Chhoo Mantaring The National Herald, Bones, Beak And All!

Chhoo Mantaring The National Herald, Bones Beak And All!

The sleight-of-hand, aka ‘criminal fraud’, used by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, to seize control of the defunct independence era newspaper National Herald’s assets, is a tale oft told. The shenanigan actually surfaced as long back as 2012.   

But in 2015 going on 2016, not only are the Gandhis visibly rattled, enough to stall parliament and threaten mass agitations; the son crying wild-eyed about  ‘100% political vendetta from the PMO’, and the mother reminding us about her being Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law, quite unafraid of anything.  

But this shrill bravado assisted by the usual Congress chorus seems to cast aspersions on the dignity, objectivity and probity of the judicial system. It might even be seen as contempt of court.

Run under the umbrella of Associated Journals Limited (AJL) with over 1,000 shareholders that subscribed Rs. 89 lakhs decades ago, the galling part is the principal accused duo took over its assets for a modest equity infusion of just Rs. 50 lakhs.

This got them, one Section 25 company to another, meaning a pair of bankrupt companies to start with, all the commercial land and buildings AJL owned, valued at between  Rs. 2,000-5,000 crores- plus the sizeable current monthly rent from tenants the MEA, Tata and others. And the acquisition was via an even-stevens 78 per cent shareholding in the buying company, Young India Limited (YIL), the rest being held by family loyalists, all in their individual capacity.

The matter is indeed in the courts, but curiously, not one BJP sort, not even a fringe player, has called for the resignation of the Gandhis from parliament. This, of course, is mystifying because Rahul Gandhi routinely calls for BJP resignations as standard operating procedure 2015. But then BJP has been maintaining this is a court matter and nothing to do with them.

The two hot shot Congress lawyers, Singhvi & Sibal, are seemingly in a panic, tripping over themselves in search of a winning strategy. This includes the strenuous argument that YIL, assets, rent and all, was a not-for-profit outfit too, and therefore was not enriching its shareholders.

The famous lawyers may however have bungled the defence so far. Their first volley that missed its mark was to pour high dudgeon contempt onto the Patiala criminal court trial judge who had the temerity to summon the accused.

Then, they rushed off to the High Court to have the lower court summons squashed. Only to be taken aback by the judgement, which opined over 28 damning pages, that there was prima facie evidence of ‘criminality’ and ‘fraud’ and directing all accused to appear in person afresh.

Now, the legal counsel are baulking at their loudly publicised option of taking the matter to the Supreme Court, fearing perhaps that the Supreme Court might not over turn the Delhi High Court ruling. So, the plan is to wait and see what happens on the 19^th of December at 3 pm at Patiala House.

Meanwhile, Rahul says he wants to go to jail after refusing bail if offered, to reprise the stance once adopted by his socialist Joan of Arc admirer  and ancestor , Indira Gandhi. The other accused, less able-bodied, are prudently reaching for their bail money and personal bonds.

The Gandhis find themselves caught in the cross-hairs for once, accustomed as they are, to shooting from the shadows via proxy warriors. The accompanying party, rubber stamps all, are the 87 year old Congress treasurer Motilal Vora,  shadowy chum Suman Dubey, Chicago based cheerleader Sam Pitroda, and long-time confidante Oscar Fernandes.

The acquisition of AJL was done by tipping its contents into YIL without reference to AJL’s many shareholders. It did so to establish a ‘clean’ title of ownership of the defunct paper’s assets.

There was also a convenient Rs. 90 crore interest free loan from Congress coffers, to clear AJL’s accumulated losses, that was subsequently written off, one hand telling the other what to do.

Singhvi & Sibal, in another fit of legal punditry, have been publicly questioning  the locus standi of senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who had filed the case three years ago, because he wasn’t an AJL shareholder.

But media coverage of the locus standi issue,  has thrown up former Law minister Shanti Bhushan, who states his father purchased 300 shares of AJL in 1938, and he, along with his siblings or their heirs, intend to contest the YIL takeover.

More ‘cheated’ shareholders, or their heirs, may well begin to appear to queer the pitch further.

For: The Quint

(743 words)

December 11^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Even, Odd, But What About Evening The Odds?

Even, Odd, But What About Evening The Odds?

The AAP government’s controversial executive order to reduce dangerous levels of air pollution in Delhi is unlikely to make a sufficient dent in it. We are talking about between 3 and 14 times above the safe limit in different parts. Nevertheless, it seeks to halve the number of private cars allowed to ply on any given day.

Meanwhile, we burn unseparated garbage and leaves  despite the bans. We bury toxic waste and foul the water and sub soil. Carrion birds feast in overflowing, putrefying, garbage dhalaos. We have no modern garbage processing plants at all.

This odds and evens effort promises chaos and hardship, given the inadequate state of our public transport. By itself, it cannot however appreciably better the quality of the air.

There are many other places one can cite that have dealt with such problems better; big cities like Paris, London, Moscow, helped by strong governments and huge conflagrations in congested slum areas. Once thus providentially cleared, there was scope to renew things. So there are worthwhile public transport systems, massive parks, walkways, cycle paths; often next to thriving rivers.  But, to be real, we need to look at ourselves, just the way we are.

