Punjab Is Flirting With The Vanishing Point

George Herbert Bush won his single term presidency after stints as chief spook at the CIA and vice president. His team coined the slogan ‘It’s the economy stupid’.

If only the rulers of the state of Punjab woke up to fixing the economy, things would not be at this pass. The completion of the AAP’s term in office might be in some doubt already. And even more importantly, Punjab is on the verge of a bankruptcy that will parallel that of Sri Lanka.  

Wildly rich but tax free, gun-toting, politically entitled, connected, Mercedes driving Arathiyas, rule the rural roost. Former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh was careful to be in harmony with this powerful group.

They showed their might, even though just in their hundreds, during the unjustified farmer agitation that forced the central government to repeal the three farm laws.

Manufacturing, such as it was, fled the Khalistanis in the eighties, and has never come back to Punjab. There is massive unemployment, and few avenues open to the youth. Punjabis have long reacted by emigrating to the West and this has not stopped, even 75 years after independence.

The government of Punjab is notorious for not paying its bills to contractors, and soon it may be unable to pay salaries to government employees as well. In fact the previous government was not able to pay the arrears in revised pay structures from 2016 to date.

State Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema said the debt of the state stood at 2.63 lakh crores or 45.88% of the state gross domestic product (SGDP), in a recent White Paper. He called it an ‘economic morass and a debt trap’. The 2022 Punjab budget that was presented soon after the White Paper therefore could do no more than tinker with Punjab’s problems.

The state is nevertheless bristly about central intervention with strings attached, under the Modi administration. Only an unconditional bail-out will do for the AAP, blaming all woes on past governments, and Chief Minister Mann has been to Delhi demanding vast sums already.

But without reform, it would be just paying out good money after bad, and the Union Finance Ministry is not interested.  Neither are global lending agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both like India because it pays its debts on time, but individual states, not guaranteed by the centre are another matter.

Punjab does nothing to help itself, and the essentially populist AAP government will not bite the bullet. It is easier to blame the centre like West Bengal, its chief minister much admired by Kejriwal, does.

So the AAP ignores the dire numbers on its balance sheet, the debt trap the state has entered long ago. The call that needs to go out is for deep and painful structural change, but no government of Punjab, including this one, has the political stomach to make such changes. For AAP, with both states it has under its belt not exactly flush, the situation is an existential dilemma. It is therefore very vulnerable to inimical slush funds coming into the state from abroad. Funds with nefarious intent but which allow for a degree of leakage.

Meanwhile, Punjab just ploughs on, even as it grows unsustainable paddy in a water deficit state, a legacy of the Green Revolution under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when India was not able to feed itself, and Punjabis were considered to be the best farmers around.  It also grows large quantities of wheat. Both  continue to be grown today even when better quality crop comes from other states, and India is food surplus. This, just to get its hands on the minimum support prices (MSP) and compulsory government buying of its output.

There is widespread sarkari corruption, entrenched law and order issues, drug and gun-running, nascent terrorism, a builder mafia, hyper religiosity akin to Islamic extremism by groups such as the Nihangs.

The Khalistani sympathisers, in an echo of the 1980s movement, like cosying up still to an uncomfortably broke Pakistan. A Pakistan that persecutes its Sikhs and vandalises its gurdwaras. Nobody seems to revise strategy in Punjab.

It appears, despite its brave, derring-do, and talented people, of whom many are in the Armed Forces, that Punjab is headed towards a real, as opposed to a seeming, vanishing point. The definition of vanishing point is that place at which receding parallel lines seem to meet when represented in linear perspective.

Desperate to avoid an approaching doom, the voting public imported Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with a dictatorial Bania from Haryana as its supremo, to rule over an insistently Sikh Punjab. Kejriwal is an IIT graduate and a Magsaysay winner, besides having been an  Indian Revenue Service (IRS) bureaucrat, but today he is amongst the wilier of our  opposition politicians, with his eye on the main chance.

The success of AAP in Punjab is a paradox and defies logic at one level, because no non-Sikh government has ever been elected in Punjab. Bhagwant Singh Mann, a trim bearded ‘cut surd’ with an alcohol problem is seen as little more than a puppet CM. He is a stand-in and proxy for Arvind Kejriwal, who rules day-to-day by remote control from wherever he is.

The AAP stamp is clearly visible, with Delhi-based Hindu handlers such as Raghav Chadha, massive print and TV advertisements, replete with clean governance gimmicks, as employed in Delhi. There is an attempt at taking credit for all manner of things, done or not done, granted or rolled back, AAP style.

This win and presence is sought to be used to expand into other states such as Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, particularly as a weak Congress continues to fade electorally. But how long will the people of Punjab, other Sikhs, even away and apart from the Khalistani sympathiser, put up with an AAP ineptitude?

Only three months ago, AAP, accused of having been backed by Khalistani money, won a clear-cut mandate, up from 28 seats five years ago. But like John Kennedy, America’s first Catholic president, just as Joe Biden is only the second, Kejriwal may have made a big mistake. Kennedy persecuted the largely Catholic Italian Mafia, after narrowly winning the presidency using their support and money.

