The nonchalance of the political class

'We are the hollow men
we are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet on broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men'

(T.S. Elliot – Hollow Men)

Mumbai, India’s financial capital, shred by the audacious terrorist attack, exposes as it has done time and again the moral bankruptcy of the political and governing class in India. While it is true that terror strikes can’t always be predicted or stopped, what we need from the political class is more proactivity when it comes to dealing with the security of the nation and its people. Even after 50+ years of independence we are yet to mature as a nation as far as governance is concerned. The Congress party that has ruled the country for the majority of years has under Indira Gandhi sunk this nation into an ever spiraling vortex corruption, ineptitude and mediocrity. Take the instance of the current Home/Internal minister – an outright nincompoop who has absolutely no right to hold the office that he holds – that guy wouldn’t know even if his own bed caught fire let alone re-organize the intelligence gathering mechanism that is racked by factionalism, interference from the political parties and is riddled by corruption. Did he resign on moral grounds? Absolutely not, he ain’t going unless given the boot by Madame Sonia. The President of India – a nation of a billion people, is another example of the mean mindedness of the ruling party – a person with no poise, experience or charisma propped up as the First Citizen of the country. I am feeling extremely angry as I furiously type out this post thinking who is there, if anyone at all, among the large smattering of political parties that we have, who will put the interest of the nation before their party or themselves or the next election.

Until we bring to the nation a certain rigour in governance; give birth to an Obama among us, innocent families, you and me have no option but to be slaughtered like lambs – the political families remain unscathed by all this and thus feel no need to pull their act together. God! It has been years since we have achieved our freedom riding on untold sacrifices, for how long are we fated to deal with an inept political class and a largely corrupt governance system ; till then we have to bear witness to hundreds of innocent families being ripped apart.
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Footnote: I couldn't help adding this...had uploaded the post before the PM's address to the nation in the aftermath of the terror strike...so here is the edit... and I quote from the PM's address:

"We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts. We are determined to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the safety and security of our citizens"...(sic)

"Instruments like the National Security Act will be employed to deal with situations of this kind...to immediately set up a Federal Investigation Agency to go into terrorist crimes of this kind..."

I wish the PM had kept his silence. It would have been better! We have had enough of hearing the same stale response...you and your brethren will continue doing nothing and you will forget all that you said up until the next terror strike...please concentrate on the assembly polls and on how to protect your turf - the nation be dammed!

The Festive Season...

This time around, the festive season seems to have come on in a hurry and has, as equally, left in a rush. Most of the time the festive season gets spread across October and November giving us a feel of an extended season of fun and celebrations, but this year the entire season had got cramped into October and with the last of the events today (Bhai Dooj) we are staring at a long year ahead before the new season sets in.

Here are some snaps from our Diwali celebrations. All of these snaps were taken by my little Bro.

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Interview with Mamata Banerjee

I must confess that I am very poor with the lay of Kolkata even after spending more than 4 years here and therefore used the services of a driver to land me to Mamata’s current abode – set right in the middle of a labyrinth of narrow lanes. I was surprised that Mamata had so readily agreed to be interviewed – not after my, shall we say, encouraging last post on the Singur impasse.

So there I was, standing at the formidable lady’s doorway; me in my tee and jeans, with a borrowed digital camera slung awkwardly across my shoulder and a thick black BILT notebook in my hand. Did I look the jurno type I wonder! But I sure was all strung up. This was after all my first celebrity interview!

As I stood at the doorway debating how to address the lady, the door opens up to reveal her Ladyship herself and I blurted out in Bengali, “Mashi, ami Supratim, interview-ta netae eschi” which to effect meant “Auntie, this is Supratim and I have come for the interview…” Her Ladyship visibly stiffened and with a sharp scowl responded “I am no one’s Mashi, call me Didi….everyone calls me Didi here so…anyway come on in”.

Here’s a verbatim transcript of the interview that ensured:

SK: It’s an honour to be having been invited to carry this interview and thank you for sparing time from your hectic-hectic schedule.

MB: Let’s dispense with the niceties…make it quick…there is a delegation of some social activists who I am expecting in 20 minutes…will you care for some tea?