Still, no doubt statistics will be trotted out, to show how well the anti-pollution drive has done. It will probably be extended. Why, the one voluntary traffic-free day, with the chief minister and his colleagues photographed on bicycles, also recorded an appreciable drop in air pollution levels.

But this putting half the cars of Delhi away, on pain of a yet to be announced quantum of fine, is, in any case, an untested novelty. It is a hopeful measure, instead of the much needed comprehensive approach.

The even-odd car scheme seeks to regulate over 75 lakh vehicles, registered in Delhi, growing at the rate of 1,500 a day. It will be for an initial fortnight’s trial. Some 8,000 traffic policemen are expected to retain their sanity while monitoring this. They are also tasked to let off badly maintained buses blowing clouds of black smoke, in fact the government will add many more to cope; three-wheelers, perhaps two-wheelers too, taxis, plain and radio callable ones, other public transport, plus unstoppable ambulances and hearses.  

The Delhi government hasn’t yet pronounced on what it proposes to do with all the cars registered in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Importantly, there is no green remedy proposed to address over 80,000 highly polluting trucks, that stream in and through Delhi every night. These leave high levels of smog laden pollution by dawn.

Clearly, beyond the tamasha planned for the private cars, come January 1^st 2016, much more needs to be done. Urgent construction of the long pending bypass roads for the trucks that are presently driving through, need to get out of the planning stages, and be swiftly implemented.

Truck depots outside the city, languishing for decades, need to be made functional. Fifteen year old vehicles, both commercial and light, must be compulsorily retired. Highly polluting two-stroke engined vehicles should be taken off the street.

Polluting industries, power plants, grim land-fills, and mountains of garbage have to be revamped and relocated. Some, like the malodorous industries in UP’s Sahibabad, which contribute to some of the highest particulate matter readings in colonies across the way, in Delhi, want to be sanitised.

What seems obvious however, is that a comprehensive and modern approach to town planning, inclusive of massive reforestation, creation of  large new open spaces, to act as the city’s lungs,  has been  and is, still totally missing in action.

This, even as India’s population explodes, ever since the inheritance of  1947.

Whatever green space Delhi does have today, and this is ironically much more than other Indian cities, is left over from colonial times.  Under Indian management, green areas and water bodies/lakes, have actually shrunk.  

Instead, unauthorised colonies have grown, on the edges of the ever expanding city. These are ugly and unplanned, lack basic amenities, exhibit highly unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

But instead of sorting them into habitable and organised spaces afresh, they are being regularised on an ad hoc as-is-where-is basis.

Floor area regulations for constructed buildings, their heights and footprints in Delhi, are also being raised to cater to much higher population density. Mixed areas that permit commercial and residential use together, are also being enhanced, in response to various lobbies and intercessions.

Statistically though, each green intervention to improve matters is bound to yield some limited results; but to get this right, Delhi will have to implement multi-pronged programmes, aimed at improving the quality of its urban habitats and surroundings.

This merits serious consideration, because 55% of Indians now live in the cities. And if this is the sorry and intractable state of the nation’s capital, what hope is there for others, including the 100 proposed ‘smart cities’ around the country?

For: The Quint

(808 words)

December 9^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Is Modi Machiavellian Enough?

Is Modi Machiavellian Enough?

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has been repeatedly mentioned in  foreign reports as being richer than Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain. This has been routinely denied, but if it is true, and since she did not inherit this alleged wealth, the sheer quantum becomes all the more remarkable.

While hardly comparable in terms of scale, her son-in-law Robert Vadra too has shot up to the status of a dollar billionaire. And this, allegedly, in a matter of less than five years. Vadra’s rise to serious wealth was reportedly achieved via a number of controversial land deals in Congress ruled states. The further flipping of the original monies obtained, was aided by the unbridled support of DLF Limited, one of India’s biggest real estate companies.

DLF was, it is recorded, first helped into prominence in the 1950s by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru; building several prominent residential colonies in New Delhi in the process. And much later, in the eighties, by prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who arranged for DLF to colonise and develop large tracts of Gurgaon in Haryana. So, to some extent they could have been returning the favour.

Sonia Gandhi’s son, Rahul Gandhi, vice president of the Congress party, on the verge of replacing her at the helm of the party, goes around aggressively championing the poor.

He rails indignantly against the ‘suit-boot sarkar’ of the erstwhile chai-wallah turned PM, and swears to work only for the interests of the downtrodden- poor farmers, daily wage labourers, Dalits, Muslims, tribals in the mineral rich forests, etc.

Allegations of real estate scammery, with regard to the former property of The National Herald, an erstwhile broadsheet in English, started by Jawaharlal Nehru, and later edited by Feroze Gandhi, Nehru’s son-in-law, also hover around Rahul Gandhi and his mother. There are additionally, suggestions of defence purchase kickbacks via shell companies registered abroad.

But all this ostensibly does not worry the Congress scion, who loudly dares the government to prosecute him and put him in jail if found guilty.

The sheer Machiavellism of these democratically elected but feudalistic leaders, from the most indicted party for rank corruption, is both audacious and breathtaking. It seems to exude contempt for the ordinary comprehension of the people.  

