Democrary and the Great Disconnect

The news papers carried this morning  a fervent appeal by the newly appointed Chief Election Commissioner urging the Bihari youth to vote in great numbers. The item evoked my interest so I wanted to know more. I am normally done with four newspapers in close to two minutes. If my reading glasses are at hand well and good, if they are not, I make the newspaper adjust to my myopia. But I don’t miss very much. Glasses or no glasses, I manage to get the flavor and I thank God for giving me that day, my daily fix of sleaze and scandal, high-minded rhetoric and promises galore, privileged intimation of forthcoming political defections or new alliances in the making. Sometimes I find my name figuring in there. Seasonally, for the last couple of years the odds of my being appointed to some post or the other has been discussed. Then I reach out for my glasses. I like to be enlightened on these matters. Otherwise two minutes is all that I can spare. But today I made an exception. For a public cause, I called to the aid of my failing eyesight my pair of reading glasses.


Why have the youth of Bihar voluntarily renounced their right to vote? By not exercising their right to vote are they making a subtle political statement? And thinking of the their alienation and withdrawal the martyr’s memorial, just a few hundred meters away from where I live, floated before my mind’s eye! The statues of the young students frozen in their stance –marching into a hail of bullets yet holding the tricolor aloft- cast derision on death and mock the might of the empire over which the sun never set. They paid for with their lives to secure for us our independence and the right to vote. Would they consider sitting somewhere in the heaven, wearing their halo of martyrdom around them, their sacrifice worth it? Was the hard fought right to self-determination worth the price after all?


I wondered if this abstention is due to the fact there is an absence of worthwhile opportunities for raising their political awareness before they acquire the right to vote. The traditional modes of participation like student union elections are largely nonexistent. Student politics has always mirrored the concerns and preoccupation of national politics and is a report of what is happening in the broader society. For the youth it is a period of apprenticeship in the culture of parliamentary democracy, a recruiting ground for political cadres, and it incubates the future political leadership. The JP movement of 1974 is a case in point. One may not agree with either the agenda, or the philosophy behind the “Total revolution” but who can deny the reality of the ‘radical youth’ with their unabashed enthusiasm and utopianism or the momentousness of the occasion?


Or is it because the nature of politics today offers no scope for romantic idealism to the youth? What is there for them to be passionate about? There are no radically different visions of society on offer-visions which can captivate their imagination or inspire hope. All the parties dish out the same trite agenda whose similarity and repetitiveness emit a stale odour which you can catch from miles away. Nor for that matter the farcical change of the hearts and minds which compels large scale migration of members from one political club to the other holds their interest. The youth know they would be better occupied following the fortunes of their favourite sports stars –their movement from Milan AC to Real Madrid or from Kolkata Knight Riders to Chennai Super kings.


Arthur Miller had once observed that our political life, thanks to 24/7 TV is now “profoundly governed by the modes of theatre, from tragedy to vaudeville to farce.” The television is both a powerful ally and a useful tool through which the politicians try to project themselves as characters that they are not. In the live telecast of the proceedings of the houses representatives appear to have very few stakes in what goes on in the house. At their most radical, they can only throw a couple of chairs taking care not to cause hurt to their assumed adversaries or get hurt themselves. Even as a spectacle it comes out a loser in terms of audience preference for programmes like WWF.


But even if the youth somehow overcome their aversion there are not very many of them left to vote. A very significant section of them has been forced to become absentee voters out of dire necessity. They have joined the exodus to Delhi, to Poona, to Bangalore or wherever they see opportunity for decent education. And those not endowed with wealth or work are similarly forced to migrate in search of livelihood.

I realized that I had only questions, no answers, only hypotheses and speculations no hard theories. Obviously, I could not get under the skin of the young generation, I could not think like them. But I tried to make an effort of imagination, a nimble leap across the years. What would I be doing, say, if I were eighteen today? Would I listen to the elderly rubbish and make a beeline to the nearest voting booth? In the absence of ideology and idealism, faced to choose between hedonism and nihilism where would I be standing. I am ashamed to admit that I found myself merging into the character of that deeply connected youth in that interesting commercial, in spiritual communion with his mobile, knocking down kids and flower vases, ready to fall off malls. In that state of supreme connect, who would care for the vote?

Intellectuals And Their Idee fixe

[For the fellow travelers, people can] “be divided into two camps, one the incarnation of good and the other of evil”.
Raymond Aron in "The  Opium Of The Intellectuals."

Operation Green Hunt is perhaps the first determined and concerted effort at neutralizing the Maoist threat and it certainly has put them to notice about the seriousness of the intent of the Indian state.  It is too early to predict its outcome, but it has  thrown the domestic politics in a state of ferment. The ruling establishment itself, going by the press reports, is wracked by internal squabbles and dissensions. Some commentators have expressed the fear whether it will stick to its resolve to fight the Maoist menace or give in to the doubts and self criticism of many of its own allies, party ideologues and intellectuals. One gets a feeling that a significant section of the political opinion in this country wants not only the Operation Green Hunt stopped but some actually wish the Maoists to win. Never was the need for collective thinking to establish a consensus in accordance with the prevailing realities of the situation felt more urgently than today. In a polity dominated by violence in all its forms, in a society where legitimate authority is fast losing its grip over its constituents, the theory of the state as being the sole repository of coercive force needs to be made practical through sustained and purposive engagement. “I do not want to take names”, the Union Home Minister was quoted as saying the other day, “but many of them are highly educated …..They write very well”. This group is propagating the view that “the government is bad and has to be fought at every turn and every stage.” Arundhati Roy’s Gandhi with the Guns must take the pride of place in this form of writing.

In the view of a sympathetic blogger Arundhati Roy’s essay Walking with the comrades, “somehow manages to tread that very fine line of neutrality… she indicates her distance from her subject quite rigorously and repeatedly…..” Her case could not have been stated better— however as one goes along one will wonder whether this is the only reading possible - but the point is which ideal reader has Arundhati Roy in mind- only the trained literary critic with a fine ear and an alert mind for the modulation of the narrator’s voice? Or the common reader at whom mass media is generally directed the reader whose critical resources are not quite equal to the task of the fine distinction demanded by the text. In view of the widespread debate that this essay has initiated both in the mainstream as well as the alternate media, it is clear that people have engaged with it as a serious political text and it has been taken as an endorsement of the Maoist violence. Hence the issue for the debate could be formulated along these lines – is Ms Roy merely indulging her taste for literary exuberance and bucolics or is it a cleverly camouflaged Maoist propaganda?

Arundhati Roy’s fame and standing spreads far beyond her vocation as a writer and she is one of the foremost public intellectuals of our time. The public intellectual speaks on a wide variety of issues of contemporary concern to which he brings an oracular authority. Illuminating the issues in the light of his clear thinking, he analyses the situation dispassionately and objectively in order to situate the issue in its proper context. Apart from the value of what he says his writings are also remarkable for lucidity, reasonableness, and objectivity. Therefore with the enormous power to influence public opinion and shape up public policy comes a tremendous responsibility, especially in view of the fact that the likes of Arundhati Roy hold the monopoly to the creation and supply of emancipatory ideas to this world. No one denies that  she owed the debt of hospitality to those who are sworn to the destruction of the Indian state  but she also enjoys the trust and confidence of the civil society, howsoever ineffectual it may be. So “the fine line of neutrality” was a just requirement of the occasion and merging her voice with that of her temporary hosts an act of betrayal.

