india and the camel

you've heard of the arab and the camel. let's look at india and delhi now. let me quote a short paragraph from this paper to illustrate the point i'm going to make:

...for example, one of our findings is that while the central government spends (in 2005-06) rs.4.07 on hrd-nh per person in orissa, it spends rs.177.12 in delhi, rs.105.42 in uttaranchal, rs.105 in arunachal pradesh, rs.77.7 in assam, rs.33.78 in himachal pradesh, rs.28.10 in west bengal, rs.25.12 in karnataka, rs.17.29 in tamil nadu, rs.17.09 in maharashtra, rs.17.08 in u.p., rs.16.2 in jharkhand, rs.16.05 in andhra, rs.14.5 in j & k....

i haven't quoted the full paragraph because i think you've already got the point. that was the spending on national highways- only one indicator of many barely hidden signs that delhi is steadily pushing india out of the tent. from a capital of a union of states and a municipality it's been fast growing again into an imperial capital and a state-nation on its own. people, and more acutely, politicians, businessmen, mediapersons and the smartest sections of the middle classes in the states in the immediate neighbourhood understand that. who from the neighbouring states doesn't want to be in delhi? from charan singh to bahuguna to v.p.singh to n.d.tiwari to mulayam singh to mayawati- which chief minister from uttar pradesh hasn't expressed his/her desire to be the prime minister (sometimes, even before he/she became the chief minister)? bihar isn't any different and if the chief ministers and other ambitious politicians from the other states around delhi aren't so candid about expressing their 'right' (because that's what it ultimately seems to be: none of them seem to have any doubts about whether they deserve the post) it doesn't mean they don't nurse any such aspirations. and if the rulers do not wish to stay in their respective states a moment longer than necessary why should the ruled want to be in those states? especially, if they're smart?

a large portion of those employed by the central government, through its various ministries, the psus, the banks, the railways and the armed forces have planted themselves in delhi and even the threat of an imminent nuclear attack wouldn't convince them to leave, i think. that wouldn't be less than a million people (i'd agree if you say- two million, but i'll come to these figures later) hanging onto a million of the most prized jobs in the country. a million people who'd get the first chance to help themselves to the billions that the central government supposedly spends on the upkeep (after first paying for its own upkeep) of the country and to 'develop' it and to 'alleviate' poverty. if you were one among those lucky million, would you let the gravy train just roll by, onward to the boondocks- even after you've been paid enough for your needs? without stealing from it, or directing its course or in some way attempting to change its destination? you'd be stupid if you didn't do any of those things.

[this was growing into a very long post so i'm going to stop here and continue later].

annihilation of caste

i'd taken this picture in a temple town in north telangana. now, i'd like to point out something that i'd originally missed when i was taking the picture, one of the first i've ever taken in my life (that's my excuse for the poor quality). i'm not talking about the statue, i'm talking about the banner strung across the railing protecting the statue. it says (you can zoom in and check if you can read telugu): 'vaishya sankharaavam' (or 'vaishya conch call', roughly). the banner is calling on all vaishyas, in a grandiloquently aggressive manner, to attend a conference of members of the community.

this definitely is ignorant nonsense

there is a petition being discussed in the supreme court which shall decide who qualify as indians. it'd have made sense if it had been discussed even a minute or so before midnight,15th august, 1947. so, don't look for any sense there. imagine you're watching an indian film and you won't be disappointed. or look at the other tamashas being staged for you- an eighty year old rationalist who doesn't understand that smoking bidis in temples isn't fashionable any more. or an eighty year old nationalist who doesn't understand that pointing fingers at the rationalist is nothing like pointing out a mosque. or eighty dozen revolutionary parties that want those whose indianness hasn't as yet been decided by the courts to ...well, not eat at mcdonalds. or eighty odd sutradhars from the ruling party who are busy stoking eighty odd fires so that those of undecided indianness may feel the warmth of the debate (over all those tamashas) those who don't need to be certified by any court that they're indian are engaged in. and feel happy that those participants are so un-ignorant.

caste is supreme

april 24, 2007:

"If you could wait for 57 years, then you can very well wait for another six months,"

“We do not want to play the game first and then frame the rules. We want rules to be framed first and then play the game,” the Bench said, rejecting the Government argument that staying reservation for a particular class for this year could jeopardise the future of students.

september 3, 2007:

"The Union Health Minister shall affix his signature on 49 certificates/degrees as well as such other certificates of the students who need these to take admission for higher studies," Justice Bhatt said.