By way of contrast, a confirmed bachelor that holds all of his modestly appointed family at arm’s length, a former RSS pracharak, prime minister Modi, with no taint of corruption, is under perpetual pressure. It is he who is vilified daily for his actions, for being a blood thirsty communalist, for purportedly venal dictatorial motives. It is he, despite the BJP’s thumping majority, that is on the back foot defending himself and his flock.

And this, while the pure ‘ends justify the means’ party with 45 seats in parliament has seized the initiative and gloats about it!

This raises the key question, can ethics be combined with power if it is to remain in the saddle? Modi seems to think so, but the Gandhi family clearly can’t be bothered with it.

Machiavelli’s famous primer on realpolitik, The Prince, was published for the public only five years after his death, but is going strong five hundred years later. Machiavelli did not think being good helped very much in terms of retaining power. He suggested that people did not respond to ethics in public life, but instead to their own sense of  insatiable greed.

So, a corrupt leader that could be of benefit, was better than a do-gooding honest leader that was incapable of manipulating their greediness.

The BJP, let us remember, erred once before with its concentration on boosting the economy and raising the GDP via improved infrastructure, business, industry, exports, services etc. It was mocked, taunted and thrown out of office after a single term, for proclaiming India was ‘shining’, based on unprecedented 9% p.a. growth rates.

The opposition Congress, and its socialist/communist friends, were able to drum them out. GDP was nothing, they said, if it didn’t create largesse and jobs. Trickle down effects of wealth was a chimera, they said, even though subsequent analyses revealed that millions of people had indeed been raised above the so-called poverty line.

And so, when the UPA came to power, it broadly neglected the demands of business and industry, of defence and infrastructure, in favour of welfare, financed largely by fiscal deficits.

But combined with macro head winds, of huge oil import bills, and rampant inflation, the corruption laden administration of this largesse, collapsed.

But the irony in the woodwork is this: even oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela could not/cannot, sustain an excess of welfare disproportionate to income, if the economy is not to be gravely damaged for the long term. And while the rocks and shoals below the surface can be covered up when oil prices are high, they cannot any more.

The further irony is that a people used to the state’s free hand outs, don’t care to have them withdrawn for any reason whatsoever. This is universally true, not only of the impoverished, but also of the middle class and rich beneficiaries of state patronage.

Balancing budgets and strengthening of the economy is thought to be a poor substitute for being on the gravy train.

And so, even those who backed the BJP and propelled Modi into the prime minister’s chair with an absolute majority, are sorely disappointed even as the economy is picking up today. OROP and the 7^th Pay Commission will certainly help many people. In due course, ‘Make in India’ also will. But for now, where are the boosts to the residential and commercial housing sector, the largesse for business and industry, the big tax cuts, the stimulus to agriculture?

The prime minister seems to have his gaze upon the distant horizon some ten or twenty years into the future, when his foundational actions today will bear handsome fruit.  Some say, Modi is more concerned with his legacy. But can he really get very much done if he is restricted to just one term in office?

As for managing perception, the opposition seems to be doing better. Congress with its hypocritical top leadership, an outrageous Lalu Prasad in Bihar, a blatant in-your-face Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, a  quieter Nitish Kumar picking up the reigns yet again in Bihar but dreaming of Delhi. Even a fraudulent Arvind Kejriwal, already in Delhi, but lusting after Chandigarh.

Not only do none of these worthies deliver on their promises, but their supporter base doesn’t seem to care. They have, after all, been well compensated for their support. Perhaps Modi too, needs to add a little Machiavelli to his bedside reading.  

For: The Pioneer

(1,103 words)

December 7^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

What Is The Government Doing Running Businesses?

What Is The Government Doing Running Businesses?

Gandhiji may have written fairly extensively about governance being a solemn trusteeship, meaning thereby, or implying, that the government should let go of assets it crucibles and incubates, when the time is right.

But the notion has, in our seven odd decades since independence, been more observed in the breach. The government just keeps it all.

Of course, M.K. Gandhi could not envisage or visualise in the 1930s and 1940s, with his small is beautiful, and back to the village, labour intensive and swadeshi ideas; the scale, competition, and sheer interdependence that globalisation would impose on the world.

Or indeed, of the relative speed with which technology would conquer everything and capture the narrative, no matter what the ideology being espoused!

But still, India has never really nurtured business and industry in the greenfield stage, only with the intention to hand it over to the private sector to run once its survival looked assured. It tries, from time to time, to unload loss- making lemons at inflated prices, predictably, without success.

It has, in fact, never worked to deliberately build up the private sector, tolerating it as a second fiddle in a ‘mixed economy’, though it now talks of fostering start-ups and skill development which might be a beginning towards it at last.

It has often been said that in taking business and industry upon itself, along with all its other responsibilities, the government did not manage to look after the interests of ‘the people’, whose money went into its hundreds and thousands of badly put together, outdated, inefficient, mostly loss-making  enterprises.

Nevertheless, the government has hung on resolutely to its sizeable number of PSUs in very many fields, and poured countless crores in public funds into the sink hole of their survival and upkeep.

Positive returns under sarkari management are rare, even in public service institutions it runs, let alone industry, services, or enterprise; and in many cases, where the ink on the ledgers is actually black, to use a metaphor from the old pre-computerised days,  the returns are a scandalous 1 or 2% on ROI.

The thinking was/still is, that it provided much needed employment and was a kind of welfare scheme, rather than entities that needed to work to turn out quality goods and services and make a profit.