SK: No, Thank you. Can we start…and would you mind if I record the interview?

MB: I am waiting…and please keep the recorder between the two of us and don’t fiddle with it.

SK: Didi, I have heard that there are three P’s that your life revolves around – Poetry, Politics and Painting – how do you order the three P’s and why only P’s?

MB: The three P’s are like three children to me…I love each of them equally and like all children they vie for my attention always, but the eldest one ‘Politics’ is by far the naughtiest and the unruly one…and while these are the main P’s there are some smaller P’s (she smiles) – P’s that no one knows about.

SK: Didi, can you shed light on the other P’s?


MB: Well, I have never spoken publicly on those….but…okay…one of them is plotting (she gives a mischievous grin and her eyes twinkle). You know Supratim I am a dramatist at heart…I love drama…but there is only a small wrinkle here…while I know how to start a drama, I have still not mastered the art of developing a closure…I guess it will come in time…

SK: (A little wide-eyed) Didi, if you don’t mind, could you please elaborate on this?

MB: Look, I started the extended Metro project while I was the Railways Minister in Delhi but even after a decade it’s yet to see the light of day….more recently the Nandigram impasse…I started it out well and there was a lot of drama…the plot was nicely sewed up but then the ending…Singur…again, I thought I had thought out the ending…but the ending is veering away from my ending. It’s maddening I say….each of my dramas behaving so atrociously!

SK: (I don’t have the heart to ask about her other P’s and lunge for the next question) Didi, I understand your feelings about Singur but why did you block the national highway?

MB: (Didi gets visibly agitated here) You guys are no different…you are speaking just like those media guys…and I thought…No I did not block the highway…the highway came between us and the oppressors (TATA’s). If the government and the honourable courts were so concerned about the highway why, tell me why, didn’t they move the highway a little sideways…Ba re!

SK: Didi, I noticed that Medha Patekar is your ardent supporter. How did you meet her?

MB: Truth be told, I didn’t know about her till the Narmada Dam issue came up and drove her hopping mad (dam read backwards!!!). But once I met her I felt that we had a lot in common! We don’t invest in combs, always wear white sarees – a little dirty and crumpled sometimes – and can be heard for miles around, with or without a microphone. Not to forget she is a social activist and I activate societies.

SK: Didi, the Nano project by the TATA’s is supposed to help industrialisation in the state, why are you opposing it?

MB: I am not opposing the project…this is all wrong…it is those communist agents who are spreading this type of disinformation…let me put the record straight…I am all for industrialisation but why do these TATA need so much land…small car, small land…better still no land…we all know agriculture needs land, but whoever said industrialisation needs land…you seem to be a sensible person, you should know…


SK: But…

MB: I am not finished…and please don’t interrupt…I lose my train of thoughts and focus…As I was saying, why can’t the farmer farm the farm while Tata Babu makes his car…that way he can shout to the farmer who can help him paint the car or fit the bumper or help in a thousand other things and the farmer can always sell the freshest produce…Tata babu can always have the freshest breakfast, lunch and dinner…grow healthy and produce more small cars…and there we are, everyone happy.

SK: But Didi, the Tata’s would need to create factories to mass produce the cars and this will help generate jobs for the people and a myriad other things.

MB: Maybe you are not as bright as you look… Dhritarastra (the mythical Indian king in the Mahabharata) had, if I recollect correctly, over 100 children and in one lifetime…he is the father of mass production in India and did he need a factory…and here we have Tata babu who is a spinster but thinks about mass production…and didn’t I just tell you that Tata Babu could shout to the farmer for help…I am lowering Tata babu’s cost and there he is threatening to withdraw the project.

It is at this point that Derek O’Brian, the noted columnist and humble Trinamool (Mamata’s political outfit) worker steps in.

DOB: I couldn’t help overhearing and had to step in. Didi is absolutely right. When will you guys understand Didi. She has the good of everyone at heart…the good of Bengal…its people, farmers, workers and the industrialists of India.

MB: Derek, it is no use explaining anything to these guys…and Supratim is no different. It was my mistake that I thought that he was different. Why, I can hear the social activists shouting…they must have turned into our alley…I got to go!

