I wonder if I am infringing copyright in using the title of this article: this phrase was often used by a former Chief Minister of Karnataka, who shall remain unnamed. When quizzed by the press about any political development, he would reply with an expansive smile “What does it matter?” He probably took his removal from office within a few months philosophically as well.
As one nears the biblical Rubicon of three score and ten years, close friends merge into the mists of time. The past few months and years have been marked by the passing away of those with whom one shared so much time in earlier years, bringing to mind, in a different context, the haunting words of the song from the film Kagaz Ke Phool: बिछड़े सभी बारी बारी.
Being fully aware of the tenuousness of life, why do we take it so seriously? When we look back at our life as it unfolded over six decades and more, it is difficult not to be wonderstruck by how events which, in retrospect, seem so insignificant dominated our thought processes and dictated the way we led our existence. We are free beings for roughly the first three years of our lives, till we become gradually aware of our distinct, separate identity: the “me”/ego/ahankara. Thereafter, Rousseau’s famous words characterise our existence: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. Social conditioning dictates most of our actions. Our families and parents, in most cases, set our thought patterns along specific lines. Teachers in our education system play an important role in further straitjacketing our minds. The average child is subjected to a fifteen year indoctrination on the criticality of succeeding in life, starting with outcompeting her/his peers in securing the highest marks. Subjects which will often play no role in the individual’s future life — algebra, trigonometry, calculus, physics — are drilled into the student’s head, with no thought as to whether s/he is suited mentally to receive such instruction. The educational rat race continues unabated, with anxious parents, especially in India, trying desperately to get their wards seats in medical or engineering colleges, either through coaching classes and/or payment of exorbitant fees.
And then starts the feverish rush to create a career — for most, the job market, for some, entrepreneurship and, for a chosen few, the political arena. In my case and those of my confreres in government service, it involved many hours on the job, often at the cost of family priorities. I wonder if the many hours spent in the secretariat were really worth it, rehashing cabinet notes and attending boring meetings. But it is at that stage of life that one is tempted by the lure of fame, glory, money and personal advancement. As the years advance, the “success” of peers, the open stench of corruption and the moral decay one observes all around — in professions, politics and social life — engender scepticism followed by cynicism (more on these in a later blog). In due course comes the day of retirement, when the organisation has no further need for your services. And realisation then dawns: what did I go through all this for?
With life expectancy rising, the superannuated individual spends a lot of time reflecting on the remaining portion of her/his sojourn on this earth. It is here that three basic maxims can help the individual lead a peaceful life, free of internal strife. Accept what comes: Old age brings with it attendant problems. That aching back, those knee problems, diminishing eyesight and hearing, unsteady locomotion, are inevitable accompaniments. The exit of near and dear from this earth brings to mind John Donne’s prophetic words: “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”. The gradual distancing from old friends and acquaintances, the preoccupation of people with their own lives and the realisation that you have to face crises largely by yourself are hard realities that confront you in your later years. Live in the present: Taking each day as it comes and handling challenges with aplomb are the mark of an evolved individual. Let life flow in its natural course and take pleasure in the small joys it brings — the chirping of the bird that greets you as you wake up, the first refreshing cup of tea or coffee, the greetings exchanged with a neighbour and the music and books that add colour and meaning to your life. Have no expectations: We generally forget that the world does not owe us a living. And yet we pin our hopes and fears on what we expect others to do for us or what we expect a munificent providence to provide us. Post-retirement years bring home to us the not always palatable truth that the attention lavished on us during our working years was predicated largely on the self-interest of those who worked with us.
It takes the most part of a lifetime to reach the hard conclusion that our lives are just part of a leela, a grand cosmic drama, where we, as bit actors, play our insignificant roles till we go off stage. As the bard put it in Macbeth, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Or, as that remarkable lyricist, Shakeel Badayuni, penned it in the 1948 film Mela: ये ज़िंदगी के मेले, दुनिया में कम न होंगे, अफ़सोस हम न होंगे.
Archive for the ‘human interest’ Category
21 Sep
What Does It Matter?
1 Feb
Eppur si muove
The year was 1633 CE. Galileo Galilei, the renowned Italian astronomer, was facing the ire of the Catholic Church for challenging the old Ptolemaic view that the sun revolved around the earth. To save himself from being burnt at the stake, Galileo recanted his theory. However, under his breath, he murmured “Eppur si muove” (and yet it moves).
Cut to 2025 CE and nothing much seems to have changed. Punishments for religious heresy still exist in parts of the world governed by theocracy-dominated regimes, starting from our western neighbour Pakistan and extending westwards to a number of other nations. But punishments (and threats of punitive action) for political heresy abound all over the world, including India. The latest instance is the communication from the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to two well-known Indian cartoonists, Satish Acharya and Manjul. X has informed them that the Mumbai police has flagged cartoons carried on X, which the police deem objectionable. A long way from Nehru telling the famous cartoonist Shankar “Don’t spare me Shankar”.
The last thirty years or so have seen an alarming decline in our ability as a country to tolerate (leave alone appreciate) humour, or any news, that exposes our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The early years of this century were witness to the hounding of the noted artist M.F. Husain for his depictions of goddesses and Bharat Mata, leading to his self-exile. There was also the deplorable occurrence of the vandalisation of the venerable Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute by self-appointed guardians of Shivaji Maharaj, responding to a book by James Laing which they deemed derogatory to Shivaji Maharaj and his family. Since then, the downward spiral has accelerated: Sanjay Leela Bhansali faced an ink attack for his film on Rani Padmavati, which had to be renamed Padmavat. Any and every caste/clan group is up in arms whenever they perceive that a hero of their tribe has been slighted. Rightly have political commentators labelled us a “republic of hurt sentiments”.