Kejriwal is seen to have turned his back on the Khalistanis immediately after winning, allegedly using their money. AAP is now looking at a broader national footprint and being Khalistan supporters won’t do for that. Former AAP leader Kumar Viswas pointed out the Khalistan connection and Kejriwal immediately sent the Punjab police after him. He did likewise for criticism emanating from BJP’s  Tajinder Pal Bagga and Naveen Kumar Jindal.

However, subduing brewing public discontent, or indeed amongst AAP’s own MLAs, may not be so easy. He should perhaps ask Uddhav Thackeray about this.

The Khalistanis have reared their separatist heads once again, rap artists and Canadian sponsorship included, albeit tentatively.

The newest manifestation is the AAP loss in a by-election to a Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD-A) leader,  Simranjit Singh Mann, in  Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s ‘stronghold’ Sangrur.

This Mann, who won by 5,822 votes, defeating the AAP candidate, as well as the Congress and BJP candidates, took away the only Lok Sabha seat AAP had. Simranjit Singh Mann is an avowed Khalistani supporter and Bhindranwale fan. In fact, he promptly dedicated his win to being inspired by Bhindranwale’s teachings.

Not long ago, alleged Khalistanis attacked a Kali Mandir in Punjab too. Punjabi Hindus, let alone settlers from elsewhere, have been steadily relegated to second-class status, or driven out of the state by the Sikhs. Hindus can’t win elections in Punjab anymore. If they use proxy Sikhs, as AAP did, it is possible, but will even this stick for any length of time?

While the Khalistan sympathiser is turning to separatism probably frustrated by the bankrupt economy, many are also converting to Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant versions. Priests at the Akal Takht have recently voiced concern but there are already a 1,000 churches in Punjab. Does this make it easier to migrate to Canada, if you become an oxymoronic Sikh-Christian? Otherwise, why is it happening at all?

The 1971 cult classic Vanishing Point is a Hollywood movie about a high speed  car chase across America, that eventually ends by wilfully crashing into an impromptu roadblock using two bulldozers at a small town in California. Here, there is a nihilistic end to the story that India cannot afford to contemplate with this border state.

At the moment, it is not clear if AAP has bitten off more than it can chew in Punjab. If it cannot make a success of running it in its parlous state, it will put a big brake on its further ambitions. From the outset it looks like the AAP government is up against multiple entrenched lobbies such as the drug mafia, the free electricity and water culture, subsidies, the smarting political parties it beat in a landslide, and its adversarial relationship with the BJP both in the state and at the centre. It also lucked out because of the deep-seated problems of the state, and no relief from either the Akalis or the Congress.

But, as the man said, it’s the economy stupid, and nothing less will do.

 (1,539 words)

June 27^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

This President Will Preside Over BJP Effort To Win A 3^rd Term In 2024

It’s careful business for the prime minister, who has the last word, to choose a presidential candidate in 2022. More so, with a desperately reduced Opposition, looking for a way back into the mainstream electoral game.

With BJP holding 48% of the presidential votes before the contest begins, its newly announced choice, the 1958 born Droupadi Murmu, former Governor in Jharkhand, is more or less a shoo in.

Her candidature is likely to receive unstinted support from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), for Murmu hails from Odisha. In fact, it has already been welcomed by Naveen Patnaik, its Chief Minister. Others, such as the YSR Congress (YSRC), have been sounded out, and are also likely to vote alongside the BJP.

The Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, is an IAS member from Bihar turned politician, in 1986. He was prominent nearly two decades ago, during the  Chandrashekhar and Vajpayee administrations, doing turns as Union Finance Minister, and also as External Affairs Minister.

Later, Sinha fell out with the Modi administration, quitting the party in 2018, when it did not consider the elderly politician for any role in the party or government. Emerging now from membership in the Trinamool Congress (TMC), The 84-year-old Sinha is doomed to probable failure. This, in the absence of sufficient numbers to elect him, or indeed a truly united opposition.

Yashwant Sinha has name recognition on his side, and a virulent antipathy to the Modi administration to recommend him to the Opposition. If he were to win, on the unlikely off-chance, he would most certainly be an activist president, questioning many of the BJP/NDA government’s moves, even in the remaining time up to the 2024 general elections. And certainly beyond if the BJP/NDA wins.

However, no incumbent government can take kindly to an activist president, and nor is the constitutional office really designed for such high jinks. The president, at least in theory, is meant to be above party politics, and serving in the best interests of the country. It is a vexatious matter however, when these ‘interests’ are interpreted differently by the incumbent government and the president.

It has happened occasionally, taking the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis, for example in the tenure of President Zail Singh. He was in the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the time of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, over 35 years ago.

The Modi government will naturally do all in its power to negate such a possibility emanating from the new president.

The new president will be in office for five years till 2027. She will preside not only over the next general election in 2024, when BJP expects to win a third consecutive term, but witness many other changes. These include the functioning out of a new, enhanced parliament building, built to accommodate more than 700 MPs. There will most likely be a slew of reformist legislation that could embrace the Uniform Civil Code and a Population Control Bill. And an expected major overhaul of the judiciary.