And thus,I unceremoniously ended my first celebrity interview, and in the rush of things all but forgot about taking an interview snap and have had to rely on one of those google(ed) images.

Maybe Buddhadev Bhattacharya will accede to my interview request next.

When Politicians lose their marbles...

What does a nation or a state do when confronted with politicians who have figuratively and literally lost their marbles? Take the case of Mamata Banerjee, the indomitable and maverick politician, who ironically swears by the three P’s – Painting, Politics and Poetry – don’t ask me in what order. She has single-handedly managed to hold an entire state to ransom by going hammer and tongs at the TATA’s ‘Nano’ car project at Singur; and going by the latest reports the TATA’s are peeved at the way the dispute has been handled and are in a good mood to pull out of the state and relocate their signal small car project.

It’s a strange breed of mammals these politicians – thinking the shortest of the short term – if and when they are thinking, if at all! If this wasn’t enough we have so called ‘intellectuals’ and ‘social activists’ a.k.a. Medha Patkar and her likes – who love nothing but diving right into the already murky waters as soon a ripe and juicy opportunity presents itself – Singur being a case in point. The Singur impasse has all the portents of pushing the state back into the industrial dark ages with the Wipro’s and Infosys’s of life emitting ominous growls.

While there will always be a heated debate on whether agriculture should take precedence over industry or vice-versa, in so much as land is concerned – the ability to arrive at an amicable solution, where the interests of each of the stakeholders are addressed to the maximum extent possible, is what is sorely missing from our political masters. While listening to the Guv (Gopal Krishna Gandhi), who mediated between the opposition and the government, I felt the TATA’s would necessarily have been taken into confidence by the back-room boys and posted minute by minute on the unfolding discussions. It is stupefying to even think that a government would go-ahead and negotiate deals with its distracters without taking one of the principal stakeholders into confidence. What use is of having an intellectual in Buddhadev Bhattacharya as the Chief Minister?

On one hand we have the intransigence of Mamata Banerjee, who like Nero was painting Khaas Phool (a kinda flower?), confident in the belief that she is doing good for the state and its populace, while infact she had single-handedly managed to push ‘industrialisation’ on an express elevator to hell. On the other side of the coin are the honourable Chief Minister and his colleagues working like a pair of Tweeddalde and Tweeddaldums unaware of the basics of negotiating deals – forever content with igniting and fighting fire.

One Billion People...One Gold Medal

Abhinav Bindra, and all kudos to him for winning India’s first individual Olympic gold medal, also amplifies the huge string of malaises that afflicts the Indian sporting fraternity. Apart from the all important sport of Cricket, which literally rains money, and where we sadly end up losing more than winning, no other form of sports has had any measure of success at the larger world stage. A person like Abhinav can succeed, no doubt, due to his grit and determination but more importantly because he has access to independent funds to fuel his dreams. Had he lacked the necessary funds or depended solely on government infrastructure I am sure he wouldn’t have been able to reach the heights that he reached. This is true for almost all sports where private money provides access to world class sporting infrastructure. Take for instance Sania Mirza or better still Viswanathan Anand. They have reached the world stage inspite of the government’s lackadaisical attitude to sports and sportsmen in general.

In India where politics permeates almost everything, sports has fallen victim into its vice grip. The politicians have, as a unit, colluded to keep India in the dark ages as far as competitive sports is concerned and corruption is endemic. Look at what they have done to our hockey team or in the latest case where Monica Devi, was so unceremoniously pulled out of the Beijing Olympics Weightlifting team on half baked doping charges, which were later withdrawn. But the damage had been done by then.

It’s maddening to think that our polity is so spineless that they don’t feel any emotion whatsoever to see such a large nation religiously ending up at the tail end of any medal tally or can’t they just simply look over their shoulders and see where China has taken its sporting fraternity.

It is said that a people deserves the government that it gets, which to a large measure may be true, but are one billion people so warped that their politicians, who after 6+ decades of independence, can garner only one individual Olympic gold medal and that to inspite them!

Singh is King. But is it long lives the King?

