by man, this "silence" has the ability to calm, to soothe, to rejuvenate, to connect us with the eternal. This is what meditation, Vipassana and Pranayam are all about, realigning our antennae to the world within us. Listen to the Silence- for it has all the answers you are seeking.

  

EXPIRY DATES , FUSED BULBS AND THE GHOSTS OF RETIREMENT.

  A bureaucrat is like a bottle of medicine: he comes with an expiry date. He knows, right from his first day in office, the exact day and year on which he has to hang up his boots, and yet most of them are caught unprepared on the appointed day, scrambling to adjust to the changed realities. On one occasion, when I moved into a house being vacated by a senior who had just retired, I found him in his pyjamas, furiously packing mounds of "raddi"- three years' worth of old newspapers (he was entitled to five every day), a pile as imposing as any in the National Archives. Seeing the perplexed look on my face he sheepishly explained: "Just to tide me over till the pension starts coming, you see...."

  Bureaucrats don't retire, they are filed away and become a PPO (Pension Payment Order) number in the Accountant General's office. The smarter ones among them refuse to accept the expiry date and consider it  the "best by" date at most, and adopt various yoga postures in an attempt to get another five years, one reason why Yoga has proved to be so popular with civil servants. The most practiced asana (position) is the  "Sirnamaskar", a variation of the  "Suryanamaskar"- the posture is the same, only the God has changed. It's nothing but old whine in new bottles, but it usually works.

  Retirement is, of course, the great equaliser and leveller, as I'm now finding out in my village of Puranikoti. I may have retired in the Apex scale, but I have to bow and scrape before the IPH (Irrigation and Public Health) key man or the Electricity Board lineman every time  I have a water or power supply problem. They are the new VVIPs for me, along with the Patwari, the driver of the single HRTC bus that serves my village, and the postman who comes once a week if you are still in his good books. Our  "Acche Din" depends on them and not a distant Prime Minister expounding on Atmanirbharta. This was very well explained to me one day by my good friend and I.P.S. batchmate, Heimant Sarin: "A retired babu is like a fused bulb, Shuks , it doesn't matter whether the bulb was of 120 watts or 10 watts- once fused, all bulbs are similar." Had he studied English literature in Delhi University instead of guzzling  "chhang" at Tib Dhabs , Heimant would perhaps have couched this wisdom in more poetic language: 

" Scepter and crown shall tumble down

  And in the dust be equal made

  With the poor crooked scythe and spade...."

But the gist of what Heimant says is certainly an improvement on a First Information Report, which would have been his favourite bedside reading when he was yoked to the plough.

  It is said that a criminal always returns to the scene of his crime, which is why retired bureaucrats just can't tear themselves away from their former offices. They haunt the corridors of power like Banquo's ghost, but unlike this Shakespearean spectre, they insist on dishing out unwanted advice, recounting hoary tales from their undistinguished pasts, and drinking endless cups of sarkari tea while the files on his reluctant host's desk keep piling up. But their effect on the serving babus is the same as Banquo's ghost on Macbeth- making them feel guilty that they are still in service while the old geezer has retired, that they have taken his place unjustly. I would strongly recommend that all bureaucrats read Macbeth, so that they can exorcise all such ghosts when the bell tolls for them.

  Retired bureaucrats just can't forget their heady days in power, when they were fawned upon hand and foot, and confuse this with genuine popularity. This misconception sometimes goes to their head. An I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) colleague of my father-in-law, who had been Chief Commissioner of a Union Territory (UT), convinced himself that the populace loved him to distraction, and after retiring stood for election to the post of M.P  from that UT. He received, I am told, 17 votes, mostly from people who mistook his name for that of another candidate. His wife later confessed to my mother-in-law that she didn't vote for him- he was already too full of his self-importance, even without being an MP !