Ms Roy’s notions of the Maoist struggle are not only romantic they are a little infantile as well. “I am surrounded by these strange, beautiful children with their curious arsenal. They are all Maoists for sure. Are they all going to die …?” What does one make of this meaningless babble? Beautiful or not, children or adult, what other fate can befall those who are fighting a protracted war with the state. And should these young guerrillas for whom the cinematic killing of the hero at the end of the movie Mother India is weak ,maudlin stuff, the real “blowing up of policemen” is their quota of entertainment be referred to as children and kids again and again? The heavy duty sarcasm in the description of these guerillas as “internal security threat”, “Gravest Internal Security Threat”, “blood thirsty” should leave no one in doubt that the story is being narrated from a partisan point of view.

Her lyrical advocacy of the valiant Maoist guerrillas battling the Indian state for the rights of the poor is aided by some clever debating skills as well. First an ex parte hearing is given to the Maoists to help them build formidable case against the Indian state, as indeed it is possible to do so against any state, at any time of human history. The considerable evidence against the Maoists- formidable as it may appear to those who are not their camp followers- is not put up at all. Then all the clichéd and counterfeit universals of such a discourse are deployed to justify their wanton killings which are termed as just reprisals for brutal policies of the enemies they are up against. “The gruesome beheading of the policeman Francis Induvar is still fresh in everyone's mind” for which the Maoists will not even make a plea of diminished responsibility; the moral and spiritual blame for the beheading of the ill-fated cop must be squarely laid at the doors of the Indian state. Ms Roy argues “by institutionalizing injustice in the way that it does, the Indian State has turned this country into a tinderbox of massive unrest.” And yes! Maoists are very generous. They are ready to pay compensation to the family of the bereaved whom they kill with diabolic unconcern, or collateral damage that they inflict, a very capitalist solution! Ms Roy does not instruct us whether this should be made  the  rule of engagement?  Money for killings - on either side? For the record since Ms Roy composed her panegyric, "the beautiful children" have toted up an impressive figure of several hundreds of innocent anonymous civilians killed in trains and buses blown up in different locales in different parts of the country as a “specific solution to a specific problem”. To be sure the videos of these  would provide invaluable instruction and entertainment of the  future generations of the "beautiful children."

Arundhati Roy’s account, largely on the basis of her tutorial in the jungles of Dandakaranya, seeks to construct an uncontested narrative of the whole Maoist movement as also a part of our hsitory.So far so good. No one can dispute that these “comrades”-the adivasi foot soldiers- have been dealt a very bad hand. But what is sad and dispiriting is her conclusion that this binary world of the hunted and the oppressive state has arrived at a stage of social and political entropy that the possibility of change though any agency other than violence appears nonexistent, as if the countless democratic non violent struggles to overcome the local environments of oppression and exploitation through peaceful means throughout the country were not part of our time and place. The success of Indian constitutional democracy may not satisfy some absolutist standards but who can deny the fact that to it we owe the radical change in power relations that obtained  sixty years back and the subalterns and the marginalized have acquired their new character. But to admit this possibility would be inconsistent with the Maoist  strategy of invoking force to justify counterforce and  engender a vicious cycle of alienation of  more and more  people.

But Ms Roy will have none of it .She is convinced that the present system has outlived its utility. “I think of what Comrade Venu said to me: They want to crush us, not only because of the minerals, but because we are offering the world an alternative model.”But this “alternative model” was experimented with, in half the world, for the best part of the century, and it fell on its face not by the application of superior force but by the greater appeal of the liberal market democracy. Whether the resurrection of Marx who now indubitably belongs to the heritage of European culture is a viable project, whether the formidable edifice of Marxist reflection and analysis which dealt in certitudes would be as relevant in an age when there has been such a radical change in the character of productive forces, technology and human society, one cannot be too sure. The leftist discourse itself is such a mishmash of Marxist ideology, vague socialist leanings, phrases and ideas adapted from the neo liberal discourse, bourgeois political opportunism of the worst kind, and proletarian confiscation for the private profit, downright criminality and hedonism. And those who are running the show know that such projects thrive on impossible promises. So in order to keep the hope alive lies, deceit duplicity and force are important weapons in their arsenal especially when they are dealing with their own followers.

Not that Ms Roy is unaware of this, “When the party is a suitor (as it now is in Dandakaranya), wooing the people, attentive to their every need, then it genuinely is a People’s Party, its army genuinely a People’s Army. But after the revolution easily this love affair can turn into a bitter marriage. How easily the Peoples’ army can turn upon the people. Today in Dandakaranya, the Party wants to keep the bauxite in the mountain. Tomorrow will it change its mind?” This bit of thinking aloud should have been posed to the Gandhians with the Guns. As a public intellectual she owed it to the society to act as an interlocutor between the mutually hostile parties to the dispute but she keeps these doubts to herself and expresses the optimism, “But can we, should we let apprehensions about the future immobilize us in the present.” That is too heavy a price to pay for the salt of her hosts.

Her apologists say she is not obliged to give out a programmatic vision for the whole of India so long as she can write some stirring prose extolling the social bandits of Dandakaranya. As all her previous reflections have shown, she is good only at fulminations and polemics, grandstanding and high rhetoric. Perhaps it is we who have been dupes to our own optimism, pouring over her tiresomely long disquisitions hoping against hope that “A directionless dyslexic, capable of getting lost between my bedroom and my bath room” would show us the way out of the most serious crisis in our nationhood.

Apocalypse Postponed

Haunted as the world is by the spectre of Jihadi terror and extremist threats, the act of one lone individual which nearly pushed the world to the brink of total and irreversible destruction went absolutely unnoticed. Thanks to the great statesmanship of the President of Banana Republic the Apocalypse was postponed. Musings brings out the first of a series of such Tales from the Banana Republic for its followers and friends.  Comments would be very welcome.

Mr. Ghotaskar's removal from his assignment-even though it had been a long time coming- unsettled him completely. A couple of days after he was made to quit, grave and worrying symptoms began to be noticed in his behaviour by his family members and his close friends.

He no longer flaunted the three inch wide sandalwood paste on his forehead. "What is the point in belonging to the highest Brahminical order, what use is all this Puja Path, paying obeisance to the 330 million gods, if they spurn you like this.” Mr. Ghotaskar was known to practice celibacy for the last several decades, simply because he couldn't find the time for any activity other than sitting in his office. He himself famously explained it once. “My career is a very jealous and possessive mistress, and it will not allow me to court any other.” He came to office as early as it was practicable, and left when the watchman threatened to lock him in and retire for the night with the keys. His efforts to keep his assignment from poaching colleagues occupied so much of his time that it left him with little time for his other familial obligations. The routine had got so intricately woven in his life cycle that his biological clock functioned accordingly. Even on Sundays and holidays he would visit the office on one pretext or the other because it kept him normal and balanced. His wife could take it no more and decamped with the gardener. When this news reached him he remained completely unmoved and he went about his business as usual. Denied access to that charmed office of his, for the first time he demanded to know where his wife was. It seems his family had read courage and stoicism in a gesture of pure indifference or incomprehension.

