THE MALLYA EXTRADITION- EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

    [ This piece was published in The New Indian Express on 20.12.2017, with some minor changes, under the heading BRINGING BACK MALLYA NOT EASY. ]                   

    T he government has pulled out all the stops to extradite Mr. Mallya from the UK but it would be well advised not to put its prestige on the line. It’s unlikely to happen, primarily because of the dismal state of our criminal justice system and our poor human rights track record. The developed world sets great store by both these factors and the past history of our extradition requests clearly show that they are not applauding us for either.

    India has extradition treaties with 38 countries and since 2002 only 61 accused have been extradited to this country. Currently, 121 extradition requests are pending with 24 countries. We signed a treaty with the UK in 1993 but till now only one person has actually been extradited, and that too because he consented to it! Ominously for the govt., the latest rejection was in October this year: one Sanjeev Chawla, a UK based bookie, was given the reprieve even though the judge found prima facie evidence against him for match fixing in 2000. The reasons cited for refusing the request were our poor human rights record: abysmal conditions in Tihar jail, overcrowding, lack of medical provisions, risk of being tortured, violence from other inmates and prison staff which, the judge noted, “is endemic in Tihar.” And it’s not only the UK. In February 2016 a Canadian court rejected the extradition of Surjit Badesha and one Mrs. Malik wanted for an honour killing in Punjab in view of the “appalling human rights record of Indian prisons.”  And therein lies the rub.

    Statistics prove that these judges were right. With more than 450,000 persons in jail( most of whom are undertrials and shouldn’t be there in the first place), our prisons are horribly overcrowded: Tihar has three times the population it was designed for. Corruption and violence are rampant. Quoting NHRC figures, the Asian Centre for Human Rights has revealed that between 2001 and 2010 there were 14231 custodial deaths in India- 1504 in police custody, 12727 in judicial custody. 99.99% of the deaths took place within 48 hours of the person being taken into custody. This is damning enough, but what the international tribunals will find even more inexplicable is the govt’s refusal to do anything about it. India signed UNCAT ( United Nations Convention Against Torture) in 1997 but we have not yet ratified it. We are only one of 7 countries not to have done so, and they are not elevating company: Sudan, Gambia, Comoros, Brunei, Bahamas, Angola. Unlike other countries, we have also failed to enact an anti- torture law: the draft Bill has been pending in the Lok Sabha since 2010. The recent murder of a woman inmate by warders in Arthur Road jail in Mumbai does not help our cause.

   We have not improved our credibility with the developed world by failing to adopt or implement the Standard Minimum Rules ( for prisoners), also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, adopted by the UN unanimously in 2015. This signals a disregard for prisoner welfare and rights.

    The British court will also note our pathetic conviction rate- 45%- which will raise doubts about the genuineness of the charges made in most of the cases, including, naturally, Mallya’s. The independence of India’s investigating agencies will come under close scrutiny, with the Supreme Court itself labelling the CBI a “ caged parrot.” Ironically, the CBI is the investigating agency in Mallya’s case! The manner in which only opponents of the ruling regime are being prosecuted will lend credence to Mallya’s defence that he is a “political victim”. The clogged judicial system is another major area of concern: as on October 2017 there were almost 40 million pending cases, of which 1.62 million and 743000 cases had been pending for more than five and ten years, respectively, with the various High Courts. These figures raise serious questions about our judicial system’s ability to provide justice in time. Taken together, all these dysfunctionalities feed into a perception that human rights cannot be assured in the country. Even the 2017 report of Human Rights Watch notes that India “has serious human rights concerns.”

   Certain recent events in the Supreme Court will further erode the perceived image of our higher judiciary- charges by senior lawyers against the Chief Justice himself concerning his integrity, inaction on the suicide note of the Arunachal Chief Minister in which he had accused senior judges of bribery, corruption charges against a retired judge of the Odisha High Court. In fact, according to a press report on the 13^th. October 2017, Mallya’s lawyers have already seized on this- his defence has already brought to the Magistrate’s notice a research article by a scholar in Portsmouth Law University about corruption in the Supreme Court. It does not help matters that the Court is locked in a bitter battle of attrition with the Central Govt. over appointments and “judicial overreach,” or when its coherence is suspect when it appears to be internally divided, with judges overruling each other on important matters.

    There is also the question of whether Mallya’s failure to repay loans justifies criminal prosecution or is a matter for civil action. We do have a propensity to arrest people at the drop of a hat, whether it is for someone’s foot accidentally touching a woman on a plane or a cartoonist lampooning someone in power. All these factors will coalesce into a powerful defence for Mallya, and his lawyers have already started using them. A lot of our dirty linen shall get washed in public but the outcome is still not certain as most of the cards are stacked against India. It is difficult for a civilised society to extradite a man to a country with a dysfunctional legal system, a thoroughly compromised police and a strident media which appears to be the final arbiter of guilt and innocence.

