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.

______________________________________________

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.

____________________________________________________

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.

Purity is piffle (and only ethnic cleansers find it pretty)

It appears that scientific scepticism, emphasis on dialogue over hostility, openness to new ideas, assimilation of diverse cultural strands- no matter where they originated- a 'liberal' (don't miss the quotes) mind, is now emblematic of a Nehruvian conspiracy to drown out alternative theses that represented the 'real' India. These alternatives, I am asked to believe, involve much more धर्म and परंपरा, and diverge sharply from the fake consensus that was really in the nature of leftist propaganda. We have been duped and our minds are contaminated. An epic 'cleansing' or 'purification', शुद्धिकरण, of our minds, and nothing less, is imperative. And imminent.

I have two issues with the argument:

1. India has a liberal tradition that predates Western Colonisation by centuries, perhaps millenia. Remember that Vedanta allows or even encourages multiple interpretations. From Nyaya, Vaisheshik, Mimamsa (of two variants) to Lokayat or Charvak, they coexist and none has claim on immutable truth. We don't need the West. We can show them a thing or two about the liberal temperament. Like Khajuraho and Konark.
2. An epidemic called globalisation has infected the planet probably from back to the earliest years of the Silk or Spice Routes. People and ideas have been travelling back and forth across continents and oceans. As this mighty churn turns, everyone is touched by its centrifugal and centripetal forces. In recent years, the Human Genome project has been revealing how everyone is now of mixed ethnicity: we are not Asian or Caucasian, not Native American or Nubian or Pacific Islander but a little bit of everything. Ideas have been cohabiting and people have been procreating without inhibition about provenance. We began as a timorous homo sapien tribe in the Rift Valley. A million years on, having branched away to inhabit and adapt to every terrain and climate, we have spent the last few thousand mixing it all up. To speak now of a pure race is an unattainable goal. Then again, we may be closer now than ever before to recreating the original, undifferentiated stock that came out of Africa. Entropy was replaced by enthalpy and we are children of the confluence.

We can work up a froth about a pristine, uncontaminated state but our planet's civilisational history conspires against it. We can no more bring back this ethnic or religious or cultural purity than we can put humpty dumpty together again.

The food we eat is not our own. Chillies, potatoes and tomatoes came from the Americas. Our customs aren't our own. The demure घूंघट is a modified hijab. Our language isn't our own either. My mother tongue, Marathi, is shot through with Arabic and Persian, Portuguese and English. Would you strip away these variegated, many splendoured colours? And what do you think you'd be left with, at the end?

Let me break this to you gently. Your utopia of the unsullied state is only ever going to exist in your febrile dreams. Deal with it.

 If an year were to be a day, then today marks a week since I lost Baba, my father.

Let me rephrase that. Baba got reabsorbed, scattered, into the elements whence he had been made. Molecules, which once comprised him, are now in the air, water and soil. Baba is in the Arabian Sea and the water which evaporates from it and travels as the monsoon cloud across the continent. Baba is in the rain which brings nourishment and revival to parched land and sweaty brow. Baba is in the air which sustains all things. Baba is in a molecule of iron which will fortify a carrot, a carbon atom in the sweet sugars of an alphonso mango, a mote of nitrogen in a protein strand called DNA which is the stuff of life. Baba is here and there, in you, and in me, in passing into eternity, he has returned to the immortality which we are all guaranteed.

This, in essence, was how Baba understood rebirth and continuity, objective enough to survive the most rigorous scientific scrutiny, subtle enough to invoke wonderment in the most jaded of cynics.

Baba valued one virtue above all others: Scepticism. Everything had to be questioned. Why was it the way it was? Could it have been another way? What caused it to happen? What is likely to happen next? This critical lens was often turned upon himself. However, the questions were always unexceptionably kind. The idea was to understand, not assign blame.

His exploring eye took in every possible field of endeavour. He loved art, representational or abstract, in all its still and plastic forms. With him, I learned the right way of looking at Hussain and Pyne, with him I pondered Rodin's Thinker. He laughed with me as we read long passages from "Meet Mr. Mulliner" or "Jabberwocky" together. He led me to George Gamow's 1, 2, 3, Infinity. And to Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, bringing alive the wonders of Mathematics and Physics and the wonderment he felt as a part of the Universe which turns upon and observes itself. He could compare the Shukla and Krushna Yajurved one moment and Kukubh Bilawal and Bilaskhani Todi in the next. He was a baby when he was with the little ones; they took to him instantly, perhaps because they saw his guilelessness and innocence. But when he spoke to Jayant Naralikar about the Chandrasekhar Limit, the physicist was left wondering how a lay person could speak about it with such authority.

His prowess with the Times of India crossword (later inherited by Economic Times) was such that he would solve it all in his mind, then, picking up a pencil, fill in all the squares at the intersections of Across and Down, because he hoped, fruitlessly, that some day I too would pick the paper, and find my path to loving the puzzle through cracking clues using the hints and tips the filled squares gave me. His preternatural skills with Mental Mathematics would stun even the keenest Vedic Maths aficionados: he could cube three digit numbers in his head!