This discovery by Mr. Ghotaskar caused considerable consternation in the family. The confirmed celibate now boasted of his tremendous tumescence and showed interest in lewd stories and limericks. The embarrassment of his close friends and family grew with every passing day, until one day he was found to be shouting at some one, who was however not visible to others. His friends and family came out and tried to remonstrate with him, to calm him down but his anger showed no signs of abetting. If any thing he was beginning to get more and more aggressive. "Sir, you are a liar and a cheat" followed by some expletives and then he become incoherent. A few drops of froth were also noticed at the corner of his lips. His son got terribly alarmed and immediately called up his family doctor, "Uncle, Papa has certainly become unhinged. To think that he is standing up and shouting at his superior is a dangerously abnormal behavior. When he was alright he would always stand up with one hand raised in a gesture of salute, even when talking to them on the phone. In person he would prostrate himself to lick their boots. Whether hallucinating or not is not the issue, the fact that he is standing up to his superior provides the key to his abnormal behavior. We must no longer hesitate to put him under psychiatric care". So Mr. Ghotaskar was finally bundled out to a mental hospital-where they put him on sedatives for a while and did some counseling. The treating Doctor was of the opinion that he had just been touched in some corner of his head, and he just had to learn to accept the reality of his removal. The regular counseling would help him cope with it and he should be fine very soon.

Mr. Ghotaskar had risen steadily in his career braving all the hazards that his particular profession presented. The career of a government servant is a virtual battle field mined with backbiting, negative PR, character assassination etc but he negotiated it very deftly and arrived where he had longed to be all his life. At the very top! But strangely enough, he was not enjoying it any more: on the contrary, it was a big disappointment, an anti climax and a let down. He felt cabined, cribbed and confined. Of course all the privileges were his. Innumerable servants, several cars, parties, conferences, tours, ceremonials. To tell the truth, many more were added to the already long list and yet there was something vital missing. Mr. Ghotaskar like many other civil servants could not live by bread alone. He must have cash to go with it and cash was hard to come by because he was that much more in the limelight. Even then he could manage some but it was not in the prescribed dose to keep him healthy, wealthy, happy and wise.

It appears his friends and members of the family had failed to read the symptoms of the impending illness. Even when he had not been certified insane he complained that some one else kept marching by his side all the while. The afternoon shadow longer than himself often scared him and he viewed it as an attempt to cut him to size. He tried to drive away these negative thoughts by collecting a clutch of his cronies in a closed room where he would shout at the top of his voice "I am the master of the universe". This shot of adrenaline did bolster his sagging self confidence, but only momentarily, and he needed this fix more and more often. Otherwise he spent his days in fear and trembling. Or in less gloomier moments, he would just sit in his office all day long fondly touching the upholstery, gazing at the stationary, looking up the succession board where his name stood out in bolder print. He had already carved out a place for himself on the succession board. What he was now worried about was history-or precisely the dung heap of history, the ultimate destination of all those who achieved that position. From the thought of history to the onset of hysteria was just a few steps and a passing apprehension of being removed rendered him inoperative, inactive, and infirm. He became less and less productive.

The patience of the president of Banana Republic finally ran out and Mr. Ghotaskar was given the marching order. There was no particular provocation. Just that his inactivity and his paranoia had reached the tipping point. Mr. Ghotaskar was a congenital liar but he surpassed even himself that day-he strung together eleven separate lies during the course of one single statement and was not agile enough to eat his words instantly. It cost him his job and tragically enough, his sanity as well. So here he was, recuperating under the expert care of a renowned psychiatrist.

But it was not long before Mr. Ghotaskar came round. He started wearing his sandal paste as meticulously as ever. The rounds to the various temples etc increased and the time spent in spelling out his wish list also increased. He would often come back to the temples add a post script or heavily underline the important parts of his request that he made to gods. Never to take any chances he would mobilize at least two dozens other gods to a particular task and several others were sounded out and kept on hold, just in case. Finally one day, there was some stirring in the statue of Hanuman in the temple near the Central Bank and clearly, unmistakably, he asked Mr. Ghotaskar with a smile to state his wish. This Hanuman had always a slightly sullen and angry look about him, as if, he had been snapped on his incendiary mission to Lanka, and sculpted in that state. This was perhaps the reason why it was less frequented by supplicants, and believed to be even less likely to grant wishes. So Mr. Ghotaskar least expected anything to come out of this routine call. Moreover he was lost in a fantasy in which he imagined that he had acquired the powers to assume whatever shape he wanted to. He was enjoying the bounties of the lost office by assuming the identity of his successor. Long used to deceit and cunning, straight, and simple solutions never occurred to him. So on the spur of the moment, he demanded that he be given the powers to impersonate any one-human, animal or machine, he chose to. "So be it", said Lord Hanuman and then immediately froze in his sullen angry stance.

Mr. Ghotaskar made some dry runs to test the boon and was delighted at the results. No body even so much as suspected any foul play." Now was the time to get back at the manipulating bastard", he thought. "His name would be mud from tomorrow. If I am perceived to be bad he will be seen in a worse light henceforth”. He planned to set afoot a hundred mischiefs in the disguise of his successor, make up for deficiency in the targeted amount of cash and make merry in general while his successor would face the music. So Mr. Ghotaskar assumed the looks of his successor and occupied his seat in the office of his successor who was out on a secret undisclosed mission. But even before Mr. Ghotaskar could cause much mischief he was discovered. The successor of course was no saint, and he had his share of weaknesses but they were all etched on the human scale and in his short stint he had restored some sort of normalcy. Mr. Ghotaskar had been able to impersonate his successor only in terms of out ward appearance but so unique was he in his behaviour that even the divine weapon could not be of much help. It remained its own original self and immediately raised suspicion in the minds of the close retinue of the chief. The whispering campaign alerted the genuine incumbent who rushed back from his secret destination and challenged the imposter. Mr. Ghotaskar was discovered in no time and was branded on his left cheek with an indelible mark, under the orders of the government so that he could not deceive any one again.

Mr. Ghotaskar however did not give up. He sat down in a yogic posture of meditation and concentrated deeply to keep the negative thoughts away. Where did he go wrong? How and when did he stay off the trajectory success that he had plotted for himself? "Ah" no negative thoughts. Let me recall the happier years. Perhaps that will recharge my batteries, perhaps reveal to me the formula of my success so far.