THE GUJARAT ELECTIONS : PAPPU PASS HO GAYA !

    At times there's more glory in defeat than in victory, and the results of the Gujarat elections demonstrate this. Congress may have lost, the BJP will form the government for the sixth successive time, but the real winner is Rahul Gandhi. He fought an honourable battle, which is something of a rarity in these devalued times, against a party which has made the gutter its own, and a media vying with each other in singing hosannas to the presiding deity. His was an impossible task, taking on the most efficient and unscrupulous election machine the country has ever seen, a Prime Minister who appears to have cast a spell over most Indians, a partisan Election Commission and unlimited money power. And this with a non-existent Congress apparatus, a party which had been out of power for 22 years!

   Rahul Gandhi went to Gujarat as an underdog- the much reviled and lampooned poodle ranged against the powerful mastiff, scorned and reviled daily by the apopleptic  sycophants of TIMES NOW, REPUBLIC and  NEWS-X type of venom spouts. Not only did he lead from the front, it was almost a single-handed battle as very few other national level leaders of the Congress were around- whether by design or default, one will never know. For a person whose public speaking skills are limited, as is his knowledge of Hindi, he addressed more than 150 rallies over six weeks and by the end had matured into an accomplished word spinner. The style, manner and substance of his public interactions could not have been more different from that of Mr. Modi.

   Whereas the Prime Minister was his usual haughty, distant, table-thumping, talking-down self Mr. Gandhi came across as much more informal, relaxed, accessible, exuding an almost school-boy kind of openness and honesty. Where Mr. Modi came across as contrived and scripted, the Congress  (then) Vice-President appeared to be much more spontaneous and natural. The former did not mingle with the crowds, no doubt befitting his SPG endowed aura, but the latter( also an SPG protectee) had no hesitation in doing so at every opportunity, even stopping at the odd wayside tea stall to have a cup and a gossip session with the locals. This contrast in demeanour and attitude could not have gone unnoticed by the people and the results show this.

   The contrast between the two in the content and substance of their electioneering was even more stark. Mr. Modi stuck to his time tested formula of Hindutva, the Muslim card and the Pakistan bogey, playing the cliched poor chai wallah victim and personal attacks on the Gandhis- starting from Jawaharlal Nehru to Rahul ( he has not yet picked on Mr. Vadra's children but that is only a matter of time). The common thread uniting these sub-texts was a liberal dose of falsehood and innuendo. Development, economics and welfare were almost totally absent from his discourses- again, something that the electorate did not fail to notice. He stopped at nothing- he questioned Mr. Gandhi's temple visits, his religion, and his pedigree; he dug out the four year old chai-walla jibe of Mani Shankar Aiyer, spicing it with the latest " neech" appellation to further buttress his humble credentials as against Rahul Gandhi's privileged upbringing, forgetting that after 12 years as Chief Minister and 3 years as Prime Minister this plaint is wearing rather thin; setting the bar of decency at its lowest mark, he went on to accuse a former Prime Minister, a former Vice President and a former Army Chief ( among a dozen or so of India's most distinguished diplomats and journalists) of conspiring to remove him; he even hinted that Mr. Aiyar had issued a " supari" in Pakistan to get rid of him. As usual, he did all this with his customary mastery and the virtuoso performances must have got him the votes, but all this rabble rousing is becoming predictable; he needs to write a new script.

    In refreshing contrast, and to the pleasant surprise of many, Mr. Gandhi came across as much more would-be statesman like. He publicly announced at the start that he would not repay Mr. Modi in the same demonetised coin, that he respected the office of the Prime Minister and would never use inappropriate words for Mr. Modi, that he would campaign with love in his heart, not hate; that  (unlike the PM's stated view of the Congress) he did not want a BJP mukt  India for a strong Opposition was essential for a functioning democracy. He perhaps overdid the projection of his Hindu credentials, and failed to publicly condemn the horrific murder of a Muslim labourer in Rajasthan to avoid sullying these credentials, and this is something he needs to avoid in future- he should not try to win the Hindu vote by espousing the  BJP's ethos. He would do much better by emulating his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru. who, in the first election campaign after partition in 1951 when the wounds of the religious conflagration were still fresh, had the political courage and vision to proclaim his unambiguous article of faith at the Ramlila grounds in the following words: " If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both at the head of the government and from outside." It is this kind of leadership we need in these critical times.