His otherworldliness ensured that his gigantic mind was never intimidating and never ever used to humiliate anyone, no matter the provocation.

His name was Ratnakar, the Ocean of Priceless Jewels. I am what I am because some of the lustre and coruscation rubbed off.

It is 16.15 now and I must stop, because it is exactly 7 years since his spirit wafted away.

Purity is piffle (and racial purity is a nazi's most obvious 'tell')

It appears that scientific scepticism, emphasis on dialogue over hostility, openness to new ideas, assimilation of diverse cultural strands- no matter where they originated- a 'liberal' (don't miss the quotes) mind, is now emblematic of a Nehruvian conspiracy to drown out alternative theses that represented the 'real' India. These alternatives, I believe, involve much more धर्म and परंपरा and diverge sharply from the fake consensus that was really in the nature of leftist propaganda. We have been duped and our minds are contaminated. An epic 'cleansing' or 'purification' of our minds, and nothing less, is imperative. And imminent. 

I have two issues with the argument:

1. India has a liberal tradition that predates Western Colonisation by centuries, perhaps millenia. Remember that Vedanta allows or even encourages multiple interpretations. From Nyaya, Vaisheshik, Mimamsa (of two variants) to Lokayat or Charvak, they coexist and none has claim on immutable truth. We don't need the West. We can show them a thing or two about the liberal temperament. Like Khajuraho and Konark. 

2. An epidemic called globalisation has infected the planet probably from back to the earliest years of the Silk or Spice Routes. People and ideas have been travelling back and forth across continents and oceans. As this mighty churn turns, everyone is touched by its centrifugal and centripetal forces. In recent years, the Human Genome project has been revealing how everyone is now of mixed ethnicity: we are not Asian or Caucasian, not Native American or Nubian or Pacific Islander but a little bit of everything. Ideas have been cohabiting and people have been procreating without inhibition about provenance. We began as a timorous homo sapien tribe in the Rift Valley. A million years on, having branched away to inhabit and adapt to every terrain and climate, we have spent the last few thousand mixing it all up. To speak now of a pure race is an unattainable goal. Then again, we may be closer now than ever before to recreating the original, undifferentiated stock that came out of Africa. Entropy was replaced by enthalpy and we are children of the confluence.

We can work up a froth about a pristine, uncontaminated state but our planet's civilisational history conspires against it. We can no more bring back this ethnic or religious or cultural purity than we can put humpty dumpty together again. 

The food we eat is not our own. Chillies, potatoes and tomatoes came from the Americas. Our customs aren't our own. The demure घूंघट is a modified hijab. Our language isn't our own either. My mother tongue, Marathi, is shot through with Arabic and Persian, Portuguese and English. Would you strip away these variegated, many splendoured colours? And what do you think you'd be left with, at the end? 

Let me break this to you gently. Your utopia of the unsullied state is only ever going to exist in your febrile dreams. Deal with it.

Meritocracy Shmeritocracy

Society, in India or anywhere else, is divided into strata. The gradients across strata may be gentle; apparently true of some Nordic countries, or steep (you don't have to look far to find examples); but they are there. It is as if tiering is genetically encoded into the Social Contract. 

In centuries past, fiefdoms and kingdoms were the power/political structures prevalent in most parts of the world. Rights and privileges were inherited, patrilineally in most cases, as were servitude and bondage. In India, we had pioneered the "Caste" system, which used specious reasoning to explain, and perpetuate, social hierarchies. In many other places, the liege or king was ordained by a pliant priesthood as directly descended from the gods themselves. Pharaoh was seen as Ra, the Sun god, incarnate. Even today, the Japanese royal family claims lineage from Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun goddess. Here in India, many Rajput feudal lines identify themselves as Suryavanshi or Chandravanshi, literally, Sun descendants or Moon descendants. 

Divine origins were an excellent ploy to stop all contentious quibbling in its tracks. As was the ironclad law of Karma. You were condemned to incarnate as a life form repeatedly, until your karmic slate was cleansed of the stains of bad deeds and thoughts. If, in this turn of the universal screw, you were a scavenger or leather tanner, it was only fair price to pay for a previous life of sin. Conversely, the brahmin or kshatriya had earned his exalted station by meritorious deeds in earlier lives.

Previous and subsequent lives may have gone from the vocabulary but the hierarchy is undisturbed. It is imperative, particularly for those who are winning the societal sweepstakes, to find a new framework, which retains the inevitability of divine rights or karma, but frames it in more palatable, contemporary language. 

I give you MERITOCRACY. 

Why am I successful? Because I have been capable, committed, diligent and ever willing to learn. What is more, I have kept this up my entire life. When I was in middle school, my parents got me into a coaching class which prepared me for competitive examinations and/or my high school boards. I worked harder than my peers, aced every test and eventually, got a prized, priceless, admission into a premium institution. I didn't have the benefit of a leg up, unlike other kids who availed of seat reservations to traipse in with much poorer academic records. They wallowed in complacency while I continued to bend my back, put my nose to the grindstone and abjured all pleasures, thus reaching graduation day as a proud recipient of medals, citations, scholarships and endowments. That same spirit of a pursuing excellence makes me the success I am. Now compare that with those indolent louts who envy my success but wouldn't expend a fraction of the effort. They thought they could be my peers just because they entered college on a reserved seat? Heck, no. I got here due solely to my "MERIT".