And gradually the stranglehold of a plethora of enabling labour laws and trade union penetration saw to it that they had to be kept going even if they produced nothing or ran up losses every day.

Today, when the Modi government tries to prise open this stranglehold, the entire status quoist establishment rises up in protest. So much so, that the prime minister  apparently changes course, and tries to nurse the problematic companies back to health. But how long can this kind of person al zeal be sustained, and what will be the net effect of less interested successors?

Every government since 1991, when the most significant reformation of the economy began, has spoken of divestment and privatisation, but faltered at the starting gate. They have made one or two controversial offerings, usually in the manner of a distress sale.

These undervalued sales have gone through thanks to an eye on lucrative physical assets like land and buildings, acting as the lure for private acquisition. This has raised questions of both propriety on the part of government divestment actors, and exploitation, rather than any attempt at fair value, on the part of the private, sometimes foreign investing acquirers.

As  for privatising the management or unloading majority shares, the record has been dismal, probably because of demands that the government absorb all losses accumulated, in order to let the enterprise go forward under private management, quite debt free .

So, most divestment and privatisation targets have remained on paper, administration after administration. No one wants to perform the politically fraught and thankless task, and face the innuendo infused music ever after. But is this because the government has forgotten Gandhiji’s nudge on trusteeship?

In other words, letting a company go into private hands for its eventual  betterment is a moral desirable, and for the government to exit from a distraction to its core functions, even at nominal terms, is a good thing, seen  in this light.

But most governments are bent on earning ambitious revenue from its assets and just cannot manage to do so.  

To be sure, first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Harold Laski and Soviet influenced ‘commanding heights of the economy’ position, saw the public sector doing almost all the heavy lifting when it came to core industry and infrastructure.

But, this was not just because the private sector, perhaps with foreign collaborators in tow, could not afford to invest in long gestation and expensive backbone industry. The thinking came also from a socialist’s mistrust of the private sector, and its pursuit of profit and supposed efficiency, seen as a code for heartless class oppression.

And so, the privates were kept on a leash for long years in this country, and consequently became very good at thriving in adverse conditions, sometimes by hook or by crook. They learned to use the government regulations to their advantage. They learned how to corrupt its officials to do their bidding.

But still, policy stubbornly kept to the nets and entrapment of the licence permit raj, however convoluted the business climate became as a consequence.

The aftermath of the licence permit raj, with its what can be made and how much of, is still evident to this day. As such, in overall size, the private sector still comes a poor second to the government. 

Deliberately turned into pygmies and bonsai enterprises over decades, privates in India lack major capital, as do Indian banks, both public and private. But in dwarfing private enterprise the government also dwarfed itself. It grew for years at 2 or 3 per cent in GDP terms, probably wiped out altogether or turned negative because of high rates of inflation. This drove the country to undeclared bankruptcy, before it cried uncle and started dismantling its over regulation.

That is why, even now, when our growth rates, at about 7.5% p.a., are meant to  be the best in a troubled world,  prime minister Modi travels the world to attract FDI to fund his growth plans.

After nearly 70 years of running our own show, we have built an economy of around $ 2 trillion, grossly inadequate to meet the needs of our 1.2 billion people. China, with a slightly bigger population, has meanwhile pumped up its economy to over $12 trillion, using unabashed capitalist methods under its communist shingle, consistently over the last 30 years.

That PSUs provide politicians with the scope to distribute patronage is undeniable. But is extensive non-strategic state ownership of business and industry, some of which are outright monopolies, appropriate, if this country wants to develop faster?

Of course, prime minister Modi takes considerable pride in his ability to tweak administrative processes to produce better results. He coaxes out greater productivity and massive cost savings. This, applied not just to business and industry but in the dispensing of subsidies and sops, the LeD light bulb revolution, the more affluent giving up of the cooking gas subsidy  voluntarily, in a massive digitisation push combined with the AADHAR Card.

And then there are the early breakthroughs in his ‘Make in India’ campaign, with its promise of many new jobs, this time emphasising the private sector and foreign collaborators. The Modi government has made major headway in better electricity generation using revived coal mines, more solar energy. There is also an exciting and huge push into road, rail, and port infrastructure.

But as it stands, the old cohabits with the new, and very little is jettisoned.

Should the government not get out of running businesses, as Modi promised on the campaign trail in 2013-14? Why then, is it seemingly comfortable sitting atop a disparate laundry list of non-essential activity?

The gargantuan size of expensive and ever expanding government is eating up a good deal of revenue after all, leaving not very much for development. If it downsized because it wasn’t supervising so many non-strategic industries and businesses, it could concentrate on its real job of providing infrastructure, security and finance.

But coming back to the concept of trusteeship, the only entity that apparently heard and implemented Gandhiji’s message, even if it did so for its own self perpetuating reasons, is private sector primus inter pares, the Tata Group.

It is also, along with fellow Parsi started enterprise, the Godrej Group, renowned for having some of the most enlightened HRD practices and policies in the country as well.

Tata is overwhelmingly owned by a number of trusts, with the largest private holding in the apex holding companies, 18%, being in the hands of the Mistry family. It is also very profitable, and consistently so over decades, but probably because it has differentiated between ownership and management.

Cyrus Mistry, younger son of long time JRD Tata confidant and contractor to the Tata Group , the octogenarian Pallonji Mistry, is likely to be in the saddle for the next three decades or more. Mistry is the present group head, after succeeding Ratan Tata, who was hand-picked by JRD to succeed him.

Ratan carries the family name, but owns just about 1% of the Tata Group. But, after relinquishing his executive position on turning 75, he now runs all the key Tata trusts, for life; and invests in start-ups on his own bat.

So, what is it that the government is missing, or is it concentrating on the big new multi-billion ‘Make in India’ private/ foreign/ government partnerships, to put the old PSUs and their problems in the shade?

For: Sirfnews

(1,617 words)

December 4^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

BOOK REVIEW- REBOOTING INDIA By Nandan Nilekani & Viral Shah

  

BOOK REVIEW

Title:                    REBOOTING INDIA-Realizing A Billion Aspirations

Authors:              NANDAN NILEKANI & VIRAL SHAH

Research:             Swapnika Ramu

Illustrations:        Aparna Ranjan

Publisher:             ALLEN LANE/PENGUIN BOOKS, 2015

Price:                     Hardback, Rs. 799/-

Applying IT To Fast Track India’s Development

Nandan Nilekani, famed as one of the team of founder entrepreneurs from Infosys, retired as its CEO, only to go on and spearhead the making of the famous AADHAR Card.

Nilekani is clearly an incandescent man of transformational ideas that can be implemented, judged from his corporate career, the success of AADHAR, involving over 900 million card holders, and this, the second of his visionary books.

The first, Imagining India, marked his advent into doing something for the country, and was expressive of his zeal. And this one, Rebooting India, is  also full of practical and far reaching ideas. Nilekani truly should be in parliament, though he lost his maiden Lok Sabha election bid from Bengaluru, even if it is via the indirectly elected or nominated route to the Rajya Sabha.

While there have been many government sponsored identity cards, rivalling each other, duplicating effort, and sometimes working at cross purposes, nothing has come close to the biometric AADHAR Card. It is the first one that may become and possibly remain the definitive identity device for Indians.

That it aspires to becoming the link pin for social security schemes, subsidies, government services, e-KYC, the soon expected GST administration, electronic toll services, voter roll reviews, electioneering, fraud and embezzlement prevention, and even voting itself, alarms some who benefit from the present confusion. There is a potential to save the government about Rs. 100,000 crores per annum or about 1% of GDP if it is used extensively. And so, the universal use of the AADHAR Card is opposed by many vested interests including those who cite an invasion of privacy, and others who say illegal immigrants who manage to get hold of this card become thereby legitimised.

But still, the potential of this one-stop device to simplify identification, speed-up processes, and save money, is indeed immense.  

Nilekani and Viral Shah, his young techie collaborator and co-author of Rebooting India, both worked together in the Unique Identification Authority of India(UIDAI), chaired by Nilekani. 

Given the authors’ backgrounds and achievements, the duo are eminently, qualified to suggest the acceleration of India’s development using information technology. And this, in a country and administration traditionally riddled with red tape and extreme bureaucracy.

This book is also something of an unabashed collaborative effort. Apart from its easy readability, despite the complex and intricate subject matter, assisted by senior journalist Samar Halarnkar; it is also remarkable for the meticulous research done by Swapnika Ramu. And then there are the profuse illustrations, with their easy to grasp graphics, by Aparna Ranjan. If one were to just follow all the illustrations and graphics, it would be possible to form a thumb-nail sketch of the contents of this primer of a book.

Many new and emerging technology devices are cited as the horses fit for courses: micro ATMs, via a handheld wireless device, plus an AADHAR card number and a thumb-print, for hey presto rural banking, for example.

There is a discussion on the burgeoning Ali Baba style eCommerce revolution, borne on the Internet, backed by a warehousing or supplier inventory management programme, that can be used nowadays to purchase a plethora of goods and services. Items and services that come to the consumer, quickly, sometimes instantly, often at far more competitive prices than in brick and mortar facilities. And the process is minus the travel, the crowds, the queue; not to mention the consequences of real -estate costs and location costs/ rents/utilities/salaries, and the unavoidable, resultant retail mark-ups.

India will become the world’s youngest country by 2020, with 64 per cent of its population, some 800 million people at present count, of working age. This huge mass of humanity will be consuming all manner of goods and services against a long list of demands. This, even as its ‘online footprint’ grows towards becoming amongst the biggest in the world. And also as per capita income levels rise.

Despite being even the fastest growing major economy in the world from a modest base of some $2 trillion presently, at a projected 9% per annum in GDP, this extra money in the economy, by itself, is not going to be able to deliver every need for all. Especially if expensive, wasteful and tardy systems are not thrown over. India will need technological efficiencies and constant innovation to make its rupee stretch, given its massive population.

India is also likely, given the intelligence and dynamism of its youth, to become the Start Up Capital of the world. But this, only if the regulatory and financial environment encourages such entrepreneurship. In other words, it is likely to spontaneously stand up and meet its own demand opportunities given the chance.

But, the delay and complications imposed, by sometimes necessary and often outdated government permissions, left over from another era, has to  be overhauled and speeded up to cope.

The Modi government is not only highly appreciative of the work done by UIDAI but is moving towards digital locker systems for important documents, direct transmission of subsidies, bank accounts for the people at the bottom of the pyramid, electronic payment of income tax, stamp duties, money transfers online, agricultural marketing systems, and other electronic governance processes, and this too, quite rapidly.

And then there are the reforms in the infamous sarkari benefits, misdirected and siphoned off by contractors and middle-men, over these long years, and with impunity.

Without a direct and transparent transmission plank between the giver, usually the government, under its many welfare and poverty alleviation schemes, and the recipient, aka the impoverished, the situation cannot get better. And this is being both recognised and addressed, often using AADHAR, even though the Supreme Court has refused to make it mandatory.

The broad idea in the medium term is for every Indian to have an AADHAR Card, a smartphone and a bank account.

Beyond the potential of the AADHAR Card, this simply written but brilliant book does short sketches of how vital areas of governance such as health, education, energy, the legal system, agriculture, can all be transformed, with the efficient use of IT.

In the end, Rebooting India envisages a new governance paradigm shift, via access to a data grid that has every single Indian on it.

 

For: The BOOKS Page in The Sunday Pioneer

(1,032 words)

December 2^nd 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Sprucing Up The Augean Stables At The BCCI

Sprucing Up The Augean Stables At The BCCI

The mighty BCCI, its constituent state cricketing associations, its sidekick the IPL are beleaguered- conflict of interest situations, nepotism,  cronyism, illegal betting, sex-on-tap, Great Gatsby style partying, big bang sponsorship deals, match-fixing, spot-fixing, money-laundering, black money; all in the context of big power and bigger bucks, and oh, it’s all about playing top class cricket too.

But yes, there are entire teams still under a shadow in the IPL, national teams too bored, jaded, and plain tired, to play test cricket for their modest fee paying nations. The viewership has been dropping as fans have grown disillusioned with rigged matches and listless performances.

There are several international players under investigation in the aftermath of government probing into payola  and sleaze. Some players, caught out, too ashamed to bear the scrutiny, have even committed suicide. This even as others, of a more brazen temperament, have weathered the storm and been exonerated.

All money, it seems, corrupts, but absolute torrents of money corrupt absolutely! But yes, what a lot of fun is had by one and all in the know.

The Indian government is presently trying to recall former IPL Tzar Lalit Modi, who nearly unseated his former mentor, the CM of Rajasthan Vasundhra Raje. He also threw quite a bit of mud at Arun Jaitley, the finance minister, at sundry Congress appointees in the BCCI/IPL, at Sharad Pawar, the Mahratta strongman at the helm of the NCP, and, of course, badly dented Congress smoothie Shashi Tharoor, as    well as his late wife Sunanda Pushkar.

Lalit Modi is ensconced in a Raje family mansion in London, and periodically,  in parts more exotic, such as the French Riviera, Montenegro, Brazil, Monaco, Portugal etc.

So, the best of luck to the Indian government in trying to catch him against his will.  L. Modi would, however, as he says quite often, come back in a flash, licketysplit, if he is given Z plus plus protection, and promises of a piece of all his enemies and tormentors. But that would mean I am starting a fairy tale here, given the powerful company this Modi keeps.

But at the moment, the cricketing universe, fans, players, staff, administrators, impresarios, cheerleaders, is holding its collective breath, on the will there be or won’t there be a Pakistan India Test series played in Sri Lanka very soon.

This, even as the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), needs the series badly to fill its empty coffers. Still, citing security reasons, it does not want to play in India, thinking it could perhaps be held in the familiar environs of the UAE instead.

But venue apart, the PCB quickly agreed to the series, backed promptly by  Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who also offered ‘unconditional’ talks on the eve of his departure for climate talks in Paris, knowing he will meet our prime minister Narendra Modi there. And now he has; and we can all wonder what they spoke about.

The wealthy and influential BCCI knows the excitement and money these India-Pakistan matches would generate, and Manohar has applied to the Indian government for permission to proceed.There is talk of truncating a test match from five days to four, even three. Ravi Shastri, former cricketer, potential coach, Indian team director, functionary of the BCCI extraordinaire, is advocating it.

After all, any India-Pakistan test match, or even a short form fixture, tends to be the most viewed sequence of cricket matches on earth. Television and the sponsors love it. TRP and viewers likewise. It is generally believed you can’t ‘fix’ this particular rivalry beyond a point.

If the government of India agrees to this joust, and who knows, in the humility induced by the post Bihar election drubbing scenario, it well might, now that  the opposition Congress has already declared for it. This upcoming test series has been proposed to be held in Sri Lanka; and if it takes place, promises to bring a financial windfall to the island nation as well.

Picking Sri Lanka as the venue suits the regional cricket diplomacy of the freshly appointed  Shashank Manohar, enjoying a second term after four years,   as the new president of the BCCI, with two years to go, and the spot as chairman of the ICC also his, for another six or seven months.

His predecessor, the redoubtable N. Sreenivasan, was ousted, at last, first in favour of the late Mr. Jagmohan Dalmiya, and now, Shashank Manohar from Nagpur.

From the political outside, the Congress party wants the Indo-Pak series to be played, in a volte face  of its former position, and new attempt to separate cricket from politics. The Shiv Sena on the other hand, has been vocal in bluntly stating that any such India-Pakistan test series would be disrespectful to all the martyrs of Pakistani sponsored terrorism. A terrorism, they gratuitously add, that shows no signs of abating.

The union government has not, as yet, given its assent, and it is thought in some quarters, that it will not agree under the fraught circumstances in tense India-Pakistan relations. Others say the decision to allow it has already been taken, and will be announced early, very early, in December.

Shashank Manohar, lawyer turned administrator, appointed/elected president by the board of BCCI this October, has quickly set to work. An early announcement from him spoke of resolving conflicts of interest between the BCCI administration, players, and staff, and the appointment of an independent ombudsman to keep the lines untangled in future. Manohar has a clean image, bolstered by his earlier stint in the same job, and much is expected from him. He, in turn, has asked for a mere two months to ‘clean’ things up.

Meanwhile, wearing his ICC hat, he has already embarked on a misstep. Manohar has suggested that the rejigged dominance of India, England and Australia in the ICC, engineered in part by predecessor Sreenivasan recently, was not fair to other cricketing nations.

This, in a move reminiscent of Jawaharlal Nehru turning down the UNSC permanent membership, when it was offered to India first, way back in the fifties, sending it spinning towards Mao’s China instead.  Present day China, of course, is not in the mood to return the favour any time soon.

But Manohar, citing his own convoluted logic, wants to give away the hard won Indian advantage before the ink is dry. This even as the BCCI is in line to receive 22 per cent of the ICC revenues generated going forward.

Manohar’s rather enigmatic attempt to curry favour with the very many other cricketing nations, though promptly applauded by South Africa, is not likely to be remembered by the gallery of beneficiaries going forward. After all, no good deed goes unpunished.

So let us hope that Shashank Manohar’s gush of egalitarian sentiment will be ignored, and nothing  more will come out of his less than well thought out international initiative. But he is welcome to sort things out at home and make the cricket clean and worth watching again.

For: Swarajyamag

(1,161 words)

November 30^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Questioning Indian Secularism & Socialism After Overhauling Macaulay

Questioning Indian Secularism & Socialism After Overhauling Macaulay

The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars; the owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.

Sultan Mehmet of Turkey on his conquest of Byzantium from the Romans after 1,123 years and 18 days of their rule.

November 26^th 2015, the first day of the Winter Session of India’s parliament, was marked as Constitution Day, simultaneously remembering Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar in context of his year- long125^th birth anniversary celebrations.

The Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, in his speech,  implied the need to revisit the 42^nd amendment to the Indian Constitution that inserted the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ into the preamble.

The Home Minister said the word ‘secular’ is being grossly misused today. The chief author of the Indian Constitution, BR Ambedkar, felt that India is inherently secular and therefore felt no need to spell it out.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party, now in opposition, agreed that the intent of the Indian Constitution was to assert India’s essential secularism. She defended the need to have the word explicitly inserted into it. She also laid claim to the very thinking behind the drafting of the constitution on behalf of the Congress party, implying the BJP were interlopers and recent arrivals.

The broader point now is not in the original intent, but in the need to examine afresh what these two words might mean today for the people of India, and for the future.

And herein may lie the basis of conflict between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress, apart from the usual struggles of power politics.

The one, apparently wants to change the narrative, and the other is determined to cleave to meanings as they have been for long years.

Secularism has been dubbed ‘pseudo’ and code for ‘minority appeasement’ in certain quarters, while any attempt to redefine or reinterpret it has been seen to be ‘majoritarian’ and ‘communal’ in other camps.

The new debate, virulent as a virus, particularly on electronic media debates, print media editorials, and succinct social media posts, is raging in India.

Socialism, read the interests/welfare of the common man/poor, overlaid with tones of  being moral and correct, versus Capitalism, seen by some as making the rich richer/crony capitalism. But, as we tread over this watershed, is the route to take, a subsidised, unsustainable deficit financed polity of millions, or one that strives to generate more opportunities, income, and jobs for all?

The other hot potato is the attempt towards redefining secularism; seen, ironically, as almost a sacrilegious attempt to change its moorings.

One side does not want any understanding of the word ‘secular’ changed to represent a uniform playing field for all, in the interpretation if nowhere else, let alone the travelling towards a uniform civil code.

And yet, viewed through another prism of democratic evolution, this debate may represent the movement from adolescence to adulthood, a coming of age for the people of this country. Yet, the reactions from many quarters seem to be ringed around with fear of a lurking, rampant, majoritarianism.

It may be a good and hopeful idea, harbingering the inevitability of change, at this confused time, to remember another shibboleth that slowly changed over time.

The posh Indians with an Oxbridge education from pre-independent times spoke funny. Their accents were nominally upper class English, but somehow over-enunciated. It was the strain of remembered preservation surrounded by the saltier cadenced speech of multiple Indian languages.

The foreign accent was nevertheless a valued acquisition. It announced their Brown Sahib sensibilities, and suggested they should be taken for English. Too bad it was a trapped, piggy-in-the-middle sound, likely as not, to not always ring true. It wasn’t, after all, underpinned by the insouciance and sliced vowels bred by the white man’s burden and the privileges of empire.

Unfazed, irrespective of paradoxes and contraindications, this top rung of Macaulay’s children, the ‘loyal natives’, believed completely in the British way, just as he intended them to. They were, carried into the independent 1960’s and seventies, the neo-colonials you couldn’t ridicule into silence.