   Contrary to the vacuous " Pappu" image of Rahul Gandhi created by the social media trolls, he showed remarkable ability in strategising vital alliances and weaving the noose of failed economic policies and development with which to choke the BJP's narrative of specious claims. He appears to have correctly read the electorate's pulse, a departure from previous elections. He increased his party's seat tally by 19 ( 21, if one includes the two supported Independents), a 30% increase, and vote share by 5%- an astounding feat for a party which has lost just about every election since 2014. To put this in perspective, one should recollect that in the Parliamentary elections of 2014 the BJP had won in 165 constituencies; Rahul Gandhi has brought this down to 99. Let us also not forget that Mr. Amit Shah had arrogantly announced that his party would win 150 seats! He also showed great courage in accepting the Presidentship of his party just two days before counting and declaration of results, signalling that he was not afraid of accepting responsibility if things went horribly wrong for his party. They didn't, and in the process we have a new leader who has been through a trial by fire, has shed his "reluctant politician" image and can perhaps provide the counter balance to a powerful Prime Minister whose militaristic/corporate style needs to be tempered with compassion and tolerance. The BJP may not admit this in public, but Rahul Gandhi has given it plenty to chew over: if he can almost upstage the BJP in the Gir lion's den, he can inflict much more damage in the states going to the polls next year- MP, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh. He has seized the initiative and the BJP will no longer be the sole driver of the electoral agenda.  Pappu pass ho gaya !   

INDIA'S HEALTH SECTOR NEEDS MORE GOVERNMENT, NOT LESS.

    The conventional wisdom is that the less government we have, the better. In fact, that was precisely what Mr. Modi had promised us in 2014 with his rousing " Maximum governance, minimum government." Of course, he confused governance with intrusion into our private lives, but that is the subject of another column some other day. My assertion here is that there is one sector in India to which this policy should not apply- the Health sector. If proof were needed to validate it, it has been provided by two shocking incidents  in just the last month, both in Delhi. The first was the case of the little girl who was treated for dengue in Fortis Hospital, Gurgaon; she could not be saved but her parents were nonetheless presented with a bill for Rs. 16 lakhs: this was after the parents had turned down a preposterous suggestion to do a whole body plasma transfusion at a further cost of Rs. 45 - 50 lakhs ( on a patient who was already 80% brain dead!). An " inquiry" has been ordered ( the classic cover up) but the affair is a good as closed: we shall hear no more about it. The second case occurred on the 30th of November: twins born to a mother in the Max hospital in Shalimar Bagh were declared dead immediately, packed up nicely like an Amazon prime parcel and handed over to the parents. On the way to the cremation ground, one of them was found to be moving-he was alive! ( This baby also died subsequently a week later). The AAP govt. has now cancelled the hospital's licence after an inquiry ( the order will probably be stayed and the matter will  drag on in the courts for years). The callous insensitivity of the medical fraternity was revealed on prime time TV  when the President of the Indian Medical Council put the onus on the patient/ relatives- he advised us that we should not assume death if the patient has a low body temperature or hypothermia! Why should WE assume anything, Doctor Aggarwal ? Isn't it for the people like you and the hospital to do all the assuming, specially when you charge us hundreds of thousands for it ?

    These are just cases that found their way to the news: similar stories are playing out in their hundreds everyday, in hospitals and nursing homes all over India. A sting last week by CNN-TV18 exposed how doctors and path labs collude to fleece patients and share the spoils.. Profiting has now degenerated into profiteering. The list of malpractices indulged in by the medical profession is menacingly imposing, and has been revealed by whistleblowers and NGOs such as SATHI ( Support for Advocacy and Training in Health Initiatives): commissions, failure to prescribe generic drugs,  "sink tests" by path labs where all the samples are thrown into the sink without testing and false reports generated, corporate hospitals' unwritten rule that 40% of OPD cases should be converted into admissions, unnecessary and expensive tests. Even diagnoses are deliberately distorted in order to milk a patient for all he is worth: a report by Medi-Angels, a Mumbai medical centre that offers second opinions has reported that 44% of 12500 patients advised surgery for stents, joint replacements, cancer etc. were advised against it by the second consultants. ( Most of us have our own personal horror stories about this.)

    There are reportedly 4.50 million cases of medical negligence in India every year. But the citizen has little recourse to justice, except to go the Consumer Courts which is both expensive and time consuming. Govt. policy, till now, had visualised that the medical profession would regulate itself and had established the Medical Council of India for the purpose by statute. This body, however, like most internal regulatory bodies, has been a spectacular failure; it has become the protector of the practitioners that it was supposed to regulate and monitor. I have googled incessantly to find out how many doctors it has disbarred or deregistered for negligence or malpractices- I have been unable to get any information, because in all probability it hardly ever does so. All it does is lay down ethical guidelines, conveniently forgetting that it has legal obligations to the patients too. In contrast, in the USA about 450-500 doctors lose their licence EVERY YEAR, and in the UK the figure is between 150 and 200 ( incidentally, most of them are of Indian and Pakistan origin !- not an export we should be proud of).

