Manoj’s Constitution Day 26 November 2023

A few years ago, Rename Sarkar took a perfectly serviceable 'National Law Day' and rechristened it 'Constitution Day'. No, damage done, so let's get the mandatories out of the way. Greetings of Constitution Day. 

Those of you who follow my posts here, may have spotted some on my work as a writer of exams for visually handicapped children. This work took a big turn when, in 2021, I started helping a blind PhD student with work on his research, which segued earlier this year into helping him edit his thesis. He submitted his doctoral dissertation on October 31 and almost immediately after that, his roommate, also blind, also a PhD candidate, reached out, and I am now assisting him with editing his thesis.

Manoj, for that is his name, is a thinker. His chatty, friendly demeanour scarcely lets it on, but his cheerfulness conceals a contemplative mind. He's a PhD student in Sociology, so his reading, particularly of Philosophy, Social Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology is of course prolific. To this, add empathy, which comes so much more naturally to people of disability, since they experience physical, and emotional, bruising so often, and you have a person who is able to abstract broad verities from narrow personal experiences.

This ability is well known to his peers and teachers at his institution, so they've invited him to give a keynote speech at a 'Constitution Day' event on campus, later today. Yesterday, he decided to rehearse his material with me. And it was so good, it warrants this post. Read everything below this para as if it were Manoj speaking to you.

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Warm felicitations of Constitution Day!

A few years ago, Rename Sarkar took a perfectly serviceable 'National Law Day' and rechristened it 'Constitution Day'. No, damage done, so let's get the mandatories out of the way. Greetings of Constitution Day. 

Those of you who follow my posts here, may have spotted some on my work as a writer of exams for visually handicapped children. This work took a big turn when, in 2021, I started helping a blind PhD student with work on his research, which segued earlier this year into helping him edit his thesis. He submitted his doctoral dissertation on October 31 and almost immediately after that, his roommate, also blind, also a PhD candidate, reached out, and I am now assisting him with editing his thesis.

Manoj, for that is his name, is a thinker. His chatty, friendly demeanour scarcely lets it on, but his cheerfulness conceals a contemplative mind. He's a PhD student in Sociology, so his reading, particularly of Philosophy, Social Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology is of course prolific. To this, add empathy, which comes so much more naturally to people of disability, since they experience physical, and emotional, bruising so often, and you have a person who is able to abstract broad verities from narrow personal experiences.

This ability is well known to his peers and teachers at his institution, so they've invited him to give a keynote speech at a 'Constitution Day' event on campus, later today. Yesterday, he decided to rehearse his material with me. And it was so good, it warrants this post. Read everything below this para as if it were Manoj speaking to you.

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Warm felicitations of Constitution Day!

I will speak to you today about the unique relationship that People Of Disability have with the Constitution of India. There are three parts to my speech: a brief look at the historical status of the handicapped in India; a review of how the Constitution addressed PoDs; and what remains to be done, to enable PoDs to live lives of value and dignity in times to come.

A vast majority of the human race is fortunate to be born and grow to adulthood without significant handicap. Most people have access to sight, sound and speech, a normally wired brain, and a complete set of limbs, bones and muscles to grant them unrestricted mobility in both the physical and mental spheres. A tiny minority, though, is deprived of one or more of these faculties, at birth, or at some point thereafter. This is my cohort, the People of Disability.

When kids with congenital deformities or disabilities were born in the past, they caused consternation, fear and sorrow. Their families had no explanation for why this misfortune had visited them. So they turned to the priesthood: the ojha, purohit, shaman, maulvi, padre, rabbi or witch-doctor, because, after all, who could know the arcane ways of the divine, and the destined, better than those who thrived on peddling exactly that myth? This 'wise' person leaned into something which could be readily understood by common people, as it was a part of their everyday lives, except, they gave it a mystical, and completely unverifiable twist. The handicap, they said, was, a punishment, either for misdeeds that this infant had committed in her or his previous life. Or it was a test of the parents' faith in the benevolence of their, supposedly beneficent, god. Job of the Old Testament of the Bible, Dhritarashtra of the Mahabharat or Ashtavakra of the Puranas all suffered, either because they were being thus tested or punished. 

