The Number Game

The Number Game

Stars often take on stage and screen names. Hence the metamorphosis of Norma Jean into Marilyn Monroe, Yusufbhai into Dilip Kumar, Meejhabhen aka Meena Kumari, Harry Webb into Cliff Richard without the “s”...

A remarkable story of the transformation a name change can bring about involves Gerry Dorsey, a talented but struggling torch singer, unable to break out of the UK “B Club Circuit” where he’d languished for 14 long years. At last, his manager, on one inspired day, changed his stage name to Engelbert Humperdinck, borrowing this so-unhip-that-it’s-hip name from an obscure 19^th century German classical music composer. And immediately, overnight, Engelbert arrived, and stayed.

 It may be clear, from this aforementioned nugget, that sometimes, talent, and for that matter, destiny, needs a little nudge for the ready lamp to light. After all, not everyone is born with a name to suit - like rock King Elvis Presley - and even the pelvis had to dye his hair black.

Traditionally, the current trend of attracting a little magic in one’s direction, was embedded into paths of least resistance taken at the suggestion of family astrologers.

Many, not placed on the right track at birth by prescient astrologers, develop the urge, in these new aged times, to make a course correction much later. Is there substance in numerology that is superior to the four-leaf clover or the rabbit’s foot after all?

Numerology harks back to the Hebrew Kabbalah and their practice of Gematrics, an elaborate scheme that lays out the interrelationship between alphabets, words and numbers, Chinese divinatory systems, ancient Egyptian writings and our very own Vedas.

Change your name, or even the way it is spelt, change your destiny goes the promise. And more and more ordinary people are undertaking contortions of spelling to realign their names. These folk are following the examples set by role models, celebrities such as Shobhaa, Jayalalithaa and Viviek.

So which of all the numbers are auspicious? Bingo players will mumble “lucky 7” but the thing is, every number comes with its own set of goodies and each letter of the alphabet in the “Roman Script” corresponds to a given number. The premise holds true in other languages and scripts too. So interpretation becomes quite a bitch. Take the word “shirt”: it’s numerical charge in English is 8, but, in Spanish, “shirt” is “camisa,” and the numerological equivalence is 6. So here we are, shirt-tail in hand, embedded on the horns of a meanings and implications dilemma. Numerology is probably a good way to start arguments, and, perhaps, if you have a meditative bent of noggin, a good way to exercise grey cells.

Here’s the roll call. Numbers one to nine are used in numerology to describe character, predict outcomes, attract good fortune and side-step the charge of enraged bulls. Compound numbers  are tinctures and higher octaves of the same 9 primary numbers. Alphabets  a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, and i take the first nine seats front row but the next set of nine get the same nine numbers in sequence and so on. This is  how you land up with families of  same number alphabets, about three to the pack. So j has a numerical equivalence of 1, just like a.

Words, names, street addresses, flowers, fruit, mountain, stream, trees, movie, serial titles, shop fronts, and Victoria’s Secret, can all be tweaked. The myriad names of God, the Devil, lovers, heroes, heart-throbs, villians and banes, exes, pets: can all be reduced to sets of single and sometimes compound numbers, and analysed to reveal all.

Each individual number of a compound can likewise be analysed separately and in conjunction for all that they represent. The navigating principle in all of this is the bank of  received knowledge, your native intuition and a good “feel” for sorting wheat from chaff and seeing woods for trees.

Playing around with numbers as a unifying principle: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing them, pondering likelinesses and applicability, creating integers and formulae and other building blocks, did eventually give birth to  calculus and modern computing. So it’s probably best if you don’t sneer at the esoteric by-products. It would be sneering at Pythagoras, a keen 6^th century numerologist, for example.

And as to meanings, let’s try a sampler. 

One is the loneliest number as the song has it. Numero Uno, first, tough at the top, associated with the Sun, Sunday and immensely powerful. It represents the beginning, the start of things, the origin, perfection, absolutism and God - in monotheistic faiths, that is. Number One people, (born on the 1^st,10^th or 28^th, those whose entire birth-date adds up to 1, or those whose most-frequently-used name numbers add up to 1), are happy, loving, dynamic and charismatic when they’re feeling smooth and fitted into their groove. But if they’ve got out of bed on the wrong side, the self-same Ones can be sharply egotistical, selfish and melodramatic. Ones are simply not afraid to be individuals,  be obstinate, or go for a walk all by themselves.

Two is altogether more amiable, Moony and Mondayish. Twos represent duality: partnerships and interaction with others on the one hand, and disunion and polarities on the other. In symbolising partnership, Two implies that individual achievements are not  always sustainable and benefit from co-operation and teamwork. You also most definitely need two to tango and sustain der master race.  Two has great fun with synonyms and antonyms, Chinese Yin and Yang medallions and considerably less when buffetted by the tension generated by some of those infamous polarities. Twosas  have feminine virtues, like the Moon, thought of as feminine, in contrast to the fiery and masculine Sun. Twos display intuition, they nurture and protect.  Having said this, a negative twofer can be a right-pain-in-the-a: full of the petty vexations of the human spirit. It’s the grief of being Number Two, the frustration of being a perpetual Tonto but never The Lone Ranger.

Three is expansive Jupiter’s number with Thursday all to itself. And By Jove, it puts a third leg to the see-sawing polarity of two. This injects  stability, integration and  the wholeness into the occasional table. Three is the number of the Holy Trinity in more than one major world religion. Three jives with mind, body, and spirit. Our visible world is three dimensional. Three is lucky, a money magnet and career builder. Three associates with successful communication of all kinds: expression, drama, acting, humour.  On the upside, Threes can be wise, understanding and knowledgeable. On the flip, Threes can be sad sacks, foolhardy and take unnecessary risks particularly when attempting to run three-legged races.