With the advent of 24 x 7 television in India and ‘live’ pictures being beamed right into our bedrooms (or wherever you happened to have plonked your TV set) the drama played out in the Parliament, during the trust motion, was taken to an entirely different level – a surreal, supremely sad multi act play.

The Nuclear Deal, rather than being issue of extreme national importance, that needed debate and civilised exchange of views, became an ego issue for the Left parties – an issue so emotive to Mrs. and Mr. Karat, the revulsion to the US so profound that they had had to try all they could to bring the government down.

I was listening to the fire-brand Cho Ramaswamy, and I couldn’t agree more that Manmohan Singh is a straight and honest political fellow – a man who has had the courage of standing by his conviction (right or wrong only time will tell), and one who was ready to walk the walk if the government came crashing down. The other guy who stood tall among all the muck that was flying around was Somnath Chatterjee – the Speaker of the house –and now an expelled member of CPI(M). It’s rare to see in Indian politics people honouring the sanctity of the chair that they occupy. Hat’s off to him.

You couldn’t say that of any political party. The ‘nuclear deal’ became the Samajwadi Party’s golden steed to ride into the UPA vacuum left by the Left, and with what sweet timing! Left to themselves both the SP and the Congress would have been almost certainly obliterated from the Hindi/UP heartland in the next polls. Some politicians, on the other hand, started giving the deal a ‘religious’ hue. A certain political cretin was heard mouthing that the deal was bad for Muslims. Hey! If the deal does finally end up giving us much needed electricity, the government of the day would find it extremely taxing to keep power away from Muslim households, while the rest of the populace basks in nuclear reflected ‘light’.

Then there are political vermin like Sibhu Soren, the guy with unkempt hair, who put his party’s support for sale. Thus he ended up with two ministerial berths and a deputy chief- ministership for his son and God knows how much cash. Mayawati, on the other hand, demonstrated her political astuteness, however much we may dislike her personally. She camped herself firmly in Delhi, getting the first whiff of the discontent and wonder of wonders was able to convince the wily Deva Gowda and Ajit Singh to bat for her. The myopic Left projected her as a future Prime Minister, leaving a lot of people, including me, feeling how much of a battering can India take.

The BJP came off the worst from the conflict. Their mind was not in the battle, after all the deal was their brainchild. Advani was the reluctant general, who had no option but to play the role of the opposition to the hilt. The BJP could have carved for itself a much neater position, had they stopped being an opposition for the sake of opposition and played a constructive role. Manmohan, in retrospect shouldn’t also have taken umbrage at Advani and should have understood the latter’s political compulsions and need to play to the gallery.

Net-net, I wouldn’t say Manmohan has emerged stronger, since he along with the Congress employed every trick in the book to stick to power – however desperate that may have sounded. You may say they had a point to prove, but that was inconsequential to the avowed moralistic and nationalistic position that he had taken by going ahead with engaging with the IAEA. A lot of sheen got wiped off his armour by the guiles that the Congress party resorted to.

There is a silver lining in the cloud though – in the inflation ridden days that we live in, it’s a surprise that the price of our MPs have plummeted to Rs. 3 Crores (insead of Rs. 30 Crores). On a more serious note, we will now hopefully get to see more economic openness from this government and passage of bills that were held back due to the Left opposition.

Part II - What is the deal in the nuclear deal? The US interests.

Proverbially, there are only two sides of a coin, but as far as the Indo-US nuke deal is concerned, it’s more like a crystal, with multiple sides. In my first part of the post, I tried to debunk the nuclear energy aspect of the deal that is being currently espoused by our political leaders – at least the wherewithal of giving to the nation nuclear based energy on a strict timeline basis. Now to the other side of this vexing deal – Why is the US so interested in pushing the deal through? I would be loath to think that the US has our energy interests and security in mind and would be losing sleepless nights over it!

First and foremost, contain China

With the rise of the new world order with only one super-daddy, the vacuum created by USSR would sooner than later be filled up, and what better horse to bet upon than China. Here’s where the US policy mandarins start squirming. They would be loath to see China as a super-daddy, inimical to US interests and its desire to police the world seriously curtailed.