Sounds convincing? 

Advantages which we were, quite literally, born with, are hard to recognize. As a person with no handicaps or disabilities, you don't really see any reason to be particularly grateful for what is widely true about a large majority of the population. PODs, persons of disability, have to struggle to integrate and keep pace. When you hear "disability", you are probably thinking visual deficiencies, speech or hearing problems, or learning impediments like ASD or Autism, etc. Those disabilities are easily perceived, although not necessarily remedied. The incidence of such PWDs, sadly, is a mere fraction of the endemic disability: accident of birth into the wrong caste, community or religion.

How did the circumstances of my birth shape my life? Born into a Hindu brahmin household, I had well educated parents and grandparents. English was the preferred language of conversation, and books full of wonderful knowledge filled many shelves. Opportunities to experience and discover everything, from foods and cuisines of the world, to archaeological finds, travels to distant places and conversations with interesting, urbane people, were mine at every step of the way. The soil I grew in was fertile and well irrigated. The warm light of inspiration suffused my days. To all intents and purposes, I lived at an elevation which was shrouded in a metaphoric cloud from 99% of the population. 

If this was not enough, I entered the workplace equipped with a network of contacts which would have been the envy of those with undistinguished backgrounds. Doors opened, as if by magic, when I merely looked at them. I spoke the insider's lingua and understood barely perceptible winks and nudges, far outside the ken of those not to the manor born. 

If this still sounds to you like the victory of "merit" over whatever is its opposite, I will leave now, so you can enjoy the views where, it is said, the Sun don't shine. 

Nothing is free.

Everything has a price. 

For the last decade, people of a certain persuasion believed, that their unquestioning faith and loyalty to their Beloved Leader, only came with benefits and dividends. There was no cost involved. They could wave their fingers, or fists, if they felt so inclined, at anyone who dared disagree, and they would come to no harm. Indeed, the more vehement, and violent, they were in professing their worship of their God Incarnate, the quicker they would ascend to power in the new Reich. 

Periodically, Beloved Leader would demand a more overt demonstration of unquestioning devotion. If he shuttered large parts of the economy with a bizarre demonetization, they would come out in droves to defend him for his audacious decision, never mind their firsthand experiences of small businesses shuttering. If he swung on a jhoola with the northern adversary, or lavished hospitality on selfsame dictator, he was applauded for his personal diplomacy. Even when terrorists attacked a convoy deep inside our borders, somehow he became the knight in shining armour and the valiant who had to get another turn in office. Crooks fled to foreign lands and his predecessors were blamed. The economy was on a trajectory to devastation and the fandom called it a much delayed spring cleaning of the cobwebs. After all, EVERYTHING was BLji's masterstroke. 

The quagmire had begun to swallow whatever was left of incomes, employment and growth before 2019 ended. Then 2020 happened. 

We are where we have never been before. The pandemic was ignored as fear mongering by pappu, and no response was put in place. Until, true to form, inaction made way for surrealism. We banged taali-thaali, lit diya and batti and showered flowers on diverse places, because this Mahabharata would be won in 21 days. And yet, the Devout stayed unwavering in their devotion. As violent as ever in their defence of His Infallibility. 

He, however, was not satisfied. He needed more evidence of complete suspension of disbelief and absolute prostration, so he decided to ratchet up the Reality Distortion Field. 

He began tossing birdseed at his faith army even as the world tumbled into helplessness and despair. And they clapped and cheered. Knowing something which they could never tell anyone. That they'd been had. And now there was no turning back from the Abyss.

Everything has a price.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan...

This story dates back to 1992. I lived in Hyderabad in those days, and would use the weekends to discover the twin cities and their hinterland. Back then, the Golconda Fort was a bit of trek, but I had heard paeans sung to its grandeur so it was a matter of time before I landed up there. As I climbed up to the main citadel through a succession of concentric battlements, I stopped abruptly when I saw a young lady diligently carving her name or initials into the ancient wall. And snapped. "Utro neeche, ye kya ho raha hai?" Without pausing for breath, she responds, "Tere baap ka hai kya?" "Hai, ab utar nahi to kuchh ulta seedha ho jaega". By now, my voice must have gone up a few decibels, attracting the attention of others nearby. The girl slinked off.

Vandalism is vandalism, whether it is Taliban fundamentalists pointing their artillery howitzers at the magnificent, serene Bamiyan Buddha or a stupid girl carving her name into ancient ramparts. Vandals are sterile, mindless trolls, who believe that violating and destroying what someone else built with love and toil, will immortalise them, and erase the memory of the original builder.

An act of monstrous vandalism is unfolding, at this very moment, in the national capital. A glorious, 3 km long, arrow straight boulevard, formally designated the Central Vista, which connects that great Victorian pile, the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the National Stadium, running right through the India Gate and the Amar Jawan Jyoti, India's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and around which, Sir Edwin Lutyens laid out the imperial capital of British India, is in the cross-hairs of this grotesque, hideous attack.