Four is ruled by Rahu, the Shadow Planet Dragon’s Head, and shares Sunday’s with Number One.The first "composite" number; that is to say, the first number that can be created from multiplying numbers other than itself. The simplest solid, a right square, has four sides. There are four cardinal points as any weathervane will tell you, (North, South, East and West), months have four weeks mostly and some lucky climes have four seasons. There are four Christian gospels and four "elements": viz. Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. The "composite personality"  of the Foursomes often leads to fiercely independent, "out-of-the-box" thinking. Dilbert must have been created by a 4. In the Jewish religion, the number four resonates with the four-letter name of the  God,  Yod-He-Vau-He.  The other four-letter word we live by needs no introduction. However, Chinese numerology doesn’t like 4 because the word "four" is a homonym of the Chinese word for death. So the Chinese skip the 4^th floor on their buildings just as much of the rest of the world skips the 13^th ( a higher octave of the self-same 4).

Five stands for sensual awareness in the form of the five senses. If Lolita spoke up, this might well turn out to be her number. Associated with the thinking planet Mercury and Wednesday, Fives are highly analytical but can over-ponder an issue too. Contrast this contradiction  with their Quicksilver temperaments which bestow great  and instant grasp and can exude killer charm. Fives are versatile and kinky, scandalously open to new  ways of doing “it”. Bet you can’t wait to meet one armed with this intelligence.

Six  is Venusian, not specially rich but very comfortable thank you. Number Six is surrounded by luxury and sensual fulfilment. But line ‘em up three in a row(666) and it becomes the number of The Beast (The Antichrist, who it is prophesied, will rule the world with the consummate charm of the Devil). By itself, Sixers are tactful, beautiful and harmonious. And why ever not? The Six deals primarily in attraction and pleasure, possess charm, grace and the ability to make diplomatic small talk in abundance. But piss off a Chakka and you get trashed. The Sixer will go on a philandering spree, bitter as gourd, vengeful as the whole rack of wrath with no barbecue sauce to help things along. Still, should you want to play math footsie, Six is the first "perfect" number, in that the sum of its divisors, other than itself, is equal to itself: 6 X 1 = 6 and 3 X 2 = 6, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. Interestingly, the product of its divisors, other than itself, also equals 6.

Seven is  Neptune’s number, illusive and veiled, fish-tailed and armed with  a trident. Seven is also ruled by Ketu, the Shadow Planet Dragon’s Tail and shares Monday with the polar Twos. Lucky Seven is concealed and sacred. Three Sevens in a row (777)  is God’s own number by Biblical tradition. In Islam, however, the number is 786 being the total value of the letters of "Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim". Then you have 7 days a week, the Bible says God created the world in 7, the ancient solar system had 7 planets  (getting a bit messed though, what with recent discoveries). There are 7 chakras too. But when it comes to 7 people, it does  take a bit of doing to find the light under this complicated and  dreamy bushel.

Eight on the other hand packs a Saturday Night Special. Eight also serenades you with all eight notes (octave), of the musical scale. The Chinese love 8 best of all and set up a clatter of chatter in praise of the "good luck" number, mainly because Eights move heaven and earth to achieve wealth and material success. To the Chinese, this wealth and pelf thing is THE IDEAL. Saturnian, the Atka is loaded with sinuous ability to tame karmic influences. Eights work hard for their money and learn avidly from experience. The number of seriously rich and famous Number Eights are legion because nothing deters them from their objective. Lovers love their ardour. Everyone say Salut! Tamam shud. 

Nine is the number of the genius, ruled by warrior planet Mars and reformist Uranus. Innovative, changeable, do-gooding Nines  possess all our Tuesdays and are happiest  making some kind of difference.

And those of us who cannot yet find a truth in all of this are worshippers of the Zifr, the Arabic zero, the sublime Fool of the Tarot deck, the unborn, full of possibility.

(1,861 words)

 For: Sirfnews

 By Gautam Mukherjee

31^st October 2015

Meat, Potatoes, Milk & Greens

Meat, Potatoes, Milk & Greens

The Indian debate on beef and cow slaughter which has been playing proxy for the tussle between Congress (and friends) and the BJP/Sangh Parivar, has recently been joined, quite inadvertently, by the WHO.

The World Health Organisation report finds all read meat, beef, pork, sheep, goat, and processed meat such as sausages, bacon, ham, luncheon meat etc. as likely to increase the chances of contracting a variety of cancers.

This kind of juxtaposition could not have been orchestrated for love or money but takes the politics of the cow to the realms of whether the meat-eaters are doing themselves any favours. Other reports talk of the presence of feces in US ground beef. Let us understand we are not talking of dubious Indian hygiene standards here, and yet.

And this set of health warnings came shortly after another report said that addiction to cheese was as strong as addiction to tobacco. Of course, many meat and cheese eaters are upset all over the world, but are determined not to give up their favourite foods. Besides, quasi-medical reports of this kind tend to be overtaken by other quasi-medical reports that contradict them further on down the stream.

Sunday Times of London Style Magazine food critic AA Gill, a Scotsman with a Sikh sounding name, wrote a piece on meat some time ago. But seriously, when you’re Gill without the Mc, and hobnob in places that resemble the erstwhile El Bulli, hamburgers can’t just be regular hamburgers and hope to make the cut. 

On the other hand, McBurgers in beef, pork and chicken, can’t be sniffed at either. They’ve been sold so plentifully, that laid end-to-end, the advertising goes, they would voyage from the earth to the moon several times over.