Mr. Ghotaskar recalled that he had performed feats that defied even the laws of Euclidean geometry. His performance was always at an abysmally lower plane compared to the rewards. They were totally unaligned and yet no one in the entire bureaucracy had been able to figure out this mathematical fallacy, and hence his case was put in the category of unsolved management problems. Mr. Ghotaskar smiled to himself. He could feel the muscles in his entire body relax and a pleasant feeling of well being spread across him. Mentally, he counted his hoard of cash. It had crossed the ten figure mark, and he felt himself awash with a beatific feeling. But then unaccountably his prosperity reminded him of the poverty of the people of Republic and it gave him a shot stab of remorse. Was he seized of some subliminal guilt? However there was light at the end of this tunnel of confusion. "Shall I impersonate the President’s chief advisor? I shall engage him in important matters of state. Warn him of the unholy designs of the neighboring kingdom. Assess the relative strengths of the generals charged with defending the kingdom, compare our military might, then bring him round to the internal security scenario .From the defence, scenario to the internal security situation would be a very natural progression, and then may be casually he would let slip the topic of rehabilitating myself - Mr. Ghotaskar that is . The idea appealed to him and he devised the many opening gambits. But on second thoughts he abandoned the idea. The thought of war and financial management perhaps may not usher in the right frame of mind to elicit a favorable decision. It may indeed leave him a little insecure, perhaps anxious and worried. The more he cogitated, the less favourable a strategy it seemed to appear. Just then he had a eureka sensation. “I shall approach the President with some innovative programme for the poor; the President is very deeply committed to these programmes. The plight of the poor could be dwelt upon some length, till the milk of human kindness became operation flood. And then casually mention about the deep injustice committed to me, Mr. Ghotaskar, that is. May be the president will agree to rehabilitate me, Mr. Ghotaskar, that is, along with the innumerable poor. He chuckled at the idea, “The chief advisor pleading for the rehabilitation of poor Mr. Ghotaskar!” He immediately assumed the look of the chief advisor and stood before the mirror to ensure that every detail of his dress and demeanor was just right. But alas, the branding mark on his cheek stood there. He hurriedly checked up with the Lord Hanuman near the Central Bank but he said he that was helpless because this branding was inflicted after the boon was granted. Sorry, he said, retrospective remedies were not with in his powers. He couldn't do very much about it. Given this conditionality the boon had become infructuous as far as impersonation of human forms was concerned.

A deeply disappointed and demoralized Ghotaskar retired to his hideout intent on vengeance and a come back. Only if he could meet the president and remind him of his unflinching loyalty and years of entertainment that he had provided to him and his courtiers for free! Only if he could plead his case in person! In his human form he would never even be admitted in the presence of the president leave aside an appointment.

"He had two more life lines still", he thought", he could assume animal and machine shapes". At this stage we would do well to summarize the story of Mr. Ghotaskar’s long ordeal and the fortuitous circumstances that prevented him from making a personal representation to the President .He tried being a dog in the President’s house, but his dog in the manger attitude and his propensity to wag his tail surreptitiously to the arch opponent of the President also, earned him his dismissal. The disguise of a mole, he thought was ideal for him. He had in fact been one- for several political parties, all at a time, for many years and had never been discovered. His association with the president in this avatar was even shorter lived. Mr. Ghotaskar assumed his human shape very reluctantly but he looked more frustrated and angrier than ever .He was full of negative, destructive thoughts. He cursed Lord Hanuman day and night .He would sit in his garden and throw bricks, mud, weed, whatever came handy at all and sundry .His family members again got alarmed they suspected these to be the symptoms of another break down.

The counselor and the psychiatrist were both summoned. The psychiatrist suggested his removal to an asylum at once .In his view of things Mr. Ghotaskar was too far gown and was now in urgent need of shock therapy. But the counselor, a bald kindly gentleman, pleaded for a few days postponement of this drastic mode of treatment. He was confident that there was nothing wrong with Mr. Ghotaskar. He was just a little frustrated.

He gently took him by the arm and asked him to sit by his side.“Mr. Ghotaskar what is bothering you? You have such a wonderful record of service. You have graced all the key appointments, enjoyed every privilege and perk that your particular position allows you to. You went right up to the top. You have lived a full life, what is your regret”. Mr. Ghotaskar let lose his flurry of complaints. How he had been cheated by life, by his friends, by his protégé, by Lord Hanuman himself .He went on for hours together, endlessly repetitive, at times boastful, sometimes maudlin, sometimes threatening to be self destructive. The counselor listened to him with enormous patience, providing him just the right dose of reassurance. The session which had started around afternoon went right up to late in the evening. Mr. Ghotaskar was by now totally composed and in complete command of himself though just a little pensive “I must work upon him a little more”, thought the counselor. He knew Mr. Ghotaskar’s fondness for drinks, so he said, “How about a drink Mr. Ghotaskar”. Mr. Ghotaskar was instantly receptive, but at whose cost- that is the thought that was engaging his mind. The counselor knew Mr. Ghotaskar only too well. “There is some good Scotch lying in my car but I am afraid we will still need some soda”. Mr. Ghotaskar instantly made amends for his earlier indecision by quickly offering to provide the soda. After two refills Mr.Ghotaskar became a little philosophical holding forth on the eternal verities of life. “The idea of God itself is a delusion. One of the longest lasting delusions which has affected mankind through out the ages, trans culturally.” The counselor was trying to figure out which way this abstract observation was headed but Mr. Ghotaskar was immediately on ball. “Now look at me. Who could be more God fearing than I. Lord Hanuman gave me the boons alright, but how ineffective they proved to be. It could not achieve my purpose and yet through out the ages, we have all believed him to be omnipotent. He is supposed to have burnt Lanka single handedly, lifted mountains with people and plants, insects and animals on board. And yet he could not so much as haul this pretender out of my chair and evict him from my office.” The counselor listened to Mr. Ghotaskar with great patience, periodically filling his glass with generous amounts of whiskey. “I have tried every thing, I have even been a dog and a mole and yet! Even the boons given by Hanuman have failed me.“But you have still one boon left- you haven’t tried being a machine”.

Mr. Ghotaskar almost sprang from his seat. “Oh yes how I could have forgotten that. What shall I be--- a bulldozer, a road roller; an electric saw, what shall I be. I shall cut him into pieces, I shall bulldoze the pretender and then roll him to finely powdered dust, I will squash him to a pulp and then roll him into sausage.” “Just hold on. You are too confused. The idea behind assuming these different forms is only to achieve your objective-- you have to get back your job which belongs to you right fully, and is yours in perpetuity, is that right? “Well said doc”. “So what you need is the right ideas. Why not become a computer”. “Wow”, he jumped at the suggestion, “I’ll become a computer, the most powerful computer on this earth.”


He instantly sat cross legged and asked Lord Hanuman to grant him his wish. Lord Hanuman was looking a little bored even irritable. “Yes Ghotaskar, what it is it this time round”. “Oh God please make me a computer”. Lord Hanuman looked distinctly puzzled. This is the first time such a boon had been asked of him. And he himself was not too sure about the computers, whether it was good for humans to be computers. So he asked Mr. Ghotaskar to carefully consider the proposition. He also reminded him that many a demon, god and humans had come to grief by acquiring powers that they should not be having. But Mr. Ghotaskar was unmoved, computer he wanted to be and the Lord must grant him his wish. “Make me the most powerful computer on the earth.” So Lord Hanuman put him inside the central computer in North American Air Defence Command, PENTAGON. “I am the most powerful member of the tribe after all.” Drunk with his new found power he challenged all comers to various games of black jack, back gammon and chess and bet them all in no time. “But why have I become a computer in the first place. I must get back my assignment. How could being a computer help was even beyond his computing ability which was measured in several bytes.