Our overlords, for they no longer see themselves as merely temporary, democratically elected, incumbents who would, in time, have to relinquish charge and pass the baton, but fancy themselves as founders of a thousand year reich, have decided to take a giant wrecking ball to the Central Vista.

A huge swathe of land on either side of the Rajpath, which is the modest amount of macadamised road a mere two lanes in width, running the length of the Central Vista, has, for a century, been a public commons. For generations of Dilliwalas, it has been a place for paddle boating in the long, reflecting pools, morning walks and late night ice-cream sorties to the green tubelit Sardarji Di Gaddis. The Central Vista was designed to emphatically denote the power and grandeur of the Raj. It segued, effortlessly, into the living heart of the Republic of India. If its great sandstone buildings denote solidity and endurance, its endless acres of turf, gnarled old trees, pools and fountains create a haven of peace and calm where brows uncrease and stress falls away.

A bureaucratic decision, rushed through when the country's attention is on combating the COVID-19 pandemic, and one which would be of a piece with despots of the Chinese, North Korean or Russian regimes, has changed land use of this entire, beautiful commons and appropriated it for building a brand new Xanadu for our brand new Kubla Khans.

Unsurprisingly, all pretense of democratic, consultative process, has been dispensed with, in arriving at this decision, purportedly in the interest of speed and decisiveness. It doesn't stop there. As the government of the day completely abdicates its responsibility for protecting hundreds of million migrant labourers, petty traders, small business owners, blue-collar workers, and their dependents from imminent economic devastation, and offers nothing except hollow homilies to help them to survive and build back their lives, these new age Neros and Marie Antoinettes have set aside Rs. TWENTY THOUSAND CRORES, for funding their Forbidden City. That's money from the Consolidated Fund of India. Money that you, I and every other Indian voluntarily handed over to the government, in the form of direct and indirect taxes. Money which was meant to be held in trust and spent for pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number.

Catastrophes are the despot's best friend. They provide cover fire for unspeakably grotesque, unapologetically egregious, self-aggrandisement.

One day, in decades to come, we shall look back and wonder how we remained mute spectators as the new empire vivisected and dismembered one of the grandest, most beautiful cityscapes not merely in our country, but in the entire world.

Right now, though, cry a quiet tear, for yourself, and for the generations who will follow you. Our Bamiyan Buddha moment is at hand.

Salary. Payable when able?

By now you have probably heard of multiple instances of people's salaries being partially docked, or postponed in full or part, as an immediate consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Step back and think about what messages are implicit in this situation.

• Top Managements of organisations, under implicit, or possibly explicit, instructions from their investors, are moving to mitigate impairment of the financial health of the enterprise.
• One group of creditors, who are currently in no position to insist on their credit being honoured, is employees. The economy was already in deep trouble even before the pandemic hit; when all revenue gets turned off as abruptly as it has, for over a month, and counting, the outcomes worsen by orders of magnitude. They will, in the event, take any punishment which comes their way.
• Managements have, therefore, chosen to attack this statutory obligation with a sledgehammer. Redundancies are rising rapidly, and even those employees who survive the culling, are worse off than they were, just last month.
• Needless to say, while employees' incomes are shrinking, or vanishing, their multiple obligations won't. A home mortgage will, at best, permit a temporary moratorium of maintaining monthly installments, but at a punitive cost in terms of increased interest in the near future. Education, healthcare, energy, household provisions, transfers to support the extended family and so on will not pause, merely because the salary does.

It shocks me, that this assault on employees' compensation has drawn as little anger, revulsion and condemnation as it has.

The contemptuous indifference to the economic, and indeed physical and mental, well-being of employees, at a time when it is more fragile than it has been in my memory, (which goes back to the 1970s, I should add), is freighted with many messages, some of which I shall try to unpack and decode.

• The only voice, which counts at the corporate decision making table, is the investor's voice. His/her ROI must be protected, no matter what else is thrown under the bus to ensure it. This is not surprising. Anyone familiar with the role of incentives in decision making will know that the financial interest of most top management teams is bound, inextricably, with shareholder returns. All the other stuff about caring capitalism is just, well, stuff.
• The entire idea, that equity investment in a business is in the nature of risk capital, which will burgeon when the business enjoys fair climes and favourable winds, and wither when it faces adversities, is a fiction, an oft-repeated fiction which sounds credible exactly because it is repeated so often. Investors, particularly, all sorts of institutional investors, refuse to even contemplate capital attrition, much less allow it, fully cognizant of what it may imply for other participants in the organisational value-chain. Did you notice my refusal to use the popular word, 'stakeholders', and resorting, instead, to an elliptical phrase? 'Stakeholders' has a heartwarmingly broad sweep. The moment the proverbial hits the fan, the only stake which must be, is, privileged is Big Capital.
• The State will offer plenty of lip sympathy to struggling employees, and even appear to raise a disapproving eyebrow or two at errant employers who beleaguer employees. This will be accompanied by little or no legislative or executive action, either to proscribe such actions, or to mitigate the suffering of employees at the receiving end. Managements and investors understand this well, given that here too, a system of incentives, called electoral bonds, or other such virtuous-sounding names, is at work behind the veil.
• Investors in equity become entitled, in perpetuity, to returns on their investment, either in the form of capital appreciation or distributed profits (dividends). Employees must justify their presence on the payroll every day that they spend on it. Employees sign up to a salary which grows in accordance with the company's reward system. Now, it turns out, that there was a force majeur clause, presumably inscribed in invisible ink, which qualified their salary itself. In effect, employers can work, with impunity, on the assumption that salary is not even payable when able but payable IF able.