"The Minister shall sign the certificates within 24 hours," he directed.

sonia visits andhra pradesh but..

..can't find her way to lumbini park. she also didn't know the way to gangavaram, mecca masjid or mudigonda. and she didn't have any time to talk about farmers' suicides, or weavers' suicides, even though on both counts her government had recorded a much better performance than the previous government! and in only three years (as compared with the inefficient naidu regime which took nine years to achieve those figures)!

when you want to write a story

What happened?

The story has stopped.

Obviously,

How can a story be written

About that ambulance

Carrying dead bodies,

Or the flower

Plucked before its time.

a part of a poem that i found here - it's by azra abbas and has been translated by asif farrukhi. and yes, there wasn't/weren't any ambulance/s to carry away the bodies on saturday...most of them were piled into any ordinary bus or auto-rickshaw that passed by.

revisiting the present

Therefore, the fact that the government is the biggest capitalist, the main banker, the greatest employer, and the ultimate refuge or ineffable solace of the bootlicking intelligentsia makes for only a formal, superficial, difference. The main question to ask is: what special class-interest does this government serve?

that was written in 1954. i wrote this two years ago:

government is the landlord with the largest surplus landholding. goverment is the tycoon who owns ships, planes, buses, trains, trucks and cars. government is the businessman who runs factories, mills, mines, quarries and souvenir stores. government is the investor with interests in healthcare, hospitality, travel & leisure, financial services, energy, food processing, warehousing, insurance, armaments, telecom, construction and housing, infrastructure and information technology.
would you like to do business with him ? (who wouldn't, right ?)

do the two statements, broadly, seem to describe similar situations? the problem is this (from the same article as the first one):

The solution for India, of course, would, be socialism, which alone can create a demand rising with the supply, a solution which can be utilised not only by advanced countries but by backward countries ( as China is demonstrating) , and without which planning is futile.

now after 1954, the government seemed to have heeded his advice to a significant extent and tried a vast number of measures to socialise india: efforts to control landholdings, nationalizing private banks and companies, restricting foreign capital (much, much more than earlier), restricting local capital, investing in 'food, agrarian production, re-division of land, employment, education,' etc., so what provoked me to write the second para, which resembles the first one so much, fifty years later?

the problem is also this: the first author, if he were alive, would repeat what he'd said in 1954. we haven't socialised enough:

In fact, the Five Year Plans mentioned above are self-contradictory in that they are obviously inspired by the great successes of Soviet planning without, however, taking any account of the necessity of socialism to the achievement of these successes: effective planning cannot leave the private investor free to invest when and where he likes, as is done in India, nor can its main purpose be to assure him of profitable opportunities for the investment of his capital.

and so on. and add : i told you so. except he didn't tell us so - what he'd predicted was this:

All these factors together, however, will not prevent rapid disillusionment at promises unfulfilled, nor the inevitable mass protest against hunger, the ultimate Indian reality. There may come a time when the Indian army, officered by Indian bourgeois and aided by a transport system designed for an army of occupation, may not suffice.

headless chickens

'------- has already taken a decision to re-organise the Lottery Department. Intensive legal steps are going on to ban illegal lotteries. At the same time, steps have been taken to considerably increase in the lottery market of -------, the sale of ------- Lottery. The re-organisation package will include specific purpose super bumper lotteries, attractive prize structure, intensive publicity campaigns and more facilities to agents and sellers. In order to get registration in the welfare fund, the lottery sellers will have to sell ticket of ------- Lottery worth at least Rs.10,000 per month.'