    The medical profession has consistently resisted any attempt by the govt. to discipline them or to cap their exorbitant charges/ fees. But ( after the Kunal Shah case in 2013 where Rs. 13.00 crore was awarded as compensation to a patient) they have been demanding a cap on the compensation award! So far they have manged to get away every time by arm twisting the govt., their strength lying in the fact that the private sector provides 80% of health care in the country. Successive govts, both at the centre and the states, are responsible for this dismal state of affairs: the state spends barely 2% of GDP on health, whereas the WHO recommendation is a minimum 5%: he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that is why doctors and corporate hospitals are humming all the way to the bank. But this has to change. Govts. have to drastically increase outlays of the health sector: the 2.50- 3.00 % promised by the Union Health Minister by 2022 is just not good enough. Self regulation has failed, the cupidity of doctors shows no sign of abating, and corporate hospitals are medical vampires who suck your blood and make you pay for it! This is one sector that requires maximum government. It is high time that the National Clinical Establishments ( Registration and Regulation) Act 2010 and the Clinical Establishment ( Central Govt.) Rules 2012 are implemented and enforced by the Center and all states . Currently only a handful of states and UTs have done so, and that too for mere registration purposes only. If implemented sincerely the Act empowers governments to deregister clinical establishments, entertain complaints, award compensation, initiate criminal cases where needed, cancel licences of  doctors, hospitals and other health related commercial facilities, fix the rates of various medical procedures ( as it already does for CGHS and EGHS members), lay down minimum standards of treatments. The MCI's mandate should be limited to advising on medical education issues, and issuing ethical guidelines ( the only thing it is good at). The health consumer has been betrayed by the medical profession and the govt. must now step up to the plate and do the right thing. It must protect the ordinary citizen and not be seen to be siding with, or succumbing to the blackmail of, these corporate profiteers. As the poet lamented:

" Inquilab-e-aasman se kyon na ho uljhan mujhe,

   Main pukaru dost ko, awaaz de dushman mujhe."    

ALLOW US TO DIE WITH DIGNITY

         [ This article was published in the New Indian Express on 6.12.2017 ]

    Responding to a PIL by the NGO Common Cause in the Supreme Court asking that the right to die with dignity be declared a fundamental right, the Union govt. has opposed the concept of a Living Will. The reason given by the  Additional Solicitor General was that “ it could be enormously misused.” This attitude is extremely regrettable, though not surprising since it is consistent with the government’s backward looking and obscurantist stand on some other progressive and liberal reforms. It had opposed the declaration of sex with a child bride as rape, it still refuses to delegitimize marital rape, and it supports the odious Section 377 of the IPC which criminalises homosexuality. It justifies this antediluvian mind-set by claiming that the peculiarities of the Indian ethos sanctify these practices or beliefs, and that Indian society cannot be trusted not to abuse good laws. This is a strange position to adopt for a country which seeks to be a superpower and leader of nations.

    A Living Will is the ultimate assertion of privacy and the desire for dignity on the part of an individual. It is an “advance medical directive” to a physician or one’s next of kin by a person of sound mind, stating his wishes for end- of- life care, in case he is unable to communicate his decisions at that point in time owing to illness or incapacitation. It specifies the type and extent of medical care he desires and appoints a person( power of attorney) to carry out his wishes or take medical decisions on his behalf. It can state, for example, that no aggressive interventions such as attachments of ventilators, heart-lung machines, intubation, dialysis, tube feeding etc. be made to keep him alive.

    The Living Will is a response to advances in medicine which can keep a person “alive” indefinitely even though he may be in a coma or in a vegetative state, brain dead, with no hope of recovery. This life support comes, however, at great financial and emotional cost to the next of kin, unnecessarily prolongs the suffering of the patient and also blocks scarce health care infrastructure which could be used for someone with a better prospect of recovery. The only gainer is an avaricious hospital system which makes more money by aggressively keeping a patient going even where there is no hope. Can we ever forget the tragic case of Aruna Shaunbag of Mumbai who remained in a coma for 42 years before God mercifully intervened? Even the higher courts did not allow the hospital to withdraw the useless life support systems and denied her the relief and release her tortured body and soul were entitled to.

    The concept of a Living Will was first mooted in the USA in 1969, and has  been accepted by most of the developed world:  USA, Australia, Canada,  UK, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland- all have framed legislation to permit it, and some have even devised standardised formats  for it to make them more legally acceptable. Adequate safeguards have been built in to avoid the kind of “misuse” our govt. is apprehensive of. A recent study in the USA revealed that 80-90% of respondents would refuse aggressive medical intervention if they were in an incapacitated state with no hope of recovery. The figure would be higher in India, given the dismal state of our health care; India is one of the worst countries to die in- the Quality of Death Index places us at 67 out of 80 countries.

     In its draft bill- The Medical Treatment of Terminally Ill Patients ( Protection of patients and medical Practitioners) Bill- the govt. expressly forbids recognition of a Living Will by providing that “ every advance medical directive( called living will) or medical power of attorney executed by a person shall be void and of no effect and shall not be binding on any medical practitioner.” Therefore, if a family of an incapacitated patient wishes to refuse life support in deference to the latter’s wishes, it will have to apply to a High Court for permission . Clearly, the govt. is confusing the Living Will with euthanasia, and not recognising that what is involved in a Living Will is not withdrawal of life support when the patient is comatose but an advance  refusal to permit it , a decision made when in full control of one’s senses and faculties. The distinction is critical, because it is the person himself deciding, not someone on his behalf. And the right to privacy and the right to a life with dignity gives him this entitlement.

    The govt’s position is just not right or compassionate. Approaching the courts (as suggested in the draft Bill ) could take months as evidenced in recent cases of abortion of rape induced pregnancies. The apprehended “misuse” of the Living Will is no justification as just about every law in India- dowry, domestic violence, sex selection, Sec. 377- is misused: that can never be a reason for rejecting a progressive legal provision. Not just constitutional, moral and ethical considerations are involved here too. One, if I can legally decide ( in a normal will) what to do with my worldly possessions, why can I not be allowed to decide what to do with a useless body that has become a curse and a source of intense suffering? Two, if the law allows me to tell a doctor to cut me open to remove a tumour or cancer to alleviate my pain, it should also allow me to tell a doctor not to touch me, and to let me die, for precisely the same reason- to end my agony. These are two sides of the coin, and I should be the one to decide which one to flip- not a disinterested government, doctor or judge.

    Medicine or law should not always be active protagonists in the process of dying- there are times when they should be simple bystanders.

THE MISSING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

    The Indian Constitution gives us six Fundamental Rights: right to Equality, right to Freedom, right against Exploitation, right to Freedom of Religion, Cultural and Educational rights, and the right to Constitutional Remedies. The Supreme Court has recently given us another one: right to Privacy. It sounds pretty impressive on paper. Now, I'm no legal expert- for a long time I was under the impression that "corpus delicti" meant a beautiful body, and till recently I thought that RIP on a judge's grave meant Recused in Perpetuity, in deference to a common practice in inconvenient cases. But even I can see that these fundamental rights are not available to large sections of society, and of late they are being denied with renewed vigour.

    Equality still eludes millions of dalits, tribals and the poorest of the poor; our push for a digital India with Aadhar as its trumpet call is further disadvantaging these sections and denying them access to public welfare services such as pensions and food rations. Talk of equality is a farce when 200 million people go to bed hungry, when 15% of the population in under nourished( FAO figures), when 34% of the children are stunted, when the top 5% of Indians own 65.5% of the country's wealth while the bottom 50% have to make do with only 4.5%. Freedom is still a dream for millions of bonded labour and child workers, and for those who are indiscriminately arrested by the police, for the more than 400,000 undertrials in prisons, most of whom will be acquitted if their cases ever come up for trial in a system as clogged as a railways toilet. Freedom of religion did exist for some time, but is now being threatened by new conversion laws in some states that require the approval of a District Magistrate before one can exercise that option. The sporadic demands for a Uniform Civil Code and a muscular assertion of majoritarianism constantly haunt the minority psyche. Educational rights consist of mere statistics of enrollment figures; in actual practice, so dismal is our govt. educational system that a Class 6 student lacks the ability of a Class 2 student; 27.51 of every 100 children who join school drop out by the time they reach Class XI. Those who pass out of college are unemployable. The hardest hit here are the physically disabled: of 28 million not even 0.1% have access to schools and 0.01% to higher education. The courts are waging a valiant but losing battle to enforce our right to Constitutional Remedies, hamstrung by an adversarial central govt. and its own internal shortcomings. How, for instance, does one enforce one's constitutional right to freedom of expression when the govt. will not act against those who murder it ? Seventy journalists have been killed in the last 14 years, hardly anyone has been punished. How can this right be exercised when draconian laws- criminal defamation, sedition- are used to muzzle any contrary voice ? These remedies, unfortunately, are available only to the rich and powerful, usually to save their own skin.

    There is, however, one Fundamental Right that the Constitution has not given us, but one which is being enforced these days on a daily basis- the Right to be Offended. " Hurting the sentiments" of any one of the country's seven religions and 7331 castes/communities is an offence under the IPC and is the trigger for claiming this right. This legal oddity has always existed, right from the days when the film Kissa Kursi Ka and Rushdie's Satanic Verses were banned by the Congress, but over the last three years it has acquired an accelerated virulence and a violent character. Organisations- mainly perceived to be of the far right- have sprung up whose sole purpose in life is to feel offended. Anything which does not conform to their regressive ideology or can help them win the next election is a legitimate source of causing offence, and therefore for raising the demand for a ban, criminal prosecution, apology or mindless violence. Offence is taken at girls wearing jeans or a young couple going out in public ( Valentines Day ?), MS Dhoni appearing as a Hindu God on a magazine cover, Kamal Hassan's comment about Hindu terror, any form of sympathy for a Kashmiri or for the Kashmiri perspective, support for a  Pakistani cricket team, any questioning of the Indian Army ( sedition), possession of cattle or meat, intercaste marriages. Creative work- films, books, paintings- the very mediums which advance civilisation and its best values, are the primary founts of imagined offence and hence the primary targets for the proponents of this right.

