Attemptations -- attempts at temptation

Theatre Of The Absurd

2011-08-20T02:12:00.073+05:30

We Indians love our theatre. The interminable sitcoms on television are testimony to that. But tastes in theatre are evolving, just like tastes in cinema. The public can no longer be hoped to be satisfied with the hero and heroine dancing around old banyan and peepal trees, with birds chirping away. Awakened tastes today demand something different -- pines and poplar -- to dance around. And to really make the feel-good sink in, the birds chirping away should also be of some endangered species, so that it can be a statement for a 'cause'.

Witness the latest avant garde theatre being played out, starring Anna Hazare and cast. How it has taken the middle classes by storm! Running to packed halls across the country, with more and more threatening to gatecrash if not permitted into the party. The government is all at sea, floundering for breath, as everyone and his grandmother wants to be a part of the crusade that's guaranteed to deliver the coup de grace to knock the monster of corruption once and for all. The iPad-esque formula has been such a hit that copycats have already thrown their hats in, in the form of His Holiness Baba Ramdev and disciplehood. Never mind if the government forcibly brought the shutters down on that one in an act that was widely condemned (and condemnable). So long as one show goes on, it should make the feel-good continue. (India Whining, anyone...?). After all, when it's going to deliver us from this plague which we have nurtured over decades, what's a small sacrifice -- like taking a day off from work wearing black armbands -- to make for it?

You want freedom from the voluntary bribe you paid to get your job done yesterday...? Support Jan Lokpal Bill. You want to reclaim the land in front of your house where you've traditionally dumped your garbage for years -- municipal laws be damned -- which was snatched away by a corrupt Commonwealth Games operator...? Support Jan Lokpal Bill. You are still smarting from the loss you faced due to that traffic cop who caught you - what injustice, only you --when you were jumping the red signal along with so many others, and who simply refused to be put away without being paid half your due fine as his cut...? Support Jan Lokpal Bill. You are outraged by the guy who paid the ticket collector more than you could afford to pay and got the railway berth reserved ahead of you...? Support Jan Lokpal Bill. You want to teach a lesson to the neighborhood pharmacist who keeps demanding more and more to issue you false medical bills to help you save on taxes...? Support Jan Lokpal Bill.

The phenomenon has gathered such TRP ratings that it has forced protesters of all other hues to cool their heels till the event gets over. It has effectively postponed the launch of the latest rounds of agitation that Geelani and company were planning, come this August, to bring Kashmir to a boil once again. Neither are the Maoists killing any policemen while it lasts. Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy too decided to take a welcome break, and keep their next round of agitation and protest on hold, while TV cameras are all busy shuttling between Ramlila Maidan and Jantar Mantar and Tihar Jail (or has that now become Tihar Hotel, from which you check out at your own will...?). The anti-corruption movement in its popularity now threatens to derail every other form of protesting art, much like a mega cricket event swamps out every other sporting event in the country.

Creativity has been lent a fresh new lease of life, thanks to Anna. Supermarkets are stocking up on Anna paraphernalia as the latest hot cake. Depending on your predilections you can pick up an Anna Bhajan, Anna Hard Rock, or Anna Chalisa, which are all being offered free teaser previews on national television. Tee-shirt companies are promising new Anna designs every fortnight, and chances are unless you hurry they'll all be gone before you land up to buy them. Movie stars are making a beeline to sign up for Anna, lest their rivals capture the returning Anna fan base first and their own movies are left high and dry. (Clever folks that they are, they've realized that sex and violence are now passe, it's anti-corruption that sells now!) ShahRukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra have promised to hold a free fundraising show in support of Anna, and have roped in Karim Morani of Cineyug to organize the grand event. Morani has promised to contribute 15% of the loan returned by DMK's Kalaignar TV, and also an additional amount per ticket sold, to the Anna fund. Mammooty and Mohanlal had agreed to lead the march in support of Anna down south, but they got held back at the last moment because of income tax raids on their undeclared properties. Chetan Bhagat has found it an auspicious moment to announce his next novel -- 'One Fortnight @ The Anti-Corruption Center', and has promised not to lift any page from Life of Pi this time, to keep it clean. Last heard, Apple Store has announced the latest set of funky Anna Anti-corruption Apps (AAAs), which are available for immediate download. Gadget makers are scrambling to get their smartphones and other gizmos certified as Anna-compatible, and offering free Anna merchandise with every purchase. Offer valid till stocks last.

Anna-mania has gripped the nation this year with the same virally infectious vehemence as Swine Flu had last August. People are seeing the Jan Lokpal Bill as their last chance of deliverance from corruption, and will not budge without Anna's bill being tabled in Parliament, and getting the government's version being discarded lock, stock and barrel. Anyone drawing attention to the glaring defects of the Anna bill, and the gross unimplementability of his proposals will be consigned to face the firing squad as a cynical cribber at best, and active promoter of corruption at worst. Much like in the heat of the Kashmir stone-throwing frenzy, anyone who spoke about the illogicality of stone-pelting as a device for achieving any goal would have been branded an imperialist tyrant and a traitor to the cause of oppressed Kashmiris. Such is the force of the fashionable hysteria in town that an ear-ring sporting, goatee-brandishing hippie who seems like having spent more of his life in a discotheque than at work can have the cheek to question a social worker who has spent twenty five years of his life among rural masses -- 'What is your credibility?' -- when he points out that we need to examine the merits of the Anna proposals and consider the implications and practicability of a body which's mandated to handle a Prime Minister's corruption together with fifty rupees bribe taken by the village patwari.

When hope rules, reason can't find a place to hide.

Which is why the din for 'Bring on Jan Lokpal' has totally drowned any need to examine the actual proposals made by Team Anna, and to see what will be their implications. Currently, the mood on the street is: 'Let's teach the elected representatives, and especially the government, a lesson and show them who's the boss.' Anna and team have been bandying about results of referendums that they have held privately which apparently show that 95% of the people want their version of the bill. Never mind the results of the survey carried out by CNN-IBN that shows that two-thirds of the people of India have either not heard about Lokpal at all, or have no opinion on it. That 95% of people have understood the differences between the two drafts and have developed a strong opinion in favor of one version (Team Anna's version) is an astonishing claim to make. But it's being peddled day in and day out, presumably because of SMS-happy pollers on television, without so much as raising an eyebrow. Leave alone the question of whether 95% of the masses are qualified enough to arbitrate on matters concerning the finer points of law.

Right now, a mass hysteria has been whipped up, which has simply tried to exploit the frustration of the people with corruption at every level of societal and governmental functioning, as also the TRP-driven media obsession with a 'scam'. People have been given two choices as black and white: either you support corruption(and are for the government-introduced bill) , or you are against corruption (and therefore in support of Anna's bill). Most people have ignored the part in the parenthesis, or have been led to believe that it follows as an inevitable consequence, and simply chosen the second one. There isn't much difference between this and what George Bush propounded as well: either you are for terror (and therefore advise considered action) or you are against terror and for democracy (in which case you allow me to start as many wars as I want). Don't miss out on the overwhelming choice that Americans made, and where it led them to.

Let's check out a couple of the things being proposed by Team Anna in their draft:

Who will come under Lokpal's ambit?

All central government servants. Government Servant includes "any person who is or was any time appointed to a civil service or post in connection with the affairs of the Central Government or High Courts or Supreme Court either on deputation or permanent or temporary or on contractual employment but would not include the judges." Additionally, any public servant who is or was at any time,-
(a) the Prime Minister;
(b) a Minister;
(c) a Member of Parliament;
(d) Judges of High Courts and Supreme Court;
(e) Any member of government instituted corporations, cooperative bodies etc

How big will Lokpal be?

Lokpal shall consist of one Chairperson and ten members along with its officers and employees.

From the two above, it's clear that an eleven-member Lokpal is supposed to oversee what would easily be hundreds of thousands of employees, given that government servant includes not only serving employees but also all past ones, that too not just permanent employees but all temporary and contractual ones too. In India, even by conservative estimates at least a hundred thousand bribes will be asked for by central government employees every day (half of that could easily be from railway TTEs alone, and another quarter from court clerks).

Could Team Anna explain what'll need to be the administrative size of the Lokpal? How many officers and employees will it need to even accept so many complaints every day, forget investigation and prosecution of each? What'll be the expenses burden on the government to maintain this behemoth? Are we proposing here that we wind up all vigilance wings which each government department maintains? Will all those people who man those wings be laid off? Or are the same people going to sit all together inside the Lokpal building now?

Or are we going to limit the number of complaints by issuing a public advisory that 'Guys, please continue with your current practice of not making any written complaints, since you can obviously see that we are in no position to handle all of them. Please send us only those ones which'll create the best media-circus experience for all of us." Or are we proposing to have a lottery system whereby, say, a hundred lucky winners every day will have their complaints investigated?

Will each complaint be given the investigative approval of the eleven-member team, or will lower level staff decide on it?

What will Lokpal do?

Lokpal shall be responsible for receiving:
(a) Complaints where there are allegations of such acts of omission or commission which are punishable under Prevention of Corruption Act
(b) Complaints where there are allegations of misconduct by a government servant
(c) Grievances
(d) Complaints from whistleblowers

So we are saying that citizens of India are free to submit their grievances to Lokpal, regardless of whether corruption is involved or not? I have a grievance against BSNL (which is a central government corporation) for improper broadband billing, which has had no resolution despite escalation to state-level and central-level authorities. Am I encouraged now to post this to Lokpal? Or are citizens supposed to engage a lawyer first, to decide whether or not the grievance that they have can be posted to Lokpal?

What are your scalability limits? -- how many millions of such grievances can you accept each year before you blow up? And are you really promising to resolve each of these within a month? Anna, are you sober still, or has the hypoglycemia started to take a toll on your thinking capacity...? Or did you never believe that thought really has a place, so long as one is free to raise slogans...?

What will be the Lokpal's powers?

Here's a sampler:

a)For the purposes of section 36 of Criminal Procedure Code, the Chairperson, members of Lokpal and the officers in investigation wing of Lokpal shall be deemed to be police officers.

b)For the purpose of any such investigation (including the preliminary inquiry) the Lokpal shall have all the powers of a civil court while trying a suit under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

c)In order to get its orders complied with, the Lokpal shall have, and exercise the same jurisdiction powers and authority in respect of contempt of itself as a High court has and may exercise, and, for this purpose, the provisions of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.

d)No proceedings of the Lokpal shall be held to be bad for want of form and except on the ground of jurisdiction, no proceedings or decision of the Lokpal shall be liable to be challenged, reviewed, quashed or called in question in any court of ordinary Civil Jurisdiction.

e)This Act shall override the provisions of all other laws.

So, the Lokpal will be a police officer, who'll have the powers of a Civil Court for adjudication, powers of a High Court for enforcing contempt of itself, whose verdict shall be final and unchallengeable (making it the Supreme Court), and also the Lokpal Act will supersede the provision of every other law and thus be the ultimate Master Law which'll govern India. Is this really the product of your luminous legal minds Messrs Prashant and Shanti Bhushan...? How come you forgot to put in a clause saying that: 'Lokpal shall be the sole competent authority to act as the defence lawyer for the accused' as well? That would probably complete the full circle -- the circle of laughable nonsense.

May be China should draw inspiration, take their 'catch and shoot' methodology of eliminating the corrupt, and rechristen it Chinese Lokpal.

What'll Lokpal mean for other government agencies?

Lokpal shall have the powers to choose its own officials. Lokpal may enlist officials on deputation from other government agencies for a fixed tenure or it may enlist officials on permanent basis from other government agencies or it may appoint people from outside on permanent basis or on a fixed tenure basis.

So, the Lokpal could simply pick any officer from any department it wants, and that department's boss will have no way but to let him go? So, we'll filter out efficient, upright officers from other government agencies and put them into Lokpal, and that'll be the way to ensure that those agencies run in the best, most corruption-free way. I'm getting it Anna, I'm getting it...

If an officer is given permanent posting in Lokpal, can he expect to get promoted to Cabinet Secretary rank ever? Can he expect to be rotated out to other departments, if he gets bored at some point? Mind you, these gentlemen or ladies can never hope to be promoted to the Team of Eleven, because by definition those who are in government service for the past two years are disqualified.

And, not just that, Lokpal can appoint officials from anywhere outside the government service too. Great. Will Lokpal now start conducting its own LPSC examination too? (That's Lokpal Service Commission examination, if you didn't get it. Only honest people with no blemish whatsoever will be allowed to sit for it.) For the sake of advance information, will that examination be multiple-choice type or essay-type, Anna...? Will the question papers be set by the Team of Eleven, or will other Lokpal staff do it? Will final appointment interviews at least be conducted by the Team of Eleven? What kind of social-justice principles be applicable to it, that is, what sort of reservation policies will it have...? What sort of other agitations will it spawn, in case some groups feel left out, especially since the Lokpal jobs are supposed to have higher emoluments than other equivalent government jobs...?

What happens to existing vigilance wings of departments?

a)The posts of the Secretary and other Officers and Employees of the Central Vigilance Commission are hereby abolished and they are hereby appointed as the Secretary and other officers and employees of the Lokpal.

b)All vigilance administration under the control of all Departments of Central Government, Ministries of the Central Government, corporations established by or under any Central Act, Government companies, societies and local authorities owned or controlled by the Central Government shall stand transferred, alongwith its personnel, assets and liabilities to Lokpal for all purposes.

c)That Department from where any personnel have been transferred to Lokpal under sub-section (5), shall cease to have any control over the administration and functions of transferred personnel.

d)That part of Delhi Special Police Establishment, in so far as it relates to investigation and prosecution of offences alleged to have been committed under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, shall stand transferred, alongwith its employees, assets and liabilities to Lokpal for all purposes. (-- This is the anti-corruption wing of the CBI.)

This is a stroke of genius! All vigilance wings of all departments are hereafter abolished. In one fell swoop, it absolves any departmental Minister or Principal Secretary of being answerable for the wrong-doings of any other member in their department. It gives them the freedom to show the door of Lokpal whenever any instance of corruption or misconduct is brought to their notice -- with the simple excuse that 'I have no powers to investigate since my investigative wing has been dismantled. Please take your complaint to Lokpal.' If I were any such minister or secretary, I'll throw a celebratory party -- imagine what load it takes off my shoulder, and with how much peace I can go to bed now.

