Safe House Wellness Retreat - The Facility

Insouciance

Insouciance

Insouciance is a kind of uncaring nonchalance born of smugness. There is a suggestion of wilful idleness about it, a sense of entitlement, and an assumption that one can get away with not delivering on one’s promises.  

And even some twisted thinking that suggests that doing what one says dangerously raises expectations. And should these be met, it only fuels even higher, unreasonable and unwarranted aspirations amongst essentially undeserving, ignorant people, best not encouraged above their station.

And therefore, it is implicitly better to drown such ambition at birth using ruthless subversion. Of course, you will never catch a politician or factotum saying any of this out loud. On the contrary, the average neta or bureaucratic burra sahib will feign horrified protest against such calumny being heaped on his ilk.

This is all the more remarkable because in a democracy which presumes to promote equality of opportunity, it is a patrician/feudal attitude, papered over with egalitarian and pro-people rhetoric. This is all the more ironic because in recent times, many elected representatives do not exactly come from a background of privilege.

But fact is, our common or garden politician and “steel frame” bureaucrat fits the bill for both insouciance writ large, and nonchalance too, though the latter term has a  Dev Anandish charm about it, found, in this context, to be missing in action.

The lesser accompaniments to these exalted personages, including all manner of secretaries, clerks, “officers” and agents at large, are not so humble that they are incapable of aping their masters.

So, for the supplicating public to be nearly squashed under this mountain of hubris is a very natural thing. That it makes them somewhat angry and full of the malice of schadenfreude, that peculiar but oh so real German notion of deriving pleasure at another’s misfortune, is therefore not surprising.

Particularly since now, you have this former army driver in a Gandhi cap and whites, in possession of a very effective wagging finger, that has lit a fire under all this insulation from reality.

Here was the standard issue politician, state, central, in meaner municipal/local government, or even quango setting, comfortable in the belief that he had to only think about his voter near about an election, and not at all otherwise, sanctimoniousness apart.

And suddenly, the former driver and social activist from Ralegan Siddhi, an obscure backwater in usually placid rural Maharashtra, is jumping all over one’s mind space. Mr. Anna Hazare is not only able to capture the media attention, but quite a bit of the popular imagination as well with his relentless Government bashing. People love an underdog going to war and understand one that talks in comfortable sound bytes.

That Mr. Hazare is simplistic is the true delight of the masses, if truth be told. People are sick of being bamboozled and patronised by insincere men and women, some elected to public office, some in unsackable Government jobs, and yet others in political parties and committees, who wield enormous power without being accountable to very many, let alone the public.

And this challenge to the comfortable politician and bureaucrat has been mounted at a time when the ruling classes are seen to have mismanaged both the economy and the political landscape. And brought it down to the point where not only is there policy formulation and implementation paralysis, but also a rapidly developing dire straits in terms of its rapidly depleting coffers.

The Government has choked the economy in the pursuit of lower inflation to the point where it is almost broke itself. Both direct and indirect taxes have fallen, and the need to borrow to bridge ever widening deficits has grown. Though you wouldn’t necessarily realise it if you looked at the ever expanding subsidy raj we cannot afford being thrust upon mute future generations.

Of course, the Indian Government routinely tends to see the light only when it reaches the end of its dark dank tunnel. It is always a rock bottom moment that brings substantive change to us, in a paradoxical, Through the Looking Glass manner. So expect a cut in interest rates and stimulation of growth afresh in 2012. Looking back to 1991, Mr. Narasimha Rao was able to jettison Nehruvian Socialism once and for all only because we had come perilously close to bankruptcy. And most “reform” of our system since has also been with a gun to our heads. We cannot arrive at a political consensus on any improvement without this coercive aspect, and perhaps it won’t be long before future governance learns how to stage a crisis for the purpose!

But as long as the taps of cheaper credit are turned back on, the reportedly Rs. 150,000 crores worth of Non-Performing-Assets (NPAs), consisting of  loans to stalled power sector companies and moribund infrastructure builders, can all be revived. And quick to forgive Indian industry can put the folly of monetary Stalinism behind itself.

And, once again, the politico and bureaucrat will be saved from the consequences of their sins. If you’re a mere member of the public, all you have to do is wait for it, and survive long enough to see the worm turn.

And yet with a report card hovering between failed grades and the bottom most rungs of scraping through, there is no real mea culpa. Instead, there is a pointing of fingers at civil society abrogating to itself the proper functions of our elected representatives. As if it is being done without provocation or cause by a group of misguided and subversive individuals naïve about the functioning and needs of governance.

Let’s face it, there might have been no JP Narayan in his time, launching the political careers of the many towards the bottom of the pyramid then, or Anna Hazare now, gaining traction with the Twitter and Facebook generation many decades his junior, without some due cause.

Of course, as the Lokpal debate proceeds, it becomes more and more difficult to fathom how the wondrous creature is going to function, and be effective, even if, and after, a “strong” bill is enacted into law. A polity free of corruption in the Indian context sounds truly fabulous and unreal.

Of course, a desire to make such a thing come about is laudable. And like the activism of civil society amplified by media coverage, is likely to tone up the functioning of not only Government but the Opposition too, and this not just at the Centre but also in the States.  

As for the economy, even bad cooks cannot totally wreck the effect of good ingredients, despite a chronic laparwai insouciance.

(1,099 words)

27^th December 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published in The Pioneer on Edit Page as Leader Edit on 29th December 2011 entitled "Wait for the worm to turn". Also online at www.dailypioneer.com and in The Pioneer ePaper. Also archived under Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com 

Navel Gazing Discontent

Lovely Poonam Kaur

Navel-Gazing Discontent

The current official navel-gazing assessment of our economic situation is stymied by its own in-built limitations. It is now evident that an economy of our modest proportions does not possess the resources to right itself, dependent as it is on investment from the driver economies of the West to do so. This, particularly in the management of our current account deficits, despite our foreign exchange reserves of some $ 300 billion.

We should have realised this before embarking arrogantly on a strict monetarist path, smug in the belief that our growth story was going to survive the abuse to its roots. Instead FDI has dried up, would-be investors domestic and foreign are dismayed, and FII money is leaving in floods, driving the rupee and the stock market down in its wake.

With appalling swiftness, we have gone from an admired BRIC nation that survived the 2008 downturn with finesse, to one in which we have managed to embarrass ourselves to the point of becoming a global disappointment in 2011.

And since some 56% of our economy now consists of the services sector, inclusive of the growth engines of IT; and America happens to consume, or did, some 90% of our IT exports, we are naturally hard hit in that department.  Of course, a lot of this service sector also attends to the domestic market, but the home market has been garrotted in the cause of containing inflation too.

Europe and America  are grappling with an avalanche of debt without growth, even negative growth in some places, that has led it to technical, if undeclared, bankruptcy. They are only staving it off from naked admission by constantly printing more and more notes marked figuratively with an IOU from the future. And of course, the West does have a substantial technological and military dominance and the heft of sheer size that will help it pull through in the end. In past centuries this would have been a good time for them to go to war in order to seize the resources they needed, and some say the military activity in some of the oil and mineral rich regions is precisely that.

Back in our shanty, besides IT, our other brilliant spot consists of small diamonds duly imported, cut and polished, mainly in Surat, before being sent out again. And diamonds, the small and tiny ones which are processed in India, have also been hit hard by the recession in the West.

Other areas, such as commodities, garments and engineering goods, not our strong suit in any case, are caught in the pincers of very low margins and sluggish demand. But the good thing is that the exports area accounts for only about 12% of the total Indian economy. So the implication is - fix the domestic economy and we’ll be alright. However, this seems easier said than done, as attempts to reform it have demonstrated.

This mainly because, despite the grave economic situation, occasionally given frank voice to by our Finance Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, the powers that be are more interested in controlling inflation which affects the voting poor the hardest, rather than managing growth, which is an amorphous reality not easily understood by the illiterate.

So growth be damned has been the mantra of our Government, let’s control food inflation instead. The good news is that food inflation is at last falling noticeably, partly because it is a seasonal demand-supply thing for farm produce, and partly because of the sharp constriction in money supply engendered by over a dozen interest rate hikes imposed by the RBI.