Our ancestors came up with a supposedly immutable law of Karma, a virtue and vice book of account which runs from one lifetime to the next ad infinitum. Nobody has seen any evidence of rebirth, nor of the accounting, and nobody can say who keeps the score on countless lifeforms, but in the face of incomprehension, even this sort of contrived fabrication, albeit delivered with certitude, is better than nothing. Did these doctrines of punishment and test limit themselves to physical disability? Far from it. The priesthood used exactly the same phony framework to explain social and economic disability too. So you were born to a lower caste? Your past lives. You were born dirt-poor? God was testing you.

Time passed and science progressed. Remedies became available for debilities and prostheses helped people live fuller lives. Science and the Scientific Temper became mainstream, and the old ways of understanding disability began to be discredited.

This was the social and intellectual context in which Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, a true 'mahapurush', whose encyclopedic grasp of Science and Rationality was paired to an impeccable understanding of Law and Justice, began working on the gigantic task of writing our Constitution. Born to a Dalit family, Babasaheb knew from personal experience what the degradation, humiliation, privation and squalor which was, unfortunately still is, the shared lot of millions at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. The invocations of Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which begin in the Preamble, and continue throughout the Constitution, speak loudly and clearly to someone like me. My handicap ought not stand in the way of being able to secure Justice, social economic and political. My handicap should not limit my Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship. My handicap should not deprive me Equality of status and opportunity. And my disability must never cause me to be excluded from the Fraternity which assures the dignity of every individual and the unity and integrity of India.

It ought not to. But it does.

Today marks 74 years since the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution, or the 75th Law/Constitution Day. One might think, three-quarters of a century is long enough a time-span for completely embracing and manifesting the soaring, ambitious vision which the Constitution enshrines.

It isn't. Why not? And this is the third and final part of what I want to say to you today.

You have so far heard it from my unique perspective as a person of disability. Let me turn this around and make you aware of yours. Yes, you who have all your senses in excellent working order. You, who just ran the Navy Marathon. You, who spends hours toning their abs into the perfect 6-pack. You, who chefs at the city's fanciest restaurant. And almost all the rest of you too, barring the handful of people like me scattered across this room.

You are blind to the struggles of the blind. You are deaf to the challenges of the hearing impaired. You are mute when issues of justice for the handicapped, whatever be the handicap, not only physical, need you to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. 

We know where we fall short, and work hard to live as-close-to-full-as-possible lives, despite our disabilities. 

You, though...

The Art Of Negotiation- RR style (aka निरिच्छ भाव deal making)

 

Been a while since I posted, so before the year runs out, here's a memory from my three wonderful years at Capital Maharaja Group, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Mr. R. Rajamahendran, whom we tragically lost in July 2021 after COVID related complications, was then the Chairman of this amazingly diverse conglomerate. I worked for his consumer business, IPL Marketing, and he would often call me up to attend meetings associated with the broader consumer sector which, inter alia, spanned significant interests in carbonated beverages and broadcasting.

A renowned supplier of broadcast technologies was visiting Colombo, to showcase their latest product range, a lot of which would be of direct and immediate interest to the group's radio and television broadcast operations. Some products were even classifiable as of urgent procurement priority, given that broadcast was, is, an extremely competitive sector, and as category leader, Maharaja stood to lose a lot if it didn't stay at the top of its game.

RR, as he was popularly known, would always ask his overseas visitors to arrive in Colombo a day before the scheduled business meetings. Guests would be received at the Bandaranaike International Airport and dropped to one of the fancy hotels dotting the Galle Face, with a welcome note detailing their schedule while on the island, and including an invitation to a dinner, later that evening.

RR decided that he needed me in this meeting and I was asked to attend the previous evening's dinner, so I could meet and greet the visitors.

Exactly per schedule, RR was at his bar to receive his visitors at 7 pm. The delegation arrived about a half hour later and were ushered in to his presence. He would tend his bar himself, pouring, mixing and serving his guests' tipples using the finest wines, spirits and liqueurs to grace any bar anywhere. If they'd visited earlier, he would remember his guests' choices and surprise them by passing them 'the usual'. When a country's top business magnate lays out such hospitality, the hardest businessman will turn gently into putty, as the lashings of fine bev and superb food mellow their mood.

