The proverbial last straw

As we grieve with the parents of Amanat and fellow countrymen, a few thoughts come to my mind that I would like to share with you.  This most unfortunate incident has been the proverbial last straw and released an avalanche of pent up feelings.

We have a saying in Bhojpuri which roughly translates to this - "I was feeling like crying and (fortuitously) something poked my eyes (and gave me an excuse to cry.)"  The unfortunate and brutal tragedy that "Amanat" suffered is this poke that has precipitated the tears that a growing number of population has been finding hard to hold back for some time now.  This is the section of the population that is more concerned about the real issues affecting them.  These are the economic issues, the law and order issues, issues concerning opportunities for growth, issues of creating a more egalitarian society, issues of accountability for highly paid bureaucracy and politicians, issues of corruption eating into the vitals of the system.  They are unlike their mothers, fathers and elder brothers - those victims of the earlier feudal system who were happy with condescending politicians and babus who occasionally threw crumbs to them and pandered to their base instincts for competitive identity management. This new breed of people is not willing to put up with an apathetic and manipulative system and they are crying out for change.  A change that will mean a clean break with the way we have been running this country for six decades now.  To me this restless desire for change looks like the harbinger of a new era and a ray of hope.

What truly beats me is that the present system is not able to see this deep craving for change at all.  The politicians remain apathetic, the police oppressive and manipulative, and the bureaucracy unconcerned.  Probably the politicians feel that while they have divided the populace along umpteen lines of religion, caste and creed, they remain highly united in their skilled manipulations and that the dust will settle down as always.  And the police and bureaucracy partake of their complacence.  Hopefully this dust will not settle down, not this time.

And this is why Modi and Kejariwal are emerging as new icons of hope.  While Kejariwal stands for bringing about systemic changes that can put a stop to the current rot, Modi symbolizes robust performance and a no-nonsense approach.  And this is what this new generation of Indians desires above everything else.

Let us hope a new dawn is about to break and that this sad loss and this angry uprising will not go waste.

GFGS

The current rage on the streets of Delhi over the recent gang rape case is essentially similar to that that was on display when the issue of corruption was taken up by luminaries like Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejariwal et al.  It has its genesis in the same thirst for GFGS (Governance, For God's Sake) that led to what Hindi newspapers termed नमो, नमो, नमो (Three times NaMo) phenomenon in Gujarat.  The thirst is so deep that it remains unquenched even after two NaMos.  Elsewhere the public is simply sick and tired to the core of a defunct system that doesn't care much for its citizens, their life, livelihood and prosperity.

We must not mistake it as merely an outburst against wretched humanoids who perpetrated the beastly crime against the victim girl.  I am sure that all societies, howsoever evolved, do have a certain percentage of such beastly creatures.  Similarly all societies and their constituents have within them the primal urges that need to be controlled and sublimated through moral persuasions.  It is our leaders in the government who have been given formal powers by the society for governing it.  It is their job to ensure that the beasts in the society are either reformed or subjected to strict controls or, if all fails, eliminated.  They are also supposed to epitomize all the values that the society collectively cherishes and aspires to embrace.  They cannot be otherwise and provide the kind of governance and leadership that the society desires and deserves.  Do we see this happening?

It is strange that no leaders from the government have come out to address the restless crowds.  This job has been left to the opposition and the informal leaders.  The government has instead deployed the police:  The police whose job it is to protect the public at large:  The police which repeatedly fails to check and control the beasts amongst us:  The police which sometimes itself is found perpetrating similar beastly acts.  A foreigner may be forgiven for thinking that the police forces in the country exist merely to protect our elected leaders and they hardly have men or resources left to protect the public.  And when they do mobilize the men and resources it is always for repressing the public rather than protecting them.  Has any of our leaders shown the courage to let go of their A-Z kind of security and ask them to perform their first and foremost task of protecting the public? Why are we perpetually deferring the police reforms?

What indeed frightens the daylights out of me is the utter and sheer disregard for law and order that is displayed by our political figures and then imbibed by their followers and finally percolates down to the beastly elements that we have been talking about.  The political leaders must be allowed not to pay toll tax that have to be paid even by a bus carrying a busload of BPL people.  A political leader considers it okay to publicly threaten another public figure who insists on exercising his right of freely moving through the length and breadth of the country.  It is okay for leaders to remain absent from their job, to defy all codes of decent conduct in the highest bodies of the country, to call each other names, to throw missives on each other, to amass DA (disproportionate assets), to entice and kill young girls, to father children out of wedlock.  Once the leaders have thus established their absolute superiority over ordinary mortals and law of the land, it is the turn of their supplicants.  So they go out brandishing legal and illegal arms, rape women and beat up cops.  The message finally percolates to the humanoids who shed all fear of authority and indulge themselves.  Finally the public is bound to get fed up to its nose and come out openly against the deep shit in which it finds itself.

My dear leaders, please listen to this desperate cry for GFGS.

Is there a civilized Alternative to slapping?

Slapping of Sharad Pawar by an irate youth is being hotly debated. Pawar refuses to forgive him. A section of public opinion says that while the anger and frustration of the young man is justified, the way he gave vent to it is not. This anger and frustration was reflected in Anna Hazare who asked if he was slapped just once. Another section, miniscule but vocal, proclaims it as a grave offense and demands most severe punishment for it. This section has also called for enhancing the security of Pawar and other leaders. This confirms and underscores what I said about providing security to all sorts of netas in my earlier blog.


In the political arena initially a proper facade was maintained and the all the murky business was kept carefully hidden from public view and knowledge. Thanks to the media more and more detail of the murky dealings and goings-on are being dug out and exposed to public view. And the public is becoming more and more desperate and irate and getting more and more exasperated by the unabated murky dealings and irresponsible statements and acts of the political class. The political class, in turn, is getting more and more brazen. Their smugness comes from the knowledge that they have the levers of the system firmly in their control and an electorate hopelessly divided along the lines of religion and caste is in no position to displace them. With all these deep divisions the politicians need not work too hard at getting votes either. They can win by bagging a miniscule percentage of votes. And a disappointed electorate has no right to recall either.


So what does a deeply aggrieved member of the public do? How does he vent his anger? Well, if he is daring enough, he goes ahead and slaps any politician within reach. And politicians clamor for more security instead of mending their ways!!! I reiterate the need to take away all protection from politicians except those occupying the topmost positions like PM and President. Doesn't each party have its quota of goons who can protect their leaders as was done recently to protect Rajiv Gandhi? The same goons can also serve to attack the leaders of other parties. Leave the security forces alone and let them protect the public that is their primary job.

Why should politicians be given special protection?

How would you react if a soldier demanded protection against the professional hazard of getting shot? Though this a rather dramatic example, each profession carries hazards that must be squarely faced by those who engage in that profession. A statistically dictated number succumb to the hazards in each profession and are routinely replaced by new incumbents.

So why should it be any different for politicians? They think it is their job to play with public emotions. After all it is emotions that help them win votes and not real issues. None of them care for the real issues. They put up farcical fights to win certain groups over to them without ever acting on the real issues plaguing the electorate at large. An exaggerated example of this is provided by statements currently being dished out by Mr. Digvijay Singh and his counterparts in other parties on serious issues of corruption and governance. This entails obvious professional hazards. They should face such hazards squarely as people in other professions do. But instead they stridently demand and get special protection. There are hordes of them at various levels. We are told that there are more policemen allocated to guarding the politicians than to their hapless victims - the public at large.


Such special protection also betrays their lack of confidence in the system that they run. The system is created to implement the constitutional guarantees given to the public such as the right to life. If the system created by them is good enough to serve the vast ocean of general public, why should they insist on special treatment for themselves? And even if they had no protection and were to succumb to their perceived hazard, why do they consider themselves irreplaceable? And is this paranoia justified by the available data? As far as public memory can tell all successful and unsuccessful attempts have only been on persons occupying highest office of Prime Minister. It is only people at the very top who face dangers from outsiders. As such outsiders are not subject to our control, it may be proper to accord more protection to the said class than what is available to common citizen. Everyone else must must be on equal footing.


Accordingly I strongly suggest that the current system of providing special security to politicians / bureaucrats at various levels except to a few at the very top should be done away with.

Wake up, dear fellow countrymen!

It is quite fashionable to blame the government for all the imagined ills plaguing the country. In doing so we tend to completely overlook the altruistic measures taken by the government for boosting the economy. Altruistic because in doing so the government has risked its own credibility and image. Yet it persists in doing the right things, ingratitude of the public notwithstanding. I would like to illustrate this with some very concrete examples.


We cry ourselves hoarse about the unsteady and erratic power supply and long power outages. But we fail to see the abundant availability of all kind of gadgets for overcoming these annoyances. These include voltage stabilizers, inverters, generators etc: Gadgets, unknown to denizens of more developed economies. Have we ever given a thought to the employment that the manufacture and maintenance of these gadgets generate? And we must not forget that this not achieved by understaffing the power corporations. It is quite to the contrary. It is common knowledge that these corporations err on the side of overstaffing. Erring may not be the right expression because it is this overstaffing that leads to the inefficiencies and incompetencies that stimulate industrial growth by creating demand for power conditioners at retail level. I do trust that this shows the power boards and corporations in better light. Can you see that the apparent bad governance in power boards is in fact deliberate and prompted by the noble objective of promoting industrial growth and employment?


Take the case of another essential item - water. We have heard of Coca-cola’s frank admission in USA that the packaged water marketed by them is plain tap water. And it is quite okay as the tap water there is absolutely potable and guaranteed to be so. (Though, this being the case, one fails to understand the need for purchasing packaged water unless it is purchased by the homeless only.) Back home here tap water carries no assurances of potability and many a time it has positive visual evidence of not being so. Having learnt our lessons in the previous example let us refrain from calling names and look at the positive side instead. Yes, this too has spawned an industry, the water purifier industry. And let us not forget the packaged water industry. We do hope that they do not follow the US practice of packaging tap water itself.


Yet another example is apparent lack of law and order. This too is a studied and deliberate act aimed at promoting private security agencies that provide employment to ex-servicemen in large numbers. What could be more patriotic than this?


Look at our primary education. Despite huge outlays and employment of an army of well-paid primary teachers, primary education remains the butt of jokes. We know that even the BPL guys earning INR 32 per day or less hardly display any preference for these public (government) institutions for their progeny. This deliberate mess painstakingly created by governments and its pay-happy teachers has again been done with the sole objective of promoting schools in the private sector. What is difficult to understand is the insistence of these private schools on calling themselves public schools! These schools also provide employment to a large number of educated unemployed.


What has been said for education applies equally to the health sector. This has helped a large number of health care businesses to come up and India now figures as a medical tourism destination for people from developed economies. This would perhaps have never happened if the public health care system left little incentive for private players in this sphere by working all too well.


This penchant for promoting employment has been imbibed by each and every department of all governments - central, state and local, especially those supposed to directly interface with the public. They encourage enterprising people to come forward and facilitate this interfacing by deliberately making themselves a little too difficult to approach directly and making procedures a wee bit too difficult to be correctly understood by the public directly.


The public is not merely deluded about the real motives behind apparent shortcomings and inefficiencies in governance. They are equally deluded about the real reasons behind politicians occasionally dipping their fingers in the Consolidated Fund of India. The do it with a view to provide capital to industries, their own or those of deserving entrepreneurs. This again generates employment and improves general well-being. And after putting in all this hard and thankless work for an ungrateful public, they do need an occasional break. So what is wrong if they set aside some funds at well-known tourist destinations like Switzerland?


Wake up dear fellow countrymen and stop quibbling over bad governance, corruption etc. Thank your leaders for their hard work and vision and give credit where it is due.