 In addition, even as Business and Industry have been battered by way of collateral damage by the actions of an unsympathetic and unsupportive Government, observers, at least those that don’t subscribe to endless handouts, are dismayed by the Government’s exploration of more populist measures. These encompass further reckless welfarism aimed at the aam aadmi, such as the pending Food Bill, likely to have very deleterious effects on the finances of the Government.

With indifference writ large on the part of the Government, Indian companies will have to wait to make their own way once the investment climate and confidence improves in the West. We will then stop being buffeted by waves of imported pessimism aggravated by unhelpful domestic policies and circumstances. These include tight money, the Government’s ever growing fiscal deficits, weakening currency values, slowing growth rates, governance paralysis on reforms, chronic political cacophony and weakness and a most disconcerting lack of purpose.

The great hope is in the revival of the much vaunted domestic economy that the whole world also wants a slice of.  Hopefully, what is done is done, and there will be change before we reach the point of no return. In trying to drive out inflationary liquidity over the last 13 months or so, we have lost economic momentum, while succeeding only very slightly in curbing inflation, because a lot of it is automatically imported, via our vast petroleum needs.

So what can we expect next? We do have the wherewithal to ride out this period of distress, as long as we once again pump-prime the domestic economy, reversing the present tight money policies, in an echo of what we did in the aftermath of the Wall Street debacles of 2008. It would have been great to encourage FDI also, but judging from the furore over FDI in multi-brand retail, it may prove to be politically too difficult at present.

But we cannot afford to kill the golden goose entirely. Most analysts of the European and American economic scenario are also casting doubt on their ability to return to prosperity via the rocky road of prolonged austerity. What that would do is assassinate the spirit of all enterprise, and no government can substitute for it, or insinuate anything else to serve in its precious place.

On our part too we need to course correct fast. Perhaps the greater folly has not been the delusion of grandeur occasioned by the navel-gazing.  Nor in the inward looking regard that we were safe as the second fastest growing economy in the world. It is in not recognising our imperatives on how to keep it that way.  We have presumed that the “India story” that we have got used to dining out on, could never slip away.  Now that it is, we must freely admit that our revised self-image of several years now cannot stomach or tolerate being sent back to the third world of basket cases. Let us therefore hope that it is not the covert policy of the Government in a variation of the Communist deification of poverty and privation.

(1,108 words)

15^th December 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader Edit in The Pioneer as "Ahead lies disaster" on December 15th, 2011. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is archived under Columnists and in the ePaper of the day. 

Control and Carpe Diem

Control and Carpe Diem

Control the message and you end up controlling the medium, seems to be the update on Marshall McLuhan’s vision. And this is being practised in a see-saw motion by both the Government and the Opposition.

Witness how Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Ms.Mayawati, has thrown down the gauntlet to the UPA, of which her BSP is also a restive part, by proposing that her state be split into four. UP has long been a grand prize for any political dispensation in its present form, along with Bihar, even after being divested of Jharkhand. UP is vast, ungainly, populous, lawless, backward, communally sensitive, yes, but sends cohorts of MPs to both houses of Parliament. 

But broken up into four states, the political imperatives as well as the arithmetic will change, perhaps unpredictably. For the implied manageability, it is nevertheless a good idea chasing its time. Meanwhile, the proposal, and the timing of its propagation, has managed to set the cat among the pigeons. At a minimum, the resolution, passed swiftly by the UP Assembly, has put paid to the pressure being applied on Ms. Mayawati by the higher reaches of the Congress Party.

The UPA, caught on the back foot, has countered with a stirring of the quota politics cauldron. The new mischief is in terms of an 8% reservation for Muslims within the 27% OBC quota. Not to be outdone, the SP has dusted off its old proposal asking for an additional Muslim quota over and above the OBC 27% . The upper castes and Hindus are no doubt being asked to pay for the sins of their forefathers, a kind of karmic pitri dosh.

But all this is essentially political posturing.  As the numbers in UPA 2 are constituted, to get anything passed at the Centre, the UPA needs both the SP and BSP for its numbers, not to mention the DMK and the TMC as well. Likewise, the BSP with its split-the-state-into-four proposal. And provided Parliament is allowed to function long enough!

Some of these trial balloons will be adjudged as too complicated to grab the voter’s imagination, and other ideas will peak too soon. A case in point is the rage about the Land Acquisition norms, wherein what Mr. Rahul Gandhi proposed, post his visits to Bhatta-Parsaul, has been defused by quick political and administrative action as well as by the Allahabad High Court giving out a number of sagacious decisions on the matter.

This land acquisition topic did indeed help Ms. Mamta Bannerjee ride to power in Paschim Banga. But now she’s grappling (ironically) with her former pals, the Maoists, and out-retrograding the Communists by stoutly opposing FDI in retail. For Ms. Bannerjee now, it is a battle for credibility with the much pampered if nearly destitute grass-root voter, whatever the illogic.

Ms. Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister from Tamil Nadu, joins her in the chorus against FDI  in retail from Chennai, for good measure probably, and to avoid any labels of elitism from the watchful and active DMK, smarting from being thrown out of power in the state.

Chief Minister of Delhi, Madame Dikshit’s attempt to control the messaging is less effective. Her big idea is to try and tame the BJP dominated MCD by trifurcating it. The BJP, taken aback at first, has now waded into the fray armed with codicils and amendments. Mrs. Dikshit is carrying on regardless, but with consensus likely to elude her, she has moved on to testing the waters for full statehood for Delhi.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, besieged on all sides by corruption scandals, stubborn inflation, persistent terrorism from Maoists/Islamists, bullying from China, artful dodging from Pakistan, a slowing economy, governance paralysis, indiscipline, populism, a clamouring Opposition, global economic meltdown, high commodity prices, etc., has also had his eureka moment. Dr. Singh does tend to get one big idea per term of office that he tenaciously adheres to- remember the civil nuclear power deal from UPA 1?

This time, it has come in the form of a redemptive Cabinet decision to push through majority or wholly-owned FDI in multi-brand and single-brand retail with little or no restrictions, including the kind of babu-bred detailing that makes even a good idea a non-starter.

Suddenly, the 2G scam is old hat, the Opposition stands out-manoeuvred on black money and inflation, and anti-corruption Tsar Anna Hazare is scrambling to get his share of media space. Mr. Hazare may be growing desperate at being upstaged, if his ever more bizarre pronouncements about flogging alcoholics, slapping Mr. Pawar, more fasting, and a resurrected East India Company, is anything to go by.

The fact is, liberalising the retail space is going to benefit millions of farmers to get more for their produce. It already has in Punjab and Haryana, as pointed out by the farmers’ lobby, where the efforts of the desi retailers such as Reliance Fresh have delivered. It will also open up a lot of jobs and other supply opportunities all along the delivery chain and make for a degree of first world sophistication, instead of the waste, unhygienic conditions, sloppy management and general inefficiency that dogs our present efforts.

The Opposition, and various Luddites in the ruling party, are essentially defending, and that too with unnecessary paranoia, an outdated set of ideas. The consumer will also benefit from better prices and a surfeit of choice, as in much else since 1991. Not one Kirana store need necessarily shut down if it wants to work for a living in competition with the big chains. It is competition that has put India on the economic map since liberalisation began, and not protection and barriers to global free trade.

In 1991, Mr. Rahul Bajaj was a leading light of the “Bombay Club” lobbying relentlessly to prevent foreign competition with talk of an “even playing field”. Now the same Mr. Bajaj suggested Kingfisher Airlines should be allowed to die if it could not compete. And India, flagging in its growth story and lagging in its Reforms Programme, can certainly do with the dollar billions in FDI investment and the modernisation it will bring.

A similar defensiveness was evident when Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, first started to put computers in to improve the workings of the Government, Nationalised Banks and PSUs in the Eighties. Then too, there were a firestorm of flag-waving and slogan-shouting morchas, all hysterically yelling fear and saying the machines would end up taking those secure Government jobs.  

But remembering that silliness today makes one fairly confident that FDI in single and multi-brand retail cannot be stymied after all, despite the no-holds barred kabbadi match going on at present.