The Civil Service, the broader Bureaucracy, the Armed Forces, and the digitisation of all parts of the government and economy, is expected to continue apace. The induction of 5G, 6 G, and the effects of sweeping Aatmanirbhar policies in manufacturing and defence production, are all expected to be transformative. The massive infrastructure modernisation drive will show significant results beyond what we see today. Strong efforts to invite foreign investment into manufacturing in India will open up new and exciting possibilities in employment, business, industry, export and import.

The rectification of a bias in education and curriculum is ongoing. The emphasis on reviving Hinduism, its Mandirs and places of pilgrimage will continue. Establishment of many more institutes of higher learning and research hospitals are transforming society. A new diplomacy places India’s interests squarely in the unafraid centre.

The political agenda of a resurgent BJP will continue to make its presence felt in all things. It will roll-back those aspects of the Nehruvian ethos which are not useful to India’s present or future.

The economy is being used as the most important of tools to take India into the top three in the world. This president, who will be in office till 2027, will see the Indian GDP at $5 trillion with all the attendant benefits this will bestow on the people of India.

Other contentious laws, either partisan, or flawed, such as the Right to Worship Act 1991, could be repealed.

The Opposition, already out of power for nearly 10 years, is increasingly given to using violence, rioting and protest to enforce a sort of street veto. This cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely. Both legislation and administrative measures will be used to curb such tactics in addition to firmer policing. The new president will experience all this during her tenure and play her part in the proceedings.

It is often stated by some that many of this government’s reforms threaten the constitution, but it must perhaps be realised by such objectors that the Indian Constitution is a living document that can, and has been, amended several times over the years. More often than not, it has been amended by the previous Congress and UPA governments at that.

Even the bulldozers that are being used to demolish illegal encroachments and unauthorised construction in some states, are unsuccessfully opposed on this basis in the courts.

Murmu, a seasoned BJP politician from Odisha, has been an elected MLA twice, in 2000, and again in 2009, winning from Rairangpur in Mayurbhanj district, both times on a BJP ticket. She held charge of the Commerce and Transport Ministry in the BJD-BJP coalition government, and later held the Fisheries and Animal Husbandry portfolio. Most recently, she was Governor in Jharkhand, from 2015.

Murmu is a well thought of tribal leader, who started her working life as a teacher. Before becoming an MLA in Odisha, she was a councillor in the   Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat, winning in 1997. Later she was President of the BJP’s Scheduled Tribes Morcha.

Looking into the crystal ball, it is conceivable that Droupadi Murmu’s elevation as President of India will enthuse the Odisha voter in favour of the BJP.

In addition, Droupadi Murmu’s presence in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, will, it is expected, bring more of the female and tribal vote to the BJP in multiple states. This could come in handy in short order, both in the various assembly elections remaining in 2022 and 2023, and also in the general elections of 2024.

The ongoing political developments in Maharashtra, like an earlier but similar interaction in Karnataka, could again draw in the offices of the governor and the president. The political effort will attempt to change the government in power without going immediately for fresh elections.

Other post-election adjustments have occurred in states like Goa. In all this, the smooth handling of the constitutional offices overseen by outgoing President Ramnath Kovind played a low-key but effective part. This is expected to continue under President Murmu.

The office of the president is both ceremonial and diplomatic. Having a female president only for the second time in the history of independent India is a significant international statement. Within the country, it signals the inclusiveness of the present government in terms of the large tribal population around the country who have been exploited and neglected in the past.

Murmu’s own political track record suggests a deep commitment towards the poor and downtrodden.  Murmu has known deep personal tragedy losing her husband and two sons in the process. The fact that she was elected multiple times, in the Nagar Panchayat, and then again as MLA from the same place in Rairangpur, is a testament to her popularity and consistency.

India has once again, in this choice for the highest constitutional office in the land, cast its lot to demonstrate its commitment to diversity, gender equality, and cultural symbolism.

(1,309 words)

June 22^nd, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Rahul Gandhi And Mum In PMLA Al Capone Moment

For the Gandhi family, after all the pelf and power, over decades, of providing three prime ministers and one remote controller, this is the Al Capone moment.

Almost regal, even in a republic, an above-the-law comportment has gone unchallenged for decades.

There are dark whispers of fabulous wealth, billions, accumulated and stashed abroad. More voices from the shadows on kickbacks in defence purchases and every other large contract. Trunks and suitcases of je ne sais quoi brought in from abroad without Customs declaration or scrutiny. Stacks of land and buildings, flats, apartments, hotels, construction companies. Lavish properties, cropping up both in India and abroad in vast excess of the rules. Indian antiquities and artefacts being exported to relatives in Italy. No frisking and passage through the VIP sections of airports - it has been a charmed life at the top with no government agency ever having the temerity to even question them, let alone start an investigation, or file a case.

Nothing untoward has ever been proved in a court of law. The Gandhis are obviously very well-heeled, but maybe they can conjure up the funds they need from thin air, like magic.

Even now, after eight years of the Modi government, and several cases actually filed, on Gandhis and Vadras, both, nobody seriously believes they can actually be sent to jail. Those who say they can, are considered to be cranks. Lalu Prasad or Azam Khan are not in the same league they snort.  