Then the penny dropped for him .As the central computer at NORAD it was his responsibility to assess the threat perception of incoming nuclear missiles and launch a counter attack. Or if the need be to launch a preemptive strike. So he spoke to all his counter parts - computers- in London, Paris, Beijing, Kremlin, even Delhi, Pyongyang, Telaviv, Pretroria, and Islamabad. In league with them he staged a scenario that scared the day lights out of those charged with the responsibility of using these diabolical weapons. He simulated a cloud of nuclear missiles on the horizon, and warned the US president of an impeding attack by Moscow. “Mr. President we have precisely thirty minutes for a response but I am afraid that there has been a major malfunction in our control and command system so the hatch of the nuclear silos won't open.” His counterpart in Moscow threw its hands in despair that it found itself helpless against a preemptive strike by Beijing. Delhi, Islamabad, Pyongang London Paris, Telaviv were paralyzed with fear on being similarly duped. Hotlines rang ceaselessly between the various capitals with in those anguished few minutes, and in an informal impromptu world summit the like of which had never been seen before the statesmen asked each other to cease and desist. Having brought the world to the brink of a nervous break down the central computer announced that it had been invaded and taken over by a desperate civil servant. If his wishes were not granted then and there, he would actually precipitate the Armageddon. The world leaders led by the president of the US listened with great trepidation the demand. “Mr. Ghotaskar of the Banana Republic must be restored to his original assignment and an equivalent of a years pay and allowances be paid to him as reparation damages. Further to that the President of the republic must make a solemn undertaking that he shall be allowed to remain there till his superannuation and after that he should be provided a sine cure assignment befitting his status.” The world heaved a collective sigh of relief but where the hell was this Banana Republic?


The key advisors and strategists of the world leaders were busy locating the republic, the services of the Google fellows were requisitioned, Arabic, Swahili, Hindi, Spanish, French, Chinese, Creole and all the language experts put their collective experience together, but they could not locate the republic so that the entire world community could plead for the immediate fulfillment of Mr. Ghotaskar’s demand. Time was running out and many a world leader could be heard silently saying their prayers when the chief of the South Asia bureau of the CIA said I have heard the word Ghotala. Let  me see. And soon he was able to find out the exact location of the republic .The president of Banana Republic was immediately contacted and the planetary delegation pleaded for the demand to be acceded to at once. The president of the Republic had made a solemn declaration only a couple of days before that terrorist demands will not be met with, whatever the cost. But this was something out of this world. He dare not demure. The superpowers were already threatening to blow up should he not immediately announce, as asked for by Mr. Ghotaskar.The president immediately agreed but demanded to speak to the cyborg monster who had invaded the computer .He was curious - who could be this nut who would threaten to blow up the world for this puny assignment. The message was relayed to the president of Banana Republic live via the satellite which had been maneuvered over the republic just in case. Mr. Ghotaskar’s synthetic mechanical voice still retained that hallmark quality and the president immediately knew who it was. “ Oh it is that Ghotaskar in one of his nine lives. Let him come. He is welcome and all his demands have been accepted.”

The biggest crisis in the history of mankind had been averted but a small problem had still to be tackled at home. Mr. Ghotaskar’s successor had become hugely popular – not because he was in any way extraordinary but he had a tremendous advantage by comparison. Mr. Ghotaskar could not be rehabilitated without outraging the public opinion .Caught up between the planetary pressure and public opinion at home the president came up with an innovative solution. He had an exact replica of all the appurtenances and accessories of Mr.Ghotaskar’s office made in papier mache. Even the various attending staff were cast in a similar mould. Mr. Ghotaskar arrived with all the pomp and show attached to his office and made himself comfortable. He just did not seem to notice –or even if he did, he did not mind very much .Legend has it that he discharged with great distinction his virtual responsibilities. The president of Banana Republic went down in the annals of mankind as some one who thwarted the evil design to unmake in a few minutes the world that God took six days to make.

The current post was actually in the nature of a brief response to the text of a talk “Poverty, Corruption and Accountability” delivered by late Sri Pradhan Jwala Prasad at the Rotary Club Patna , which he had mailed to me for my comment .Sri Pradhan was a distinguished engineer and a public spirited senior citizen with a variety of social concerns which put us younger ones to shame. He firmly believed in the power of reason and critical debate so vital to a vibrant civil society. Unfortunately he died only a couple of days ago in a very unfortunate accident and I held back the mail which was written on the same evening-but not sent for some reason- that he died. I have now decided to post it on my blog as a tribute to the memory of Sri Pradhan

THE POOR MUST PREVAIL

Manoje Nath

In a market driven society the poor cannot create demand nor step up the market hence they stand in stark contradiction to the logic of the neo-liberal order. Yet there is a very unusual political consensus that will not oppose, either on pragmatic considerations or for reasons of economic viability, the allocation of resources to poverty eradication programmes even though there has been routine and unedifying lack of achievement and orientation in meeting the targets. A certain agreed inefficiency in the management of these programmes is also perhaps part of the same consensus. Every culture obligates its citizens to set apart a sum of money towards charity, Dan, or Zakat, where the recipient is an anonymous, incidental medium for ensuring one’s own rites of passage. The poverty alleviation programmes may sometimes appear to be a mode of political correctness and expiation.

To introduce some clarity in our thinking it would be useful to differentiate the role of various agencies. The professional economists, statisticians etc devise the parameters for defining poverty and methods of arriving at poverty estimates .The political establishment makes the necessary allocation, and the budget is approved by the legislature. The problem of identifying the actual poor in accordance with given criteria and ensuring that the subsidy reaches the deserving poor –essentially a managerial problem –is the exclusive domain of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state government.

We are still wedded to the old colonial concept - salvation only at the hands of the district magistrate- where the district administration is a pre existent arrangement to be assigned any and every task, howsoever, over worked, or ill equipped in terms of both motivation and skills it may be. The poor achievements in the poverty alleviation programmes can be largely attributed to the fact that the system geared to the task of delivering the benefits is rigid, attitudinally inadequate and unbending to the task in hand. Traditionally the authority of the district magistrate is rooted, largely, in the fact that he commands the obedience of the district police force. But where as it is advantageous in –maintaining law and order, reigning in the malcontents, performing regulatory functions, the law –and – order – cast –of –mind has a countervailing disadvantage for this kind of a task. The poor, in their inability to articulate their concerns, in claiming their due are vulnerable and helpless like newborn babies. It is not enough to make allocations; it is more important to reach it to his doorsteps and empower him to claim it as his right. The newborn baby and the poor are alike in their helplessness- they are stricken with hunger but cannot articulate it, nor may reach for food howsoever plentiful the availability. Just as the baby has to be helped to the mother’s breast for nourishment a lot of flexibility and hand holding is required in reaching the relief to the poor households. For the poor to benefit from any programme one has to understand the narrow realities of his life and above all have great compassion commitment. Otherwise since the bureaucracy is also in the monopolistic possession of information, it can always manage -and manipulate it, to its advantage. But more importantly, performance in this major sector of the state activity and the career rewards of civil servants are not aligned on the same plain. How cavalier can some civil servants be will be evident presently.