We now seek to rewrite history in order to valorise rulers of yore, whether Maharana Pratap or Prithviraj Chauhan. Reference is made at the highest levels of governance to the “thousand years of subjugation to foreign rule”, a very north-centric view, considering that Hindu empires flourished till 1565 CE and thereafter in the south, not forgetting Maratha dominance till 1818 CE. Terming the Mughal or Bahamani rulers or Tipu Sultan as foreigners is to ignore the reality that they were firmly rooted in the soil of India, regardless of their religious leanings. Even the freedom struggle and partition, and the events that followed in their wake, have not escaped airbrushing, based on political ideology. It is always easy to view and comment on historical events in hindsight, ignoring the compulsions of that time, which led to specific decisions, whether on partition itself, the manner of accession of Kashmir to the Indian Union or the economic development pattern adopted in the 1950s.
The mass media and an obliging bureaucracy have also contributed to the twisting of factual accuracy. Official handouts from government sources are carried without any critical examination of the contents. Indeed, the print and audiovisual media, controlled largely by powerful corporate houses, not only parrot official versions but even go further to create alternative truths. Inconvenient (unflattering) data from nongovernmental/international sources is debunked: official data is released tardily, with no public discussion or debate on the figures. The time-honoured Decennial Census is now four years overdue, even though the Covid pandemic has come and gone. Data from official sites, which was available on the internet earlier, is now often not easily accessible.
But it is the easy recourse to brute state power and arbitrary vigilante justice over the past decade or so that causes greatest concern. This recipe has been tested time and again in different states of India. Any innocuous attempt at wry humour or any investigation of misdemeanours by the executive, by a journalist, comedian or cartoonist, has led in the past to filing of cases under the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act, with incarceration of the “offender” until s/he secures bail from the courts. Despite repeated suggestions from respected citizens and civil society organisations, defamation continues to be a criminal offence in India. Our former colonial masters, under whose rule the offence of defamation was made a part of criminal law, have abolished criminal libel in 2009. However, despite replacing the colonial era Indian Penal Code with the newly minted Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita (BNS), the provision for criminal defamation (Section 356) remains on the statute book, with untrammelled scope for misinterpretation and arbitrary interpretation. That a leader of the main opposition party could be convicted for apparently hurting the sentiments of an entire community and lose his membership of the Lok Sabha is a fair indication of which way the wind blows.
Section 152 of the BNS is even more chilling in its ambit. Spoken or written words, signs, visual representation or electronic communication can invite a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. The explanation to this section seeks to exempt from the operation of this section “comments expressing disapprobation of the measures, or administrative or other action of the government with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means without exciting or attempting to excite the activities referred to in this section….”. However, given how often in the past the police machinery has shown alacrity in registering offences against anyone voicing views that go against the official grain, it can legitimately be apprehended that this section confers wide powers for arbitrary arrest, till the affected party manages to secure bail, possibly months or years later.
Article 19 of the Constitution confers on all citizens the right to freedom of speech and expression. With this right being infringed on many occasions, one is reminded of the quote attributed to Idi Amin “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech”. Before uttering or writing any words that could be deemed offensive, the thinking citizen will probably consider s/he is better off remembering the words of the scamp in a droll song from the film Anpadh:
सिकंदर ने पोरस से की थी लड़ाई
जो की थी लड़ाई तो मैं क्या करूँ
(Sikandar (Alexander) fought with Porus. If he had a fight, what can I do?)
15 Jan
KYC – Keeping You Confounded
KYC entered the life of the Indian banking customer in 2002. Till then “know your customer” meant the intimate and friendly relationship the local bank branch manager had with the depositor. Not anymore. As India adopts impersonal modern habits of arm’s length, faceless transactions, banks are no longer the place where the retired person drops in for a mid-morning chat and cup of tea with the manager. The new normal is KYC: though KEEPING YOU CONFOUNDED fits the acronym far better than KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER.
The past decade has certainly put the depositor through the KYC wringer. Originally conceived to check money laundering and terrorist activities, KYC is today the scourge of the hapless common citizen. For accessing her hard-earned money kept in savings accounts, the citizen is compelled to prove her identity almost every year. While the eKYC is intended to allow for online verification of identity, there are numerous instances of the depositor being required to visit a bank branch to confirm her identity. My own harrowing experiences bear out the repeated trials and tribulations in ensuring KYC compliance.
I have a joint savings account with my spouse in the branch of a private bank in Mumbai. This account was opened before this millennium in a bank which was subsequently taken over by the private bank. Some fifteen years later, I was informed that this account was dormant since no transactions had taken place in the previous couple of years. Question no. 1: why would a bank need to verify the ownership of an account with a limited amount of deposit, just because the depositor has not undertaken either deposits or withdrawals over a period of time? Surely the depositor can exercise her democratic right to operate or not operate the account, since she may be drawing on her reserves in other bank accounts. Anyway, it took us three or four visits to the bank to get the account activated.
Stranger things have since befallen us with this same account. Despite transacting with the account in mid-2024, the account has again been marked inactive in late 2024. Now, the problem has assumed a new dimension. When the account was opened in the predecessor bank in 1997, my name in the account was just ‘Ramani’. Some bright spark in the bank has concluded that this does not coincide exactly with my name in the PAN card and Aadhaar records, where my father’s name precedes my own name. So, no go with eKYC procedure: I am required to present myself at a bank branch so that they can be satisfied that I do indeed exist in flesh and blood.
To build on the madness, my demat account has been rendered inactive on the grounds that I have undertaken no activity in the past 24 months. Question no. 2: why is an investor required to compulsorily buy or sell stocks to satisfy the concerned agency that she is not a ghost operator- that again, when the amount involved is so measly? I tried the eKYC facility on the website: it accepted my signature but refused to accept my mug shot; apparently, a selfie is a must. Question no. 3: since banks and other institutions have already wrapped Aadhaar verification around our necks, why could a simple Aadhaar authentication not have sufficed? To add insult to injury, an affiliate of the same private bank is now sending me messages for eKYC of my car insurance policy, executed just five months ago. Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this buffoonery.
I read in the news recently that the Government of India is concerned about the large number of inoperative bank accounts in the country. With the huge number of Jan Dhan deposits, the mind boggles at the thought of 800 million or more Indians going through the KYC quagmire once a year. My entreaty to the Finance Minister of India, the Finance Secretary of India and the RBI Governor would be as follows:
(1) For bank accounts that have been in existence for years and where KYC has been complied with anytime in the past, do away with future KYC compliance.
(2) Select only those bank accounts for KYC verification which seem to reveal suspicious transactions.
(3) Even where KYC is felt to be necessary, rely on online procedures such as Aadhaar authentication and video calls to the customer, if identification by the bank is required. Many senior and super senior citizens may not be in a position to undertake the numerous trips to a bank branch to complete the KYC formalities.
What comes through clearly from this entire rigmarole is the absolute lack of trust that pervades the system. The banking staff does not trust the virtual customer (even when adequate documentary proof has been provided) and governing institutions do not trust the banking staff. In this entire process, the 0.01 percent of banking malefactors who ought to be caught and prosecuted for their financial wrongdoings go scotfree, while for the remaining 99.99 percent, it continues to be the same routine of KYC verification, ad nauseam ad infinitum, leading to LYC (losing your cool).
1 Jan
The Phoenix Rises
As we enter the 26th year of the 21st century, let me wish all my readers and blog subscribers a very happy and fulfilling New Year. I wish, like the Phoenix, to give new life to my blog page. My effort in the new year will be to sustain my writing of the past thirteen years and more. I started blogging in 2011 when I realised that my attempts to induce newspaper editors to carry my pieces were cutting no ice. Digital communication was then still in its teething phase. But I realised that I had to self-publish if I wanted my views on the world to reach a larger audience. The bug finally caught me in early 2014, when I started to publish my blogs on a more or less regular fortnightly basis. Not only was I able to tap readership on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, my blogs were also published regularly in the Financial Express between 2015 and 2017, thanks to its editor, the late Sunil Jain. Since 2020, the frequency of my blogs has fluctuated widely, whether you put it down to other preoccupations, writer’s block or sheer laziness. There are also times when a blogger wonders whether her/his views really matter at all to the world at large. This feeling is enhanced when I observe that the advice of sage commentators on social, economic and political matters are either derided or just ignored by those at the top echelons of power and influence. But, ultimately, a blogger perseveres out of sheer love for creating the written word and for stating clearly what s/he stands for.
The advent of the New Year is the time for making resolutions to improve one’s life and contributing to society. These serve as an impetus to make us introspect on our past thoughts, words and actions and how we can make our country and the world a better, more harmonious, happy place to live in. So here I go with my three bits.
Firstly, all discourse must be civilised. What came to my mind as we ushered out 2024 are the acrimonious exchanges in the hallowed precincts of our Parliament, with distressing scenes of confrontation, verging on the physical, in the recently concluded winter session. What used to be seen in some state legislatures has now reared its ugly head in the highest legislative body of the country. As it is, the level of public (and parliamentary) discourse has witnessed a steep drop over the years, leaving those in the post-60 age group with wistful memories of the gentle cut and thrust skills of stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indrajit Gupta, Nath Pai and Madhu Limaye. The passing of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to signify the end of an era of decency, humility and civility. The rapid spread of social media has spawned an era of vitriolic aggression, with the use of new technology tools to purvey even falsehoods as genuine facts. Add to this the verbal public attacks on individuals and groups, as well as political opponents, with ineffectual and inadequate restraint by constitutional bodies, and the distressing scenario is complete. The guardians of law pick and choose what writing or utterance needs to be criminally proceeded against: repeated offenders get away lightly while innocent comments land those voicing them in interminable criminal suits.
Letting go of the past is the second essential condition for a harmonious society. We humans are generally fixated on the perceived injustices perpetrated against us in our individual lives. This has now been magnified to the social sphere, a phenomenon increasingly evident in India as well as in the world. Historical grievances, real or imagined, of hundred year or thousand year vintage, dominate present day discussions. There is the wistful harkening back to an imaginary golden age, when the land was awash with prosperity and glory, leading to the refashioning of history. Governments also get obsessed with magnifying their current achievements in comparison with the apparently dismal record of predecessor regimes. This creates an acrid environment where all the ills of the present day are sought to be visited on the heads of a different religious/ethnic community or long-deceased persons. We forget that turning backwards to gaze at the past prevents us from pursuing the path to a better future.
As citizens of a vast, diverse land, our effort at all times must be to uphold the values enshrined in that peerless document, the Constitution of India. The principles of justice, equality, liberty and fraternity are the beacons that must guide all our actions. I really wish the Constitutional values were embedded deep in all our hearts. How many citizens have reflected on the wisdom in the words of the Preamble and on the inalienable fundamental rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution? Trying to pin the blame on each other for subverting the Constitution, as our political parties have sought to do in recent days, is a meaningless exercise. Each of us must introspect on our daily thoughts, words and actions and assess how closely we have structured our interactions in line with the principles enunciated in the Constitution. This applies particularly to those who have taken an oath at the beginning of their executive (political or administrative) careers to preserve and protect the Constitution. Yet, what do we see today? Bail applications are not heard for months on end, negating the individual’s right to liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. Individual freedoms pertaining to what one eats, who can be one’s partner in life and exercising one’s right to profess, practice and propagate religion (not my words, but spelt out in black and white in Article 25 of the Constitution) are severely circumscribed by legislation enacted by state governments, using the proviso of reasonable restrictions on such activities. “Hate speech” directed at specific communities and calls to boycott goods sold by vendors of minority communities are increasingly heard. Directions from the Supreme Court have been required to get administrative authorities to move against such elements. The same administrations act with alacrity to demolish structures of persons from minority communities for various alleged offences, without following due process of law, drawing adverse comments from the Supreme Court. Investigative agencies launch criminal cases which drag on for years in Kafkaesque fashion. These cases go into a miraculous limbo when political opponents affirm their support to the ruling dispensation. One would certainly hope that, in the new year, officials act only on the dictates of the Constitution and the laws of the land drawing sustenance from it.
So, as we enter 2025, it is time to revisit the great poet Rabindranath Tagore’s unforgettable words from Gitanjali:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
28 Jul
Of Kangaroo justice and Kafkaesque trials
While the origin of the phrase “kangaroo court” is still not certain, the term is quite clearly defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted.” I would modify the term to “kangaroo justice” where due process of law is given short shrift.
