LAST TANGO IN SERVICE--THE GREAT REEMPLOYMENT GOLD RUSH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Of course, this will never happen in my lifetime.

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

WHY KEJRIWAL AND AAP CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO FAIL

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

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

   But is that enough?

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

   What went wrong?

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

    EXCEPT ONE.

    KEJRIWAL'S  AAM AADMI PARTY

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

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

* Holding a dharna against the central government.

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

* The Law Minister calling a meeting of judicial officers.

* Kejriwal occupying a four room official bungalow.

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

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

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

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

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

IS THE INDIAN VOTER A MORON ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                ELECTIONS AND BLACK MONEY-GOOD ECONOMICS?



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

CLUELESS IN DELHI- A POTPOURRI OF RANDOM THOUGHTS

     Just about every medium of communication these days- television, print, hoardings, social media, even the " chai pe charcha"- is dominated by politics, to the point where even our dreams now are of Kejriwal on a dharna or Modi on a white horse. Now, politics is important but I draw an Obama type red line when it excites my wife more than my ardent come-hithers, when she would rather watch Arnab Goswami"s Prime Time than ladle out the soup, when even the aging mastiff shows his preference for the Aam Aadmi party by barking fondly every time Kejriwal and his muffler appear on TV. Surely( the Bard would have no doubt shrewdly observed) there are more things in heaven and earth than are thought of by Rajnath Singh and Sitaram Yechury? So I've decided to make a weekly foray into other, unrelated issues that should concern us just as much and which should also be discussed. You may not be any wiser after reading this but you will be well on your way to developing the rounded personality that took us into the IAS once upon a time but will now get you arrested at India Gate.

                                 THE  DOWNSIDE  OF  POLITICAL  CORRECTNESS.

    The SMS went something like this:

Question: Why do women find Jewish men irresistible?

Answer:  Because they can't resist anything with 20% off!

Its a joke, right? Wrong. In today's India this attempt at humour is sexist, racist, communal and a public obscenity. Reciting it can get you dismissed from your job, mauled by Arnab Goswami and his panelists, condemned by Kavitha Krishnamurthi and HER panelists, sent to jail for a few years, disqualified from contesting elections: it may even cause a diplomatic uproar. In this tower of Babel that is India today there exist a myriad lunatic fringe groups that claim to represent some community or the other: desperate for their five minutes of glory on TV they latch on to any statement, dissect it under the microscope and hey presto! discover the gene that denigrates a community, a sex( there are more than two, you know, though the Supreme Court has yet to realise this). a religion, an occupation. The script thereafter is predictable: street agitations, panel discussions on TV, NGO spokespersons frothing at the mouth, intimidated governments passing legislations more appropriate to the Dark Ages. Whatever happened to our sense of humour? Our appreciation for beauty? Our longing for romance? ( There are in fact many more dimensions to political correctness but I shall concentrate on just two- humour and romance).

   The greatest truths are the most simple ones. Someone once said that the secret of happiness lies in having a sense of humour and a dirty mind. Both are forbidden by law today. The essence of humour lies in laughing at, or with, someone including oneself, without giving offence. Most of the civilised world does this-on Prime Time! In the USA their Presidents are the biggest butts of jokes, as are British Prime Ministers. Remember that gag about Margaret Thatcher when she was at the height of her power- that if she did to her husband what she was doing to the country then at least there would be one happy man in the UK!?( In this country the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, no less, warns the media to show more respect for the Prime Minister). Certain communities have had their legs pulled for centuries- the Irish, the Cockney, the Hillbilly in America, even the Sikhs in India personified by Santa and Banta. ( It is no coincidence that all the three communities referred to are among the most resilient and loveable in the world- after all, singling someone out for mention is also a sign of respect. Genuine humour does not defile the person or object of the joke, it brings that person closer to you). Today in India it requires genuine courage to publish a joke about Santa and Banta. Chances are that if the SGPC doesn't get you the DSGMC will, or the Akal Takht or the Akali Dal- all with the sanction of law. A degree of sexual nuancing is very much integral to humour, too, for after all sex is the primordial force that drives all living beings and is in fact responsible for all great literature- how then can it escape the gaze of the comic? Genuine humour is completely eclectic, secular and egalitarian-it holds nothing sacred, not even religion. ( I recently viewed a Jay Leno show where he rummages around in his desk to see what's been lying there for years. One of the objects he finds is a ladies' thong with a picture of Christ in front with the words: " What would Christ do?"! The audience( all Christians, presumably) had a good laugh. Can you imagine what would have happened if it had been a Hindu or Muslim god on that thong? Yes, we would have had a good riot or two followed by some stupid legislation.                                         What has happened to the sense of humour in this country? When will we realise that humour has no agenda except to tell its audience or reader not to take life too seriously ? Humour  assumes a maturity on the latter's part to get its true message across. And that precisely is the problem in this country: we take ourselves too seriously and are therefore quick to take offence. When Sashi Tharoor refers to travel by " cattle class" we demand his resignation. When Kumar Vishwas refers to the colour of Kerala nurses we demand a public apology. When Mandira Bedi wears a saree with the tricolour on it we want her to be jailed. When Farooq Abdullah jokes that men are now afraid of having women secretaries we denounce him as being sexist.

