WHERE WILL MR. MODI TAKE US FROM HERE?

   For me, the defining metaphor of the 2019 elections is the 250000+ votes victory of a terror accused ( who also described the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi as a patriot) over a two time Chief Minister with forty years of political experience. If this is the extent and nature of India's transformation from a compassionate society to a brutalised one, then it's time we stopped blaming Rahul Gandhi. He never stood a chance, for the India he was addressing in his campaign speeches- about jobs, farmers, adivasis, religious divisions- no longer exists. Mr. Modi has created a new India in just five years.

  No right thinking person will deny that  Mr. Modi initiated a number of economic and welfare measures; but equally, they remain at best a mixed bag for the moment: GDP growth is below 7%, private investment is at an all time low, MSMEs and the informal sector have yet to recover fully from demonetisation and GST. unemployment continues to climb, farmer distress is very real. Welfare measures like the Ujjwala yojana, free toilets, household electrification have yet to bite, encountering many kinks that have yet to be ironed out. There is a palpable insecurity among the minorities. One would expect that a mixed bag would result in a mixed result, albeit tilted in favour of the BJP. That it has instead delivered such a massive sweep for Mr. Modi and the BJP indicates that the former has offered to the people a nostrum that overrides and discounts these concerns, makes them forget about their distress. In 2014 he had done the same thing and had packaged it as Hope, but this time he has packaged the placebo differently- it now comes in the form of a cultural nationalism, an assertion of a new Indian identity. If you can't give them bread, at least give them a sense of pride.

  The Modi- Shah duo have single handedly replaced the idea/ideology of a humane, plural, tolerant India with an assertive, Hindu dominated, impatient, proud India which is prepared to wait another five  years for the fruits of development to trickle down to it. It has worked beautifully: the BJP has won 303 seats out of 542, 31 more than last time; its vote share has gone up by almost 10%, it has made 17 states " congress mukt" and in all probability driven Mr. Rahul Gandhi into permanent retirement. But there is a catch to this New India- it has no place for minorities, for dissent, for consensus, for independent institutions, for the impartial rule of law, for any ideology other than the BJP's. It is an India which has given unprecedented power to one individual and has now been asked to identify itself with just this one Great Leader: " India is Indira and Indira is India" was just a slogan, but "India is Modi and Modi is India" is a reality. It is dangerous to identify a country with just one man, for if he fails then where do we turn? Every alternative support structure would have been destroyed - ideologies, leaders, institutions- and the country would have only chaos to fall back on. 

  Mr. Modi is here for the next five years. He, however, now stands at a crossroad and has to choose between two paths before him: one, the high road, leads to economic development and the lifting of 200 million people out of poverty and a subsistence existence, the consolidation of health, education and agriculture, the strengthening of institutions, the assurance that all sections and communities form part of this new India, the eradication of all classes and castes, an acceptance of Kashmiris( and not just the real estate of Kashmir) as part of India. The other, the low road, leads to an aggressive assertion of a nation postulated on only one religion and ideology, a narrow concept of what constitutes nationalism, the equation of all dissent with sedition, a majoritarian democracy that denies any space to the opposition, the steam rollering of all Kashmiri sentiments as anti-national, the use of official and public institutions to further the ruling party's political agenda, the equation of a political party with not only the government but with the country, the putting into practice Savarkar's dictum: "Hinduise all politics, militarise all Hindudom."

  There is a very real possibility that Mr. Modi may choose the latter path because it has been carved out by the organisation that he grew up in; it is also the path he has been treading on these last five years and he may well decide that, since it has worked so well so far and has given him a renewed mandate, it is the right road to follow. As the saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But this would be a mistake, for it is not the road the people of this country have given him the keys to, even though they may have temporarily bought into his heady concoction of cultural majoritarianism and masculine militarism. Cultural redefinition without economic development is not what they have voted for. They would want him to follow the high road to economic prosperity and social harmony, to lead them to a new India shorn of all the ideological and political baggage of the last seventy years, which is what he has promised them.  He alone can make the choice whether he chooses to be a Moses or a Pied Piper.

  He must choose wisely, for there will be no third chance for him and no second chance for India. 

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOKWORM.

   Hazaribagh in Bihar in the early 1960s. I was ten when I first got to know Dr. Binoy Chatterjee: I don't know how old he was, but he looked pretty old to me because when you are ten everyone beyond forty looks like he is a centenarian. Dr. Chatterjee was our family doctor (he even treated our pet bull-terrier), a homeopath, and I don't think he charged us even a penny for those white pills he handed out. He was a big, burly man but I think he had some problems with his feet because they were always heavily bandaged and he never stepped out of his house. Why do I remember him after almost 60 years? Because he introduced me to the wonders of the English language and the habit of reading.