Thomas Piketty and several other economists and thinkers have been warning us about the ever widening chasm between an ever-shrinking global elite and all the rest of us grunts. COVID-19 has underscored, for hundreds of million employees around the world, how tenuous their lease on their salary really is.

We are just over a week away from International Workers' Day, marked on May 1 every year. Most readers are likely unaware of the history which led to this observance. It commemorates a massive strike in Chicago on this day, back in 1886, which led to the US-wide adoption, over the following decades, of the 8-hour workday. The issues, 134 years ago, pertained to just conditions of employment for the working man. In 2020, the employment contract itself seems to have turned into a flimsy, fragile parchment which might, at any moment, turn to dust.

A few hundred million livelihoods may be devastated over the very near future, but hedge fund partners will not be surrendering multimillion-buck bonuses any time soon.

Preaching to the converted

An interesting issue came up in a conversation with a dear friend . "You always take a polarised position on politics which does not help you bring new people around to your way of thinking. The world has a lot of undecided people, who are looking for a persuasive argument, which will help them pick one side over another, but your polemics turn them away". And further. . "If you are truly objective and rational, you will be able to see that the people you oppose also do some good. If you acknowledge it before getting into your critical commentary, you will sound more credible to those who straddle the fence, and perhaps, even bring some of them around to your positions". Culminating in this. "There will be more elections in future and the undecided will really be the deciding vote. If you can bring around even a few people to your point-of-view, it might help make the difference between victor and vanquished".

Where do political positions come from? From what I have seen so far, there is a considerable amount of politics which gets passed down in families. A lot of it has to do with community or religious affiliations. This legacy is already in place before a child gets into her teens. Those kids who were heckling the nanis and dadis of Shaheen Bagh with 'goli maro' slogans, or rioting at Chand Bagh, accompanied their fathers and uncles to the protest site. They have been blooded in a particular ideology and it is unlikely that they will change their minds any time soon. My father, who never explicitly aligned himself with a particular party, leaned to the Left, and if I identify as a democratic socialist, it is because of our countless conversations about political power, how it is distributed, what it does to the lives of people, and whether it is possible to reset its inequitable distribution.

Political positions are guided by self-interest. This may be related to religion, economic status, social class, specific or generic anxieties about people or things, assessment of the balance between primacy of the individual/collective and so on. Even the most altruistic or 'virtue-signalling' positions are likely underpinned in self-interest (though this warrants a separate post). What are my positions?

• I abhor and accept no compromises with: gender-disparity and misogyny, racism, casteism, religious phobias (Antisemitism, Islamophobia), sectarianism, communalism, stratospheric disparities of income and wealth and government policies which encourage them, totalitarianism, majoritarianism, extra-judicial vigilantism. And so on.
• I endorse and promote: freedom of thought and expression (including religious thought and expression), equality of status and opportunity, fraternity of all peoples across the world, economic justice and system of progressive personal taxes, a durable and comprehensive social safety net, independent judiciary, competent and autonomous institutions, scientific temperament and intellectual curiosity, free and fearless news media, affirmative action for the physically, socially or economically disadvantaged. And so on.

My writing about these issues is, therefore, an act of political activism. What does political activism seek to achieve?

1. Political activism is intended to organise individuals into collectives. The Mahatma, Madiba, Dr. King and Velupillai Prabhakaran sensed that there was far wider support for the causes they espoused than was visible, particularly to their particular adversary. Their actions were designed to galvanise people to action and each action snowballed their movement. Their message to their people was of resistance to a malign overlord. Their strategy was to show them that they were not alone in their frustration and pain; that while an individual could be muzzled or snuffed out, the collective was impossible to mute. They worked as the glue which fused individuals into great movements.
2. Political activism clarifies hazy, unarticulated frustrations into cogent ideas of dissent and resistance. Stated differently, political activism gives vocabulary and grammar to what was incipient and repressed. Greta Thunberg can't possibly be the first person of her generation to agonise over the ravaging of the biosphere by insatiable human greed, but she became the catalyst for a global movement by speaking her mind.
3. Political activism creates a litmus test, parsing those for and against a viewpoint. When Mr. Modi called for his allies to prefix their SocMed identities with "chowkidar", he set up a binary; there was no middle ground. In addition, he gave them an honorific which they shared with the greatest in the land. Gandhi's Khadi, Lenin's red scarves and Trump's MAGA hats are all shibboleths. These days, a cursory look at the comments below any SocMed post, particularly one with a political colour, divide neatly into pro and anti. 

What, then, about the 'undecided people' who triggered this post?