Eventually, well past midnight, it was time for good-night-and-see-you-tomorrow.

Just hours later, at 8:15 the following morning, we were all back in the office, in RR's personal board room, waiting for the visitors to make their way in. They came, still battling jetlag and too much alcohol, and after a short presentation about the Maharaja Organisation, RR let them take charge.

They may have imagined that they were carrying priceless treasures which a small third-world business would instantly snap up. They discovered instead that their host wore an air of dispassionate equanimity, making it clear that he had no particular interest in their shiny gewgaws. This wasn't a mask. A deal would only happen on his terms, or he would be happy to part as friends.

In those 16 hours between the party and the business meeting, RR taught me more about the fine art of negotiation than any book or paper might.

The only path to a successful outcome of negotiation is to enter it without desire or temptation. What we would call निरिच्छ भाव in Indian languages.

Guests would still be feeling almost beholden after their welcome upon arrival, and would feel almost ungrateful if they didn't close their deal, even if it might break their own terms. And ever so often, they did, giving RR the reputation of a great host and tough deal-maker rolled into one.

It's a hard act to follow, but I try. I try.

Republic Day? Independence Day?

Preface: This started out as a thread on my Twitter. Decided it made sense here too.

Last Wednesday, we marked our 73rd Republic Day. In years past, you could send a telegram to family and friends with the message, "Greetings of Republic Day. Long live the Republic". The telegram has since faded into history. Now, sadly, so has the kernel of the message.

If you look at how our two national festivals; Independence Day is the other one; are observed these days, there is little to separate them, barring the parade on one and the PM's speech from Red Fort ramparts on the other.

The same playlist appears both times, "Jo shahid hue hain unki zara yaad karo qurbani", "Ye desh hai veer jawanon ka", "Jahan daal daal par sone ki chidiya karti hai basera", and of course songs from Kaneda Kumar's latest fratriotic film, is trotted out.

Schools, colleges and RWAs have flag salutes and National Anthem, no doubt accompanied these days by a slipshod Vande Mataram. And tedious speeches by 'important people'. (It is poorly understood why the flag is unfurled on Republic Day and hoisted on Independence Day, and most such events miss the distinction in any case).

The patriotic spirit finds expression in donning kurta-pyjama or salwar-kameez, ideally with hints of the tricolour somewhere. Plastic flags are pinned to lapels and dupattas and babies' bibs. (They will be mercilessly trampled by day's end; turn into non-compostable litter).

What, exactly, of the spirit of the day will all these, faux-impassioned celebrants of the day, take away from the cacophony? Perhaps a sense of how well they were able to show (off) their conspicuous patriotism. (Joshi didn't even show up. So unpatriotic na?)

No, dear Ms. Patriot, Republic Day is not just more of the same thing which happened in August last year, though the kit you picked out is the same, and you wear it only twice a year, right?

Independence Day is a day of gratitude and relief. Gratitude for the myriad sacrifices, small and big, which hundreds of million Indians, united only by their single minded commitment to free their country from the colonial yoke, paid over many decades leading up to 1947.

Republic Day is different. It is the day when we look ahead, when, as the Preamble puts it so beautifully, solemnly resolved to "Constitute India into a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic" and secure to all citizens, "Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity".

Republic Day is a solemn commitment to the times before, not behind, us. Independence Day looks backward, Republic Day looks into the future when, to borrow a phrase from another beautiful document, the Preamble to the American Constitution, we can form a "more perfect union".

What is a republic? A country where the ultimate sovereign power is with the people; ALL the people of the country. Where there is no sovereign above the people. Canada is a democracy but NOT a republic. A foreigner, EIIR, is the sovereign.

India is a republic. Each and every one of us, big or small, rich or poor, is, quite literally, the highest authority in the land. WE are sovereign. WE resolved solemnly to constitute OURSELVES into the republic. It was not ordained by someone else.