The notorious Depression era American gangster Alphonse Gabriel Capone, known as Al Capone or Scarface, gangster boss of the ‘Chicago Outfit’, allegedly murdered scores of rivals and opponents in the course of his flamboyant career. There are famous movies on him. Capone indulged in flourishing but illegal businesses, but was finally convicted and jailed only on an income tax evasion case.

In America, income tax evasion is a criminal offence, unlike in India. It is ironic that the mother-son duo is also up for crores in tax evasion in this same matter, as indicted by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), who have managed to make it stick through many appeals using the best of lawyers all the way to the top court. But it will ultimately result in paying the tax and a fine, rather than being sent to jail.

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) however deals with the criminal act of money laundering. In the case of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, it involves just Rs. 1 crore that has the potential to send them both to jail if convicted.

The PMLA is stringent in many ways, not least of which is a presumption of guilt unless the netted ones can prove their innocence. Every statement made during verbal questioning under video and audio recording, and in writing under signature of the accused, is admissible as evidence in a court of law.

Rahul and Sonia Gandhi have been out on bail since 2014 on this case. It  involves the purchase of shares of Associated Journals Limited (AJL), the owner of the independence era National Herald newspaper started by Jawaharlal Nehru, and the several properties it owns.

After eight years, when it was largely assumed that it had been more or less shelved, both Rahul and Sonia Gandhi have received summons for questioning. Subramaniam Swamy, a prime mover in the case, says he presented some new evidence to the ED two years ago to get it going again.

Rahul Gandhi presented himself to the ED for questioning on Monday the 13^th of June 2022, determined to make a media spectacle of it and try and get some political mileage. Some said he was being launched for the penultimate time.

Alongside massive and organised street protest by his partymen, erstwhile ministers, slogan shouters interspersing party and Rahul praise rhymes with Vande Mataram in order to cover all bases. There were bandwalas dressed up as Ramayana characters, party workers delivering filmi style dialogues Dev Anand style, party spokesperson Surjewala in full-dress Prithviraj Kapoor mode, all a-quiver with emotion.

This entire circus was claiming a government vendetta against their innocent leadership, amidst frequently expressed determination to fight this injustice till breath resided in their bodies.

All however in the face of a massive Delhi police bandobast to contain any law-and-order threat. This greatly cramped their style. All the demonstrators were promptly detained by the Delhi Police as soon as they stepped out of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office in Central Delhi. Once released, after being taken in for unlawful assembly in defiance of Section 144 (that disallows any more than a gathering of four persons), some of the elderly Congress grandees complained of being shoved and pushed.

They showed off their cuts and bruises to the waiting TV men. One former Congress finance minister, no stranger to criminal and civil prosecution, a senior lawyer and jailbird himself, claimed a hairline fracture on a rib.

But none of this could be verified, because there was no mention of it while being held in the police station. They could have been medically examined if they complained.

There were some comical interludes caught on TV cameras, including a senior Congressman sprinting away from the police to avoid being detained. Other people drafted into the paid-for crowd had no idea what they were protesting.

Elsewhere, marches and protests to ED offices, grandly named a Satyagraha, echoing the independence movement, with many invocations of MK Gandhi, were held simultaneously around the country.

Rahul Gandhi went to the Enforcement Directorate in New Delhi on the 13^th of June 2022. The first day’s questioning lasted 10 hours of recorded conversation and careful revision of the written statement by him. The ED officers questioned Rahul Gandhi again on the 14^th. But on the 14^th, apart from a few Congress workers waiting in the AICC headquarters, the senior leaders had taken the day off. There could be more days of questioning or even a prayer for a spell in custody if Gandhi stonewalls too much.

It is a simple case, the kind it is easy to prove.Rahul and Sonia Gandhi took a loan of just Rs. 1 crore, albeit interest free and without collateral, not from a scheduled bank, but from a well-known Hawala operator in Kolkata. They used Rs. 51 lakhs of it to buy the shares of AJL. They bought 75%  of them, between mother and son, displacing multiple small shareholders of AJL, some very old, others dead but with heirs, who were not even informed about this takeover.

With the acquisition of the shares, came a bonanza of property holdings worth anywhere between Rs. 2000 and Rs, 5,000 crores, according to recent estimates. A lot of the property is on land sold to AJL for the express purpose of running its newspapers in multiple cities all over India. The trouble is the newspaper stopped being published years ago, and was revived online once this case came about. And later still, as a once a week broadsheet recently to provide a further fig-leaf. But this is published from the Indian Express Building in Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, and not its own building, because it is fully rented out. Besides, the state governments that gave the land for the AJL National Herald buildings at vastly reduced rates, are restive, since no newspaper is being published from those premises.

Because of the nature of the buyout into a Chapter 25 company under the Companies Act, and Young Indian Limited being a non-profit company, the properties cannot be sold.

However, they can be rented, and that is precisely what the Gandhi duo proceeded to do, along with the rubber-stamp darbari owners of the balance 25% of the Young Indian shareholding.