India, on the other hand, fits the bill neatly – We are close to China, have a burgeoning economy, are a democracy (like the US!), straddle a large part of the world with an even larger population. So, pitch India against China and hey presto! China is somehow, hopefully contained. What the US is forgetting is that to counter the India threat, China would continue to fuel and enrich the Pakistani nuke program. A zero-sum game and you start converting this place of the world into a mad basketplace, if it’s already isn’t. Well, to add to it the last bit of the tail, the US creates a large market for its armaments which it would hitherto miss if India is not on its right side.

Contain Non-proliferation

The US is being downright stupid here. India, has been, and continues to be among the most responsible (non-acknowledged) nuclear powers. We are not the guys going out and selling our nuke wares or technology to whoever comes calling. Please look a little beyond our boundaries…So, if you guys are touting that by having the deal, we can legally procure reactor fuel, you also thereby mean that we are being dishonest right now in our nuke fuel dealings – and that is an unacceptable position. Please concentrate on the bad guys.

India signs up the CTBT...

The US would be keen to see India as a signatory of the CTBT, and the give and take of the deal would ensure this. Pah! The US itself has not signed up and it’s expecting us to go ahead! I hope the South Block guys know what they are doing!

Make the world a greener one!

It’s common knowledge that the developed world shoots up more carbon in the air than the developing world. If the Indo-US nuke is to ensure that, we in India, shoot up less carbon, it is a noble thought but than ought the US not clean up its act at home!

So, what to do we have here? It’s beyond me to comment whether the deal is good or bad for India. It is for our foreign office mandarins to ponder upon…but I hope our political masters are shrewd enough to judge if they are leaving the country stronger and more secure by going into the deal.

If you want to read the previous post, click on the June archive on the right hand pane.

Part – I: What is the deal in the nuclear deal?

The past few months has witnessed a lot of angst among political parties in India over the proposed nuclear deal with the United States. The actors have ranged themselves into three distinct camps – the ayes, the nays and the vacillators. The Congress party leads the ayes camp with the entire jamboree of Left parties making up the nays camp. UPA allies currently occupy the vacillators camp with the BJP waiting in the wings to either crumple or resurrect the deal.

The common populace is nowhere on the scene due to the absence any form of public debate or discussion and most of us are largely unaware of the need for and the ramifications of the deal.

The Prime Minister has been insisting that the deal is essential to help us meet India’s future energy needs. On the energy front India, to-date, relies heavily on fossil fuel. The energy break-up stands somewhat like this:

• Coal and Coal Products: 58%
• Crude Oil, Natural Gas Liquids and Natural Gas: 37%
• Nuclear Energy: 1.3%
• Hydro Electric: 2.6%

The data is a couple of years old but except for minor deviations remain more or less same. You would notice that we have an overwhelming reliance on fossil fuels and coal is among the most dirty carbon fuels, with our reserves promising to last another 20 – 30 years at the current rate of consumption. On the nuclear energy front, unlike what is being touted by the Congress, the picture too is bleak. In 1954, India’s Atomic Energy Commission declared that nuclear plants would provide 8,000 megawatts of electricity by 1980-81. Yet, by 1970, only 420 megawatts were being generated. In 1971, Vikram Sarabhai, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee, scaled back projections, saying that by 1980-81, India would be producing 2,700 megawatts of electricity. Almost thirty years later our nuclear plants are now producing roughly 2,700 megawatts of electricity. But the Indian mandarins are undaunted and proclaim, for all who can hear, that we will produce 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power by 2010 and 20,000 megawatts of electricity from nuclear plants by the year 2020. If that’s not wishful thinking what is…and we have still not touched the cost of producing nuclear driven power. What the Prime Minister has incidentally forgotten to tell us (Ashwathma eti gaja) is that the Indian uranium reserves - about 0.8% of the world, falls woefully short and we are running out of fuel for the nation’s existing nuclear plants and let alone building and operating new plants.

That’s where the nuclear deal steps in, promising us permission to import nuclear fuel for our plants which we are currently unable to do so because of nonproliferation rules. There are more grander plans on the way...Our scientists feel that with a planned nuclear energy programme, the available Uranium can be used to harness the energy contained in non-fissile thorium, of which India possesses about 32% of the world's reserves. To get to use thorium powered energy we need to go through a three a staged development process:

1st Stage: Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors using Natural Uranium as fuel and producing Plutonium which is recovered in reprocessing plants for initiating the 2nd Stage.