Gill wrote, somewhat enigmatically, that “meat is all eugenics and fascism”. Did A.A.G mean the genetic engineering and up-breeding involved in producing superior meat to eat? And the fascism, presumably it’s the uncompromising attitude necessary to produce the quality stuff?

This is sweeping characterisation, but now you have associations of cancer with both meat and its processed avatars to help it along. In Western meat, the live cow and pig  are processed on the hoof to make delicious meat too. Still, Gill’s Dr. Mengele inducing phrase might be something one might expect from Boris Johnson, a sort of British/Turkish Mr. Trump.

Mr. Johnson, blond shock and paunch, is a former Spectator editor and current Lord Mayor of London. He recently went to Japan and body tackled an 11 year old Japanese lad to the mat in a bout of mock rugby. Back in London, he likes to comport himself on a bicycle and is said to have prime ministerial ambitions.  But it wasn’t Johnson but Gill who wrote the piece on meat. 

Gill is a reticent sort who favours dark-glasses and eschews alcohol, despite being a food critic. But then he writes with equal aplomb on TV shows, fashion, architecture, and politics if the fancy takes him. 

This “meat” tag applies, like code to beef and pork in the West, because they are considered the only serious meats of choice.  Fowl, Turkey, Duck, however formidable, are also-rans, decided poor cousins. They could be meat substitute fit for vegetarians.

We can however include processed meats in the discussion here because the WHO has just indicted them. And the line on what is processed and what is not in the West is already a blur. Thank God, fish, prawn and lobster are off the hook for the interim except for when they pick up too much mercury from polluted waters.  

Huge, tasteless-in-themselves, turkeys, have been known to feed mini-van fulls. Also, one wouldn’t know how to classify non-farmed meat such as snake, kangaroo, horse, seal, elk, moose, dog, tortoise,   hedgehog, partridge, quail, venison etc. particularly in the cancer stakes. Besides, barbecuing meats concentrates the carcinogens.

Where that leaves the eponymous potato that tends to accompany the meat, is anybody’s guess. In India, an alu is an alu,  and can travel unaccompanied, but sometimes is also a rather apt euphemism for male tumescence. Alu subzi suffices everywhere on the sub-continent, if there is roti and a katori of dal, maybe some onion and green chilli on the side.

But in the West, the humble potato is an accompaniment, even when processed into crisps and chips. The potato is like an excellent back-up singer without whom no stars  would shine up front.  However, ask them, and the back-up singers will be self -effacing. French-made gravy on the other hand, has attitude. It always thinks the meat is nothing without it.

Another report, on Western milk, indicates that it contains all manner of additives fed to the cows that gave it up. And ergo, that drinking quantities of milk production enhancing boosters, inescapable if one imbibes, may not be all that good for humans. This largesse of cow hormone boosters, cow vitamins and cow tranquilisers may be divine for the bovine, but not so for others. 

The matter of addition and enhancement and processing, it is seen, goes much beyond the vegetarian/non-vegetarian divide.

Milk from the free-on-the-range variety, spending their days in bucolic grazing, like the produce from organic farming, without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers,  presumably doesn’t poison as it  feeds.

But the protected Indian cow, fed partially on garbage and plastic bags, apparently have Chinese Walls between themselves and their very fine milk. But what about our water held responsible for the lead in Maggi noodles made in India?

And strange suspended matter in the Coca Cola bottled here. The water in mineral water bottles is also suspect, and found to be contaminated sometimes.

 As an explanation, East may be East with its poor standards. But the West was meant to be guaranteed clean. Now you’ve got a conundrum of both dirt and chemicals to think about, and there’s only so much a poor body can take.

In the face of such controversy therefore, it is good to remember that milk and meat are two very different things.  Reference the cow as life-support system, to drink from, make ghee/butter/cheese from, is one thing. But eating it, to taste, turn into glue, bags, coats and shoe leather, is mostly business, but neither eugenics nor fascism, unless the cows are force fed chemicals without their consent first.

And so, at last, to the question, beyond Holy Cows and the world out there. More so, since we Indians love our headless chicken, and don’t have much truck with beef or pork anyhow. Does India have meat on its mind at all, or is it merely and mostly potato  with a little green?

For: The Pioneer

(1,105 words)

October 27^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

The Lytton Connection To Lutyens' Delhi

The Lytton Connection To Lutyens’ Delhi

Did the best designed and most coveted bit of  New Delhi start and finish with Edwin Landseer Lutyens and Herbert Baker, or does the short story have a back story? In any case, whether in the realms of fact and metaphor, grace and favour, pen or sword; Lutyens’ Delhi still rules the sub-continent.

 It began, on a parallel track, to official Whitehall and Calcutta/Simla.

The obscure 19^th century writer, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, has left behind at least two lines that have notched him a couple of cuts on the scratching post of posterity. The first is lampooned by fashionable creative writing courses on both sides of the Atlantic. It is the tagline of the annual Bad Writing Awards handed out in the UK and named after the poor man, to boot. It is: It was a dark and stormy night.

Stood up by itself, I can’t see what’s wrong with it. Why is it regarded as a hopeless cliché? Did Bulwer-Lytton pick it out of pantomime or burlesque tradition, tongue in his cheek, when he inked it in at the start of his novel Paul Clifford in 1830?

In point of fact, the phrase was actually the start of a reasonably long compound sentence; one that ran to the size of a short paragraph. So do the good writing course wallahs actually dislike the turgidity of long compound sentences?  They do have a stretch-limo-like construction, not likely to appeal to Mini-lovers.  Well, probably. 