We are SOVEREIGNS, not subjects. We are NOT praja, because every one of us, in the soaring imagination of our Constitution authors, is the wellspring of the power and authority which we, only temporarily, entrust to our elected representatives. We are NAGARIK, citizens, equal and equipotent as the collective highest authority in the land.

So why did Joshi not participate in the twee celebrations today? Because the spirit of sovereignty is fast disappearing. We are reminded, frequently, of how a benevolent raja is looking after his praja. Ramrajya, some call it.

If you have stayed so long, you'll probably not mind some small blasphemy (there have been so many already in the post, for those of the devoted persuasion, so where's the harm?).

No, the Indian Republic should NEVER be a Ramrajya, not even in whatever sense Bapu used it. Ramrajya still means that we have a sovereign, benevolent, but all-powerful, above us. That we are subjects, not rulers.

Republic Day 1950 appointed us RULERS. And let's hope we will always be the sovereigns in this Republic of India that is Bharat.

Long Live The Republic!

November 20, 2017: My simpleminded take on the first anniversary of demonetization

I am not an economist. Can't fault you if you disregard this post as the incoherent ravings of an Economics ignoramus. This would be a good time to stop reading this post.

I keep hearing that demonetisation was a major economic reform. This puzzles me.

1. A government embarking on a systematic program of privatisation of PSUs is clearly triggering a process of opening more space for private initiative and private capital. This is a reform that will produce effects and outcomes over an extended period.

2. Reduction or elimination of licenses, permits and other preconditions for establishing a business is again a reform that has enduring impacts.

3. A major tax overhaul in direct or indirect taxation will have impacts over the long haul. If it was well conceived and competently executed, this would be a major reform and yield benefits for decades.

4. The abrogation of privy purses was a populist action that may even have been the right thing to do at the right time but it can't count as a reform. It took an entitlement away from families that had already lost royal privileges a few decades earlier. It had no enduring gifts to offer the economy.

My point is this. Not all acts of government, including grand gestures, no matter how sizeable their immediate impact, constitute reform. To qualify as reform, they must open new opportunities, and continue to open them, for an extended duration. Is that duration 3 years? 5? Even longer? I can't say. But if all the impacts dissipate or if things generally return to status quo ante, what was reformed?

Which brings me to my incomprehension of demonetisation as reform. Yes, it was a grand gesture. Yes, it unsettled hundreds of million Indians for several months. But was it a reform?

The government may realise a few extra income tax or indirect tax filings this year. Revenue department might investigate some accounts loaded with cash last year that may produce more assessees whenever they are able to conclude their inspection/investigation of these deposits. But sooner or later, all this will conclude and all the benefits will have been booked.

A hundred analyses and commentaries have pointed to the success of the decision by pointing at the electoral payoffs that the establishment collected in UP. That still doesn't make it a reform, just a successful grand gesture.

Over to the economists now to set me and my stupid argument to rights.

"We are going to have to let you go"

Show me someone who can say 'Human Resources Development' without a trace of irony and I will show you someone who has no self, or any other, awareness.

Ever since business schools and, by implication, business graduates have existed, so have congenial sounding euphemisms for entirely uncongenial phenomena. 'Flexible compensation' is a nice way of saying salary cut with the elusive possibility of performance linked pay. 'Offsite meeting' connotes a stressful, sleepless weekend when the company pays for your booze and expects you to work 14-hour days to produce a half-logical, one-fourth-plausible business plan which incarnates the wild fantasies of the business head. And "Performance Appraisal" means a theatrical performance designed to humiliate the employee: not once, not even twice, but three times. First, the employee is asked to fill her own appraisal document, aka the confessional statement which shall be henceforth be used as accusations by various reviewers. Then, there's the annual walk of shame to the boss's enclosure which begins with crushing anxiety and ends in fatally perforated self-esteem. Finally, there's the increment letter, quantifying the despair in economic terms.

Crowning all these gems of HR doublespeak is the dreaded statement, "We are going to have to let you go".

