CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Of Being Zero-savvy

It is too sad. Most Indians have forgotten most aspects of their cultural roots, roots that gave them credit for many things and gave them some respectability as carriers of a great tradition. Thanks to the Indian Space Research Organization and its perspicacious pilots at the helm, today Aryabhata is a name that is well preserved in the minds of at least the school children and votaries of quiz programmes. This genius, who lived in the 478--550 AD in the court of the Gupta emperors, was mathematician-astronomer non-pareil. That he was probably born in Kerala is an idea that opens up other possibilities, surely. It is the words of Bhaskara I, who about 100 years later wrote a commentary on his masterly treatise 'Aryabhatiya'  that sums up his achievements: 

"...Aryabhatta is the master who, after reaching the furthest shores and plumbing the in-most depths of the sea of ultimate knowledge of mathematics, kinematics and spherics, handed over the three sciences to the learned world."

And as the world knows and accepts, Aryabhata was the one who invented the grand concept of the zero and unleashed it on the world.

The power of zero has never been more apparent to the non-savvy guy on the street than now. Aryabhata himself had stated that his work 'Aryabhatiya' was composed 3,600 years into the Kali Yuga, when he was 23 years old --which corresponds to 499 AD. That tells us we are into Kali Yuga by about 5,000 years plus. Not bad when you notice that at least one good has come to pass. The average person, whether in India or elsewhere, I am sure has his/her difficulties when it comes to tackling numbers with more than, say, half a dozen zeroes. Perhaps in a fitting revenge of the past, in India 5,000 years into Kali Yuga, we are now faced with the mammoth task of digesting numbers with God alone knows how many zeros. Surely we are going to need all the blessings of these past masters if we are to make head or tail of all those zeros. Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Varahamihira and the great minds of the past are having the last laugh as we grapple with the 'genie from the bottle'.

Of Black and White

The airwaves are saturated with zeroes. The print media, for once, is foolishly ignoring their advantage and playing a low-key game. Whether it is a few lakh-crores or maybe a few crore-lakhs, it just doesnt make all that difference when you listen to it on the TV channels. On the other hand, just imagine the impact in print of 1 followed by, ahem, a whole procession of zeroes. Who bothers if you can count? But the sheer impact tells you that it is HUGE. English is a poor language and has no adequate word to describe such a size. Perhaps India should, along with 'curry' and 'verandah' and 'pucca',  contribute an apt word too to describe figures of such grand proportions.

Be that as it may, let us take a closer look at all these zeroes and what goes with them. It is the latest revelations about the wealth stashed away in Swiss and other banks. These days when even diehard Socialists are shouting themselves hoarse about the need for wealth creation, what is wrong salting away some wealth in a bank or two. The trouble is, they say this is all "black". Ah, the colour of money! The government in its wisdom does some exercises every March-April ("...beware the Ides of March..." Google that and be scared!) and announces a financial 'road map' for the country and its citizens to follow. This involves sums with Aryabhatiya scales of zeroes, and in the end they append what is termed 'deficit'. The common man doesnt understand much about that, except that the government is spending more money than it has. Good, we think, for them; but we pay for it all with runaway inflation and price rises and all that. In brief, the government approved financial 'tamasha' is supposed to be all in "white", despite the existence of the deficit. Anything that goes beyond that and is not accounted for is all grouped under "black".

What the average Indian thinks of black money is that it is the paltry sums made by the average trader and businessman by defrauding the government of some taxes. If the average tax is say, ten percent on goods etc, it will take a long time and millions of tranasctions before a trader could amass black money totalling lakh-crores. But what shook the man in the street has been the pronouncements of the Honourable Judges of the highest Temple of Justice of this land, perhaps the last sanctuary of the common man in this country. They speak in strong terms of the plunder of the nation to the tune of lakh-crores by the 'kings of black'.It sure paints a totally different picture. And the average citizen naturally has a tendency to go by what the Justices say than by the words of Kapils and Sibils, blue eyed boys though they might be. Here is money that has been plundered from the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of this country and has been salted away in safe havens outside our country. And the money amounts to...forget it, you wont be able to make sense out of the zeroes; just take it that it is many times more than what the government earmarks for our national budget. Oh my God!!!