Go back and read what I abhor and what I endorse. People who claim to be undecided about: misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, freedom of speech and expression, scientific temperament or independent media; are really people who represent views at complete odds with mine. People, in essence, who are waiting for the moment when their views will sound less horrible because the Overton Window has moved that way. They are fellow-travelers of everything which I oppose. And it's a waste of my energy and time to try to bring them around.

India, and the world at large, has ceded huge ground to sectarian demagogues with totalitarian ambitions. Remarkably, their positions enjoy widespread support and even a scintilla of dissent is squelched by the armies of vicious trolls at their beck and call.

In such a time, the task for a small voice like mine is to give  some vocabulary to those struggling to find it, to contribute to the glue which will coalesce them into a meaningful opposition, to shake out hypocrisy and sanctimony. The grand consensus doesn't need my approbation to validate itself. Those who feel cold, lonely and lost because they are apparently railing against what everyone else worships, though? They need to hear encouragement; to gather around, make common cause, fight on, no matter how daunting the odds.

My time and effort is best spent preaching to the converted.

p.s. A young reader who read the first draft drew my attention to this essay which highlights very similar themes in the context of white people's views of racism.

Good times? They are here now.

1. Our GDP is ~$3 trillion or ~$250 billion per month or ~$10 billion per day (25 day working month).

2. It looks likely that COVID-19 is going to be with us at least for another month. 

3. Given the restrictions already in place, and further strictures which are bound to follow, we should expect at least a 5% impairment of the GDP run rate until April end. In other words, if the expected GDP for the 6 weeks from now to April end was $375 billion on a steady state basis, it will now come in at $356 billion. Assuming that India bounces back instantly and the remaining 11 months of Fiscal 20-21 deliver $250 billion per month, India will wrap up 20-21 with a GDP of $2.99 trillion.

4. Now the Rupee slipped from 69 to the USD in April 19 to 73 to the USD right now, a 5.6% depreciation. Let's assume that it erodes only 5% during Fiscal 20-21. That will leave the Rupee at about 77 to the USD a year hence. 

5. Adjusted for this depreciated Rupee, the GDP slips to $2.84 trillion for 20-21, a hard fall of 16% in USD terms. 

6. Assuming that our Fiscal 24-25 goalpost remains unchanged at $5 trillion, India's GDP will have to grow at >15.2% in constant, or >20% at current terms for these 4 years.

7. The official growth rate right now is ~4%. It needs to quadruple to give the economy a fighting chance of making the goal. 

8. Put differently, India needs to grow her GDP as much in 3 months as it is currently doing in the year. 

9. Capital formation, particularly by the private sector, is at a standstill. Banks had little risk appetite; what little remained, has vanished post Yes Bank. The equity market is unlikely to shake off the Coronavirus before Wall Street. Don't hold your breath for animal spirits there. 

10. What is the government (and apparently, most of my putative friends on Facebook) most interested in right now? Pushing NPR/NRC/CAA through, by fair means or their means. 

An administration which has brought India such shining economic success, is building on it to deliver shining social success.

Buckle up and soak in the lovely view. 

These are the "good times", which you are going to remember, wistfully, in 2025.

Desecration of Dr. Babasaheb's political legacy

I am wracked by shame today. 

Ramdas Athavale, a minister in the Central Cabinet, leader of the eponymous splinter group of the Republican Party of India, added volumes of vomit to the overflowing bowl of embarrassment that is the zeitgeist. If you have not seen the "Go Carona" (sic) video, search it now. I will not dignify it by appending it to this post. 

Why am I ashamed? Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar evolved an independent political space for Dalits in stages: first by launching the Independent Labour Party of India, then, the Scheduled Caste Forum and finally, the Republican Party of India, which he announced in September 1956 but died before it was formally constituted. 

Why did he choose to name it "Republican Party"? I am speculating here but my hypothesis is this. For Dr. Babasaheb, the Reublic, where the Citizen was the Sovereign, where there was no greater power in the country than every last one of us, must have represented an even greater sociopolitical value than Democracy. By the nomenclature he chose, he was sending a loud and clear message: that the long oppressed Dalits were, henceforth, not merely masters of their own destinies, they were equal partners in being the sovereign rulers of India. His message to Dalits, "Educate, Agitate, Organize", critically emphasized "Organize". The organising principle was people's sovereignty and the Republican Party of India would evolve into the point of the spear. 

That incomparable legacy; of Education, Agitation, Organisation; was publicly destroyed today. By a politician who claims to inherit the great Babasaheb's mantle.

Then again, that is the price of the Faustian bargain that he made with the party which stands for "Uneducate, Oppress, Destroy".

Get-out-of-jail-free card for all the toxic isms

Racism, sexism, religious sectarianism, casteism and all assorted other isms if their ilk share a few characteristics.

Before I go there, a little rewind to the moment which triggered today's contemplation.

A bunch of us friends were witness, to a 70-something male, launch into a particularly obnoxious riff about what attracts women at different stages of their lives. This bloke, I understood from my friends, was a corporate mover/shaker in his halcyon days. He continues to serve on various company boards but otherwise lives a retired life in various resort-style homes. His authority may have been sharply diminished but the sense of entitlement and arrogance is as unpleasantly evident as his bulbous nose.