Three incidents in recent history make us wonder whether we live in an era of kangaroo justice: (1) In December 2019, four men accused of the rape and murder of a young woman were shot dead by the police when, while in judicial custody, they were being taken to the scene of the crime near Hyderabad for a reconstruction of events as part of the investigation. The subsequent judicial enquiry concluded that these men were summarily eliminated and indicted ten police personnel in this connection. (2) In April 2023, Atiq Ahmed, a former Member of Parliament, and his brother, Ashraf Ahmed, in judicial custody in connection with several crimes, were shot dead by assailants posing as media persons, in the presence of UP police personnel, while being taken for medical examination to hospital at the unearthly hour of midnight. (3) 84 year old Father Stan Swamy, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, passed away in July 2021, after a series of ailments, while in judicial custody, without being given bail on medical grounds.
In the first two instances, summary executions by uniformed persons and by ordinary citizens made a mockery of the rule of law. Legal processes were unfortunately short-circuited to render instant justice (injustice?). While there was public support for the two actions, this does not behoove a democratic society that ought to be totally committed to the rule of law. The third case is even more unfortunate: an octogenarian social worker, who was not questioned by the NIA during his incarceration for eight months in Taloja prison near Mumbai, was refused bail even when it was apparent that his health was failing and that his release on bail posed no threat to the state or society.
“The wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind exceedingly fine” is a metaphor attributed to both ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers, acknowledging the slow pace of delivering justice, though justice is finally done. In the Indian context, delivery of criminal justice is often excruciatingly slow, with the main stakeholders at the pre-trial stage — the police, victims and their families and the accused — left with a feeling of frustrated helplessness as cases drag on for years. The phenomenon of ‘encounter specialists’ taking the law into their hands to dispose of criminals and of public lynching of notorious ant-social elements are but symptoms of a deeper malaise. Shoddy investigation of crimes, prompted sometimes by political pressure and sometimes by the lure of lucre, and interminably long periods between the commission of a crime and the final verdict of guilt seriously affect the credibility of the criminal justice system.
It is against this unsatisfactory background that recourse is had to the arrest of persons for even petty crimes and/or where they are not habitual offenders, just to satisfy public sentiment. Once arrested, the accused remain in jail because, in many cases, they cannot manage to give the surety/security required for grant of bail. The courts and the police are reluctant to trust the release on bail of persons on personal bonds/undertakings. Non-granting of bail and overcrowding in jails are two sides of the same coin. According to the Bureau of Police Research and Development, in 2022, India housed 5.73 lakh persons in its jails as against a prison capacity of 4.36 lakhs. The National Crime Records Bureau has reported that the proportion of people in jails, who are not convicted, rose from 33% in 1947 to 66% in 2012 and 76% in 2022.
More disturbing is the increasing trend of arrests of those deemed by the ruling dispensation to be opposed to them politically or those who raise their voice against actions of those in power that smack of restraint on or misuse of constitutional rights — these range from politicians of opposition parties to “anti-nationals” and “urban naxals”. The draconian provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on grant of bail keep those accused under these Acts in prison for years on end. Under both laws, the court has to be satisfied, before releasing the accused on bail, that a prima facie case of guilt is not made out by the prosecution: this has led to a situation today where courts at all levels are reluctant to grant bail, never mind the provisions for bail and bonds under the newly enacted Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) (or its predecessor Act, the Code of Criminal Procedure). It has long been a judicial precedent that bail ought to be refused only where (a) the offence is likely to be repeated while on bail; (b) the accused may abscond; (c) witnesses may be influenced; (d) evidence may be tampered with. The Hindu newspaper has highlighted (September 10, 2022) the abysmal conviction rates of 3% for those arrested under UAPA between 2018 and 2020, and 0.05% under PMLA until March 2022. As a consequence of the stringent provisions for grant of bail, the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, Umar Khalid in the Delhi Riots case, AAP politicians Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia in the Delhi liquor policy and former Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren have been in jail for months and years on end without commencement of trial. The eagerness of a state like Maharashtra to enact the Special Public Security Act, modeled on similar legislation in Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Telangana, with provisions for keeping lower courts from intervening in executive actions under the Act, does not bode well for civil liberties of citizens.
What is clearly required to safeguard the right to liberty of citizens are three sets of legislation to check abuse of authority:
(1) Requiring the courts to reach a preliminary conclusion about the possible guilt of the accused under the UAPA/PMLA vitiates the judicial process of a fair trial. It is essential to delete the proviso to Section 43 D(5) of the UAPA which reads “Provided that such accused person shall not be released on bail or on his own bond if the Court, on a perusal of the case diary or the report made under Section 173 of the Code is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against such person is prima facie true.” Similarly, Section 45 (ii) of the PMLA which reads “where the Public Prosecutor opposes the application, the court is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he (sic) is not guilty of such offence and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail;” deserves to be removed from the statute book.
(2) The right to bail must be enshrined as a fundamental right, under either Article 21 or 22 of the Constitution of India. This will ensure that special laws do not tamper with the right to bail of an accused, which should be governed only by laws of general application like the BNSS.
(3) India, unfortunately, has no statute governing tort law. Legislation must be put in place which provides for legal damages in the form of monetary compensation for confinement in prison which does not result in conviction. This compensation would be payable by the state. However, where a miscarriage of justice which leads to incarceration is established in a court of law as motivated by mala fides on the part of specific government functionaries or other individuals, compensation to the affected party would also be payable by the concerned persons. The same principle of individual as well as state liability would apply to all deaths in police/judicial custody that are attributable to gross negligence or deliberate actions in violation of the rule of law by the guardians of law or other persons.
Since it is evident that the executive at the Union and State levels seems to lack both the moral authority and the resolve to ensure that law enforcement agencies do not overstep their powers, it is high time that the legislature and the judiciary step in to ensure that the ordinary citizen is protected from arbitrary actions that interfere with her/his enjoyment of personal liberty. This will be a lasting tribute to the framers of the Constitution of India in the seventy fifth year of the Republic of India.