What then, do they like? Ernest Hemingway, perhaps. Hemingway’s spare, whittled down, implication-laden short sentences are held up as the gold standard. He was the Marlon Brando cum James Dean of writing. Why overwrite when you can evoke the angst of incoherence?

The other line, used so often that you’d think it came from folklore, is this: The pen is mightier than the sword. There it is, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote this one too! How did one ‘bad writer’ contribute two iconic lines? Even if this one does evoke shades of the Fall of the Roman Empire and all the journalistic braggadocio of Lutyens’ Delhi, all at once.

But I find dark and stormy still fresh and evocative.  It has a pregnant and suspenseful Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein about it. It raises expectations. It makes you look forward to what comes next, in a lip-smacking, ketchup and Tarantino sort of way.

Bulwer-Lytton’s body of work, prose, poetry and letters, is not negligible. He didn’t exactly lack readership or critical acclaim in his time either. To wit, Bulwer-Lytton’s letters to his son and others betray a certain self-satisfaction. But, all in all, it was probably just as well that he was a Baron, with an independent income, the sensibilities, friends and connections to go with the territory.  

Come the 20^th century, dark and stormy struck a chord with Charles M Schulz’s star Beagle, Snoopy. He loved it so much that he made it his own. Snoopy used it whenever he worked his Olympia Traveller, pounding away on it. Snoopy, the novelist, atop his dog-house, friend Woodstock the moulting bird, in attendance; starting, but never finishing, a series of thrillers.

And, then there is the India connection, through Bulwer-Lytton’s son and grand- children, and it is this: His son, after turning down the proffered Governorship of Madras, became Viceroy to India. Robert, Lord Lytton, Viceroy, 1876-1880, presided over a humdinger of a famine, the first Afghan War and the “Empress Durbar” in 1877 which proclaimed Queen Victoria Empress of India. He also designed various protocols and intricate gun salutes to calibrate the relative importance of each of the princely states, all 558 of them!

Lytton enjoyed himself over this - some kings with kingdoms the size of football fields got no guns at all, several middling ones got 9, the biggest and the best got 21, and the Viceroy gave himself a chandelier rocking 31- so that  no-one was left in any doubt as to which tribe, in effect, ruled India.

But, in his heart, he wanted to be a writer, just like papa. His letters refer to it time and again, pining, and sentimental. Robert did write furiously in his youth, stacks of poems of indifferent quality, using the foppish pen-name Owen Meredith. Only to wilt gradually, damned by faint praise and stymied by neglect. His novel- in-verse Lucile ,was probably the high-water mark. It was made into a film too, in 1912, more than a decade after his death in 1891, but nothing much came of it either.

Fortunately, goaded by his father, Robert did take up a parallel career in diplomacy. He began as the Ambassador’s dogsbody at the British Mission in Washington, working for his ‘Minister’ uncle; served happy years in Italy and various spots in Europe; and reached the zenith of his career in India.

And later, after some years in the wilderness, he was appointed Ambassador to France. Interestingly, Robert Lytton even died in the act of composing a poem at the ambassador’s residence in Paris.  And his son, Simla-born, was briefly Viceroy in the 1920s too. It was a short stint, in between holding down the seat as Governor of Bengal, between 1922-1927.

This Bulwer-Lytton grandson, all Victor Alexander George Robert of him, ran into quite a few dark storms of his own trying to contain the burgeoning freedom movement- scrapping with Sir Ashutosh at Calcutta University one day, and working out how to keep the non-violent Mohandas Karamchand at bay on another.

There is more. Robert Lytton’s daughter Emily married one Edwin Lutyens, the talented arch-imperialist who designed Rashtrapati Bhavan and a good deal of New Delhi besides. Lutyens laboured away, anchoring his thoughts on the belief that it would all endure for centuries. It might, yet, but not as the Raj, which puttered out into history, just twenty years after Viceroy House was built.

Perhaps Edwin should have taken a cue from his wife. Emily became the most ardent follower of Jiddu Krishnamurti. She also befriended the young and promiscuous Annie Besant and the growing Indian freedom movement.

But Edwin didn’t pay any heed to Emily’s native infatuations, cursing Indian architectural traditions even as he stole from them. Ironically though, it is the imperialist Edwin Lutyens, and not the India loving Emily, who’s remembered, his name, embedded in the power structure of India.

For: Swarajyamag

(1, 050 words)

October 26^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Evenhandedness

Evenhandedness

“If you cry ‘forward’ you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don’t you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely different directions.”

Anton Chekhov

“The good old rule sufficeth them, the simple plan

That they should take, who have the power,

And they should keep who can.”

William Wordsworth in “Rob Roy’s Grave”

Is the principle and intent: that of even-handed, non-biased governance,  worked through the assiduous separation of  the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, being served by any of the above in India today?

Have they not all been carrying on most interchangeably and incestuously instead, particularly through the interminable years of Congress or Congress led rule?

The Sarkar has rarely needed the constitution to have its way. And are they not, all three wings of government, delivering a performance, individually and collectively, much below expectations? Acche Din  is not easy to usher in for the lotus party, though there is no dearth of keechar.

So, we can’t help being startled and embarrassed when a principle is called to account by manipulators in this unprincipled land, and must be forgiven for being sceptical.

Or are these just common or garden turf and bailiwick battles, a pull me-push-you game, that we are forced to witness? A tussle for power and influence, brazenly naked, and equally craven.

 The people, it would appear, do not come into it. Its vote and get lost for us- no more and no less. The Sarkar, in every nerve and sinew, is into self-aggrandizement, so why don’t we be good chaps and get out of the way?