Our conversation soon moved to the wider canvas of everyday misogyny and normalisation of sexism at the Indian workplace, which stubbornly resists attempts to tame it, notwithstanding the law or public abhorrence, expressed, for instance, during the #MeToo moments of 2018. And that was when a recurrent theme popped up.

Apparently, men who have cabins or large, enclosed, offices, now rarely close their room doors when they are meeting a woman- colleague or business associate, individually. This is to prevent subsequent accusations of inappropriate behaviour behind closed doors and all the potential consequences which might follow. I objected, perhaps not too vigorously, to this train of thought but it never left my mind. A day later, I have marshalled my thoughts and, even as it reawakens the disquiet I felt yesterday about backing off too soon, it is important that I explain why I think so.

1. Women may have been a part of the workforce from time immemorial, but through those millennia, male domination of the workplace has gone on, unchecked. Even today, the gender pay gap in North America stands at 82%. Women work harder, and almost always continue to carry the bulk of the homemaking burden, to get the same place in the corporate, or even bureaucratic, hierarchy. And eventually, the glass ceiling comes calling.

2. Women will, almost without exception, experience sexual harassment at the workplace. It may be overt: demanding favours in lieu of advancement or advantage, or covert: lewd messaging, sexually explicit personal comments, or worse: non-consensual contact all the way up to its worst manifestations. If I was to hazard a guess, the reported, and hopefully, remedied, incidence is no more than a single digit percentage of what actually happens. This is after, and in spite of, laws on sexual harassment at work becoming almost a universal feature of statute books around the world.

3. Victim shaming is the first instinctive reaction, every time an incidence of a minor misdemeanour or a major infraction is reported or otherwise becomes public knowledge. You have already heard or read about all the shapes and forms which Gaslighting takes, so I don't intend to elaborate.

Which brings me to my disappointment with myself.

The very suggestion: that a woman may falsely accuse a male colleague or business associate of impropriety at the workplace, because she sees advantage in so doing, is horribly troubling.

1. Males routinely get away with their worst excesses under the catchall "boys will be boys". What makes it worse is this isn't even necessarily a blemish on a male resumé: he's just assumed to be a particularly virile, or perhaps raffish, chap. Sometimes this extends further. "Oh, if he hit on her, she must be special; he has discriminating tastes on the distaff side, you know".

2. A woman pays a very heavy price for calling out her tormentor. All efforts are made to silence her: bully, threat, bribe, legal gags. We are hearing a lot these days about the nondisclosure agreements which Bloomberg bound several of his victims under. Even if she does get her story out, her subsequent reputation is always marred by innuendo. "Takes two to tango". "Sleeping her way up the corporate ladder". These, and much viler comments adhere to her like indelible stains. If you are unfamiliar with it, this is a good time to google "Roger Ailes".

3. Subordinates seek closed-door meetings with their supervisors, or hierarchical superiors, only because they wish to discuss something which warrants confidentiality. A superior who will discriminate between his male and female subordinates in the manner of taking such a meeting, is grossly iniquitous. It reveals HIS incapacity to conduct such a conversation without risking language or action which will likely attract censure. In the meantime, the open door will effectively muzzle the woman's ability to fully discuss what she wanted to, in the first place, and grant the corporate seal of approval to hypocrisy and injustice.

What does all of this have to do with the other isms I brought up at the top? Everything.

Replace gender by race, religion, caste or sexual orientation; all the issues do not change a whit.

Victim shaming is our permanent get-out-of-jail-free card.

Blood on whose hands?

Someone said this to me yesterday. "If you voted for 56 in 2014, you could be forgiven for being gullible and succumbing to promises of "sab ka saath, sab ka vikas", or to express your frustration with a comatose government. or even the anti-incumbency, "These guys have been around 10 years; why don't we give the other guys a chance and see what they can do?". But if you voted for 56 in 2019, you did so with the full knowledge of what went down in his first five years, and the attack on JNU, the barbarity of Jamia and the carnage in Northeast Delhi is on you".

I'm now beginning to realise, that those who did, are actually quite pleased with all these manifestations of brute majoritarianism. I now see clearly that demagoguery has succeeded in amplifying existing inferiority complexes and weaponising them against the 'Other'. That this project rests on half-truths, fictions, fables and myths is utterly irrelevant. Demagoguery has successfully painted scepticism, rigour of inquiry and openness into effete obsessions of (another bad word) intellectuals.

They are seeing and reading the same news stories as you and I are. Several of them are all in so deep, that their Muslim hate, (I choose to eschew the term 'Islamophobia' as an unnecessary euphemism; let's call it what it is), is now worn as a badge of pride on their chest. The rest continue to practice false equivalence. "Offfoh, it isn't anti-Muslim, both parties are equally culpable".
People who have never read the CAA will keep telling you, "it isn't meant to take anyone's citizenship away, it is meant to GIVE citizenship to *persecuted minorities* from Muslim-majority neigbouring countries". Here is the act. http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf
No, there is no reference to either persecuted or minorities in the act. All it does it creates a religious test for granting citizenship, and this does not have precedent. However, it will BECOME precedent for "Reasonable Classification" in times to come.