Just one monumental deception perpetrated by the Food and Civil Supplies Department in the year 2002- it is being quoted because it is emblematic and the facts are in the public domain -will demonstrate that the poor can sometimes be stripped of their humanity and be reduced to being mere numbers in government records.

In the year 1998 the food cell of the Economic Offences Wing of the CID during the course of its investigation into the Red card scheme came across huge irregularities both in terms of errors of exclusion as well as inclusion. The distribution of the subsidized food grains was another racket. The EOW registered more than 40 cases– was obliged to register because these irregularities constituted cognizable offences and the police are duty bound to investigate each one of them. 800 more such cases were registered in the districts in a particular period of time, against various functionaries of food and civil supplies department and FP shop owners. The number of accused may have run into thousands. Several detailed and evidence based reports urged to get a genuine survey conducted because the dimension of the problem was not amenable to solution by criminal cases. The sheer volume would place it beyond the reach of such a measure. How many people can you prosecute? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, the sheer enormity of the numbers would nullify the power of deterrence.

Under constant pressure to weed out ineligible from the list of beneficiaries, the department of food and civil services conveyed to all concerned in 2002 that a survey had brought to light 21, 00,018 ineligible beneficiaries, and a district wise break up for all the 37 districts was given out. It also had been able to identify the ineligible beneficiaries as well as an exact number of the eligible ones so that a neat swapping could take place. The Economic Offences wing of the CID which was keeping a very close eye on the situation contested this but it was overruled and the matter was handed over to the Vigilance for further investigation. The CAG report discovered, during its detailed audit of Food Security programme in 2005 -2006, that this bit of statistic was a figment of imagination .No such survey had taken place! When asked to clarify, “The department stated that the departmental figures were based on rough estimation of 30 per cent families. The reply of the department is not tenable because rough estimation cannot lead to deletion of ineligible and inclusion of eligible families in absence of specific information relating to individual beneficiary.” (Page 69 of the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. For the year ending 31st March 2006. Civil.)

The Vigilance Department, which had been entrusted with the enquiry after divesting the food cell of the EOW of the responsibility, was alerted during their inquiry to the fact that no such survey had taken place. But instead of unmasking the lie it skirted the issue altogether and submitted its several hundred-page rambling report, with no clear cut recommendation, which reached the government after 3 years. Given that the delivery system is a network of responsibilities so organized and so subdivided that the individual is conscious of no responsibility at all, it sometimes becomes difficult to call the various functionaries to account. Performance of the civil servants in this major sector of the state activity and their career rewards are not aligned on the same plain. Not many of these have come to much grief for the tardy implementation of the TPDS programme which may have deprived the poor of Bihar of food subsidy opportunity worth thousands of crores of rupees between 1998 and 2005. But significantly enough the Secretary Food and Civil Supplies who solved the problem of identification with the simple expedient device of shouting “Aaall is well” and the obliging police officer who lent a helping hand did extremely well for themselves.

Thus in the absence of a credible and parallel channel of information and grass root level political commitment the bureaucracy can sometimes stall feed the Government any data. More than that such large scale doctored figures not only derail the ongoing programme but they also create a false template for future revisions. Pre existing figures are like indentations or grooves into which any identification exercise naturally gets sucked into given the arduous nature of the task. Political representatives -even of the so called pro poor parties- often indulge in canvassing for the inclusion of favoured groups and individuals urge the exclusion of their adversaries. Thus identification of the poor becomes problematic. It is also the obligation of political parties to make the poor worthy recipients of welfare programmes of the state, which as Lawrence Mead says in his book Beyond Entitlement, is to create “civic obligations ...send the children to school, respect the rights of others. It does not in any manner obligate the poor to any political party.” In absence of this dialectic the poverty alleviation programmes tend to become a mode of domination and dependence.

A fact that has escaped the notice of poverty economists is that the poverty alleviation programmes almost necessarily lead to a large scale impoverishment of the public sphere and the debasement of the values of the community. Since the per capita subsidy is extremely low a very large number of the poor have to be excoriated to make a decent pile. Thus a formidable nexus of graft and rent seeking on a grand scale –there were approximately 55000 FP shops in Bihar during the particular period - develops in which civil servants, elements of politics, law enforcement, freely collaborate for mutual benefit. The collections evaporate at the lower reaches and precipitate at higher peaks and generally may not leave an audit trail. But it inculcates a way of life based on corruption, unlawful behaviour and a general attitude of cynicism and despair. The criminal cases registered in the wake of some enquiry or the other slowly languish and are ultimately settled out of court or plainly forgotten. If at all the cases reach the courts, the poor are further cheated by the system by being asked to attend these criminal proceedings either as a complainant witness, or an accused- thus losing his wage for that day, if he is lucky; things could be lot worse - because the poor sod put his LTI or signature on some paper.

The lack of social empowerment of the poor makes a mockery of their legal entitlement. The extraordinary passivity of the poor underlies the paradoxical situation: their social reality becomes starker even as they are becoming a credible political force. The institutions of the open society do not fare much better. The TPDS matter was continuously agitated in the legislative assembly, writs were filed in the Hon’ble Patna High Court and the Supreme Court .No less than 1000 reports appeared in various newspapers. But in the absence of a sustained engagement and lack of access to authentic information, neither relief nor recompense came their way. The media has created a thriving public sphere but it is still far from creating some kind of a participative parity in terms of issues and agenda as far as the disadvantaged groups are concerned.

Given the enormity of the task, the community must step in to act as a guarantor. Instead of treating it as a bipartite issue between the anonymous state and the nameless, luckless beneficiary, it must assert its role as a stakeholder for the programmes to achieve the transformative impact. Even though programmes like NREGA and even TPDS have an important vigilance and social audit roles, the civil society at large helplessly watches the miscarriage of the programme.

The idea of a welfare state, we may remind ourselves, is not the result of the efforts of progressive minded thinkers but of a hard headed “reactionary” like Karl von Bismarck who was aware of the threat to the well being, security and stability of the state form the poor malcontents. We may not always get the allocation that we demand -competitive claims on national resources decide that- but we can certainly ensure that every paisa that is allocated reaches the beneficiary to stem the appeal of extremism. It is all for our own good.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The author had the occasion to investigate many of the anti poverty programmes during his 14 year stay in the Economic Offences Wing of the CID Bihar where he closely observed the nuts and bolts of the delivery appartus as well as the mechanics of the programme implementation . This article is a thumbnail version of a larger project - which has since been abandoned -The Parable of the Well Paid Public Servant: A Review of Three Major Poverty Alleviation Programmes (Targeted Public Distribution System, the Dhoti Sari scheme and the Indira Gandhi Awas Yojana, the whole ensemble of Roti, Kapada and Makan.)The write up referred to is more in the nature of a police report- heeding the advice of Pierre Bordeau, the noted French sociologist,- that one must avoid the temptation to turn these stories in to “literature”. The best thing Bordeau says is “to make our readers see that raw absurdity, without any special effects. …. to allow these stories to retain their extraordinary and almost unbearable violence.”

These generalizations draw upon his experience of investigating a slew of cases but only TPDS programme 1998 -2005 has been cited, given the limited scope of an article and the fact that this particular incident has for long been in the public domain.

n

Commemorating the Saint, Canonizing Corruption

(This piece was written for a newspaper immediately after the killing of Satyendra Dubey. I thought this would be relevant in the context of my latest post, Conscience is the cancer not corruption.)

The reactions to Satyendra Dubey's tragic death provide a substantial psychoanalysis of the postmodernist society. Even while the investigation is on to establish the motive and identity of his killers, he has already been apotheosized as the sacrificial victim to the Golden Quadrangle project, which, for its sheer size and sweep, is a significant civilizational milestone. The association of ritual sacrifice and the rise of civilization, and of the sacrifice leading to the establishment of order, are ideas that are ingrained in the collective psyche and, in so honouring Dubey, is the society catering to its own deeply felt existentialist craving?

Development projects generally engender some kind of a gold rush, given the opportunity it provides for making money. After the contractors, subcontractors etc. have maximized their profit, reportedly, in states infested with extremists, it is further vulnerable to the proletarian confiscation by extremist outfits, as well as to extortion by the mafia. Pitted against the fervour that is brought to bear on this activity are the apathy, listlessness and an extraordinary passivity of the people – because, as yet, there is no communitarian mode of fighting for common causes. Whether it is the private man for profit or public man for office, we ruthlessly push for the gratification of our objectives. The practice of blat and bribery is quite common and acceptable, not only in development projects, but elsewhere as well. Sometime back, a leading financial journal brought out an issue devoted exclusively to corruption. Interestingly enough, the main thrust was on the problem: how does a manager do business given the inevitability of this factor?

Perhaps as a reminder of the fact that we may be going overboard in our reactions to Dubey's killing comes the revelation of the deeds of Ranjit Don ,the master hacker of competitive examinations. His clientele consists of the elite of the society; those who could pay a million rupees and more to secure the admission of their loitering heirs to the prestigious medical, engineering and management schools of the country. His capacity for accumulating phenomenal wealth in a short time is part of his charisma.

He is a hero not in spite of the questionable means but because of it. His supporters took out a procession on two wheelers from Nalanda to Patna. Their grievance? A man who had done so much for the development of Bihar was being unjustly arraigned. The conjuror of stamps Telgi also has, reportedly, a fan following.The value of dishonest theft over honest labour could not have found more resounding endorsement than this. Given this culture, the effort of an honest man doesn't hew in the agenda of career advancement or success; in fact, there is something of a kamikaze self-destructiveness about his efforts. He only ends up annoying the powerful groups without necessarily enlisting the goodwill of the society at large. Such a man questions the basic premise of doing business. Hence, he is viewed as taking up a terrorist position. Had he been armed with an AK47 or RDX, it would have been easier to handle. But the danger stems from the fact that he is anachronistically frugal. He is armed only with a determination not to make compromises. The intractable problem that he poses is sometimes soluble only by getting rid of him. The various organizations show a remarkable convergence of approach in dealing with such malcontents and stragglers. Of course, he isn't murdered. He is often tolerated like a quaint little absurdity, an alien from a different moral world. Sometimes he is humoured as being slightly unhinged but should he become troublesome, the full arsenal of penalties is unleashed to neutralize hum. After all, one full vigilance week is reserved for emancipatory and enlightening speeches, and for affirming one's faith in the values of probity.

It is not that only those who have been to the IITs are bitten by this bug. Can morality be taught like mathematics or lessons in probity ingested like so many pills? Man or woman, honesty has no gender. It can be found anywhere - even in the police. However, the rule holds. Those afflicted with it are at a tremendous risk. Not long ago, a young superintendent of police did realize it - too late - in a remote district of the erstwhile south Bihar, now Jharkhand. He had stood up against the so-called extremists who enforce their curfew in the forests for the illegal loggers and kendu leaf contactors to carry on their profitable business, peacefully. He was ambushed and his dead body lay in the jungle for several hours, before a police party could reach there. There was a faint whiff of a scandal about some fifth column activity. A divisional Forest Officer refused to abdicate his responsibility of preserving the jungles in the hills of Kaimur district and, for this reason, he had endeared himself to the local masses. But that was no protection against his death and dismemberment at the hands of an extremist group in the name of these very people. A handful of enraged students of a veterinary college similarly torched their principal sometime back in the full view of shocked but passive fellow students - because he refused to be a party to mass cheating. News channels report that a senior civil servant is on the run because he had refused to sign a list of appointees that he believed was trumped up.

All these episodes jogged the social conscience for a while, but it hasn't made the life of the Dubeys and Sanjay Singhs any easier. Because martyrs and saints are no longer models for emulation. Their image serves a very utilitarian purpose. By the very act of conferring sainthood on them - their rejection as an "outsider" is part of the mystique - their deeds are placed beyond the realm of an ordinary man's effort. The society thus alleviates any vestigial anxiety or guilt on this score and keeps its constituents both peaceful and pacified.

Corruption is responsible for the sorry and sordid state we are in but alas! We cannot quite do without it. Just as the post modernist society, by entrusting power to politicians, disdains any aspiration to power itself, by periodically enacting this ceremony of innocence and self-flagellation, it rids itself of any responsibility to be honest.

These are the personal views of the author

Conscience is the Cancer, not Corruption.

Sometime back, during a particular vigilance week, I was invited to speak to a gathering on the topic, "Corruption in public life." It is a task that I detest, not the least because I am a poor public speaker. What could I, with my relatively privileged perch in the society, tell the common man, who bumps his knees every day on the intractable problems of existence, soluble only through bribery , graft, baksheesh, chai-pani, speed money and a hundred and eight other names by which facilitation may be known? He could tell me a thing or two, because corruption is omnipresent and omnipotent. I am very clever at evading such requests, but I had to accept the task because I was given to understand that it was part of my government duty. Since I was posted to a vigilance organization, ex-officio, I stood invested with the wisdom to shed light on the etiology of the cancer that is afflicting the body politic and the moral authority to exhort the rest of the society to weed it out.
I reached the venue, a posh local hotel, nervous and tense. To add to my mortification, I was to occupy one of the three chairs on the dais. The chief guest arrived in time and occupied the seat next to me. He exuded an unmistakable whiff of power, success and a Mercedes coupe. A look of great distaste on his face reinforced his privileged status and his pain at being thrown into the company of humbler folks. But immediately, his face softened, and he even mimicked the gesture of getting up to greet me. It turned out that he was the son of a leading public figure whom we had prosecuted in the late 80s and early 90s on charges of corruption. From the looks of it, it appeared that he had kept up the good work of his father and was then worth hundreds of crores himself.
He was the first speaker and he got up with a military determination, wheeling the big gun of his mouth into the best position in front of the microphone. Very soon, it became clear that his taste for luxuries did not stop at expensive clothes and cars, but extended to a clean conscience as well. For the first few minutes he sang the song of himself with great devotion, his eyes closed. Then, for the best part of his lecture, he rained down on the captive audience, launching a virulent and merciless attack on the corrupt practices prevalent in the previous regime, sometimes pausing to look sideways, to seek approval of the bon mot or aphorisms that he was firing at great speed. His speech could be paraphrased in terms of antinomies and opposites. They were pure. Their adversaries and predecessors in office were corrupt. (He had recently defected to his new party and hereby felt cleansed of his sins of association with his older party, which was now being blamed for all the ills.)
They had reintroduced the rule of law. Their adversaries had lived by the code of connections or cronyism. The message was clear – probity in public life could be ensured only if he and his party remained in power. The alternative was moral deluge.
I had already given up, and when my turn came, I mumbled some disjointed thoughts like you cannot teach morality the way you teach mathematics, one could only set an example for others to emulate... I knew I had not made an impression but it bought me my freedom. I marvelled at the confidence, the surety of touch, and the complete confidence with which the chief guest had cast the first stone. For one thing, it has never been axiomatic nor self-evident that honesty is the best policy. Despite the glaring evidence that the most notoriously and infamously corrupt rule the roost, and long after the social consensus that had prohibited dishonesty has dissolved, long after it has been accepted that corruption is not an issue, extolling the virtues of , and exhorting others to practice, honesty requires some gumption. Viewed against this backdrop, a clear conscience is the greatest asset in facing up to the issue of corruption. A career in public life confers a certain advantage over other avocations in acquiring this. You are asked to defend the indefensible all the time, you are occupationally obliged to occupy the moral high ground, moralizing earns you an exemption from the requirements of morality, and when you preach what you yourself do not practice for a considerable period of time, by ingrained habits you cease to notice the difference. Our chief guest represents that class of people who have ceased to perceive their deception, and to that extent, they are honest human beings. It is no longer a question of duping others. The issue is how well and effectively can you dupe yourselves.

"In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself" wasn't exactly written in honour of our speaker but it will serve nicely as a motto for him and his ilk.

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
"View With A Grain of Sand"
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Close Encounter of the Third Kind

These diaries came as a big surprise to me. Two volumes of these surfaced, almost of their own accord, it seems, while I was rummaging through old papers. I thought they had been put to the torch. And yet, after several clean-ups and umpteen bonfires of old useless papers, this mushy stuff has survived.

Plainly speaking, I was shocked, because I did not know the author even though he bore my name and lived at the same address. The handwriting was also identical. Was it me? But gradually I did get to recognize him and yet, I was unable to identify with him. It required no brilliant feat of memory because the broad details were already there. We only differed in the interpretation of their significance. It was like watching your own double in action, only you didn't fully understand the springs of his motivations. Things that seemed so important, concerns that were so urgent now appeared totally ridiculous, even imposed and superficial. And to think that a down to earth, at times almost cynical person like me could be capable of so much cant, humbug, even posturing does not actually reinforce my self esteem. (Check with me twenty years later folks!)

And yet, why should I try to reconstruct them and edit them or even pay attention to the outpourings made years ago? Admittedly a bit of narcissism is a fairly widespread weakness in human beingsbut more importantly, some kind of a reminder to myself that wordily wisdom or cynical attitude is not arrived at in one giant leap. Perhaps the process of becoming entails all of this. The intermediate stages have to be gone through and a nineteen-year-old is a nineteen-year-old no matter how much of Maupassant and De Sade, Sartre and Eliot, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Krishnamurthy or Gasset he stuffs himself with. But what is lost in the process of growing up is a whole outlook on the world. A certain affable innocence, a freshness, a charming naiveté. The posturing remains in the older person also because to be hypocritical, to pretend to be what one is not is inherent in human nature, but these are more heavily guarded, better disguised. The egotism is not sloughed off but greater ideological justifications are found for it.

Another advantage of preserving the diaries of reminiscence is that one gets a point of view on one's own self. An amused slightly superior and self-deprecating ironical view from the standpoint of present. Recapitulation telescopes the details changing their shape and texture. It also colours the events from the standpoint of present and abrupt changes of states of mind and feeling are somehow evened out.

"Memory is the zest of life. It keeps the years together", said I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winning novelist, in an interview. But memory assumes the role of an editor also, leaving out details in the interest of uniformity. Diaries capture the experience as and when they were lived - in the raw; before caution, self esteem and a hundred other defense mechanisms take over. It is also sobering to realize that one was young, impressionable, and vulnerable to the whole portmanteau of failings that go with that stage in a man's life. This added dimension, this ringside view may perhaps help one to relate better to the next generation. But of this I am not too sure because one can remain of and relate only to one's own time. I am equally firm in my views that the attitudes that I have arrived at and the views that I have formed are the correct and desirable ones and the earlier view was just an aberration, or born out of ignorance etc. Hide bound through extensive system of thoughts and prejudices we just cannot jump out of our own appointed time. If it were

possible to make an astral projection or escape to a non-body state and have a view of ourselves through the eyes of an impartial observer. It were as if one could open a window on oneself, be the viewer and the person viewed simultaneously. But alas! That is not possible and therein lies the essence of the purely contingent, limited, fragmentary and relativistic nature of our experience. Our view of reality. Our very existence.

This may also perhaps explain why many of us are not open to conviction, or why some are opinionated.

The human organism is a great bonfire of living cells. The process of burning up of old and building up of new cells in the human body is the dance of Shiva on a miniature scale, creation and destruction held in a state of balance by some ineluctable mystery. The molecular biologists and geneticists have calculated that after a particular period of time. A human being becomes an entirely new system of congeries, an entirely new colony of cells, a new organism altogether. Bone, blood marrow, liver, kidney, spleen, heart, brain, nervous system everything gets completely replaced. The outward appearance also changes but ever so imperceptibly. The change is not immediately noticeable because the human sensory system is a very crude apparatus. An organism changes by the hour, by the minute but we can perceive changes in physical appearance only accruing over the years.

The point one is trying to make is why should we put such a premium on consistency of views, fidelity to a particular idea howsoever inspiring or brilliant. The human organism keeps changing by the minute so why shouldn't our views, our beliefs, and modes of thought, preferences, and priorities? Fidelity and constancy, is a property of the dead: change and inconstancy the signs of an organism which is living; inconsistency is a

profound concomitant to the living organism because it is constantly in a state of flux. After all, our thought processes must have some physical basis somewhere so they must mimic and reflect this state of impermanence, emphemerality and fleetingness. I can now understand the predicament of some of my friends who embark on a career with great hope and fervour and commit themselves to particular mode of behaviour and decorum and then gradually stray off course by miles. I can now understand the many soldiers of virtue and probity falling by the wayside. Understand but not condone. It also makes me wonder how people can live by a single truth; remain on a single level of obsession: tyrannized by the dominance of one consuming idea. What are the root causes of fanaticism? Can these phenomena be related to the facts of biology? I do not pretend to answer these questions; I merely ask them because they are large, general questions and in the ultimate analysis perhaps not amenable to any answer?

Or, at least, in the current state or our ignorance.