2nd Stage: Fast Breeder Reactors using Plutonium as fuel and breeding Plutonium and uranium-233.

3rd Stage: Thorium and uranium-233 based reactors.

With our current capabilities of generating nuclear power, the move to Uranium based power to Thorium based power seems a distant pipe-dream.

In part II of the post we shall investigate US interests in pushing the deal through

The Other World...

Get up from bed…finishing the morning routines takes about 30 minutes…grab a quick bite…collect ur car keys…off I go melting into the morning traffic to my place of work some 16 kms away…so what’s new? Nothing, except that I don’t have to worry about where my next meal will come from or whether a stray rocket is going to vaporise my house along with it’s occupants by the time I return home…or wonder why the trash has been collecting on the streets for years on end, so much so that my landmarks are one putrid mound to the next cause all the familiar landmarks have been shelled and bombed to oblivion or shall I be happy that I no longer see rotting and animal feasted bodies on the streets and that the dead need only wait a day to be picked up.

Those of us who live on the other side of the world can’t for a minute imagine the life an ordinary Iraqi lives or what the Afghans had to go through during the vacuum created by the withdrawing Soviet army, the different warlords reducing the Afghan nation to shambles or the misrule of the Talibans…Today’s Iraq is no different nor are the other countless war-torn territories that we don’t have a clue about.

We can only glean the outer visages of this world from the literature that comes our way and can’t help but feel a sweltering mix of emotions…..blessed that our morning routines have remained unchanged in years…horrified that nations and people can wrought such havoc on humanity….helpless…

“After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!”

The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock (T. S. Elliot)

For those of you who would like to visit the fringes of this 'other world' read “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini and dispatches by Anna Badkhen from Iraq on Salon.

First African Author...

Every time I read a particularly captivating book by an author who I haven’t read before, I feel like kicking myself for discovering him or her, as the case may be, so late in my reading cycle. It has been an unfailing ritual with me! My latest discovery has been Doris Lessing and what a revelation she has been! Some of you guys out there may be thinking “Ain’t seen a bigger dud”, but what the heck – never late than never!

It was pure serendipity that the book that my paw rested on was ‘the grass is singing’, Doris’s first novel, set in Southern Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe. An intense and captivating book, Doris brings to the fore her powerful experience of life in Southern Rhodesia, the country that her father chose to travel to make his pot of gold by going the farming route. The reader is pitch forked right into the middle of the action from the word go as Doris throws open a window through which we see and intimately experience the life of the main protagonist Mary Turner.

Mary shows us how deep the racial divide ran between the white settlers and coloured natives. Her life exposes the subtle but unmistakeable class system within the whites themselves and their unrecorded and unspoken rules of camaraderie. More importantly it is through Mary that we learn the rules of engagement with the coloured – so biased, so inhuman, that at times it fills you with a sense of loathing for the people who could have behave thus.

As we journey along with Mary in the rural hinterland of Southern Rhodesia, we experience the natural vividness of Africa, feel the searing heat of the midday sun thru Mary’s tin roofed house that misses a ceiling, and get swallowed by the nights filled with strange sounds.

As Mary gradually disintegrates and the racial lines, that were drawn so taut in her life, dissolves we experience the utter destitution that human’s are capable of bringing onto themselves, by their actions and inactions. Mary also brings to the fore, how our life’s journey is decided by our childhood experiences and how utterly incapable we are to escape its death like vice.

Cooking the Nation's books - Part II

Carrying on from where I so abruptly sliced the ‘Cooking the Nations Books’ post into two… I ended up downloading the whole sheaf of financial statements from the Finance Ministry site and started my elevator ride down the black hole of numbers in tens and hundreds of millions.