    Taking offence has de facto become a fundamental right these days and is being practiced on a daily basis. The latest instance is that of the film PADMAVATI. Official Rajput organisations have joined hands with criminals and louts to ransack theatres, offer Taliban type of rewards for beheadings, hold up trains and threaten to maim the artists. As the furore over this film has demonstrated, two factors are conferring legitimacy on the sinister assertion of this right to be offended. One, neither the central govt. nor the concerned state govts are taking any action against these criminal elements for violence, criminal intimidation, destruction of public and private property, wrongful confinement, instigating public disorder, contempt of court, etc. Second, and even more telling, is the fact that this manufactured disturbance is being supported by these same govts, directly or indirectly. Union Minsters have done so by proclaiming that film-makers should  be "sensitive to cultural feelings" and to the "status of women", state Ministers have lamented that the feelings of the Rajput community have been "hurt", the UP, Punjab and Haryana CMs have asked for a ban on the film, the MP and Gujarat Chief Ministers, in their attempts to out Herod all other Herods, have actually banned it ( even though the Supreme Court has refused to do so!), the Rajasthan CM wants it to be censored, the Union Home Minister declares that even if the film is cleared by the Censor Board the govt. can always review it. The Congress and other opposition parties maintain a psephological silence, for this is the age of votes, not values. Only Mamta Banerji has had the guts to speak out in support of the film.

    Other constitutional rights be damned. The only fundamental right which matters in India today is the Right to be Offended, and this has become the new clarion call for the self appointed custodians of the country's culture and national pride. The govt. appears to agree and has legitimised it by its inaction, bans and statements. It may as well take the next step and legalise it: amend the Constitution and provide for it as the seventh fundamental right. We may as well end this "willing to wound but afraid to strike" charade and reveal ourselves in all our regressive glory. Then our country can officially become the kind of unfortunate place WB Yeats had written about , a place where

    " The ceremony of innocence is drowned,

       The best lack all conviction, while the worst

       Are full of passionate intensity."
Welcome to the New India of 2022. 

THE LANGUAGE OF GOVERNANCE

     In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And then God committed one of his periodical goof-ups, the first after the original mistake of creating Eve and involving us for perpetuity in sexual molestation cases: he created the Bureaucracy and the Bureaucrat took over the Word. Originally intended to convey meaning, the Word now became a means to conceal!- a mechanism which even the Right to Information Act has not been able to dent. But let’s not scoff at this, for concealment is an art- given the sheer scale of goof-ups and gerrymandering constantly going on in the labyrinths of power, concealing them behind just a few words requires far more skill than merely revealing to us that our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Shelley may well have been right when he said that, but could he have hidden behind words a hefty kickback in danger of disappearing? That's what one Minister was once required to do, without Mr. Vinod Rai finding out about it.

    Having successfully negotiated the required payola from a contractor, a Minister called for the file and wrote on it "Approved". The contractor, secure in the false illusion (like Lalu Yadav a-la Nitish Kumar) that the Minister was now committed and could not go back on either his word or file noting, refused to pay up. Unfazed, the Minister requisitioned the file again and simply added the word  "Not" before "Approved". The now chastened contractor, acknowledging defeat at the hands of a master, prostrated himself (like Nitish Kumar a-la Amit Shah) before the icon of democracy and begged for his contract back, wondering at the same time how the worthy would find a way around the neological cul-de-sac. The Minister, a wordsmith par excellence, extracted the file from his drawer and just added the letter "e" to the word "Not". The final noting read "Note Approved"- two simple words that concealed twists worthy of a Saki or an O'Henry !

    In the mid eighties in Shimla a powerful Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, whose wife wished to devote all her time to disciplining other IAS wives and thus delegate her culinary responsibilities to a cook, moved the Finance Deptt. for the creation of a Class D post. The file duly reached the Joint Secretary (JS) in Finance. Now a JS, compared to a Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, occupies a slot in the bureaucratic food chain comparable to the position of the plankton in relation to the sperm whale, and in the normal course the file should have been cleared without a whimper, or whatever sounds the plankton emits when under stress. In this case, however, this humble organism (born and bred in the badass corridors of Hindu College) refused to accept his humble station in life and rejected it ! A livid Principal Secretary to CM, accustomed to worms squirming before him and not turning, returned the file with the noting: "Has this file been seen by the Finance Secretary? If not, it may be put up before him". (I may mention here that senior Secretaries belong to the same lunch club, operate on the principles of the Cosa Nostra, and are usually more adept than the macaque monkey in scratching each others' backs). The JS returned said file after recording on it the standard default option of all Finance Deptts.: "FD regrets to reiterate its rejection of the proposal". An epileptic Secretary to CM decided to teach this callow fledgling a lesson. Confident that he now had this amoeba cornered, he put the ball back in the JS's court with a thunderous ace: "At what level has this decision been taken?", thinking that this would expose the lack of jurisdiction of the JS. The latter, however, having dealt with seven foot Jats on a daily basis in Jubilee hall of Delhi Universit, was unfazed and responded with a classic cross-court of his own: "Secretary to CM is respectfully informed that the decision has been taken at the competent level." Game, set and match. No actionable information revealed. The sperm whale retired shortly thereafter, sans cook.