doesn't that sound like a corporate honcho speaking? the signs are all there: power words like re-organisation, marketing mantras, promotional schemes, advertising campaigns, sales incentives, targets and carrots for the distributors/dealers. and who else would so shamelessly push a product like lotteries?

well, the speaker is not from the corporate world and the missing words are: Government, Kerala, State and Kerala. read the full speech here (the para quoted is from page 50).

largely private

Here's a quick summary: in spite of the 'burden' of reservation, (a) our public sector companies -- particularly banks -- are flourishing in the face of de-licensing and unfettered competition, and (b) the southern states -- and in particular Tamil Nadu, the state with the highest level of quotas -- have also done quite well -- if not better than the rest of the country.

that's abi reacting to a post on indian economy blog by an ill-informed blogger who attributes the inefficiency of the public sector in india to reservations. it's unfortunate that abi doesn't question the underlying presumption of the other blogger's stand: that the infusion of the 'merit-less' (read lower castes) into the public sector through reservations has been as significant ( in terms of numbers) as to significantly alter its performance

here, check the numbers of the dalits in the central public sector enterprises. you'll notice that around 85% of the dalits and adivasis are in the lowest three echelons and in the top two rungs, their combined number doesn't exceed 14%. and we would never know how many of the truly significant positions in those two rungs are occupied by the dalits. and we would also never know the position of the dalits and adivasis in the rest of the public sector which accounts for 75-80% of the total manpower employed in the public sector.

let me explain: central public sector undertakings do not include departmental undertakings, banking institutions and enterprises where govt equity holding is less than 50%. this broad, nebulous expanse of entities comprises of the railways (which is clubbed with the central government), banks, other enterprises producing and distributing goods and services (like utilities) and several other kinds of organisations, institutions etc., and we do not have reliable figures for any of them. the total employee strength of the public sector (excluding the central & state governments and the railways and the armed forces) is around 6 million, according to estimates thrown up by recent economic surveys. of these, as i said earlier, we have reliable figures for only the central public sector undertakings. and even these are hotly disputed by many dalit groups. the banks, according to them, are the worst offenders and the number of dalits/ adivasis in banks and pses/institutions other than cpsus couldn't be more than 3-6% (of the total employee strength) according to these dalit groups. and most of the non-compliance in the public sector enterprises isn't as rigorously scrutinised and questioned as it is in, say, the government itself. and i don't even have to talk about the obcs in the public sector, i think. i'd touched upon that subject earlier, but let me repeat my earlier stand: the representation of the obcs hasn't improved significantly (perhaps i should say 'improved even marginally'?) since the disinterment of the mandal commission report. and the sachar report has told us about the invisible muslim in the public sector. no, the public sector doesn't shoulder any significant social burden- and it is more than adequately compensated for doing whatever little it grudgingly does.

i've always felt that the public sector in india is a largely private affair, and the left in the country had always maintained that the organized private sector in the country is a largely public affair (because of the various sops, in the form of cheap land, subsidized power or water and other public resources, grants, loans, tax breaks and other incentives that it receives from the government- why doesn't the left ever enumerate/calculate the sops the public sector in the country received/s from the government?). considering all those facts, does a public debate on such private issues as the performance of the public sector or the private sector in the country have any real public significance? aren't 'debates' on the doings of popular film stars more entertaining? 'public sector' trains run late often, 'private sector' cellphones go out of coverage areas often. the only things you can truly depend on in this country, are street corner panwallahs and suchlike sundry institutions who/which deliver most of the time you need them. now, where should you start a truly public debate on excellence?

'left nukes deal'

that's a headline on a television channel. why was the deal 'nuked'? national sovereignty, security, blah blah are the reasons cited. i read somewhere that enrollment in primary schools in the country in '96-97 was 77%. 60% of those 'students' dropped out by class 10. so the nation worked for roughly 30% of them. what's the point in protecting a nation that works for only 30% of its people 60 years after becoming a nation, mr.karat?

off

you!
scarf off the head
eyes off the ground
lines off the line.

shorn off
peeled off
told off
us.

lay off
stay away
move on
be gone!

your kinsmen, your banks, your revolution

So in the social banking philosophy that India adopted when it nationalized the banking industry in the late 1960s, banks did significant amount of lending to farmers, recognizing that these are the people who place the food on your table, on the nation’s table. Once we went into the brave new world of economic reforms, the banks progressively stopped lending money to farmers, so much so that something like 3,800 to 4,000 bank branches in rural India closed during the reform years.

a revolution is a tea party. you can organize it on your own, think up sweet little fictions like the first line in the above paragraph, garnish them with half-truths, like in the second line. and like the rishis of old, go on yatras around the countryside, 300 days a year (nothing establishes one's authenticity more than such severe penances- it's an old trick in this country)....and come back chanting those two lines to a still-in-university-at-dad's-expense-and-mother-india's and never-really-left-university-or-gave-up-on-che-or-charu crowd waiting for your musa-esque arrival in the city. to clutch you to their progressive breast and hand you over to other progressive breasts across the world. that's how you do a revolution.

or you could learn from your kinsmen in the non-fiction world, those progressive workers in the nationalized banks who never lent a paisa more than ten (of each rupee) to the peasants you discovered, on how to plan an indefinite strike that would cripple the banks whose original and only purpose, perhaps, was to provide them with employment.

this news has died

you know, of course, the man waving in the first picture is dr.y.s.rajashekhar reddy, chief minister of andhra pradesh. he's also in the second picture, shaking hands with a top oracle executive. but who's the man with the grey, tousled mop of hair who appears in both the pictures? doesn't he seem a little out of place? he seems too old to be a security guard, too small-built, non-athletic. he seems too much like r.k.laxman's common man, right? and in such august company, what's he doing there?

until a few months ago, most news-consuming people in andhra pradesh didn't know who he was - he seemed to accompany the chief minister everywhere, you saw him on television and in pictures, a little behind the chief minister, never more than a few feet, five feet or so to be precise, from him. and then he emerged from the shadows and became a news story himself.

he's been identified as a key figure in a scam involving the siphoning away of government funds to the tune of rs.150 crores. a major portion of the funds were meant for the sarva shiksha abhiyan/dpep programme. no, he's not been arrested - some associates 'voluntarily' gave themselves up. an investigation is on - which will no doubt try to establish that those who gave themselves up are guilty- and no one else is.

yes, scams bore me too - but this one still manages to disgust me. money meant to provide basic literacy skills to children, who already are victims several times over, has been stolen.

it tells me: the poor count for nothing in this country (which is not news) and therefore, their children count for less than nothing. which, sadly, isn't news either. so what is it about this piece of non-news that has me all churned up inside? well, it's not those kind souls in yojana bhavan or wherever who knew, beforehand, when they were drawing up this programme, that this'd happen. or the experts from academia or the think tanks who helped in both the conception and the development of the idea. or the activists who drummed it into the slow heads of politicians over the years. or the politicians who bided their time, sexied it up and introduced it at the right poll opportunity with a bang.

it is this: that rajashekhar reddy should submit to his inherited obligation to distribute largesse among his inherited constituency. to consider that, as a pedda ( the equivalent term in hindi is bada) reddy (as reddies of certain sub-castes or those owning large landholdings are considered in rayalaseema) it is his duty to look after the well-being of those who serve him. and condone their mideeds and actively try to protect them and deflect any criticism directed against them. this inherited duty superseded the duty to serve those who elected him. as it does so often in india.

it is this: that the chief actor in this drama should also submit to to his inherited obligation as a lower ranking clansman to follow and serve his inherited betters- that is how you get to fulfill your own needs. you could see he was following the historic script faithfully when you occasionally saw him on television actually serving food, to the leader as he is talking to the '24-hours-with-so-and-so' interviewer. you saw his role in the relationship, and that of his master- the chief minister had appointed him his 'personal assistant' after assuming office, but that didn't mean his role had changed. or his master. he still remained someone who held the leader's bags, his files and looked after his personal needs..a man friday, saturday, sunday...everyday. everywhere.

it is also this: that the media should also look at this from their inherited positions - as mouthpieces of dominant competing communities or of aiming-to-regain-or-gain-a-vantage-position communities. that the political parties, also representing competing, communal interests, should seek to not look beyond, or let you look beyond, the bare, titillating details of who and how much - at how easy it is to steal from poor children... and how unimportant that is to everyone.

note: i'd started this post on may 22nd, a few months after the news of the scam actually made it to the media. i'd expected, and i guess most of the players involved did too, that it'd die in a few months and it has.

why bring up caste?

randomly picked, these two articles refer to the 'yadavisation' process in u.p., and bihar. what's yadavisation? the reporters, you'll notice, offer the barest explanation. the underlying message is that - it's such a well known phenomenon, don't you know about it? where were you? you'd be too naive to ask- well, so is the loch ness monster, tell me what does yadavisation look like? somebody tell me- what does yadavisation look like? does it look anything like this:

A quick head-count reveals that right from the present cabinet secretary to other key positions like secretary, RAW, defence research and development, agriculture and cooperation, economic affairs, revenue and legal affairs, Brahmins hold key jobs. As many as 37 top officials in the list of secretaries and officers of equivalent rank in the present administrative set-up are Brahmins. Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins account for 37.17 per cent of the bureaucracy. Other forward castes too constitute a substantial chunk.

that's the face of the central government- do i hear anyone whispering, forget shouting across the national media, brahminisation? notice that the magazine calls the article, oh so indulgently (as if the writer was describing interesting peculiarities of some species of fauna and not outlining the contours of an ugly man-made monstrosity called the indian government), 'the durbar hall pundits'. and don't miss the note of hope at the end:

But the winds of change are blowing. This year 144 candidates who cleared the civil services examinations are from other backward classes. Even the candidate who topped was an OBC. As a senior official remarked, perhaps 2010 may throw up an altogether different bureaucracy—one that is more inclusive and representative. Till then, it’s Brahmins who will dominate.

if anyone seriously believes that 'an altogether different bureaucracy' (the magazine has done another story, pushing forth the same happy idea, recently called the 'backwoods babus' - do you see the pattern?) would emerge even by the year 2110 leave alone 2010, i'd definitely advise him/her to get his/her head examined. some minor changes in some rungs are possible, but the truth is: the size of the indian public sector, which means the central and state governments and the psus, has remained the same since 1990, more or less. and given the size of the current wage and pension bill of these employees, and also imminent hikes and further hikes in the future, any massive new recruitment that would substantially change the composition of the entities listed...wouldn't be possible until the year 2030 or 2035 or so. and given also the history of determined and successful opposition to the entry of the lower castes into the bureaucracy (unless if it's in the lowest echelons) in the last sixty years, i don't think any restructuring would happen even in 2030. or for sixty more years or so.

this is my response to readers who didn't agree with the tone of my last post (was the media trying to point out an 'against all odds' success or was it trying to convey the subliminal message that the lower caste aspirants who want reservations are no-good-idlers?)- when the media and the articulate classes in india can call dirt dirt, even if most possibly it isn't, why can't they call a spade a spade? why don't they see, (possibly irreversible, in my view) the brahminisation/rajputisation etc., of india?

brahmin journalist bags magsaysay award

a brahmin journalist is one of the seven winners, announced yesterday, of the magsaysay award this year. read also: obc candidate tops ias exam.

the mater of all expectations

i am so often disappointed by people who prove to be nothing more than kayasth or kamma or brahmin or reddy that i should have given up trying by now. but i am what those folks expect me to be: dumb. if only they raised their expectations of me! if a nair thinks i am as good as a nair, and a bhumihar thinks i am as good as him - wouldn't i have to be as good as a nair or a bhumihar? my parents would have to be as 'good' as theirs, their friends and associates as nice and the things they buy/give me as good. and my average performance at school or wherever would be as good. but, wait a second. what comes first? raised expectations or better performance? they wouldn't think better of me if i didn't perform better, right? but how can i perform better if they don't think better of me?

well, i'll perform better if the government gets out of the business of education. the government would give me vouchers and my folks would 'encash' these at a school which would provide me with 'education'. but the school my parents first take me to may not want me - they may have very low expectations of me, considering the performance of people like me had always been poor. and the next school may have the same reservations and so on...until my parents find a school for me where no khatri, bania, brahmin or maratha would ever go.or my parents, being illiterate, take me to the wrong kind of school. so, i live upto the low expectations and perform poorly. i am misjudging the market? the first school would accept me? does that matter really? i would do poorly there as well because of low expectations - look at the americans of african origin who go to the same schools, mostly, as the whites. the africans are different? look at how poorly the lower castes are expected to do at all levels, from schools to the most elite of colleges- 'the only quota candidates that actually do well are those from the upper middle class'. so except for a thin layer at the top, all quota candidates are expected to do badly- wouldn't you say the same thing about the africans in america? so the expectations are the key, right?

but 'imagine that somehow our expectations were raised'. and we kicked out the bad guys in high office and brought in 'good guys' who would have the 'leadership, courage, vision, and heaps of chutzpah' to raise the expectations of the people 'far above the prevalent average'. in short, leadership of a quality beyond expectations. but, here's the rub: given the condition that the leadership be of exceptional quality, the good guys can only be those 'expected to be good at whatever they do, whether scholarship or the arts', so they can only be brahmins and rajputs and so on because the 'bad guys'/guys like me 'are expected to generally drop out of school, engage in crime and end up in jail'.. now, when the good guys get into office, things would change?

i don't think so. because the good guys are already in high office - in a majority of the states from gujarat to jharkhand and kashmir to kerala, they already are the chief ministers. if they aren't the chief ministers, they hold all the key cabinet positions and play leadership roles in all political parties. they constitute 90% of the key secretary-level babus in the central government and occupy over 70% of the rest of the posts. and their clout extends to the state governments and the public sector enterprises. and they own the best, most influential companies in the private sector. and they're the media and the judiciary. and all the prime ministers until now have been uniformly 'good', unless you consider the jats and the vokkaligas 'bad'.

and they all have low expectations of me. how do i know? because they provide me with less all the time - access to public goods, for instance, among other things (why should they waste precious resources on someone like me who's going to perform poorly anyway? so they steal as much of it as they can). and more importantly, they treat me with less attention (because that's what i deserved...according to the historic 'script', right?). and therefore i perform poorly. the new good guys would be different? how?

the problem is not that they... you expect less of me. the problem is that you think less of me.. whether i am an african in america or a low caste individual in india. you think i am only 'sufficiently poor' even when you acknowledge that i am 'disadvantaged'. in 1947, when you were sufficiently poor it didn't stop you from giving yourselves schools that actually worked, elite colleges and universities (whether we needed them or not) that only you went to, building factories (whether we needed them or not), with my money and yours, that would employ only you, and installing institutions and offices, with largely my vote and yours, where only you could work and wield power. you 'assured yourself that both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome were mandated'. you gave your opportunism a grandiose name too- socialism.

forget equality of outcomes, you don't even want to assure us that equality of opportunities is mandated- 'here kid, take this anna and go buy yourself a good education. i don't have the time to make sure you get a good deal. or even whether you get any deal.' and even if i managed to scrape through school, despite an uncertain deal, you want to make sure that i still wouldn't get into any college that'd offer me a good deal. which, of course, would mean that i would probably get the kind of job my kind of people were always expected to get. would my kid brother even go to school if i told him - this is the best you can get? and i guess you have a grandiose name for this new kind of opportunism too. to tell us that it is nothing like socialism. in my view, the objectives and the script, of course, remain the same.

the problem is not socialism or whatever-ism: in your hands, everything will turn into your-ism. in 1947 and 1955 and 1968 and 1980 and 1986 and 1990 and whenever you were laying down education policy or trying to distort positive discrimination policy, you always maintained that equalizing of opportunities is essential. that we needed good schools more than reservations. but you never delivered. now you come back and tell me 'you need good schools more than reservations' with the complete confidence that i'd never have thought of that original idea on my own. or heard it earlier. you must think me stupid.