We shall, for the purpose of this post, not worry about whether the figures are in Crores (10 Million) or Lacs (Hundred Thousand) but the pure arithmetic gymnastics of the mandarins of the Finance Ministry. Almost all receipts and disbursements are maintained in a book termed as the ‘Consolidated Fund of India’, which also details the receipts and disbursements under the ‘Capital Account’. A second book of accounts titled ‘Public Account of India’ deals with funds against which the government either earns interest or disburses monies. This book is not what we are concerned with.

The first thing that struck me was the callousness with which the books have been prepared. The guys tasked with making the Financial Statements did not even check to make sure that all additions are in place and I found multiple instances of totalling mistakes. I feverishly hope that the guys noted the figures correctly and that a 69 didn’t get transformed to 96.

Here’s how the figures stack up….

Earnings/Receipts:

Taxes (all taxes under the sun) fetches the government Rs. 687,679.00 crores. Of the monies earned Rs. 178,765.00 crores is shared between the various states leaving the federal government with Rs. 508,914.00 crores (A) to play with. Non Tax Revenues fetches the government Rs. 224,519.55 crores (B) and a further Rs. 55,183.89 crores (C) is shown as receipts under Revenue deficits (by what logic I fail to fathom). Add to this Rs. 1,901,142.94 (D) which is shown under receipts from the Capital Account. Here is the interesting part - Rs. 1,884,985.43 crores is money raised as public debt, which in turn constitutes 99.15% of all receipts under the Capital Account.

Going forward if we add up A+B+C+D, the governments earnings stands at Rs. 2,689,760.38 of which the government raises 70.08% as debt and do you recall any of the economists or corporate honchos ever raising the red flag and taking the government to task!

The disbursements/spendings of the government provides a much bleaker picture. Read on….

Disbursements/Spending:

Disbursements shown under the Revenue Account stands at Rs. 785,583.70 crores (A), all Capital Expenditure heads add up to Rs. 1,839,833.97 crores (B) and a host of other expenses are charged simply by saying ‘Disbursements Charged on the consolidated Funds of India’ which adds up to a staggering Rs. 1,994,729.44 crores (C). Add A + B + C and the government ends up spending Rs. 4,620,147.11 crores, spending almost double of what it earns. The shocking part here is not that we end up spending more than we earn, but 72.31% of all earnings are spent towards debt servicing. No wonder we have precious little left for education, infrastructure development etc etc and to top it all none of the myriad hued analysts, who go though the budget using a fine tooth comb, have though it fit to share the information with the public.

Not only does the shortfall between earnings and expenses stands at a shocking Rs. 1,930,386.73 crores, but our honoured Finance Minister has not included the Rs. 60,000 crores of the farmer largess nor has he added the financial implications of the sixth pay commission in the budget. As per the latest news that’s emerging, the government will end up forking out Rs. 30,000 crores to meet the revised increased salaries, shooting up the already high deficit to Rs. 2,020,386.73 crores.

This kind of financial jugglery has been done by almost all governments since the late 70’s sinking the federal government’s finances further and further into debt which, as we stand today, is an extremely vicious circle and an extremely tight spot to get out of until some drastic measures are taken to enforce fiscal discipline in the system.

Cooking the Nation's books - Part I

This post unlike my other posts was never meant to be. As with every other ordinary citizen the annual Budgeting exercise by the federal government held little significance for me, except for an understanding of what one has to fork out by way of taxes, prices for various commodities etcetera etcetera. This post is also, by the way, the culmination of two significant insights.

a. Never pre-judge
b. You don’t know what your elected governments (past, present and future) are upto!

It all started with one of the group companies, of the organisation which I work for, organising a talk on the latest budget by a certain gentleman from Delhi who wasn’t someone I had ever heard of. The budget had been, by then, declared, analysed, poked, rifled and sifted by the doyens of the industries and honchos from the various - some known, some unknown - trade bodies and chambers. Almost everyone in my organisation tasked to make the talk show a success thought, ‘Hey! We know the budget… it has been discussed threadbare…no surprises there, so what on earth is this guy going to talk about?’ The guys from the media, whom we had invited for the event, had turned up their noses and didn’t want to cover ‘stale’ news. I must admit that none of us knew what the guy was going to speak about but had all mentally decided that there couldn’t be anything new that we could learn – don’t we all watch TV and read the papers. Big mistake – the guy spoke what no one had spoken before. With a memory of an elephant he reeled off figures and statistics that showed how an elected government can hoodwink its own people and made bare to the audience the government’s utter failure at fiscal discipline even with an economist as the PM at the top of the political-bureaucratic pile. Thus the first insight – don’t ever pre-judge! The second insight, following furiously at the heels of the first, was more sombre and shocking. I had heard of fiscal deficit and how the government ends up spending more than it earns but the magnitude of the problem and how callously almost all governments, from the late 70’s onwards, have mishandled India’s finances is amazing. Thus I ended up downloading the latest budget statements from the government site and started my own poking and sifting, trying to make sense of all that governmental legalese.