On desi shores, these accents, their accompanying mannerisms, the cold weather clothes, the liking for Worcester Sauce and breaded sausages, the studied ignorance of ‘native’ culture, were all of a piece.

The mercantile banias on the other hand, who were often richer than these pretenders, laughed up their sleeves. But seizing opportunities for profit being the bania way, they scraped and bowed with professional gusto, letting the Brown Sahib think he was as good as the genuine article, and simply over-charged for such affectation.

The home-grown English speakers, those educated in our government and private institutions with their sprinkling of poignant white missionaries and Lord Jimming educators, were largely condemned to a second and, it must be said, third, rung of Macaulay’s  intended edifice.

These English speakers, the species going back over a hundred years, were letter perfect meal ticketers, persons who read English as a ‘foreign’ language, and thought in other, altogether more comforting mother tongues.

These people, much more numerous since the 1830s when Macaulay introduced Indian-English education, composed the rich seam of out-and-out babudom.

Babudom that has been lampooned but persists, with their ‘preponing’ preponderance towards ‘doing the needful’ and by their super-heroic ‘swinging into action’.

Caricatured, but unconcerned, is the babu, now  migrated into the 21^st century, having grown up generation upon generation with derived ‘power’, waiting for discretionary ‘orders’  from  ‘ higher-ups’.

Babu, on the third rung of this tyranny of how one spoke English, didn’t care about being bested by the ‘mixed up’ produce from our home grown public schools. What were they after all: sing-song hybrids, syntax shot through a tarka of gas/coal-fired steam? Nothing pucca about it.

Banquo’s ghost at this table was indubitably Anglo-Saxon-Norman English. The rest, Scots, Irish, the Welsh, in the Indian experience, were ‘Tommies’, low caste, and not fit to emulate.

They were familiar enough in the bazaars and kothas, in Rudyard Kipling and John Masters’ books, speaking their pidgin, and dipping their wicks. Dipped they were into the same inkpots as the natives. Sometimes this introduced a sprinkling of blue and grey eyes, to take on, where the Greeks left off.

But, for the native Oxbridge set, it was an unchanging England, a fancied, Bertie Woosterised period between the wars, with surviving notes of High Raj Victoriana and pre Great War bucolic. And, later, troubling lashings of Harold Laski from the LSE.

On the khaki side of the fence, there was a Sandhurst-IMA variant, complete with bottle-brush moustache, harrumph, tweed, and cravat.

Time, they used to say, moves slowly in the colonies.

Then, stirrings, as the world began to change. ‘Sentiment’, as they also say in the stock market, shifted. Socialism became shop-worn. Class, that caste-wealth-birth triumvirate, was much dented, scratched, holed.  The new, up-to-date was to be part of a sarkari ‘reserved’ model, but you had to be born to it.

Colour too, in this most racist of countries, went in for a makeover- ‘wheatish’, became seen as contrast to fair and lovely, and not automatically ugly.

Ethnicity was now chic, and the big fat Indian wedding bested most. Consumerism grew hip. Colonialism went camp. It’s the tradesmen who use the front entrance now because they are the ones who keep people in business.

Meanwhile, the accented Oxbridgers went obsolete, even the doughty specimens who occasionally made plummy foreign ministers. Instead, our once minister of everything, and now the president of the republic, Pranab Mukherjee, speaks with astoundingly rounded vowels, and doesn’t worry a bit. Oxbridge is now more useful as entry code in class-ridden Britain, than it is in India.

The current-dayers go to Harvard and Yale, their claws sharp and their accents drawn tight on a Yankee leash. On the way back, standing under Nelson and the pigeons on his hat at Trafalgar Square, they can watch parcels of Patels, Noons, Mittals, Pauls, Hindujas and Tatas sweeping by. And none of them worried a whit about their broad Jinja or Jullunder or Navsari or Chennai or Bengaluruspeak. They even have a good deal of that caucasian insouciance aforementioned, as if it rubbed off on them like whitewash.

And so, we’ve arrived at the digital age, brought on by resurgence, our place in the sun, a smaller world, technology, interdependence, money.

Life has become a multispoker, overlays, blends, bhangra-reggae, tip o’ the hat. There is no need for compromise. The information highway is faster than any dictionary. Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and VS Naipaul; mellifluous Vikram Seth, newer claimants, with their ‘finest’ use of the English language, is certainly cause for pride, yes.

But if it’s hair you want to let down, and a voice you want to call your own, let’s talk chutney, and raise a cheer for the pioneering work of Salman Rushdie.

That exuberance, which is so Indian, has broken out of its confines and not just on the written page. But let’s look for barometers anyway. Cast your eye over the three big Bombay books of yesteryear, all with their we don’t need glossaries and italics for the goralog.

And let’s not forget the delicious desi gaalis, full-throated, immense. It’s alright for Suketu Mehta in Maximum City and Vikram Chandra in Sacred Games, huge mothers, both books. But the third tome, Shantaram was written by Australian Gregory Roberts.

Confidence has come. Everything else will follow Insha’allah, including the solution to today’s semantic and real problems, and the success of masala bonds.

For:Swarajyamag

(1,574 words)

November 26^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee