Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Banalities and Platitudes Unlimited!!

One is very clear that any further dissection of the Anna Hazare Movement (AHM) is the blogging equivalent of hara-kiri, simply because the topic has been humongously over-exposed during the past few weeks.  There is very little that is meaningful to add to the pile that has already been produced by mouths, which did not close during all the churning.  As for meaningless dribble, well, let us not go there at all, since that is a bigger heap.  My focus in this piece is not the principal event itself; as in the case of modern banking where every primary deal creates a few derivative opportunities, here too, one can perceive some such avenues and I am taking one.  Banalities and platitudes are inseparable from politicians and during the past 3 weeks,  while they were being cornered and made to squirm with uncomfortable questions, many of the tribe obliged with statements of characteristic banal quality.

The pride of place in this series is given to our Prime Minister.  A man of very few words even on his best day, he decided to find a place in history with the exemplarily inane `I dont have a magic wand to take care of corruption' and `Just one law is not going to eradicate corruption'.  As if this mind-blowing profundity begged reiteration, Rahul Gandhi stressed on this gem during his epoch-making speech in Lok Sabha.  Many other politicians, cutting across party lines, enthusiastically agreed with the PM, since they needed some defence, any defence!  Very gratifying, but I wonder who from AHM told any of these worthies that when Lokpal bill is passed corruption would be history!  Not even the commonest of common men, in his wildest dreams, ever entertained the notion that this bill is the panacea for that debilitating malady India suffers from; he may not be vocal, but he is not dumb.  So, this bit of condescension on the part of the politicians just adds grievous insult to the festering injury carried by people for ages.   When Dr.Singh took his baby steps in the early 90s to open up the economy, one does not remember him saying `I dont have one sweeping solution to fix our economy and poverty; so I cringe from taking the first logical step'.  Subsequently many initiatives have been taken on that front and Dr.Singh has presided over many of them.  So, why this nervous breakdown for over 40 years when it comes to taking the basic step of passing a solid anti-corruption bill??  When dithering politicians bleat out such a lame excuse, it just shows them up for what they are - a bunch of mollycoddlers of corruption.  But one must concede that as a tactic it is brilliant - if you dont take the first move and stall at the beginning, you have nowhere to go and politicians have successfully played this game out all these years.

Then comes the `Parliament is Supreme' shout.  As if people have been trying to pass the Lokpal bill on Ramlila grounds with a thumping majority!  As if, Anna Hazare was going to proclaim from his fasting area that the ordinance on Lokpal was being promulgated.  No, that was not the concern; the politicos were bristling because, for a change, people who normally elected them and left them to their own conniving devices, were telling them now what to do right and how!! Our politicians are a spoiled lot and they like doing what suited them and their private constituencies.  Status-quo in this context suited their way of life best - `get elected and keep your personal pens dipped in the perennially nourishing public ink-pot'.  Any attempt to change that is offensive to them, naturally. So, they took umbrage at the massive public upsurge not only against corruption, but also their own inaction and indifference.  What they are saying is `We are the elected representatives; we have not done our jobs for 4 decades and will not change; but who are you to suddenly wake up and force me in the right direction, to think about common good enshrined in the constitution?'.  So much for the `sanctity of the parliament'.  We know that these are the very people who cannot even stick to the basic, civil way of doing business inside that august building for a few hours at a stretch and have brought dishonour to the institution in more ways than one.  As I write this, some ruckus has broken out in the Rajasthan state assembly, with shoes being hurled by elected representatives, who doubtless, would otherwise want the public to recognize the supremacy of the legislature!!  That sums up my brief nicely, thank you.

Mayawati, Shard Yadav and few others lit up the horizon with another flash when they chose to take a myopic view of the issue and asked for Dalit representation in the Standing Committee reviewing the various versions of the bill.  As if otherwise,the recommended law would pointedly help fight corruption everywhere except when  Dalits are involved.  And Sharad Yadav went one step further and said that Anna Hazare did not mention the name of Ambedkar even once.  Anna did not mention many names, so what? What does that make him??  A traitor of the cause?  Anna is standing firm on his demand that lower bureaucracy should be brought under Lokpal's purview only to ensure that the poorest and most downtrodden people can get some reprieve from the harassment of minor government officials for bribes.  These politicians who shed copious crocodile tears for that segment of the population refuse to see the big picture but would prefer to ride roughshod inside a casteist or communal tea-cup to perpetuate their vote-bank politics.

Then comes along Syed Bukhari and forbids Muslims from taking part in the protest.  Why?  Because protestors sing Vande Mataram from time to time during the day.  Some other Muslim leaders supported Bukhari.  So, if the bill is passed and its implementation improves the fight against corruption, thereby yielding some benefit to the public, will Bukhari and his band of leaders urge Muslims to forfeit the benefits and continue to pay bribes? Just because the genesis of this bill had some association with Vande Mataram during public protests?  How ridiculous would that be?  Isn't there ever a time for leaders to set aside religious and casteist  overtones and behave like sensible men who genuinely desire improvement at the ground level for people?  I guess not.

Manish Tiwari surpassed himself in the act of casting aspersions on Anna, the way he would have usually done with any differing politico from across the party line.  He has since apologised; but it seems that the somewhat eloquent among the politicians tend to take themselves very seriously just because they have a marginally better vocabulary!!  It is best not to dignify Manish Tiwari further by writing anything about him or what he said.

The suave Salman Khurshid served up this gem at the finale - `we (the government) did not make any mistakes; there were some errors of judgement'.  You are on the dot, sir.  You are never at fault.  People are the fools committing one enormous mistake after another for the past few decades.  May be, just may be, there is some hope of seeing some corrections kicking in now!!

Finally, the post debate outcome in the parliament just makes one smile wryly.  All the political parties generally supported the bill with some riders here and there.  It almost seems that they have all been bursting at their seams to get a tight anti-corruption bill in place for over 40 years and the people at large have been denying them this pleasure all along.  Now that the people are agitating for that, voila, `here we are - completely on your side, despite your deliberate insult to the institution of parliament and despite your blatant attempts at bypassing the elected representatives'!!  Jai Hind.





Monday, August 15, 2011

Another new state in India??

The Telengana controversy has been raging for a while now, even if you graciously concede that lead-time in Indian politics that should be rightly known as `pickling time'.  My grandmother would not permit any of us to so much as inhale a whiff from the mango pickle in a tightly closed porcelain jar, unless the requisite number of days per her own unwritten statute had elapsed.  Our hard-boiled politicians simulate the same tactic when it comes to any issue that is a political hot potato and they find it expedient to kick the ball down the road for the next government to handle. Some issues have been left festering for 64 years or so - the precise number was easy to pick, because prior to that Indian politicians did not have control over governance.  My grandma  was an excellent judge of the mandatory pickling time, thereby achieving outstanding results all the time.  But unfortunately, our politicians through the decades have always been bereft of the skill and the goodness of loving grandmas. So they resort to pickling as a way of avoiding tough decisions.  Not that they are so dumb as not to realise fully that the passage of time would only complicate the process of resolution, but they still sit on their hands because they would rather have someone else bell the cat. Telengana, Lokpal are a couple of issues seething now, after decades of neglect by all governments. This writer just wanted to see what is it that makes the idea of a new state attractive, especially when it is not based on linguistic division of people, given that Telengana is sought to be carved out of Andhra, Telugu being the language of the people in the covered areas.  For the record, this scribe does not really care whether or not the new state is created, ever!

We can be sure that the pickling process kicked in for this case, primarily because the politicians could not use language as the tool to whip up passions.  If Andhra had people speaking two different languages, Telengana would have seen the light of day a bit earlier.  Obviously, only after a few hundred people became martyrs in the fight for 'independence' and 'freedom' from the oppressive tribe speaking a slightly different language; only after a few hundred buses and train coaches were burnt or otherwise wrecked; only after a few student leaders who usually were neither students nor would recognize `leadership' if they were in the same bed with that quality, ignited passions regularly among like-minded non-students to shut down schools and colleges, causing terrible inconvenience to those who want to study; and only after the customary strikes and shutdowns among the already stricken government offices, disrupting whatever little was on offer as `services' to people.  It would have been a cake-walk for the manipulating politicians to split the state, had the issue been language. But that was not to be and Telengana is still languishing. 

If the historically proven primary motivation for creation of a new state in India - language - is out of the equation in the case of Telengana, what is then the argument driving the agitation?  Is it that it has dawned on the people and the political tribe that smaller states are easier to govern and by dividing the state into two, administration and services to people would be enhanced beyond recognition??  The example of Singapore as a state has often been laid on the table to argue for smaller states.  Somehow, that sounds hollow because Singapore would probably have been as efficient as it is even it is double or triple the size because the reliance there is on good political and administrative structures, besides much cleaner politicians with very little corruption to complain about.  If someone wants to provide similarly clean administration in an Indian state, the process can begin with district level implementation (which is small enough in size) and the building blocks will result in mind-blowing improvements in governance overall.  Some smaller states have been forked out of UP and Bihar in the past (Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Uttaranchal) and one does not hear of virtual Ramrajya in those states due to their smaller size!!   We should not be surprised if the gullible people who were goaded by avaricious politicians into agitating for these states have not seen any change at all in terms of overall governance and still wallow in their pitiful misery routinely created by government's apathy - only the name of the government has changed from X to Y. 

If smaller states fail to achieve better governance and still frenzy is being whipped up by vested interest groups, who stands to benefit from this artificial change??  Let us see.  While outlying areas in the new state continue to struggle to get noticed by the new government, one city will walk away with the glory as the capital of the new state.  Eventually crores of additional tax-payers' money will be spent in setting up new infrastructure for delivering the same abysmal services to people.  Contractors and politicians involved in such projects will, as usual, end up looting public money for personal benefit.  Nothing new in that except that an enormous new opportunity has been created by splitting the existing state.  While the sum total of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in the two states will probably be the same as in the old state, what will definitely change and help the marauders is the setting up of various new government companies/corporations in the new state.  While employees from the old corporations will be distributed, what will be inevitable is all the new corporations in the new state will be headed by new set of politicians.  So, what was earlier a set up of some 35 or so clueless politicos sitting as head honchos in as many state sponsored companies which do nothing but provide vehicles for the CEOs and assorted brethren another avenue of milking tax-payer funds, has now been effectively multiplied to 70 such companies in two states.  And, while logically after the split, the two states together should have the same number of ministers as in the earlier government, usually the post split  total number would always be way higher, beneficiaries being those who struggled for the creation of the new state.  All other assorted hangers-on will be favoured by the politicos  for whatever positions that can be created arbitrarily, in the name of service to the people.   Now, the new state has fulfilled the aspirations of the downtrodden people in the area, without improving anything in their lot but opening up new avenues for politicians to merrily pursue their corrupt ways.

Do we need more new states??  Or should the attempt be to improve governance in the existing set-up?  Unfortunately the voting public is willing to gulp anything fed to them by the so-called leaders.  Until that changes, there will be more Telenganas in the offing.  What next??  South Tamil Nadu and North Tamil Nadu?? Or Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada??  God save India!



20th Century Breakfast Experience!

A friend was visiting Bangalore from Bombay.  A rather innocuous suggestion from my dear wife that he should grab a bite at one of the anted...