This post, I fear, is going to get stretched, calling for a lot of scrolling, and those of you my dear readers who trudged along till this line, please bear with me. I have spilled this post into another to make for easier reading. The second part deals with the figures that appear in the latest budget and will hopefully reveal to you how the government pulls wool over our eyes.

Marathi Pride?

I have always felt, since the time I could think coherently about political affairs, that our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had committed a colossal mistake by carving up the various states in India on the basis of linguistic lines. As an idealist he must have felt this was the right thing to do but then he overlooked man’s propensity, even if he is a highly educated individual, to be extremely parochial when it comes to religion or race or ethnicity.

Politicians being politicians, the world over, will by nature, try to exploit every fissure in society to their advantage. Mumbai – among the most cosmopolitan cities in India has been in the throes of street violence prompted by the rabble rousing speech of Mr. Raj Thackeray, where not only did he invoke the latent Marathi pride but called for the ouster of all North Indians from Maharashtra. These were the guys who were, supposedly, taking up all the local jobs and though he did not say in so many words, meant that they ended up vitiating the air over Maharashtra. Surprisingly, except for the film fraternity, there hasn’t been a single whimper of protest from the so called urbane intellectual class. The rest of India and the world are no different.

The political equation, though, is entirely different and complex here. The Congress/NCP combine are pushing the MNS (Raj Thackeray’s party) to grab a sizeable portion of the Marathi soul that the Shiv Sena, (which had its formative roots in the Marathi pride syndrome), was gradually vacillating away from, in its endeavour to project a more nationalistic flavour. The Congress/NCP stands to gain a lot of ground when the vote bank becomes as much fractured as possible, while the Samajwadi Party hopes to create a foothold by riding on the backs of the sizeable North Indian migrant population in Maharashtra.

Early pre-independent India, when it was still ruled as a conglomerate of princely states didn’t have to struggle with linguistic driven parochial violence and where the political shenanigans of the modern world were missing. I wonder what history would have been like if Nehru didn’t choose to divide the states the way he did.

We haven’t seen the last of such violence and with our politicians being what they are, expect an encore of the appalling narrow mindedness that the modern populace is capable of.

Contentment – are you on its left or right?

As we weave through life and follow predictable life-routines…wake up..the loo routine…the morning grub…rush to work…swear at your fellow motorists…etc etc the level of mindless automation that we have achieved is amazing. During those rare moments when we sit back and think about what we are doing and where we are hurtling towards, life has this funny way of rushing in and sweeping all those thoughts under the carpet. Life is the chameleon here taking the form of our children suddenly brawling or the wife either cosying up or screaming or a myriad other distractions.

Are you content? That’s the moot question! Or as T. S. Elliot’s central character in his poem The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock, shall we also in chorus refrain:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Do we dare disturb the universe that we have created around ourselves and turn back and descend the stair and give up the hustle and bustle of life to do what we really care. Are we really content?

We have all our lives, atleast us middle class Indians, been goaded by our parents and society to climb the ladder of success, participate and win in the rat race…chase our tails till kingdom come…and here I am.. neither a doctor nor an engineer..things that an Indian parent would give their limbs for to have their children achieve..thinking which side of contentment am I? Content that I have the means to enjoy’s life’s pleasures or should I follow that part of me that wants to chuck it all up…go to Benaras, the city where I have left my soul…float in the Ganges…and do what I cherish to do – write!

Stop awhile and think, which side of contentment are you?