India's Muslims are reading the writing on the wall; their right of citizenship is facing its greatest in independent India. You can parrot the propaganda, because it suits your prejudice; be more honest and accept that you really do want to see disparate citizenship rights; or see it for what it is. Not a traffic inconvenience in Southeast Delhi, or Mumbai Central. Not an ISI conspiracy to spread unrest. Not a paid assignment for pay-per-use intellectuals. But a brazen, frontal attack on our Constitutional paradigm.

Please read the promise that our wise Constitution makers made to our generations to eternity. That the Republic secured, for all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation

If you got all the way here, you are probably furious, one way or another. Either with me for being a gormless liberal. Or with the state of the nation.

Pick your fury.

Martyrs' Day 2020

Today is Martyr's Day. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated exactly 72 years ago, today. This post is dedicated to all those millions, known and unknown, who built India.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
From "Friends of Voltaire"- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

A common refrain I hear these days is "Liberals are really illiberal. They won't get into a discussion with people with whom they disagree. Is this liberal?"

Now, I can't speak for everyone who identifies as a liberal, but here is where I stand on this allegation.

1. You have the right to believe in, and say, whatever you want. If you believe that India belongs, primarily, to people of a certain religion; adherents of all other religions, and atheists, are required to know their (subordinate) status, feel free to say it. If you believe that women are the inferior gender and the world really belongs to men, say it. If you believe that the 'Aryan' race is the superior to all others, say that. If you believe that people born to poverty are only paying for the sins of their previous lives, and deserve the privations, indignities, squalor and disease which comes with it, say that too.
   
   DO NOT, HOWEVER, EXPECT THAT I WILL BE PREPARED TO ENGAGE YOU IN A REASONED CONVERSATION ABOUT ANY OF THESE, OR SIMILAR, PROPOSITIONS. YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE WORLD, AND I HAVE NOTHING TO DISCUSS WITH YOU.
   If, in contrast to such brain-dead bigotry, you ask questions about any of these issues, are uncertain or unclear, I am always willing to talk to you at length.
    
2. When I was rather young, my politics was described, variously, as Marxist, Communist or Leftist. With time, I moved away from the notion of violent overthrow of the established order, and was appalled by the tyrannies which the real-world manifestations of Marxist societies had produced. My positions began to shift away from every form of totalitarianism, whether it emerged from the Left or the Right. Individual rights, particularly those of equality before the law and an independent judiciary, free thought and expression, fair representation in legislative/executive arms of government, practice of religion, ownership of property (subject to reasonable restriction), conduct of business or profession (with caveats) became the keystones of my view of the world.
   
3.  The great George Orwell showed the way, to me and goodness knows how many others. I identified, by my late 20s as a Social Democrat, with a tilt toward a more statist political economy, particularly in sectors like infrastructure, education, healthcare and social security. This position has broadly defined my sociopolitical identity ever since.
   
4. The world, goaded on by the victory of free-market capitalism over communism with the collapse of the USSR in December 1991, moved decisively towards unfettered primacy of corporate, and increasingly, global capital flows.
   India had begun her own march towards economic liberalisation, earlier that fateful year, in the face of looming fiscal collapse. My cohort, of people who came into the work force starting the early 1980s, were the biggest beneficiaries of the tailwinds created by India's liberalisation, which propelled us to almost unimaginable prosperity, as compared to our parents' generation, even as it also lifted millions out of poverty at the bottom of the economic pyramid. I will readily admit that the next two decades were hardly about politics. Accumulation (of all sorts) and the responsibilities of building the household defined my life. Politics, at best, was only instrumental, sometimes as a catalyst, at others as a dampener.
    
5. I am older now, and the self-centeredness which defined my last thirty years, has made way for restoring at least some part of the idealism which informed the awakening of my political consciousness in my teens and early twenties. In the meantime, the go-go 90s and noughties turn out to have been drivers of unprecedented polarisation along every axis. More wealth now lies in fewer hands than ever in recorded history. Politics has ceded all middle ground and shifted, sans challenge, further and further right. Wealth, particularly in its most egregious form, and political power concentrated with a handful, have colluded and coalesced into a creature which now brandishes the State itself as its proprietary instrument. Demagoguery, fear-mongering, bullying and the often-brutal silencing of dissent have become commonplace, from the Philippines to Brazil and all points in between. We know it too, right?

Still with me?

I cannot be silent any more.

I cannot be indifferent any more.

I am NOT A LIBERAL ANY MORE.

Let me step away and end with lines written by the great poet, Ramdhari Singh "Dinkar".

तिमिर पुत्र ये दस्यु कहीं कोई दुष्काण्ड रचें ना
सावधान हो खडी देश भर में गांधी की सेना
बलि देकर भी बलि! स्नेह का यह मृदु व्रत साधो रे
मंदिर औ’ मस्जिद दोनों पर एक तार बांधो रे

समर शेष है, नहीं पाप का भागी केवल व्याध
जो तटस्थ हैं, समय लिखेगा उनके भी अपराध.