Tenants have included the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), contracted for when the UPA was in power, to house a passport office in the National Herald Building on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg.

This rental income, running into crores from multiple properties around the country, is the subject of the Income Tax demand.

But this too has allegedly been siphoned off to benefit the personal coffers of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. But the income was not shown in the tax returns of either Rahul or Sonia Gandhi.

 In addition, the Congress Party, on its part, has advanced a sum of Rs. 90 crores to Young Indian Limited, ostensibly to pay off the debt accrued in AJL  over the years. This significant amount has been written off by the Congress Party subsequently.

There is no restriction against a political party giving a loan from its funds. They derive however through public donations, and are tax exempt only because its monies are meant to be used for the party’s political activity. It is a stretch to suggest bailing out AJL or Young Indian qualifies as a political activity. To then write it off is really generous with other people’s money.

But this is the other case, involving income tax evasion, that stands, even though it was taken to every possible court in the land in an effort to have it squashed.

The PMLA case that the ED is pursuing right now has had a Delhi High Court observation that the takeover of AJL shares and properties into Young Indian smacks of a ‘criminal acquisition’ and must be investigated.

But the juicy part that cannot be wriggled out of, is the Rs. 1 crore loan from a Hawala operator in Kolkata. Was this a loan at all, or just Gandhi money being round-tripped via an ‘entry’? If so, its classic money laundering, and falls smack dab in the centre of the PMLA. Ouch!

(1,606 words)

June 14^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

Kashmir: Ethnic Cleansing Versus Demographic Change

Even the Modi government’s earnest backers are puzzled by Home Minister Amit Shah’s handling of the security situation in the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). The Home Ministry’s dithering gradualism is uncharacteristic, as it works via the Lieutenant Governor (LG), changed once so far.

Its reversion to old, failed strategies, of trying to win the hearts and minds of the Sunnis in the Valley, despite hostility, the raising of anti-India slogans in the mosques, the killing of Hindu shopkeepers, is a hodge-podge of wishful thinking. It is also a one step forward and two step back manner to deflect charges of communalism.

The most prominent Valley politicians, echoing the Pakistani separatist line thinly-veiled, such as Mehbooba Mufti and the father and son duo of the Abdullahs, were placed under house-arrest at first. The populace was also subjected to a restriction on internet usage. The security forces were put on high alert. But when all this was normalised, nothing much had changed, though some would talk in terms of relative improvement and degree.

The most recent jailing of Yasin Malik may not have evoked much protest in Srinagar, but coming as it has, decades late, it is something of an anti-climax. Besides we shall see, if and when he receives a death sentence for murder.

The release of names and posting spots of Pandits working for the government in the public domain has acted as a marker for the terrorists to find. Why was it done?  Several have already been target killed by terrorists. In any case, the Pandits are fed up with the government’s ineptitude and broken promises on their security, and about half of the ones who were in the Valley have left in protest.

The Government of India employs a statistical approach, as before, to track the ebb and flow of militancy. This is to demonstrate progress. This method, taking comfort in small gains, listing the number of terrorists apprehended and ‘neutralised’, has not worked in two decades or more. This does not address basic underlying issues, such as the insistence on Muslim ascendancy and domination in the Valley that is jealously guarded.

It has cumulatively claimed thousands of lives of civilians, police, and armed forces personnel, while leaving the situation more or less disturbed and unresolved. Taking off Article 370 and 35A, but walking and talking the same old line has no future.

Tactics employed by police and armed forces are still extremely ginger and mindful of invading private spaces and homes, in search of terrorists, their weapon stashes, and their sympathisers/enablers. Why are the security forces  still hobbled like this?

Only the bona fide terrorists are eliminated, often with high attrition, loss of life and limb, amongst the security forces. Defensiveness is the sanctioned norm against highly armed terrorists who can see the security forces from their vantage points inside Kashmiri homes. There is no punitive action on those who aid and abet jihadi elements. If there is intelligence, it is not acted upon in a manner where networks and support groups are apprehended in advance. This, so as not to offend the same Kashmiris who are against India. Why?

The sheer hesitancy and lack of boldness appears to be disconnected with adamant ground realities.

By implication, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite his undeniable popularity and charisma, is also blamed. Indeed this policy could have consequences affecting the Hindu vote in 2024. But perhaps the BJP calculates that the Hindu has nowhere to go, and can therefore be taken for granted.

It is widely perceived that nothing is done or not done in the sensitive UT without Modi’s nod. People think there is too much emphasis on his Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, and Sabka Prayas policy in Kashmir, with too little by way of dividend. The prime minister, on his part, seems to be more interested in bringing in investment from the Centre and Islamic countries such as the UAE, by showing extreme moderation.

There is less emphasis on retribution and stamping out the violence. Hindus, and even Muslim Kashmiri security forces personnel continue to be killed at a steady rate without much accountability. This is extremely demoralising, but the government seems to be holding to this policy. They show regret and visit the homes of victims, hand out purses and jobs to wives and children as appropriate, but do not escalate the retaliatory responses to wipe out the ecosystems.

 The Valley Muslims may not all be in support of terrorists, but very few are willing to publicly speak out against them. For that matter, neither do Indian Muslims from elsewhere in the country, or any of the Liberal Leftist groups. And none seem to be in favour of effecting a demographic change that would equalise their numbers, or reduce the influence of Sunni Muslims in the Valley into that of a minority.

Pakistan in particular, along with China, are backing the violence and the separatists with money, arms, covering fire, logistical support like drones and tunnels, training. This despite massive attrition in their ranks caused by Indian security forces. They are determined to keep the unrest in Kashmir alive and some say they step up the violence when they feel cornered.

But true and long-term solutions to the conundrum on the Indian side are not forthcoming, unless increased development and moderation is considered to be the key strategy. Meanwhile, the ancient Amarnath Yatra is under heightened threat of terrorist attack and has to be conducted under heavy armed guard.

Planners and strategists are restrained from coming up with anything that is not moderate. Even well thought of and influential National Security Advisor Ajit Doval appears to have failed to change the situation in Kashmir.

And yet, Amit Shah, the point person, is the same man, likened to revered strategist Chanakya, and much admired, over the years, for his electoral masterstrokes as the former President of the BJP. His elimination of Article 35A and 370 was swift, brilliant, audaciously executed, legally watertight. Overnight, at the beginning of Modi 2.0 in 2019, two Union Territories (UTs) of Ladakh and Jammu& Kashmir were created, in place of the erstwhile state within a state.

But the aftermath of this action elicited strong reactions from Pakistan and China. China stepped up pressure in Ladakh and indeed all along the LaC. Pakistan did likewise with greater terrorist infiltration along the LoC and propaganda in the international arena, including at the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), the United Nations (UN), and via lobbies in several Western countries like Britain and America.

 Rahul Gandhi and others in the Congress Party, other like-minded Opposition parties, the Mufti Mohamed family in the Valley’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and the Abdullahs of the National Conference(NC), have chimed in against every move of the government.

This includes the recently concluded delimitation exercise, the first since 1995, that provides more representation to Jammu with 6 new seats, as well as those previously excluded amongst the residents of the Valley, with one more seat added. Will the next election, after this, yield a Hindu led government in J&K? Is that the reason for anger?

The Modi government’s reluctance to move fast on demographic changes continues. For example, the domicile requirement is retained, at 15 years, though it now does not restrict eligibility only to ethnic Kashmiris. This law should be eliminated altogether, so that Indians from any state can settle in J&K and be put on the electoral rolls as soon as possible. That would truly make it like other normal states in India.

 When there is no threat of quick demographic change, the Valley Muslims revive their taste for ethnic cleansing. This was extremely effective for them in 1990-91, and they are trying to do it again now.

But BJP’s extreme moderation is something of a universal policy position. It is also visible in the handling of the West Bengal security situation, post the state assembly election. BJP won 75 seats, up from just 2, but could not wrest a majority for itself. Subsequent defections from its ranks, and a spate of murders of BJP cadres allegedly by Trinamool Congress (TMC) goons, have met with no central response. Ditto in the Communist led state of Kerala where BJP workers are regularly killed.

 But others, elsewhere, both totalitarian and so-called democratic, have taken a different approach. The first principle of conquest, by military or political means, and let us understand that the amalgamation of J&K into India is nothing less - is consolidation. This means subjugation of one’s enemies after the conquest.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won power in China after a four-year-long civil war that left them impoverished. But no sooner had the CCP won in 1949, hungry, tired, and practically barefoot, it set about consolidating its power.

The vanquished Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuo-Min-Tang took refuge in Formosa, present day Taiwan, to prevent its own rout and annihilation. But the CCP Chairman Mao Ze Dong and his key compatriot Zhou Enlai, did not rest on their laurels.

They took advantage of the fatigue of the Allied Powers after WWII, and its preoccupations with picking up the pieces. The Axis Powers, including neighbouring Japan, the once and former conqueror of China, were all but destroyed. 

So, Mao and Zhou caused the immediate takeover of Inner Mongolia and Tibet in 1950, largely by political means, including bamboozling India’s Jawaharlal Nehru into complicity on Tibet. Nehru even sent the rice to feed the Chinese troops during the Tibet takeover.

This was followed up with a ruthless programme of killing any in the resistance, before settling large numbers of Han Chinese in those new provinces. The idea was to effect rapid and sustained demographic change, backed by the force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Such as the PLA was at the time, with no Air Force or Navy. This was accompanied by a relentless attack on the religion, culture, monuments, language, and localised beliefs of the populace.

Xinkiang, which had been conquered by the Chinese Qing Dynasty in 1884, was likewise subjected to extreme repression of the native Uighur population, along with a Han majority makeover. This too, immediately, from 1950 onwards, and the process continues to the present day.

When the impoverished immigrant settlers from Europe came to America, landing at Ellis Island, New York, they were incentivised with promises of free homestead land if they decided to ‘Go West’. On the way, they encountered and eliminated Red Indian tribes that were native to those great grasslands. In addition, the would-be settlers killed the Bison that the Red Indians lived on. Gradually, the remaining few Red Indians were placed in arid ‘Reservations’ while the White settlers completely colonised the vast country. This was demographic fascism backed by a so-called democratic America. The violence is in its DNA. It also explains the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, the right to bear arms.