So as not to inflict emotional and information overload, that too of unbearable negativity, let us just perambulate through a few thoughts on our august judiciary here.

Are justices Khehar, Lokur,Joseph and Goel who rejected the NJAC Act and 99^th constitutional amendment,  just playing collective Becket to their members’ only church?

Would the NJAC appointment of judges, desired by parliament and half the state assemblies, become quite the ‘web  of indebtedness’ claimed by the justices? Or would it breach deep dark secrets of the higher judiciary?

The four arrived at the same conclusion individually 4:1 in their 1,000 page-plus judgement. But are they right? Now, I guess, we’ll never know.

However if we look at it squarely, Justice Jasti Chelasmeshwar, the 5^th judge on the bench, dissented strongly. He suggested keeping the government out entirely from the selection of judges was ‘undemocratic’, and the collegium process lacked ‘transparency’. He cited the rejection of certain names under the collegium system in the past, with no one, except the chief justice with access to the files that recorded the reasons why.

But let’s beg the question a little. Would it really have been such a terrible, unacceptable dilution of judicial independence in reality?  It looks very much like the judges voted for themselves, straight-faced and unabashed, employing flowery language to mask their steel.

But when a stalwart of the government, finance minister and senior lawyer Arun Jaitley called the judgement ‘the tyranny of the unelected’, a lawyer, one Ankit Goel, hopefully no relation, filed a case accusing him of ‘sedition’, in the obscure Mahoba civil jurisdiction under the Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh!

The supreme judiciary of this country in its wisdom has deliberated and decided to cock a snook at parliament. They have ignored the many shortcoming in their collegium system, in situ, along with their buried skeletons, for 22 years past; perhaps thinking being obligated to each other  makes for fairer judgements, at least on themselves.

Chief Justice HL Dattu and his flock have achieved a defiant first in rebellion, circa 2015.  The supreme court is upholding the guild, dressed up as principle.

The judges that struck down the NJAC Act and 99^th Constitutional Amendment, have, to mask their triumphalism, mildly asked for suggestions and comments to tweak the workings of the collegium. But this is all about the present lot.

Others who have occupied Dattu’s high chair in recent times have been tainted by more bazaru allegations of corruption and graft, promptly hushed, shamed and covered up by colleagues on the bench, not above a little naughtiness themselves.

Morarji Desai’s law minister, Shanti Bhushan, somewhat less credible after his early support to the AAP, sensationally named eight out of 16 chief justices corrupt, in 2010.

But from street level, these allegations are impenetrable, probably just the way the collegium likes it. After all, it selects not only the supreme court judges, but also those in the high courts, and therein lies another set of skeletons that could rattle.

But let us see how the judiciary, particularly the higher judiciary conducts business as it affects real people. Justice, in this land is far from blind. The question is, does it deliver justice or its travesty?

Cringe-worthy question:  Why does the Allahabad High Court, yes, it seems to do it more often than any other, order demolition of dozens of high rise towers, fully built and some occupied, in Noida?

Those high rises may have been built illegally or in violation of some laws but have been bought and paid for by hundreds of unwitting buyers. But, the UP state’s high court judges seem more concerned with the majesty of the law, or what else?

They don’t indict the corrupt officials making it all possible over a length of time, these people from the state’s executive that colluded in letting them be built, nor the legislators that enabled the acquisition of the land, nor the political authorities that ordered it.

They blithely hit the builder whose money is in those towers, and the hapless buyers who have bought in and others who have begun to live in them.

The justification? The courts of law can only take cognisance of something once it is put in front of it.

In Delhi under the auspices of the late chief justice YK Sabharwal, whose sons worked in real estate, and allegedly weighed in, per a very interesting Mid-Day expose in 2007. The supreme court ordered the MCD to seal, and its bulldozers to knock down perfectly good malls built on Lal Dora land.

Yes, the mall builders took advantage of a fuzziness in the law on what can and cannot be done on Lal Dora land. But nobody spoke up while they were going up over a period of a couple of years. And many people were allegedly paid off.

Nevertheless these malls were well designed and built to the finest specifications, by class one contractors. But because they were built on the edge of Sultanpur village, off the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road, supposedly outside the purview of the MCD, but evidently not of the Supreme Court, they were targeted.

And the supreme court ordered them to be pulled down. Then, not to look partisan, it went even-handedly down the ladder. Emboldened perhaps by past successes, such as the coercive introduction of CNG in public transport and no public broadcast mikery after 10.00 p.m., it called for the destruction of every “misused” shop, “flagrant violation” of a showroom, “rampant commercialism” of an office in the wrong place and “encroachment” prone and overbuilt home.

At an estimate it involved 294 of Delhi’s 300 districts in 2006 because they all contained numerous such violations of the law. 

The orders were to “raze” every illegal structure to the “ground” and prosecute all the colluders. Just so that there is no mistaking of judicial “will,” the supreme court was rumoured to be working on ways to strengthen the contempt of court law! 

But the aggression and uncharacteristic zeal, time did tell, was due to the rich and influential hand of the “legal” mall builders lobby.

Or is this a kind of judicial dividend brought on by a bigger payoff to the judiciary rather than to the executive? Did the events of 2006 in Delhi illustrate the might of an independent judiciary or a sad subversion of justice? 

And helplessness. Were the small traders in Ghitorni, their shops and livelihood suddenly shuttered, going to riot? Were urban villagers going to stop traffic?

For the Indian judiciary, with 30 million or more cases pending adjudication, feeling “above” the law is extremely cynical, surreal, and decidedly perverse.