    Another story which comes to mind is that of a  young Deputy Secretary (DS) in Shimla , now grown long in the tooth and safely parked in the USA, whose newly acquired wife happened to be in Delhi. He kept applying for leave to spend some time with her, especially during those long winter nights in Shimla when a quilt is not enough to keep one warm. His applications were invariably rejected by the Chief Secretary (CS) who had long ago replaced his wife with a bottle of triple XXX rum. The DS then changed tack: he requested for leave on  "compassionate grounds", stating that he had to check up on his aging parents in Delhi. Even this crap did not cut any ice with the CS (the mixed metaphor may be excused). The increasingly desperate DS then made his final gambit, taking a huge chance: he applied again, this time on "passionate grounds" viz. that he was only recently married and had not seen his wife for many months and would not be able to recognize her if he did not see her soon! It worked! Off he went to Delhi and he has not left her side since then- much to her annoyance, of course. The power of the word- the deletion of three letters- made all the difference between marital bliss and enforced "vanprastha". Why, he may even have joined the RSS if denied leave again, left his wife and become a Chief Minister !

    My own favourite is the one about the officer who wanted a bigger garage built in his official residence to park his two cars. He sent a note to the Secretary PWD requesting that the "garrage be constructed immediately.'' The latter's response revealed his stout English Literature background:  "Request approved. However the officer may be informed that while a garage can always contain two cars it can never contain two R's "!

    The good Lord need not worry- His Word is in good hands.

ANGER MANAGEMENT , LEMMINGS AND HONEY-BADGERS.

    Even the most rabid of Mr. Modi's detractors would not grudge him one thing: that he is an orator par excellence with an acute grasp of crowd psychology. He has all the arrows in his quiver: the suggestio falsi, the rhetorical question ( "kaha tha na?"), the breathless tapering off of a sentence, the pregnant pauses and suspenseful silences, the pumped up fist, the innuendo and worse. At his best he can be almost a Shakespearean figure- a King Lear, an Othello, even a Hindutva version of Richard III ( "A cow, a cow- my kingdom for a cow!" ). Why then does he have to descend to the level of a Kilkenny cat in his election rallies, as he recently did in Himachal? His generic hatred for the Gandhis was on full display but that is something we have come to accept, even though we still don't understand what lies behind it: there appears to be something almost personal behind it. But some of his comments went way beyond political antagonism. By calling them termites and rakshash ( devils), by branding the AICC as the All India Corruption Committee and terming the Congress ideology as "sadi hui soch" ( rotten, putrified thinking) he has lowered the dignity of the Prime Minister's office and exposed both his hubris and insecurities. Before Mr. Modi's arrival we had become accustomed to a different style of oratory from our Prime Ministers for the last twenty years or so. Mr. IK Gujral was the quintessential gentleman, seeking to make friends and to persuade by debate and discussion. Mr. Vajpayee was a fiery orator himself but his metier was passion, learning, poetry, reconciliation. Mr. Manmohan Singh was no orator but he was soft-spoken, learned, polite and never confrontationist. Their public speeches were both conciliatory and critical, but never scatological. Their followers also took their cue from their leaders' styles, and public discourse rarely crossed the laxman rekha. But all that has changed with the new government . Are the votes worth it if they are won by broadcasting hatred, anger, contempt, calumny and vitriol ? There is so much anger in Mr. Modi that I cannot but quote the Buddha: You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

*                                    *                                    *                                   *                                *

    Delhi just has to be the most messed up capital in the world- administratively, politically and environmentally. It is becoming more dysfunctional by the day. Things have become particularly bad over the last three years because Mr. Modi finds it hard to forget that Mr. Kejriwal delivered him the biggest haymaker of his political career by winning 67 out of 70 seats. Ever since then the Union govt. has a simple one point agenda for Delhi- let its administration and civic services deteriorate to a point where the AAP is totally discredited and Delhi-ites are ready to lynch Mr. Kejriwal. It does this through a multi-pronged strategy: don't allow the AAP to legislate any new initiatives ( by sitting on its Bills- at last count about 11 Bills were awaiting approval), intimidate the IAS and Dhanics officers into being loyal to the Centre rather than the state, use the three Municipal Corporations( all BJP controlled) to deliberately deny proper civic services to the citizens by constantly raising financial demands on the Delhi govt and instigating strikes, ensure non-cooperation by central agencies such as DDA, the Delhi Metro, CBI etc. And its lethal trump card is of course the Lieutenant Governor, a latter day Viceroy, a superannuated appointee who can ( and constantly does) veto the wishes of a govt. that has been elected by twenty million voters. He is omni-potent but accountable to no one. None other than the Supreme Court has held, in a recent obiter dicta, that he is the undisputed and constitutional head of Delhi. But have you ever seen him appear on TV to explain why he is presiding over such disarray and shambles, and what does he propose to do about it ? Why grill poor Mr. Kejriwal on prime time every evening when the Big Boss is the LG ? Is it that asking him to give an account of his administration would amount to some kind of lese majeste ?