This is an astounding piece of invention, unbelievable in its glory! What hundreds of departments with thousands of their own dedicated staff could not achieve separately, the Lokpal will now be able to take over all of it single-handed and deliver! And you know what? -- Lokpal will be able to do it with exactly the same personnel as the departments already had over so many years, who'll now be transferred to it. That such a phenomenal transformation can be brought about simply by moving personnel from one building to another, and changing the signboard from one to another, is a discovery which political and administrative scientists should feel ashamed of for not having figured out in all these centuries.

Thank you for showing us the way, Anna -- thank you very much for this earth-changing insight!

No, wait. It's not going to be exactly the same people. Only impeccably honest personnel will be allowed into the Lokpal, remember...? I'm sure Anna will install robust 'Dishonesty Detectors' (like metal detectors) at the Lokpal entrance, and ensure that all corrupt folks from the vigilance wings can be stopped right at the door. Don't forget to patent your device Anna -- a number of our inventions are lost because of lack of awareness of the filing process.

Whom will the Lokpal be accountable to?

(1) The Chairperson of Lokpal shall present annually a consolidated report in prescribed format on its performance to the President.

(2) On receipt of the annual report, the President shall cause a copy thereof together with an explanatory memorandum to be laid before each House of the Parliament.

(3) The Lokpal shall publish every month on its website the list of cases disposed with brief details of each such case, outcome and action taken or proposed to be taken in that case. It shall also publish lists of all cases received by the Lokpal during the previous month, cases disposed and cases which are pending.

So, if I read it correctly, we're saying that the Lokpal will be accountable to its own website. I do not see a genuine value-add of the report submitted annually to the President and which is supposed to be tabled in Parliament too. It's a read-only feature, because neither the President nor the Parliament has been entrusted with any power of doing anything with the performance report other than to read it. And since it's already available on the Lokpal website on a monthly basis, by the time it reaches the President/Parliament it's already stale news.

Wouldn't other bodies too rejoice were they to be allowed this luxury? Imagine, if the government were to be accountable, not to Parliament, but to its own website, on which it'll upload its monthly performance report. Would one ever see a better performing government on this planet?

Mind-boggling isn't it? -- if appointed apparatchiks, who never have to answer anyone, could be such wonderful performers, why on earth do we have any problem at all...?

Who'll be on the selection committee for Lokpal?

The Chairpersons of both Houses of Parliament
Two senior most judges of Supreme Court
Two senior most Chief Justices of High Courts.
All Nobel Laureates of Indian Origin
Chairperson of National Human Rights Commission
Last two Magsaysay Award winners of Indian origin
Comptroller and Auditor General of India
Chief Election Commissioner
Bharat Ratna Award winners
After the first set of selection process, the outgoing members and Chairperson of Lokpal

Again, the attempt to play to the gallery is plain enough. All Nobel Laureates of Indian origin, Magsaysay Award winners (only last two, mind you) and Bharat Ratna award winners...? Have these people really expressed any desire to be on such committees? What about Dada Saheb Phalke winners, Sahitya Academy winners, Jnanpeeth Award winners, Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize winners, Olympic Medal winners, and World Champion title holders...? Why have they not been offered a pride of place on this august committee...? After all, the flag-waving swarms on the streets could only increase if these too graced the committee, isn't it...?

What'll Lokpal do with public-funded NGOs?

No mention in the draft. But verbal positions are known from Team Anna -- NGOs shouldn't be touched with a barge pole. Reason? -- the government will victimize NGOs to cover its own corruption. How does that follow, Mr Kejriwal...? Haven't you already built in enough safeguards and penalties against false allegations? The government has already proposed two years' minimum imprisonment for false complaints. If you do believe the government itself will file false complaints with Lokpal to victimize your beloved NGOs, why do you oppose that then? Shouldn't you be all for it?

The latest report of the RTI activist Shehla Masood who was killed in Bhopal last week shows that she had controversially inquired about the assets accumulated by an MP from the local ruling dispensation who runs an NGO, and she had expressly notified of a threat to her life. Just what makes NGOs so sacrosanct, Mr Kejriwal, and why should they be excluded even though they are receiving public funds? Just because some members of your team may be sitting on them?

Nevertheless, if one is interested in exploring the differences between the government draft and the Team Anna draft one can check this and this. Looking at the two drafts, they look about 85-90% the same to me. The differences are few, some of which are negotiable, and some on which there is a difference in principle. But none of it is such that merits the hullaballoo that is being perpetrated on the streets today in the name of a 'second freedom struggle'.

It's somehow being assumed that the more the number of people that you can assemble, the weightier your argument becomes. That's never true. No Justice Hegde -- you are flat out wrong. The public is not supreme. Only reason is. Never underestimate the capacity of large masses to be completely wrong and delusional in their thinking. If that weren't true, you won't see the Bengal public up in arms against and kicking Nano out, thereby destroying their own economic prospects. If that weren't true, you won't find the millions who swear that Sai Baba's bhabhoot does indeed cure all ills, no matter of what variety. If the subscription of millions were to be justification, then SpeakAsia would have indeed been the money-making opportunity of the millennium. And just because the Taliban can boast of an even bigger and more dedicated, fight-to-death clientele than even you have, doesn't mean that Islamic Fundamentalist Rule is the best form of government.

Like they say of the stock markets -- in the short run it's a popularity contest, but in the long run it's a weighing machine. It's the same of ideas and bills.

To conclude, here are the objectives we must keep in mind:

Have no illusions of removing all corruption with one law and one statutory body, no matter what its name and composition. It's a pipedream.

Don't give too large a mandate to the Lokpal. Let us first concentrate on controlling conspicuous corruption in the higher echelons of power, and only then think of levels further down. A cut-off limit at the level of Joint Secretaries as proposed by the government is a very pragmatic decision. It doesn't amount to declaring open season for all lower levels. It merely focuses the Lokpal on something that it can concentrate on and deliver. Let us eliminate 20% of the corruption first, which is in the higher executive, and then think about the remaining 80%.

Anna's bill is sweepingly ambitious, to the point of being ridiculous. It's unimplementable. It's very easy to ignore that when merely waving flags in a protest carnival. But the reality will come crashing down on you later. Without fail. Please don't invite disaster knowingly -- you'll only end up with disillusionment with one more body when reality dawns. Anna is making huge, huge overpromises. And, guess what, that's a sure recipe for huge, huge underdelivery.

The country doesn't suffer from the corruption of prime ministers. But it sure can cost a lot to the taxpayers' money to destabilize governments through motivated accusations. When Lal Krishna Advani alleges that Sonia Gandhi has Swiss-Bank accounts, he's not whistleblowing. He has merely read Wikipedia -- that's his evidence. Don't bring the country to a boil on a point which has no practical significance. While there is no doubt that not including the sitting PM does indeed reduce the moral weight of the bill, there are still many across the political spectrum who have valid arguments for keeping the PM excluded. Let's just park this debate for a later point and move on. It doesn't merit a standoff of the kind Anna is creating.

On the question of the CBI, even Anna's bill has asked for only one division of the CBI to be brought under its control -- the anti-corruption division. The CBI has six other divisions within its fold -- Economic Offences Division, Special Crimes Division, Directorate of Prosecution, Administration Division, Policy & Coordination Division and Central Forensic Science Laboratory. Those remaining ones continuing to be under government supervision is not under dispute. The government has already proposed a fresh new investigative agency entirely under the Lokpal. Just what is wrong with that? In the worst case, are you ok if you are given the used-car in the form of the existing CBI anti-corruption wing, and the government gets a new car in the form of a freshly constituted one to backfill the outgoing one? It doesn't make any difference to my eyes, but if you are going to keep crying over it, please negotiate with the government and get your lollipop.

And no, there is no question of the judiciary being brought under any kind of non-judicial control. Whatever problems they have, they'll have to be equipped on their own to deal with it. Please provide inputs for the Judicial Administrative Reforms bill, if you have any concrete, substantial proposals.

The Lokpal can only be an investigative and prosecuting agency. It cannot pass any verdicts. Only the independent Special Court designated for the Lokpal will have the power to deliver a verdict. That'll without fail have to be subject to appeal in a higher court. The people of India have no need for any kala kanoons. Please don't mislead them by proposing and advocating such things. The Lokpal will be under the High Court and the Supreme Court, and never the other way round.

You are not doing away with retail corruption till there is limited resources, and innumerable hands to lay demand on those limited resources. Please wake up to the fact. If you want to solve the problem, reduce the hands and increase the resource creation and utilization. There is no other way. The rest is all cheap showmanship.

In the meantime, go for strong bodies but which'll work collaboratively and produce some results instead of needless and time-wasting clashes. Don't root for Greg Chappell-esque solutions. A huge number of people had gloated that Chappell was the right medicine that Indian cricket infested with the so-called cancers of that time needed. Don't forget the outcome. And don't forget the latest to happen.

Think solutions. Not emotions.

Please don't assume that oceans of protesters landing on streets adds even a fig to the real weight of Anna's proposals. They have good company in the form of a convicted murderer like Pappu Yadav who too has started a fast unto death for Anna inside the jail. Kalmadi and Raja too would soon want to join the bandwagon. The multitudes that are descending on the streets are doing so because they've figured out it's a free lunch. There's no cost to it, and they get relieved of corruption automagically. Corruption is not a symptom of the lack of anti-corruption laws. It's an invention that Indians have made in their infinite capacity for jugaad. It emerges from the same wellspring.

The government needs to show spine. It must not buckle down under this blackmail, no matter what the consequences. Fasting to death repeatedly is no manner of democratic dialogue.There is no dialogue here, anyway -- it's a one-way monologue by Anna. Just like when faced with an airplane hijack the best policy is to refuse to engage the hijackers, even if you may incur loss of lives, similarly, if someone wants to hijack the due political and legislative process by threatening endless street agitations, the government must not genuflect. If that means fall of the government, well, then so be it. It's important to retain authority, not merely power. If Anna threatens a further countrywide agitation to bring down the government unless his version of the bill is accepted -- just call his bluff. Let him go ahead. And mobilize for a political counterattack. Not the kind of puerile personal attack that you've recently resorted to, but an organized and massive political counterattack. If fasting is allowed legitimacy today, tomorrow someone may also say that unless his demands are accepted in toto, he'll do indefinite sheershana. Day after somebody may claim his democratic right to indefinitely walk on hot charcoal to get his way. And the next day, somebody will claim his democratic right to commit suicide to get his demands met, like so many Telangana agitators, and earlier anti-reservation agitators. Such things are completely in defiance of democracy and must not be legitimized in any way. By all means negotiate and be accommodative of reasonable demands, but don't capitulate. If you be a wimp, be prepared to forever be run over in the future too.

Corruption isn't there despite 95% being against it, as it's being bandied about. It exists because a very large majority of Indians do want it, and actively promote it. You won't be able to figure that out if you ask the wrong questions. If you ask -- 'Are you in favor of corruption?' -- the answer is a no-brainer. If you really want to know the real story, here's what you should be asking (representative answers included):

Do you find it awfully bothersome to face the exceedingly long queues that you have to face in every sphere of life? --Yes.

Do you think it wastes a lot of time, creates a lot of trouble, and causes a huge amount of inconvenience? --Yes.

Would you appreciate having a way to circumvent this queue so that you can really put the short life that you have to more productive and pleasurable use? --Of course.

Would you mind incurring a small, very affordable expense to avail of this facility, if it were to be offered to you? --Think not.

There is a name for a cure for all ills. It's called: snake oil. Anna is selling it by the truckloads on Ramlila Ground at a great price (free). Don't miss out on your share!

Kashmir - A Failure of Imagination

2010-09-20T04:38:00.005+05:30

A numbing sensation of bewilderment and helplessness overwhelms the nation as every passing day brings news of further lengthening of the death toll in the Kashmir valley. Over one hundred dead since the disturbance erupted three months ago, and it'll only be a miracle if that is the last word we have heard on it. A hundred needless deaths -- deaths which should have been preventable at least ninety-percent of the time. Though everybody is grieving, both in and out of the valley, nobody seems to have any clue as to what can be done, or should have been done, to put a lid on it. The only thing one gets to hear are flogging of the dead horses, regurgitations of the same age-old positions -- 'constitutional framework' on the part of the Indian administration, 'self-determination' on the part of the separatists -- with the inevitable outcome being the continuing logjam, and the flowing blood. The distrust between the parties is at its peak, nervous stability at its lowest, the urge to continue to pander to one's own local constituencies regardless of what the situation today demands ruling the roost. There is complete paralysis on the matter of trying to carve out a creative solution -- something which can only be achieved by agreeing to yield on one's stated grounds. The thing uppermost on everyone's minds is fear - the fear of backlash from the home constituency in case one even so much as budges a little. And that fear is what plunges the situation inexorably on its downward spiral.

A number of Indians will actually be puzzled as to what was the trigger for all of this to start. It was not as if some catastrophe happened which caused everybody to be up in arms, protesting on the streets with stone-throwing. In fact, a new government was sworn in barely two years back, with an expression of democratic power witnessed in the overthrowing of the previous PDP-INC government. More than 60% of the electorate actually voted, higher than the national average, in what was widely acknowledged to be fair elections. People defied calls by the separatist Hurriyat Conference to boycott the elections, as also threats by militants. The separatists seemed to be on a downward slide, with erosion of influence markedly evident. Though, post facto, they had tried to reclaim face by declaring that people voted only on local matters of everyday governance, and not on the question of azaadi, on which their support is based. India had urged the Hurriyat to participate in the elections, and to form the government if they win. The Hurriyat excused itself. Not for the first time. They have always claimed to be the true representatives of the people, but haven't on a single occasion established what their support base is in an election - that is beneath their dignity to do. Kashmir seemed to be on the way to normalcy after the elections, with militancy largely shorn, large masses of tourists restarting their visits, the agricultural economy improving. Then all of a sudden, the protests started, weren't paid due attention, kept flaring up, and then got caught in a vicious cycle of stone-pelting and arsoning protesters, deaths in police firing, and then further violent protests.

The seed for the protests was the killing of three Kashmiri youths in an alleged fake encounter in Kupwara in June. It's perfectly legitimate for people to protest if indeed such a gross violation occurs. Some months back too there were televised reports of three ordinary civilian youths picked up on suspicion of being militants, taken to remote forests and about to be killed in a fake encounter when an army officer himself intervened and freed them. These are criminal incidents, and even if the army soldiers were involved, who normally risk their lives in fighting armed militants and the steady stream of Pakistan-pushed infiltrators, these cannot be overlooked. These encounters are completely arbitrary and illegal. They should have been met with the full force of law, as murders or attempted murders, and vigorously prosecuted. The transgressions of a few besmirch the entire nation, and in fact undoes all the good work the security forces do under trying circumstances. Instead, the government merely drags its feet, constitutes some eyewash commissions, and normally waits for the people to just forget it in time. And that is what stokes the fires which finally burn on the streets. If only people would learn the merits of putting a stitch in time...