Meanwhile, picture Delhi’s estimated 3 million slum dwellers relieving themselves in open nullahs and meditating upon progress, capital ishtyle.

(1,407 words)

For: Sirfnews

October 24^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Whatever Happened To India's Thorium Advantage?

 Whatever Happened To India’s Thorium Advantage?

 To think it has been over ten years since the hard won July 2005 in-principle accord on civil nuclear cooperation was reached between India and the US.

And, in all this time, we have just two Russian 1,000 MW nuclear power plants in series at Kundakulam, coming fitfully on stream now, after horrendous delays and protests.

And there is a promise from Putin that he will help us build one more, to generate 3,000 MW of power in all from Kundakulam. Russia will also provide  the fuel required to run the units throughout their life cycle. And  it will let us keep the plutonium produced.

It is ironic that it is the Russian plant, and not one from the flashier Americans, the Canadians, or the French, who have got to the operational stage first. But yes, the Canadians and Australians now sell us uranium, ostensibly without problems, though they tend to change the goal posts at will after each of their several government changes.

The sticking point is that every operational Indian reactor is run on uranium, which is a strategic fuel, very expensive too, and we have almost none available indigenously. This puts us in a very sorry position with the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.

A month after this accord with the US, on August 25^th, 2005, at a week-long international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems in Brussels, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal stated that BARC had  designed the “world's safest nuclear reactor,” after some  seven years of effort.

The scientists unveiled a path-breaking design for A Thorium Breeder Reactor (ATBR),  that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years “with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.”

This prototype ATBR  did need about 2.2 tonnes of plutonium as “seed”, consuming 880 kg of the plutonium annually to ignite and generate energy from the reactor core to convert 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium 233. This differential gain in fissile formation made the ATBR a kind of Thorium Breeder that enabled an almost perfect balance between fissile depletion and production by causing in-bred U-233 to take part in energy generation.

This, in turn, extended the core life to two full years. This longevity, it was claimed, was greater than  any  other nuclear power reactors, because fissile depletion in other systems takes place much faster than production of new fissile material.

A US company attempted to market this ATBR abroad in 2009, but nothing came of it. It is still very much a uranium fuelled world.

Plutonium being hard to come by in India, the successors of this ATBR prototype  were expected to run entirely on thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the ATBR reactor itself or obtained locally by converting fertile thorium into fissile uranium-233 ,by a process called “neutron bombardment”. 

To cap it all, this Indian ATBR, the two BARC scientists said, was safer and more economical to run than any other type of nuclear power reactor extant worldwide.

This is very relevant, in its place, because of the antipathy towards nuclear reactors in the US (particularly after the accident at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl in the USSR), that has kept electrical power generated by a clutch of ageing US nuclear reactors to a relatively low 23%.  

The key fact, strategically speaking, was that the ATBR ran entirely on thorium, except for that seed plutonium in the prototype to kick start things. Thorium is plentiful in India. We have the 2^nd largest deposits in the world: some 32% of global reserves. What have we done, since 2005, to exploit this? Absolutely nothing.

The BJP put it in its general election manifesto in 2014, that it would develop our thorium potential. The only thing that happened with thorium under UPA beyond the ATBR prototype, is that it was being mined illegally on the beaches of Tamil Nadu, and the sand containing monazite and thorium, was being exported; in yet another scam to add to the tally.    

This lack of action on thorium and the strenuous efforts to sign the nuclear accord with the US, even though we have practically no uranium of our own – between just 0.57% and 0.8% of the world’s reserves, is perplexing. We also cannot make a uranium-based reactor domestically!

This lack of domestic uranium, combined with strict checks on its importation, plus a chronic shortage of funds, is the historical reason why India’s atomic power programme has languished. 

We have produced a paltry 2,000 MW p.a. of nuclear energy over the first 34 years of effort, and even in 2015 the tally is at 4,780 MW, far away from the 2020 target of 20,000 MW.

Still, some estimates say, if all the other plants in various stages, come to operationalise, and the fuel  keeps coming, the tally could rise to 10,080 MW by  2017. Against, that is, the erstwhile Indian Planning Commission target for 2020. Half a loaf is better than none. And then there’s clean energy- solar, wind etc. initiatives too. 

Principally though, with faster growth  has come growing dependence on petroleum instead, and though the prices are below $ 50 a barrel today, we do import 80% of our huge demand, and it accounts for the biggest chunk of our import bill.

However, if ever the bountiful reserves of thorium become the fuel of India’s future, things could change. There are also reports of enormous  ‘fractable’ gas reserves on the floor of the Bay of Bengal, but that too will take a lot of money and technology. And who can afford to go after it in in a soft petroleum market?

India has had a long standing road map in place called the "Three-stage Nuclear Programme". In the first stage, plutonium was to be created in its pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and extracted by reprocessing. In the second stage, Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs)  were to use this plutonium to breed uranium-233 in a thorium blanket around the core. In the final stage, the FBR's  were to use thorium-232 and produce uranium-233 for other reactors.

The first stage has been realized, with India's 10 existing nuclear power plants- though there are 22 planned, and 35 proposed as on 2015.

The second stage has been proved by a small experimental fast breeder reactor (13 MW), at Kalpakkam in Kerala. Mind this was already in place in 2005.

And the third stage is now, on the anvil, but the train has not left the station.

Tedious and tortuous as all this may seem, consider this: one tonne of natural uranium can produce 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is what 16,000 tonnes of coal would produce or 80,000 barrels of oil. Thorium, mined in India, turned into uranium 233, can do exactly the same thing. But because there has been no progress we are mining more polluting coal for electricity in desperation.

