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.

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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.

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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.

A Modest Proposal - V

The other day, I was mobbed by the media. TV cameras to the left of me, TV cameras to right of me and a forest of mikes right in front of me. I rode past them, fending off the charge of the flash light brigade. But this young, sweet thing, confronted me - almost physically.

"How dare you write about serious problems in such a jesting manner? Have you no heart? And where do you get the inspiration from, for such cranky ideas."

I wish I had carried my heart on my sleeve. It would have served the twin purpose of providing proof that I have a heart and also... well forget about it. But the question was still on my plate. I answered only the operative portion - I said, "The source of my inspiration is Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette is my guru, my acknowledged master". (Mistress wouldn't do! Gender bending feminists).

She looked a little puzzled but then brightened up and said, "Aha! The lady who perished in the Russian Revolution. Wife of er-Emperor Lenin?".

I was impressed by her knowledge acquired from comic book history and a deep study of serious literature like Tin Tin and Asterix. And what is a hundred and odd year's error in dating a remote event. After all the history of human civilization is thousands of years old. But full marks to her for getting the first letter of the name of the king right.

"You got it right, lady. Actually she perished in the French revolution. The consort of Louis the XVI."

I pulled it off with the grace of the most accomplished quizmaster on a TV programme. But clearly she had the makings of a critic - She did not know in order to pronounce "Was Marie Antoinette such a big crank".

"On the contrary she was the greatest management expert that ever lived, but she was just a little too avante grade. That is why her paradigm of problem solving went a-begging. Leonardo da Vinci was another such genius. When the French people complained of scarcity of bread, Marie Antoinette advised them to eat cake. And history, in its ignorance, has held this against her ever since. The management guru is posed a problem. He gives a solution. It is now the business of the client to marry the solution to the problem. Or if you like it otherwise tailor the problem to the solution."

The lady was left speechless.

But this other lady was the swooning, fawning variety, under the spell of my considerable problem solving abilities. She was apparently a civil servant in charge of the prisons of the state - Her problem was that the jails of the state were overflowing and as a result there was unrest. In fact in a couple of jails the inmates had taken over the jails. The siege was broken only by the intervention of police and after considerable bloodshed. Did I have any innovative solution for her problem?

"Wait, lady wait. Let me get it right. Why can't the inmates take over the administration of their own residential quarters? I understand that governments are sometimes run, from inside the jail. So what is the problem in this? Small bit of local self-government".

"Oh, thaaat' She said, "Oh, thaaat is different". I didn't probe further. Not my job to reason why.

I held a detailed discussion about the problem and the inevitable conclusion was that the over flowing jails has been caused, because of the overcrowding of the jails. (See?) But this overcrowding itself was the reason of stultifying thinking, a failure of imagination. The simplest solution was of course to encourage jail breaks, till such time the number of occupancy tallied with the capacity. The jail department could split its staff into two halves for the twin tasks of guarding and breaking the jail. But then there would be great rush to join the section for engineering jailbreaks leading into lot of heart burning etc. Moreover it would look a little odd for the jail department to be guarding the jails as well as engineering jailbreaks. (No one would have very much minded the de-facto arrangement to be converted into a de jure one, though.) But more importantly the question of rules, principles came in the way because the arrangement had to be solidly rooted in principles, manuals, and rules. Hence the principle is being laid down with some care and in great detail.

The state, it seems, is being governed by a set of laws and statutes, which have become totally, effete and do not have the popular sanction behind them. And what are laws devoid of the endorsement of general more importantly the powerful but soulless creatures. Every citizen of this country likes to break or bend a little bit of his fancy or taste suits him . From mild bottom pinching to the manly vocation of rape, from mere penny pinching to big scams. And yet we have gone on criminalizing all kinds of conduct all this while at the same pace and enthusiasm with which we have engaged in these conducts. Prevention of Dowry Act has become more stringent in direct proportion to its increased prevalence and rising number of dowry deaths. Corruption and backroom dealing is opening more and more avenues for profitable enterprise every day and yet they went ahead and enlarged the scope of the Prevention of Corruption Act. But best of all taking of bribery may not be an offence in certain cases but giving would in the same circumstance. A lot confused practitioners of this art are also needlessly filling jails. And a society which doesn't understand these basic instincts of its members ends up incarcerating a large number of it able bodied, energetic, innovative members who could be put to good use by setting them at large in the market place of competing interests and matching abilities. This is what globalization is about. Therefore the mantra is de regulate, deideologise (the missing element of the triad) and decriminalize. From today all those conducts which find mention in the various penal laws stand decriminalized. Free all those who are inside the jails charged for the offences under hundreds of section of numerous laws.

"But then empty jails would mean more takeovers by unscrupulous elements". Don't worry: I have already a plan up my sleeve. The orders have been given to find suitable scrupulous inmates. After all how can a society survive without a portion of its members being in jails? It is a sign that it cares. It has not lost its ethical moorings, its sense of right and wrong. The jails should now be filled with those lazy pusillanimous bums who have not committed any of the hundreds of exciting acts mentioned above. We certainly can find a few hundred in the population of millions of inhabitants.

Thus the seek-and-destroy mission was out. Well, not seek and destroy really. Not quite. I mean seek such citizens who have not committed any of the acts that had been listed in as crimes in the old world order and detain them promptly. The tally was not quite impressive. The scouts of the new order returned with 53 people in a city which boasts a population of 1. 2 million. Against a vacancy of 530 only 53 could be located. The team looked downcast and a little sheepish. But I encouraged them: "It is not a bad beginning. Not bad at all I hope you have picked up the right people".

"Yes Sir", they chirped. No Old World chicanery."Booking the wrong people. You can interrogate them Sir. They have an absolutely clean record. They have not even hurt a fly".

It is a pioneering solution and the success of the programme depended on the integrity of the selection process. Moreover, now I am never oblivious of the griping critics. I motioned to the leader of the team to thoroughly interrogate them. The suspects were lined up and wired to the lie detectors and a couple of psychologists kept hovering, looking them in the eyes. The interrogation went on something like this. You Mr. so and so have you committed murder, rape, dacoit, fraud, forgery, buggery, thuggery, wife swapping, and bottom pinching eve teasing or even simple lechery. Have you abused your position to award contracts, telephones lines, and gas connection or have been a recipient of it? The choruses of, "no never" drowned the doggerel like questioning until such time the interrogators exhausted their considerable lists of old world crimes. But two of these fellows showed some positive signs. They were jittery and shifty. The psychologists swooped on to them like birds of prey. They were subjected to intensive and intrusive questioning and given an extra dose of the truth serum to make them confess the truth. The psychologists rained on them like the monsoon showers and bore down on them like the relentless summer sun till they wilted like flowers.

"You know", the interrogator said in a very friendly but accusing tone in the manner of O'Brian of 1984 fame."It would be a huge shame if we let our adventurous healthy members of the society who had either indulged in the pastimes mentioned above or even if they had the inclination to be incarcerated. The society needs to be saved from those sick and morbid members who have failed to avail themselves of the huge opportunities them."

It was too much for him to take. He fell on his knees: "Yes I have sinned. I have sinned. For the privilege of going to jail. And now I have lied. He was inconsolable. But the psychologist persisted in a very polite, persuasive manner."Yes come on out with it."

"I wrote obscene graffiti on the ladies loo in a public bath. I was drunk. I was depressed I know I shouldn't have but I did. I swear, I have a clean slate otherwise. But wouldn't you forgive me this small breach. Shall I be denied the privilege of going to jail, just because of this small bit of indulgence I shall be denied this opportunity.

This had an electric effect on the other suspect. He also gave in but in a very dignified manner. He was almost magisterial in his approach.

"I confess to my guilt, Sir. I had thrown peanuts at the monkey in a cage in the Sanjay Gandhi zoo despite a waning to the contrary. It was the first of January. The atmosphere of revelry was infectious. I got carried away. I should have told you but suppressed it with intent. I have never been a member of any prestigious club. I had heard that they provide you with TV, cellular phone, liquor, free facilities of moving to and fro to the best of hospitals. I am sorry. I lied".

So out of the total of 53 two were out. The batch of 51 detainees was immediately marched out and they rushed into the privileged precincts of the Jail. They were euphoric and they departed crying Satyamev Jayate and murdering the tune of Sare Jahan Se Accha Hindostan Hamara in their various ways.

The civil servant was disconsolate "Against a capacity of 530 we have got only 53 and of these two you want left out".

"Lady, you asked me to solve the problem of over population. The jail stands depopulated. Quad Erat Demonstrundum."

"But let us have the two at least".

"No way. No way. They have the promise. They are still capable of being reformed to be active conscientious citizens in this vibrant market place. Set them among the believers, among people of their own ilk. In a year they will have committed the whole roster of old world crimes which have ceased to be crimes in the New World order. They will be happy as lark. Just as those inside will find enough opportunity to indulge in their lunatic desire of earning their honest bread, by the sweat of their brow. They will have an acre of a plot of green to each one of them."

A Modest Proposal - IV

(Repost of an an old article.As it originally was.)

The other day, I attended some commemoration ceremony or the other. Speaker after speaker eloquently, and in great detail, recounted the deeds of the departed soul, and bemoaned in telling phrases how much the nation was in debt to him. There was a lump in my throat at this selflessness and sacrifice but an indeterminate, diffuse and unfocussed sense of rage was also welling up in my heart. Why did the great man leave us all forever in debt? He had rather accepted the full recompense than condemn us to the fate of dying in debt. Debt is certainly a fate worse than death. Because of the misplaced magnanimity of the great man, the nation would forever languish in this helplessness.

Impereceptibly but inexorably, it seems our nation is falling into a twin debt trap which the people at the helm of affairs are not fully seized of. The debt of the IMF - World Bank variety is a crippling burden no doubt, but by various scheduling and structuring adjustments, abdication of policy initiative, or, if it come to the crunch, by handing over the reins of government altogether to the World Bank, IMF we can still redeem our credit worthiness and Moody rating. But what about this other debt; the one that cannot be quantified but is weighing the nation down? The thought has been nagging me ever since.

What has been done cannot be undone but we can certainly be forewarned to take some preventive measures so that the tangible debt situation does not get exacerbated by the intangible one. The debt incurred in dollars, perhaps, can not be prevented. Because, after all, if there are Banks, there would be borrowers. The global village cannot, perhaps, do without its moneylender. And from the pockets of those whose coffers are overflowing with dollars, something will spill into the pockets of those whose coffers are empty; it is a fairly equitable kind of order and one would sooner wish the distinction of the sexes to disappear than try to tinker with this. So forget about the debt accumulation in dollars. Pragmatism demands that we concentrate whole heartedly to ensure that there are no further accruals to the debt of the other kind. Of course I must express my indebtedness to the various figures in public life to whom I owe the inspiration, but to me must go the credit of fully articulating and systematizing it.

A sizable section of the population has already started feeling grateful for the brilliant, rearguard action that I have been mounting for national reconstruction through this column. Gushing admirers have been so overwhelmed by my reformist zeal that they swear I am the only hope. It is only natural that this feeling would spread far and wide. I am not worried overly on this score, but what is worrying is that soon the nation will start recognizing the debt that they owe me. Gradually, the sense of guilt on account of the unacknowledged but unrepayable debt would grip the national psyche. Therefore, I have decided that, at an appropriate time, I shall succumb to the pleadings of my numerous acolytes and allow myself to be anointed; to be elevated to some kind of a national institution. I would let it be known very discretly how much the nation is in arrears to me for my services etc. My birthday would no longer be such an esoteric secret nor would my predilection for being weighed against gold on that day of national thanksgiving be held back from the grateful, indebted population. A rumour would do the rounds that if gold (67Kgs of it! I have added precious kilos since then.) was scarce, coins would do just fine. Universities, roads, bridges would in fitness of things, be named after me. The nation may honour me by conferring awards etc. on Republic Day. My scholarship, my contribution to the realm of ideas, the early promise that I had shown even in school would easily pass muster and there would be no cause for me to disbelieve what the nation firmly believes in. To afford the nation the fullest opportunity of benefiting from my advice or just gawking at me, people may clamour that the facility for travel in greatest comfort be made available to me at the taxpayer’s expense, to which I would initially demur but finally accede to.

As a first tranche of the repayment of the debt, this should do, but if nation is eager to completely free itself from the obligation that they owe me , a couple of SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) which will be explained presently, for my children and children’s children can be considered. Ours is a land of equal opportunity, no doubt, but the wishes of the majority have to be heeded to. Therefore, in any contest for office, public or otherwise, my descendants could encash these .In any contest or competitive struggle for opportunities, the mere fact of being my descendants should suffice.If they were running a race they could be allowed to stand on the finishing line when the pistol cracks to signal “go” for the rest of the lot.

In fact for the whole cadre of the selfless, self-effacing public men, I would recommend this brilliant scheme whereby they could be remunerated for their services rendered to the nation in the manner of encashing Teller cheques (ATM's were not heard of a couple of years back). Promptly and without delay.The utopia dreamt of in the old maxim neither a borrower nor a lender be would be very much here.

That way we can become a nation of proud self-respecting people who owe nothing to any one.

A Modest Proposal - III

The third instalement of the "A Modest Proposal" series, below.

The references to the strife torn locales and the names of the new gods of the globalised order are a little outdated, but it is published as originally written.

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I was basking in the morning sun on my lawn when half a dozen sullen looking youngsters stormed in. A tall burly fellow with a week old stubble, grim, sleepless eyes and a distinctly embattled look-threw down a canister, matchbox and other incendiary material at me feet. As if on cue, the others also dropped their pick-axes, crowbars and plain bamboo stick. The man with the sleepless eyes swept ahead and spoke in vengeful tones (a straight take off on Om Puri's encounter with Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's film)

"Here, keep them. You have spoilt the party. All along we thought we were activists for a cause and now you come and knock the bottom out of our belief. From freedom fighters and satyagrahis we are reduced to being mere vandals. Now an eternity of purposelessness, inactivity and sheer boredom lies ahead of us. I have torched no less than twenty public vehicles, bumped off a few cops and decapitated many. But now I will be rendered effete, otiose, unemployed."

Another meek looking fellow screwed up his courage, sidled up to me and said in an accusing tone, “My record has not been as spectacular, a mere .000216 vehicle, but I am also destined to the same fate. A hundred questions were swarming in my mind but the uppermost was the great divergence of their personal tallies of burnt vehicles from the national average of 1.016 vehicles per citizen. I invited them to explain the appalling disparity in their achievements.

The embattled young activist had been in business for quite some time and in fact his youthful looks belied his experience. But still a stroke of sheer luck had helped him improve his tally. A fleet of public transport vehicles was abandoned to be torched - he could not believe his luck - to thwart some proposed inquiry into the purchase of substandard vehicles by the road transport corporation officials. This symbiotic arrangement contributed to the resounding success of the bandh while helping the smooth operators pocket their millions.

The other fellow's measly score in five decimal places still remained unexplained. He was a small towner and his area of operation didn't have a regular public transport system. After all, you can't burn private vehicles for public causes! The last public vehicle that they had burnt was during the 1974-75 agitations. It was still lying near the town hall as a relic of the permanent revolutionary struggle of the town's people. Now they ritually burn it over and over again during every agitation, bandh etc. The townspeople even collect funds and get it painted to look like the real thing. Everyone is allowed to have a crack at it. That is how is average has worked out to .000216 vehicle per person.

There was a rueful look of deprivation in his eyes as only the deprived can have. My heart went out to him and the likes of him. So much crusading zeal, such dedication and not enough buses to burn or public property to destroy! Never had the glaring inequalities of our system or the appalling state of our economy been apparent to me in such concrete terms. But the inequality apart, the immediate problem was that of millions of unemployed and unemployable youth, recently demobbed from the civil disobedience movement. Seething with so much latent energy!

But have no fear! In my scheme of things no problem remains unsolved. Roughly, these youth could be divided into a few broad categories on the basis of their skill and work experience. The likes of my friend - the elite of the corps -were experts at incendiary activities, sabotage and the body contact method of registering their protest. Their commitment to their karmic destiny - vandalism and destruction - was absolutely selfless and purposeless as well. (Nihilism is too philosophical, too abstract a word for such intense activity).

In the present global situation they could be profitably exported to the strife-torn, civil-war ravaged locales of Sarajevo, Serbia, Bosnia, Alma Atta, Tiblis, Kabul, Chad, and Nicaragua. Beirut has traditionally been a good market for some of our boys for making money fighting for this group or that and satisfying their innate destructive impulses. But now the export can be canalized in a planned manner to these new markets. Economic statesmanship demands that we plug in successfully the emergent markets with the abundant supply of the likes of our friends. With such vast reserves we can meet any future demands also. Of course we could charge the consumer countries for the services in hard currency.

I offered this deal to my friend. He was skeptical at first.

"Wouldn't we be overstretching ourselves"

"Far from it. Instead of rickety buses they will have the glass and chromium thing. Instead of crude homemade Molotov cocktails, they could handle sophisticated bombs and pistols, plastic explosives and shoulder launched rockets".

He was already salivating at his mouth. I plied him with the piece-de-resistance. "Since you are committed only to the cause of vandalism, violence and disorder, you can take a perfectly neutral stance striking at both the warring parties courting the minimum danger and maximum surprise."

He was now straining at the leash. Raring to go. I asked him to line up all those ready for export, so that ISO 9000 specification and sundry other papers were got ready. (Economic liberalization makes it easy but still it takes some time!)

But what about the others - the pacifist types - experts at the more sedentary type of struggle - gheraos and dharnas?

"The pity of it is that all these economists are armchair theoreticians. Their sophisticated visual and hearing aids makes them incapable of seeing things right under their noses."

The developed western countries are chockfull of dollars and causes. But while they made their dollars their causes went a-begging. Here we pursued non-existent causes and the deficit in dollars kept mounting. We will make a swap. We are good at pursuing causes. They are good at earning dollars. We will pursue their causes for them they can earn our dollars for us. So we will export all these pacifists to pursue - if need be, revive and reinvent - their causes.

Greenham Commons, Anti-whaling groups, environmental lobbies, anti-nuke demonstrators, feminist leagues, groups supporting children-seeking-divorce-from-their-parents, anti-and-pro-abortion militants, flat-earth society, the association of the admirers of skunk - the list is endless. All these have been active for quite some time without achieving anything very significant, largely because the groups consist of amateur weekend agitators. We could form some kind of an International Brigade, or Resistance from the ranks of these people and send them all over. This way it would work to the advantage of all concerned. The causes will find their activists, and vice versa and the country's forex reserve will soar to greater heights.

The left overs and lay abouts can be crated for export to Japan where the rich and busy Japanese keep hiring strangers to talk sweet nothings to their aged parent in geriatric homes. Good as our boys are at killing time doing nothing, they will mix business with pleasure. The grateful Japanese will compensate us suitably for salving their guilty consciences.

But this still leaves behind the psychophants, the stooges, the bootlickers and PR men. The nation could tighten its belt a little and even they could be dumped at a discount in Washington, Paris, Tokyo in the service of the new Gods: Lewis Preston(the then president of the World Bank), Camadasseus (the then chief of IMF), Calra Hills or Kimamaso Tarumizu( the then chief of the Asian Development Bank) to wash their feet with soda water and unguents in ritual worship and to sing in their praise day and night.

The activists were dazed at this marvellous package. But the meek one still persisted, "Wouldn't this body shopping demean us, in the eyes of the world".

I silenced him with a withering look. "For Camadasseus sake! Dollar is the new god. We must surrender everything in the service of him. That is the only way the poor shall inherit the earth."