However, it'll not be very fair to heap all blame on the Omar Abdullah government for the current crisis, though he has evidently become everybody's favorite whipping boy. From the very beginning, when the deaths could still be counted on one hand, he was issuing appeals to all political parties to help build a political environment for de-escalating tensions, instead of adding fuel to the fire. But the PDP was steadfast in its opposition, in and out of the Legislative Assembly, and looked hell-bent upon not losing the opportunity to malign the National Conference government. Mehbooba Mufti probably never wanted the deaths to be so high in number, but she definitely wanted to milk the early few ones to the maximum effect, to prop up her own fortunes, after having been roundly beaten at the last hustings. In fact, this kind of brinkmanship is hardly a new phenomenon. We have seen that already in Bengal, with Mamata Banerjee cocking a snook at ordinary civilians lives, instigating them to violence in Nandigram so that she could reap the political rewards of any deaths that happen in police firing. No less than nineteen lives were lost there too, with weeks of charged atmosphere ensuing, but Mamata's fortunes steadily climbed. Evidently, the lesson was not lost out on others across the nation.

Of course, for the separatists this has come as a windfall. After seeing the ground slip beneath their feet in most steady fashion, they suddenly can hog all the limelight again, as the messiahs of human rights, and the sentiment of Azaadi. Never mind that till a few years ago they were fighting among themselves, and even shooting each other down for taking a softer stance with respect to India. Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone was shot dead by militants for favoring a peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue, through a negotiated settlement and internal autonomy -- a fate shared by many other leaders too sharing the same set of opinions. Today his son Sajjad Lone blames the Government of India for not granting Azaadi, which forced the militants to shoot down his father. Never assume that ridiculousness knows any bounds in the political arena.

Everybody has an axe to grind here. And that axe is being ground on the heads of the ordinary citizens of Kashmir. It would be plain to anybody with any shred of sense that stone-throwing, burning government vehicles and buildings, and facing police reprisals leading to deaths would help solve no problem at all. But that'd assume that what is being sought is a solution. That, unfortunately, is quite far from the reality. In fact, the calculation is that the unrest should continue and proliferate at least till President Obama visits India next month, so that international attention can be focussed on Kashmir. The same phenomenon was observed on the eve of President Clinton's visit to India as well, one decade back. Violence had escalated, and in one incident on the day of his arrival, thirty-six Sikhs were massacred in Kashmir by the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Which brings to focus the fact that Kashmir is a political problem that needs to be solved and not merely kept pending. The Indian state has to acknowledge this and not merely stay caught up in its own self-delusion that Kashmir is like any other Indian state. If large masses of people refuse to accept themselves as citizens of India, and make it their fundamental grievance, you've got to heed it. Either take steps to get Kashmiris on board of their own volition, or give them the right to self-determination as they want. For how long can you make people stay at gunpoint? Talking of "constitutional framework" achieves merely one thing -- scuttling the chances of having a meaningful dialogue with the separatists -- with the only result that the sentiments of alienation are kept simmering forever, ready to be exploited at every opportunity. The basic premise of negotiating your way out of a situation is that you've got to be prepared to yield something, in exchange for something else. Parking away this ruse of "constitutional framework" is a small price to pay. Just hold dialogue, keeping aside any other considerations as secondary. Doesn't mean that you cannot still do things perfectly within the limits of the Indian Constitution, provided you're a skillful negotiator. What is to be achieved by merely going to town about it, thereby just making it an insurmountable impediment to dialogue?

Acceding to this demand doesn't mean you've allowed the state to secede. That's still a very far way off. Geopolitics doesn't get resolved overnight. Even China does not attack Taiwan to reclaim what it calls its own territory, but is prepared to wait. But it can buy you a promise of shunning all forms of violence till the negotiations are over. Utilize that time for a vigorous political and developmental offensive, demilitarize the area and let the people breathe a bit easier. That in fact will help the people of Kashmir to gather their wits, and think rationally about where their future lies. And then suddenly the prospect of Azaadi may not look all that rosy to them.

Practically speaking, Kashmir has no option but to remain a part of India. Even a fool can see that joining Pakistan is the road going straight down to hell. With Kashmir having hardly an economy of its own, and Pakistan's own economy on the brink of collapse, saved only by the perpetual oxygen supplied by the West in the form of aid, who is going to foot the bill of Kashmir's development? And once they sit down to reflect, with no other agitation of the mind, it'll not be lost out on them what the condition of Indian-emigrant Mohajir Muslims is over there, and the kind of treatment they get. And as bad as the situation today in Kashmir is, you still have your telephone lines working. Just pick up the phone, and talk to your brethren in PoK to know how they are enjoying over there. And an indepedent Kashmir nation is practically a pipedream -- you can last about fifteen minutes before being served a notice by China that it's all Chinese territory based on some twist of history. Pakistan has already bargained Kashmiri land with China in exchange of nuclear weapons, in the shape of Aksai Chin. And won't bat another eyelid before sacrificing the rest of Kashmir too for more. With Chinese settlers pouring in -- see Tibet -- there goes your Kashmiriyat.

There is a long-standing feeling of grievance in Kashmir. And very bold steps will have to be taken to assuage it. It has to be driven home loud and clear first of all that Kashmiris enjoy the same rights in India as any other Indian citizen. The claims of a parallel with British rule in India have to be roundly rebuffed. Just last year the top ranker in the Indian civil service was a Kashmiri doctor (whose father incidentally was killed by militants). If he continues to do well, he may well rise to be the Cabinet Secretary of India - the topmost bureaucratic position. It'll not happen tomorrow, he'll have to put in a couple of decades of stellar service before that happens, just like any other incumbent. Mehbooba Mufti's father himself has been a Home Minister at the center - not the Home Minister of Kashmir mind you, the Home Minister of India -- ostensibly the second most powerful political post after the Prime Minister. And if a good enough poltical leader emerges from Kashmir tomorrow, he may well rise to be the Prime Minister of India too. Nobody from the rest of India will have even the slightest of objection to it. So where is the parallel with British rule? Were Indians allowed to head the British Government? And the Congress and other freedom-fighting parties always swept whatever polls were held in India. When have we seen the Hurriyat winning even a municipal election?

India has already seen militancy and secessionism of the same kind in Punjab earlier. But it took the successive elected governments, and the stellar service of top cop KPS Gill to quash it. At the peak of the Khalistan movement, many if not most aggrieved Punjabis too would have voted for Azaadi, especially after the anti-Sikh riots after Indira Gandhi's assassination. But after Manmohan Singh's ascension to the PM's job, I guess there are zero takers today for the idea of an independent Khalistan. India was fortunate in some ways that a person of Manmohan Singh's caliber appeared on the scene, who helped in thoroughly burying the sentiments of grievance on the part of the Sikhs. Not all feeling of injustice -- evidently a lot needs to be done still to bring the perpetrators of the Sikh pogrom to justice, but at least the grievance against the Indian state has been quelled. Gyani Zail Singh has been President already, but then everybody knows that that's only ceremonial, not the real center of power.

It'll probably need a Kashmiri as the Indian Prime Minister to do the same trick there too. Of course, people may remind that the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru himself was a Kashmiri, but apparently, it does not cut because he was not a Muslim. So having a Muslim Kashmiri at the top job may kill two birds with one stone (no pun intended!) -- assuage the Kashmiris, and also reassure the rest of the Muslims in India that they too have got their due, and are being treated fairly and equally. Time for the Indian political establishment to give it a serious thought. If not the PM, at least a President should come from Kashmir. Symbolism has its value -- having a woman as the President for the first time in Indian history has apparently gone down well with my mother. (Though I wonder why it should, given that Indira Gandhi has already been PM, but then...)

It may well be that the obnoxiousness of everyday life under constant military and paramilitary presence, and curbing of civil liberties, is what is getting translated to the calls of Azaadi in Kashmir. The steady stream of deaths also adds to the repugnance. India must take steps to push all army towards the border, and scrap all arbitrary powers that violate fundamental rights. It's one thing to have special powers for a short duration, and another to have them ad infinitum. The same needs to be done in the Northeast too. However, the people of the state too must help to make that a reality. And not give in to clever exploitation in the form of orchestrated protests which probably do serve some people like Geelani, who apparently can't imagine Muslims living under Hindus, and is waiting for his day in the paradise of Pakistan, but does little for improving the lives and lots of the ordinary Kashmiri. They have to see through the designs of those who are intercepted as talking on the telephone as needing 'at least fifteen martyrs today' when the death toll was still four or five. Yes you paid with your lives, but who gained, did you? If not, who did...?

However, if at the end of the day Kashmiris still don't want to be part of India, then they should be allowed to have a referendum and go away if they desire. But with it having been made clear that don't come to us when you face the next invasion from a foreign army. And please, hereafter take care of all your other bills too (paid in your own shining currency if you please, which you so desire). You can't have your cake, and eat it too. India will have to take care of sealing the borders down the line in that scenario, for then the aggression posts will shift. And no, you are not taking Jammu and Ladakh with you too -- those people definitely call themselves Indian citizens. And if instead of a hundred deaths in three months of police firing, you start seeing so many deaths in every weekly suicide attack, do well to remember that you chose it on your own. Oh yeah, you resent the fact that the Indian government sends the army. Cool, go to Pakistan and have the army send you the government.

As they say, one should beware of what one wishes for. For one may get it, and then live to regret it more.

Rolling Stones Gather Animus...?

2010-07-01T04:10:00.004+05:30

That certainly has been the case for General Stanley McChrystal the last week. Having served for about a year as the head of the NATO led operations in Afghanistan -- a task which he carried out with much distinction -- he found himself at the gathering end of a freak 'article' in the Rolling Stone magazine, which was somehow made up to be his declaration of open defiance of the civilian leadership. President Obama duly bowed to the pressure of the chatterati, and fired the general to reassert "civilian supremacy over the armed forces". He thus hoped to make his prowess of "decisiveness" known to the public.

Except that it was only a display of decisiveness in playing to the gallery. Perhaps the President didn't bother to ask himself -- What are the criteria to qualify a general for his position, and whether writing magazine articles that sing high praises of the civilian talking heads is one of them? Should the continuance or otherwise of a captain be decided by whether he can rally his men around, and deliver the goods, or by whether he can show his selectors in good light in every interview he gives?

The President paid no heed to the cries from everyone who's on the ground, who clamored for McChrystal's continuance. And that included fellow NATO commanders of all hues and the Afghan President Karzai himself. In a situation where the NATO troop presence is severely detested by the Afghan populace, Gen. McChrystal showed remarkable sensitivity to the sufferings and losses of the Afghan civilians, even at the cost of making himself unpopular with his own troops. That Karzai in fact argued for McChrystal, showed how well the general has been walking this difficult tightrope.

It'd have been easy for Karzai to heap the blame of any civilian casualties on the NATO leader, castigate him at every opportunity, and shore up his own popularity among the Afghans by claiming the high, people's-leader ground. As it'd have been easy for McChrystal to allow his troops to shoot at will anyone under suspicion. That would have looked like minimizing his own casualties, and won him greater plaudits among the American masses, who are reeling from their own losses. Sure, that would have botched up the situation further, but it would hardly look so, from a political correctness point of view. After all, it's common perception among American masses that there is nothing to be gained out of the expensive and bleeding misadventure. And the soldiers themselves would like nothing better than being ordered by the civilian masters to pack up and return home. Contributing to the failure of the mission while looking perfectly unimpeachable would have been easy for the general. Just follow what the political masters say to the letter, and let them be the one to dig themselves into a hole.

But that's not what the general did. Instead, he made it a point to keep meeting Afghan leaders and commoners, hearing out their grievances and apologizing for any excesses that happened. He also articulated a stricter code of conduct for operations in civilian areas, for being respectful towards the local residents, and to cap nighttime raids which were thoroughly resented by the people. Karzai's brother often invited him to explain policy in Afghan bodies. And the general also did have to explain his policies to his own troops which didn't quite understand why the general wants to endanger their own lives by advocating restraint. He faced allegations for not caring about his own men's lives. To which the general responded by going out on combat missions himself with his men. Even before Afghanistan, he had headed Special Ops in Iraq where he himself had been on the ground on many a mission to eliminate terrorist insurgents -- quite unusual for a commander of his rank. He wasn't quite used to being an armchair policymaker and talking head. And that indeed proved to be his undoing in the end. For it left him blindsided and vulnerable to media gaffes. He didn't learn the first principle of career growth -- what matters is what you say, not what you do.

For all his merits, General McChrystal proved to be a poor career manager. He should have taken a few lessons from his erstwhile commander Karl Eikenberry, who also served in Afghanistan a few years back. He got himself promoted very well, dons his military outfit no more, proved himself capable of "higher responsibilities", and is now serving as Ambassador to Afghanistan. He's safely out of the dangerous activities now, and concentrates more on writing performance appraisals of the likes of General McChrystal, expressing disapproval of his methods in secret missives to the government (which are also sometimes leaked very auspiciously). It's another matter that he's not even on talking terms with Karzai and others in the Afghan government, who simply loathe him. He makes a better career out of spreading the message of freedom and democracy among the Afghans, as desired by his bosses, and declaring that Karzai is not quite a suitable ally for the United States. As an Ambassador he has taken upon himself to educate the Afghans on how to elect a leader who can be a better and more reliable ally for the United States. A better ally would free up the NATO forces and allow them to return home, presumably furnishing Eikenberry his next round of promotion, once accomplished. One hears that Eikenberry was dissatisfied at not being made the Viceroy to Afghanistan, instead of merely the American Ambassador, a post which would have given him the political overseer capacity for the entire NATO presence. Eikenberry need not be disheartened. If he writes his magazine articles well, and makes sure that his stones don't roll too much, he'll pretty soon be rewarded.

And what did McChrystal do? Whoa, he asked for thirty thousand additional troops. Troops whom he wanted to indulge not in lethal ops (and deliver a quick victory!), but to act as security forces in policing the Afghan provinces. His counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, formulated with General Petraeus himself, another four-star general who now replaces him, instead calls for a prolonged engagement, where the military does not just do combat duty, but also "lights up the lamps" by building infrastructure, overseeing electricity and water supply, and helping to raise the Afghan army and paramilitary forces to the size of a couple of hundred thousand each. It's a huge wastage of American taxpayer money, when he cannot even guarantee a victory at the end of it. Nay, by all indications, everybody in America is convinced that they are actually losing the war in Afghanistan. And here is this nasty, arrogant general, who just lives in the barracks, and knows nothing about media-management, diplomatic and political finesse, the economy, or public sentiment and tells the President in unequivocal terms that the Afghan mission is gonna fail if another thirty thousand troops are not sent in. What if not outrageous is this! A man in uniform, who sleeps four hours a day and runs seven miles every morning, and doing nothing but fighting a losing war -- is he the one to tell Joe Biden and John Kerry what military strategy to follow? Are these such trivialities as can be decided in the trenches instead of on the dinner tables and high-powered conferences?

Was McChrystal fired for his incompetence whether in formulating the right strategy or in its execution? President Obama has himself said that the policies are going to continue just the same way. So it's not a question of the COIN (counterinsurgency) strategy that McChrystal advocated. Indeed it was formulated by General Petraeus himself, another distinguished general, who had quite a lot of success with it in Iraq. The generals having fought for years have recognized very well the nature of this beast -- that it's no longer winnable by laser-guided-munition and indiscriminate use of lethal force. As General McChrystal says, for every innocent killed you give birth to ten more enemies. Which compounds the problem ten more times. As ready example, he quotes that the Russians killed a million in Afghanistan, but could do nothing more than leave the place in disgrace.

And if it were a question of his failure to execute the strategy that was approved by the political leadership of Obama, then he should have been thrown out much earlier. But so far there hasn't been a single accusation that the general failed to be a leader of his men. In fact, that a retinue of military commanders are expected to quit in solidarity with General McChrystal shows that he was well-respected and well-loved by his team.

So all he was fired for is the publication of an article by a sneaky journalist, who simply indulged in breach of trust by laying bare what was pretty clearly insider talk, never meant to be on record. Put on record what the political classes say about each other in private, and soon you'll have to dismiss the entire senate. That is, if you agree to discount what the political classes say even on record, on national television -- things which are of a far viler and meaner nature than what General McChrystal and his fellow officers said to each other, oblivious to the dangers of having an alien eavesdropping on them. Lesson for General Petraeus now: next time a third-party is around (or even when not around), make it a point to declare ad-infinitum that it's the vision of the boss that you hold dearest and believe in most (after Christ, if you please).

If somebody wants to say that those utterances by the General amounts to challenging civilian control of the military, then that person must have very poor self-esteem. Indeed, that the General immediately called up every civilian leader who was mentioned, and apologized unconditionally without trying to explain or extenuate things, and offering to resign, shows amply that the General was never in defiance of the principle of civilian control. The singular mistake here is confusing the chair with its occupant, a confusion which the occupant will only be too willing to promote.

Not to suggest that the General was at no fault whatsoever. It's very dangerous to allow access to a reporter to inner circles. He could very well be a spy, and from the enemy camp. That is a serious slip-up. But that some bitching over beer at the end of a frustrating day amounts to defiance of civilian control is nothing but a bagful of hot air. Except that in General McChrystal's case, the storm in the beer-glass was enough to blow him over.

And what really did Obama's "decisiveness" buy? He simply disturbed the already tumultuous situation in Afghanistan over what is essentially a complete non-issue. Now with the flux in the ranks of the commanders, General Petraeus would have it difficult to get the stones (err..ball) rolling again. It'll also improve the morale of the Taliban and lower that of his own men. If you doubt that, check whether any team revels in the discomfiture of the opponent captain or not. If Obama was really in control of the situation, he'd have got a younger leader in place -- someone more capable, and likely to deliver better. That'd show whether he was aware of the talent available within his ranks. Obama showed none of it. He simply had to go back to the old-hand Petraeus! So much for Obama's selection capability! And what indeed is General Petraeus expected to do now -- do the same as McChrystal was doing, with greater political correctness? And what if the day he lands in Afghanistan he gets blown up by a Taliban suicide squad? Will his team be up to the chase two wickets down? Since when has war become a matter of niceties?

If Obama wanted to be really decisive, he should have simply said that my job doesn't allow me the luxury of having the time to read Rolling Stone. I know what's going on in Afghanistan, and General McChrystal and his men are doing sterling service. It's a difficult and stressful job, and every soldier out there deserves our full backing, so that they can concentrate on the job at hand, and that includes soldier McChrystal too. When the general has to be removed, and if he has to be removed, is for me to decide, not the media. Right now he's doing what I asked him to do, and doing it well -- other things don't matter. And he could have called McChrystal aside and told him -- don't let this indiscretion happen again. Thirty minutes of private talk was not needed -- twenty seconds would have been enough.

That would have been decisiveness. That would have shown that he knows where the bull's eye is, and would not let egos deflect his attention. A commander's job is to put his men before himself. McChrystal knew that -- we don't hear him firing his junior officers for insubordination when they question his COIN strategy. He explains at length, and joins them in their work. Obama, sadly, proved himself unaware of the principle.

There are two grounds for dismissal -- incompetence, and lack of integrity. Of which the former deserves a second chance, and the latter none. Neither was present in General McChrystal's case.

And if Obama really wanted a change of guard, and McChrystal was not up to the task, he should have found out who the best man is from lower down the ranks, and given him charge. Like Roosevelt did before the second World-War picking up George Marshall bypassing several other seniors. (And Marshall in turn dug out Dwight Eisenhower.)

Obama's decision is the second blunder of his presidentship. The first was when he ordered fire to be opened on Somali pirates who had captured an American merchant-navalite. They were only pirates that far, who were after ransom money. In getting them killed Obama gave them the motivation to become murderers, next time they captured another American. Needless to say, Obama is in no position to guarantee the security of trader navymen on the vast expanses of the seas.

There is a very thin line between decisiveness and foolhardiness. A good batsman stays indecisive and plays his shot late, having judged well both the nature of the pitch, and the nature of the delivery. Those who play premeditated shots never last long. Let's wait to see how it unfolds, now that change has come also to Afghanistan.

Indian Politics Comes A Full Circle

2009-05-18T00:51:00.013+05:30

Pollsters again came second in the game of guessing the mind of the Indian electorate. The prophecies of neck-and-neck photofinishes with Third umpires holding sway, all melted in the swelter of the summer of 2009. All would-be PMs turned out wouldn't-be's, except the one who would be! Some dreams came crashing, some got exposed to be the daydreams that they were, and some got what they couldn't even dream. Thus unfolded the drama of the dreams of a people aspiring to democratic bliss.

Well, take a bow, India! The democracy keeps taking baby steps forward toward eliminating its flaws and deficiencies, hoping for the strides to happen some day. The stolen footages of captured booths and serial-stamping by goons have been largely conspicuous by their absence. The electronic voting machines (EVMs) didn't tank in India, though they had in Norway a few weeks ago necessitating a return to paper ballots, despite being deployed on a scale a hundred times larger here. Remember that those were not made in China -- a resounding testimony to India's manufacturing prowess, what say! From the fumbling footsteps of Peri Sastry in the late eighties, to the strident swagger of T. N. Seshan in the nineties, to the tangled tango of Gopalaswamy-Chawla in the Y2K9s-- the frowning degeneration of the Election Commission (and the electoral process it oversees), has given way to a reassuringly smiling regeneration.

A successful completion of the quintennial national festival whose popularity transcends all social, religious, and political divisions. A sense of relief and happiness in the midst of dire situations on all sides of the border -- with Pakistan a cauldron, Nepal a dogfight-house teetering on the brink of militancy, Bangladesh in the grip of mutinous brutalities stoked by fundamentalists, and Srilanka trying to douse the flames of a long-standing civil-war resulting in a grim humanitarian situation. A stable India, as mandated by the current election results, can be the only antidote to the dangerous situation all around, and act as a regional as well as global stabilizer.

As much as there are sighs of relief over the certainty after the results, through the run up to it, it was just a nightmare. Internal security in the doldrums thanks to the dismal inefficiency of the policing and intelligence apparatus which resulted in terrorist attacks becoming a monthly affair, political debate nosediving to personal slanging matches, every second leader aspiring to be a kingmaker if not king, the tearing pulls of social and regional divisions in all directions, neighborhood Talibanic menace threatening to plunge us into a deadly battle with medievalists, parties resembling molecular Brownian Motion as to their allegiances and alliances, the economy gradually getting infected with the crippling global flus and salvaging measures in the danger of being turned turtle through the efforts of bankrupt ideologues frozen in time -- it had all the makings of an impending Greek tragedy. There was widespread anticipation of a looming second election within another year because of the ruptured nature of the polity. It's a tribute to the sagacity of the electorate that it circumvented the pitfalls, to present a cohesive face and allowing the rollout of a resolute response to the challenges in a united manner.

For the first time in four or five general elections one party has got a 200+ strength in a house of 543, and a pre-poll alliance has got within striking distance of a majority on its own. Otherwise, people were getting habituated to the sights of minority governments running from pillar to post, conceding to the armtwisting of criminal elements who made it to the Lok Sabha, and forging understandings with strange bedfellows who'd support from outside and subvert from inside. With the Congress-led UPA bucking the trends and gaining near-majority, the electorate has mandated a return to a strong center, clipping the wings of fragmentary forces.

Was it all by design? I'd probably prefer to hold that back. Certainly there is a perceptible thrust towards a unified response-system (read government). An element of conscious choice is evidently there. But it was also a happenstance, of certain things coming together in unexpected ways at unexpected times, some perhaps even through the seasonality of things. Let's look at some of those factors.

The foremost was the return of the Muslim vote to the Congress coffers after almost a decade-and-half. The Muslim vote had largely deserted the Congress in the seatwise-numerically-significant Hindi heartland states after the Babri Masjid demolition. Although the handiwork of fundamentalist forces and their political front-piece, the BJP, the Muslims in large numbers held the Congress to be significantly responsible for it, and its riotous consequences. The Muslim votebank had drifted towards all and sundry, who masqueraded as the saviors of Muslims, albeit only to cynically exploit them and other socially backward classes, in order to hide their ability to deliver on the governance front. The Lalus and Mulayams of the world had a field day banking on this sentiment, conveniently using their social-engineering prowess to keep their developmental failures and widespread corruption under the carpet.

Muslims acually realized that their allowing themselves to be taken for a ride and backing of fragmentary forces (read incompetent regional parties) was actually backfiring on two fronts -- first, it was depriving them of good governance and development, perpetuating and worsening their underdog status, and second, it was facilitating the upsurge of the same forces which threatened them the most. They'd probably still have remained divided, were it not for the openly threatening posture of a rookie BJP contestant just before the elections who saw his route to glory through demagoguery. That was probably the last straw which made the Muslims shake off their indecisiveness and cluelessness, and return to the Congress fold.

The second reason was that it providentially became the final moment of disenchantment with the Left of the people in Bengal, who had bolstered it for three long decades. The Left had scored resoundingly even as close as a couple of years back and returned to power in the state. They had two things to thank for their endless rule despite the absence of anything that can be called as overwhelming support -- i) deft electoral engineering which made sure that their minimal one-percent lead in vote share was enough to decimate the opposition who fought among (and against) each other, and ii) a party machinery which held a vice-like grip on all institutions, forcing people to toe the party line for illusory favors, and also using largescale electoral malpractices, intimidation and violence to distort the electoral outcome. With progressive improvement in oversight and policing leading to the elections becoming freer and fairer, and ultimately the opposition parties joining hands, they bridged the one-percent gap, and the Left citadel crumbled. This brought a straight 30+ seats to the UPA. "Inside" seats, rather than disruptive "outside support" that it had been in the last house.

The third was the disharmony within the ranks of the parties in opposition of the UPA. They lost a lot of ground because of the internal squabbles, whereas for a long time they were the beneficiary of the exact same phenomenon within the Congress ranks, which had been going to the last few polls fighting both against their main opponent (BJP, Left, TDP, SAD etc) and also against a local, "Disgruntled Congress" (with different names). The BJP had gained a lot because of this phenomenon, in many cases by themselves aligning with the disgruntled elements. This time around, it became payback time for the BJP/Sena who were undercut in a significant way through their own dissidents like MNS in Maharashtra, Kalyan Singh in UP, and perhaps through Keshubhai Patel in Gujarat. Factionalism in the Rajasthan unit also contributed to a large extent to the BJP getting routed there. Widespread differences amongst their national executives, in full glare of the media, also exposed their fissures, which despite a patch-up job later, could not really redeem the lost ground at the grassroots. Similarly, a hopelessly divided Left house in Kerala also helped the Congress romp home.

To add to their disharmony was also their directionlessness. The BJP never really could digest that they got defeated in 2004 after being in power for six years. They convinced themselves that it was an aberration, caused largely by their own overconfidence rather than the electorate rejecting them or their opponents outdoing them, and always thought that their rightful place was in the treasury benches rather than the opposition ones. They approached parliamentary proceedings with the motivation of a player dropped from the national side and forced to play domestic cricket. For three years they simply boycotted every session in sight on one frivolous ground after another, and believed that the role of the opposition is merely to badmouth those in power, many times in the vilest language possible. Just like a player who ascribes his dismissals to poor umpiring and bad luck refuses to see any reason to improve his technique, the BJP too believed that all it had to do was show up on the pitch once more, and a hundred was guaranteed. If only...

The BJP has never understood that it suffers from serious inadequacies. Nay, it sees its inadequacies as its USP. To start with, it rests on a very narrow support base -- the Hindu insecure voter. It unendingly panders to the same clientele, which, while it does keep it as a core, committed votebank, does nothing to expand the popular support base. In fact, it alienates wide sections of the people, and parties, who become determined to keep their communally divisive policies at bay. The BJP has failed to realize that its customer base has hit a ceiling, and unless it can attract newer customers by offering a newer menu, it's doomed to stagnation and gradual contraction, because the core customers too would get jaded with the old offering. Can somebody tell what new shots the BJP has learnt in five years? They are still playing i) POTA ii) personal attacks (first against Sonia and this time against Manmohan Singh iii) black money (which is basically Bofors repackaged). They were so short of a programme to offer, that they decided to jump on to the opportunity presented by the terrible Mumbai terrorist attacks, by placing full-page vote-seeking ads in the newspapers the very next day. Their declared programme for the first hundred days in office is -- hold your breath -- hanging Afzal Guru.

The other opposition parties too were equally bankrupt in terms of their offering. The Left is selling -- hold your breath again -- anti-imperialism. No wonder, everybody's salivating -- they could as well sell dhotis in a fashion show. Prakash Karat's invention of an "all-stick, no carrot" policy on the nuclear deal proved quite par for the crash. He also had the blockbuster idea of creating a "We are all Prime Ministers" club as the Third Front, which saw the electorate running for cover. TDP offered a "cash-transfer-scheme", overturning the milleania-old wisdom of a government taking money from those it rules. He promised that he has developed a secret formula for paying everyone money every month, if he's brought to power. People saw through this quackery as a cure for their ailments...

The fourth incidental cause was probably the most unexpected one -- economic growth and rural prosperity. A large number of politicians and parties who made hay on the issue of reservation of government jobs, have in this election seen their support eroding siginificantly. A strong contributor to this could be the availability of alternate means of employment, mostly engendered by economic reforms, higher crop support prices, and things like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Rural prosperity is reflected in things like sales of motorbikes, and consumer goods, which has bucked the economic downturn. So a sizable votebank which was probably going the fragmentary way a decade back has probably now gone mainstream with the Congress.

Anyway, the new government with its newfound strength has its task cut out. It has to tackle economic issues resolutely by bringing in reforms, beef up the internal security apparatus, work towards a greater spread of prosperity among all sections of the people, give boost to infrastructure in a huge way, and strengthen cooperation with other countries towards the resolution of global challenges -- economic, geopolitical and environmental. Complacency and arrogance emanating from unbridled power must be religiously kept at a distance -- the electorate is unforgiving, otherwise. Fetters removed, nobody will brook excuses any more, either.

What about the opposition? The BJP has a responsibility to give the nation a credible alternative. Every democracy needs a viable alternative. But the alternative has to be such as will be acceptable to all quarters and not merely to its core, fanatical constituency. It hardly has much time, though. If the new central government keeps performing like Shiela Dixit's, the BJP will soon discover that warming the reserve bench is the recipe for taking the flight back home. It has to stop its Gandhaari act, and smell the coffee. Else it'll pretty soon have to wind up and make way for an altogether different dispensation as the national alternative. If a house wants to rest on just one pillar, it's only so tall it can be.

Will the BJP be able to reinvent itself and expand its appeal? Or will it remain stuck in its Adv-ennui-itva?

The Greatest Inferiority Complex On Earth?

2008-11-29T11:27:00.010+05:30

The imperative for political correctness often serves as an excuse for refusing to take the bull by its horns. It's often believed that addressing the manifestation is an adequate response and we don't really have to bother about addressing the cause. To our own detriment. Let's just try to treat the patients who are showing signs of rabies, and keep them in isolation. There is no danger to public health to let the latent carriers be at large. They can freely intermingle, be welcome, be given no instruction to sanitize up, be given a carte blanche for living eternally in denial - of being carriers, be at liberty to keep infecting others with their virus knowingly or unknowingly, till their own immune system collapses and they become fully blown instances of rabies themselves. And then we can go back to our business-as-usual response of treating them as isolani, quarantining them, while assuring ourselves and everybody else that it was just one-off, and there is nothing wrong with anybody else, and nothing to require a mass-level fumigation programme to disinfect.

And that's what Islam and Muslim society today is all about.

A religion that has practically become synonymous with mindless terrorism. Of attacking with arms those who are unarmed, and proclaiming the glory of their religion and their Prophet in butchering the helpless. Bravehearts those -- Peace Be Upon Them, and their inspirers. They never dare to face anyone in an equal battle. Why would they? Have they not been the universally downtrodden, the universally victimized? No matter which corner of the world they live in, no matter what privileges and luxuries they have enjoyed without having to earn them, they are the perennially victimized souls. Shouldn't they have the right to avenge themselves, the poor souls, a right solemnized by the teachings in their scriptures which are nothing but the Word Of God, and which gives them the right to kill and maim the infidels, in return for a cozy afterlife in heaven?

Muslim society is what they come from. But whose members do nothing more than a post-facto disowning of the individual few, and huddle up together to claim that there is nothing wrong with the rest of us. Agreed, it could not but be a distortion of colossal magnitude for anybody to turn religious edicts into a license to kill. Agreed, it's not what Islam preaches, or any religion in the world preaches, for that matter. Agreed, it horrifies and pains all civil-minded Muslims too, to see the name of their religion being so tarnished. But what solution do they offer? They disown those who have got caught red-handed, after the fact. And say that they have nothing to do with us, or our religion. Mind you, disown only those who have got caught red-handed and beyond any chance of doubt. Every single other carrier amidst them is blamelessly, spotlessly innocent.

Have you ever heard anybody being detected as a terrorist-to-be by the Muslims before they have actually had the chance of committing their depravity? They are never depraved till they are caught in the act. They are all angels. And we'll never believe anything could ever be wrong with the way we approach our religion, with the way we practise our religion, with the way we teach our children what the fundamental tenets of our religion are. Those are unimpeachably correct. Only when one of our brethren exposes the stink of it to the rest of the world, exposes it undeniably, in broad daylight, will we just wash our hands of them, and be done with. Excommunication is expiation. Nothing more needed. Everything before and after is faultless.

Yes, we'll grieve when we find one of our own sons indulging in such heinous act. We'll be shocked, and unable to believe it. We would never have thought that one of our dearest could have gone so outrageously wayward. And bringing horror and shame to all the rest of us. But we'll just treat it as an aberration. Occurring just out of the blue. Without anything being there to lead its way. Let's just get on with our lives. Let's just keep our eyes closed, like cats, and assume that no problem would be able to stare at us.

Is violence a Muslim invention? By no chance. It has been on earth since ages before Islam came into being. Is violence against innocents a Muslim invention? By no chance. The Nazis were not Muslims. Is violence for a cause a Muslim invention? No. From the Indian Revolutionaries, to the Irish Republican Army, to LTTE, political violence, sometimes of the most reprehensible kind, is a frequent enough occurrence that can easily refute any association of violence with Islam as such. But one must note -- none of the other examples are of violence for a global agenda. The Irish Army doesn't go and kill people in Russia for their cause. The LTTE does not go and kill in Australia for their cause. Those are all localized, and with specific objectives in mind. That is where the latest genre of violence perpetrated by Islamists stands apart.

Islamic terrorism is not for defence. It's an offensive posture. With an offensive goal in mind. Of establishing the rule of Islam, however flawed their brand be, on all terra firma. Is that an objective espoused only by the terrorists among the Muslims? You'll be surprised by the answer. Absolutely not. Talk to any Muslim on this topic, and engage them for an hour or two. And you'll see that they are all unequivocally behind this. It does not matter whether you are talking to an illiterate Muslim, or a highly educated one -- you'll find that they are unanimous on this question. That Islam is infallible, and therefore has to rule on the earth. Openly or surreptitiously, they are all behind that.

Would they ever accept that there are any flaws in Islam? The only flaws they'll admit to are flaws of interpretation. The written verses are correct. Somebody just misunderstood them. I have been surprised to see that even folks who come to the best of universities, come to learn science and technology, and who are quite liberal and tolerant in general, are absolutely determined that if anything is found to be insulting to the Prophet or his purported sayings, it deserves to be annihilated. There are no two opinions on it.

Check with the followers of any other religion -- Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, anything. You'll find some or more folks among them who'll be willing to accept the shortcomings, and admit to rooms for improvement. They can absorb criticism and sarcasm. But among Muslims, you'll see that it's an absolute impossibility. No matter how genial the Muslim is in general, when it comes to anything against the Prophet or his words, the verdict is unanimous -- "Kaat ke fenk denge" ("we'll cut you to pieces and throw away"). And that thinking has universal support, whether overt or covert. You only have to persist a bit to unearth it.

Look at the progression and evolution of religious following the world over. Christianity was among the first to establish a separation among the Church and the State. I don't mean this was a separation brought about by the Church, but it certainly was effected by followers of Christianity. And that led to the growth of the scientific spirit and paved the way for innumerable discoveries and inventions which forged the technological world we live in today. You could find a Galileo defying the version of the Church as to cosmology, and a Darwin defying the version of the Church as to the birth of species. Hinduism too, after an initial period of brilliance and openness, had got itself tied to a prolonged period of dogma in the middle ages. That is when they fell to conquerors from the Persian region, and later Europeans. The Persians at that time, were less dogmatic than the Hindus, and their Islam had still the vibrancy of youth. The Islam of the times of Mahmud Ghazni was still producing the likes of Omar Khayyam and Al-Beruni. When they came to conquer India they could veritably claim to be the superior race, beset as Hinduism at that time was with dogma.

In Al-Beruni's words (describing India of the middle ages):

"The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner ... Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khorasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they traveled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is."

But then, Hinduism extricated itself from that morass through the efforts of numerous reformers, who challenged dogma, vanquished degenerate rituals and social practices, and led to a modern and progressive, forward-looking version of the religion. Of course, there are still many deficiencies to be plugged, many aberrations to be nipped. But on the whole stability has been established and there is no danger of tipping over. There are challenges from pockets of fundamentalists, which keep rearing their ugly heads. But Hindu society as a whole is capable of dealing with those in a resolute way. It's modernized and roundly in agreement with the value systems of the modern, democratic, secular, scientific world order.

But one could only wish if the same could be said of Muslim society today. And, yes, Muslim society as it cuts across national boundaries. Of course, cultural and ideological differences do exist even among Muslim societies separated by geographical boundaries. An Iranian coming from a more prosperous and culturally thriving society is less given to destructive thought, than a Pakistani or a Sudanese, who have less to show. But the phenomenon of dogma is universal among Muslim society.

A child born into a Muslim family is not brought up with the notion that "Look son, you are to be guided by reason in all matters. Not dogma. And there are NO exceptions to that." He is brought up with the idea that "Trust the Prophet no matter what. Subjugate reason to that, if need be, because the Prophet is infallible, and you aren't. Lay down your life if need be for the Prophet, because that's a noble cause." And along the way the child forgets that there is no way he could know what the Prophet said. What he hears of the Prophet is only through what other people tell he said, or write he said. But the child has never got his instincts developed for discriminating. He got his instincts developed for blind belief. And from "laying down your life for the Prophet" to terrorism, is only the journey of one block. You can always find one verse from the Quran which you can read as giving you the license to kill, so long as you can invent a cause. And you can be smug. Because you've mortgaged your own capacity to discriminate. And that's because your parents always inculcated that in you, telling you it was a virtue. Except that it was NO virtue. In fact, it's the fundamental vice, the root of all evil.

If you could see the point of Al-Beruni's -- "If they traveled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is." -- you could easily understand why the Muslim world is stuck in such a rut for the whole of the last century and going only from bad to worse. They just can't see the need for a comprehensive reform in their value systems and their thought processes. They don't wear the same cloth that they did in the ninth century, they don't use the same camels for transportation today as they did in the ninth century, they don't gather their food and rear cattle in the same way as they used to do in the ninth century. But they want to keep their religion the same as it was in the ninth century. To say nothing of the fact that in the ninth century the followers were far more intelligent than you are today. They were breaking ground with novelty in their religious thought -- Islam was a new concept and they had the head to understand and adopt it, discarding the common beliefs of that time. Today you are trying to cook your meal with the same harvest that you made twelve centuries ago. Your food will not smell fresh.

And the Muslim today is incapable of realizing that the Muslim world lately has had no achievements to offer to the world. None of the inventions -- from television to automobiles, from aircraft to spacecraft, from penicillin to immunization, from wireless telegraphy to the internet, from the discovery of electromagnetism to quantum physics -- have had their origins in the Muslim world. No they haven't. They have all come from people who have learnt how to keep the secular and the religious aspects of their life separate, and not make their religion the center of their existence. The only thing you've achieved in doing, and to which you owe all your riches, is dig some oil. And that's your only export to the world (apart from terrorism). And what is oil? -- nothing but remains of the dead. And your conceit is such, that with this full a bag, you want to establish your own order all over the world.

The Muslim wants secularism wherever he goes, but does he have any secularism in his own backyard -- the cherished land of the Arabs? Can secularism be considered a Muslim value-system at all? It's only something that they expect from others, but not something they offer others. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. You want to turn the whole world Muslim? For what? So that they could turn into the same ghettos that your Arab brothers have produced in the name of a state? Are you even aware of how derelict and repugnant they are to the rest of the world? You don't even have the mind to realize that religion exists in the personal domain. There is no religion that a state can believe in. And you have established grand Islamic states. Apart from Turkey, which is secular thanks to its military vehemently defending those principles, and which owes that to its proximity to Europe, there is no other state that Muslims have formed which is secular in nature. And in your brilliant Muslim eyes, Turkey happens to be a reprobate, not a model.

It's not that there aren't legitimate grievances in the Muslim world. Of course, if six hundred thousand Iraqis are killed for flimsy reasons, obviously a lot of anger is going to fester, and at some point it'll cost others. If riots kill thousands, and the system of justice is not perceived to be fair, a lot of grudge is waiting to explode. If the minority instead of being protected by the majority is threatened by its doings, obviously they'll respond with revenge by stealth. There is no alternative to having a world order that is respectful and reverent to others, if violence is to be kept off. You cannot walk over others when they are weak, and expect them not to ever retaliate.

But the Muslim world has to introspect and ask itself why it is at the bottom of the pyramid today? Why is the rest of the world so far ahead that you are always getting trampled upon, whether that be a correct perception or otherwise, a fact that you always claim to be avenging? Sure, you didn't have any WMDs in Iraq, and you were attacked for an invalid reason. But can you tell why you don't have an acceptable system of government that keeps pace and integrates with the rest of the world in a responsible way? Why do you have military dictatorships for a regime for decades on end, which crushes your own society and acts violently against other states? Why is there an absence of a civil system of governance, gross gender inequality, and why do you have barbarism in the name of laws? Why you create a Taliban for your ruling class, folks who can't even cross high-school, but rule at gunpoint? Why you can't learn from your Jewish neighbors, who so clearly have so much greater ability than you have, and emulate them? Your only response is to envy them, and wish their destruction. Why is it that your problems are always a creation of others, and you have no role in it yourself? You've surely had as much time and resources as the rest of the world. Why is it that you are so retrograde, with nothing that the rest of the world finds emulatable? Why can't you see the need for reform to pull yourself out of your pit, a need which is painfully obvious to others?

Before you think of ruling the world, try to grow up to the rest of the world first. And have something to offer. Without that your assertions of superiority and desperate attempts to establish it -- attempts that you are using only to deceive yourself and nobody else -- will smack of nothing but a deep seated inferiority complex in you. As is well known, a person suffering from an inferiority complex does not regard himself as inferior. He instead uses aggression to establish his superiority. The Islamic terrorist today blasts bombs and sprays bullets to establish the "superiority" of his religion. Without realizing that a bus falling off a bridge kills more than your best coordinated attempt at terrorism, and an earthquake kills a thousand times more, without cowing any civilization down. You issue a fatwa to kill if someone writes a book that you consider offensive, or if somebody draws a cartoon of your Prophet. When have we seen you issue a fatwa against someone who starts a terrorist organization and naming it after your Prophet as Jaish-e-Muhammad? Sure you issue voluble denouncements, but where is the action? If you can't realize your shortcomings and modernize your religion you'll only succeed in bringing further disrepute to the great religion founded by the Prophet, and no glory. And your inferiority complex will only bring about your own downfall, and nobody else's.

The grave danger that your own religion is in today, for want of modernization, is proving to be a grave danger to the rest of the world too. But overwhelmingly you choose to live in denial of the fact. You've almost turned denial into your very reason for existence. It's not that there aren't sane elements among the Muslim world today. But their voice is too weak, and they are too cowardly. They allow themselves to be repressed by the militant sections and have clearly been taken hostage by them.

But it was the voice of just one such sane element, an Egyptian cleric whom Thomas Friedman quotes in his book, that said: "They want to bring down towers. Because they know that they can't build them."

Passion For Cricket? Or Life By Proxy?

2007-03-25T08:04:00.000+05:30

Tiger biscuits, Sansui TV, Fiat car, Hero Honda motorcycle, Sahara flight tickets, Mayur suitings, Pepsi cola, Tata Indicom mobiles, Lupin pharmaceuticals, Emami cosmetics, Surya bulbs, Castrol engine oil, Natco tiles, ESPN, LG and Sona Chandi Chyawanprash -- those are the good things in life that we'll purchase, if our larger-than-life, product-endorsing cricketing hero wins a match for us. Doesn't matter even if the match happens to be the most insignificant of ones. And if he doesn't -- well -- we'll slap the coach, break the window panes of the player's house, burn effigies of all and sundry who belong to the team, call for the head of the captain, and indulge in endless chest-beating in television studios, often in the illustrious company of retired cricketing heroes, whose record in their own times of failing to deliver has been no less spectacular.

The bandwagon of scribes whose sole claim to glory in life is that they puff cigars and pipes while watching cricket on their drawing room television sets will now bleed bucketfuls of sympathetic tears for the common Indian fan on the street, whose hopes have been mauled, we'll be told, by the utter callousness of the players. (Not the callousness of the sponsors, mind you, whose ads we certainly need to keep every households's economy running, and also indirectly pays for those cigars to puff.) Even the netas whose behavior on the field (in-House, that is) is world-beating (beat everyone with chairs, microphones, chappals, and what not) will now demand explanation about why the cricket team is not a world beater.

The story has repeated so many times now that one would be hard pressed to tell whether even Shakti Kapoor utters his jumla in a film any more number of times, or whether there isn't more variety in an episode of Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. And the wheel will keep chugging along...till kingdom come...

Which brings us to the question of why is it that we keep chasing after that elusive cricket win as if our life depended on it, huffing and puffing even against sides who are younger to cricket than even the kid in Baby's Day Out? Leave alone the World Cup which, to all intents and purposes, has been nothing more than a pipedream -- I'm talking about a tournament win of any import whatsoever. When was the last time India won anything, which has involved three or more teams? -- can you remember anything from the last five years? So why do we naively keep waiting in the same place for this tsunami of hollow expectations to come and run us over? Is it because we have sunk ourselves to the utter depths of disconsolate masochism? Or is there something more to it, which keeps hitting us time and again, waiting for us to get the message, but which we are too afraid to face squarely in the eye?

There is a phenomenon known in the psychiatric circles, which goes by the name of the 'repetition compulsion'. (It's not what is called as the obsessive-compulsive disorder, which has a somewhat different causality.) The repetition compulsion is something which is pervasive in the lives of each of us. Say, you react in a particular, abrasive way when under stress, which makes you lose your closest ones. Something that you regret every time after the fact, but can't seem to stop yourself from behaving in the same manner the next time you find yourself in the same situation. That's what is the repetition compulsion.

When psychoanalyzed this will usually unfold in some kind of truth about ourselves that has often confronted us, but which we have deliberately tried to repress, by looking the other way, thereby denying the existence of the truth. Denied thoughts, denied feelings -- because it was too painful for us to feel them in their true form. So we keep pushing them under the carpet, and pretend that all is well, and that the problems will go away on their own if only we can forget about them long enough. And paste a phony smile on our lips which will give the airs of optimism from a distance.

But the truth won't change its skin just because we have chosen to deny it. It keeps coming back to us in the garb of this replay act -- the repetition compulsion. It'll keep putting us in the same situation where all our worst fears about ourselves -- our own failings -- will seem to get enacted through the medium of others.

When one notices this repetition compulsion, often under the guidance of a trained analyst, it's time to get to its original seed. And realize our failings. Our failings may not always be our own faults -- in fact we may have often been a victim ourselves. The failing lies in refusing to accept that we failed ourselves, or somebody close to us whom we had trusted failed us, or that we let ourselves be willing victims of circumstances, simply because we didn't have the courage to revolt or take effective action. Our deep-seated feeling of inadequacy, of our not having risen to the occasion when we should have, which we consciously please to be unaware of, is what becomes an unconscious desire for punishment. And that punishment is what we enact via the medium of others, through the repetition compulsion.

Psychodynamically speaking, this is in fact a healthy sign. It forces us to realize our shortcomings, and take corrective action, thereby curing us of the disease. The symptom -- of repeatedly finding ourselves in the same punishing situation, which we create ourselves -- serves as a signal. Much like fever -- which tells us that we have become infected with something -- and that we need to attend to our health, and no longer indulge in things that exacerbate the disease. But...only if we are willing to listen...willing to unearth the underlying problem, willing to patiently work through the resolution of it, whatever be the cost and pain for us. The shortcut which we'll mostly adopt is to gulp an antipyretic, and suppress the fever for the time being. Letting us heave a sigh of relief, however false. For all we know, we might just be delaying the discovery of our own cancer. Till it gets too late...

And the cancer in our case is that we want to be offered the gifts of excellence, without ourselves playing any part in generating that excellence in our own spheres of activity. Much like the proverbial Marxian exploitationist who wants to consume, but without producing.

It's high time (as if it wasn't high time two decades earlier itself) that we asked ourselves: what is our own contribution to the sporting excellence that we seek through a bunch of eleven individuals? What is the place of sports in our lives -- apart from the contribution of eyeballs to the ad-flicks that are dished out for our consumption while trying to lose ourselves in a fantasy world of televised sport? When was the last time we participated in a competitive event, even if played at an amateur level?

The maximum, I bet, we'll manage to recollect will be some kind of time-pass game, just to enjoy ourselves -- the whole matter reeking of farcicality. The last time we played cricket ourselves would have been to grace our gullies on the bright morning of a bandh day. And when we return home that evening we believe that the enormous sacrifice that we'll be making the rest of the evening in watching all our advertisements entitles us to the solemn right of becoming world champions. And when the castle in the air comes crashing, it's very comfortably the fault of the eleven men in blue for having failed to repay us. For the ad-revenue we generated. How many other instances of such self-righteous indignation can we find in the world?

And, mind you, that will not be an exception. It's how we conduct ourselves in all spheres of our lives. There is nothing that we do in which we take ourselves seriously; there is nothing that we want to invest effort in so that the end-product shows any signs of excellence. And even with our sab-chalta-hai philosophy we remain smug that our heroes will do it all for us, no matter what jokes we make of ourselves in everything that we do. No wonder that the punishment keeps revisiting us every few days; only to prepare us for the next bout of punishment, a few days later. And on we go with our lives, in blissful stoicism.

The very definition of a 'fan' in our dictionaries is a unique one. Our 'fan' is not one who loves the game, or even knows anything about it. And participating in it actively, with a spirit of competition that the game is all about, is what he has postponed for his next life. Our 'fan' is one who wishes to wipe off all the frustrations of his life through an illusory cricket win that he'll watch from his armchair. His being a guinea-pig of consumerism is what, according to him, also entitles him to his relish of victory.

The fact that a game is primarily meant to be played, not watched, has been given a quieter burial in our culture than Mozart got for his own. It's easier to find Govinda in an art film than to find a game -- any variety of game -- being played in competitive spirit by the amateur public anywhere in India. Contrast this to the hundreds of counties in England; to the multiple division, even beach, soccer clubs in Latin America; to the German Bundesliga where amateur chess playing teams take leave from work to play alongside professional grandmasters.

It has left us that the pleasure of the game is to be had by playing hard and beating your fellow peer or peer team on the field, not by watching TV from your drawing room. That requires a degree of involvement, discipline, practice and above all an urge to compete. We have said goodbye to all of that and merely hope, nay demand, that our 'heroes' give us a vicarious pleasure, which we are not willing to partake first hand. The first is the much more comfortable pursuit, the latter the much more arduous, and isn't 'sloth' the middle name that we have chosen for ourselves?

Cricket is not the only sport in which we have sunk. That story has unfolded in all other kinds of sport since long, so much so that nobody even remembers any more. Cricket is only the latest in the string of what looks like inevitable downward slides. The other day the news was splashed that we have lost eight places in the FIFA world rankings -- which had me really perked up with reassurance that there still are some more countries left behind us, and we still have it in us to fall further down! May be there are just so many countries in the world that 170-180 too doesn't qualify for a last place finish these days.

In hockey too, the other crown jewel, we have stopped qualifying for even quarter-finals of major events. In track and field events, Olympics, Asian games, our delegations carry more officials than players, and return with more bagfuls of shopping goods than medals.

Even the ones who show some semblance of international class, coming in most cases from the toiling, poorer sections of society, are left to fend for themselves. The other day an Asian-games silver-medallist wanted to switch the state she represented in domestic events, because of official apathy. There are no sponsors for her. No prize for guessing whether, given an option, she'd have preferred switching her country altogether, and settled for maybe China.

There has been a disturbing trend of ex-footballers dying by the hordes in their early forties. Sudip Chatterjee, Krishanu Dey, Satyan, Narinder Gurung etc -- who have played with distinction in the eighties and nineties -- are all victims of sudden deaths, in some cases even suicide. It just leads to a vicious cycle -- of active sport not being enough for financial support, and therefore the public, even the part of it with talent, looking for alternate avenues, and lack of interest and patronship leading to poorer standards.

Take the example of chess. Humpy, who is world number two in women's chess, loses Bank Of Baroda as her sponsor, because they think they get more mileage out of showing Rahul Dravid's face. Again, by a Fide rule, any 2700+ player could have challenged the World Champion for a title match provided he brought a minimum of one million dollars to the table as prize fund. Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaizan, who only recently broke 2700, manages to find it, even from a small country like Azerbaizan, and challenges Topalov. Whereas our own Anand, who has stayed in the top three of the world for more than a decade (and is currently number one) doesn't find any patronage among the Indian corporate world. Though more millions of dollars are spent on advertisements even during a ridiculous India-Bermuda cricket match. And now the corporates are bemoaning the millions that they are going to lose, because of India's first round ouster in cricket. Don't they just deserve it, for the utter cynical manipulation they try to indulge in?

I'm not very sure whether it's just a matter of economics though. There are much poorer countries than ours -- look at Africa and even the war ravaged Iraq -- who still produce international class soccer teams, and win medals in huge numbers in Olympics. It appears more to be that as a nation we just accord very little priority to what is not directly connected with our livelihood and survival. We don't have a place for passion. Or pride. Or a desire to break new ground. Or to excel. Just a place for consumerism. And we believe, nay shout from the rooftops, that we are soon to be a superpower. Well, powerhouse of consumerism, for sure; the rest takes a wee bit longer.

We believe in sending our children to school, and compete fiercely for entrance exams. Because that's connected with our livelihood and survival. And the sheer degree of involvement produces enough exceptions so that we still manage a very respectable showing in the International Maths Olympiad, and Physics and Chemistry Olympiads every year. However, sport is not our cup of tea. For it isn't good enough for our livelihood. Just as town planning is not our cup of tea. Because it's not connected directly with our survival. Nor civic sense is our cup of tea. Because nobody pays you anything for it. We believe in getting paid for doing things. Even if that be at the cheapest rates.

Coming back to the analysis of the current cricket fiasco. It's tempting for me to point out what I wrote in my earlier blog post two years ago (as can be found in the post titled 'Chapsticks' below). That a thorough overhaul of the system as Chappell was attempting is fraught with danger in the short run, even if that may bring fruits in the long run. There are two reasons for the danger: firstly, it leaves you in total disarray if you try to change too many things at one shot; and secondly, if you focus on your methods too much, you lose sight of your goals. Some readers expressed skepticism about that, and initially there was widespread euphoria that we have finally found someone -- a tough Aussie -- to deliver us from all that held us back from becoming world champions. And now the disillusionment in those quarters would be equally rampant.

In sport you don't lose because of your own self. You get beaten by your opponent. And conversely, to win you need to find chinks in your opponent's armor. To outsmart, outplay him. Our esteemed coach was more busy finding weaknesses in our own ranks. In finding why this or that player is not good enough, in discovering who deserves to be dropped, and who deserves to be given a chance to 'recover his confidence' by sitting in the sidelines, than in finding out how to exploit the weaknesses in the opposition camp. Perhaps, taking up a job in the land of Gandhi, he chose to adopt a Satyagraha approach to victory -- an approach of non-violence towards the opponents.

There is certainly a case for accountability. You have to deliver too, show results, and not merely 'process'. But given that we were blissfully ignorant of the short-term dangers, and never prepared to take pain first, we now stand equally prepared to abandon even the long term benefits of the system-wide overhaul that was initiated. We want everything too soon, with too much ease, and too little pain. Popping that aspirin is the quickest solution to that. And that antidepressant. Doesn't matter if our aversion to take the hard way continues to keep our cup of woes flowing over. Glory to the repetition compulsion!

It isn’t that the bunch of players that we sent was not good enough. But that applies to playing cricket alone. Not for serving as wish fulfillment agents for a billion people with nothing else to cling on to for pride. If only we could spend as much time playing ourselves as we do in protest marches, and burning effigies...

It's pouring divinity everywhere!