31 Dec
Our neocolonial complex
When the new criminal laws were recently passed by the Indian Parliament, a frequent refrain was that these laws were framed to do away with the colonial criminal jurisprudence of the nineteenth century. But, in fact, the new laws reinforce the colonial view of a huge population as fundamentally untrustworthy, hence the need for a wide range of offences that are punishable with stiff terms of imprisonment or death. This set me thinking: have Indians really, as a people, shed the colonial complex that was inherited from the British?
Actually, it would be more appropriate to categorise the mindset that dominates Indian thought as neocolonial. This is because, after World War II, the axis of power and influence shifted across the Atlantic from the UK to the USA. The UK has attempted some military forays since 1945, in the Suez (1956, with disastrous results) and in the Falkland Islands (1982, with a somewhat better result). Otherwise, the UK has been very much an understudy to the USA, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It is the USA that has colonised the global (including Indian) weltanschauung over the last 70 years, apart from meddling in the politics of innumerable countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia, at great cost to and human suffering in these countries.
As one born in the 1950s, my generation was exposed to propaganda from the USA & the UK (and countries allied to them), in the impressionable early years of our lives. Our young minds were filled with a surfeit of Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Mallory Towers) and Frank Richards (Billy Bunter). Apart from exposing us to life in good old Blighty, there was also a subtle racial stereotyping of the “natives” from India and other Asian-African countries. Fiction by the likes of Leon Uris painted Israel as a country with a divine right to get its Promised Land. The USA had, by the 1960s, stepped into the quagmire of Vietnam. Magazines like Reader’s Digest, Time and Newsweek printed rubbish week after week, detailing the atrocities of the Vietcong and artfully evading the horrors of the My Lai massacre and the carpet bombing of civilian populations in Cambodia and Laos. Other magazines like Playboy, Life and Vogue catered to the prurient tastes of the younger generation, awakening in them desires to partake of the bounty that Uncle Sam could offer.
Unsurprisingly, many of us, especially those educated in elite missionary/public schools, were ashamed to claim what was truly our heritage. As a participant in the Bournvita Quiz Contest, I informed our Quiz Master, Hamid Sayani, of my interest in Hindi film music, to find my response drawing derisive titters from our opponents, the girls from a prominent Delhi convent school. At university festivals, western music competitions drew crowds that the Hindi music competitions never did. Come 2023, I am most happy and gratified that my friend and college mate, Ajay Mankotia, has come out with Bollywood Odyssey, an ode to the Hindi film music industry. Hindi popular music has, in recent times, acquired a massive fan following, as mobile phone technology has penetrated large sections of the population. Bollywood has spread its wings internationally, thanks to the Indian diaspora.
To some extent, the shedding of the Indian inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West began with the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991. Freed somewhat from the shackles of a pseudo-socialist economy, the Indian economy accelerated away from its hitherto sluggish growth rate. Positive state policies in a number of sectors, ranging from infrastructure to energy, finance and telecommunications, have propelled the country to a different growth trajectory. At the same time, the need to step up job creation, improve social development indicators, make governance efficient and facilitate the explosion of entrepreneurial talent by removing bureaucratic hurdles faced by the citizen are still works in progress.
It is here that the Indian government (and domestic public opinion) still remain overly sensitive to studies and surveys emanating largely from the western world. Like Rome, India cannot be built in a day. It will take time for indicators, especially in the social sectors, to register dramatic improvements. Nor is it necessarily the case that figures for other countries (especially those under authoritarian leadership) are accurate. So, there is no need for government spokespersons and proudly nationalist commentators to launch into a denunciation of such reports. What is important, however, in the interest of meaningful policy making is that data gathered for different sectors be accurate and open to the public (and experts) for critical examination. If there are serious reservations about the applicability of international standards to Indian conditions, appropriate indicators can be developed for application in the Indian context. Take the example of the child nutrition measurement indicators used in India till 2008. Since the child nutrition indicators used in the USA would probably have overstated the percentage of underweight and stunted under-6 children in India, an underweight measure devised by the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) was used in the ICDS to assess the numbers of children who were very severely/severely/moderately underweight and normal as compared to the weight of the reference child population. Post-2008, India has moved to the universally used WHO growth standards. There is now a debate on whether India should adopt its own child growth standard indicators. Even if this is developed and officially adopted, there still needs to be a sound theoretical basis for the standards and ongoing progress in reducing child undernutrition should be measured by the same yardstick over time, without shifting goalposts to show achievement. Nor should data be withheld from public view. Unfortunately, there is a growing tendency in respect of various economic and social indicators to either modify baselines to show better results or to just stop publication of crucial data. Third party evaluations that differ from officially published figures are debunked. Not only do these reveal a deep sense of insecurity in official circles, they also impact effective policy making based on reasonably accurate data. There will always be some gap between the desired and actual outcomes: the shortcomings in implementation and the ground-level realities need to be analysed to effect mid-course policy corrections.
The neocolonial complex also has its reflection in the “neoliberal” economic policies followed in most nations (India included). These are based on a preoccupation with gross domestic product, with a corresponding sidelining of concerns relating to the environment and unequal income and wealth distribution. Manmade natural disasters and frustration and a growing sense of grievance in marginalised, deprived populations are the consequences that society has to face. Unless economic policies are fashioned to keep harmony among the four elements — the market, state, households and nature — that constitute the modern economy, imbalances are sure to develop over time. Glitzy malls, superhighways, high-speed transport and luxury products are no indicators of a healthy society, especially when the state has to repeatedly step in to alleviate large-scale misery.
Governments in India need to focus on economic and social policies that lay stress on job and income creation for the mass of people. Reducing income and wealth disparities without destroying the entrepreneurial spirit or the environment should be the guiding principle in this context. Unless a new direction is forged with a people-centric focus, we can only rehash the prescient words of George Santayana “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
20 Nov
The 70 hour week
Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy set the cat among the pigeons with his recent advice to the young to put in a 70 hour work week. Apparently, this is essential if the country is to become a global economic powerhouse. He was silent on whether the rise in the country’s economic status would translate into rising living standards of its citizens. As a long-time sceptic of the theory that GDP growth solves all problems, especially unemployment and low incomes, I wonder, given the way wealth has distributed itself unequally (in India and elsewhere), whether India’s youth would not be justified in taking his advice with a generous pinch of salt.