But, ever since our pompous and ill-fated civil liability fracas versus international convention, festering since 2010, though eased a little now, we have received no foreign technology cooperation. When will we ever learn?

And our own domestic R&D can’t seem to take it any further in a hurry.

World Thorium Resources
(economically extractable):

Country	Reserves (tonnes)
Australia	300 000
India	290 000
Norway	170 000
USA	160 000
Canada	100 000
South Africa	35 000
Brazil	16 000
Other countries	95 000
World total	1 200 000

Source: US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 1999

Pakistan, meanwhile, seems to have all the uranium and plutonium it needs, and is moving towards building its own array of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) for the battlefield. It is slated to have the fifth largest stockpile of nuclear weapons by 2030.
That it has little or no electricity in the interim is quite another matter altogether. 

Ghulam Ali anyone?

 (1,303 words)

For: Swarajyamag

23^rd  October 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

India Must Have And Deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons Too

India Must Have And Deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons Too

Considering the first tier of nuclear powers, the NPT ones- namely USA, Russia, UK, France and China, all possess tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs),  it is unsurprising that Pakistan should want them too.

Pakistan may have only joined the club in 1998, alongside India, Israel and North Korea, all non-NPT nuclear weapons’ powers, but, quite rightly, wants the ‘nukes one can use’.

Throughout the Cold War, it was hotly debated whether TNWs could be used in battle: ‘little’ ones of 300 tons (0.3 kiloton), for example, on ‘choke points’ and the like, without escalating the conflict to full blown strategic nuclear war?

The classified answer was probably always yes. But only as long as the TNWs were disguised as conventional, if powerful weapons, and passed off as such. 

Nuclear weapons have never overtly been used in war or armed conflict since the Americans used then in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, both bombs TNWs by today’s reckoning.

But since then, and fairly recently, they have allegedly been used covertly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.

This is the burden of the circumstantial and forensic evidence. So, assuming this to be the case in fact, the point to underline and note is that there have been no broader consequences.

TNWs do not apparently cause Chernobyl-style ruinous nuclear fallout, radioactive land and stream pollution, and the like. But, the jury is out on how big a TNW is too big to pass muster.

Of course, so far, TNWs have been used only against non-nuclear states. But this notwithstanding, TNWs have evidently graduated to become the only nukes you can use. This, even as the bristling masses of strategic nuclear weapons continue to sit sentinel as ‘deterrents’, only to be replaced with more up-to-date versions.

NATO is now working on new generation tactical nukes of varying explosive and radiation potential and ones that can be more accurately targeted.

The argument that suggested that TNWs in the field, because of their limited range, called for decentralisation of the command structure, and  could theoretically be authorised for use by relatively junior  fighting men,  is now dated.  Modern communications and activation processes make unintended nuclear weapons escalation difficult.

TNWs need not be deployed from the field at all. They can be started from stealth bombers in the stratosphere, from nuclear submarines deep in the ocean, from aircraft carriers on the high seas, and so forth.  The  reduced nuclear pay-load in TNWs  remains the attractive point, not portability.

It is  seen  as a weapon of controlled mass destruction. TNWs can now also be rendered to become variable weapons, calibrated from afar in seconds, and deployed to achieve the precise and desired objective.

In the Pakistani context today, of many non-state actors working in coordination with the ISI, as well as the Pakistan Army, plausible deniability can be diabolical nuclear weapons strategy.

The presumed proliferation of mini-nukes has long been a terrifying prospect in jihadi hands, but it does provide Pakistan a nuclear knuckle duster to threaten India with. 

The idea appeals to the Pakistani establishment, because it has pointedly declared, just before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif went to see President Obama, that it was going to build its range of TNWs.

And it said that the TNWs would be used against conventional Indian troops if they tried to invade Pakistan territory.

Of course, in the process of heeding the counter argument, that too many low yield nukes scattered around would be difficult to control, a large number of probably obsolete TNWs have indeed been destroyed by the big five. But the US has, for example, at least 500 TNWs even today.

TNWs of course come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, up to 100 kilotons or more in potency, and do not conform to any accurate definition.

They include gravity bombs, short-range missiles but also the ground or ship launched surface to air variety (SAMs) plus the air-to-air types. Then there are artillery shells, land mines, bunker and cave penetrating bombs; depth charges and torpedoes against submarines and so on.

India enjoys the confidence of the US and the NPT powers because of its impeccable non-proliferation record. But now, it is clear, it must get some state-of-the-art TNWs into its weapons arsenal alongside its strategic ‘triad’ capability, under construction.

But, because of the secrecy that surrounds each country’s nuclear weaponisation programme, and the covert defence cooperation matrix, there is no actual knowing whether India is actually ahead of Pakistan on this one or not. But if not, it had better put on its skates!

For: The Quint

(756 words)

October 23^rd, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Construction Workers, Farmers, Industrials & Bankers: All In Dire Straits

Construction Workers, Farmers, Industrials & Bankers:All In Dire Straits

As statistical news trickles in that the Modi government’s  classic Keynesian effort to revive infrastructure with massive public spending ( up 19% since April), may be working, per a Reuters report of 14^th October, some of the inter-related sectors are in deep trouble.

These include, housing and commercial construction, farming/rural income, industry- its  under-utilisation of capacity, and banking, inadequately sized/under- capitalised, with huge NPAs.

They all have deep financial and structural problems inherited from the previous government, but this one has not been able to make a dent in any of them in over 16 months either.

Though the GDP has been dragged up from lows of under 5%, mainly on account of a reduced oil bill, to around 7.3% now,  finance minister Arun Jaitley’s projections of 8 to 8.5% coming up next year, will be difficult to stabilise, let alone work up towards double digits thereafter. Not, at any rate, without a composite effort on several fronts. Even if a fortunate blip from infrastructure takes it there, it is unlikely to sustain if other issues are not tackled.

Raghuram Rajan may have front loaded a recent repo rate cut of 50 bps, putting paid to the criticism that the RBI was stymyieng growth; but the banks have barely passed on 25 bps of it to the customer, and that too only a selected few from amongst them.

One reason is that the public sector banks alone (PSBs)are carrying 2.67 lakh crores in bad debt as on March 2015, up from 2.16 lakh crores in March 2014. This is as per minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha, who reported these figures to parliament in July 2015 (Times of India, datelined 21^st July 2015). According to other reports, the NPAs are placed even higher, at 3.02 lakh crores in March 2015, up from 2.40 lakh crores in March 2014 (Indian Express, September 22^nd, 2015).

The gross non-performing asset(NPA) ratio of PSBs has increased to 5.43% as of March 2015, up from 4.72% a year before.  This massive bad debt has also affected profitability, though the lack of dynamism in PSBs is another factor, and the annual return on PSB assets has come down to 0.78% in 2014-15, from 1.09% in 2010-11, per the same Indian Express report.

This has a moral dimension too, alluded to on more than one occasion by Governor Raghuram Rajan, who is keen on pushing through a host of banking reforms. All the bad debt in PSBs is public money, loaned out largely to a coterie of crony capitalists under less than stringent conditions. It is unlikely to ever come back.

To mend matters, the government needs to expedite stake sales of PSBs to the private sector to enhance efficiency and introduce better practices. It will also bring in fresh capital.

And of course, put teeth into both the asset reconstruction companies (ARCs), which are too few in number, and again woefully under capitalised, with a net worth of just Rs. 4,000 crores between 15 of them. This puny effort is meant to recover lakhs of crores of bad debt! The bankruptcy laws too need to be made much stronger.

The RBI has been trying to help this along, but even on the recovery side, the statistics for the ARCs, at some 31%,  is far from encouraging. Governor Rajan has publicly lamented the lack of consequence for company promoters who can get away unscathed, despite owing thousands of crores to the PSBs as things stand. The gaps in legislation and regulatory practice have been exploited by influential industrialists and their political backers ruthlessly over the years. In addition, many of the given loans flout banking norms, cautionary notes, and so on, and smack of collusion and corruption.  

Banking reforms, when, and if, they come to tackle this daylight robbery and hold such borrowers liable, will certainly be a step in the interests of natural justice. It will also enhance India’s fiscal ratings and creditworthiness internationally.  However, since this involves a good deal of vested interest and is a nexus between the rich and the powerful, it remains to be seen what will be done by the Modi administration.

But till then, the bankers are in trouble. They cannot even cut their deposit rates in line with their  intended lower lending rates. The small savings rate, controlled by the government in post offices and the like, have not been cut as yet. This prevents, or at any rate constrains the banks from cutting their own savings rate, lest they earn the ire of depositors. But, overall, the Indian banking system is broke, and therefore reluctant to lend, compounding the catch 22 situation.

Meanwhile, the construction sector (housing/commercial property),  remains moribund, because it can’t raise finances, at least from the Indian banks, to cover their over-leveraged debt acquired in the boom prior to 2012.  They are finding it hard to finish long delayed projects or even service their debt. To remedy matters, some are going  to the stock market to raise finances, and others are tapping  private equity (PE) money.  This is indeed working up to a point, though at snail’s pace, because the lenders against equity stakes are hoping  to make a killing when the market revives.

Ditto is the case for those privates who are building roads and other infrastructure on a PPP basis. The government is trying hard by way of offering them exits. They have lifted lock-in stipulations for completed projects; but finding buyers at appropriate prices is not proving easy.

While this may be the big picture for the people in board rooms, the construction worker, millions of them, have had to go back to their villages, because there is no work on the projects. And to his dismay, he finds, there is no work on the farm either.

The rural and farm sector, involving according to a recent Hindustan Times (HT) report, 833 million people, was living on subsidies and high guaranteed offtake prices in  UPA II, but these have tailed off since May 2014.

This may have been done partly to curb high food prices and inflation from this source. That has succeeded, but the farmers are left bereft in the process. Since October 2014, rural wage growth has slowed from  a respectable 17% to about 3% currently, according to a Hindustan Times Spotlight report datelined October 10^th, 2015.

The average daily rural wage for ploughing/tilling in May 2015, says HT, was only Rs. 272.87, just 3.3% higher than they were a year before. This is probably because of a labour supply glut caused by the construction and road building shut downs. And the inadequate or unseasonable rainfall in many parts not served by irrigation has compounded matters.  

Rural demand for goods and services, in the absence of disposable income, has also tailed off, leaving most factories producing 30% below capacity, and impacting the profitability of a host of companies ranging from FMCG majors to two-wheeler and white goods manufacturers.

Truth is, farming and rural services just do not need so many people, and with a 15% contribution to GDP, it is far from lucrative. Most people there need to be employed in the urban areas, in construction, which accounts for just as much of the GDP, and industry, even though it needs to grow.

But with industry, construction etc. down in the dumps, and languishing there, this just cannot happen. Modi has to move fast to tackle these multiple problems. Oherwise the growth in GDP  such as it is, will not bring any succour to the masses who vote, and the people who have reposed faith in his promises.

For : Swarajyamag

(1,269 words)

October 15^th, 2014

Gautam Mukherjee