2006-08-28T14:10:00.000+05:30

The monsoon story this year unfolds with a twist. No, no, lest you jump to the contrary conclusion -- I'm not claiming that this year there has been any dearth of the regular floods that have become such a ritualistic part of our customs and traditions. Witness Surat, which is staking its claim to a Guinness mention as the biggest swimming pool on earth. (Last heard, some politicians were planning to show this in their report cards as one of their delivered promises -- that of providing fillip to sports. And who can blame them -- after all it's from places like Surat that some day our Olympic swimming champions will emerge.) Or take Gujarat, where fifty thousand had to be evacuated. (I guess very soon we are going to see Medha Patkar come out in full support of building dams -- after all, during rains the poor can climb atop the dams and save their lives!) And we don't even need a typhoon Katrina to submerge our New Orleanses -- just a couple of hours of garden variety rain, without commercial breaks, is enough to drown the high and mighty of our cities -- we are so technologically advanced.

But what looks more interesting this year is a deluge of a different kind. It's almost as if the presiding deities high up there have decided to shower their divine benevolences in generous doses to the thirsting masses below. And so we have sea water turning sweet in Mumbai -- and people queuing up with buckets, old mineral water and cola bottles, and what have they -- to take home their quantity of this souvenir -- or panacea as some devotees are hoping. Ok, ok, you'll say I have got to be lying -- nobody in India queues up for anything -- it's a violation of the natural law that applies universally here, inertial or non-inertial frame. The actual reality is closer to people jumping barricades, ducking one policeman here, dodging another policeman there, and pushing each other helter-skelter, to somehow scamper to gulp a mouthful and carry home a bottleful - pesticide residues be damned. But those are just details -- we should mostly be interested in the mind of God.

(Granted -- IIT Mumbai geologists have explained that due to heavy rains in the hinterland, the water table has grown up very high and is disgorging underground torrents into the sea, and such sweet water, being less dense than salty water, is floating on the top temporarily till it gets to mix well with the rest of the saltwater. But then, how can you be so unromantic as to believe that? -- it goes against the very grain of the Indian sentimental psyche, as moulded by the likes of Karan Johar. It's so much more fashionable to view this as a divine grace of Baba Maqdoom Shah whose beach-house is somewhere adjacent to the Mumbai coastline.)

But that's not all -- look around and you'll find Lord Ganesha doing an encore of his milk drinking feat in temple after temple, city after city, state after state. (It was reliably learnt that Manmohan Singh has instructed Sharad Pawar to convene a meeting with secretaries to ensure that enough milk is imported from outside, before a shortage starts looming, and the BJP gets a chance to boycott Parliament on the ultimate nationalistic issue of Lord Ganesha not getting enough milk to drink because of minority appeasement.) And it transpires that the remaining deities too have decided not to miss out on the fun -- so we have the Kali's and the Durga's too partaking of the sip that cheers!

(One could say that surface tension and capillary action would make Ganesha drink alcohol and kerosene too, but, then, how can the heart devoted be so blind as not to suspend reason over belief?)

The heavens have been extra generous under the Indian sun, you think? Hardly. It was only last Christmas that in the West it was seen that Mother Mary was crying blood. There were even reports of tree barks automatically developing uncanny engravings resembling Mother Mary and people were seen thronging the places, under the floodlights of television cameras, as if there were no Russian circus in town. Oh well, there is a version of the blockbuster released in India too -- reports from Kerala recently have claimed Mother Mary exuding tears of perfumed water. Perfumed water? -- ah, isn't it comforting indeed to learn that perfumed water turns out thicker than blood, after all?

It's not just the gods making their guest appearances -- we also have the regular human cast reappearing in their second and third roles after an intermission. Marilyn Monroe is supposed to have reincarnated as the singer Sherrie Laird. A psychoanalyst working with her has, under hypnosis, been able to extricate from her the unknown mysteries of her previous Monroevian birth. He claims to have enough experience with human nature as to be able to distinguish the real from the charlatan, and is convinced that Laird is indeed Monroe born again.

Not to have the Orient fall behind -- we also have postulates about Amitabh Bachchan being a rebirth of the actor Edwin Booth, and Shahrukh Khan being a duplicate of the dancer Sadhan Bose. There were reports in the newspapers, some months back, of a five-year old Haryana kid 'remembering' his past life and walking back to his erstwhile family several villages nether. He claims he was murdered in his previous birth, and threatens to identify his killer too if paraded before him.

A Nepali boy was reported to be sitting under a tree for six months without break, in a meditative trance -- might as well be called a media-tative trance, with the electronic media filming every non-movement of his body -- raising the spectre of the Buddha born again. The Christ, it may be recalled, is also destined to be back in the field, though his appearance, mind you, will not be as peaceful and unobtrusive as that of the Buddha. He is expected to be more destructive than Sehwag in his second innings, obliterate everything, and thereby re-establish the Kingdom of God (though I very much doubt it will happen -- Christ will prefer rather to call it the Presidency of God instead, in keeping with the modern idiom, though with the clause of stepping down after twice being in office clinically amputated, and with His election being of even greater permanence than that of President Musharraf). Now, if ever you heard of a casting coup...!

The relentless, James Bond-ian chase of the Godly has to be the longest potboiling sequence in the theatre of life. Not even the American gold rush has drawn in so many pursuers, that too in so many different eras, nay, every era. It's a force that's more pervasive than gravity (and produces even more baffling distortion of spacetime). I wonder if they have thought about according it its place of honor in the Grand Unified Theory alongside electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. If I were Einstein, I'd refuse to accept any such theory, unless it integrates explaining the physics of why people run towards the divine with a speed greater than that of light.

How do we indeed approach the question, which keeps bursting into the scene, expected or unexpected times? Could there possibly be a way to reach the undercurrent which manifests itself in these phenomena on the surface? Could we achieve an integration of science, philosophy, religion, psychology and spiritual thought into a unified whole through which we could harness answers to not just the phenomena of the inanimate realm, but also those that are connected with the animate, and human existence?

It's quite clear that a fragmented, compartmentalized way of investigation will not satisfy everyone. It runs a greater risk of regression into the unsavoury world of superstition if mainstream thought is unable, or unwilling, to address the questions of life, consciousness and the relationship with the physical universe. It cannot be denied that there indeed exists a void in the human mind, which if not filled with a wholesome, cogent understanding, will always rush to get occupied by the cloud of the preternatural. Unless we understand the dynamics of life as an unbroken continuity, unaffected by the birth and death of its containers - individual organisms -- there will always be a temptation to invent oddities like the same person being born again, which is no different from saying that the same glass of water which I drank has reappeared in another place on another day again.

Talking of folks who have attempted an incursion into the realm of both physics and the spiritual, Gary Zukav, Harvard grad, whose work "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters" on the new physics won an American science popularization award, has postulated in his book "The Seat Of The Soul" that every human being is endowed with a soul. The soul, though immortal, is somehow in search of some healing, which it tries to obtain through its human experiences. Not only that, whatever a person does generates 'karma' which apparently disturbs some kind of equilibrium in the world and has to 'balanced' by reaping the results of that 'karma' in another, if not the same, birth (some kind of "law of conservation of karma"?). Moreover, though souls have no beginning, some souls are younger than others, as they have yet to go through many experiences -- some souls press the accelerator of wisdom and advance quicker, while the rest learn through 'fear and doubt' making retarded progress. All souls would emerge much the wiser from these experiences, and finally get completely 'healed' and become one with the overall soul of the universe, which is God.

Old wine in new bottle! These concepts have since time immemorial been a part of Hindu philosophical doctrines. Zukav writes in a flowing, sweet-sounding, poetical language which is very easy to agree with, for its utter lack of offensive idiosyncrasy. The result: with millions of copies gobbled up, the book is already souled out.

Now, Gary Zukav is no physicist. Though he has written a reasonably well-noted book on quantum physics and relativity, he's not an expert in the field -- not someone who has lived the ideas long enough, or has sufficient grounding in the rigorous methods of science, so that we could safely assume that he'd write only out of conviction born of painstaking, critical examination. So shall we take him at face value then and agree with him?

Some of the things that he propounds which I find to be quite half-baked ideas, if not flights of fancy, are that lesser animals do not have individual souls -- what they have instead is a "collective soul of the species", though every human being gets to have one soul for himself (or herself, except feminists who are denied any souls). For such "collective souls" the experiences of all members of the species contribute to the experience of the soul. And it's possible for the lower-order soul to graduate to higher order over time.

Now this sounds quite preposterous to me. For this implies that other forms of life are somehow subjugated to human, which I disagree with. Humans have merely specialized themselves in terms of having a bigger brain, and information processing capability. Other species have also specialized themselves in other ways -- dogs can detect the smell of mere molecular traces, others animals can see ultraviolet light. Even the lowly cockcroach has specialized itself in having an immutable genetic code which has made it stay exactly the same for 320 million years, and which is why it's said that in a nuclear holocaust only the cockroach species would survive, as all other genetic structures would be mutilated beyond survival by the radioactivity.

The essential 'life' is no more in possession of human beings than it's in other living beings, including plant life, even the first unicellular beings. They have all had a consciousness, a knowledge of their own being, due to which they reproduced, proliferated, and evolved into the complex, multicellular life forms of today, culminating in the human form. To offer a private-bedroom of an individual soul to every human, while offering a dormitory-like collective soul to lower forms makes no sense. Since humans evolved from apes (which in turn evolved from others, and so on), at what point did the individual soul really emerge? And since the human population has grown from some millions in about a few thousand years ago to the six billion of today, are individual 'souls' being manufactured for each of them, like garments in a factory? Or are we to invent some kind of mitotic soul-division to account for it?

Moreover, this appears to be taking recourse to the anthropomorphic principle - that the universe exists for humans to come to being. This arises from nothing but an extremely narrow world-view reeking of arrogance, quite akin to that of the frog in the well, who when he meets a frog from the ocean refuses to believe that anything bigger than his well can exist. For all we know, there may be much higher-order living beings elsewhere in the universe, compared to whom humans would quite have the same status as dogs compared to humans.

In fact, in his book "The Last Three Minutes", science-writer Paul Davies conjectures about how intelligent beings would cope with a universe approaching heat-death, when all energy-sources have extinguished themselves through nuclear-transmutation, and coagulated themselves into sterile entities like black-holes. It would be at a time when everything would shut down, implying that there won't even be other galaxies to go and colonize, which would have anyway been done much earlier.

He conjectures that by that time intelligent creatures would have evolved to a point where they would be capable of having an infinite amount of thoughts, feelings and experiences in an instant, even in a hibernating mode. So for them the flow of time would appear to be so slow that they'd never reach 'the end'.

(There is another possibility, depending on the actual mass present in the universe, of everything winding back into the furnace of a big-crunch, but even in that scenario the coping mechanism would be the same.)

So how can we be sure that such creatures don't already exist in remote corners of the universe today, which would have the real golden 'soul' compared to whom us humans would be mere paupers?

In fact, theoretical astrophysics does not even rule out the possibility of there being multiple universes. The reason they being called separate universes rather than part of our own is that no information can escape from those universes. The interior of black-holes are conjectured to be of similar condition as existed where our universe began with a big-bang - just the cradle for another universe to take shape. Just as there could be such baby universes, it's also likely than some universes would be old enough to be nearing heat death. In such universes, the supra-intelligent being could already be in existence. So shall we reserve the 'soul' for the honor of such a being (or community of beings) while consoling ourselves with a "collective soul" as we are currently deigning to offer lower species on earth?

It may not altogether be such a bad idea. In fact, it would even find support from mainstream psychologists today. One thing that's pretty well accepted today is the existence of an unconscious mind in every human being. It exists side by side with that part of the mind which we perceive as being in our conscious control, but it's different in being entirely independent and incapable of being affected by 'will'. It makes its own decisions and is often the seat of our instincts, intuitions, and 'inner voice'. It's information processing is far superior, requiring much less explicit data input (or may be it works on a much bigger data bank to which it has exclusive access). It's capable of tremendous leaps in decision making - its algorithms are just far too optimized - something we associate with wisdom. The only deficit is that it's not at our beck and call -- it chooses at what point it'll touch base with us, and that too it does in a very cryptic language - in the form of inexplicable dreams, out-of-the-blue revelations, stumbled-upon realizations and such. In fact, much as the conscious mind differs from person to person, the unconscious mind is marked by a homogeneity.

In fact, this so-called unconscious mind may very well be the glue that binds together all human beings, and by extension all members of the biosphere. It's the common cord that runs through all life, and unifies it. It may the ultimate super hard-disk that carries a record of all events so far; the ultimate, multi-billion-node parallel-processing quantum-supercomputer that has processed everything, and will create whatever is processable or knowable or experienceable or existable in the future, of its own sovereign will. If the individual unconscious mind is itself so powerful, imagine how infinitely powerful this mega-community of the unconscious would be, if it could just have communication buses. Does such a communication bus exist? Our understanding is still so primitive that we immediately look for connection wires -- which obviously can't be found. The entire mechanism is wireless, whose complete physics we perhaps have yet to work out. According to some psychologists this "collective unconscious" is what comes closest to what our idea of God is.

This is not as far-fetched as it appears on the surface. After all, we all consider ourselves as one unit each, despite the fact that we are just an assembly of billions of individual, self-contained cells (which again are subassemblies themselves of nucleus, mitochondria, microtubules, protoplasm and membranes). If that sounds perfectly acceptable, then how can we overlook the fact that we may ourselves be subcomponents of a much larger whole? Just as the billions of cells still communicate with each other despite being one at the toe, and the other at the head, so too individual organisms could very well contribute towards a unified existence, despite not even having direct physical contact.

Come to think of it - if our laptops can participate in the internet without a network wire, and mobile phones can talk to each other across the globe, what's so impossible about there being a inter-living-being net, life being an infinitely superior device than an ordinary gadget? Wouldn't it be a more preposterous thing to assume that life is not equipped with its own version of Bluetooth? And just as from the time of our birth to our death possibly every single cell in our body has died and been replaced by a counterpart (through cell division), despite our having an unbroken living experience, so too the existence of life as a whole is unaffected by the birth or death of any individual organism, so long as we allow enough room for internal replenishment. This may well be what is implied when it's claimed that though the body is mortal, the soul itself is immortal.

Even if we could unite all life into a common manifesto and proclaim "Living beings of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your ignorance", the question would remain: what of the relationship that it has with the inanimate, physical world? Did life and consciousness emerge as an accident from inanimate matter, or whether it was consciousness in the first place that gave rise to matter?

This is a tricky thing to address. It pertains to the very nature of matter itself. Does it even have an independent, sovereign existence? Or is it a mistake of our perception? Though we know that what we call as life, is nothing but a coexistence of protein bodies which are themselves organized by the genetic code embedded inside genes. The DNA of genes itself being composed of assemblies of different types of molecules, which molecules are in turn formed of various atoms. The atoms of all heavier elements are formed through cosmic, stellar phenomena which cause primitive hydrogen to transmute to everything else in a complex nuclear interplay, which phenomena are all reproducible in today's laboratories. So does it imply that matter gave birth to life and consciousness?

One thing that is easily observed is that it's the finer thing that drives the coarser. Like a huge crane is moved by our finger pressing an electrical button, our finger itself being moved by nerve impulses, the impulses themselves being generated by some activity in neurons in the brain, the neurons themselves firing because of - because of something that I can't define, but of a microcosmic nature. Modern physics has allowed us to investigate the world of the microcosm. And what astounding things we find there!

The entire predictability that's at the core of our perception of matter -- the house or the rock that I saw today remains there tomorrow and day-after and whenever I observe -- is lost! It's a world of uncertainty! Uncertainty not merely in measurement, but even in theory. Try to locate the particle that we know as an electron, and which we have so effectively harnessed in our electrical and electronic technology, and lo! what you find is that it does not even exist at a single location at any point of time. It's just a cloudy indefinable something, that only probabilistically exists. The moment you try to encage the particle, it becomes a wave and escapes like water from our fist. Moreover, it even defies ordinary electrodynamics by accelerating continuously without radiating out any energy in steady state.

This uncertainty is the governing edict of everything that exists in the subatomic world. They just thin out into something wavy, and lose their particulateness. Which just implies that they dissolve into something finer, and renounce their material properties that are the hallmark of our perception of them. This has even led to physicists beginning to view matter as merely something where 'events' are co-located -- we observe just the 'events' and extrapolate it to the presence of a material particle, which may not exist at all in strict terms. It's only the 'events' that have any perceivable existence -- the rest is merely our assumption, or perhaps a model that we use for our own comprehension. As is well understood by physics, matter is nothing but a condensed state of energy, and the two are interchangeable.

It's quite possible that this energy in its most primal state is what consciousness is all about. This energy cannot be weighed, it does not have a physical location, but still overspreads everything and everywhere. Isn't that how we characterize our God too?

It's from this energy that matter forms as coagulates, and which further specializes to organic compounds, and ultimately to the expression of life, and to intelligence which then embarks upon a reverse comprehension exercise (reverse engineering is not such a new idea after all!). It's all as if the primitive energy is trying to be aware of its own self, through its own manifestations.

This leads entirely to the world of what is called as mysticism. It's also inherent in the principle of non-dualism expounded by Hindu philosophy, where only the Brahman is accorded absolute existence -- everything else being just different manisfestations of it. The manifestations are deniable (like the position of an electron somewhere) and therefore unreal or only partially real -- only the Brahman is undeniable and therefore truly real. For it's nothing but Consciousness in its primal form. Consciousness is the only thing that is undeniable -- because the very denial of it presupposes the existence of consciousness that'll do the denial. Sankaracharya had an excellent deductive doctrine - only that is real which cannot be denied. He engaged in debates with all the leading masters of his time, who held a different doctrine, and was able to defeat them all in logical discourse. It's a fascinating way of life -- in the finest scientific, logical and democratic traditions -- and how far removed from the modern obsession with the supernatural!

Heisenberg himself was aware of these parallels and had discussed the matter in detail with Tagore when he visited the latter. It probably indicates how the tradition of the ancient saints and prophets (who somehow inexplicably got a wind of the same concepts much ahead of their time) now lives on in scientific investigators of today. And someday we'll have a combined, comprehensive, all-encompassing theory of everything. What we have so far unearthed may be an accident, but even if it's an accident, the accident will in all likelihood continue, and reach its logical conclusion. The direction is unmistakable; so could its inevitability too be.

Till that time we might do well to remember what was once said: There are only two ways to lead your life -- one as though nothing is a miracle; the other as though everything is!
(-- Einstein)

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Some more info:
BBC report on Nepali boy
University of Virginia researcher on cases of rebirth
Sai baba not to be undone by Mother Mary

Do you have to kill him seven times before he's dead?

2005-09-30T18:06:00.000+05:30

Ahh, the World Championship of chess is in bloom now. In the picturesque environs of the Argentinian town of San Luis.

And with it go the sleepless nights glued to the small screen, capturing the pungency and the aroma of the games as they are delivered fresh from the kitchen, in the form of live telecast. No, I am not talking about the television screen. It has not reached that stage yet where the likes of Anand, Topalov, Leko, Svidler, Adams, Morozevich, Polgar and Kasimdzhanov would be seen happily endorsing products in between breaks from the action. (Do any of those sound like blokes from the neighbourhood, btw? One of them is actually a lady, though.)

Not because there aren't enough natural reserves of 'commercial breaks' in the course of a chess game -- to be true those reserves exceed the amount of natural gas in Iran, as, to the layman, there could appear nothing but a sprinkling of the chess coins on the board that shift position slower than Ganguly's scoreboard, and advertisers could show a full spectacle of Bachchan brushing his teeth to glory in between, if they want, than merely holding a pack of Dabur Lal Dantmanjan -- but because there are so few to be present in front of the screen when the action takes place (games getting played out that is, not Bachchan's antics).

But the chess servers broadcasting the live games on the internet have been witnessing a record breaking viewership, with the onset of this tournament. (Yes, a tournament -- a radical shift in the way a world champion of chess is decided -- because so far it was customary to hold one-on-one matches to decide that, but that's another story that'll interest just the die-hard enthusiasts.) Yesterday, in the second round of the tournament, there were close to five-thousand viewers watching the games at any instant. And this just on one server; there were, arguably, thousands more capturing the live action on other servers and websites.

Well, Topalov was taking on Anand.

Both tournament favorites, and just emerging from wins in their first round games to lead the points tally. Clash of the titans. Whoever of them wants to pocket the title ultimately will need to beat the other in their face-to-face matchup. Their individual encounters may be what will finally tilt the scales one way or the other; as both are equally proficient in beating up the other relative weakies (if anyone in this field could be called weak without blasphemy, that is). Topalov had already dealt a body blow to the other principal contender -- Leko -- in the first round, stealing a win from a lost position. And it was time to take the other bull by the horn -- Anand. A win for Topalov today and he'll be very much in the driver's seat towards the crown.

Topalov played briskly with white, and was soon 25 mins ahead on the clock. This being against Anand who's the acknowledged speediest player on the earth, showed that Topalov had come prepared with something special for Anand. Soon it uncorked itself -- an exchange sacrifice to create a powerful bishop pair and possibilities of attack against black's king. Anand navigated the position with elan and pretty soon had managed to contain white's initiative while retaining his material advantage.

However, that was only part of the work done. To win, Anand needed to come up with a winning plan. He seemed to be on course, gradually improving his own position bit by bit. Simplifying the position and going to the queenless ending would have ensured a victory for him. But, fortune never beckons without a hurdle; and that hurdle was: how to simplify at all?

That was when disaster struck. Unable to come up with the winning plan, and under pressure from Topalov's attacking pieces, Anand made a poor move that turned out to be a blunder. And within a flit, it saw Topalov holding Anand by the jugular as he not only regained the exchange but totally annihilated Anand's kingside with a pretty sham sacrifice. It was all over for Anand.

It is not without reason, however, that Anand has often got himself called as the best defender in the game. He took on to resist resourcefully in a completely lost position, and decided to force Topalov to sweat for his win. Topalov was playing like a man possessed -- finding the precisest moves on each turn to pile up his advantage, and denying Anand any counterchance whatsoever. Anand was lamb to the slaughter.

4 o'clock at night, and it seemed no point wasting any more time awaiting the verdict that was bound to be a death knell to an Anand fan's hopes.

Wait a minute! What did I hear Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan commenting on the game, just say? He said he regrets that though he's expected to be an expert in this endgame the fact was that he wasn't. But from what he could gather, he believes this could be a draw.

What?? What's he talking about? With Anand's position in greater ruins than Kandahar, and his king finding himself in a smaller hole than Saddam Hussein, how could he talk such nonsense? Every computer worth its silicon in the world was showing decisive advantage for Topalov. How could one even imagine Anand salvaging a draw in that eyesore of a position?

The thing with computers is that if they see a forced win their eval jumps by leaps and bounds. How come it was staying within bounds, then, for a considerable while? Hovering just around +3.0 (that's the equivalent of being three pawns ahead, for the uninitiated). Were not the computers too quite sure how the win was to be got at?

The last hopes keep me awake for another hour and a half. Suddenly it dawns (as much figuratively that, as literally), that probably the wily grandmaster was correct after all. With precise play, Anand's b-pawn one step from queening was providing enough counterweight to continue the oxygen supply to his beleaguered king.

Every step was fraught with danger. Anand treads on the precipice. One false step and his lifeline will be cut. But he managed to find the precise defensive moves for his king. Topalov decided to win back the dangerous looking b-pawn that had long been a thorn in his flesh. But in exchange had to spoil his connected passed pawns that were to win the day for him.

It was a wise decision, as he didn't appear to have much more than a draw, and after winning the b-pawn it was impossible that he could have lost. Anand still had to play on precisely to salvage the draw that he had worked so assiduously toward.

It was 6 in the morning and I finally decide that I must crash in bed, now that it was looking that Anand would indeed manage to save the game.

It wasn't without further drama, though. Anand did make further inaccuracies, but thanks to the gruelling seven hours of play Topalov was unable to capitalize. Draw agreed on move 97.

Phew!! 97 moves. In an era where these super-GMs are prone to call it truce in twenty-five moves, more often than not. Some spectators drooled in the excitement provided -- it was a cliffhanger in a sense that couldn't be truer -- while some lamented the inaccuracies made by Topalov after having purchased Anand's ticket. No prizes for guessing which fan-cult sided with which opinion, though!

The next morning I read that Anand indeed saved the day.

As some anonymous chatter on the server was heard saying, quoting a long time adversary of Anand: it's not enough to just kill him. You have to kill him seven times before he's dead!

Chapsticks -- Chappell with a stick

2005-09-27T19:01:00.000+05:30

Random thoughts on the latest potboiler starring G. Chappell and S. Ganguly, running in the national theatre.

This thing presents an interesting case study from the point of view of corporate governance and the role of change in it.

You have a classic case of a corporate body in disarray (Indian cricket here) and a high-profile CEO (Chappell) is brought in to bring about a radical turnaround. The CEO comes from a different cultural background, and is either not aware of the workings of his new workplace, or is not willing to put up with the ways.

His ideas are too revolutionary -- opting for upheavals instead of gradual change. The existing mass of the corporation resists the change, because it conflicts with the cocoons of comfort that people inside have built over the years.

It's nothing new. It happens all the time. It's not a question of motives - everybody has the best of intentions. It's a question of methods - skill at negotiating change, and the dexterity to deliver in a complex situation.

The point is: do you attach greater primacy to the goals you have (how to take Indian cricket to the top?) or to the ideas that you have of going about it? Being too rigid with your methods, and thrusting them down the throats of people, without first achieving a complete buy-in from the people who have to adopt those changes, could easily backfire, and defeat the very purpose you had your ideas for.

This is what we need clarity on first. Whose responsibility is it to finally deliver? Is it the players'? Is it the coach's? Is is the captain's? Is it the administrative body's (BCCI)?

Depending on who shares how much ultimate responsibility, the distribution of power has to be accordingly achieved. And the spoils should be divided in that proportion as well.

In a game of cricket, it is the players (led by the captain) that ultimately matter. All the rules of the game are made for the players. There are no cricket rules made for a coach. No coach can ever be penalized with suspension for slow over rate. The coach cannot declare an innings.

Contrast this with football, where the captain goes only for the toss. The rest of the show is managed by the coach. He can withdraw any player as per his wish from a game in progress -- even the captain. The coach is the boss there. And usually if the team fails, it's the coach's head that rolls first.

Also to be considered, is how foreign coaches have traditionally fared in the Indian sporting scene. I remember about 6-7 years earlier Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi (equivalent of Dalmiya in football) brought in a Soviet coach for the Indian football team. This coach was considered the third best in Asia at that time. He began with a bang: bringing it radical ideas in terms of training, game strategy, player's positions etc. But ended with a whimper as the team couldn't cope, and the results got worse than they were to begin with. He had to be promptly replaced with Naeemuddin, who though a strict taskmaster himself, was more conversant with the workings of Indian football and the players' psychology. The foreign coach, in fact, sank without a trace.

Don't go that far. Remember what happened with the German hockey coach the IHF appointed amidst much fanfare just about a year or so back, before the Olympics. He found the existing stars too difficult to mould and fall in line with his ideas, confused them further, fought with Dhanraj Pillai and other seniors, and I guess had to be replaced even before he could make his Olympic debut.

The bottomline is: you need to be culturally sensitive. Or else failure is guaranteed. You can't get Ford's managing director to come and turn around Ambassador's fortunes. The trade unions will make life miserable for him, and he will end up complaining why the Indian Parliament is not doing anything to rein them in.

Your better bet to improve HM's fortunes remains the boss of Telco or Maruti perhaps.

So does that mean change is impossible or even undesirable? Quite the opposite. There can be no growth and forward movement without change. And there can be no radical forward movement without radical change. And what's more there can be no radical change without excruciating pain either.

So where lies the crux? It lies in one's skill in *negotiating* the change rather than trying to inject it intravenously. Warm up first, before trying to sprint. Whip people into running for their lives, and they'll all end up debilitated with cramps.

The other important aspect here is shareholder patience and the ability to oversee. The shareholders here are the Indian public. If you bring in a CEO to deliver, give him some room to deliver. And be aware that the fruits of radical change cannot be had overnight, or even in the short run. The short run here is: World Cup 2007. The fruits will be there for all the world cups to come therefater, if the changes are finally made to enter the system. But in short run, one is in only for pain, and loss.

If you go for change and abandon it once the results get negative in the short run, you lose both ways. Lose now and lose in the future. You have to stick through it.

It is very much like what happened with the liberalization of the Indian economy initiated by Narasimha Rao's government. You'd face crisis initially. But as long as you know it's the only way out, you reap the rewards in the long run. Everyone does. Though some might lose their jobs when the first few desi mills close down facing global competition.

But make sure you have a Manmohan Singh overseeing and executing the change. Don't get an American Treasury Secretary to do that, or you crash and burn, if he tries to do things as they are done in America.

The question is totally independent of which personalities are involved in the matter. Ganguly is only symptomatic. He's doing what any incumbent would do. Chappell, if he has been given a mandate, should try to see how best he can achieve it without shaking heaven and earth. Shaking heaven and earth might be quite against his professed objectives as well, which will end up sapping his own as well as everyone else's energies, to no good end.