  However, there is one positive trait that we carry into our twilight years- the habit of meticulously keeping all papers in files. I have carefully marked files for every subject under the sun, including the names of blighters who have asked me for copies of my books but have not paid for them. It's a different matter that I can never find the right file when I most need it. My doctor tells me that this is a sign of AAADD- Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. But I won't blame you if you thought the acronym was another one of Mr. Modi's pet schemes, announced on Republic Day and forgotten by Independence Day, or a type of cell for your electronic thingummy.

  But this habit can occasionally work miracles. When the Chief Commissioner referred to earlier handed in his pail in the fulness of time, his widow could not find his Will, which posed a problem in probating his considerable estate. When she had just about given up, the old gentleman appeared in her dream one night and told her to look in the pages of John Grisham's book THE TESTAMENT in his library. She did, and sure enough the Will was there! Who says civil servants don't have a whacky sense of humour ? (This is a true story, I swear, though I may have got the title of the book wrong. It could have been  WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A LAWYER by Confucius, or WILL HE, WON'T HE ? by Rahul Gandhi).

  And finally, there's this thing about bureaucrats writing books after they retire, something which has assumed the dimensions of a plague or pandemic. These books fall into two broad categories: toolkits for fixing the civil services, and memoirs of a life generally mis-spent. I have yet to figure out which is more lethal, but it's a close call. In this respect one can't but agree with Christopher Hitchins when he says that "Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that is where it should stay." Which is why I also support the government's latest diktat that bars retired govt. servants from writing about their experiences in service. Retirement is a time for blessed forgetting, not recollecting. For the latter we have the blood curdling Partition Horrors Remembrance Day now, don't we ?

  Which reminds me that my birth certificate is nearing its expiry date and it's time for me to write my own Will. But is it worth the effort, I ask myself ? By the time I get that one way ticket (with a 50% discount for senior citizens, thank you) , Mrs Sitharaman will in all likelihood have ensured that there's nothing left in my bank accounts, my car would have been scrapped by Mr. Gadkari, my Mutual Fund investments would have been squirrelled away in the Dominican Republic by some fat cat, and my Mashobra home would have been demolished to make another six lane highway for tourists from Karol Bagh and Kotkapura. Maybe I'll just spend my remaining years in that Kedarnath cave when Mr. Modi vacates it to move into his new mansion on the Central Vista. Must remember to ask Heimant whether I'll need any bulbs there.    

THE JUDICIARY HAS A ROLE TO PLAY IN THE 2024 ELECTIONS

     The bugles have been sounded for the five state elections next year and the General elections in 2024. The BJP, the well oiled election machine that it is, has already made the first moves: it has changed two Chief Ministers and brokered a deal with a third, it has started putting its blue eyed boys in crucial positions in the bureaucracy, it has hunkered down to sit out the many storms its faulty governance model has raised, it has taken the first steps to " regulate " a digital media it can neither coerce nor buy out, it is even testing the communal waters to see if it will pay the same dividends that it did in 2014 and 2019-witness the talk of " population control " measures and the inflammatory rally at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on the 9th of this month .

    The Opposition, which is more of a " Supposition " than a fact, is in the meanwhile going through the same dumb charade it does every five years- various leaders making gestures and statements which other leaders then have to figure out. The Congress has made a beginning by doing everything it can to lose the one state it was sure of winning in 2022; Ms Mayawati is still assessing whether "disproportionate assets " are preferable to votes, Akhilesh Yadav in UP has declared a premature victory ( as in 2017 ) by announcing that he will go it alone, Navin Patnaik will continue to bask in hockey glory till the BJP pulls the astro-turf from under his feet, Sharad Pawar may still strike a Presidential deal with the BJP. The new trinity of Modi, Shah and Nadda are not losing any sleep over these jaded shenanigans; it's deja vu times again, they've seen it all before. The only novel factor this time is a recharged Mamata Banerjee, but it remains to be seen how long her batteries can last in the face of the lemming instinct that drives our Opposition parties.

   To be fair to the non- BJP parties, however, they are running a three legged race while the BJP is roaring on all four. Over the last seven years they have been denied the space to function or to compete. The BJP has appropriated all the levers of administration, the flow of funds, the media space and narrative and instruments, social media and cyber space, parliamentary and legislative eco system. It even determines what constitutes truth and fact, to hell with the reality on the ground. It has achieved all this by means which are dubious, authoritarian, undemocratic, perhaps even illegal and unconstitutional. And if this status quo is allowed to continue, there is little chance of it being dislodged from power in the coming elections. To compete fairly the Opposition needs a level playing field which just does not exist today.

   This is where the role of the judiciary comes into play.

   Most, if not all, of these encroachments on the Constitution and the democratic space are, prima facie, illegal and have been challenged in the Supreme Court and High Courts. Unfortunately, they continue to linger there, conferring on the BJP a continuing advantage in elections. There are many such issues, but for the purpose of this essay let us just pick three of the most important ones.

   The Electoral Bonds are a perversity of the highest order and have enabled the BJP to not only win elections but to also subvert opposition governments in states which they have lost. They enable it to collect huge amounts of money without any transparency and to legitimise possible kickbacks. According to the latest report of the ADR ( Association for Democratic Reforms), in the year 2019-20, the BJP received Rs. 785.77 crore as donation, while 5 other major opposition parties ( including the Congress, TMC and NCP ) received a combined Rs.228.035 crores. The BJP's stranglehold on donations is further confirmed by the fact that 76% of all donations by Electoral Trusts were made to the BJP in the same period. The illegality of all this does not lie in the donations per se but in the complete shroud of secrecy that veils them- NO ONE knows who has contributed how much and to whom, except the Government! This by itself is enough to make all corporates and donors fall in line. The challenge to the Electoral Bonds has been inexplicably pending in the Supreme Court for the last three years.

   Consider next the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Sedition ( Sec. 124 A  of the Indian Penal Code), two legislative weaponry utilised by the BJP to ensure that it wins elections. Democracy presupposes the open flow of information, the right to criticize the government of the day, the uncensored reporting of public facts. Without these there can be no fair contest between a ruling party and opposition parties. The BJP, by its ruthless wielding of these two pieces of legislation, has created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation that prevents journalists from honest reporting and the public from being able to access the true facts. Even someone complaining on social media about oxygen shortages is arrested, a journalist going to the village of a rape victim is booked under UAPA, even a Rajdeep Sardesai or a Vinod Dua are charged with sedition. We will not even mention the hundreds locked up in Kashmir for just being Kashmiris. What the threat of these two provisions of law does is that it chokes the channels of information to the public, who are then left with only the government narrative which is what the sold out mainstream media dishes out every minute of the day. These pieces of legislation too have been challenged, but continue to languish in the courts' registries.

   Pegasus is the latest concealed stiletto  to be found in the government's arsenal. All the evidence so far, and the government's steadfast refusal to either give a categorical answer, or to allow discussion in Parliament, or to order an investigation, only confirm the belief that it has bought the spyware, and has used it to serve the BJP's political interests, not the country's. The ramifications of this surveillance extend far beyond the invasion of individual privacy, they strike at the very foundations of our democratic edifice. All the organs of a democracy appear to have been targeted: the judiciary, the media, the Opposition, activists, even the government's own representatives. The information gathered from such surveillance can enable the BJP to sabotage any opposition to it in an election and to coerce all institutions and individuals to toe its line- or else. At least nine petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a court monitored investigation but the court is yet to issue a notice to the government.

  There are other controversial decisions of the government which too are crucial in deciding the fate of the coming elections: the PM CARES fund, CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), Article 370 and the reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir, the implications of the Pegasus surveillance on the Bhima Koregaon cases, the the new IT Rules, among others. All have been challenged but are pending adjudication and a verdict. The Rafale verdict by a now discredited judge is crying out for a review and reinvestigation in the light of the latest revelations in France.