(1,102 words)

4^th December 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

The Phantom Strikes

The Phantom strikes

It isn’t just the Rolls Royce that has made much of its quietness in motion. Much, as in its monikers of Phantom and Ghost and its famous David Ogilvy created advertisement.

The legendary headline to the 1958 print ad said: At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. The Subhead line read: What makes Rolls-Royce the best car in the world? “There is really no magic about it – it is merely patient attention to detail,” says an eminent Rolls-Royce engineer.

Of course, the Lee Falk “Ghost who walks” inspired imagery in the Rolls Royce model names, the somewhat horse and carriage reminiscent rounded lines, and the advert that talked of tick-tocking clocks and miles per hour, all belong to a bygone era. One in which the “Roller”, under British ownership, exuded occasional, if nostalgic, whiffs of Empire, despite the dwindling number of its anachronistic takers.

Significantly, this iconic British marque built at Crewe in the Midlands, associated with royalty and the “toff” for so long it seems like forever; still makes aircraft engines on its own. The auto manufacturing however has been hived off to BMW, the German car maker from Bavaria, which also once made aircraft engines but now only has the blue and white propeller on its much admired logo.

But BMW too, while extensively reengineering and restyling the Roller into tank-like toughness and Teutonic performance, has daintily retained the ethereal model names and the je ne sais quoi Greek mythology classicism of the “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood badge, now retractable to elude souvenir hunters, vandals and the gritty cynicism of modern times.

With this combination of old world class and Butch new, improved, performance, the Phantom can outgun several serious sports cars, despite weighing in at over two tons without any armour plating. Likewise, the slightly smaller new Ghost for those who want to drive themselves.

Which brings me to the reclusive billionaire with built-in state-of-the-art stealth features undetectable on most radars, known as “The Phantom of Bombay House”.  I write of Mr. Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry and his long road journey to the takeover of the iconic Tata Group. He too oozes stateliness and good manners while being a proven quantity over decades at or near the top of Indian business and industry.  

Mr.S.P. Mistry has been closely associated with all the major construction emanating from the Tata Group for decades. He has been an inner circle intimate of JRD Tata and an avuncular and consistent presence for his successor Ratan, not to mention all the other Tata satraps. Mr. Mistry has quietly sat on the boards, or in the Chairman’s office, of several Tata companies at the same time, for decades together, in addition to having his own name plate formally and informally at the board table at Tata Sons for just as long. But despite his biggest single private shareholding at some 18.5% in the Tata Sons holding company, Pallon, as his friends call him, has been careful to eschew petty ambition while diligently minding the store.  

Even now, at around 80 years of age, in technical retirement certainly, the elder Mistry is still a major force at Bombay House, despite his innate humility, warmth, human touch and signature low-key style. But underneath this silk and velvet, is a clear cut and long term strategist that has at last executed a plan of action begun in 1930, when his father, the heir apparent Cyrus Mistry’s grandfather, acquired 12.5% of Tata Sons by buying out the then Tata lawyer’s holding.

In the 1930s it was a very different kind of Phantom and Ghost, that rolled around in the heat and dust of princely India, besides featuring anthromorphically in hit films like “The Yellow Rolls Royce”. But undeniably, the Rolls Royce motor car’s survival to date owes much to a nimble evolution from its walnut and burl dashboards and picnic hampers that has cast many of its contemporaries into the outer darkness of museums sighing with times past.

The naming of the 43 year old Cyrus Mistry to the top job at Tatas’ is significant for its signal of an astute and hard-nosed makeover not unlike the one made to the Roller by BMW, signalling both modernisation and continuity, and recognising, as Ratan has done throughout his tenure, coinciding with the beginning of India’s liberalisation, that competition, not protection, is here to stay.

The Tata Group, grown out of the pre-independence ethos, consolidated throughout the Socialist era and brought into its own since 1991, has a long way to go in its transformation into a global behemoth. And this particularly as the balance of power is beginning to shift to Asia in terms of China and India and also to the other BRICS countries. What is certain is that America and the West will have to share a lot of power and pelf in the future.

Cyrus Mistry will have the time, over 30 years per the terms of tenure at Tata, God willing, and given the determination and vision demonstrated by outgoing Chairman Ratan Tata, like JRD before him, he will take it to the heights of achievement and excellence befitting the refreshed TATA logo.   

 Cyrus Mistry has already taken the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, albeit in conjunction with his father and elder brother, into very impressive multi-billion dollar growth, branching out into a conglomerate on its own, embracing manufacturing, services and engineering, from its roots in A grade civil construction going back to his grandfather’s days.

The time has come to continue the kind of dynamism and courage that has marked the latter half of Ratan Tata’s tenure, when he came into his own after successfully subduing considerable internal challenges to his leadership. Cyrus Mistry is lucky to be inheriting this legacy of consolidation. All he has to do now is leverage the considerable strengths of the Tata Group in an era where India itself is destined to become a leading nation and economy.

There are great opportunities in areas that are yet to be thrown open to the private or collaborative joint sectors, particularly in the Defence Industry, but they are coming because of irresistible geopolitical pressures and threats that need urgent action. Such private-public-international collaboration, inclusive of both organic and inorganic growth, as demonstrated in the Corus and Jaguar/Landrover acquisitions, has the potential to catapult more and more companies in the Tata Group into the upper reaches of the Fortune 500.

All Mr. Mistry needs is a hunger and stomach for visionary growth and he has certainly demonstrated this characteristic already, if on a smaller canvas.

(1,100 words)

24^th November 2011
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader Edit on the Edit Page of The Pioneer as "With sleeves rolled up" on November 29th, 2011. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com

Modi as in Deng

Modi as in Deng

Reform is China's second revolution.
Deng Xiaoping

In power terms, political correctness is a reasonably modern phenomenon. In history, the blood and gore of conquest was usually cast in terms of valour, vision and the capacity to rule. It was understood statecraft was not a province for wimps. But another demeanour, far less militaristic, that works nowadays, is that of the doer with a modicum of style.

Chief Minister Narendra Modi recently went to Beijing with a large entourage of Gujarat’s finest business leaders. He went in response to an ongoing Chinese initiative from the Central Committee of the CCP. Another possible Opposition prime ministerial candidate, Mr. Nitish Kumar of Bihar, has also recently been to Beijing on the same invitation format, as have several others, including Haryana’s Mr. Hooda.

Modi however is the only Indian CM who can boast of Chinese rates of growth. Gujarat has an overall figure of 12%, per annum, with even the usually moribund agricultural sector turning in a record-breaking 10% last year. The urban population of Gujarat, at 40% of the total, more closely resembles the demographic in China. Our near inviolate shibboleth is that “India lives in its villages”. That profundity was pronounced by the Mahatma, Gujarat’s greatest gift to the nation and the world, over a half century ago. Unsung as he undoubtedly is, Sardar Patel also from the womb of Gujarat, with a great deal more realpolitik to him if not the greatness, makes up a close second to MAK Gandhi.

Modi, also cast in decidedly heroic hue, is seen by the Chinese as an Indian Deng Xiaoping, himself long on the periphery of national power, but once installed centre stage, the one who took China on its spectacular trajectory to make it the fastest growing economy in the world.  Our NaMo, impressed as he is with Chinese achievements, is not content however, to slavishly ape Chinese growth methods.

He sees the business opportunity more as a Chinese one, and asked his hosts to desist from egging Pakistan on to make trouble for India, inclusive of the Chinese presence in POK. He also referred to the brandishing of Chinese maps that include large tracts of Indian territory such as Arunachal Pradesh and Akshai Chin on the Chinese side of the fence.

Modi does not think such essentially hostile attitudes are going to help Chinese companies get lucrative Indian contracts in infrastructure, telecom, and energy, amongst other things. Hardly the talk of a supplicant, and to give credit to his hosts, they took such pointed remarks on board without demur.

But even if China sees Modi as a possible future prime minister of India, they don’t have to fight through the thicket of rivals and detractors that NaMO has to tackle. Of course the matter that most stands in Modi’s way towards power at the centre, is the perception that he either caused, or colluded, with mob fury, during and in the aftermath of the Godhra riots that took some 3,500 lives. While technically and legally it may be very difficult to lay any such blame at his door, the damage has already been done.

The irony of this situation is that this country itself was born in the grip of communal violence, with perhaps a half million lives lost in the process. But it did next to no damage to the subsequent political careers of the principal beneficiaries, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Mr. Jinnah of course coughed his last soon after, but you could hardly blame his tuberculosis on his politics. The third beneficiary in glory, if not in pelf and power, was the beribboned Lord Mountbatten of Burma, but when he was finally blown up in a fishing skiff many years later, it was the IRA that did it, and not any part of the Hindu-Muslim diaspora.

In recent history, there was Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s invasion of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, that bizarre use of tanks through narrow lanes, and that of the regular army.

There were about a thousand casualties around the lanes, rooms, pools and terraces of the temple. The net effect was one of desecration and sacrilege. The martyrdom of Bhindranwale, when a judicially sanctioned noose would have been infinitely better was a corollary, and deeply wounded Sikh pride, a consequence. And then, there was the whispering from the shadows, echoing with the ghosts of Jallianwala Baug, located just a few alleyways away, in the same city.

Later came the Shakespearean aftermath, that of Mrs. Gandhi’s murder at her wicket gate, and the 4,800 Sikhs butchered in the Capital in swift retaliation. The

carnage organised, it is maintained to this day, by prominent members of the Congress Party, over four days of barbarity.

And yet it is Godhra, where the first provocation involved the deliberate burning alive of  scores of  Hindu pilgrims inside locked railway carriages, and Ayodhya, wherein nobody was killed during the demolition of Babar’s mosque; which are held out as prime examples of communal intolerance in this country.

Having the bountiful money tap of Government advertising is a good way to control the flow of news and analysis, even allegedly third-rate analysis, as certain judges with extra-curricular views have it. It is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, if one only casts a glance at the state of our judiciary and the functioning of our legal system. But casting stones at others is the sub-continental idea of free speech. Though we have never been much good at taking what we love to dish out.

Coming back to Mr. Modi and the great neo-liberal cant about his unsuitability for the top job because of his communal credentials, and coming, as he does, from that “communal party”, is so much talk that can harm our national progress.

The importance of NaMO is that  there is practically no one from any party with his development record. And as for his communalism, even if it is taken on face value, it cannot be seen to be any worse than that of any other politician, including Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, who justified the Sikh killings in Delhi circa 1984, in philosophical and arboreal similes. 

Deng the doppelganger was purged twice by Mao, but managed to upstage Mao’s designated successor Hua Guofeng. He then took control of the second generation reform that has catapulted China to its present prominence.

Modi has similar potential, albeit in a different political context and discourse, and this has not been lost on the Chinese. As for NaMo himself, he prepared for his visit carefully and made his presentation on Gujarat in correct Mandarin. 

 (1,105 words)

13^th November 2011

Gautam Mukherjee     

Published as Leader Edit on the Edit Page of The Pioneer as "Modi could be India's Deng" on  15th November 2011. Also online at www.dailypioneer where it is also archived under Columnists.

People will say all sorts of things

People will say all sorts of things

Ernest Hemingway said all American literature began with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. But then L Frank Baum, coming later, shouldn’t have had the hassle he did in trying to sell his wonderful Wizard of Oz. Publishers said to him, full of omniscience, that there wasn’t and couldn’t be, any such thing as an American fairytale.

And all because the prescription was for importing such magic and fairy-dust from Europe, where the culture was considered old and deep. The Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon world never paid much mind to the other “exotic” cultures such as ours, or that of the Chinese for that matter.  

L Frank Baum wrote over a score of books, besides the magical Kansas tale about Dorothy and Toto and the Kansas wind; but nothing else really mattered. But he was spot on about Oz with the lion who was a coward, and the yellow brick road, and the tin man worried about rust, the scarecrow with no brain, and of course, the wizard who knew the way home.

On the converse side of this argument, maybe that’s why so many American writers, and not a few of the painters, went to imbibe the spirit of France. Of course, help from the French, during their war with Britain, also created a subliminal kinship. It’s symbolised by France’s present of the Statue of Liberty, standing to this day in the New York harbour, opposite the fabled old immigration point of Ellis Island.

John Lennon, avant garde Liverpudlian and world citizen, art-schooled and acerbic, was very good at saying things, including something about the Beatles and Jesus. He  also said if you want to call rock n roll by another name, it’s Chuck Berry. He plugged the early Elvis by saying he had actually died the day he went into the US Army, (and not after starting a merchandising empire wearing his bejewelled jumpsuits and demonstrating his karate moves on stage in Las Vegas; and certainly not when he was, by his own description, “fat and forty”). Lennon said a few things about Nixon too, and they probably got him killed.

Rewinding a little, the commissioning executives at Decca and at EMI (the latter now ironically, but not surprisingly, defunct), said that there was no future for four young men with guitars (The Beatles), while turning down the opportunity to sign them up after listening to an audition. It’s fortuitous that the Beatles had Brian Epstein to do their Col. Parker parallel for them, because he did get them in on Parlophone, an EMI subsidiary, later with the help of legendary producer George Martin.

Across the Atlantic, Bob Dylan said to the Beatles, who were fans of his, shortly after their famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. This was right at the beginning of their US invasion, in 1964. What’s this about holding hands, said Dylan allegedly, here smoke this.

People, it appears, will say all sorts of things.

Some of the most inconsistent things being said locally are ironically coming out of the mouths of our  would be reformers in team Anna.

What need was there for Mr. Shanti Bhushan to fly that dangerous kite about Kashmir? Especially now, when all India has to do is wait for the disintegration of Pakistan, because of its extremely unviable internal contradictions, having run with the hares and hunted with the hounds to the point of terminal exhaustion. It is a little like these buildings that collapse in the inner-city every monsoon.

Particularly, when the vandals keep stealing the supporting pillars of US diplomatic protection along with the accompanying dollars, and expect Pakistan to leverage the other yellow pillar, or is it peril, of China, to do the work of both.

And more importantly, pay for the privilege, presumably in Renminbi and Yuan. Yuan apart, every red-blooded scotch drinking elite member of the ruling classes in Pakistan would rather take a George Washington faced dollar and go and bamboozle the Yanks as opposed to the Chinks, “all weather friend” and “deep as the Arabian sea and high as the Himalayas” notwithstanding. But these guys may be surrounded these days.

After all, Pakistan’s terrorist breeding programme is so successful that they are rapidly outnumbering and swamping all other local species including the despised “mohajirs” imported from India. These hapless exiles actually thought they would be better treated in Pakistan amongst their co-religionists than in Allahabad or Lucknow or Hyderabad or Junagadh for that matter. And they’ve been reeling from the shock for every one of these 64 years, even though they are loathe to admit it. And that includes Mohajir former president Pervez Musharraf.

Plebiscites too, much as Bhushan may advocate them, are a page straight out of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s ghost’s book. The one in which he wants the thing in Kashmir where the skewer of demographics is expected to give him the kind of democratic verdict he was fond of. That is when Zulfie wasn’t drinking the “infidel’s scotch” or profaning the atmosphere canoodling with kafir women.

Plebiscites have had their failed day, and have actually never worked anywhere. They were nevertheless favoured by excellent Roman Emperors such as Nero and Caligula, with death as a reward for ticking the wrong box.

Mr. Bhushan also recently argued his own case seeking Income Tax exemption for his heart-bypass surgery, because he considers it an occupational hazard as a lawyer. He may have something there. Still, Anna Hazare obviously knows how to pick them, but it is a relief to see he knows how to discard them as well!

I wonder what Anna’s going to do with his expense fudging frontrunner for  Jan Lokpal? Or his master’s voice, who hasn’t paid quite a lot of taxes and spent a quantity of time moonlighting from his government job. Or Mr. Bhushan senior blithely garnering himself a farm property “allotted” to him by Chief Minister of UP Kum. Mayawati’s largesse.

What makes it particularly disappointing is the lame excuses they have handed out when it comes to their own integrity and probity. And this, at a time when the race is far from run.

To be fair, it is indeed a very difficult game to stay a jump or two ahead in the honesty stakes, particularly with your supporters immolating themselves on the fervour of their own combustibles (also known as vanity).  

And as for dictators and other infallibles, they have a strange habit of coming to ultimate grief in the vicinity of drains and underground crevasses. Who knows what Saddam and Gaddafi called safety, but it certainly didn’t work for them.

(1,097 words)

October 21^st, 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader on Edit Page of The Pioneer as "Shake it like Elvis" on 2nd November 2011
and online at www.dailypioneer.com/ as well as in The Pioneer ePaper.

Please Sir, may I have some more?

Please Sir, may I have some more?

Charles Dickens, said to have been reincarnated as JK Rowling, the author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series, never got over the trauma of being sent to the Poor House with his entire family, on account of his father’s bankruptcy.

The brilliantly conceived Harry Potter, though an ace wizard, is an orphan, maltreated by his remaining family. Could it be the same Dickensian soul in JK Rowling carrying on with the expiation?  

Dickens mined the trauma of that poor house experience of some two years in book after book including Oliver Twist , David Copperfield and A Christmas Carrol. He, even after he became rich and famous, also demonstrated several colourful mundane and profane quirks in his personal life as well.

In Oliver Twist, the protagonist famously has the temerity to ask for more porridge in the orphanage and brings down the wrath of the establishment on his hapless if innocent head.

Dickens’ thematics of deprivation, hunger and brutal repression brings to mind the strange ongoing discourse about the so-called Poverty Line, with a blue-turbaned Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission trying to calm the troubled waters in his considerably pucca accent while wearing his air of inviolability.

But showing surprise at the media focus on his Rs. 32/- per person per day Laxman Rekha, when it used to be only Rs. 24/- is somehow missing the point. Nobody seems to realise that having such a thing in itself shouts about the failure of our remedies and nostrums in this regard after more than sixty under-achieving years!

It is shocking the amount of newsprint and broadcast media time that has been devoted to this obscenity. Noted columnist Mr. Swaminathan.A. Aiyar added to the surrealism in a recent article by opining that since poor families tended to have more members and had say five or six mouths to feed; a rate of Rs. 32 per day times 6 would work out to a not totally shameful Rs. 6,000/-  or so per month! And that the middle class were not morally qualified to ask for more for the poor because they cribbed about paying this kind of wage to drivers and servants. What happened to the logic of 6,000/- times 6 here, presumably for a family of domestics all cleaning and swabbing in unison in neighbouring homes, or drivers of either gender, from ages 10 to 79 doing likewise? Then, the poor would be veritably middle-class, and we could move the Poverty Line to say, waist-high!

The fact is that Socialism over 40 years has done us no favours. We became a nation of lofty, lecturing, hectoring, arrogance-laden theorists, our reach nevertheless always exceeding our grasp. Then Liberalisation came, with an ultimatum from the World Bank in 1991, and changed the rate of growth, slowly, and then very fast, considering it was climbing from a paltry little third-world base.

And gradually the middle-classes swelled, till now we talk of some 300 million people, with the poor being twice as numerous, and a couple of hundred million people in the rich category, differentiated between those who have cash and assets worth crores of rupees, and yet others with so much that they could never properly tell you just what they were worth.

Besides the number of Indian US dollar billionaires is swelling respectably, not just in the domestic but the Asian context, and millionaires are plentiful enough to hardly elicit comment.

This singular fact of growth in the economy near the double-digits year-on-year has led to whatever change and transformation we see around us. If the poor are going to get anywhere at all, then they are going to benefit from the effects of this sustained growth and transformation in their possibilities.

But there is indeed another problem that hasn’t quite hit the comfortably pontificating middle-classes here in India as yet, but might, when rising wages drive low-end jobs overseas to poorer countries.

Remember, once the developed world busy exporting jobs, spoke of cheap Japanese and Taiwanese imported goods of dubious quality.  Even China with its formidable manufacturing strength and current export competitiveness is going to have to move up the value-chain and hopefully be saved from the fate of many others. They, like us, have a potentially massive domestic market to run to.

Similarly, as India climbs up the same globalised economic tree in hot pursuit, the middle classes will have to keep expanding to fuel more and more domestic demand.

But if we export low-end jobs, our economy, as in the West, will turn from being investment driven and manufacturing/service industry/infrastructure based, to a consumerist/trading one.

This tends to favour the rich with the resources to corner trading opportunities, and the economy tends to get polarised between the rich and the poor, relatively speaking of course.

America is seeing the shrinking of its middle-class now, grown strong in the post WWII years with its massive job creation programmes, and, if we tread the same developmental path we could see the same thing happen here.

Of course, we have a long way to go before the worm turns, particularly with our birth rate persisting and prolific, and the years in between are assuredly good ones.

But decades from now perhaps, we will have to face not the problem of monetary scarcity, but one of plenty without that many jobs. And that is provided the rich who control the finance haven’t bet it all on the wrong horse like Lehman and Goldman and all those happy Jewish people in Wall Street, now being occupied by a bunch of irate “smelly hippies”.

But even if the famous Indian conservatism and rectitude keep us on the straight and narrow, it might still be a feeling amongst those of us who are not rich and probably not poor. A feeling of being all dressed up with nowhere to go unless we plunge into the world of the self-employed. This more so with no Laxman Rekha drawn up to tell us our place in the scheme of things.

(1,004 words)

10^th October 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader Edit on Edit Page of The Pioneer on 14th October 2011 as "May I have some more?". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and in The Pioneer ePaper. Archived under Guest Columnists online at www.dailypioneer.com 

A suitable metaphor

A suitable metaphor

What is a suitable metaphor for our life and times in India today? Was it encapsulated in the picaresque 1993 novel Suitable Boy by author and poet Vikram Seth?

The book chronicled the emerging new nation of the 1950’s busy abolishing the Zamindari system, working on women’s emancipation etc. in the backdrop of an idealistic, if ineffectual, Socialist India that only succeeded in increasing poverty even as the population exploded.

Or is it the shifting of gears in big-time geopolitics in the South Asian theatre and the Indian Ocean region as well?

America has sold war planes to Taiwan and entertained the Dalai Lama. It is not very happy about the growing Chinese involvement in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Baluchistan, Gilgit and POK, and China’s evident policy of pushing India around in Arunachal Pradesh and other places.

It is uncomfortable with China’s nuclear submarine programme and the launch of its aircraft carrier with more being built. It is cross about its nuclear proliferation using North Korea and Pakistan as proxies. And then there is the relentless infrastructure upgrading and talk of a new Silk Route, alongside of the revival of the old Stillwell Road one. And also its muted belligerence in the South China Sea and China’s laying claim to its oil, gas and other resources, the needling of Japan, etc etc.

With regard to Pakistan, China’s side-kick desperate to dominate Afghan politics and power play, President Obama recently said: “We’re not going to feel comfortable with a long term strategic relationship if we don’t think that they’re mindful of our interests as well.”

There is an evident shift in stance both from the frequency and the more than usually candid nature of the statements from not only the President, but also Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (wild animals being reared in the Pakistani backyards), outgoing Joint Chief of Staff Mike Mullen (ISI supports the Haqqani network), and Vice President Joe Biden (unreliable ally), Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (retaliation)...

And this new exasperation with Pakistan, frank criticism of its ways, threats of discontinuing the massive military and non-military aid, is being publicised worldwide by a global media, slowly but surely hardening its own stance.

It seems clear from all this that America is getting ready to do something more effective than finger-wagging, and has moved on to strategising about exactly how to restore the balance of power in its own favour. The scurrying around of Pakistan’s military top brass also echoes this perception.

But the back story is indeed long and fascinating. Probably much too much of both for proper analysis in this short piece. Still, it all began with America’s historic and infamous tilt towards Pakistan in the Nixon-Kissinger years, aided and abetted by its concurrent overtures to open up to China.   The rise of China into the world’s fastest growing economy is a direct consequence of that tilt, and so is its growing posturing and militancy.

Pakistan, in the interim, has gone through its “good terrorists” era under President Zia Ul Haq helping America free Afghanistan from the Soviets, alongside comprehensive Islamisation of the Pakistani polity domestically. Then came the corruption and loot of the Benazir Bhutto years, followed by the artful dodging of commando President Musharraf.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden at Abbotabad recently however has torn the veil right off the mutual denial and deception.

 And now it is time for another tilt away from the toxicity of the situation.  Don’t be too surprised if we wake up one morning soon to a frontal American attack within Pakistani territory launched from the Arabian Gulf and Afghanistan. This could take place, starting with a crippling of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, as soon as the Americans work out their quid pro quos with China.  

 India will, of course, benefit from the change, and began to do so under former President George W Bush. But, is our defining metaphor then some kind of big brother largesse or happy coincidence of geopolitics?

Or does the question resonate better with revered journalist Mr. Sunanda Datta-Ray’s recent article that invokes Kipling’s 1901 India novel Kim; saying much of the description in it still strikes a “contemporary chord”. Mr. Datta-Ray also quotes Paul Scott, the author of the Raj Quartet, set in the 1940’s, just as India was making its transition towards independence.  

A character in the novel Division of the Spoils, Sargeant Guy Perron, an upper-middle class gentleman who prefers to be a non-commissioned officer, says, “I have never been in a country where the sense of the present is so strong.” Point taken, but I dare say we may not be particularly respectful of our hoary history, but it is still embedded in our DNA.

Perhaps a more apt metaphor is the new film by Mr. Tigmanshu Dhulia, who has adapted the themes of Guru Dutt’s baroque Zamindari tale Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam into a stylish if somewhat sly Sahib Bibi aur Gangster, with no apologies to the iconic period piece based on Bimal Mitra’s novel.

Dhulia interprets, but it is not a retelling at all. It is more of a comment on what we have to do to get ahead, or even just by, in a resurgent, if somewhat morally decayed contemporary India. So the metaphor is not just about peeling paint and backless cholis that provoke hot, if inappropriate, sex. It is also about the notion that one may not always get what one wants, but with a little effort, it is possible to get what one needs - to paraphrase a very catchy Rolling Stones number.

 If contemporary India is a wheeler-dealer haven then, does it mean it is time to give the straight-up and honest a hasty mass burial in a shallow grave?

No, but you might get run over by wheeler-dealer traffic going down both sides of the road. Which may amount to the same thing if you have the temerity of wanting to cross the road.

Casting aside the cloak of metaphor, one has to be struck by the sheer death of incompetence though. It is no good being a bad crook today. Ditto goes for a neer-do-well do-gooder. This is the era of delivering the goods for a price.

You would be spiritually bankrupt if you didn’t want to move on. But the fact is Indians are in a hurry to catch up with, and perhaps surpass, the developed world. We no longer consider such ambition a pipe dream. And that means we are not only focussed on the future but innately aware of our glory days of the past.

(1,099 words)

7^th October 2011

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader Edit on the Edit Page of The Pioneer as "In search of a metaphor" on 19th October 2011. Also published simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer and in the facsimilie   edition ePaper.

Collaboration Sutra

From Modern Mughal miniatures by the Singh  Twins

Collaboration Sutra

Renowned columnist Maureen Dowd who writes for the New York Times compared the poor academic credentials of the Republican Party front-runner Rick Perry with that of the Harvard educated and almost professorial President Obama, with not, let it be understood, anything approximating approval for Perry. She ends her piece with: “The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates.”

In India, confronted by a host of portentous issues including terrorism, national security, corruption, inflation, economic slow-down and drift in governance, all of which have become onerous, the truth and applicability of Ms. Dowd’s comment, though made in the American context, is indeed perplexing.

It is probably true that neither the people of India, nor our rulers and administrators, quite know how to tackle our problems.  But even though the urban or rural public may not understand the issues or possible solutions very well themselves, they are not willing to passively endure the non-doings of an incompetent sarkar any more.  

One such portentous issue, on which the Government has actually taken some action, is the matter of land acquisition. The snatching of land from its original owners for a pittance without recourse has been carried out with Stalinist insouciance ever since the flag of independent India fluttered first in 1947. Then and throughout since, land acquisition has been carried out with spectacular brutality, instead of being conducted in a manner befitting  a republic aspiring to ostensible equality for its citizens and one boasting universal franchise.

So now, even as the Union Cabinet has already passed a forward looking Land Acquisition Bill for further consideration and enactment by Parliament, the various interested parties and their lobbies are hard at work.

The agricultural land-owners are pleased with the provisions that henceforth acquisition of land by developers and industry will require the promoters to pay four times the highest registered sale price in the preceding three years for land sold and bought in the contiguous rural area. For land bordering urban municipalities, where rates are higher, the applicable formula is double the highest registered price of the last three years for a given area.  In addition, 70% of the targeted land-owners have to agree to the proposal in order for it to go through, leaving the door open for further negotiation and upward mobility of the buying/selling price per acre. 

The Government, in the interests of equity, fair return to its largest voting constituency, and natural justice to boot, will not interfere in this process. It will henceforth confine itself to land acquisitions strictly for the common weal, as in roads and freight corridors with widespread benefits for the general public.  

Consequently, the builders and industry looking at green-field projects are a worried lot, because they think this Bill, when enacted into law, will sharply increase the costs of their projects. In fact, land prices have begun to rise already in anticipation, now that the threat of compulsory acquisition by the Government has been set aside.

These constituents also have a point, though urban builders can, of course, pass on the increases in land cost to the ultimate customers of their flats and villas, and they, in turn, can look forward to sharper appreciation in their real-estate values in short order. The so called low-cost or budget housing is a misnomer and non-starter in the NCR or around any of the metro cities anyway, because even a modestly priced and small flat is priced at over Rs. 30 lakhs. To get these at affordable prices, one has to move to Panwel near Mumbai or Bhiwadi or Kundli near the NCR for example. And given good connectivity, this need not be impractical either, as has been demonstrated in many places abroad.

Industry has also been directed in the Bill to share their potential profits by allocating some 15 to 17 % of the developed land to the original land-owners free of charge so that they can participate and partner in the development of their area.

Most of the complaints of the developers and industrialists are essentially retrograde because they are comparing what is fair to all with what was to their exclusive benefit till lately. So, it won’t surprise anybody when they do all they can to argue for a dilution of various provisions of the Bill before it becomes law.

The land-owners, including illiterate tribals from some of our mineral and resource rich states, are naturally strongly in favour of the new Bill, which seeks, after all, to redress the inequities of the colonial 1894 land acquisition law in force at present.

But even as the discussion gathers traction and momentum, there is another, perfectly workable methodology that has been in use for many years now- that of an equitable collaboration. In this formula, the land owners retain title to their land themselves and the developer or industrialist puts in all the money and expertise to develop it.

Collaboration agreements typically run on a 40% to one third share in favour of the landlord, inclusive of a negotiated advance of monies to seal the deal. This is a fair basis for a mutual sharing of the future appreciation in property values, or handsome profits on sale at any point in the development phase as well.

Similarly, in the case of industry developed in collaboration, the land owners get to participate as shareholders on an ongoing basis, with options to sell part or whole of their holdings as the time goes on, at freely negotiated or market rates.

This form of shared enterprise has the most important virtue of rendering most of the increase in land prices redundant, and normally draws voluntary and enthusiastic cooperation from land-owners. But of course, this kind of transaction may not suit the developers and industrialists who have long been used to a less equitable outright purchase of land at low prices, and the unfettered freedom to work on the development at their own pace and in the manner they see fit.   

In terms of redevelopment of residential and commercial premises and plots in our metros, as well as a number of projects in the surrounding areas, collaboration is a tried and tested method which has proved most successful. There is no reason, given a shift in attitude on the part of business and industry, that it won’t work equally well in rural areas too. 

But to underpin and ensure the good intent of the developer or industrialist, the Land Acquisition Bill, with a minimum of modification, needs to be passed into law as soon as possible.

(1,100 words)

19^th September 2011
Gautam Mukherjee


Published by The Pioneer as Leader Edit on the Edit Page on 22nd September 2011 as "Look beyond new land Bill". Also published online at www.dailypioneer and in The Pioneer ePaper simultaneously.

Tiger! Tiger! Burning Bright

Tiger! Tiger! Burning Bright

This country’s tectonic plates are shifting, and not just under Sonepat. It is a phenomenon occurring deep down in its unexplored innards. But on the surface too, there is much sensed excitement, like monkeys chattering in the forest to herald the approach of a tiger.

The old formulae, such as the much abused fig leaf of “secularism”, used to dupe the largest minority, and fear-monger amongst the smaller ones, have not totally lost their relevance, but they no longer command blind faith.

The perception of the people has become much more sophisticated as a consequence of greater prosperity and exposure to the world via satellite TV. The left-liberalism of the ruling party has undeniably yielded some benefits over decades of being in power, most of them continuously, but now this success at lifting the lowest common denominator, has come of age with its concomitant changes in aspiration.

This change, in aspiration and sophistication, is evident also in the reception given to the new wave commercial cinema coming from younger directors, and even the success of original music men such as AR Rahman.

Some of these new movies do not have the de rigeur songs; others lack the elaborate masala-mix of melodrama; others still, dare to explore elephant-in-the-room topics. As for AR Rahman, it is a me-and-my-studio-effects phenomenon the old school would not consider seriously. But it is AR Rahman with the international recognition and the Oscar and not any doyen of the old school.

This may all be a middle class and multiplex phenomenon, a metaphor stretched too far, but even then the size, spending power, education, exposure and clout of this segment cannot be denied. This has turned it from a passive “petit bourgeois” mindset, fearful of losing its hold on precarious “respectability”, into a more assertive and expressive one.

The change in the air is also evident in the realm of public affairs in the way the people are proving resistant to the old explanations, the mealy-mouthed platitudes, the lip-service, the sloth, inefficiency, waste and hypocrisy, accompanied by the routine passing of the buck. The inaction and ineffectiveness is resulting in an audible, if not yet loud ticking of the clock, even in the silence of this quartz-batteried and digital age.  

The usual nostrums and broad spectrum stock explanations are not working. Nobody believes the cant being handed out. Truth be told, they never did, but added to the existent disbelief is a certain impatience and unwillingness to put up with it anymore. Even the tele-evangelising apologists for the ruling dispensation are having trouble mustering enthusiasm for the lines they are required to mouth.

As for the sycophancy towards the ruling family at the apex of the Congress Party, and indeed most of its allies, similarly topped by can-do-no-wrong satraps, it all has a tinge of desperation. And no minister of Government or party big-wheel wants to be less sycophantic than the competition, lest it costs one much more than one is willing to lose.

Out on the street meanwhile, the trouble is that the institutions and mechanisms of redressal are themselves dressed in cobwebs and rust. So there is nothing to do but mobilise on the streets, hopefully under the gaze of the force multiplying media.

We may not be part of the Arab and North African “Jasmine” revolution, mostly against dictators and absolute rulers backed by military juntas, but there too, dangerous as it is, it is the street that is the forum.

We in India are ostensibly democratic, but our functioning has always been decidedly feudal, autocratic, even colonial, with brown men replacing white ones. This malaise of obtuse arrogance affects all who get elected to office or occupy those inordinately powerful and unsackable posts in the Government.

The agitation over corruption that has caught the popular imagination is actually a symptom of deeper causes. It is probably the thin edge of a wedge that will open up Indian society to review and reform all that is antiquated and redundant in our country.

And stimulated by these yearnings for renewal, catalysed by this banner of obsolescence, it is difficult to point at even a single area of our daily experience not in need of overhaul. The frightening thing is that the framework and human resources available to bring about such comprehensive change is simply not available in-house to the Government.

Nor can our grasping politicians in faux people-friendly mode and fancy dress to match, cope effectively within their ponderous parliamentary procedures and the moribund Soviet style checks and balances. These are now seen by the public to be  redundant mechanisms and excuses for doing nothing. What we have is a legion of yesterday men and women baffled by the demands of tomorrow, clueless, floundering, ageing, rigid, impotent and unresponsive.

And in the midst of all this, there is the spectre of a tiger approaching, with all the “fearful symmetry” of the four-legged one from William Blake’s evocative poem. Czar Nicholas must have felt like this when a determined Lenin took him and his centuries old monarchy head on.

Mr. Narendra Modi can unite the country under the truth of equal rights and opportunities for all communities, as opposed to the ruling dispensation’s time-worn strategy of playing Peter against Paul and living off the difference.

The Congressional Research Service of the United States has recently acknowledged Mr. Modi’s possibilities as a future prime minister, even before he and his party have enunciated their own positions. 

This comes on top of an abstruse Supreme Court ruling, best understood by competent lawyers in its entirety, but which, the man on the street may be forgiven for construing as a “clean chit”.

In plainspeak, Modi is not Himmler, let alone Hitler, despite strenuous smear campaign efforts to that effect. He is undeniably a most efficient Chief Minister with a mission to deliver what he promises. And he can definitely do likewise at the national level given the chance. And this for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Tribals and every other minority and community alike. Mr. Modi on his part, reacting to the propaganda against him, is working hard on refurbishing his image.

Therefore it is understandable that when the ruling dispensation puts the rise and rise of Narendra Modi in their smoking pipes, they can’t help but gag on the acridity. More so because the way things are going, the people of India could well see Mr. Modi, with his proven experience and effectiveness, as a better alternative to Mr. Rahul Gandhi for the prime ministership of India in 2014.

(1, 089 words)

15^th September 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as the Leader Edit on the Edit Page of The Pioneer on Dussehra 7th October 2011 as "Time to slay our demons". Simultaneously published online at www.dailypioneer where it is archived under Guest Columnists and in The Pioneer ePaper.

Forbearance and Virtue

Forbearance and Virtue

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Edmund Burke, British statesman and philosopher from the 18^th century, said “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist,” and, “the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse,” in an echo of Lord Acton’s famous aphorism on the corruptibility of power.

In context therefore, it is somewhat amusing to witness parliamentary procedure being used as a shield to hide behind, by the very people who have outraged the public long enough with routine and boorish flouting of parliamentary norms. So much so that, both spontaneously, and as a consequence of political mobilisation, large numbers of citizens have finally take to the streets in protest, not just in Delhi but all over the country, led by an erstwhile army driver inspired by the Mahatma and  his methods.

In the midst of the extensive and most commendable media coverage, one can almost see the manthan, the churning of the political discourse, with the possibility of a distinct shifting of gears. This is what happened economically, and irrevocably, in 1991 and may be happening, in the political context, today. And since the political classes are under attack, they are scrambling to find consensus and common ground amongst themselves.

Mr. Varun Gandhi, strangely, the only MP to visit the Ramlila Grounds to see what was going on for himself, described it, in pointedly dulcet tones, as a milestone and turning point that will be in the political history books 25 years from now.

This young man of 31, educated briefly at the London School of Economics, who may have come of age at last, may also have realised something profound, in the very midst of the cacophony and multiple versions of the Lokpal Bill jostling for political space. He too looks at this protest not so much as an anti-government matter but as one that goes well beyond what is being talked about right now, to what this popular movement actually stands for. It stands for change in the way things must be done by politicians in future.

It was equally, if not more of a pleasure, to listen to Mr. Arun Jaitley’s broad spectrum speech on the multifarious ways and means of nearly institutionalised corruption on the part of the system. He spoke in the Rajya Sabha on the 24^th of August 2011, broadcast live on most of our English news channels.

Mr. Jaitley is probably the most articulate, modern and cerebral amongst the top leadership of the BJP, particularly in English. His passionate delivery and well reasoned arguments are made with the finesse of a top-notch legal luminary that he is, and this brings great lustre to his role as the Leader of the Opposition in the upper house.

There is something of Obama at the hustings about his style, that suggests he could do very well as the international face of the BJP at the next general elections, rather than confining himself to back-room strategies as an  in-charge of the election campaigns in various states.

Along with Mr. Narendra Modi, the great “NaMo”, with his tremendous governance skills and overwhelming grass-roots support in his home state of Gujarat, you’ve probably got the new avatar of the erstwhile Vajpayee-Advani team that took the BJP from two seats in parliament, namely their own, to power for a full-term, and  thereafter on to being the principal Opposition and ruling alliance in several significant states around the country.

Certainly this duo has relative youth and vigour on its side, and both are also seasoned players at the forefront of their party administration. The third member of what could be a winning team, with a view to carrying along the NDA allies, while drawing others into the fold, should probably be Mr. Nitish Kumar, a proven success in his home state of Bihar.

Ironically, he too is in the NaMo mould when it comes to governance, but without the taint of alleged communal bias in his image. Bihar, of course, has a large and eligible minority voting population, and it has been important for Mr. Kumar to pass muster with this sizable constituency. In addition, as Mr. Kumar is a leading light of the JDU and indeed the NDA, and not the BJP, he can be very useful in the Opposition bid for power in 2014.

As for the ruling UPA, much of their aam aadmi plank has been eroded, both by inflation, and the humungous parade of corruption scandals following each other like floats in a Brazilian carnival. Besides, there is a generational shift afoot in the ruling family but the burden of experience still lies with seasoned cabinet ministers and party satraps decades older than the heir apparent and his junior ministering contemporaries.

It is going to be interesting to see how the Congress Party manages its contradictions in this regard, and its effective transition to team Rahul Gandhi. Courtiers can’t hack it at the polls, and stalwarts will not do so at the expense of their self-respect and power.

We have seen the grand old party languishing for many years in the wilderness after the passing of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi till Mrs. Sonia Gandhi came to head the Congress Party apparatus. And this is still the salutary writing on the wall.

In the paralysis of governance and political confusion at present, it is also becoming increasingly obscure as to what the priorities of UPA II are. It is no longer the aam aadmi, because nothing is being done for his benefit, so what is it?

As for a possible UPA III, like a sequel to a sequel of a badly scripted franchise, there is some real doubt now on whether it can attract large audiences to the box office/ballot box.

The larger point however is to do with the Burkian concept of forbearance or patient self-control when it comes to the oppression of the people’s aspirations, however inchoate. Law and order cannot descend into a Stalinist pogrom time and again and certainly not in our main cities while showing the face of ahimsa to Maoists, seditionists and separatists! Our Home Ministry has a quixotic idea of firmness if it wants to negotiate with savage and murderous Maoists and stamp on peaceful protestors under the full gaze of our national media.

As for the Burkian notion of Virtue, it is the public that is trying to teach the political classes the meaning of the word afresh. They truly think the politicos have forgotten its meaning, and so they can ignore this only at their own peril.

(1,098 words)

26^th August, 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published in The Pioneer Edit Page Leader Edit on September 2, 2011 as "The game has changed" and online at www.dailypioneer.com simultaneously.

The joys of the forward-looking statement

The joys of the forward-looking statement

One of the joys of writing pieces for the Edit and Op-ed Pages of a national daily broadsheet, is the facility and licence to make “forward looking statements”.

During my decades in corporate life, it was something of a taboo to do so with regard to the affairs of public limited companies. The fear was that it would cause sharp-hearing punters and heavier-duty investors to trade on the listed stock of the company based on such pronouncements, which could provide a straws-in-the-wind reckoning on which way it was likely to lean in the future, and what profits could be made by speculating on such inclination.

In America and the West, and lately in India, the procedure, hallowed and admired once in financial market circles for the derring-do initiative it showed, is now anathema, and labelled a criminal offence. “Insider trading” attracts the punishment of instant dismissal and criminal prosecution. If convicted, it will tend to get one fairly long jail sentences too.

Plus, there were the hierarchical requirements which specified who was or wasn’t an “authorised spokesman”, and just what he or she was authorised to speak or issue written statements on. Even top brass were not immune to such restrictions, on the principle one always has to serve somebody. Of course, they could also feign ignorance of lowly operational matters when it suited them, but that is quite another matter.  

Then again, all the information and persuasive pitching, was an attempt at opinion formation, which is also the objective of senior journalists and their not so distant cousins,  the politicos. The urgent messaging seeks to influence and convert, via the medium of the well-written or well-spoken word, timed well too, and accompanied wherever possible, by relevant images.

Otherwise, it would just be so much reportage, and though it is eminently possible to slant reports to suit one’s world view, editorial writing and appearing on TV talk-shows provides a rather freer format to hold forth according to one’s persuasion. And long has it been known that fancy oratory can certainly give birth to the occasional good idea too.

Politics, with its proximity to power via the EVM (electronic voting machine), has the inside track on this declamatory process in theory, necessary for the all-important gathering of votes, along with a liberal use of monetary and other inducements.

But, it is seen that too much of the political messaging in India lately is about feint and parry, essentially defensive manoeuvre, minimalistic in scope, and very little by way of the expected thrust of leadership and the grand sweep of vision.  Our Prime Minister, for example, seems reluctant to voice his opinions altogether, as if expecting to be ridiculed in the midst of his chaotic governance. When he comes out to speak to the public or the media, he gives the clear impression that he is doing so under pressure from his party.

In this prevailing climate of drift, most committed commentators sound like apologists of the UPA or the Opposition as the case may be, or indeed the Left, who uniquely manage to appear opposed to whatever is going on, whether they are in formal support of the Government, any issue, or not.

But with all this caginess as the prevailing order, it makes for a dreary narrative that rarely takes the India story or plot-line forward for the hopeful. That we are going through tough economic times both at home and globally does not help either.  

Civil Society comes across, alas, as mostly naïve, with a great deal of fury and thunder that still isn’t tantamount to effective intervention, though Mr. Anna Hazare may prove this perception wrong yet. At least it is trying to do something to clean up the mess, and for that intention and effort it deserves appreciation from those who do much less.

And to carry the corporate analogy forward, politics does not actually destabilise the polity with its manifestoes, however radical, even though most are rarely implemented. Election promises too are largely forgotten once in power. But the fact remains, a great deal of governance is about policy making and its implementation, and has to be both continuous and viewed from a long term perspective.

In a democracy, to find a Government that seems to say nothing at all about its future direction is both disappointing and distressing. Nothing that is, apart from occasional probing comments pronounced by the more quixotic amongst its spokespersons, aimed at shoring up its perceived vote banks. And then, there is the tactic of routine and boring denial in counterpoint to the criticisms of the populace, the media, and the judiciary and, of course, the Opposition.

Combined with a dysfunctional parliamentary session or two, even as it will be interesting to see how the political classes handle the current Monsoon session, the picture of rudderless drift and insouciant unresponsiveness is more or less complete. Not to mention the huge legislative backlog suffering from unforgivable neglect! Juxtaposed with a politician’s natural urge to be a little economical with the truth, it makes for disinformation in place of transparency.

Which brings us to the central point of the deteriorated quality of our democratic discourse. We have parliamentarians and state legislators, who do not uphold the grand traditions of parliamentary democracy, but instead trash them under the full public gaze and the media spotlight, like so many loutish schoolboys. We have institutions, set up by our founding fathers to be vigilant against subversion of the workings of Government, ruthlessly compromised by political interference, to the extent that they are more or less beholden to the Government of the day. A bureaucracy that is disconnected and suffering from the same malaise as the institutions. And we have a judiciary, also corrupt in parts, and wholly overburdened to the extent that it can barely dispense justice.

So where do we go from here? Is it the abyss of failure to implement the vision of our founding fathers, or are we on the verge of a renewal and modernisation in our functioning that will give us new hope and determination to succeed?

It could go either way of course, but the balance of power seems in favour of an electorate growing more sophisticated in its needs and wants. Much of the dissonance being experienced today springs from a society and nation in the throes of growing up. The elected representatives in our young republic will have to respond to this new and more demanding reality therefore, or be replaced by others, more attuned to the present day, and willing to do so.

(1, 096 words)

1^st August 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Updated version of this post published as "India's road to redemption" as the leader edit on the Edit Page of The Pioneer on 20th August, 2011. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and featured in the ePaper and is archived under Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com