you think so little of me- that is the problem. you think so little of me that you feel i don't even deserve political freedom (because 'poor, illiterate people cannot meaningfully use their political freedom'- don't you mean 'sufficiently poor' people like me?). political freedom that would help me influence the way people like you look at people like me, no matter how you think of me. am i wrong if i say you make me think of other, more famous, worthies who had very similar ideas about who deserved political freedom and who did not?

i repeat, the problem is not that you expect less of me but that you think less of me. and as long as you carry this contempt, much like you carry your cherished surname, across centuries and continents and careers, you'd always have low expectations of me.

gossipy debate

i've more drafts than posts in my dashboard - so i've decided to publish this slightly old draft even though i haven't said half of what i intended to say through it. my hope - publishing it might get me interested in the subject again.

an article in The Financial Express reviews three years of UPA rule:

At the same time, I have yet to see the senior minister or his compatriots in the National Advisory Council (NAC), or even the keepers of the Marxist faith to which he has professed sudden allegiance, come up with a coherent development strategy that will secure the welfare of the aam admi. Because, as West Bengal after three decades and China since 1978 have demonstrated in different ways, there is no simple alternative strategy or a short-cut that can address the trade-off between growth and equity. Rapid growth remains the necessary condition for reducing poverty and improving the aam aadmi’s condition.

the writer is being unfair to mr.aiyer - he actually does have a development policy. let's look at the relevant parts of his now famous speech to the cii:

In these circumstances, when a proposal came before the government to spend Rs 648 crore on the Gram Nyaya department, we were solemnly informed by one of the most influential ministers in the government to remember that we are a poor country. I was delighted when the next day he was with me in a group of ministers and I reminded him of his remark and said in that case can we stop spending the Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games and he said, “No, no, that is an international commitment and a matter of national pride.” This national pride will of course blow up if you spend Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games. We will be on the cover of Time and Newsweek.

isn't that interesting? the 1982 asian games were promoted by the gandhi family fan club in the congress, which means most of the congress, as a shining example of india's national pride and their 'success' was offered as incontrovertible proof that the then heir apparent, rajiv gandhi, who was the prime driving force behind the decision to hold the games, had what it takes to be the leader of a nearly hundred year old party. and mr.aiyer had shortly after that inveigled his way into rajiv ('hope of the nation') gandhi's innermost circle of 'smart friends and aides'. even though he was still a member of the indian foreign service. so why does mr.aiyer inveigh against wasteful expenditure now? here's the answer:

I was always something of a leftist. But I became a complete Marxist only after the economic reforms. Because I see the extent to which the most important conception of Marx — that the relationship of any given class with the means of production determines the superstructure — holds.

he's a chamcha, just as narendra modi's guru is indira gandhi more than golwalkar. he was always something of a gandhi loyalist. but he became a full blown chamcha much before rajiv gandhi's death. because that's the family which determines the superstructure of the congress, more than anything else. that's what the congress had steadily become over the years, and completely so since the advent of the indira gandhi reign. so it was okay when rajiv gandhi chanted the technology+growth mantra twenty years ago, even though the marxists, those righteous pals of mr.aiyer's, had opposed the introduction of even computers in banks and in government for a good decade or so, around the same period. and now that the current head of the family, aiyer's new master, feels a vaam-panthi posture is vital to dissociate the party, and more importantly, the family, from all things that spell narasimha rao, except, of course, from whatever gratuitous credit that comes its way because of the economic upturn engendered by policy initiatives undertaken during that usurper's era, mr.aiyer suddenly finds that he too had always travelled along the same road as the marxists. going back to the article:

Three years of UPA rule is testimony to this ongoing tussle between two schools within the Congress. This is also well in keeping with the party’s traditions. One school subscribes to high GDP growth. But, as I argued in this column a fortnight ago, this has to be supplemented with an expanded coverage and better delivery of public goods and services through administrative reforms. The other school seems to believe that growth-inducing policies per se are inimical to the interests of the poor. Therefore, they focus their entire attention on increasing public spending on welfare or so-called poverty reduction measures. The underlying logic (sic) of this school is that if by some means purchasing power can be put in the hands of the aam admi, the demand impetus so created will induce the needed supply response and generate growth.

analysts attach too much significance to whatever the congress does, attribute non-existent lines of thinking, leanings etc., to whatever congressmen do. the congress, right from the ward level, hasn't had a proper election within its organisation in the last forty years or so - if the party itself doesn't care for what its members have to say, and if the partymen themselves have long given up their right to expression, why do the pundits care? i find it very amusing that mr.aiyer's speech is being quoted in the media and the blogworld as proof of conscious dissent, of the existence of two schools of thought etc., within the congress. who's mr.aiyer dissenting against anyway? his prime minister? well, he's in good company because the prime minister himself seems to disagree with what his government is doing - helping the rich (according to him). in all the over-analysis of both these statements, and of all 'assertions' of congressmen, the critical lesson that is often missed is that none of them indicate any dissent against the house of gandhi. congressmen make those statements because they are allowed to make them. like all good courtiers, they can sense the mood of the ruling family. and the mood of the family has swung leftwards, in the last few years, as a reaction to the short reign of the modern day sher shah i had referred to earlier.

i am dredging up an old bugbear? dragging in the family into a debate on critical national issues? let's see what a wise man, dr.subroto roy, who claims to have authored the script for india's liberalisatiom program at rajiv gandhi's behest has to say on this issue:

All such questions would be ones of feminine gossip or TV-soap operas in case of any ordinary woman but assume political significance for Indians because of the inordinate impact she, her father, her sons and their widows have had on India’s modern history. Why all of India’s national-level politics have acquired a gossipy joint-family tone about them is because she projected onto them no high and universally known political principles whatsoever, but merely her own personal experiences and desire for popularity.

he is talking about indira gandhi and her family. she projected onto them no high and universally known political principles whatsoever, but merely her own personal experiences and desire for popularity. replace the word she with they and you could be talking about any political party in the country. or at least, most political parties. that's what the family has done to one institution, political parties, that is required to play one of the most important roles in the functioning of our democracy. any democracy.

a dole, in other words

Citing the reasons of ‘price rise’ and ‘globalisation and liberalisation’, the Left-backed UPA government has spelled out terms of references for the sixth pay commission. Nearly 42 lakh central government employees and two crore state government employees will receive a salary bonanza that will cost the state exchequer more than Rs 1,00,000 crore a year. However, for the 11 crore farming families, all that is being promised is more credit—doubling farm credit in the next three years.

What remains unexplained is that why is the farmer expected to live on credit while the rest of the society is blessed with a fixed monthly income?

great idea, in my view. like i had said earlier, a fixed monthly dole for all rural families would be much more efficient than a hundered different varieties of schemes and price support mechanisms. but what'd all the babus do? where'd they go, is the next question. and most of the 'voulntary' sector, and the 'alleviate poverty' brigade, and the 'globalized dissenters'?

indian bushmen in amreeka

Alexandra Tseitlin, who represents Mahender Sabhnani, described the couple as "law-abiding citizens." Where at, in the 1800's in India, where their heritage goes back to local bushmen? Do they own a time machine? Don't they reside in a Northern "anti-slavery state? I say revoke their citizenships, deport them to whatever slimy they climbed out from under and distribute a good portion of their "US banked $1.8 million" to the tortured women and donate the rest to hurricane victims or another worthy cause.

from here.

was this written yesterday?

All the past experience shows that at the point of planning policy, the greatest stress is laid on universal mass education: education of women, of scheduled castes and tribes, and in rural areas. At the point of fixing quantitative targets, proportionate expansion of all sectors takes over. At the point of performance, the highest achievements are all in the field of urban education, in secondary education, upper caste education and so on. The sectors of priority in policy, including adult literacy, are the laggards in performance: this is in line with, a consequence of, and a reinforcer of the pattern of distribution of political and economic power.

that's from a book i've been reading. those lines were written in 1975.