  I was studying in St. Xavier's, Hazaribagh, and as you can imagine, we were given a constant overdose of the classics and Wren and Martin and Palgrave there. These did not, however, excite Dr. Chatterjee much. "Abhoy," he used to counsel me in that rolling Bengali accent which in later days Mamata Banerjee transformed into a rolling-pin, "classical literature is useful, but it puts the English language into a strait-jacket. Na, baba, it makes it too serious. Language must be fun, you should be able to play with it like a puppy with a ball; it should be capable of many meanings, like the fleeting glance of a beautiful woman." I saw what he meant, vaguely; I had a puppy at home and every woman looked beautiful to me, but each in a different way. And so the good doctor took it upon himself to initiate me into the unfettered world of an English language that could convey the joy of living, and not just its grim tragedies.

  Leave the classics in school, he told me sternly, and plied me instead with Mark Twain, Steinbeck, Oscar Wilde, James Hadley Chase, Perry Mason, Bennet Cerf, JJ Hunter, Jim Corbet, Max Brand, Billy Bunter, Zane Grey, Manohar Malgaonkar, Alistair Maclean, Spike Milligan, Richard Gordon  (the Doctor series), even the first edition of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam! He had the most wonderful collection of books, all carefully packed in cartons, catalogued and indexed. On top of his list was P.G.Wodehouse- Dr. Chatterjee considered him the greatest exponent of the living English language. There were many others whose names are now lost in the mists of time. The prescription was simple: one's reading must be eclectic, every genre is as important as the next, if reading is not fun then it's a waste of time. And then there were the magazines: back issues of Punch, Reader's Digest, Imprint and a glossy precursor of the National Geographic whose name I now cannot recall. The good Jesuit fathers at school would have been horrified to see my weekly reading list. And I didn't have to buy a single book: Dr. Chatterjee had trunk loads of these books and disbursed them to me lovingly, after conducting a short viva voce on each book returned by me!

   The good doctor's bug made me a bookworm for life. My family moved to Calcutta, where my grandfather had two bookshops in New Market and one in the Grand Hotel. I soon struck a Trumpian deal with him: during my school/college holidays I would hang out at the shops, help in selling the books(for which I received a commission of four annas per book), and spend the rest of the time devouring as many more as I could. I could never afford to buy a new book, of course, having started life on a pocket money of five rupees a month, which subsequent inflation took to twenty five in my college days. So one scoured College Street in Calcutta, Navin Market in Kanpur and the Red Fort/ Chor Bazaar markets in Delhi in later life for second hand books. I still have them- handsome, leather bound books picked up for as little as eight annas in those pre-globalisation days. Till today I cannot buy a book at its printed price- it has to be either a discounted Amazon one, or a Book Fair offering, or a gift!  Old habits, like old Gods, die hard.

   During this journey from Mulk Raj Anand to Bill Bryson, however, I have picked up quite a few quirks and oddities of behaviour. During my younger days I was not beyond filching a book or two from a bookshop when in a severe state of penury, which was most of the time; the SOP was quite simple, really: walk in with three books and walk out with four, the desired title sandwiched between the others. Fortunately, this phase didn't last long, thus preventing me from becoming the head librarian in Tihar jail. I don't like people borrowing books from me: I consider it an invasion of my private space and akin to borrowing someone's girl friend. I hoard newly bought books and defer reading them for as long as I can. It's like these tomes are my capital, a kind of fixed deposit, and reading them would amount to breaking the FD and depleting this precious stock. So at any given time I always have ten or fifteen unread books on my shelves and feel the richer for it.

   My sons have strenuously tried to introduce me to Kindle and digital reading, without success. How does one explain to them that a book is a living entity and not a jumble of algorithms? That it must feel good to the touch; smell of paper, ink and time; fondly remind one of where and when it was bought (or filched); enable one to make notes on the margin? How does one convey the pleasure of physical possession, or the occasional lambent brushing of fingers over the titles on the bookshelf like caressing a woman's tresses? It's a difficult feeling to convey, but I think Jawaharlal Nehru came closest to it, though in an entirely different context; it bears repeating. At a formal dinner once, Nehru and Lord Mountbatten were having tandoori chicken. Nehru was eating in the Indian style, with his fingers, but Mountbatten was making heavy weather of it with knife and fork. Panditji observed the struggle for some time, could contain himself no longer and told the Viceroy: "My lord, you should use your fingers. Eating tandoori chicken with a knife and fork is like making love to a beautiful woman through an interpreter, you know!"  That is exactly what Kindle does to reading: it can make you a promiscuous reader but not a faithful or satiated one.

  Having bared my bookworm heart, however, I am now confronted with a problem as I revel in the idyllic ambience of my village these days. I have just acquired my latest tome, Ram Chandra Guha's latest opus: GANDHI: THE YEARS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (1914-1948). It's at no.16 of my wait listed books, and in the normal course its turn for reading should come in 2020 or 2021, about the time when Rahul Gandhi's turn for Prime Ministership should be manifesting itself. But it is all of 1129 pages and weighs about four kgs. If I wait too long I may be too weak to lift it or the Grim Reaper may knock on my doors before I finish it. I have seriously considered doing a Chetan Bhagat on it, i.e. read the first and last pages only, and instantly get the gist of all that lies in-between. But that would be worse than using an interpreter- it would be like employing a stenographer: dots and dashes can never convey the beauty of a book, or of a woman, can they? So I think I'll just give it away to Arnab Goswami- it's about time he learnt something about someone other than Mr. Modi, anyway. It will fill the yawning gaps in his education about India, but best of all it would have made Dr. Chatterjee happy: he loved to show the light to Philistines.

  

TAKE A BOW, GENTLEMEN, YOU HAVE HIT ROCK BOTTOM.

   Even by the standards of our rapidly plummeting polity and social discourse the events of the last week have shocked all right ( and left) thinking people. We have known for some time that scatology is the only subject our politicians excel at, that the judiciary is headed only one way- downhill- and that our public institutions are increasingly headed by doormats who perform precisely that simple function- allow their masters to clean their feet on them and walk all over them. But last week we learnt that there are further depths to be plumbed.

   Our revered Prime Minister, who has been in this constant Atilla-the-Hun mode since he took office, has finally proved that Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar was not far off the track when he had used the "N" word for him a couple of years ago. If language is the window to a man's soul then what Mr. Modi's language reveals is the utter heart of darkness: a bitter, malicious, vindictive, egoistical, narcissistic man who has only contempt for the living and damnation for the dead. Only such a man would have used the words he did for Rajiv Gandhi, mocking his death: " when Rajiv Gandhi died he was " Bhrashtachari no. 1." Of course, we should have expected nothing better from a man who spews hatred and invective as naturally as a spitting cobra spews venom. In the past he has referred to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi as a widow who ( impliedly) benefits from a state pension and as a Jersey cow, and to Sunanda Pushkar as a " fifty crore rupee girlfriend." Nothing is too crass, or obscene, or base for his tongue. He constantly derides the benefits of education ( " hard work" vs " Harvard" jibe), but just compare a speech of Mr. Modi with one by the man he has a pathological hatred of, Jawaharlal Nehru, and one can see what Mr. Modi has missed. The vicious manner in which he has of late been vilifying an ex- Prime Minister who died 28 years ago may show his desperation, but it also reveals that he is perhaps also delusional and has lost touch with reality. He has robbed the office of Prime Minister of all dignity and gravitas.

   Can the Election Commission of India crumble any further? is the question being asked this week. After sitting ( no doubt paralysed with fear) over election related complaints against Mr. Modi and Mr. Amit Shah for weeks, it has now absolved the former of any culpability in all the nine complaints against him, and Mr. Shah of those against him, for good measure. This is the final imprimatur of its partisanship and impotency. This is a Commission that finds a reference to a woman's underwear a bigger violation than the categorisation of a murdered Prime Minister as India's most corrupt man, even though he had been acquitted by both a High Court and the Supreme Court! Did Mr. Seshan and Mr. Lyngdoh labour so bravely so that the pygmies who succeeded them could drive this once great institution to the ground? Only Mr. Ashok Lavasa, according to some media reports, had the guts to recommend that the these complaints were justified and that FIRs should be registered against both. Mr. Shah and Modi . Mr. Lavasa holds out hope that when the real acche din return ( as they must) the institution can be revived and released from the clutches of time servers.

   The biggest scandal of the past week, however, has to be the murky goings on in the Supreme Court and its upending of all canons of justice and fair play in the " in-house" inquiry" into the sexual molestation charges against the CJI. The three judge panel has denied every legal right to the complainant, proceeded exparte against her, followed no procedure known to law, and hastily issued a report that raises more questions than it answers. It has taken the extraordinarily perverse decision to give a copy of its inquiry report to the accused( the CJI) but refused to furnish it to the complainant! The refusal to make it public, or to state the reasons for its finding exonerating the CJI of all charges, cannot but raise awkward suspicions and questions: Why did the 3 member panel conduct an "informal inquiry" instead of adopting the process laid down in POSH Act or the Vishakha judgement or even the ICC guidelines? Why did it refuse requests by eminent jurists( including Justice Chandrachud and even the Attorney General) to coopt an external member to the panel ? Did it examine the evidence ( thirty pieces of documentary evidence were submitted by the complainant, according to Mr. Prashant Bhushan in an interview to the QUINT) and the witnesses cited by her? Why did it not allow the complainant to cross-examine/ confront the CJI ? Did it examine the trail of persecution of the complainant and her family by the Court and the police after the incident? Did it look into the procedure followed by the court Registry while imposing the unusually disproportionate penalty of dismissal on her for availing just a half day's casual leave? Why were the enquiry proceedings not video-graphed? Why was she not given a copy of her statements to the committee? Civil society is by no means endorsing the veracity of the charges against the CJI: it is questioning the processes followed by the Court to inquire into them.

   More questions and misgivings will inevitably emerge with the passage of time, protests have already broken out across the country including Delhi, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Mumbai, politicians too will soon jump into the fray once election fever has abated. The Supreme Court cannot stifle these voices by imposing Section 144 CRPC and forcibly detaining those who protest its suspect conduct, as it did on the 7th of this month. It has to come clean with the facts and the strange processes it appears to have followed in this modern version of the Spanish Inquisition, it has to break the peculiar vow of Omerta its judges have taken to protect one of their own. Opacity cannot be a defence. A court's best defence is its reputation for fair play and its credibility; if it has to be protected by the police and the power of contempt instead, then its days are numbered. Judges do not define a court, the universal principles of justice, fair play and transparency do so; silence and opacity do not build judicial reputations, courage and conviction do. How our Supreme Court will respond to this existential challenge will determine whether it survives as a beacon of hope in these dark times or sinks into the morass which has already engulfed all our other public institutions. It has dug itself into a hole and should now stop digging any further.

   It has been a bad week for all of us. How much further can we sink as a country?

NIGHT BUS TO MANDI.

   Most people would would be surprised to learn that Himachal's most iconic symbols are neither Preity Zingta nor Kangana Ranaut, it is the HRTC (Himachal Road Transport Corporation) bus- green and white in colour when the money for a paint job is available, a muddy ochre  when it is not; battered and dented, baskets of fruits , vegetables and a few drunken Rohru types perched on the roof; a goat or two ruminating on the back seats. Nothing represents Himachal better than a fully loaded HRTC bus, clawing its suicidal way up mountain roads that have no reason to be there, one rear wheel on the road, the other off it, mocking the sheer abyss below it. This humble bus has kept the state connected since long before the roads were taken over by the private cars, SUVs and taxis; it has been the lifeline for Himachal's commerce, tourism, agriculture, and has given the state a sense of collective identity.

   Its drivers are iconic figures themselves, role models for every village youth and even Mr. Modi's chaiwallahs, pakoda wallahs and chowkidars have not been able to displace them. They are the counterparts of the gunslingers of the American wild west- a rough breed with their own distinct language and culture, risking their lives daily on roads that defy the accepted laws of gravity, physics and engineering. Every second rural teen aspires to become an HRTC driver. On rural routes, where the buses have to park at night at the terminal point of their route, villagers vie with each other to offer board and lodging (free of course) to the driver, for he is their vital life line to the modern world and markets outside.  Relatively well travelled and widely respected, he is also a potent opinion maker, especially when it comes to elections!

   My first experience with the HRTC occured in 1977 when I had to take my brand new bride to Mandi where I was undergoing my IAS training. In those pre-Gadkari days there were only two services to Mandi, one during the day and one overnight. On a cold February night, therefore, Neerja and I boarded the night bus to Mandi at Kashmiri Gate (an ordinary one, there were no AC or deluxe buses then). As an IAS probationer I was allotted the favoured seats just behind the driver. The bus was overcrowded and smelt of Himachal- garlic, angoori, sheep (everybody was wearing the "pattu" coats) and the vapours released by sturdy tribals who had dined well, if not wisely. Fresh out of Lady Shri Ram, Neerja was adorned in tight jeans, jacket and boots; the driver took an instant liking to her and invited her to sit next to him on the hot engine cover. She declined, not wishing to become the toast of the evening. The journey took all of ten bone-breaking hours, we lost most of our luggage (kept on the roof) on the steep climb from Kiratpur to Swarghat. and the bus broke down twice, coincidentally at "desi sharab ka thekas" where the driver would disappear for half an hour and reappear saying he had fixed the fuel pipe! I am happy to report that our marriage survived this first test, and every trial and travail since then has been a cakewalk in comparison.

   In subsequent years one got to travel quite a lot in HRTC buses, because back then it was the fortunate SDM (Sub-divisional Magistrate) who got a Jeep to himself. I as SDM Chamba had to share one with the SDM Dalhousie, my good friend C. Balakrishnan, who in later years managed the impossible feat of retiring as Secretary Coal in the central government without getting charge-sheeted or imprisoned. I toured extensively by bus in Churah, Tissa, Salooni and Bharmour, some of the most undeveloped areas of the state, and developed a healthy respect for HRTC and its staff.

   In the late eighties I was appointed as Managing Director of this creaking behemoth, with 1200 buses and 7000 staff. And here I learnt of some endearing tricks they kept up their sleeve. Leaking of revenues (pocketing the fare instead of issuing tickets) is an existential problem for all state transport undertakings. We used to set up "nakas" everywhere at all hours of the day and night to nab the rascals but rarely succeeded in netting anyone after the first catch. I soon discovered that these chaps had perfected a wireless form of communicating with other buses to warn them of the checkpoints. Remember, this was decades before the advent of the cell phone. They had a system of coded signals which was flashed to all other buses "en passant", as it were, warning them of the impending check post. We rarely caught any fish after the first one.

   There were no private buses in those pre- liberalisation days and HRTC functioned as a monopoly. This gave their unions enormous power, and they flexed their muscles every six months by going on a strike just for the heck of it. The officers were accustomed to the tried and tested SOP- we were all locked up in our rooms in the head office, sans food or water, gheraoed in proper Labour Day style till we signed on the dotted line. I decided to develop an SOP of my own the day before the next strike. I rang up an old friend, AK Puri who was the DIG (Police) Shimla,  reminded him of our good old days in Bilaspur (AK was the Superintendent of Police there when I was the Deputy Commissioner), and expressed the hope that he would like to see me in one piece after the next day's strike. AK responded like a champion : the next day the HRTC office was flooded with more policemen than are currently on election duty in West Bengal. The gherao was rendered "non est", the unions decided they didn't have a grievance after all, and I had no more strikes for the duration of my tenure- cut short, sadly, by a Minister who was miffed by the fact that I didn't see (say?) "Aye to Aye" with him!

   There were no hard feelings, however. Almost twenty years later a tree fell on me while I was taking my dog for a walk in a snowstorm. I busted three spinal vertebras, two ribs and punctured a lung and spleen for good measure. I was laid up in hospital for three months and the doctors told me I would probably never walk again without crutches. While I was absorbing all this a group of HRTC drivers came to see me. They told me of a "vaid" in Mandi who fixed broken bones (even vertebras) with a concoction made out of herbs and roots which had to be taken four times a day with ghee and honey. They assured me that it would have me on my feet again in two months. On my expressing some well founded scepticism they told me something which made a lot of sense.

" Look, sir, we are breaking our bones all the time in some bus accident or the other. We don't go to any hospital, we go to this vaid, and he has cured each and every one of us. We all speak from personal experience. Please give him a try- you are already flat on your back, you can't get any lower than that, can you?"

Since this rhetorical question was one which even Mr. Subramaniam Swamy would have found difficult to answer, I agreed. Every week one of these good samaritans would bring me a fresh batch of the unctuous, foul smelling concoction, with some of the precious "shilajit" as an added kick. I banished the doctors and surgeons to their autopsy rooms and within three months I was playing golf again, even though my swing is not what it used to be- earlier I used to move the ball, now I move more of terra firma. A couple of years later I retired from service with most of my spine intact, no mean achievement for a bureaucrat, if I say so myself ! All because of a bunch of ne'er do wells who remembered an MD who had out-smarted them at their own game twenty years ago.

   It's been a long association with HRTC and I've gained more from it than I have given. And it all started with a night bus for Mandi forty two years ago.  

THE SC MOLESTATION CASE: CHANGING THE NARRATIVE ?

   Most of my friends ( a list getting shorter every year by natural attrition, Alzheimers and my insistence that Sunny Leone and not Narender Modi is God's gift to India) frequently assure me that I am not as stupid as I look. Notwithstanding the back handed compliment, however, I am unable to make any sense of the goings on in the sexual molestation charge against the CJI, Mr. Ranjan Gogoi. There are well established laws( mandated by the Supreme Court itself) and precedents to take care of such cases. Why then is the whole narrative being changed  to treat it as a conspiracy against the judiciary and the CJI  rather than what it is: an apparently well documented and easily verifiable complaint of sexual impropriety?

   There is a tendency in India for all powerful public figures to allege a "conspiracy" whenever they are charged with any wrong doing. The Chidambarams do so when they are enquired into in the Aircel-Maxis case, the PM when he is accused of irregularities in the Rafael deal, MJ Akbar when he is called out for giving interviews in his underwear, Kamal Nath when his aides are caught with crores of unaccounted lucre. The CJI has just added himself to the list. Apart from anything else this betrays a hubris of monumental proportions- why should he equate himself with the honoured institution of the Supreme Court? Like all other judges he is a bird of passage: the Court was there before him and will be there long after he has hung up his wig and gown. The junior assistant was not complaining about the Court but about him. He is not the court, the institution is much bigger than him.

   The conspiracy dimension was raised by the CJI himself when he stated that the accusations were meant to "deactivate" his position. And from hereon the entire focus is being sought to be shifted from the sexual imputation to the " undermining the judiciary" narrative. It has found support from a lot of strange characters who have nothing to do with the case and have clearly jumped the gun: the Registrar General, the Attorney General, Solicitor General, the indefatigable Mr. Jaitley, the President of the Bar Council of India, and a hitherto unknown lawyer who has emerged from the woodwork at just the opportune moment to allege that he was offered a huge bribe to implicate Mr. Gogoi in a sexual molestation case.

   I am no legal eagle and can't tell a habeas from a corpus but even my sub par IQ tells me that this case has too many coincidences and unanswered questions for it to be glibly dismissed as a plot against the CJI. As a concerned layman here are the ones that bother me:

* Whatever prompted Mr. Gogoi to throw caution and the law to the winds and hold that unusual hearing on the 20th ? By doing so he converted what should have been handled administratively under the Vishakha and the court's own internal guidelines into a judicial hearing.

* Even this hearing was conducted in an irregular manner on various counts, as many legal luminaries have pointed out: no notice was issued to the complainant, it was held ex-parte; Mr. Gogoi made every effort to vilify the complainant and criminalise her character even though she was not present to defend herself; he flouted the very essence of justice and fair play by repudiating the basic principle " nemo judex in causa sua" ( nobody should be a judge in his own cause); he presided over the bench but his signature does not appear on the proceedings.

* The three judge committee nominated by Justice Bobde to inquire into the lady's complaint violated the Vishakha guidelines of the court itself: the guidelines state that the majority of members should be women, but initially only one was nominated against two gentlemen. Thankfully, this has now been rectified when the complainant objected.

* This committee is even otherwise flawed: it is a basic principle of administrative enquiries that those doing the inquiry should not be junior to the person being enquired into- in this case they are all junior to the CJI and very much under his administrative influence. Would it not have been better, and more credible, to have set up a committee of distinguished retired judges/ jurists as some elements of civil society had demanded? 

*  This committee's rules of process do not ensure a level playing field for the complainant. She has been prohibited from taking the assistance of a lawyer during the hearings. Even though her adversary is a sitting Chief Justice with 40 years of legal experience and acumen! Nothing could be more unequal or more prejudicial to her rights. She has to be allowed a legal counsel at all times.

* And here are some of the amazing coincidences in this case:

         - The complainant had a consistently good record of service but suddenly after the alleged incident ( October 2018) she was found to be so incompetent as to merit dismissal from service.

         -  In my 35 years in govt. service I have never come across a case where an employee was summarily dismissed for availing a day's casual leave without authorisation! In fact, the reverse is the norm: people usually first avail unsanctioned leave and then get it regularised! Why this overkill? How fair were the disciplinary proceedings against her, and what were the reasons for imposing such an excessive punishment on her?

         -  It is intriguing that the complainant's travails all started AFTER the alleged incident, and that her family was suddenly found to be a criminal one: not only was she dismissed but so also were her husband, her handicapped brother and brother-in-law in quick succession. An old case of dispute between neighbours( which was compromised amicably in writing) was dug up years later and the whole family arrested. A criminal case of accepting a bribe was registered against her in January 2019 and she was again sent to jail. She is out on bail currently, but - surprise! surprise!- the police are now asking for her bail to be cancelled.

         - Why and how did a lowly SHO have the temerity and gall to take her to the CJI's house to make her apologise to Mrs. Gogoi ? [ This is one of the allegations made by the complainant but it can be easily verified from the movement register in the Tilak Nagar police station/ visitor's register in the CJI's residence. The lady claims she also has a taped video of the relevant conversation with the SHO.]
         - How does one explain the extraordinary claim that the complainant ( a lowly junior Assistant) and her husband were issued a special pass for the CJI's swearing in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, or that her physically challenged brother was appointed in the Court from the CJI's discretionary quota? 

   These questions and coincidences cry out for answers and explanations. For, at first reading, this chain of actions does lend credence to the assumption that the complainant and her family were singled out for special attention. The lady's allegations are far more detailed than what is usual in sexual molestation cases, and each one is easily verifiable. The circumstantial evidence about her "victimisation" could also be a matter of record with the SC Registry and the Delhi police. That is why it would be wrong and dangerous to treat the matter primarily as a conspiracy against the CJI. It is eminently possible that Mr. Gogoi is completely innocent, but this cannot be certified by he himself: only an independent, unbiased, time bound inquiry based on fair legal principles and not on emotions or jingoism, can determine the actual facts in the case. 

   Unfortunately, as I've said earlier, the narrative is subtly being sought to be changed, with greater emphasis being placed on the perceived threat to the judiciary by "fixers", rather than on the woman employee's complaint. The lawyer from the woodwork, Mr. Utsav Bains, has categorically stated in his affidavit that this molestation charge against the CJI is part of the conspiracy to demean him and to get him to resign. In other words, he has alleged a nexus between the two cases. Therefore, the logical thing to do was to order an enquiry into the woman's charges, wait for its finding and only then decide the course of action on Mr. Bain's accusations. For, if the woman's charges are proved to be true and Mr. Gogoi is held liable for inappropriate behaviour, then Mr. Bain's case collapses on its own. If, on the other hand, the employee's complaint is determined to be false and mischievous then the whole weight of the law should be brought to bear upon unravelling the conspiracy. Right now the second inquiry is premature, hasty and will serve no purpose other than misdirecting the focus away from the molestation aspect and branding the poor woman as a conspiracy suspect.
   There are far too many permutations and combinations in this case. Both the charges- the lady's and Mr. Bains'- could be false or both could be true, or one could be false and one true. If it is the first then severe and exemplary action should be taken against both. If it is the second then the Court is in serious trouble, but merely because a conspiracy against the Court is established is no reason to assume that the employee's charges are mischievous and untrue: that has to be established on its own merits, as hopefully Justice Bobde's panel will do. The danger lies in playing one accusation off against the other-each should be examined independent of the other. Both are equally portentous for the future of the judiciary.  

    Finally, the Hon' Justices of the Court should be wary of the unsolicited and over hasty support of the government  and its law officers, even before the facts have been adjudicated on.  Mr. Jaitley's role here is that of the wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood fable. This govt. does not serve free lunches and an invite to its table could be an even bigger threat to the independence of the judiciary than the complaint of a junior employee.

A SKEWED PLAYING FIELD, A MODEL CODE IN TATTERS.

            

   The odds are stacked against the non-NDA opposition in the current elections to Parliament. I am not speaking about the preferences of the voter but about the electoral processes, which have been customised to suit the ruling party.

   Consider first the fact that the actual polling has been stretched out over an interminable seven phases lasting 40 days as if there is a total collapse of law and order in the country. The argument that this ensures a “ free and fair” polling is specious because in fact it does just the opposite. Such an extended campaigning period stretches the resources- men, material and money- of political parties but eminently suits the BJP and the government. The latter is flush with funds- it received Rs.1200 crores in donations last year as against Rs. 200 crores for the Congress, and 95% of all electoral bonds- and can therefore sustain a long campaign much better than the others.

   It is also interesting to note that the four states where the BJP’s stakes are the highest, both in terms of retaining seats and gaining new ones, are the ones where the maximum number of phases have been notified- UP, West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha.  UP, Bihar and West Bengal have been salami-sliced into 7 phases each and Odisha into 4. Now, if indeed security was such a concern, surely it made more sense to  saturate them with security personnel at one go and have the polling over with in just one or two phases? That would give less time to the mischief makers to organise themselves and cause any disruption; in fact, doing so would have stretched THEIR resources. Instead now they can move sequentially from constituency to constituency, state to state, leisurely over a six week period. The only party which gains with this absurd scheduling is the BJP because it will now allow their main- perhaps only- vote catcher, Mr. Modi, to travel to and campaign in each clutch of constituencies and states one after the other, which would not have been possible in a single or two phase polling. It is hard not to surmise that the scheduling has been crafted by the Election Commission in order to enable Mr. Modi to cover as much of the country as possible.

   Secondly, the whole electoral process has been vitiated, and the playing field distorted, by the Electoral Bonds,  introduced  in 2017. This has ensured the financial superiority and resource advantage of the BJP over the others. Earlier, Big Business spread its donations over a number of political parties in order to hedge their bets because the contributions were public knowledge. The opacity built into the Electoral Bonds now ensures that only the government knows( through the banks). And this is a govt. with a track record of using enforcement agencies for political objectives. It would be a stupid industrialist who would now have the temerity to contribute to any party but the ruling party.

   To encourage even greater magnanimity from them Mr. Jaitley then removed the 7.5% cap on political donations by companies and even permitted foreign companies to contribute. Is it therefore any surprise that of the Rs. 215 crore worth of Electoral Bonds purchased in 2017-18, as much as 210 crores went to the BJP?

   Electoral Bonds have been the most damaging perversion of India’s democratic process for they have put an unhealthy premium on money as the arbiter of elections. Bonds worth Rs.1716 crore have been purchased in just the last 3 months! The ECI has to share a large part of the blame for allowing this, for in 2016-17 it did nothing substantial to stop their introduction, apart from mumbling its reservations about it to the govt. The ECI is not subservient to the govt.- it is a constitutional body tasked with protecting the country’s electoral landscape. It was its duty to have immediately challenged the matter in the Supreme Court and obtained a stay. It lacked the courage to do so; it was left to a voluntary election watchdog and an RTI activist to do so. The SC has now asked all parties to submit the list of donors( unfortunately again in a sealed cover) to the ECI and shall finally  decide on the matter soon, but the damage has been done and the playing field for the 2019 elections has been badly tilted in favour of the BJP by these Bonds.

   Unfortunately, it’s the same with the Model Code of Conduct( MCC), which is no longer worth the paper it is written on. Minor infractions are noted and invite the usual notices, but no worthwhile action is ever taken on the more major violations, usually committed by the ruling party or its supporters within the govt. The public speech of Kalyan Singh, the Rajasthan Governor, seeking votes for the BJP was ignored by the ECI till a complaint was lodged. The ECI should have asked the President to sack the Governor, or at least to  censure him and send him on leave for the duration of the polling period. Instead, it  “forwarded” a report to the President who has also “forwarded” it to the govt. Rest assured nothing more will happen. The Vice Chairman of NITI Ayog, a govt. employee, openly criticised Rahul Gandhi’s promise of a minimum income guarantee scheme; he should have been immediately removed from his post but the ECI was content to simply administer a tender rap on the knuckles, sending a signal to all govt. servants that as long as one is on the right side of the govt. the MCC can be safely ignored.

  There have been other instances where an impartial ECI would have taken exemplary action: the announcement of the ASAT launch on 27^th March, its telecast on Doordarshan and the Prime Minister using the occasion to buttress his nationalistic credentials; Yogi Adithyanath invoking the Army as “ Modi’s Army. The PM has been absolved of any wrong doing in the first case while the Yogi has been belatedly barred from campaigning for 72 hours, as have Mayawati and Azam Khan, but only after a public outcry and a stern notice by the SC. The ECI has redeemed itself somewhat by banning the release of the PM’s biopic, and asking Namo TV to precertify its programmes. But questions of its registration, funding and ownership still remain and the govt. is in no hurry to investigate them.  And all this while Chief Secretaries and DGPs of opposition ruled states are being shifted without assigning any cogent reasons. There has been no word from the ECI yet about the Code violations by the Prime Minister himself: the continued appeals to (first time) voters to vote for Pulwama, Balakot and their martyrs, the ASAT announcement and the broadcasting of his Chowkidar sammelan on official channels. Will similar rules and standards be applied to him?

   One wishes the ECI would stop just barking and bite more often. Its reluctance to take stern action does not live up to the Commission’s glorious past when it had ensured the resignation of a Himachal Governor for campaigning for his son and had debarred Bal Thackerey from contesting elections because he had indulged in hate speech. Of what use is a watchdog if it has no fight in it?

DON'T MIX UP THE MODEL CODE WITH A MORAL CODE.

   What can be more ironical and hypocritical in these farcical times than the fact that a lady candidate's allegedly khaki underwear has become the symbol of the ECI's Model Code of Conduct? All channels and print media have gone apoplectic with their coverage of Mr. Azam Khan's statement and denounced him for it. And condemned he should be, not only for the sewage tank between his ears, but also for the vulgarity of his tongue. But in our obsession with his crudity are we not losing the plot? Are we not replacing a Model code of Conduct with a moral one and thereby allowing the violators of the first to get away by concentrating too much on the second?

  The Election Commission's Model Code is meant to ensure that the elections are fought fairly, that campaigning does not appeal to religion or incite hatred or violence, that no illegal or impermissible gratification is held out to the voter, and most important, that the govt. of the day does not use its vast powers or discretion to seduce, threaten or intimidate the voter or other political parties. The colour of one's underwear or a vivid description of one's lineage certainly does not do any of these things.  (In fact, I read somewhere that one lady candidate from the south has been allotted a pair of panties as her election symbol , though its colour I believe has not been specified !)

  I therefore submit that what Mr. Azam Khan said, reprehensible as it is, does not amount to a violation of the Model Code. It is only a continuation of the sexist mentality and gutter language employed by our political leaders and Parliamentarians towards women all along. And it is not the purpose of the Model Code to improve the character of our politicians, which in most cases is beyond redemption. Given the complete breakdown of of political discourse it is par for the course to call somebody a "chor" or to call somebody a " mother****" ( as a leading politician in HP referred to Rahul Gandhi recently) or threaten a community to vote for a particular candidate or else. In fact, I personally find nothing wrong in Mayawati asking Muslims to vote for her alliance or, at the other end of the spectrum, Maneka Gandhi warning the same community to vote for her or else their work would not be done post elections. Taking umbrage at these comments is pure hypocrisy and two-faced sanctimoniousness.

  Targeting castes, communities, religions and assorted vote blocks is the very essence of Indian elections. It is what "alliances" are all about, it is the criteria which determines in large measure the selection of candidates, it is the guiding spirit of manifestos and promises. There is, of course, a very thin veneer of talk of "development" to disguise this opportunistic nucleus of communalism and casteism, but it fools nobody: the entire thrust of all campaigning is the wooing of these disparate constituencies. So what is wrong with Mayawati telling Muslims to consolidate their votes against the BJP? Or with Maneka Gandhi issuing a word of caution to her Muslim voters? After all, all electioneering is transactional- you vote for me and I will get your work done- whether it is deporting Muslim" infiltrators", or stopping sealing in Delhi, or giving a farm loan waiver, or reducing GST or waiving off corporate loans, or promising to build a Ram mandir. All Maneka Gandhi did was to cast off this patina of self serving hypocrisy and call a spade a shovel, as she is wont to do. 

  My sincere advice to the ECI, which has plumbed the depths of sycophancy by suspending an IAS officer in Odisha for having the rare courage( these days) to do his duty, is to delink the moral from the model in its election Code, to ignore the first and focus on the second which is where the substantive violations take place. Let those who feel "abused" and "insulted" in these dystopic times sue their calumners in a civil court, file criminal cases or change the colour of their underwear, as the case may be. The Commission should stop running around like a headless chicken after red herrings and concentrate on the REAL violations- the misuse of the Income Tax and Enforcement Deptt. in organising raids on only opposition politicians, the continued appeals of the Prime Minister for votes in the name of our soldiers, the persistent malfunctioning of EVMs, the extremely shady goings on in NAMO TV, the rising crescendo of missing voters from  voting lists, the discovery of hundreds of voter ID cards from a drain in Delhi, the mystery of the black box in the PM's chopper, the spiralling polling violence in West Bengal, the serial offences of Yogi Adithyanath ( the day after his 72 hour ban ended he was at it again by calling a Muslim candidate " Babur ki aulad." It has been found terribly wanting in this sphere of responsibility. It should not expend its energy and resources on chasing what are ethical violations and have little effect on how a citizen votes. Concentrate on the real issues, gentlemen, and do not give the appearance of being busy with frivolities while the whole election is being hijacked from under your re-employed noses. Your job is to conduct a fair election and not to protect reputations or reform degenerate characters. Let the voter be the judge of that.