Of Treaties and Testosterone

Even if you are the type who believes only half of what you hear, definitely this is going to make you think. Suppose we get all that money back into the country, you are not going to need any loans from the World Bank or the ADB, who are all basically Shylocks in expensive suits after their pound of flesh. If we are to believe that what has come out now is only the "tip of the iceberg", then every single Indian is going to end up with a tidy sum in his name in a government-sponsored bank account. No, not in Switzerland or in Germany or in that unpronounceable place called Lichten--what, but in our own Nationalized banks that had weathered the recent economic tsunamis with aplomb.

C'mon, quick march, let us get those baddies and get all that money that is rightly ours. Not so fast! Says who? Says our own beloved PM, the FM and others who are "in the know of things". What, may one ask, is the problem? It is the treaties, my dear sir. Treaties, the dictionary tells us, are agreements between two States or Sovereigns relating to mutually agreed and mutually beneficial things/situations etc. So if we have a treaty with say, Mauritius, for trade, what we will expect is that we will agree to imports and exports between the two countries that will be to the benefit of both. If the treaty is about the extradition of criminals and such like undesirables, again the conditionality of mutual benefit is there. Only a nincompoop would think of inking an accord that would benefit only the other side.

And talking of treaties and Mauritius, one is reminded of the treaty that India signed with that nation sometime back. The then FM was at the time waxing eloquent about the gains that India would reap as a result. But after all these years of runaway inflation and what not, the average Indian is yet to be persuaded to see some of its advantages, except, if we are to believe the naysayers, that it has served as a conduit for ill-gotten 'black monies'. Whatever is the stuff of treaties and diplomat-speak, one thing is certain. Treaties, national or international, should never overstep the dictates of our legal system and the laws of the land, which are supreme. One cannot have two different laws applicable. The 'umbrella' should be our laws. Period. If some idiot in some ministry has put his signature on a piece of paper without paying due respect to the established laws of the land so as to circumvent its intent and effectiveness, it is time he was sent to his "father-in-law's house" posthaste. Dont we have a Law Minister? A Foreign Minister? And a Prime Minister, who are all paid handsomely to look after all these affairs?

In India, to do the business of govenment as per the dictates of Indian laws, all one needs is a conviction of your just stand and some testosterone in your system. It is a documented fact that testosterone levels decline with advance in years. Still, one doesn't suspect that the collective testosterone levels of India have fallen to such abysmal lows as has been apparent now.

Of Crime and Punishment

Recorded history is full of attempts at reconciling crime and its punishments. Googling for such terms would bring in results that would curdle your blood with the gruesome nature of some of those punishments. Ah, but we who live in "civil" societies need not quake in our boots or chappels. Already the FM and the government is thinking of some 'amnesty' for the 'blackies' if they promise to declare their cache and bring back some as 'legit white' into the country. What a lark! Make a cool 1,000 crore as 'black', park it abroad and get some good interest too for a while, get in touch with the Financial Ministry honchos and tell them, "Look here I wish to help the country, what is going to be your percentage?" You strike a deal and none could be wiser, all for the price of a "Legit-white" stamp from the Ministry! Hooray!!

On second thought, I was struck by some of the things that had escaped me in my hurry to digest all those zeroes. We are still a Republic--arent we reminded of that on this Republic Day! I will leave it to your memory of those civics lessons in school to spell out what a sovereign republic means. We have our laws and we have at least one of those Four Pillars of our democracy standing erect with not much damage. The Romans were perhaps the first who codified laws and naturally, they included various crimes and punishements too. The punishment meted out in those days for what could be termed broadly financial misdemeanour was attachment of the property and exile of the accused. We are on safe ground there. We are in the Indian soil and ruled by our own laws and the legal system, and safely out of reach of any 'treaties' or such bogeys. And the 'accused' are all holders of Indian citizenship and they have vast holdings in India. So what is preventing the ponderous machinery of the government from going to work on extracting what is due from these clever sultans of 'black'?

I dont think we have to ask the FM or even the PM or any other dignitary to do this "dirty work"; it is infra dig. We have minions enough in the Income Tax and other ministries who are 'at home' doing such work a per the laws of the land. Just give them the names, if you wish, in a sealed cover, and before you could say 'Jack Robinson' (or, if you are a patriotic Indian, before you could say 'Kapil Sibal'!), you would hear the sweet sound of money tinkling into the nation's coffers.

Yes, why are we not doing that ASAP?

That is the 'lakh-crore rupee' question in the mind of every upright Indian on this R-Day.

And I wouldn't take issue with anybody if s/he were to think of R-Day as Reckoning Day!

Republic Day salaams!

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PS: Here is a useful link if you are bothered about buttressing the Four Pillars of democracy with a fifth one:

< http://india.5thpillar.org/ >

                                          * * * * * * * * * * * * 

INTEGRITY -- A REALITY CHECK

Personality is what marks a person, and what one notices at the very first glance. It is very real, but when you look at it closely, it is at best an abstract quality. C'mon, you don't have to be 6 feet plus and built like a prize fighter to have an attractive personality. Come to think of it, EVERYBODY whom you know has that mystic quality, and it is precisely that that has endeared the person to you.

And personality is marked by many traits. Integrity is certainly not the least important of those. At this point it is interesting to check out its dictionary definition. Integrity is the quality of being honest and upright, and firm in your moral principles. As children grow up they pick up yardsticks to measure these ethereal qualities listening to the stories from mythology, and reading little essays on the great personages from history like Mohandas Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Jesus of Nazareth, Gautama Buddha...the list is endless. Once they arrive at adulthood and start facing the barrage of real-world challenges, they will have opportunities to put their ideas and convictions to the litmus test of their consciences. In an overwhelmingly positive manner, in say eight or nine cases out of ten, the individual will choose to tread the path of integrity. That is a statistic that should thrill us to no small extent.

Recently after seeing the word integrity repeated ad nauseum in the news media, I asked this question to myself--Is the average Indian, the "aam aadmi", a person of integrity? Does he have this quality in at least a passable measure to qualify him to be a subject of this "Mahan Bharat desh" ? Before answering that, I thought perhaps I should put the question to a cross section of people I would meet in workaday situations.

My first 'quarry' was the milkman. In our place people who are too lazy to get up early in the morning leave a small vessel or a bottle at the door for him to leave their daily quota.

I accosted him: "Would you steal that stainless steel vessel and claim that you had filled it and left it securely?"

Rather than answering me in a businesslike fashion, he fired a broadside at me: "Why should I?"

"Oh, just like that...you could sell it, make some money and add that to the price of the unsold litre of milk... sort of two birds with one stone..."

He eyed me in a strange way. "Sir, you are being mischievous this morning..."

I knew if I persisted in this line, my friendly neighbours would soon bundle me off to the psychiatrist, and so I hit another tack.

"Suppose you saw someone else steal it, what would you do?"

"Sir, such thievery does not happen in our locality."

"Why?"

"Because we are not like that..."

End of my "integrity check" with him. Stepping out for my morning constitutional, I knew I would soon run into my paper boy. As I turned the corner, there he was riding his bicycle. He was a hardworking poor boy who delivered the paper and ran errands just to scrape togther some money for his studies and books. I put more or less the same set of persuasive questions to him, and he simply shook his head, smiled a wan smile and pedalled off, surely with some trepidation about my 'state of mind' that morning.

As luck would have it, there was our neighbourhood policeman waiting at the corner bus stop. We chit-chatted and slyly I put the question to him in a roundabout manner. Instinctively, he became suspicious and defensive. I reassured him that my questions were purely like those put by the "channel damsels" to the interviewees. He stoutly upheld his honesty and integrity. But what floored me was his quip--"Sir, one thing I will say, the average policeman is more honest than some of our ministers..." and he went on to paint a picture of the 'Force' peopled by stalwart and honest men and women, with maybe one or two bad apples who gave a bad name to the entire gang. I had to agree with him there, though I had my own figures to replace the "one or two" with!

That morning 'walk' was more like standing around and talking to whoever caught my fancy and putting roundabout questions to them along the above lines. My findings after an hour and half of meticulous (...and dangerous! I was in danger of losing my stand as a more or less upright retired 'gentleman'!) "data mining"? The average person has truly solid notions about morality and integrity and, except perhaps in isolated instances of great pressure or temptation, or both, s/he would strive to maintain her/his integrity. And when it came to the question of shielding one who has been openly lacking in the above qualities of personality, they were vehement in their stand that they wouldnt be parties to shielding such.

As I walked back, I couldn't contain my great relief and the thrill of discovery that ALL WAS NOT LOST for India and Indians. If I knew a suitably expressive Latin or Greek tag like 'Eureka', I would have, though clad in my tracksuit and sneakers,  dashed along in a passable imitation of Archimedes! I was happy that I was living in India and in my locality among such upright people.

My mind was racing to grapple with many thoughts. How do you find out if a person has integrity and honesty programmed into him? Should his wife "root" for him? Or, maybe his party should go on repeating the "truth according to Goebels". Ah, the best would be to let some PR firm (no need for high profile Radias here.) unleash a blitz of "personality building ads". Uh, oh... how did my milkman, my paperboy, the police constable and the half a dozen others whom I had "put into the crucible" emerge as persons of integrity? They surely did not wear labels of integrity on their foreheads???

A person as he grows up and interacts with the world, slowly but surely builds up a cache of imperceptible things. Soon they accumulate and add some sheen to his humble personality. It is perhaps something like a brittle skin of glass. One small mis-step, and the whole thing would crumble at your feet, and like broken glass, would cut you deeply. The patina of integrity is, at every step, added to by your little actions.

Integrity is not your birthright.  ("I am the son/daughter of parents of professed and proven integrity!") Nor is it something that you can claim as part of your group ethos. ("I AM a Gandhian, and so...") Claims of ignorance is the last way to acquire it. ("I didn't know anything...") Rather, it is what the "outsider" sees in you, feels in you and respects in you as a result of the sum-total of your actions and reactions. If you behave like a common cutpurse, or worse still, like the PR man of a clever cutpurse, then, even if you are an actor who is "Oscar stuf", it is very difficult to come across with a "convincing performance" that will carry the day. Why, one may ask. Because the average upright Indian knows what exactly he would do in a given circumstance, and it is not easy to hoodwink him/her with niceties.

On second thought, let me "root" for the upright, honest, moral Indian "aam aadmi".

YOU are the ONLY hope for this great and beloved nation of ours!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

SENSE AND SABARIMALA

Swami Saranam!

That could roughly translate as 'the Lord is our sanctuary'. It is the loud invocation that traditionally reverberates on the trails to Sabarimala, the famous hill temple of Kerala, that ended up inthe news last week for the wrong reasons.  It could also be our cry when we witness the decades-long apathy of the Devaswom Board, the body vested with the responsibility of admininstering the Hindu temples of Kerala, (and surely administration includes the 'administration' of the considerable inflow of funds too) and the Government --only the Lord can save us from them both.

The Police and the Forests departments are engaged in a blame game now, targeting each other. And the God's own Board will put the blame squrely on the others in all likelihood. I gather there is a Vigilance department enquiry afoot, and later there could be perhaps one by a judge, sitting or otherwise. It does not take a degree in rocket science to predict what the outcome of the probes would be about what caused the tragedy--huge, unruly crowds, panic, stampede, maybe a wee bit of a laxity on the part of the police or forests departments etc etc.

On second thoughts, to many it looks like a classic case of greedy, fraudulent oversell.

The common factor in last week's needless tragedy (in which more than 100 pilgrims lost their lives and hundreds were injured) and the one in 1999 (when the death tally was about 50 plus, and the injured topped a hundred plus) is what is called the 'Makara Jyothi'. Pilgrims, mostly from the neighbouring States of Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka, are eager to witness the 'jyothi' at any cost, as for them that is as good as a personal encounter with their favourite Lord Ayyappa. Their Keralite brethren are not very much behind them, though there could be a fair number of sceptics. "Bhakti' is a strange and a heady thing, but we all agree that faith is best left to individual preferences.

Being one of the old school, I chose to consult some old timers, some of them long enough in their teeth to 'hit a century'. (Googling for Makara Jyothi and related topics would be an eye-opener!) What I learned was that in the early decades of the 20th C, when Sabarimala was not as heavily "pilgrimmed" as it is now, was closely connected with tribal observances. One of them was the lighting of three fires to represent the triumvirate of Gods -- Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (Siva). And this was done by the tribals of the Kantamala hills (Ponnambalamedu, the seat of the Jyothi, is on these hills) on the Makara Sankranthi day. Sankranthi is an occasion marked by festivals all over the Indian sub-continent. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makar_Sankranti  ) It is perhaps the most important day for pilgrims to Sabarimala too. In those olden days, if you were lucky and if you had good eyesight (the forests were thick and heavy mist would envelope the hills by sundown), you could catch a glimpse of the 'aarathi' done by the tribals in the far off hills from the Ayyappa temple courtyard. Another auspicious sight was the 'Makara nakshatram', which could be spied above the same high hills to the East. This is the star Sirius that is visible over the eastern sky clearly during this period. But by no stretch of imagination this could be mistaken for the 'divine fire' that flickers three times from the hillside.

In the post-Independence era, particularly after the implementation of the Sabarigiri hydel project, these hills came under the jurisdiction of the Kerala State Electricity Board. The Board and Forests officials on many occasions used to be present during these annual tribal ceremonies too, as is recalled by many old officials. But as the years flew by, in the 1960's and '70's and later, the Sabarimala temple was fast becoming a 'pilgrim magnet' , with crowds in their lakhs visiting  the hill shrine. The pilgrim rush brought with it sizeable incomes and, in its wake, another rush to enter the Devaswom Board, even by the agnostic 'Lefties',  after declaring that they were bona fide 'faithfuls' ! It probably was some 'bright spark' in the temple board who saw the infinite possibilities in the eagerly anticipated 'Makara Jyothi'. Today, as many KSEB, Forests and DB officials would assure you, but strictly off the record, the Jyothi is a "well-organized divine phenomenon". A huge cauldron of camphor is lit and a huge wet sack cloth is waved above it to present to the devotees dotting the hillsides and the temple courtyards, already at fever pitch, three flashes of 'divine light'.

It was in the post-jyothi moments that both the tragedies struck. A glance at crowd statistics would point to the fact that the crowds were peaking around the Sankranthi day, and what was uppermost in the minds of the pilgrims was catching a glimpse of the jyothi. Faith and 'bhakti' do not proceed along the rails of rhyme or reason, or common sense. It is at best a grey area of personal beliefs. But the basic question is one of ethics and honesty and truth.

The jyothi may be a fiction, but then 'marketing' a fiction is no crime if you do it openly and if you do it well, giving the customer 'value for money'. Look at the film industry. They sell unreal dreams, and charge you through the nose in some of the better movie theatres of the metro cities. The booksellers are minting money selling you highly overpriced fiction, and the readers are happier than ever! By all means sell the jyothi too to a willing public as a ritual of the hill temple; but give the devotees at least standing room and some comfort, if not ringside seats. Please.

I think it was in 2008 the rationalists approached the authorities for permission to visit the hills and debunk the myth of the jyothi. Though they call themselves rationalists, I guess they lack common sense. Would a government and God's own board want to kill the proverbial goose that was on a laying spree of golden eggs? But it is high time we thought if it was ethical on the part of an elected government, and that too in the 21st C. to be a party to what is in effect a fraud foisted upon the unsuspecting, innocent pilgrims -- with deadly results.

So what is your verdict? Who, basically, is guilty of the carnage? Think again.

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SABARIMALA - a corollary


Makara Jyothi, Makara Vilakku...
Lost in a sea of contradictions and confusion regarding the Makara Jyothi, Makara Vilakku etc, I again decided to speak to an octogenarian, an ardent Ayyappa devotee and a person with ample sense.

His take--"...As we all know the Makara Nakshatram (the star Sirius) is clearly visible during the Makara Sankranthi season on the eastern horizon. In the olden days, with the thick forests, the dense fog and overall darkness after sundown (these days there is heavy 'light pollution' in the atmosphere on account of larger amounts of pollutants, dust and lights from the cities etc), it was often not easy to distinguish between the sky and the outline of the hills where the tribals lit the 'aarati'. The 'aarati' was not a huge fireball as it is now, and often even those who had good eyesight found it difficult to see the flickering light, fainter sometimes in comparison to the bright star. The Jyothi is the light of the Makara star, but soon it got confused with that of the 'arathy' in the minds of the devotees, as both the star, low in the easten horizon just above the hills, and the tribal 'arathy' appeared very close to each other to observers in the Ayyappa temple precincts. The Makara Vilakku, on the other hand, is the festival of lights in the temple itself that is got up in connection with the Makara Sankranthi day. It may be recalled that such "vilakku" festivals are quite popular in Kerala and quite a few such names are well known in connection with many temple festivals even today."


As controversy rages and one gets dragged in all directions and loses sight of all logic and rational thinking, it would be interesting, for the curious at least, to seek out some information, a comparatively easy thing in the Web era.

Here is a sampling; your search is likely to unearth other gems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makara_Jyothi <--- About the Makara Jyothi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i58IaLnICrs&feature=related <--- A docu style expose'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urn4gOiPbCk&feature=related <--- The Kerala Minister's clarification and more details about the ritual

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vCOTF8-7nM <--- Rahul Easwar, a scion of the SabarimalaTantri (chief priest) family, explaining things


http://www.tattamangalam.com/images/makara-jyothi.JPG <---TN Gopakumar in Kala Kaumudi (Malayalam)

http://www.srai.org/tragedy-at-sabarimala-the-miracle-of-makara-jyothi/   <--- NDTV footage


http://wikimapia.org/#lat=9.4367003&lon=77.1073723&z=13&l=0&m=b <--- Wikimapia satellite map of Sabarimala and the terrain around, including the site of the recent tragedy

It is interesting to note that in one video the Devaswom Minister himself admits that the Makara Jyothi is lit by officials. The point I wish to stress is that such things gets swept under the carpet and the average devotee is tacitly encouraged to ascribe some kind of a divinity to the flickering light that appears on the hill side on the Sankranthi evening. The tempo is built up to fever pitch, and once something unpredictable or freaky happens and the crowds go ballistic, then it is a surefire formula for tragedy.

Again, who is to be blamed?

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YES, PRIME MINISTER

Dear Prime Ministerji,

Only an apology will set my mind at rest, Sir.

As one among the millions of "aam aadmis" you have chosen to represent and uplift, I all along had my faith in what pundits have come to call "Manmohanomics", and had dutifully, every year, listened/watched the budget broadcasts and trusted the learned opinions of the "expert panel" that it was all economic tightrope-walking and that it was not going to affect the "aam aadmi". Though the post-budget blues had hit me too I thought, I was by and large consoled by the studied opinions of the experts.

But recently my faith was shaken, nay hijacked, by the  media, who claimed in their expose' that each of us "aam aadmis" had been "robbed" to the tune of a few thousand rupees, totalling a grand tidy sum, in what has now come to be labelled the 2G Scam. For an instant I lost my faith in your firm grasp of economics.

However, I when I heard Sibalji, I was relieved and heaved a great sigh. Frankly, I can count maybe to 25,000 or, at a pinch to 50,000, but arithmetic and figures have never been my strong points. (You should have been there when I went to the Treasury to collect my pension benefits and cursed myself for not attending to my maths classes, so I could tally up the bundle of notes handed to be by the teller!) Believe me, I had my own difficulties with the figures presented by your mInister Mr Sibal. But I believe in his figures fully and totally, as apparently you have, the moment you noticed that you must lay the facts and figures before your voters (sorry, no need to stand on technicalities; we ARE your voters, whether we voted for you or not), authorized him to do so. Adroit lawyer that he is, my feeling is that he is the greatest arithmatician since Aryabhata and Einstein. Kudos to his brilliant presentation, our minds have been cleared of any media-generated misconceptions. How cavalierly of us 'proletarians' to think that you never had our good in your heart. I thank Sibal for reminding us that the 2G procedure had insured the current low telecom rates enjoyed by us all.

On second thoughts, I guess I could view with admiration your perspicacity and economic sense when you silently advocated  holding the price of spectrum at the 2001 levels. In our country when inflation is affecting everything else, it was indeed a laudatory step to try and rein in the price of something as important as radio spectrum, which I understand is critical to the development and progress of the country. You are fortunate to have at least two ministers in your cabinet who are conscious of the need to put a bridle on prices. One, of course, is Mr Raja. The other is Mr Deora, our petroleum minister, who takes a lot of flack unflinchingly. But everybody conveniently forgets the two or three times he cut the price of aviation fuel, which I think now is about Rs 45 plus a litre. Again, a gesture in the right direction, I think. The car is the rich man's toy; let us not forget that there are millions of "aam aadmis" flying to the Gulf and elsewhere in search of a job, who I am sure will be benefitted by the lower price of jet fuel.

I am hoping that with ministers like them and Mr Sibal, it wont be long before you could arrest the rocketing price of commodities and foodstuffs. Perhaps you should think of re-inducting Mr Raja into the Food ministry; it is the right thing to do as the humble man who just followed your economic line had to go out for no fault of his. Do consider seriously giving him the charge of the food ministry. Surely his firm-handed efforts should in no time send the prices, including those of onions, crashing to the 2001 levels.

Sir, our apologies to you for suspecting your wisdom as regards the "larger interests" of the nation. I am sure just as our minds have been calmed, you too must be experiencing a relief beyond compare now that you have set the record straight. Now at this peak of personal satisfaction that you have served the nation and its interests to the best of your ability, you must give up this thankless job and retire to the peace of some nearby sanctuary. But before you do that, will it be too much to ask you to put in place some legislation so that us poor "aaam aadmis" would be eligible for some refunds once the government implements the 2001 priceline for foodstuffs, kersosene, cooking gas, petrol and such stuff. I am sure your brilliant 'economic' mind could devise some way of doing that.

I cant hold my laughter when I think of all those moneyed fools who spent about five or six times the original price to buy off the spectrum from the original buyers. If they were keen, they need have only paid a marginal profit of a per cent or two. To have splurged so much of money, and that too on  something as intangible as radio spectrum, shows that they were imprudent businessmen. Ah, it takes all sorts of people to make up this world; but then it should not affect us people whose consciences are clear.

On further thoughts, I have a feeling that your anti-inflationary price-holding tactics may not be for the good of the older generation at least. As things stand, "vanaprastham" does not cut much ice with the older generation--perhaps as it is not subsidized like pilgrimages,. But the prices of onions and everything else have had the salutary effect of making a large part of our population to once again discover and embrace the many attractions of a frugal living, which Gandhiji had all along advocated. As a recently retired person I could vouch for that. So maybe double-digit inflation is good, as it could be a virtual short-cut to "vanaprastha" and ultimate "moksha"!

Do sleep on that, Sir.
Once again, with apologies and salaams,
Sincerely yours,

SCAMS AND THE MAN

The Blame Game
The airwaves and the print media, not to speak of the Web, these days are saturated with a war of words in what could be called a "blame game" that targets primarily the politician. As always, it is true smoke could not exist without some flames somewhere. But now the smoke is billowing thick, leaving no doubt in anybody's mind about its source! And it is amidst this thick pall of smoke that one should work trying to separate the perpetrators of the various 'scams' from the 'front guys' and the 'benamis'. A tough task indeed!
But then I for one, with quite a few others that I know, do not want to blame the politicians for the present state of affairs. I know that is a serious statement to make, and at peril to oneself, unless one happens to be  a past master in the art of dodging the brickbats that come flying in one's direction! But patience! A moment's reflection will clarify my stand.

The Democratic Tamasha
The whole 'democratic tamasha' began, as our school text books tell us, back in 1948 --though it must be admitted that it took some decades for the process to become truly 'business-like'. Today's politician is a career politician. And politics is a 'desirable' career. Otherwise respectable parents wouldn't be pushing their offspring into it with the same kind of enthusiasm and expense with which they push their little one into a career in medicine or software. To make it a career and ultimately to obtain a paying position in politics today takes an awesome amount of money and slogging. This will be clear to all but stubborn morons when one considers the cost of air time and print space for ads, the expenses for  multi-colour hoardings and handouts, the money that goes into the wining and dining of your cohorts, the other sundry expenses like 'goonda fees' and such like. And the desperate final fling is when you have to count out hard cash to 'buy votes'--as it is put by the uncharitable ones on the 'other' side. And after all that, it is again a 'maybe' for you to become a politician with a paying post, say like an MLA or an MP --your destiny waits in the ballot box or, today, within the RAM of the electronic voting machine. But once the results are declared and the candidate is 'in', he cuts the umbilical to his "beloved electorate" and soars free like a Helium balloon into the blue yonder of umpteen 'possibilities' of personal enrichment--no strings attched! Only the naive will expect the dyed-in-the-wool politician to be not open to various temptations. And temptations have had a bad press all along from the days of Christ.

After all, the end and aim of every career is personal enrichment, quite often on the material plane. For  the politician, once he is "in the gaddi", thank God, hopefully for five years, what is there to keep him from recouping what he had spent? The doctors do it unashamedly once they start their 'practice', and I am told the engineers too are not much different. Even the humble 'chaprasi', the petty 'babu' or the policeman who bribes his way into the 'system' tries his best to 'recoup' the money that he had spent to make the coveted post his own. Every person who 'invests' a tidy sum to secure an employment knows that this is the reality in our country. Then why single out the "poor career politician" as the odd man out?

Quid Pro Quo
Come to think of it, what really are the incentives for the average politician to tread the narrow path of idealism and principles like integrity and accountability? What will he be 'gaining' if he is only loyal to the people who have voted him into power? You ask him, and he is sure to  enumerate the many difficulties with which he secured the requisite number of votes! The end, as they say, often justifies the means, and the parliamentary electoral system happens to be the only means for the politician to get into the system (except in the case of a few lucky ones--more on that later!) and he used that to his advantage. Once he was in, what happened next was not any more the business of what is politely termed the 'electorate'.
And these days when PR honchos and corporate bigwigs pull the strings to anoint one the uncrowned 'emperor' in a powerful ministry, the mechanics of 'quid pro quo' naturally is the only principle that applies. Ta-ta to the voters, till we have need to meet next! As a wag recently put it, it is more 'quid' than quo! And the 'quids' defy being counted by the man in the street, who I doubt could count anything so stupendous as 1,76,000 crore or even a figure a tenth as large.

Systems and Control
For ideas about what to do in such a situation, I guess you have to turn to a couple of old time masters --one from the Industrial Revolution era and another from the more modern Electronic Era of the 20th C.  James Watt, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine ) as he was perfecting his mechanical monster spewing steam, saw that soon it would 'run away' unless he put bridles on his 'baby'. And the resourceful man bolted on what is called a 'governor' on his machine. The rest, as they say, is history, and we sing his praises for having "harnessed" steam to power man's progress. Flash forward to another era, and we have Harold Black the inventor of the electronic amplifier. It is said that the inspiration for a brilliant way to control his amplifier and make it linear occurred to him while on the Hudson river ferry back in 1927. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Stephen_Black )  His 'feedback amplifier' has revolutionized the pace of the  communications revolution in the decades since.

Is there a lesson in that for us humble humans?  Sure. Any system, to work controllably and usefully, requires some amount of 'feedback'. One look will tell us that in common with many other sociological systems that man has devised, the political system too lacks this essential factor--corrective feedback. And the lack of effective feedback is what has contributed to all this "runaway behaviour" and the attendant troubles in the system. You don't need a degree in rocket or atomic science to tell you that the solution to the ills of the present political system lies in precisely this--the incorporation of corrective feedback.

Come Easy, Go Easy
The practice of periodic and continuous performance assessments is common in academia and industry. Accountability is the keystone of academic and corporate structures; but it appears to be virtually invisible in the political edifice. So, why not have this model implemented in the political arena too? The person who came to occupy a cushy seat in the "gaddi" as a direct result of the votes polled against his symbol has, at the end of the year, to earn at least about 75% approval from his electorate in another 'assessment'.  In these days of on-line everything, it will not be such a hassle to ask the eletorate  (at least those who have no Web access) to go to the nearest government office, log in and record their 'assessment' of their MLA or MP. In order to rule out fraud, there should be a period when the full details of the 'poll' would be posted on-line and complaints received and errors rectified. If the 'humble servant of the people' fails to qualify, he finds himself 'run out' in the middle of the game, and forfeits to the Exchequer all the remuneration that he has received from the taxpayer's money, including the benefits going to his retinue.

It is simple and direct. If he takes the votes of the taxpayer and gets into the House of lawmakers and then only takes orders from some capitalist crony or some female in the garb of a 'PR persona', let him be fully in the employ of that person and get paid from his/her coffers, and not the Nation's. The "aam aadmi" has had enough of the crocodile tears of the "powers that be", whether it is about the personal/privacy concerns of the corporates or the losses of the oil companies and such stuff -- which seem to be the only things that occupy the minister's mind day in and day out. Nobody sheds at least a tear or two for the man in the street --who ultimately has to foot the bill for all the 'tamashas' galore by way of taxes and more taxes. Do we need another definition of irony?

No, no and NO. The buck has to stop here, and now. It is basically a question of accounts and accountability.

Two For Us
Along with this simple modification to our democratic system, a few other changes too should fill the bill for the present. We must have a two-party system, so that the bane of 'coalition politics' will be ended once and for ever. Whatever your political affiliations or leanings, you have to join the system on one side and contest the elections on the strength of your public, declared policies. Finer things like how to tackle a turncoat joining the other side midstream could be to left to our Constitutional experts. But I guess two parties should be the absolute limit in any honest to goodness democracy.

Then again there should be a Constitutional proviso that nobody who is not elected through a duly democratic process should be able to occupy any Constitutional position-- even if s/he were a "laad sahib ka betta". Everybody knows only too well what happens when such a person occupies a key position and s/he is unsure or undecided about his/her priorities and commitments --which obviously are not to the poor voter, who, as a matter of fact, did not elect him/her in the first place!

Let us bring in these simple and basic changes to our Constitution and India could be a model for 'real' democracies --not in another hundred years when idealism will come to prevail universally, but after the very next elections.

JAI HIND --and her people!
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