The same thing was done to the native Aborigines in Australia. There are myriad examples from all over the world both in recent times and a deeper history.

What about ethnic cleansing? Again, it is recorded that Genghis Khan massacred entire populations in the lands that he conquered. In more recent times, we see this in the former Czechoslovakia, in many parts of Africa, and Asia.

The problems in Kashmir probably cannot be solved with the gradualism of the Modi government. But in India, patience is itself a strategy, and human losses have to be seen in the context of a huge population of 1.40 billion. It is possible that geopolitical pressures affecting a bankrupt Pakistan, and a much diminished China, will soon do a lot of the eventual work for us. Because, at the back of it all, the violence in Kashmir is sponsored, and if it is somehow orphaned, India’s gradualism can suddenly appear both smart and very persuasive.

(1,979 words)

June 5^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 A Female Touch To The Indian Administrative Service

Those who confuse the premier Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), and indeed all the Central Services such as the Indian Police Service (IPS), the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), and so on, with the army of clerks that Thomas Babington Macaulay sought to create in the British Raj are making a mistake.

It is true Macaulay, historian, Whig politician, a former Secretary of War, and a Paymaster General, via his Minute on Indian Education, in 1835, was responsible for the introduction of Western Institutional Education in India. But, it had a large number of unintended consequences, even as it led to the creation of an enduring skeletal structure to build our nationhood upon.

The original Macaulay-made sarkari babus were indeed clerks, and not the high and mighty denizens of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), and their successors in the IAS and other allied services. But the current day Indian bureaucracy is also built on a solid foundation of very powerful clerks.

Macaulay may have wanted to create a tribe of half-educated order-takers who read and wrote English, but couldn’t think for themselves. But that may have been the arrogance of imperial overreach that afflicted many in the British Empire on which the sun never set at the time.

Indians were surely glad to secure employment as clerks in the British Raj, particularly in highly intelligent Bengal, which also housed the capital of British India for most of its tenure. But because of extensive delegation by the relatively few White men amongst them, originally the Writers of the East India Company, they became much more.

And in just over 20 years after Macaulay’s vision document, it was 1857. The First War of Independence, or as the British like to call it, The Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, resulted in the British Crown taking over the administration of India from the East India Company.

 But an early taste for bureaucratic thrust and parry was decidedly born in the Indian sarkari babu. It was different from the elaborate formality of the Indo-Persian way already in situ from the Moghuls. This new manner was redolent of Whitehall and Westminster, brought over to India and the Orient by steamer. And made into a peculiar Indo-British hybrid like no other. However, comparisons have been made with the Egyptian bureaucracy, a post-colonial set up, suffering from similar malaise and exalting similar strengths.  

Western liberal education in newly set up colleges and universities in India also fanned the early flames of the independence movement. Indians began wondering quite early about how to throw off the British yoke here, soon after Macaulay’s introduction of Western education. The Indian students studied the independence and republican movements in Europe and America that largely extinguished the era of monarchies and empire after the two world wars in the 20^th century. What was good for the goose could not be bad for the gander.

Today, there is a need to take stock of what has happened to the products of the competitive exams over 75 years since independence. Three young Hindu women bagged the first three places in the UPSC entrance exams for the IAS/IFS and the Central Services 2021, just announced. It is significant that the top rankers were all Hindu, because Muslims, even today, do not generally encourage their daughters to study and excel in competitive exams.

This trend of young women, from middle class families and others from much poorer backgrounds selected and excelling during training, in the Armed Forces, sports, the bureaucracy, the Police, becoming pilots, is a departure from the past, when most became teachers in the main. It is therefore probable, that aware of the need to be better to prove themselves as women administrators, soldiers etc. that the female influence will help rejuvenate the services they have qualified for.

In fact, of the 685 successful applicants, 508 were men, 177 were women, and only 22 were Muslim.

Of the chosen, only 244 were from the general category, meaning the everyman, 73 were from the economically weaker sections, 203 from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 105 from the Scheduled Caste and 60 from Scheduled Tribes.

These products of a highly competitive set of exams attract fine minds from all over the country and form the backbone of the officer class administrative structure. They are a cut above the State-run provincial services, and start their working lives in senior positions that others can aspire to only at the end of long careers. And this for the most diligent, working their way up from the ranks.

Yet, in many ways, the elite bureaucracy is not in aspirational fashion anymore amongst the ambitious and upper classes. These are the days of multiple options, technology, IT, Start-Ups, Unicorns, entrepreneurship, large Indian and MNC corporates, with hugely better paid jobs.

For some time, reservations and quotas have cut into the merit of the competitive exams, medical college admissions, government jobs of all kinds, and led to a lesser God amongst successful applicants.

The desire to serve the country has been supplanted by a sense of self-importance, aggravated by the permanent tenure and security of such government jobs. Could this be the consequence of uplifting the under-privileged with affirmative action? Have the chosen ones taken their positions for granted and become arrogant?  