    As if this were not bad enough, there is also a plethora of statutory authorities issuing all manner of directions, sometimes contradicting each other, to which nobody pays any attention, each questioning the other. The city is a modern tower of Babel, confusion confounded- should trucks be allowed in or not ? Should Badarpur TPS be shut down or not? What the hell do we do with the 15000 tonnes of garbage we produce every day? Should all construction activity be stopped ? Why is garbage still being burned at the landfills? Should odd-even be introduced again ? Does it actually lower pollution levels? Is Amarinder Singh allowing stubble burning in Punjab to get even with the BJP and AAP ? There is no shortage of "Authorities" or Ideas in Delhi- just a famine of people who will implement them.

    And while India's finest grapple with these daunting issues, the Air Quality Index is approaching the 500 mark, and the PM 2.5 ( no, its not the title of Chetan Bhagat's next book, though almost as deadly for the brain) continues to climb. We are constantly looking for exotic solutions to the death shroud of pollution tightening around us- mechanised sweeping of roads, seeding of clouds for rain, spraying water from helicopters, installing huge air purifiers at major intersections. The courts are on a banning spree; ban away a problem and it will disappear. But it doesn't, because problems have to be resolved, not wished away by judicial dictats. Take the ban on stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana. It cannot be implemented by challaning or locking up 15 million farmers. It must be recognised that this is an economic issue, not just an environmental nuisance, as the NGT appears to think. It costs Rs. 2000 an acre to remove the stubble, money the already embattled farmer can ill afford to spare. There are mechanical devices already available to remove the stubble- straw chopper-cum-spreader, rotavator, happy seeder, cutter shredder, baler- which can either shred the stalks and spread them as compost or stack them in bales for use as  fuel,fodder, feed or as raw material for paper units. They cost  between Rs. 45000/ or Rs. 3 lakhs each, way beyond the means of the average farmer, especially when compared to a matchbox costing one rupee ! The govt. should make these implements available on a cooperative/community basis free of cost. In the long term it should wean these farmers away from the cultivation of paddy in these water deficit areas. Punjab and Haryana were never meant to grow a water guzzling crop like paddy, which is sucking dry the ground water table. Punjab is a water stressed state and practically all its blocks are in the "black" category. Stubble is a by-product of paddy and reduction in the area under paddy will solve both problems, of water and pollution.               The same lack of clarity and political/ administrative will applies to Delhi:  we will not do the obvious and simple things: protect Delhi's green cover and stop deforestation ( 400 trees are being chopped down at Pragati Maidan to make space for an international convention center !), protect the Aravallis and the Ridge( 40% of which has already been lost) , our last defence against the deserts from the depredations of the Haryana and Delhi govts , revive the lost 600 water bodies of the city, preserve the Yamuna flood plains from ever increasing construction, declare selected roads as one-way to reduce congestion, add another 5000 buses to the DTC fleet ( their numbers have actually gone DOWN by 2500 over the last three years), shift ALL industrial units out of the city ( Beijing has done it, with remarkable results), introduce Odd-Even scheme mandatorily for two months every winter, stop ALL construction in the winters ( dust is the biggest pollutant as per all surveys).

    Delhi's citizens are equally culpable for the mess they are in and deserve every particle of PM 2.5 which they breathe in every time they open their mouths to complain against the govt. They will just not change their honey badger attitude and habits, and resist every reform or change. They continued to burst fire crackers this Diwali inspite of all appeals and orders. They will not walk or take the metro or a taxi ( it is illustrative to see the hundreds of cars outside, say, Lodi Gardens every morning: they belong to people who will DRIVE half a kilometer to walk two kilometers in the park- why can they not walk the entire 2.5 kms?). They will waste hundreds of litres of water daily to wash their cars. They insist on polluting the Yamuna with hundreds of idols every year, they will burn huge mounds of firewood during Holi and Baisakhi. They will oppose Odd-Even or BRT or cycle lanes. They will defy every measure suggested by the govt. Its an endless and despairing list, actually a DIY step-by-step guide to suicide. We are lemmings , led by honey badgers.

    As I finish this piece in my flat in east Delhi I'm seriously wondering if I'll ever get to see the sun  again. The pigeon on my window sill appears to have read my thoughts, for it looks at me like Edgar Allen Poe's raven and croaks: Nevermore!