Narayana Murthy’s assertion begs the question of whether low working hours were the reason for the low rates of growth in the pre-1991 period and whether the subsequent rising growth rates in India reflect greater time spent in the workplace. I am not getting entangled in this controversy but would merely like to highlight some issues, based on my work experience as a cog in India’s mammoth bureaucratic machine.
A 70 hour week (about 12 hours a day in a six day week) does not mean 70 hours continuously at the desk. Whether functionaries of private or public organisations, individuals need to have their nourishment from time to time, their visits to the loo/coffee machine and some time spent in relaxed banter with their fellow workers. It does imply, however, the time spent away from home and from one’s loved ones (Work From Home is a recent COVID/post-COVID phenomenon and the jury is still out on that one). My Personal Assistant in the Secretariat in Mumbai left her home in suburban Vasai before 8 AM and returned home after 8 PM by the Churchgate-Virar local train. My five year stint in Delhi involved, after a ten to eleven hour stint in a stuffy Shastri Bhavan room, road travel of over an hour both ways from Central Delhi to the outskirts of South Delhi (and this when I had the benefit of my own transport).
More to the point is the mistaken presumption that government servants, especially those at the middle and senior levels, have nothing to do with government work once they leave their offices. Having worked in a number of quasi-judicial capacities in the revenue, cooperation and general administration departments, I fully sympathise with the views of the Chief Justice of India, Justice Chandrachud, that a Supreme Court judge probably spends most of her time outside courtroom hours on judicial work, whether it be reading up on cases listed in the coming days, finalising judgments or keeping abreast of the latest developments in jurisprudence. IAS officers with quasi-judicial responsibilities also spend a considerable part of their evenings and weekends dictating judgments. Apart from this task, senior officers of the All India and Central Services have to clear files, to a large extent at home (don’t believe us, ask our long-suffering spouses). This is because the hours in office are often spent in meeting hordes of visitors and in countless, often unproductive meetings. The officer in the field has also to accompany Ministers and those senior to her in the bureaucratic hierarchy on their visits to districts, etc.
The 70 hour week exhortation also does grave injustice to the female half of the population. Whether a homemaker (a term I am not especially fond of) or a working woman, most women put in at least fourteen hours of work a day, seven days a week. National income statistics do not account for labour in the home, covering washing, childcare, cooking, cleaning and a host of other duties. Though men have become a little more responsive (and responsible) in assisting their partners in housework, the bulk of the burden still falls on women — the most evocative image being of women office goers in Mumbai’s locals who chop vegetables, purchased outside stations, on their way home.
Many misspent years in government later, I ruminate over the differences between inputs, outputs and outcomes in the implementation of public policy. You put in manpower and financial resources into a programme, your implementing machinery declares, come April the first (rightly named April Fools’ Day), that so-and-so targets have been achieved, whether it be sterilisations, toilets or drinking water supply to hamlets, and all in government retire to a blissful contemplation of March-end completion figures and rosy visions of glowing annual confidential reports. Till some busy body third party comes along and pricks the sarkari balloon: the outputs are either not there on the ground or the outcomes of the policies do not lead to the achievement of the desired goals, whether it be slowing population growth, reducing child malnutrition or eradicating open defecation.
The input-output-outcome drama applies in equal measure to presence in government offices. The government servant is seen at her desk zealously executing her duties, the files move up and down the bureaucratic ladder, but public satisfaction with the speed of delivery of public services shows no improvement. There is an apocryphal tale of two governments down in South India: “… ( ) government very bad government, apply apply no reply; ( ) government very good government, apply apply immediate reply no vacancy.” It reminds me of the Citizens’ Charters which were in fashion a quarter century ago. Time limits were prescribed for expeditious disposal of cases. For one clearance, my junior officer had suggested a time limit of thirty days. When I doubted that the approval could be given in thirty days, he breezily remarked that on the twenty-ninth day, the department would seek some further clarification from the applicant, thus buying a further thirty days’ time till the last syllable of recorded time (with apologies to Shakespeare and Macbeth).
So, finally, it is not the number of hours one puts in at work that matters, it is the end result of all the work that is put in. Assess your workforce by their contribution to the end-goals of the organisation and its long-term health. Embrace the maverick who can deliver in two hours what others take eight hours to execute and don’t grudge her the attention she gives to seemingly frivolous activities in the remaining hours. Her seeming inactivity may well be the fountainhead of immense creativity that will take the organisation to great heights in days to come.
20 Feb
Underage marriages in Assam – why the danda will not work
Almost half a century separates 1976 and 2023, yet the French saying “The more things change, the more they stay the same” seems so relevant. The heyday of the Emergency saw the forced sterilisation programme that was one of the reasons for the ejection of the Congress from power in 1977. Recent events in Assam point to the continued use of coercion in family-related issues. Ostensibly concerned with high rates of underage marriages and its implications for maternal and child health, the Government of Assam has decided to arrest those who participate in the marriage of girls under 18, whether they be husbands, fathers or fathers-in-law. Unfortunately, the government has gone in for a remedy that is worse than the disease.
For the first 50 years after independence, India’s population policy suffered from a myopic fixation with directly controlling reproduction through sterilisation. It is only in recent years that realisation has dawned on our policy makers that human development is the best contraceptive. More specifically, it is now acknowledged that promoting womens’ agency and enabling them to control vital life decisions are the best methods to limit population growth while also bringing maternal and infant/child mortality rates in line with those in developed countries.
Assam has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country of 215 deaths per 1,00,000 live births, almost twice the Indian average. While institutional deliveries have shown a rise from 71% to 84% between 2016 and 2019, only 51% of pregnant women availed of at least four antenatal care visits in 2019. Only 45.3% of currently married women in the 15-49 age group use any modern family planning method. Poverty and poor educational levels are clearly the driving factors behind early marriage of girls. 32% of women in Assam are married before reaching the age of 18, increasing the chances of infant mortality in children born to mothers in the teenage group as compared to children born to women in the 20-29 age group. Five districts of western Assam are among the top seven districts registering underage female marriages of over 40% – Barpeta, Dhubri, Goalpara, Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon. These are also the areas where the government appears to have focused its crackdown on underage female marriages.
In a society which is still traditional and patriarchal in its attitude to women, lack of access to education and formal schooling for girls has serious implications for womens’ empowerment. Less than 30% of females in Assam have completed ten or more years of schooling. The 2011 Census shows female literacy rates for Dhubri and Barpeta districts in Western Assam at 50% and 56% respectively. The latest figures for 2023 show that total literacy percentages for many districts in Western Assam are still between 58% and 67%: obviously female literacy percentages are likely to be lower. The lack of womens’ education has serious consequences for the next generation. The NFHS5 Report for Assam bluntly states that children whose mothers have no schooling are twice as likely to die before their first birthday as compared to children whose mothers have completed ten or more years of schooling.
There is every likelihood that the resort to police action could have very adverse repercussions where women are concerned. The rise in institutional deliveries over the years has been heartening. Now, there is a distinct possibility that families will resort to home deliveries or resort to unregistered doctors/quacks to avoid state action, as evidenced by the recent report of a young woman in Bongaigaon district bleeding to death because of unskilled delivery at her home. Equally disturbing is the likelihood that teenage pregnancies will not be reported to the health authorities, denying these pregnant women access to professional antenatal care. Out of pocket expenses on deliveries would put an increasing burden on the straitened finances of poor families. Further strains on family finances would arise from the arrest of male family members, who are in most cases the sole breadwinners for the family. The result could well be increased mortality and morbidity in the mother-child dyad.
In fact, this knee-jerk reaction of the Assam government to the problem of teenage pregnancies could well have been avoided. Pregnancies in women under 20 years of age could hardly be the sole reason for the high maternal mortality rate in Assam. Other factors like poor nutrition and health care access (especially during pregnancy) on account of poverty, and lack of spacing between deliveries are also contributory factors. Social behaviours are slow to change in the absence of rising standards of living, better education and improvements in the socio-economic status of women.
The Assam government should take heart from the statistics in the latest NFHS5 survey, which show significant step up in institutional deliveries, substantial reductions in infant and child mortality and levels of child undernutrition that are comparable with those of more developed states. ASHAs and other frontline health and ICDS workers, as well as community workers, have gradually earned the confidence of local communities. Community education on the dangers of early marriage and pregnancy and promoting the use of effective family planning measures to delay pregnancies till the age of 21 and above are measures that need to be pursued patiently and systematically. The state government should encourage civil society activists and government workers to deal with communities while pursuing policy measures that emphasise girls’ education, state-sponsored nutrition for pregnant women and lactating mothers and employment creation.
This blog has been published in the Free Press Journal of 20 February 2023 (see here)
7 Sep
Let’s rescue politics from resorts
Almost exactly twenty years after ‘resort’ politics was resorted to in Maharashtra to save the Congress coalition government of Vilasrao Deshmukh, history has repeated itself in the recent rebellion within the ranks of Shiv Sena legislators. While bundling away legislators in bulk to resorts to keep away prying suitors was a novelty in 2002, it is the norm in 2022. From Gujarat to Rajasthan, from Karnataka to Madhya Pradesh, the flock of disgruntled dissidents or loyalists (depending on which side of the table you are on) have been spirited away before crucial voting or before governments are toppled. There are, of course, states like Goa and Manipur where the resort to resorts is not even necessary: it is game, set and match even as the election process ends, with wholesale defections to the party which offers the best terms.
What boggles the mind is the scale of operations today. In my view, cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL) has a hoary ancestor in the Indian Political League (IPoL): the latter commenced functioning around 1967, a good forty years before the IPL was born. Players in the IPoL are free to switch teams whenever auctions take place: these could be before elections or at more frequent intervals, depending on team managements. Auctions can adopt a carrot and/or stick approach: positive inducements, such as signature bonuses and subsequent access to ATM assignments, and/or negative pressures, using law enforcement agencies to uncover the murky pasts of politicos. Once safely home in her/his newly adopted political party, the freshly laundered politician has a new launching pad for her/his political future.
Where does this continuous cycle of saam-daam-dand-bheda leave the ordinary voter? Increasingly, her/his vote ceases to matter. No matter whom s/he elects to office, there is no guarantee that that person will remain loyal to the party and the ideology which may have influenced the voter in her/his favour. The anti-defection law has proved to be a non-starter. Developments in recent years from Arunachal Pradesh to Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have not dampened the enthusiasm of Aaya Rams – Gaya Rams to jump ship at the call of the Sirens. The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India seems to indicate clearly that two-thirds of the MLAs/MPs of a party have to switch allegiance to another party to retain their membership of the legislature (the Goa pattern) and not attract the anti-defection provisions. Although the Tenth Schedule vests all powers to decide on disqualification of members with the Speaker (or the Deputy Speaker, as the case may be) and bars the jurisdiction of courts, there has been judicial intervention in both Arunachal Pradesh and Maharashtra. With the impartiality of the Speaker/Deputy Speaker being questioned whenever disqualification proceedings are launched, the Tenth Schedule is fast becoming a dead letter. India has made rapid strides in recent years in “anti-defecation” measures: it is time now for “anti-defection” measures with more teeth.
What is, therefore, required is legislation that discourages modern day Aaya Rams and Gaya Rams from flitting from one party to another. For a start, a winning candidate set up by a political party must resign her/his seat if s/he decides to join another party. Similarly, independent winning candidates who declare their support to the government formed by a particular political party must resign their seats if they switch loyalties to any other party. Drawing on the recent happenings in Maharashtra, I would propose that even if more than two-thirds of the legislators of a party withdraw support to the party that put them up for election and opt to join another party, the opinion of the party functionary who issued Form A at the time of nominations for election should be the clinching factor; if this functionary does not ratify the withdrawal of support, the withdrawal of support should be deemed to be grounds adequate for disqualification. The decision for disqualification must be that of the Speaker of the House and, if there is no Speaker, that of the Deputy Speaker. Additionally, the disqualified member and her/his family members (covering at least the spouse and all sons/daughters) should be ineligible for standing for election for a period of six years from the date of disqualification, thus removing them from the election process for effectively the present and next term of the House. This will rule out those legislators who think they have the necessary financial and social clout to get reelected even if they have to resign from their seats. There should also be a mandatory assessment by the Income Tax department of the income and assets of the member and his/her family members to check the flow of illicit funds to their accounts in return for the switch in loyalty.
I know that I am asking for the moon in proposing measures that will rein in incentive/disincentive-induced defections. In the current political climate, these measures are unlikely to find any resonance with political parties. The opacity of the electoral bonds regime in place today and the multiple avenues for stashing away windfall gains in safe tax havens make it highly improbable that unscrupulous politicians will be deterred from looking for easy political capital. However, we have reached a stage today where the very sanctity of the electoral process is in jeopardy. If money and muscle power can dictate who comes to power, the voter will repose little faith in the electoral system, the surest recipe for a democracy to head on the path to disaster.
P.S.: A little bird just whispered in my ear that future legislators whose loyalty is sought to be bought are likely to ask for more exotic resorts to spend time in while the political drama plays out. Antigua, Bali and the Cayman Islands are doing the rounds as possible venues. To which I can only quote Cicero: O Tempora! O Mores!
This blog was published in the Free Press Journal on 29 August 2022 (here)
27 Aug
Bilkis Bano case – the interface of law and ethics
If 2012 saw the conscience of a nation shaken by the Nirbhaya rape incident, 2022 has witnessed an equal nightmare in the wholesale release of eleven men convicted of gangrape and mass murder in 2002 in Gujarat, that too on the very day that India was celebrating the 75th anniversary of its independence. The Government of Gujarat utilised its good fortune in being declared the “appropriate government” by the Supreme Court decision of May 2022 (which overrode Section 432(7) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC)) to arrive at the facile reasoning that the 1992 remission policy provided for remission of life sentence (even in cases involving rape and murder) after 14 years in prison. The subsequent tightened guidelines on remission by the Government of Gujarat (2014) are apparently not applicable since the 11 men were convicted in 2008, when the 1992 remission policy was in place.
The decision of the Government of Gujarat begs many answers. Let us accept the argument that, as per the 1992 remission guidelines, these 11 men were eligible for release from prison. Some other nagging questions of law still remain. The case was prosecuted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), an agency created under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. Section 435 of the CrPC makes it mandatory for the state government to consult the Union Government in cases prosecuted by the CBI (note well that consultation here means concurrence of the Union Government). If such permission was not taken, the remission of sentence is ab initio void in law. If concurrence was taken, the Union Government is a willing party to this decision. Since, as in many other decisions of the Government of India today, no clarification is provided on this issue, the public is left guessing. Even if concurrence of the Union Government under Section 435 of the CrPC was taken, there is still the matter of taking the opinion of the presiding Judge of the court which passed the original order of conviction, regarding grant of remission of sentence under Section 432(2) of the CrPC: this has been mandated by the Supreme Court as well. This process has definitely not been gone through in the appropriate special CBI court in Mumbai.
These are the legal issues on which no clear answers are forthcoming as of now. But even more troubling is the process of decision making at the level of the committee on remission headed by the District Magistrate, Godhra, and the Home Department, Government of Gujarat. Even granting that the 1992 remission guidelines allowed for remission of sentence to those convicted of murder and rape, there are still other considerations that have to be kept in mind when granting remission. The Supreme Court has, as far back as 2000, laid down guidelines for remission of sentence which include, inter alia, whether the crime affects society at large and whether recurrence of commission of crime is possible. In the Bilkis Bano case, there can be no doubt that the nature of the crimes committed — gangrape and mass murders — definitely affected society at large. On the issue of possible recurrence of criminal acts by the convicts subsequent to their release, newspaper reports indicate that witnesses were threatened when the convicts were released on parole during their incarceration. Whether these factors were taken into consideration while granting remission is a matter of speculation — there is no clarification from the state government.
However, as much as these legal issues, what ought to concern us all as citizens of a humane, compassionate society are the ethical dimensions of this entire episode. Photographs have been shown of the distribution of sweets to the released convicts; even more appalling are reports of the felicitation of the convicts by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, this in a criminal case monitored by the Supreme Court and where verdicts of conviction were confirmed by the Bombay High Court. Common decency dictated that the release, even if in accordance with the procedure laid down by law, be kept low-key in deference to the sentiments of the survivors of the crimes. A member of the remission committee and a sitting ruling party legislator went so far as to suggest that the convicts were of high caste, had good upbringing and that charges were framed against them because of ill intentions of some persons. It was incumbent on the administration of the Government of Gujarat to take steps to prevent the organisation of such events and to discourage such statements which could cause unease in the minds of the victims and the minority community.
In fact, the Government of Gujarat should have taken the initiative to organise a reconciliation meeting between the victims and the perpetrators of crimes. The effort should have been to bring a sense of closure to the tragic incidents of 2002 and promote a spirit of harmony in the village where both sides would be residing henceforth. Nelson Mandela adopted this approach with his Truth and Reconciliation Commission, following the end of apartheid in South Africa, to build an atmosphere of trust and cooperation between the coloured and white communities. Our own Bapu, Mahatma Gandhi, spent the first Independence Day wiping the tears of the victims of communal fury in Bengal.
It is this spirit of fraternity (bandhutva) that is sorely lacking in the India of today. We can debate till eternity whether the 11 persons should have been released or should have continued in prison, depending on our ideological predilections. But unless those who committed these crimes are fully aware of the damage they have caused to the psyches of their victims and are truly remorseful for their past misdeeds, there can be no meeting of minds between the different communities. Immense damage is caused to the social fabric, when vested interests dabble in spreading hatred and misunderstanding among communities. Let us, in this 76th year of India’s independence, move from untruth to truth and from darkness to light: only then will we truly be free.
V. Ramani's web 