The old burrasaheb tone, copied from the British era Indian Civil Service (ICS), is intact still, but a certain gaucherie has come into it. The louche manners of many IAS people leave a lot to be desired. They copy politicians in this regard, many of whom revel in their criminal tendencies. Times have changed, and the moral fabric of society is definitely under threat.

In the pre-independence Raj, it was the ICS that upheld the order, ethos and prestige of the British Empire, backed, if necessary, by the Police and military. The denizens of the ICS were drawn from the gentrified upper classes in Britain, with a smattering of well-heeled ethnic Indians in the latter day. They were paid well, had stupendous perquisites, and wielded enormous power under the Viceregal Council. They concerned themselves with just Revenue, a colonial extraction process, and Law & Order. To a large extent they were also responsible for intelligence gathering, keeping a finger on the pulse and the mood of the vast masses they oversaw. Many became chroniclers, writers, indophiles, genuinely interested in the welfare of ordinary people.

Our IAS have a lot more on their plate now, with full-service cadres involved in the progress of the country in a comprehensive manner. The British Raj ICS had no bother of elected officialdom over them, nor the vagaries and tumult of a forever jostling and jockeying democracy. They enjoyed more or less untrammelled power at their level, with just a hundred odd running the bureaucracy.

English August, Upamanyu Chatterjee, (IAS), wrote an early novel from 30 years ago. His protagonist, the twenty-four year old Agastya Sen, anglicised, city- bred, spends his first posting in small town India, bored, waiting to be transferred somewhere more salubrious. He kills mosquitoes, surreptitiously smokes ganja, masturbates, tries hard not to look down the cleavage of his boss’s wife. But all this did not mean he wasn’t out to serve his country as promised.

The elitist, westernised, convent-educated type, joined the competitive services in the first few decades since independence. It was a great desirable to people from the reasonably well-off upper crust from the metro cities, who believed in an essential integrity and sense of duty. They wanted to be nation builders, just as the ICS before them wanted to preserve and strengthen the British Empire. They weren’t joining to see how much dowry they could now command, nor for the opportunity for politically sponsored advancement, and the filthy lucre from graft. Nor did they want to throw their weight around in district towns, sometimes forgetting to rein it in, when posted in the national capital.

And that is why most IAS folk of that vintage saw authenticity and truth in Chatterjee’s novel. Upmanyu Chatterjee himself, who stayed with the Service till retirement, also wrote a number of other books, mordantly preoccupied with loss and death. None of them had the sly send up of English August, an Indian Story.

Can there be radical reform in the competitive services to bring in a longed-for sense of urgency and accountability, in place of obstruction and red tape? Can the bureaucracy, a vast army of clerks and officers, in the centre and the states, be divested of their iron- clad job security in all but the most clear-cut cases of corruption, dereliction of duty and so on. Can the short service lateral entries being utilised of late make a dent in the ways of the permanent bureaucracy? Can vast amounts of out -sourcing to, and collaboration with, the private sector/Start-Ups, Unicorns, as is now being done in the area of defence production, help? Can the bureaucracy be realistically down-sized, when the number of MLAs and MPs are being upsized, and a bigger parliament is under construction for them?

 The answers are difficult. Whatever has been accomplished by way of reform has been done internally by the bureaucracy itself. But there is a political makeover of great consequence. Is there hope for a closer alignment between a Hindu nationalist government as it obtains today, that may well be headed towards declaring a Hindu Rashtra, and the old bureaucracy that has been left-inspired, and largely Nehruvian in outlook? What will be the impact of laws such as the Uniform Civil Code, The Population Bill, the movement to reclaim Mandirs from the usurpation of Mosques in the Mughal era, the CAA, the NRC, have on the bureaucracy and its functioning going forward?

Since retirement at specified ages is an all but rigid requirement of government service, many die-hard opponents will retire. The new entrants may prove to be Hindu nationalists too, provided the UPSC selection procedures are tweaked to suit. This will reduce, if not eliminate bureaucratic split-personalities. Instead of the distortions that have stood in place of a genuine secularism, and resulted in decision-making, or the adamant blocking of developments, on an ideological basis, one that was pushing a very different agenda. The bureaucracy, like all organs of the government, media and public opinion, cannot operate in a vacuum.

The same problem and possibility exists when one contemplates the judiciary, and possibly a number of other government institutions essential for fast- tracking nation-building.

But there is great hope, because the actions of the present government have markedly increased prosperity and modernity already, and promises to do even better.

The political landscape has turned favourable for a long innings for the BJP and its allies, while eclipsing the fortunes of those that subscribe to the thinking of the old order. From changes in the NCERT syllabus, and a reordering of recent history, a more representative set of films. To the substitution of Mughal era names of cities and towns. To a more assertive and nation-first foreign policy, a great emphasis on Aatmanirbhar defence production, massive infrastructure development. There are great changes afoot.

The biggest impact will be felt when India becomes the third biggest economy in the world, in the near future. This is proof of the pudding that recalcitrant forces cannot hold back. The competitive services are essential to all this, as always from the start, and must play its part in building the New India that is  firmly on the anvil.

 

(1,910 words)

June 1^st, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee