Get India going, don’t worry about Hindi

We really don’t need tax-funded babus to promote Hindi or protect India’s official language from Macaulay Putras. What we need is to focus on getting India going. Hindi has no role to play in that.

Language has always been a contentious issue in India which is probably the only country without a common link language that is indigenous or integral to its civilisational history. We could argue that the English language today is as much an Indian language as it is the lingua franca of Britain, and that it is the language that has contributed the most to a globalised world. But that would not detract from the fact that it was the language of our colonial masters and is part of the legacy the British left behind when they departed in 1947.

Hindi, on the other hand, was the language of anti-colonialism; along with khadi, it came to symbolise the struggle for swarajya by adopting, and extolling the virtues of, all that was swadeshi. This is largely because the leadership of the Congress, such as it was and crafted in large measure by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, came from what is known as India’s ‘Hindi belt’.

It is another matter that most of the Congress’s leaders were equally, if not more, comfortable with English, the language in which Jawaharlal Nehru embarked upon his ‘Discovery of India’ and Gandhi pamphleteered both in his early and later days. That section of the Congress which had not been seduced by the charms of European liberalism or Fabian socialism saw Hindi as one of the three mainstays of Indian nationalism – Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan was more than a slogan; it was a lofty idea.

However, this attempt to conflate the identity of a culturally homogenous Bharat with a single language, Hindi, was not embraced by a multi-cultural India. Resistance was both overt and covert. The Congress Government led by C Rajagopalachari, which tried to enforce Hindi as a compulsory language in schools in the Madras Presidency, met with stiff resistance to he propogation of  ‘national language’. The Justice Party, which was to later evolve into the Dravidar Kazhagam, led by EV Ramasamy, was relentless in its protest that ended only after Lord Erskine, the Governor of Madras Presidency, withdrew the order in February 1940.

Twenty-five years later anti-Hindi protests resurfaced in Madras State when the DMK refused to be mollified by Nehru’s Official Languages Act that was meant to ensure the continuation of both Hindi and English as India’s official languages after the constitutionally mandated period of 15 years. It required Mrs Indira Gandhi’s amendments to the Act to end the anti-Hindi riots, but by then language had become the instrument of regional politics. The DMK won the 1967 election, the Congress has never been able to resuscitate itself in what is now Tamil Nadu.

Tamil obduracy is well documented and remains the yardstick to measure popular sentiments against Hindi as India’s official language. But the opposition exists across the country beyond the ‘Hindi belt’. In the North-East, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Goa, indeed across vast stretches of the country, Hindi is resented if not despised. Truth be told, many would see the promotion, leave alone imposition, of Hindi as an attempt to obliterate local culture and language. India nationalism, whether we like it or not, is the sum total of sub-nationalism; it’s best kept that way. It is debatable whether it was wise to opt for linguistic States, but having made that the foundation of the Union of India, tampering with it would be unwise.

These thought are occasioned by last week’s brouhaha over a circular issued by the Raj Bhasha Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, asking Government officials to use Hindi, or Hindi and English, while communicating on social media platforms. As expected, the DMK was the first to object, followed by others who clearly rushed in to protest without even reading the circular. The media had a field day, spinning a story out of nothing. Worse, crucial details were suppressed to fuel the fire.

Even the most casual reading of the circular would have revealed to the outraged politicians and their followers, as also obnoxious Hindi bullies, that such instructions are routinely issued by the Raj Bhasha Department babus who, frankly, are more concerned about protecting their jobs and privileges than in promoting Hindi. It would have also revealed that the circular is based on a decision taken on March 10, 2014, when the Congress and not the BJP was in power. The circular is dated May 27, a day after Mr Narendra Modi took oath of office as Prime Minister and two days before Mr Rajnath Singh took charge as Home Minister. Most important, the circular is meant for officials in Category A States which, in any case, use Hindi as their official language.

Yet the circular was projected, wilfully so, by the media as an instruction issued by the Modi Sarkar. The Government was criticised and lampooned (depending on the news channel or newspaper) for getting obsessed with Hindi instead of focussing on bread and butter issues. Strangely, there was no immediate clarification by either the Government or the BJP. It required a clarification from the PMO to put an end to the manufactured controversy more than 72 hours after it surfaced as ‘Breaking News’.

Needless distraction from core issues of governance, and there’s enough on this front to keep the Government busy, is best avoided by reading out the riot act to the various departments that make up the mammoth Government of India: Nothing should be done to take away attention from immediate tasks and long-term goals. The Modi Sarkar came to power promising ‘India First’. For a junior babu to try and supplant that promise with ‘Hindi First’ is downright objectionable and outright dangerous. Others will take this as a cue to peddle their own agenda to protect their livelihood.

In any event, the Modi Sarkar is supposed to break the status quo and chart a new course. That should include abandoning misplaced notions of language chauvinism. Hindi is hale and hearty, spreading rapidly and subverting foreign languages like English, thanks to Bollywood and a thriving desi culture. We really don’t need tax-funded babus to promote Hindi or protect India’s official language from Macaulay Putras. What we need is to focus on getting India going. Hindi has no role to play in that.

Planning Commission releases study praising Gujarat’s success in manufacturing, focus on MSMEs

A new study, conducted for the Planning Commission, explains in detail how Gujarat has facilitated the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises, and emerged as among the top States in manufacturing. 

A new report, released by the Planning Commission, praises Gujarat for its innovative initiatives to promote the job-generating, growth-driving manufacturing sector. The report explains in detail how Gujarat has facilitated the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises, and emerged as among the top States in manufacturing. This finding negates the politically-motivated baseless allegation that only big industry is promoted in Gujarat.

The study, ‘Survey on Business Regulatory Environment for Manufacturing – State Level Assessment’, has been conducted by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Private Limited (DTTIPL). Commissioned by the Planning Commission, the release of the report coincides with Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma’s desperate attempt to downplay the DIPP-funded study on improving India’s business regulatory environment that hailed Gujarat’s land acquisition policy as the best in the country.

The ‘Gujarat Model’ just cannot be wished away, no matter how hard the detractors of the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who as Chief Minister of Gujarat has taken the State to new heights of economic success, try to disprove facts. Anand Sharma will now have to contend with the report commissioned by the Planning Commission which supplements the findings of the DIPP-funded study.

The DTTIPL study has highlighted Gujarat’s iNDEXTb initiative which serves the dual purpose of facilitating enterprise and monitoring the implementation of investment proposals. The study says, “iNDEXTb is a nodal agency under the Industries Commissionerate, Government of Gujarat for providing hand-holding support to entrepreneurs. The Investor Facilitation Portal developed by iNDEXTb facilitates monitoring of investment proposals by generating MIS reports, which can be used by officials to identify applications on which action has not been taken within the stipulated time frame.”

The study points out how iNDEXTb assists entrepreneurs by helping them finalise their choice of location for setting up a manufacturing unit. This is done by providing critical information on access to three key basic inputs – land, power and water. The Investor Facilitation Portal’s assistance is available for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as well as large enterprises across all sectors. The facilitation is for both setting up new industries as well as for expanding existing manufacturing units.

“Some of the States have developed GIS-based software which shows mapping of land plots in industrial estates,” the study says, adding, “The real time vacancy details can be checked by applicants and the applicants can select plots based on analysis of such location.” Citing the example of Gujarat, the study says, “iNDEXTb has a GIS-based software which shows the geographic mapping of industrial areas in Gujarat, including highways, GPCB zones, CRZs, port connectivity, soil quality, power and utilities grid connectivity, etc.”

Knocking the bottom out of mendacious allegation leveled by the detractors of Narendra Modi that the State Government promotes only a few big companies, the report says: “For reaching out to micro enterprises, iNDEXTb has set up kiosks at 26 district industries centres. These kiosks are equipped with infrastructure facilities such as internet connectivity, printer and scanner.”

The study refrains from assigning ranks to States. What it has done is to cluster States on the basis of six parameters. These are: finance and tax related compliances; labour law related compliances; infrastructure and utility related approvals; land and building related approvals; environmental clearances; and, other business regulatory compliances.

States have been clustered in three categories – ‘Top’ 33.33 percentile of States; ‘Middle’ 33.33 percentile of States; and, ‘Bottom’ 33.33 percentile of States.

The findings of the study show that Gujarat figures among the ‘Top’ category comprising nine States that have been assessed on all six parameters. Gujarat figures among the top States on four select parameters – finance and tax related compliances; infrastructure and utility related approvals; land and building related approvals; and, other business regulatory compliances. On environmental clearance, Gujarat has been put in the ‘Middle’ category of States. Only on labour law related compliances, Gujarat is placed in the ‘Bottom’ category of States.

Explaining the last categorisation, an analyst said “this classification can be turned around to trash the allegation that the Modi Government does not protect the interests of workers. The fact is that the Government protects the overall interests, which can at times be conflicting, of all stakeholders by holding growth and development for all as the supreme objective.”

The study comes with the rider that it solely focuses on assessing the existing business regulatory framework in individual States. “Other key factors that impact the performance of manufacturing units, like quality of infrastructure, availability of natural resources, market linkages, labour and skill availability, access to finance, etc, have not been covered in the current study,” it says, adding, “Consequently, the relative standing of individual States may differ from their relative contribution to India’s manufacturing GDP.”

Elaborating on this point, the study explains, “For example, a particular State may have been identified as being relatively mature in its business regulatory environment but may not have an equivalent standing in terms of contribution to India’s manufacturing GDP owing to limited natural resources within its geographic boundaries.”

Commenting on Gujarat’s success in manufacturing sector, it notes that the State ranked second in the country in terms of share of manufacturing GDP, contributing around 13.7 per cent of manufacturing GDP in 2011-12. The State’s manufacturing sector contributed 28.2 per cent to Gujarat’s GSDP in 2011-12, with a CAGR of 9.5 per cent between 2007-08 and 2011-12. The sector employed around 3.4 million people in 2009-10 representing 13.7 per cent of Gujarat’s working population.

Referring to interaction with industries, the study says: “It is understood that Gujarat is a power surplus State with respondents expressing satisfaction on quality and availability of power. It was also indicated that quality and availability of water has improved over the years.  Road network and rail connectivity have also shown improvement.”

Priyanka Vadra should Google for ‘tandoor case’, ‘Bhanwari Devi’, ‘Kalpana Giri’…

May more women find themselves as privileged as Priyanka Vadra. May their husbands get to bypass airport security on account of their wives’ exalted status. And may they also get to buy farmland cheap and convert it to expensive industrial land. In brief, may more mothers-in-law be as ‘empowered’ as Sonia Gandhi, ‘safe’ in the knowledge that the long arm of the law is not long enough to touch them.

Faced with its worst-ever defeat as this summer’s general election winds down, the Congress has decided to blindly hit out at Narendra Modi, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate riding an unprecedented popularity wave, hoping to score a sixer. It has had no luck till now.

On Wednesday, Priyanka Vadra, who describes herself as “daughter (of Sonia Gandhi), sister (of Rahul Gandhi), wife (of Robert Vadra) and mother (we shall keep children’s names out)” lashed out at Modi, saying, “If you’re talking about women’s empowerment, don’t snoop on their conversations.”

On Tuesday Mrs Vadra had feigned anger that her husband, the one and only Robert Vadra who is possibly the biggest landlord today after the Indian Railways, and has mastered the magic of turning a lakh of rupees into real estate worth thousands of crores of rupees in less than five years, was attacked by Modi in his election rallies. “My family … my husband are being attacked,” she had raged.

Mrs Vadra’s unstated assertion was clear to all: The Nehru household, the Dynasty, the Congress’s First Family, is beyond public scrutiny and criticism; hence, the Dynasty’s son-in-law too should be treated with absolute reverence by us natives and his black deeds should never be questioned.

As Narendra Modi told ABP News on Tuesday evening, he has “no majburi” to be deferential towards the Congress’s First Family. He is not alone. Many of us natives have no obligation to be nice to the members of the Nehru household and their damaad.

Mrs Vadra had also bemoaned the ‘harsh’ language being used by those opposed to the Congress. Frankly, she has not exactly been oozing sugar and honey in her carefully crafted interactions with voters and awestruck mediapersons, the kind whom Modi disparagingly refers to as ‘news traders’.

And now this sly attack on Modi – Mrs Vadra was obviously referring to what Modi’s detractors call ‘Snoopgate’. Till date the Congress and its cronies in the commentariat have not been able to make the ‘Snoopgate’ allegation stick on Modi.

On the contrary, the disgraced cop with a dubious reputation on whose baseless claim the Congress levelled its allegation has been found to be a pervert who constantly sought to sexually harass and abuse women, abusing his power. It’s not surprising that he should have found willing patrons in the Congress.

Mrs Vadra’s concern for women’s ‘empowerment’ and ‘safety’ – she said she was speaking as a “daughter, sister, wife and mother” – is laudable. May more women find themselves as privileged as her. May their husbands get to bypass airport security on account of their wives’ exalted status. And may they also get to buy farmland cheap and convert it to expensive industrial land. In brief, may more mothers-in-law be as ‘empowered’ as Sonia Gandhi, ‘safe’ in the knowledge that the long arm of the law is not long enough to touch them.

Meanwhile, Mrs Vadra would do well to recollect the Congress’s rather long dirty laundry list of scandals involving the abuse of women. Here are some of the stains – a few among the many – that sully the Congress which claims to be a champion of women’s ‘empowerment’ and ‘safety’:

» Sushil Sharma, a Youth Congress leader and Congress MLA, killed his wife, Naina, then proceeded to chop her body into pieces before shoving them into the tandoor at Bagiya, a restaurant in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi, a short walking distance from 10 Janpath. Mrs Vadra could Google for ‘Tandoor case’ on her smart phone.

» Mahipal Maderna, a powerful Minister in the now ousted Congress Government of Rajasthan, is accused of sexually exploiting and then murdering Bhanwari Devi, an indigent woman. Then Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot tried to scuttle the investigation. Mrs Vadra could Google for ‘Bhanwari Devi case’ on her smart phone.

» Ram Kumar Chaudhary, a Congress MLA of Himachal Pradesh, was arrested for his alleged role in the murder of a young woman, Jyoti, with whom he is said to have had an ‘illicit affair’. He then dumped her as their ‘castes did not match’. Mrs Vadra could Google for ‘Jyoti murder case’ on her smart phone.

» Mahendra Vikramsinh Chavan, president of the Latur Assembly constituency Youth Congress, and Sameer Killarikar, also a Youth Congress leader, have been arrested for the murder of Kalpana Giri, a Youth Congress leader. They dumped her body in a lake after killing her. Mrs Vadra could Google for ‘Kalpana Giri murder’ on her smart phone.

We could also request Mrs Vadra to check out the colourful activities of senior Congress leader ND Tiwari – they were not exactly ‘empowering’ for the women ensnared by him, nor do they quite bear out the Congress’s concern for the ‘safety’ women.

A last point: it’s not exactly edifying for Mrs Vadra to speak so loftily of a party one of whose high-profile MPs was caught on tape, not many moons ago, in a sex-for-favour scandal. Lurid descriptions of what featured on the tape were the talk of Lutyens’s Delhi for days. Just in case Mrs Vadra missed them, Google Baba would oblige her with a huge amount of puke-inducing details about this scandal. She could then meet the woman, also a daughter, sister, wife and mother, exploited by her party MP in so hideous a manner, and ask her whether she feels ‘empowered’.

PS: The MP concerned has not been named as he was sharp enough to secure a court injunction preventing the publication of his identity and his activities behind the closed doors of his office.

Modinomics, the route to economic revival and growth

You need neither a degree from Harvard University nor ‘animal spirit’ to get the Indian economy going. What you need is common sense and commitment — Narendra Modi has both...

Modi is a maximalist who wants the most for India

Frankly you don’t need either a degree from Harvard or ‘animal spirit’ to revive the Indian economy. If knowledge imbibed at Harvard and unleashed animal spirit could have propped up the economy then it would not have been in such a sorry mess today nor would we have had to witness our Prime Minister and Finance Minister blaming the world for India’s plight. This reality, however, has not prevented our Harvard educated Finance Minister from rudely poking fun at the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Among the many insults hurled by P Chidambaram is his boorish comment that Narendra Modi’s knowledge of economic affairs could be written on the back of a postage stamp. True to his style, Narendra Modi has given it back in full measure and more: While addressing economists, business executives and diplomats at the India Economic Convention 2014 organised by India Foundation in New Delhi last week, he said his knowledge was far less than what could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

The irony was not lost on those who tuned in to listen to Narendra  Modi talk about his economic agenda. That a Finance Minister who has spectacularly failed to halt, leave alone reverse, India’s rapid economic decline would have the temerity to scoff at a Chief Minister who has stayed the course of economic growth and development and heads a State whose contribution to the national economy has helped in no small measure to keep the latter afloat tells its own story of unbridled arrogance. But while being supercilious may titillate the establishment media, it does not detract from the fact that he will be leaving the robust economy which the Congress inherited in 2004 in a shambles.

Nor can P Chidambaram’s smart retort hide the fact that Manmohan Singh, touted as an ‘economist’ Prime Minister and wrongly credited for the 1991-1996 reforms that were part forced on us as part of a bailout package by the IMF and part driven by PV Narasimha Rao’s agenda to discard the baggage of Nehruvian socialism, has singularly contributed to killing the India Story. A feckless Prime Minister who chose to be in office as a stooge of the Nehru Dynasty and presided over a recklessly corrupt regime while feigning ignorance of the unrestrained loot right under his nose could not have been expected to fuel the economy with either policy or imagination. That many expected otherwise shows the Great Indian Rope Trick is not entirely a myth.

Speaking at three separate events in New Delhi this week, Narendra Modi demonstrated that the solution to the myriad woes that afflict the Indian economy can be found in good old-fashioned common sense and that thing called political determination. Both are understandably alien to those who survive on scraps from the high table of the Nehru Dynasty: Their Pavlovian response would be to peddle the voodoo economics of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council as the prescription to cure India’s creeping economic paralysis. There was a time when Manmohan Singh would, in unguarded moments of candour, call for out-of-the-box thinking — that was long before he decided to unleash his “animal spirit” only to discover even if the spirit was willing the flesh was too weak to respond to the looming crisis.

To think out of the box, to think radically, to think big and to think beyond today and tomorrow requires both common sense and commitment — call it political determination if you will. Narendra Modi is right when he says governance is not about rocket science, it is about clarity of purpose and integrity of action. Once these are in place, the rest follows by way of forward looking policy and implementable programmes that address short-term, medium-term and long-term concerns. It is not enough to talk about reviving investor confidence so that the tap of investment is turned on. To create that confidence, good governance is a sine qua non as is faith in the political leadership not to be persuaded by bogus schemes of which we have seen one too many during the wasted decade of UPA rule.

When Narendra Modi talks of investing in infrastructure, reviving the manufacturing sector, nursing the agricultural sector, boosting the service sector and infusing all of them with state-of-the-art technology, he is not really saying anything radically new. To meet the demand for 10 million jobs a year, all this needs to be done. But what makes him stand out and his voice heard in the cacophony of prescriptions is the sincerity with which he says this and the experience he draws upon. He does not pander to populism that the Congress believes fetches votes but also fetches ruination. He does not promise hollow rights but emphasises on dignity of labour and empowerment. He does not talk of giveaways but asset creation and tapping the entrepreneurial spirit and aspiration of Young India.

Many would argue that it’s not pragmatic to talk about the need for Indian companies to become globally competitive and bravely confront challenges in the run-up to elections. Even in the US, Presidential election candidates, irrespective of their political beliefs, turn to peddling protectionism and raising the bogey of foreign competition. That’s considered conventional wisdom. It requires courage to turn conventional wisdom on its head and Narendra Modi has dared to do precisely that. He has talked about the need for Indian companies, big and small, to become competitive and slug it out in the global market with competitors. He has talked about the need for changing attitudes, the need to look beyond the obvious, to embrace challenge as an opportunity, to invest in technology. He frames diplomacy of the future in terms of economic engagement and trade.

That a man whose knowledge can fit the back of a postage stamp eloquently talks about next generation technology, who calls for investment in biotechnology and environment technology, bears testimony to the stupidity of those who make bold to mock at him. Narendra Modi does not look at the small picture, the minor details, the nuts and bolts; that’s the job of those who are tasked with the responsibility of implementing policy. He thinks out of the box and he thinks big. That’s the way it should be. A Prime Minister should really be looking at the big picture, setting targets and goals which are seemingly impossible to meet. For evidence, go back to his speech at the BJP National Council on January 19 in which he talked of 100 new cities to cope with irreversible urbanisation, super-fast trains with dedicated corridors, new expressways and highways, and high technology-driven high yield farming, among a host of other big ticket ideas.

It would be easy to scoff at him and ask, but where will the money come from? The answer to that question is simple: Once investor confidence is restored and the economy’s slide is reversed, the India Story will once again capture the global imagination. Let us not forget that despite the post-Pokhran II sanctions the BJP-led NDA was successful in mobilising resources for path-breaking big ticket projects. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not allow minor details to come in the way of realising big picture ideas. A lot happened. A lot more shall happen when Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes charge.

Here, There, Nowhere...

A response to Salil Tripathi - I

1984 and 2002 are not comparable.


Rarely, if ever, have I commented on an article penned by a fellow writer. That’s not because I do not react to what they have to say or I hold views with which I disagree as not worthy of comment. It’s largely because writers must be allowed to have their say (and space) and partly on account of the fact that I try not to bruise feelings. I am known for not bothering with vacuous niceties; it makes sense not to compound that shortcoming by penning my opinion on the views of other writers.

Yet, I feel compelled to react, in writing, to Mr Salil Tripathi’s column, ‘Here, There, Everywhere’, which appears in Mint, a Delhi-based newspaper, that has been published under the headline “Incredible impunity” on February 29, 2012. The strap line reads: “Of all the potential and credible contenders to be the next Prime Minister, the one least deserving is Narendra Modi.” It’s a free world and this country is still a democracy where freedom of thought, expression and speech, though circumscribed by restrictive laws, is not entirely absent from the public domain.

Hence, Mr Tripathi has the right to not only believe that it is his burden to decide for more than a billion resident Indians who is the most and least deserving contender to be the next Prime Minister but also express that belief in suitable words, which he has done in his column. My response to his views is not an attempt to shout him down or point out why he is wrong in saying what he says, but to posit a set of counter-views. I have no intention to play evangelist to a heathen or convert a non-believer; such lofty tasks are best left to those who mistake their writing desk for a pulpit and their chair as a pedestal.

Mr Tripathi is outraged that those who cannot stop raging over the retaliatory violence which followed the arson attack on coach S-6 of Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, at Godhra, in which 58 Hindu men, women and children were killed, should be reminded of the anti-Sikh pogrom (it was definitely not a ‘riot’) of 1984 by those who are not impressed by the ceaseless cant of the self-righteous and sanctimonious army of the good and the virtuous. He sees this as a “despicable” attempt to equate the two unfortunate events (my words, not his) of our recent history. I would agree with him.

The hideous blood-letting by Congress goons that we witnessed in Delhi and several cities even before Mrs Indira Gandhi’s mortal remains were consigned to the flames cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be equated with the ghastly violence that gripped parts of Gujarat after the torching of coach S-6 of Sabarmati Express by a Muslim mob. There are three reasons why any attempt at comparing the two tragic events would be immoral and wrong.

First, the scale of violence is incomparable, as is the loss of lives and property. With the help of documentary evidence and those who fought (and are still fighting, although with receding hope) for justice for the victims of the anti-Sikh pogrom, I had computed the death toll to be not less than 4,733. Most of the deaths occurred in Delhi. In the post-Godhra riots, 1,044 people (not “thousands” as Mr Tripathi says) were killed: 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus. Lest I be accused of being callous, let me hasten to add that I believe every life matters and even one death is one too many.

Second, the Government of India, which was then (and still remains) responsible for maintaining law and order in Delhi, refused to lift a finger in admonition, leave alone crack down on mobs of Congress hoodlums led by Congress cronies of the party’s first family, for 72 hours. The Congress, and the Government which was then headed by Rajiv Gandhi (whom Mr Tripathi is keen to exonerate) wanted to “teach the Sikhs a lesson” -- the crime of a few individuals was converted into a collective crime deserving of collective retribution. As Rajiv Gandhi was to later declare, without the slightest trace of contrition or remorse, “When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes.”

In contrast, Mr Narendra Modi decided to call in the Army when it became clear that the State police were incapable of controlling the rioting mobs. Nearly all the 254 Hindus who died in the violence were killed in police or Army firing. Not a single tormentor of Sikhs suffered so much as a lathi-blow in 1984. But let that pass. Could Mr Narendra Modi have done better? Could he have stamped out the riots before they exacted a terrible toll? Could he have ensured absolute peace and calm despite the provocation of the arson attack at Godhra?

These are questions that can be debated till the cows come home (the reference to cows, Mr Tripathi, is idiomatic and not an attempt to push what you would derisively call the ‘Hindutva agenda’) without reaching a conclusion that is acceptable to all. I’d say he tried his best; others like Mr Tripathi would say he didn’t. I would stand by my truth just as others would stand by their perceived truth. A cock fight of truths does not excite me.

We could, however, look at how ‘successful’ other Chief Ministers have been in controlling riots. For instance, we could look at riots in Uttar Pradesh, in Bihar, in Andhra Pradesh, in Maharashtra, in West Bengal, in Assam, in Tamil Nadu, in Kerala, in Karnataka, in Rajasthan, in Madhya Pradesh, in Odisha -- virtually every State of the Union. Each one of these riots is well documented. Each one of them resulted in a terrible loss of lives and property -- well, not really because often the victims were too poor to own any property.

I don’t know if Mr Tripathi has ever found himself trapped in a riot; I have seen the Jamshedpur riot of 1979 from close quarters. When blood-lust grips people, when insanity takes over, even shoot-at-sight orders don’t have the desired result. In Jamshedpur I saw tribal Christians looting the homes of Hindus and Muslims while they battled in the streets: What does that tell us of a riot?

In Maliana, the PAC was accused of playing a partisan role. Shall we then hold Vir Bahadur Singh, the then Congress Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, personally responsible for that massacre? Nellie wouldn’t have happened had Mrs Indira Gandhi not insisted on holding a disputed election in Assam. Should we then blame her for the massacre of 2,191 people, a vast number of them suckling infants? We could go further back in history and blame Jawaharlal Nehru for the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946, for it could be argued, and convincingly so, that had it not been for his cussedness Mohammed Ali Jinnah wouldn't have called for Direct Action.

Third, no two incidents of communal violence are comparable. The causative factors differ as do local political, social and cultural dynamics. How can we then compare 1984 to 2002? More so when 1984 was a state-sponsored pogrom endorsed by the then Prime Minister of India, an endorsement that reverberated in his infamous declaration that the earth is bound to shake when a giant tree falls?

It would, then, be asked, why is 1984 mentioned at all in the context of 2002? Here’s the reason why: Intolerant ‘secularists’, sanctimonious leftists and self-righteous liberals who are unsparing in their criticism of Mr Narendra Modi take extraordinary care in steering clear of even remotely accusing the Congress, let alone Rajiv Gandhi, of complicity in the mind-numbing brutalities of 1984.

I hold Mr Tripathi in high esteem. Had I not done so I’d have been appalled by his exertions to exonerate Rajiv Gandhi who knew what was happening in Delhi and made it a point to turn a deaf ear to pitiful cries for help and groveling appeals by noted Sikh personalities.

Did he do so because he was in mourning?

Rajiv Gandhi’s grief and anguish did not quite stand in the way of his decision to take oath as Prime Minister the same day his mother was assassinated. That swearing in ceremony could have waited till the last rites were performed. But he chose not to wait lest the crown be snatched from him. Mr Pranab Mukherjee still pays the price for an indiscrete comment made earlier that day. So let’s not say with disarming certitude that “presumably Rajiv Gandhi had other things on his mind (like grief) than planning a pogrom”.

(To be continued.)

India awaits NaMo

The juggernaut moves on

The venerable Economist has finally taken note of what is common knowledge in India: Gujarat is racing ahead of the rest of the country. The credit for Gujarat's booming prosperity which has benefited all communities (Muslims included, lest the point be missed or lost in the cacophony of Left-liberal rant)should go to Gujarati entrepreneurship and Chief Minister Narendra Modi's visionary leadership.

Here are two telling excerpts from the report, headlined "India's Guangdong",published in the latest issue of the Economist:

These days Gujarat accounts for 5% of India’s population but 16% of its industrial output and 22% of its exports. Its growth has outpaced India’s (see chart) and it wins accolades from business people. A recent comparison of Indian states by McKinsey, a consultancy, waxed lyrical about Gujarat. It might yet play the role of industrial locomotive for the country, as Guangdong province did for China in the 1990s. There is lots of excited talk about exporters switching from China to India...

Gujarat could be a vision of India’s future, in which manufacturing flourishes, soaking up rural labour. Its economy is expected to grow by double digits, even as India’s rate slows to 7-8% this year...

The Congress, of course, would brush aside the Economist's assessment, insisting 'poverty in an entitlement-driven India is better than prosperity in a entrepreneurship-driven Gujarat'. Recall how the party and its pseudo-secular drum-beaters, among them the Left-liberal intelligentsia and the intellectually bankrupt Delhi Commentariat, once argued that 'corruption is better than BJP' while propping up the Jungle Raj of Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar.

I can almost hear Teesta Setalvad and Arundhati Roy ranting -- the first in television studio debates which increasingly look like WWF matches, the second through 10,000-word essays in Outlook and Frontline -- that it's all a Right-wing conspiracy. What would the poor (and I don't mean so literally) sods do if India were to say goodbye to all that is wretched with our economy, and hence our society and polity?

[Narendra Modi at India Today Conclave 2011. Watch 2:44 onwards.]

It's a pity that the Delhi4 are yet to recognise what the world has begun to hail as India's biggest (and only) success story since 2004: NaMo's leadership and its consequent bounty of riches for Gujarat. And reconcile themselves with the reality. But then again, D4's reading habits are restricted to Times of India, possibly Hindustan Times, and Dainik Jagran. These publications provide stimulating fodder for their addled minds.

Meanwhile, our 'economist' Prime Minister should check out the latest issue of the Economist for a reality check on which way is India headed under the NAC's tutelage and which way is Gujarat headed under NaMo's leadership.

[Also see 'Gujarat shows astounding growth in female literacy': NaMo leads from the front to educate the girl child. By Ashiya Parveen.]

For CBI, slander is evidence!

Real target of Congress' Goebbelsian propaganda is Narendra Modi!

There have been more than 5,000 ‘encounter deaths’ in this country. Over 1,700 ‘encounter death’-related complaints are pending in various courts and before the Human Rights Commission. More than 800 ‘encounter deaths’ took place in the last few decades in Uttar Pradesh alone. More than 400 police ‘encounters’ took place in Maharashtra. None of these (incidents) has come to trial as has the Sohrabuddin case. We have never heard that anyone has been convicted for these thousands of ‘encounter deaths’. No policemen have been found guilty or even arrested as it has happened in Gujarat,” says Mr Devang Nanavati, an Ahmedabad-based lawyer who is associated with the BJP, while highlighting the strange obsession with which the death of a notorious criminal who had a mile-long record of serious crimes and whose links with Dawood Ibrahim qualified him as a terror accomplice, is being pursued by the Congress, the Central Bureau of Investigation, congenital liars who pose as human rights activists and a corrosive media which has lost all sense of balance and fair play.

The Supreme Court, which asked the CBI to inquire into the ‘larger conspiracy’ behind the killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh and his wife, Kauser Bi, nearly five years after the incident had occurred, was no doubt motivated by the noble intention of getting to the truth. However, such lofty intentions need not necessarily be attributed to the sustained pressure from the slain criminal’s apparently inconsolable brother and jholawallahs who would be rendered jobless (and thus find themselves starved of generous funding by a variety of sources and agencies) if society were to be cleansed of malcontent, to punish those responsible for what they allege to be extrajudicial killings carried out by the police on the instructions of BJP leaders. Their pre-determination of guilt, both by implication and association, which finds more than an echo in what the CBI now alleges through stories which are touted as ‘investigative journalism’ by newspapers and news channels whose bias renders them incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction, cannot be allowed to supplant the judicial process.

Events over the past fortnight have removed all doubts, if there were any, about the CBI’s motives that are anything but lofty. The agency has been most brazen while pursuing a political agenda set by the Congress to defame Chief Minister Narendra Modi through slander and worse with the sole purpose of tarring his reputation and hobbling his Government to a point where it begins to lose credibility among Gujarat’s voters. For, the real target of the Goebbelsian propaganda orchestrated by the Congress with the help of the CBI and a craven media is not Mr Amit Shah, who has resigned as Minister of State for Home after being charged with murder, extortion and obstruction of justice in the Sohrabuddin ‘false’ encounter case and is currently in jail. It is Mr Modi — his invincibility is being sought to be weakened. At the national level, the purpose is to force the BJP on the back foot and tie it down to answering allegations instead of leading a robust campaign to oust the Congress from power.

The use of manufactured taint to stun and paralyse political foes is nothing new for the Congress; it’s a past master at the game of misusing agencies of the state, most notably the Intelligence Bureau and the CBI, to further its political interests. When the Congress needed to put down the Raja of Amethi Sanjay Singh after he fell out with Rajiv Gandhi, it used the CBI, which was inquiring into the murder of badminton champion Syed Modi in 1988, to plant salacious stories in newspapers — there were no 24x7 news channels those days — eager to oblige the party. ‘Excerpts’ from what was alleged to be the personal diary of Syed Modi’s widow, Amita, found their way into the front page of these newspapers day after day, suitably embellished with insinuations and slanderous concoctions attributed to ‘sources’ in the CBI. Public memory being proverbially short, few people would remember today that the charges against Mr Sanjay Singh and Ms Amita Modi did not stick — the courts contemptuously threw them out. Twenty-one years later, the CBI quietly closed the case, having failed to establish the ‘larger conspiracy’ behind Syed Modi’s murder which, not surprisingly, it had claimed to have established in 1988-89.

Nor would too many people remember the so-called ‘St Kitts scandal’ that was manufactured by the Congress with the help of an obliging CBI to embarrass VP Singh and divert attention from the Bofors bribery scandal in 1989. An elaborate exercise was undertaken to forge documents to allege that VP Singh was a beneficiary of his son Ajeya’s ‘offshore account’ in First Trust Corp, a little-known bank in St Kitts of which nobody had heard till then. The forged documents showed that the account contained $ 21 million. Once again, eager-to-oblige newspapers published the bogus story and the Congress’s dirty tricks department had a field day painting VP Singh in the most lurid of colours, pronouncing him as a villain who was not quite the knight in shining armour that people thought he was. In the end, of course, the forgery was exposed, the conspiracy to defame VP Singh unravelled and the Congress lost the general election. Similarly, the Congress had tried to frame Mr LK Advani in the so-called ‘hawala case’ on the eve of the general election in 1996. Not only did the Congress lose that election but Mr Advani — and the BJP — emerged stronger from that attempt to sully his and the party’s image.

Examples of the Congress misusing the CBI abound. It is no secret that after the UPA came to power in the summer of 2004, the agency not only ensured Ottavio Quattrocchi remained at a safe distance from India where he was wanted to stand trial in the Bofors bribery case in which he was the prime accused, but also facilitated the emptying of the London bank accounts where the bribe money had been parked by the Italian middleman. Subsequently, the case was ‘closed’, much to the relief of a Prime Minister who actually believed prosecuting those behind the Bofors scandal was “a shame”. We also know how the CBI’s investigations into the disproportionate assets cases against Ms Mayawati and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav are used to secure their support for the Government at moments of crisis.

In the Sohrabuddin ‘false’ encounter case, the CBI is back to using its old trick of planting stories about ‘evidence’ that has been clearly concocted to suit the Congress’s insidious gameplan. The fact is, it has filed a chargesheet but has no evidence to substantiate its allegations. And so the CBI has sought more time from the Supreme Court for ‘investigation’. Doesn’t prosecution follow investigation? Or is it the other way round for the Congress Bureau of Intimidation? And is that why it wants the case transferred out of Gujarat?

[This appeared as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on August 1, 2010.]

Media's campaign of calumny

All are equal, media is more equal than all!

Interviewing prospective students for a media school can be a useful experience. It provides you with an insight into how media is perceived among the young who shall inherit the world from us. I usually begin by asking the applicants whether they want to pursue a career in print journalism or in the audio-visual media. During one such interview recently, a young woman told me, “I want to join a news channel.” And do what? “I want to become an anchor.” Why? “I have many things to say and as an anchor I can say anything I want.” What makes you think so? “I watch television regularly. I know.” And why do you think you can actually say whatever you want? That left her slightly flustered. “But we have freedom of expression, right? And media is free in our country, right?” I seemed to have planted doubts in her mind and she wanted me to disabuse her of them. I asked her to tell me about her other interests in life.

I was reminded of that conversation on Friday evening when editors of television news channels, feigning great outrage, queued up to condemn the smashing of glass panes and upturning of potted palms in the lobby of Videocon Tower in Delhi, where the offices of Headlines Today, Aajtak and Mail Today are located, by a crowd of people protesting against the ongoing campaign of calumny against the RSS which is being accused of promoting ‘Hindu terrorism’. The violence was uncalled for, unfortunate and unacceptable. The protest could have been peaceful. Indeed, those leading the protesters should have ensured that no damage was caused on account of the demonstration. Having said that, let us look at what was said in condemnation by editors of other channels.

“This is an attack on freedom of expression. The media is being muzzled. Ideas must be combatted with ideas, not violence. It is despicable and deplorable,” said a news channel editor, virtually frothing at the mouth. Others pitched in with elaborate denunciation of “goons” and “hooligans” — the protesters did not look like either category of social malcontents — and condemned the attack. What was most amusing was to see Ms Ambika Soni, Minister for Information & Broadcasting, waxing eloquent on how the cherished values of our democracy are under assault. Ms Soni heads a Ministry which is a relic of our fake Socialist past when the Government controlled newspapers (there were no news channels then) and information flow by adopting strong-arm tactics — newspapers critical of the Government were denied newsprint quota — and by regulating the release of advertisements — obedience fetched you a greater share. More importantly, her entry into politics was through Sanjay Gandhi’s Youth Congress during the Emergency, when all freedoms and rights, including the right to life, were suspended and journalists who didn’t extol the virtues of the Great Leader were sent to jail. All that and more seems to have been forgotten.

However, we need not be distracted by what certain practitioners of the world’s second oldest profession have to say in defence of their emulating the practices of the world’s oldest profession. It’s a free country and people have the right to say whatever they want. But what is objectionable is the attempt to disguise biased writing and distortion of the truth as “freedom of expression”. The ongoing campaign of calumny to demonise the RSS and denigrate Hindus by painting the first as a sponsor of terrorism and the second as a community of terrorists is by no stretch of the imagination ‘freedom of expression’. Nor does media have the freedom to malign or defame individuals and then seek shelter in its presumed immunity from scrutiny.

Without going into the specifics of the campaign that has been launched to tar the RSS and label Hindus as terrorists, I would like to make three points. First, neither the stories published by some magazines and newspapers nor the reports that have been telecast by some news channels present even a shred of evidence. What we have read, seen and heard so far are aspersions, accusations and alleged admissions, all of it attributed to unnamed sources in the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation. These have been neither cross-checked nor corroborated with indisputable facts. Second, it is amazing that in a country which is supposed to be governed by the law of the land, there should be such organised trial by media which is really trial by insinuation. Years later, if nothing is proved in a court of law, media will conveniently choose to forget that they had already declared individuals guilty of horrible crimes. Third, since when has speaking to someone on the phone, irrespective of whether or not that person is guilty of having committed a crime, a crime in itself?

There is, of course, the other aspect about the IB and CBI leaking like sieves with a billion holes. If the alleged offence of planting bombs in Malegaon, Ajmer and Hyderabad is to be treated seriously, shouldn’t the agencies be conducting their investigations in absolute secrecy? If they must go public with titillating tid-bits, then IB and CBI offcials should formally brief the media on record. If they are planting stories, as they are doing, then this is no investigation but a political conspiracy: The RSS is being targeted to weaken the BJP. The conspiracy to defame and demonise Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has now been enlarged to hobble the BJP at the national level. There are no prizes for guessing who are the conspirators. Sadly, sections of the media have offered to play the role of co-conspirators. During Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, few editors stood up against the criminal abuse of power. Most of them chose to crawl when asked to bend. Tragically, many editors have kept up that tradition, offering space on the front page and time during prime-time news bulletins to the Establishment’s dirty tricks department.

This is not about ideology. Nor is it about political loyalties. To suggest so would be as bogus as those crying themselves hoarse that media’s freedom and freedom of expression are under attack. If anything is under attack, if anything is being questioned, is the peddling of fiction as fact under the garb of ‘investigative reporting’. Had it not been so, our ‘free’ media, a large section of which thrives on ‘paid news’, would have reported that the investigating agencies have failed to come up with any evidence to make their charges against Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Colonel Srikant Prasad Purohit stick. That the courts have refused to let them be tried under MACOCA, saying there was nothing on record to justify such a trial. That it’s been two years since they were arrested and have been in jail without being prosecuted or formally charged.

Or shall we just burn them at the stake because ‘free’ media has pronounced them guilty?

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on July 18, 2010.]

He thought, breathed, lived for people

Bhairon Singh Shekhawat
(1923-2010)

Rajasthan ro ek hi singh, Bhairon Singh, Bhairon Singh! Out there in the desert, it was a colourful sight. A large crowd had gathered to hear Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who was then Chief Minister of Rajasthan. It was early evening. Babosa, as Bhairon Singh was popularly — and affectionately — referred to, was on a jan sampark tour: The benign ruler among the masses, whom he never tired of describing as “my people”.

Later that night, as we ate a Spartan desert meal, Babosa casually mentioned how he would have had never become the ‘only lion’ of Rajasthan but for a decision he took nearly half-a-century ago at the behest of his younger brother.

It was 1952 and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh was looking for candidates to contest the first election. His younger brother, Vishan Singh, who had been attending the local shakha at Khachariawas, a dusty village in Sikar district where the Shekhawat family lived, knew the office-bearers of the newly-floated Jana Sangh. He met one of them, a pracharak who had been made joint secretary, and suggested that his elder brother be considered as a potential candidate.

Bhairon Singh, who had resigned from the police after rising to the post of Assistant Sub-Inspector, was at a loose end. Goaded by Vishan Singh, he met the Jana Sangh joint secretary and was ‘evaluated’ to check whether he met the party’s tough criteria. Later, he was taken to meet the Jana Sangh general secretary. Both the office-bearers were sufficiently impressed by the young man in a saafaa, khaki shirt, tightly-wrapped dhoti and sporting a traditional Rajputana moustache to give him the ticket for Danta-Ramgarh constituency.

Bhairon Singh won the election and became an MLA. He never looked back after that, winning each Assembly election, except the 1972 poll, till he became Vice-President of India in 2002. As he went on to build the Jana Sangh in Rajasthan and lead its team of legislators, the general secretary and joint secretary busied themselves building the party at the national level. The general secretary was Sunder Singh Bhandari. The joint secretary was LK Advani. “Among the many fond memories of my long association with Bhairon Singhji, the fondest is of inducting him into politics,” Advani said on Saturday.

In those early years, Bhairon Singh was a radical among conservatives whose voice would often be heard both outside and inside the Assembly. “Those days when he spoke, he roared like a lion,” Atal Bihari Vajpayee once recalled while talking about his close friends in the Jana Sangh and later the BJP, adding, “He was not so soft-spoken then. With his moustache and rolled up sleeves, he looked like a fighter… He still remains a fighter.”

The Jana Sangh in Rajasthan faced a major crisis in the 1950s. The Government had decided to abolish the jagirdari system and a Bill was introduced in the Assembly. There were eight Jana Sangh MLAs, most of them from landed, feudal families which were appalled by the move to abolish jagirdari. Bhairon Singh sought the advice of party leaders. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Deendayal Upadhyaya said the party should support the Bill for abolition of jagirdari as it was committed to an egalitarian society.

The decision was conveyed to the MLAs. When the Bill came up for discussion and voting, six of the eight Jana Sangh MLAs walked out of the party rather than support the legislation. Bhairon Singh, who forever remained proud of his Rajput lineage and heritage, was one of the two Jana Sangh legislators who voted for the Bill.

Bhairon Singh was equally forceful in insisting that the Jana Sangh should have nothing to do with Ram Rajya Parishad as that would mean supporting the views of its leader, Swami Karpatri, who openly advocated the practice of chaturvarna. “Swami Karpatri once pointed towards me and said, ‘Yeh aur woh, sab ek thaali se khatein hain.’ I walked up to him and said, ‘Khana thaali se hi khaya jata hai’,” Bhairon Singh told me on another occasion. That was his subtle jibe at Swami Karpatri who never used a plate or any other utensil for his meals, but insisted that food be served in his palms.

With the fall of the Congress after Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, during which Bhairon Singh, like most Opposition politicians, was jailed, the Janata Party came to power in several States; one of them was Rajasthan. The Jana Sangh had merged with the Congress (O), the Socialists and other Opposition parties to form the Janata Party. Bhairon Singh was elected leader of the legislature party and became Chief Minister. That Government was sacked soon after Mrs Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980.

Smarting from that gross injustice and furious with an imperious New Delhi, Bhairon Singh initiated the forging of an alliance of Opposition Chief Ministers to demand reforms in Centre-State relations, ranging from transfer of taxes to States to prevention of misuse of Article 356 to dismiss non-Congress Governments. It was during those years that he struck a friendship with leaders across the political spectrum, from Jyoti Basu in West Bengal to Parkash Singh Badal in Punjab to Farooq Abdullah in Jammu & Kashmir and M Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu. That friendship endured the test of time and the ups and downs of politics.

Although not known for any proximity with the RSS, Bhairon Singh walked out of the Janata Party along with Advani and Vajpayee over the ‘dual membership’ issue. And set himself to the task of rebuilding the party, reborn as BJP, virtually from a scratch in Rajasthan. He called on old workers and they responded in full measure.

His second stint as Chief Minister after the BJP won the 1990 election also proved to be short-lived when the State Government was dismissed in 1992 after the demolition of the disputed Babri structure in Ayodhya. A year later, when election was held, Bhairon Singh was back as Chief Minister.

Few would remember it today but Bhairon Singh was the initiator of the most innovative anti-poverty programme. He called it Antyodaya and aimed it at the poorest of the poor. Every district magistrate was asked to identify the poorest families in each village, ask them what could be done for their benefit by way of sustainable income, and do it immediately. The programme was hugely successful and fetched him international applause. Robert McNamara, then World Bank chief, described Babosa as “India’s Rockefeller”.

Bhairon Singh was the quintessential politician who thought, breathed and lived politics. Yet, there were facets to his personality not known to many. Though he had little formal education, he was an avid reader and read anything that was published on the Constitution, from which he could cite chapter and verse. In his own way, Babosa was committed to the greening of Rajasthan. Whenever he had time, he would take off in the official plane to survey projects to stop the desert from encroaching and would be most annoyed if he couldn’t count the trees, which would be often if not always. “The next time we will go by car,” he told me after one such flight.

The other passion Bhairon Singh had was to promote the interests of the girl child in feudal Rajasthan. At every rally, every public meeting, he would tell the people how he had only one child, a daughter, and that she had made him proud. “You say that I am the only lion of Rajasthan. Although I have a daughter and no son, you still call me that. See, it makes no difference,” Babosa would say and the people would chant, “Rajasthan ro ek hi Singh, Bhairon Singh, Bhairon Singh!”

Politicians are by nature garrulous people who love to talk and are in constant search of listeners. Bhairon Singh could talk late into the night. But with Vajpayee he shared a unique relationship of companionable silence. He would turn up unannounced, walk into Vajpayee’s room, anybody else present there was made to feel distinctly unwelcome, and for the next couple of hours the two men would lounge around, exchanging stray sentences followed by long silences. On one occasion I accidentally walked in to find them in deep solitude, listening to Kumar Gandharv. But with Advani it was an entirely different relationship: The two leaders talked politics, discussed strategy and decided tactics.

Till the end Babosa remained a fighter. He fought the 2007 presidential election knowing full well he couldn’t win against the combined might of the Congress, the Left and the non-NDA parties. But he fought to the finish, accepted defeat gracefully and retired from politics. In his personal life, he fought and won two battles against clogged arteries and treated the bypass operations he underwent as no more than lancing of bothersome boils. The last battle he fought was against cancer. Had he been younger, he would have won this battle too.

Bogus rage over IPL tamasha!

And while St Peter's thieves debate... (ELP, Works, Vol 1)

So, IPL is not only about adrenaline-pumping cricket! Here are some statistics about IPL’s third season: 57 matches, 54 parties, 270 hours of partying and 1,29,600 bottles of beer. And just in case you want to know what happens at these parties (to which, of course, you will never be invited as you don’t belong to the charmed circle of ‘celebrities’ who claim to represent ‘new’ India) check out Friday’s Telegraph which has published a set of photographs on the front page capturing the tide of testosterone that hit Dublin, the happening place at ITC Sonar Bangla in Kolkata, well past the witching hour. Apparently, discarding clothes to the rhythm of Flo Rida’s Right Round is de rigueur to celebrate the completion of an IPL match, in this case between Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals. Why else would KKR opener Chris Gayle and a starlet called Sherlyn Chopra make a public spectacle of themselves?

No, I am not taking a moral position on clothes being dropped at a private party (admittedly in a public place) or 1,29,600 bottles of beer being swigged over 270 hours of partying. What worries me is that such vulgarity should be seen as an indicator of India’s social and economic progress. No less worrisome is the widely held notion that much of young India aspires to a lifestyle stripped of all values, morals and ethics. If this is what globalisation and liberalisation have done to us as a nation, a people, then perhaps the Coca-colonisation of the world is not such a terribly good idea.

Yet, I cannot bring myself to even remotely support, leave alone endorse, the ersatz anger and bogus anguish of our Members of Parliament who have spent the past week debating, discussing and deliberating upon the great cricketing tamasha called IPL. The faux outrage of our politicians over IPL’s alleged financial scandals and scams deserves to be ignored with all the contempt that can be mustered, not least because each statement, every utterance, heard in Parliament reeks of hypocrisy and worse. It ill suits our politicians to be smugly moralistic and pretend self-righteous indignation.

It is laughable to hear, of all people, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, whose loot of Bihar is surpassed only by the sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah, wax eloquent on the need for probity in IPL. Strange as it may sound, he is the president of Bihar Cricket Association. But it’s not strange to hear him demand that IPL should be ‘nationalised’ and Government should manage commercial cricket in the country. He would want that as it would open various avenues of grabbing a slice of the pie that has till now been denied to him. That Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav’s wannabe cricketer son has acquired neither fame nor money via the IPL route is not entirely inconsequential in determining his attitude towards the cricketing enterprise as it exists. Politics can be leveraged to the advantage of kith and kin if an institution belongs to the public sector: Hence the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader’s demand that IPL be ‘nationalised’.

Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav believes, or so he claims, that the alleged mess in IPL’s affairs is the “fallout of a lop-sided policy of promoting a foreign game at the cost of indigenous sports”. That’s very endearingly rustic, but it’s utter nonsense — or, as a friend exclaimed, it’s unadulterated tripe. Kushti and khokho are not exactly spectator sports, or else Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s many friends in the corporate sector would have by now done a Lalit K Modi with both. More importantly, the Samajwadi Party leader’s criticism of cricket is as antediluvian as his party’s Lok Sabha election manifesto which promised to abolish English and banish computers from Uttar Pradesh and (if he were to become Prime Minister) the rest of the country.

And then there is the irrepressible leader of the working class, the one and only Gurudas Dasgupta, who is known for his proximity to both trade unions and the managements against whom they stage periodic strikes and agitations, often with disastrous results. “At the root of the problem lies the fact that IPL is laundering black money, it is a caricature of cricket… It is nothing more than organised gamble,” the venerable CPI leader thundered in Parliament. Amazingly, the BJP has embraced the Left’s agenda by demanding that a Joint Parliamentary Committee be set up to probe, of all things, the shenanigans of IPL! High matters of state have obviously ceased to matter for the main Opposition party.

It’s the colour of IPL’s money that’s bothering our politicians, is it? If only they would disclose the colour of the money that is used for funding election campaigns and the source of the money that greases the giant, uneven wheels of our democracy and keeps them moving! Had the colour of money been of such great significance for our holier-than-thou politicians, they would have by now forged sufficient consensus to bring about sweeping electoral reforms to eliminate the role of big money, bad money, slush money and black money in elections.

Pilloried incessantly by party elders for his links with a certain businessman, the late lamented BJP leader Pramod Mahajan had once shot back at his critics in a closed door meeting: “He is not a prostitute with whom you can sleep at night and refuse to recognise in the morning.” On the eve of the Mumbai Maha-adhiveshan in 1996, a senior BJP leader had gone public with questions about the source of money to pay for the extravaganza. “I don’t recall you asking me whether the money I gave you to contest the last election was purified with Ganga jal,” Mahajan retorted. No politician asks that question — whether he/she belongs to the Congress, the CPI(M) or the BJP. Others don’t matter.

The rank hypocrisy of our politicians is further highlighted by the fake concern of our Prime Minister who is believed to be “very troubled” by the allegations levelled against IPL and the colourful stories that are being planted in our pliant, unquestioning, ill-informed media by the Congress’s dirty tricks department in the form of ‘startling discoveries’ by the Income Tax Department, the Enforcement Directorate and the Intelligence Bureau implicating not only Mr Lalit K Modi but senior politicians in other parties. It’s a shame and a pity that our libel laws are virtually non-existent and our judiciary entirely indifferent to defamation and political blackmail. It is equally shameful that media houses which thrive on cronyism should cavil at crony capitalism, but for which they would have been languishing. More to the point, our limp-wristed Prime Minister was nowhere near being as “troubled” as he is today when his Government subverted the law to exonerate Ottavio Quattrocchi. On the contrary, he thought it was a “shame” that the obnoxious Italian wheeler-dealer was charged with and prosecuted for stealing India’s money.

[This appeared as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on April 25, 2010. For other articles, see archive.]

*Visual courtesy The Telegraph.

Tough guy act by limp-wristed UPA

How will Congress react if push comes to shove?

Nearly five years after the Cabinet Committee on Security cleared what was then billed as a ‘tough anti-hijacking policy’, the UPA Government has decided to amend the antiquated Anti-Hijacking Act of 1982. The purpose behind the proposed amendments, we are told, is to make the punishment for hijackers harsher so that the law acts as a deterrent. It would be churlish to cavil against such intent. After all, what good is a law unless it scares the daylights out of potential criminals and forces them to desist from risking the state’s clenched fist of fury?

The Government, therefore, should be complimented for deciding to make the law against hijacking more stringent. On Friday, the Cabinet discussed and approved the proposal, as drafted by a Group of Ministers headed by Union Minister for Home Affairs P Chidambaram, to introduce the death penalty for hijackers of aircraft. The 1982 law stipulates that hijackers and/or their accomplices will be sentenced to life imprisonment as well as made to pay a fine. Obviously, such measures have not proved to be a deterrent, hence the decision to make hijacking a capital offence. This will also necessitate an amendment to the definition of hijacking. Although the exact language of the proposed amendments has not been disclosed, it would be safe to assume that the amended law will describe hijacking as tantamount to ‘waging war on the state’.

Till such time the draft Bill amending the Anti-Hijacking Act of 1982 is circulated, any detailed comment on the proposed changes in the law would be premature. It also remains to be seen how much of the UPA Government’s declared policy to prevent hijacking of aircraft and deal with hijackers in the event they succeed in seizing a plane is reflected in the Bill. Policy and law are not necessarily inter-changeable, nor is there any binding requirement for the former to be codified through an Act of Parliament.

However, it would be in order to recall the salient features of the anti-hijacking policy that was cleared by the CCS in August, 2005. The policy commits the Government to treat any attempt to hijack an aircraft, or the hijacking of an aircraft, as an act of aggression against India. Hence, the Government will respond in a manner that is fit to deal with an aggressor. Second, hijackers, irrespective of whether they succeed or fail in their mission, will be sentenced to death. Third, the Government will engage hijackers in negotiations but not to cut a deal. Negotiations will be aimed at bringing the hijacking to an end, to comfort passengers and prevent loss of lives. Fourth, IAF fighters will try and force hijacked aircraft to land. Fifth, if hijackers try to use the aircraft as a missile to strike ‘strategic targets’, as was done on 9/11 in the US, the plane will be shot down. Sixth, if a hijacked aircraft lands at an Indian airport, it will not be allowed to take off under any circumstances.

According to details of the policy made available to media in 2005, the Bureau of Civil Aviation would be asked to prepare a list of designated ‘strategic targets’ that hijackers might target with a commandeered plane. Since the list would qualify as ‘Top Secret’, we will never get to know what all are deemed as ‘strategic targets’. The Government is neither obliged to nor should it voluntary disclose the list. As for the decision to shoot down a hijacked plane to prevent it from being used as a missile to blow up ‘strategic targets’, it is supposed to be taken by the CCS. If there is no time to go through the elaborate process of summoning the CCS, the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister or the Home Minister are authorised to take the call. Air Force officers not below the rank of Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations) will have the authority to prevent a hijacked aircraft from taking off, if necessary by shooting at the plane. All this, of course, is based on the presumption that the policy, barring the death penalty for hijackers, which requires an amendment to the 1982 law through an Act of Parliament, has been implemented. For all we know, it has been shelved in a ‘red corner’ file in the ‘Not to Go Out’ section in the Prime Minister’s Office.

We no doubt need to adopt a tough law both to prevent hijacking of aircraft and punish hijackers. But are a no-nonsense policy and a tough law sufficient to deal with a problem faced by Governments across the world after 9/11? More important, what good are a policy and a law if they are not implemented? It’s not only about determination, which the UPA Government lacks in large measure, but also compulsion. For instance, if push came to shove, it would be a tough call to issue instructions to shoot down a passenger aircraft. Apart from the moral dimension, there is the legal aspect: Can the state take such an extreme measure? The courts in Germany and Poland have ruled otherwise.

Which brings us to the other moral compulsion: Can any Government decide to callously ignore the plight of the families of hostages on a hijacked aircraft? The low point of the NDA Government was no doubt its capitulation to the demands of the hijackers of IC 814 which led to the release of three Pakistani terrorists, Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Sheikh Ahmed Omar Sayeed. That capitulation followed the NDA Government giving in to the demand of the families of the hostages “to do anything to secure their release”. In hindsight, it is easy to say that Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee erred, that he should have stood firm rather than be persuaded by tearful relatives of hostages to accept the hijackers’ demand. But would any other Prime Minister or Government have acted differently? Mr Chidambaram has been candid enough to admit that this is a question not easily answered.

As for the deterrent value of the death penalty proposed for hijackers, it is doubtful whether terrorists will feel deterred. Jihadis are not scared of death; they see it as ‘martyrdom’ which will fetch them a short-cut to a zannat teeming with houries. In any event, the threat of a state which does not have the courage to punish terrorists after a fair trial — Afzal Guru, held guilty of masterminding the jihadi attack on Parliament House in December, 2001, and sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in 2004, is yet to be executed — will raise no more than condescending twitter among those planning to hijack passenger planes. It is one thing to have a Prime Minister who is a fawning admirer of the US and eager to do its bidding, it is quite another to act like the Americans did when they intercepted an Egypt Air plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 over the Mediterranean and forced it to land in Sicily. Or conduct a daring commando raid on foreign soil to free hostages as the Israelis did in Entebbe in 1976 . That requires courage, not a harsh Act of Parliament or a hard policy, neither of which is worth the paper it is printed on.

Which does not make the Congress any better. The UPA has miserably failed to deal with the Maobadi problem just like it has made all of India vulnerable to Pakistan-sponsored jihadi attacks. The amended Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act remains on paper; the much-touted Operation Green Hunt is no more than Government bluster. It increasingly appears that no Government in India is keen to tackled internal security issues. Which is a shame and a pity.

PS: The BJP, in the five years that it was in power after the IC 814 humiliation, should have amended the 1982 anti-hijacking law and adopted a tough policy to deal with hijackers. Instead, it chose waffle over action and paid the price in 2004 -- and again in 2009.

[This appeared as my regular weekly column Coffee Break in Sunday Pioneer. (c) CMYK Printech Ltd.]

Women's quota Bill hits roadblock in LS

BJP's potential 'naysayers' after meeting LK Advani on Thursday: They don't look very excited about the Bill!

The women's quota Bill, meant to reserve 33 per cent seats in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies on a rotational basis for the next 15 years, has run into rough weather in the Lok Sabha. Suddenly, all parties which supported the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, are facing rebellion in their ranks with MPs openly threatening to defy party whips.

[I oppose the Bill because it restricts freedom of choice, the cornerstone of democracy, and is essentially meant to mobilise votes and not empower women. See my earlier blogpost, An assault on freedom of choice, explaining why I oppose this Bill.

The RJD and SP, as also BSP, were expected to toughen their stand as they have larger numbers in the Lok Sabha. Mamata Banerjee could go with the naysayers as she remains unpredictable.

But what has come as a shock to the BJP, which has been stoutly defending the Bill and enabled its passage in Rajya Sabha, is discontent among its MPs who feel the party erred in going with the Congress.

Their objections are three-fold:

1. The Congress will walk away with all credit and BJP will get none. Congress statements, the triumphalism of its leaders and media coverage praising the Congress and its president alone bear out this point.
2. The proposed rotational system will have an unsettling impact on MPs who have been nursing their constituencies for long. They will be asked to stand aside. The provisions of the Bill and analyses of its fallout bear out this contention.
3. Caste equations, settled over several elections, will be upset by the sudden introduction of this law. What it means is women candidates are untested in caste-driven constituencies in the Hindi belt. Understandably, MPs from Bihar, UP and Madhya Pradesh are most worried.

The rebels are mocking at their Rajya Sabha colleagues, saying they backed the Bill because they wouldn't be affected by the proposed quota.

Sushma Swaraj has denied any rifts within the party over the Bill. But there's no way she could have admitted it either.

Meanwhile, there's cross-Opposition consensus that marshals won't be allowed inside the Lok Sabha when the Bill is introduced, discussed, debated, voted (if at all it reaches the last stage).

As a principle, I disagree with the BJP taking this position. Forcible disruption of House proceedings cannot be allowed under any circumstances. Having faced similar disruptions when it occupied Treasury Benches, the BJP should have disassociated itself from the 'no marshal' demand. But then, I am not a politician!

Second, I sense the Congress working on a different calculus altogether. I don't put it past the Congress to announce a series of lollies for Muslims (the AG asking the Supreme Court to hasten hearing of Andhra Pradesh Government's appeal against HC quashing its Muslim quota is a useful indicator) and even agree to 'consider' Muslim and OBC quotas within the women's quota at the last minute. That would leave the BJP (and Shiv Sena and possibly Akali Dal) in splendid isolation while everybody else would gang up and back the amendment to the Bill which would go through without the BJP's support.

Of course, the amended Bill would then go back to the Rajya Sabha for a fresh vote. The BJP would then have the choice of either voting for communal/caste quotas or voting against the Bill. Since it is unlikely to do the former, the Bill would fall.

That's a win-win situation for Congress and all 'secular' parties, including Left. The BJP would then be painted as the villain of the piece and everybody else, especially Congress, would claim to be champions of what the Prime Minister calls "women's emancipation" and Muslim/OBC empowerment.