   Any delay in pronouncing judgments on these matters benefits the ruling party as the status quo is in its favour. It further handicaps the Opposition and puts it at a disadvantage in any election. The public has a right to know whether the government's actions are legal and legitimate, and the courts have a responsibility and duty to adjudicate on them with dispatch. Elections in a democracy must be fought on a level playing field, not one where one party has an enormous, dubiously acquired superiority in money, muscle and machinations. It is therefore in the larger interest of the country and democracy that our higher courts decide these cases well before the elections so that the voter can make an informed assessment of the legality of the government's actions. This is not optional but a duty cast on them by the Constitution. For as Timothy D Snyder, Professor of History at Yale, reminds us: "Democracy only has substance if there's the rule of law. That is, if people believe....that there's a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there's some challenge. If there is no rule of law people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote."                                                                                                                                                                                The courts are not just an organ of governance, they are also part of civil society and have a stake in its civilised existence.

THE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER'S DOG

 

THE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER'S DOG

     Those joining the IAS (Indian Administrative Service) come form all religious faiths and creeds, excluding possibly the Mormons and born-again Adventists . But for any IAS probationer training in a district there is only one God- the Deputy Commissioner. The DC(as he is generally known) has all the attributes of divinity, is to be obeyed without question, can make no mistake, is the acme of success, represents the majesty of the state, and his every word is etched in stone. That was the prevailing general wisdom in the spring of 1976 when I was informed at Mussoorie that I had to do my district training in Mandi district in Himachal: the DC, I learnt, was one Mr. C.D.Parsheera of the 1968 batch.

    Mr. Parsheera was precisely 5 feet 3 inches tall and it took me some time to spot him behind the huge table (mounted on a two foot high platform) from where generations of DCs had dispensed justice. He handed me a folder and said, with an impish gleam in his eye that was his hallmark: "Shukla, here's your training schedule in various offices. But your real training will be at my residence, from 7.00 PM to 10.00 PM every evening. Don't even think of missing it!"

   And that's how it was for the next six months. During the day I learnt the hardware of government- rules, procedures, processes, programmes- and in the evenings the vital software and OS (Operating System), without which the former was useless. Mr. Parsheera was fond of the Hippocrene and used to boast that he could do what even Jesus could not: whereas Jesus converted water into wine, he could convert wine into water- and he did, prodigious quantities of it ! But I'm getting ahead of my tale.

   On my first visit to the DC residence that evening I was shown into an empty sitting room; I was as nervous as a patient in a dentist's chair. I straightened my tie, combed back my hair (I had plenty of it back then), polished my shoes with my hankie and sat back, as if reclining on an egg souffle . Presently, a little wire haired terrier ambled into the room with a swagger that indicated it was aware of its exalted position as the DC's dog. It saw me, gave a magisterial bark as if asking me to identify myself. Since this was a few years before Aadhar, I sat still, unaware of the social status of a DC's dog. The little horror walked over to me and started sniffing around my ankles in a practiced manner. Suddenly, it raised one leg and piddled all over my polished shoes! I instinctively kicked out, landing a satisfying blow on its ribs: the pooch howled and made for the door- through which in walked the DC. His practiced eye took in everything in an instant.

" Shukla," he asked in a menacing voice, " did you just kick my dog?"

" Yes, sir, " I blurted, " he piddled all over my shoes."

" Consider yourself privileged, young man- he usually ignores all probationers. But don't EVER kick my dog again."

" But...but..sir," I tried to explain, sticking one foot out," my shoes..."

" Irrelevant!" ruled Mr. Parsheera. "Take this as your first lesson: a DC's dog ranks above an IAS probationer at all times, and you will not raise your voice, let alone your foot, against him ever again." So that was my first lesson in service, and a good one too, for in the IAS your batch and seniority determine the rest of your life. In fact, there's nothing more interesting than watching two IAS officers, strangers to each other, meeting for the first time: they will circle around each other like two wolves in a wolf pack, sniffing tentatively, trying to determine each other's batch; once that is figured out and the pecking order established, normal social behaviour and bonhomie are restored.

   The evenings at Mr. Parsheera'a house, with the whiskey flowing like a perennial mountain stream, taught me more about government than the year I spent in the Academy. His core team, hardened Bacchanalians all of them, comprised (if I remember correctly) Mohar Singh the G.A (General Assistant to DC), T.R. Sharma the SDM (Sadar), Captain Hiralal the Land Acquisition Officer, and Dr. Pandeya the Chief Medical Officer. Listening to this merry band of Revenue Officers I was exposed to the entire gamut of survival techniques needed to progress in the bureaucracy: how to handle the ego (and more important, the personal staff) of a visiting Chief Minister or Governor, how to keep an MLA on your side without doing his work, how to extract a new car from a stingy Finance Department, how to reply to an Assembly Question without giving any  worthwhile information, how to control an unruly mob when the police have all run away, how to show the same water-harvesting structure from four different angles in order to quadruple the performance statistics! Invaluable strategies that stood me in good stead and later enabled me to rise even higher than my generally acknowledged level of incompetence.

   Mr. Parsheera was only about 32 years old at the time but looked like he was 22 or so, as all Lahaulas do till the day they are buried. But he was mature and seasoned far beyond his years and watching him deal with the public and politicians was a treat. He was also instinctively smart and savvy, belying his humble beginnings in a small Lahaul village. To cite just one example: he hardly ever went to the District Officers' Club even though he was its President, though he would tipple at home every night. I once asked him about this and his reply was: " To avoid rubbing shoulders with people who have have some work with me. Always remember, Shukla, its very difficult to say NO to a person with whom you've had a drink the previous night."

   On one occasion he asked me to accompany him to Shimla for a meeting, just to prove to me what a waste of time Secretariat meetings were. In those simpler days DCs had no cars, just Willy's Jeeps. Mr. Parsheera insisted on driving himself, his boyish head barely visible above the steering wheel. We drove into Shimla at full speed , the black flag of the DC fluttering imposingly from the bonnet. At the bus stand we were stopped by a police constable, an unusual occurrence for a DC's car. The constable walked over to Mr. Parsheera's window, looked meaningfully at the flag, patted the DC on his right cheek and said: " Beta, jab Papa gadi me nahi hote hain to jhandi utar diya karo." ( Son, when your dad is not in the car then you should remove the flag). Completely unabashed, Mr. Parsheera pointed at me, said " Yeh mere papa hain !" (He is my Dad!) and drove on. There was nothing officious about him (as a tribal boy who had made it to the IAS there was nothing left for him to prove) and he could always see the funny side of things- another survival technique, by the way!).

   Mr. Parsheera was keen that I should marry a beautiful Mandi girl. In those days Mandi was known as the Paris of north India and its girls were pretty, fashionable and educated. I was advised by the DC that I should hang out at Gandhi Chowk every evening and in no time at all my plight would be trothed with some hill beauty. Now, for those not acquainted with Mandi town, Gandhi Chowk is to Mandi what Connaught Place used to be to Delhi or Oxford Street to London- the fashionable hub for the young and trendy. Gandhi Chowk is the offline equivalent of Matrimony.com where couples suss out each other, meet, date and eventually tie the knot till debt do them part. For a probationer, "advice" from a DC is actually an order, so I took to hanging out at Gandhi Chowk every evening, circumambulating around the statue in the middle more times than the Orbiter has gone around Mars. It was, however, to no avail: the maidens of Mandi were not only beautiful, they were also smart and obviously detected in me the fatal flaw which in later years prevented me from becoming Chief Secretary! They stayed away, and I had to go back to Kanpur to find a wife- in UP you can be a lump of Kryptonite, but if you are in the IAS, your marriage prospects are bright. Neerja, of course, more than made up for what I missed out in Gandhi Chowk, but for Mr. Parsheera, however, it was an abiding regret that he could not succeed in this venture. He always considered this as one of his failures as Deputy Commissioner!

  One never forgets one's first DC, just as one never forgets one's first love. My DC died young. Mr. Parsheera suffered a massive heart attack while crossing the Rohtang pass in 1983 and was dead by the time they brought him to Manali. I attended his wake the next day at the Manali Circuit House : it was the last evening I spent with him and got thoroughly drunk. I know he would have approved.

INTIMATIONS OF STUPIDITY

   These last two weeks have been pretty confounding and humbling for me, both as a generic Indian and a stand-alone Shukla. It's bad enough to be treated as an idiot by the government of the day, but it's worse when you start suspecting that the government may be right after all. I no longer get Wordsworth's  intimations of immortality, what I sense now are Sambit Patra's  intimations of stupidity , thanks to Mr. Modi . His government has conveyed to all of us in no uncertain terms what it thinks of us citizens: that we are a gullible bunch, with an IQ lower even than the current rate of GDP growth, that we can be led by the nose and collared by the scruff of our neck, that we don't know what is good for us and can eat out of his hands whatever trash he deigns to offer in place of the truth.                                                                            And so his minions can tell us that nobody died of oxygen shortage in the second Covid wave even though we could see them dying on television screens, that no illegal snooping has been carried out by Pegasus even as all  "persons of interest" named so far are clearly of great interest to him and his Sancho Panza, that the Yogi of Ulta Pradesh excelled himself in controlling the second wave even as the corpses in their thousands lined the Ganges like accusing fingers, that the raids on a certain newspaper had nothing to do with the government even as the entire press community ( well, almost entire as the others can no longer claim to be the press ) condemned it. It's pretty humbling to be considered an idiot by your government.

  This government thinks we are lobotomised cretins, and it's probably right, given the percentages that vote for the BJP. But that's not all: I am further humbled by the knowledge that this powerful government and its judiciary have jurisdiction over me even after I am dead and buried six feet under or wafted into the stratosphere from an electric chimney. Not only can I be denied bail in life, I can also be remanded into custody in death! This is the message in the most bizarre drama being played out in the Mumbai High Court these days. The late lamented Father Stan Swamy passed away a month ago in custody; he was not granted bail while alive, but the Hon'ble judges continue to "hear" his bail plea at great length ! One had heard of the long arm of the law, but this is much longer than I suspected; we are familiar with posthumous awards and citations but a posthumous bail ? Surely, this can happen only in a country where not only the law but everyone is an Ass ! I am reminded of an LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) advertisement which proudly boasted "Zindagi ke saath bhi, Zindagi ke baad bhi" (We are with you in life and after death too ).  Since this sounds more like a warning by the Delhi police, it didn't do much for LIC's turnover, and is probably the reason why its now being disinvested in. 

  But why blame only the government? My own choices confirm my idiocy (and I'm not referring here to my decision to vote for Mr. Modi in 2014 ). Till last week I believed I was the cat's whiskers, having made it to the IAS at the age of 25, retired at a level much higher than my accepted level of incompetence, and now receive a pension cushioned against everything except Mrs Sitharaman's epiphanies and the recently amended Pension Rules. And then it all came crashing down when I read two newspaper reports.

  The first stated that film star and celebrity wife Anushka Sharma's bodyguard (a hunk called Sonu) receives a salary of Rs. 1.20 crore per annum, simply to ensure that no admirer practices his Braille on her. The article further stated that Salman Khan's bodyguard, Sheru, was paid Rs. 2 crore per annum, primarily to prevent him from black bucks. These guys make in five years more than I've earned in a lifetime, even if I include the Diwali gifts. They also get to meet glamorous people all the time whereas I'm still trying to google Sunny Leone's address, without any success. Though I must admit, in all fairness, that I did pump some iron during my college days in Calcutta so that I could persuade one of those Park Street beauties to  share an ice cream with me in Trincas. But I had to give it up when my biceps refused to grow beyond 11 inches and my chest fell far short of 56 inches. I had to acknowledge that  I was built more on the lines of Mr. Bean than Charles Atlas.

  The second piece was a statement by the Income Tax Department to the effect that 256 "Chat-wallahs" operating as vendors on Kanpur's roads were found to be millionaires! They owned property worth crores, drove luxury cars, lived in plush houses but never paid a paisa in income tax. It is humiliating to admit now that these entrepreneurs, who have probably never heard of the UPSC, are smarter than all the 142 guys in my batch put together , including Jawhar Sircar ! Why, it galls me to have to admit that maybe Mr. Amit Shah was right when he had stated that selling samosas is also regular employment. Actually, it's even better, because you don't pay any taxes on it. Hats off to my favourite Munna Chat Wallah opposite the Reserve Bank on Kanpur's Mall Road, who has apparently made it to the millionaire's list without ever joining Rau's Study Circle. 

  You get it, don't you ? Pumping iron is better than burning the midnight oil. Selling "aloo tikkis" and    "pani puris" is more profitable than pushing files. I therefore leave you with this thought: is the government right, after all, in treating us all as idiots? Be honest, and welcome to the Club. And don't worry about your political affiliation- idiocy runs across all ideologies. This is a good time in India to be stupid. Remember the words of Issac Asimov: "When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent."

INDIA'S PANDEMIC CAPITALISM

   In his best-selling book, TEN LESSONS FOR A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD, Farid Zakaria makes an interesting point. He says that since the early 1990s, global inequality had been showing a marked decline, both between countries and between people in a particular country. This, he says, " was caused in large part by sustained economic progress in China, India and other developing countries, which grew much faster than developed countries.....narrowing the gap and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty." Globally, the number of people in extreme poverty dropped from 1.90 billion in 1990 to 650 million in 2018.

  He regrets, however, that with Covid-19, " much of this progress could be reversed." We can see this regression playing out in India: with the contraction of the economy, massive job losses and ruinous medical expenditures, it has been estimated that as many as 220 million people in India have dropped below the poverty line in the last 18 months, adding to the almost 200 million already there. This has wiped out the gains of the last two decades in combating inequality.

  But there have been huge gainers during ( and because of ) the pandemic: high tech firms, e-commerce entities, pharmaceutical and serum production companies, pathology labs, hospitals and nursing homes. In India this gain has come with the added and familiar flavour of cronyism. The latest Bloomberg Billionaire Index revealed that MS Ambani, Adani and four other Indian billionaires added US $ 44.75 billion to their wealth in the first half of 2021, when the vast majority of the population was simply struggling to survive. The Sensex, which adequately represents that 1% of our population which owns 54% of all wealth in the country, rose more than 11000 points during the pandemic ! ( From 41,385 on 1.1.2020 to 52,445 on 1.7.2021). There is more good news: according to the Swiss National Bank, deposits by Indians in Swiss banks, which were Rs. 6625 crores in 2019, went UP to Rs. 20,700 crores during the pandemic! It was business as usual for Big Capital, and should have been good news- except for a couple of factors.

  This grotesque inequity- obscene islands of prosperity in a sea of penury and misery- represents what Noam Chomsky, the American philosopher, terms the face of "savage neo-liberalism." He goes on to state that the script of this " has been dictated to governments by their corporate masters" and that "authoritarian states are quite compatible with neo-liberalism." This fits in squarely with the economic policies adopted by the NDA government, both before and during the pandemic.

  The government, by the admission of its own Finance Minister, is in dire straits. It has told the Supreme Court it has no money to compensate for Covid deaths or to implement the Swaminathan formula for payment of MSP to farmers, it has no money to pay its employees the arrears of the three DA instalments it had frozen last year, it has no money to disburse cash relief to those rendered unemployed by the pandemic, it can extend only credit guarantees and not subsidies to millions of suffering MSMEs and small traders. And she is not wrong: GST has failed to live up to its promises, the guaranteed GST compensation to states is in huge arrears, and central tax revenues as a percentage of GDP has declined from 10.1% in 2013-14 to 9.9% in 2020-21.

  In such circumstances, what would any sane economist expect a government to do to make up for these losses ? TAX THE PROFITS OF CORPORATES AND THE WINDFALL WEALTH OF OUR BILLIONAIRES AND MILLIONAIRES. Right? Wrong. Our government is doing just the reverse.

  Under the garb of " Ease of doing business", which is a fig leaf for rank cronyism, the government is introducing policies which blatantly enrich corporates, while the fiscal burden is passed on to the common man. In 2019 it reduced corporate taxes, losing annual revenues of Rs. 200,000 crores. This was an inexplicable decision because, as Aunindyo Chakrabarty points out in an article in THE TRIBUNE, in the last ten years the share of Corporate tax in the total tax receipts has gone down from 36% to 23%, while that of indirect taxes has gone up from 45% to 53%. As any economist, even one educated in Nagpur, will tell you- the higher the contribution of indirect taxes to an economy, the more inequitable it is. ( The "justification" was that the companies would invest these savings in increasing production. This, as expected, never happened: the money was used to clear balance sheets or squirrelled away in some foreign tax haven).

  Thereafter, the pandemic provided the perfect opportunity to further enrich the corporates. Interest rates were kept deliberately low to help industry and divert savings to stock markets, whereas the middle classes were forced to witness a sharp drop in their Fixed Deposit rates. Capital gains taxes from shares were also kept low, benefitting the big investors and the handful of companies which control the bourses. Labour laws were quietly amended in order to reduce their security of service and bring them in line.  EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) Rules were amended to make it easier to set up industry at the cost of the environment, without even an EIA approval ! Farm laws to corporatise agriculture were promulgated in the middle of the second wave of Covid, hoping this insidious move would go unnoticed. Disinvestment proposals are being floated on a large scale ( Rs. 200,000 crore estimated receipts in this fiscal) knowing fully well that we are in a recession, quotes will be depressed, and there are only a few buyers in the market. The predictable result will be that the same favoured cabal of corporates will corner these public assets at throwaway prices. The writing off of corporate NPAs has become an industry in itself: Rs. 2.54 lakh crores were written off in 2018-19 and another Rs. 1.53 lakh crores in 2020-21. This is the public's savings subsidising private profits.

  This is the time, as I said, to tax these corporates and billionaires who are milking this man-made calamity for all it is worth, and to use these funds to provide succour to the vulnerable sections of  society. Most countries are following this precept. In the USA, Joe Biden is funding his revival package by a $ 3.60 trillion tax hike on corporates and High Net Worth Individuals. Top Income Tax rate has been increased from 37% to 39.6% , Capital Gains tax on persons earning in excess of $ 1 million per annum has been increased from 20% to 39 % ; taxes have also been hiked on income from sale of investments and transfer of assets on death ; Corporate Income Tax has been increased from 21% to 28% ; tax breaks will no longer will be available for polluting industries. The G-7 group of the world's richest countries at its recent conflab has also resolved to maintain a minimum level of Corporate tax. The UK has announced measures similar to that of the USA. But our government is doing nothing in this direction and continues to tax the common man instead.

  The economic path being followed by Mr. Modi and his onion eschewing Finance Minister is absolutely incomprehensible. If they are devoid of any ideas of their own they can certainly pick up a few from other, better governed countries. For the last thing we need after the pandemic is a double dose of post-Covid capitalism.