I speak from experience. On two occasions in a corporate career which lasted from 1985 to 2012, I was at the receiving end of this blatantly hypocritical line. I was not asking to be relieved. I had a wife, two growing children (read exponentiating expenses) and a colossal mortgage to defray. And on both occasions, the job market was beginning to dry up as the economy slowed down. Thankfully, there was a (light) cushion of savings and a large community of well-wishers which allowed the family unit to trundle, only slightly bruised, through choppy waters until, not a moment too soon, the next assignment came my way.

People don't ask to be relieved. Nobody asks to be relieved. I have resigned from jobs, even in a huff once when I was young and single and India's economy was in the first flush of galloping growth, soon after the great unleashing of animal spirits by M/s. Rao and Singh. I had a fundamental disagreement with my boss. Walked to my desk, picked up a memo pad, slipped in a carbon paper or two, and proceeded to write a terse but unambiguous letter of resignation. I wasn't asking to be let go. I was telling him I was done, finished, gone. There have been other resignations too; most have been elaborately constructed announcements of a forking of paths and a record of acknowledgements and gratitude. But none, not one, has ever been along the lines of "Chhodo mujhe, please chhod do, janey do mujhe, bhool jao ki mera tumhara kabhi koi rishta tha".

What, then, is this 'letting go' about? Gaslighting.

There. I said it. HR speak is all about gaslighting. Here's what a self-help website says about gaslighting. 

"Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that occurs in abusive relationships. It is an insidious and sometimes covert type of emotional abuse where the bully or abuser makes the target question their judgments and reality.1 Ultimately, the victim of gaslighting starts to wonder if they are losing their sanity".

I entered the corporate world as a management trainee in 1985. Back in those days, employment conveyed a sense of lien: on a salary and some perquisites, on a career path which would involve many promotions and fancier designations, on stability of employment which would be conducive to taking and discharging long-term debt for buying expensive things like homes and cars. That first employer, Procter & Gamble Company, prided itself on offering lifetime employment and the claim held up to scrutiny. People really did join the company as rookies and retire, four or more decades later, having never even contemplated alternative employment.

Employment today is no more than visibility of the next pay cheque or three. En route, however, is incessant corporate gaslighting. To ensure that the employee progressively loses her moorings on not just the outside world but even her own inner universe of ambitions, aspirations and dreams.

Employment, in 2021 and the disconcertingly bleak immediate future is a demolition of the employee's epistemological sense; a blurring to grey of the difference between what is indisputably verifiable and what is merely assertion.

Look what it finally delivers. An ex-employee who exits the door carrying the entire blame and shame for the untimely end of her job. Who struggles with guilt for the merely harbouring the thought that the employer was the real cause of the severance. Whose epistemology is broken.

Am I glad I left it all behind!

If you didn't see the glass marbles in her eyes, you could easily believe Free India was still alive!

There is no good way of sharing bad news, so let me rip the band-aid off without further ado.

There is little of substance left in India's freedom. Whatever will happen on Independence Day is merely and strictly a pantomime. All the set pieces will be in place. The vast grounds of the Lal Qila will be teeming with youngsters assembled from schools and colleges. NCC or Bharat Scouts & Guides uniforms will be freshly ironed. Other kids will wear tricolor livery and sit in orderly rows to reveal the colours of the Tiranga when the drone cameras hover overhead. Excitable anchors, swept up in paroxysms of patriotic apoplexy, will go breathless in their search for new and even more soaring metaphors for the many-splendoured joys of our Azadi. All these will be no more than opening acts, of course, because the real star act for the morning, all 56 inches of chest, designer apparel, dazzling shahtoosh shawl and yards of turban topped off with perky tura, will stride up next, and launch into his endless ramble about deshbhakti, atmanirbharta, swabhiman, vikas and, as I learned just a short while ago, "partition horrors". He will then allude breezily to how we, the people of India, ably assisted by all the clods and incompetents who preceded him in the prime minister's office, have failed him. And how, despite our feebleness and incompetence, he is back at work, bearing the weight of all 135 crores of us upon his divine shoulders, much as Lord Krishna held aloft the Govardhan Parvat.

The anchors, given all the time he consumes with his tirade, will rush back, their laudatory paeans to the incarnate lord all ready, to flatter the grand panjandrum. The NOIDA brigade will shower their visionary, dynamic, fearless, towering plaudits, which will, of necessity, be punctuated at metronomic frequency with choice expletives for anybody and anything which still opposes or dissents. Successes will be appropriated from far and wide (Neeraj, Bajrang, Sindhu, Lovalina, the Hockey teams, having featured in the morning ramble, will now appear live on channels to reaffirm their gratitude and undying loyalty).

That, briefly, is tomorrow's news today. 

In this orgiastic bacchanal, we will be expected to collectively incinerate all the wounds, agonies and malignancies visited on India's body and spirit, since 2014. Most grievous of all? We will be expected to clap and cheer full-throated, as we watch the life force our freedoms; of our democratic republic; dissipate into an steel-grey, grief wracked sky. 

The great taxidermist will walk back, well pleased with himself. Free India will have become the finest trophy to be mounted on the walls of his swish new palace, in the necropolis of central vista.

Our fragile social compact

Trigger warning: hate speech and genocide

Yesterday, a bunch of Hindutva extremists gathered for a 'protest' in the heart of New Delhi, within sight of Connaught Place, and not quite two kilometres from Sansad Bhavan, the Parliament of India.

Their widely publicised objective was to demand the repeal of a series of what they claimed were 'British era' laws. What actually happened was ghoulish.

"Jab mulle kaate jaenge, Ram Ram chillaenge", the mob screamed. When we put Muslims to the sword, they'll scream "Ram Ram" for mercy, which will not be forthcoming.

Watch the video before you read on https://twitter.com/shivangi441/status/1424365069219995650?s=20

However much it upsets me, there will be those who see this video and suggest that it is best to ignore such 'fringe lunacy'. They will refuse to accept that this lunatic fringe is (a) not lunatic but a carefully orchestrated part of the Hindu radicalization project and (b) no longer fringe, given the growing acceptance for such sentiments in the poshest salons and living rooms, even those with Husain or Raza canvases on their walls (oh, the irony of a Husain Durga or a Raza Mandala in a closet bigot's home)!

I remember a time when our inclusiveness and assimilation were the pride of India. A time when we celebrated with gratitude the syncretic traditions which characterised everything from our attire, our food and music to dance, architecture and worship; literally every facet of our lives. A time when we acknowledged the Gharana Parampara in Hindustani Classical Music, a tradition which would have been a pale shadow of itself if you were to somehow exclude or erase countless Muslim ustads and their shagirds, who kept the art alive, generation after generation. A time when we thrilled to sher-o-shayari with all its subtlety, poignancy and sensual charm. A time when the Taj Mahal was a monument to soaring love, not a reminder of humiliation. A time when young people, regardless of religion, responded to Gandhi's call for Swaraj, and shed their blood when the tyrannical regime unleashed lathi charges and discharged guns at them.

That India had a big heart. It might have been itself destitute but it opened its home and hearth for millions of refugees fleeing war in East Pakistan. Our soldiers served with the UN Peace Keeping Force in conflict zones around the world. Our economy may have been on a ventilator but our soft power gently exerted itself. As early as the 1920s, Uday Shankar, with Anna Pavlova, prima ballerina of Imperial Russia by his side, was already conjuring a beautiful new dance form at the crossroads of Kathak and Ballet. By mid-century, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan's Sarod and Pandit Ravi Shankar's Sitar began to mesmerize audiences  around the world, with their dulcet strings. The Beatles came to India, to imbibe our classical music and our spiritual legacy. And freedom movements across the colonised world heeded Gandhi's voice of peace and temperance to frame their own struggles against the extortionate coloniser.

Today, that India, that Bharat, that Hindustan lies sundered. A cannibal monster has taken its place.

Unless there really is a god, who really does incarnate as a mortal every time cruelty and injustice are ascendant, we are one horrible step closer to doom.

p.s. If your political and social beliefs line up with those of the RSS/BJP, and you intend to continue voting for that malignant monstrosity, I would be extremely grateful for you to block, or better still erase, my number from your contacts at this very moment. I really cannot even pretend to be your friend any longer.