    The entire cosmos of love and romance is equally threatened by this tsunami of righteous political correctness. Love is not merely consensual sex behind closed doors- in fact, that is rarely love. Love embraces a whole spectrum of nuanced actions and cues- the covert look, the hesitant speech, the tremulous epistle, the trembling touch, the hopeful pursuit. Women's organisations and a hysterical press have ensured that all these beautiful components of love-glorified and immortalised over the ages-are now illegal: each and every one of these can now send you to jail for they have all become variations of Rape! A Romeo serenading Juliet below her balcony would now be charged with sexual harassment, Rhett Butler would be guilty of rape because he had sex with Scarlett o"Hara by holding out false promises, Helen( of Troy, not Bollywood, fame) would no doubt be entitled to register an FIR against the poet who praised her beauty as " the face that launched a thousand ships" since the remarks are personal in nature and violate her sense of privacy. How will future generations of amorous youngsters woo girls, how will the passions of romance play out, what will happen to that oldest of literary legacies-the love letter and the love song? The expression of love today has been criminalised because of some cruelly distorted idea of what is politically correct; the finer senses have been taken over by the coarse instincts of the fringe groups-including women's groups and social activists- who are becoming more Orwellian every day and dictating to society at large what constitutes acceptable behaviour. Granted that the original intention-of preventing assaults on women- was bona fide. But it hasn't worked: the number of such assaults has not gone down, the time it takes to punish offenders is just as long drawn out, the rate of convictions is just as abysmal. Shouldn't we then roll back these misplaced nostrums and follow the real trail of police and judicial reforms? For what we have done so far is to not only throw the baby out with the bathwater- we've thrown out the ruddy tub itself!

    No humour, no love, no romance-what are we reducing our society to? It would do well to remember- man does not live by law alone.

    

THE KG BASIN GAS DEAL AND THE CURIOUS STORY OF THE DOGS THAT DIDN'T BARK

     So the " supari " that had been issued against Arvind Kejriwal after his filing of the famous Gas FIR has been executed by the BJP and the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party has been shown the door in Delhi, at least for the time being. But the burning plume of gas left behind at the Ambani well-head will not subside as conveniently, and indeed will only become more intense as the elections draw nearer. Kejriwal has made a very serious charge against the Govt. and Mr. Ambani, as have four of the most respected citizens of the country, who, incidentally have had a ring-side view of the establishment's manner of functioning. The registration of a criminal FIR against a Union Minister and Mukesh Ambani, no less, is absolutely unprecedented. Attaching criminal intent to a decision of the Union cabinet is unparalleled. Alleging windfall benefits of Rs. 54000 crores per annum to Mr. Ambani is outrageous( if true) and scurrilous( if not).

    The public waited for a thunderbolt of denial from the Government or the Congress, a White Paper on the price revision of the gas from the KG Basin, at least a detailed  statement from the Minister in Parliament( between the knife wielding and the pepper spraying side-shows) or the spokesperson on TV. All we got, instead, was the epiphanic revelation from Mr. Moily that Kejriwal was ignorant. The Govt. said that it would go to the Supreme Court, its favourite haunt for burying chestnuts it finds too hot to handle. Not a word of explanation for the public.

    The Opposition was equally subdued. Here I refer to the BJP because we don't expect the two Madams or Mulayam Singh or Mayawati or Lalu Yadav or Sharad Yadav to bother about a few thousand crores of public money. The BJP was strangely silent in the middle of a Parliament session, when here was a heaven sent opportunity to stall Parliament for the second year in a row and set a Guinness record! All we got was an erudite statement from Mr. Jaitley about how Kejriwal was assaulting the federal structure ( an admission of sorts, some would say, that Mr. Ambani IS the federal govt.!)

    Equally surprising was the demeanour of the elitist press and TV who suddenly appeared like a shoal of piranha going on a vegetarian diet. The news of the FIR was mentioned in passing, a few " experts" were hauled in front of the camera to mouth technicalities that no one understood or hosannas to Mr. Ambani that everyone did, and then the matter was dropped and the flush pulled. Period. And this is the same media that spent DAYS on Kumar Vishwas's poor joke about nurses and went apoplectic about Kejriwal moving into an official house or sitting on a dharna. There were no sound bytes from the regular cogniscenti or glitterati who otherwise line up every night on prime time to air their views on things that bother them. Presumably, 54000 crores is just loose change they couldn't be bothered with. 

     Readers of Sherlock Holmes will certainly recall that story( I forget the name) where Holmes is investigating a blind murder in a country manor. There are no clues- no witness, no signs of forced entry, no evidence left behind, even the guard dogs had been quiet that night. And that is what Holmes found curious-why did the dogs not bark? It is in the nature of dogs to bark at intruders, and their not doing so was the clue which Holmes had been looking for and which ultimately led him to solving the case. Why is there no barking now?

    There is more to the KG Basin story than meets the eye and the Govt. trying to hide behind the Rangarajan report won't wash. This report was submitted in December 2012, long after the KG gas was allotted to Mr. Ambani's RIL. The PSC ( Production Sharing Contract) with RIL was based on the then existing price mechanism which stipulated a cost plus formula, not a market price( which RIL has now got). Kejriwal is quite correct when he maintains that the contracted price was $ 2.34 per MMBTU. This was revised in 2007 to $ 4.20 in 2007 under the new NELP( New Exploration and Licensing Policy). It is a moot and debatable point whether RIL could have been given the benefit of the NELP formula when its contract predated it and should instead have stood on its own legs.

     However, even if we accept the 2007 price revision, the current proposal to further increase it to $ 8.40 certainly needs a deeper investigation, or at least a convincing explanation from the govt. True, the 2007 decision of $4.20 provided for a review of the price after five years, that is, w.e.f. 1st April 2014. But this revision should have been allowed on price indexation, not by a jump to parity with market prices, which is an entirely new mechanism which did not even exist in 2007, let alone when the contract with RIL was signed. Once again, Kejriwal cannot be faulted with this assertion.

    The Govt. says( when it deigns to speak) that this latest revision is based on the Rangarajan Committee's recommendations. True, this Committee has suggested moving away from the Cost plus formula which is difficult to monitor or audit owing to the gold-plating of costs involved. It has thus recommended that gas prices be based on the weighted average of two prices-[a] the price received by producers at the exporting country well head for imports to India, and [b], weighted average of gas prices available at international hubs of three regions. The Govt. claims it has simply applied this mechanism to now revise RIL prices to $8.40.

    This appears to be patently erroneous, if not worse. For the Rangarajan Committee's recommendations come with a very specific caveat that the new mechanism would apply prospectively, and not retrospectively. I quote two of these caveats:

PARA 1.8 OF THE SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

" All the PSCs signed by the Govt. upto the ninth round of NELP will continue with the existing fiscal model, ensuring the sanctity of these contracts." 

PARA 4.9 OF THE SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

" It is clarified that the proposed pricing formula would only apply prospectively and is not proposed for application to gas prices already approved."

    It could not be clearer from the above that RIL could not have been given the benefit of the Rangarajan Committee's new pricing formula because the KG Basin contract was signed before the ninth round of NELP. In fact, the Committee was well aware of the fact that RIL had been constantly trying to link its prices to international prices and had been pushing for import parity pricing. The Committee categorically rejected this as ( in its own words) " this will give a huge monetary benefit to domestic producers."

   How then are the Committee's recommendations being applied to KG Basin gas to give such a huge benefit to RIL? Not only is the govt. not clarifying this, it is trying to drag other red herrings across the trail to throw us off the scent. It is now claiming that since ONGC and GAIL produce 70% of the country's natural gas( and private players only 30%) the major benefit will go to PSUs and not RIL. How is this relevant? For one, the public has a right not to be robbed by anyone-the govt. or the private player. Secondly, sharing of the loot with the govt. doesn't make it legal. Thirdly, the govt.'s net gain will be nil because it will have to increase subsidies on fertiliser, power, CNG etc. to offset the hike in gas price, whereas RIL will have to do no such thing when it goes laughing all the way to the Bank with its 54000 crores. It is clear that there can only be one gainer in this dubious transaction.

   We may be wrong in our assessment. But we have a right to know the full facts. It does not behove an elected govt. to treat its citizens as mentally challenged and not worthy of being apprised of the truth on an issue of such financial magnitude. It behoves it even less to hide behind an army of expensive lawyers and take cover in a thicket of legalese which it will take years to penetrate. And it is equally incumbent on our other political parties, media and social organisations to demand answers. Do not bite, but at least bark. 

    

THE DEMONISATION OF KEJRIWAL--HAS THE MEDIA GOT IT ALL WRONG?

     Over the last few months Kejriwal and his AAP have turned the spotlight on a number of fundamental issues: one of the most important of them, which has not received the scrutiny it deserves, is the attitude of the mainstream media-primarily the elitist, English language TV channels and print media- towards the Aam Aadmi party and some of its leaders. Their approach has progressed through the full range of journalistic hysteria- from contempt, scepticism, grudging acceptance, demanding, outrage, to outright condemnation ( the current phase). During this tortuous journey the media has also exposed the full range of its deficiencies, from elitist bias to ignorance, disconnect, arrogance and perhaps cupidity.

     The media has never accepted Kejriwal. It initially dismissed him as a charlatan and fraud and even dug into his IRS past( without success) to find material(the study leave issue, dues to govt.) to discredit him. It deliberately created a rift between him and Anna Hazare by over-emphasising their different paths. It churned out opinion polls ( of toilet paper utility) that could only prejudice his electoral prospects. It grudgingly accepted his political and moral ascendance in Delhi after the elections but quickly recouped its forces, joined ranks with all other political parties and unleashed a blitzkrieg against him that continues unabated till today.

     I am not talking of legitimate criticism and careful analysis, which is the reason the press exists, but of which we have seen little these last few months. I am talking of misinformation, misinterpretation, highlighting issues which support only a pre-conceived thesis and blacking out others, giving a slant to the reporting, shouting down contrary views, distorting the facts and making connections where none exist, regurgitating half digested news. ( To be fair to this section of the media, they have done this to others also-the shocking manner in which the OB vans and the anchors wormed their way into the Sunanda Pushkar case, like maggots, and laid bare before the nation all kinds of nonsensical theories- murder, ISI plot, Dubai connection, IPL connection( they showed Subramaniam Swamy making this charge on TV), Sashi Tharoor's culpability on charges of abetment to suicide,all without any verification- would make anyone want to throw up. Those anchors have  all shut up now that all those bestial theories have been disproved, and ( without so much as a " sorry" to Mr. Tharoor) turned their undivided malevolent attention back to Kejriwal.

     How fair has the media been in the following?

[*] Accusing Kejriwal initially of not forming the govt. in Delhi (  REASON-shirking his constitutional responsibility), and when he does form the govt., castigating him for doing so with Congress support ( REASON- contradicting his stated position). All channels ignored the obvious explanation given by the party- that they never asked for Congress support. What was Kejriwal supposed to do in the Assembly when the Congress voted in favour of his party-ask the Speaker to reject those votes, or expel the Congress MLAs, or go to Arnab Goswami for advice?

[*] Accusing Kejriwal of not keeping his election promises to the people when he does not announce any relief on Water and Power within a week of assuming office, and criticising him for being populist when he does announce such relief. And when the CMs of Haryana and Chhatisgarh ( and now even Maharashtra) make similar announcements, the same press only refers to it "en passant"!

[*]  Constantly questioning Kejriwal on what concrete action he would take to make the Delhi police accountable to the people and govt. of Delhi.- and condemning him when he takes the first effective step( the dharna) to attain this. For the last twenty-one years each and every Chief Minister of Delhi took shelter behind the alibi of central control of the police rather than assume control and the responsibility for their actions that comes with it. Kejriwal accepted the challenge but is being condemned for it.

[*] Terming the dharna at Rail Bhawan as " anarchy" even though it was peaceful, did not seek to bring down any govt., or break any laws( except the ubiquitous Sec.144 which was never meant to be applied in the case of legitimate protest but has become the first resort of all govts to stifle them). The media has a very short and selective memory-if all protests are to be termed as anarchy then the Jai Prakash Narain movement would never have happened and we would still be under an Emergency.

[*] Stigmatizing public participation in governance as " Vigilantism". The media-comfortable in their privileged status where any favour is just a phone call away- disapproves of public involvement in the monitoring of schools, hospitals, police stations even though they are fully aware of( and quite often expose) the deplorable conditions prevailing there. Law Minister Bharti is denounced as a Vigilante even before the Inquiry Commission has given its report. The murder of Arunachal's Nido this week and the thrashing of two other girls from the North-east in Kotla last week has thoroughly exposed the rot in the Delhi police, and vindicates Mr. Bharti's action in personally going to Khirkee village and demanding that the police take action. This is not vigilantism. Vigilantism is what MNS and SP goons are doing in UP and Bombay, but our TV channels let them off with brief mentions, reserving their vitriol for the AAP.

      The double standards on display only add to this pathetic roll call of ineptitude. All parties come out with grand manifestos before elections but consign them to the dustbin on assuming power, and the media forgets about them too. But Kejriwal's 18 point manifesto was flung in his face from day one and he was castigated on an almost hourly basis for not implementing it. The Congress has done nothing about the scams for ten years but Kejriwal is expected to throw Sheila Dixit in jail within twenty four hours of assuming office! When Gadkari makes allegations about  clandestine pay-offs to form the AAP govt. it is merely reported; when AAP's Madanlal alleges he was offered Rs. 20 crores to defect the media demands that he produce proof and file an FIR; every penny received by AAP is on their website but still questions are raised repeatedly on their legality, but have you seen any  Primetime discussion on why Mallya refuses to pay his employees or the Banks while continuing with his Great Gatsby life-style? Or why SAHARA's Subroto Roy refuses to explain how he got the Rs. 20,000 crore for his deposit schemes? Or why India's most fearless journalist forgot to ask Rahul Gandhi about Robert Vadra's rags-to-riches miracle? Or about the Houdini-like manoeuvers that enabled his family to take ovet the assets of the National Herald? Has there been even a whisper on TV or the press about Madhu Kishwar's expose on the NDTV- Chidambram laundry list of Rs. 5000 crore?

     The media has become an expert at manufacturing red herrings to divert the attention away from AAP's core issues/ intentions so as to serve their main purpose of discrediting the party. Khirki thus becomes a matter of Racism and Sexism, and not about drugs, prostitution and police corruption; Kejriwal's dharna is projected exclusively as a constitutional break-down and the issues relating to federalism, the right of a state govt. to exercise control over its police force, the attitude of an insensitive central govt- all these are disregarded. Misleading Headlines and Breaking News spots predict the imminent fall of the AAP govt. and party, a few defamation cases against Kejriwal by affected politicos is projected as the law closing in on him, an attempt at having a genuine janata durbar is tom-tommed as an administrative failure of cataclysmic proportions. Speakers on panel discussions who support the AAP position are either shouted down, intimidated, lectured to or simply have the mike taken away! Only domesticated panelists whose toe-the-media-line biases are well known are chosen to appear at the mid-night hour ( one of them inadvertently gave the game away recently by mentioning( live) that he gets paid Rs. 5000 for every appearance!). There was no contradiction from the fearless anchor who quickly changed the subject!

     What is the explanation for the patently partisan and adverserial( to the AAP) posture adopted by the media, for its 24x7 condemnation of Kejriwal and his party, for its perpetual fault-finding autopsy of every word and act of this fledgeling entity which should at least be given some grace period to flap its wings before expecting it to soar into the firmament? Having given the matter some thought, I see three main reasons to explain the media's curious behaviour.

     First, a total disconnect with the pulse of the people. Editors and anchors who divide their time between padded air-conditioned studios and the drawing/dining rooms of the rich and infamous, whose ears are fixed on their smartphones rather than on the ground, who move only in their own circle from which they also choose their panelists and pollsters, have lost touch with reality. They have yet to realise that Kejriwal's mass appeal does not stem from reduction of power or water tariffs or from the promise of regularising contract workers- it stems from his visceral denunciation of corruption and elitism, from his projection of abject simplicity, from an idiom that is not conventionally political. The more the channels concentrate on the non-issues, the more irrelevant they become to the people and the more they are perceived to be part of the effete superstructure that the people want to demolish.

    Second, sheer ignorance of both history and current developments across the world. If you have already made up your mind before the show starts, and if you profess to be an expert on seven subjects in seven days, there is very little your research team can do for you. By continuing to insist that Kejriwal is the Great Anarch the elitist media is negating all the struggles in the past that make us the great democracy we are. In the process the media has also blinded itself to the contextual relevance of Kejriwal's movement. The emergence of the AAP has to be seen as part of a global churning against big government, corruption, the feeling that " the modern state often seems designed to look after itself rather than the citizens it is supposed to serve" ( the Economist, January 4th 2014), against 19th century Chicago style politicians, against an elite prospering at the expense of the working classes. The last ten years has seen political parties with the same DNA as the AAP, what are being called " insurgent parties", asserting themselves across the globe- the UKIP( United Kingdom Independence Party) in the UK, the Tea Party rump of the Republican Party in the USA, The Progress Party of Norway, the Front National ( FN) of the inimitable Marie Le Pen in France, The Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Five Star Movement in Italy. Once considered fringe groups they too were demonised by the media and the establishment, but they have come to stay: they have broad appeal, command sizeable vote percentages, influence the formation of governments, and sleepless govts. are learning their lessons the hard way-either they adapt to the policy demands of these newcomers or they vacate more and more space for them. Lessons, dear Mr. Goswami-Sardesai-Rahul Kanwal and Ms. Dutt and Ghosh, are not derived from vacuous panel discussions but from studying what is happening in the world around you. You may consider Kejriwal a freak but most of the developed world is taking people like him very seriously.

    Third, and most important, one is beginning to suspect that there might be more than meets the eye in this sustained campaign to discredit Kejriwal and AAP. One has to weigh seriously Shazia Ilmi's charge that big corporates, who are desperate for Modi to become PM, are behind the media campaign. The Congress, equally petrified of this unpredictable party would certainly not hesitate to call in favours from a media with which it has always has a cosy relationship. The DAVP budget is a handy persuader ( as the AG audit of the advertising spend of the Chhatisgarh govt. makes amply clear). And let us not forget that loose change of Rs. 500 crores which the Congress party has set aside for its election campaign! I may be wrong, or perhaps senility is catching up with me, but I do seem to feel that our media has raised the decibel pitch against Kejriwal rather noticeably ever since news about this bankroll became public. Quite often the loudest bidder is also the highest bidder! Ever since the Radia tapes exposures the credibility and integrity of our mainstream media have been under a cumulonimbus cloud. And we are well aware of the fact that almost all  prime channels and publications are owned or controlled by business houses or leading politicians.  Aditya Thakur's article in the Hillpost gives some of the details: Prannoy( NDTV) Roy's wife is the sister of Brinda Karat of the CPM, TIMES NOW belongs to Bennet and Coleman, NEWS24 is controlled by Rajeev(IPL) Shukla a Congress Minister,PTC is owned by Sukhbir Badal, INDIA NEWS is owned by Karthikeya Sharma son of Congress leader Venod Sharma, THE PIONEER is ably steered by BJP MP Chandan Mitra , the HINDU is owned by the Kasturi family which has overt CPM sympathies, The INDIAN EXPRESS supports the Congress while its twin the NEW INDIAN EXPRESS is an avowed NDA sympathiser, the HINDUSTAN TIMES is the undisputed turf of Shobhana Bhartiya, a former Congress MP and daughter of KK Birla, the TIMES OF INDIA can no longer lay any claim to fair reporting ever since it started the reprehensible practice of accepting equity from companies( instead of payment) for their advertising: you may not lick the hand that feeds you, but you'll certainly bite the hand that doesn't.

    These then are the forces that are ranged against Arvind Kejriwal, forces that will not even allow him thirty days to prove himself. In the electronic din created by them even the sounds of genuine criticism ( which the AAP will no doubt welcome) are drowned out. We expect no better from our political parties which live in a world of dog eat dog. But we expect better from our Fourth Estate in these momentous times when change is palpably in the air. Let them not forget the words of John F Kennedy: " Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."