The Aam Aadmi Syndrome

A one act play by M.K.Kaw

Cast in order of appearance:

Principal Secretary to Prime Minister

Cabinet Secretary

Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission

Raghunathan, P.A. to Principal Secretary to Prime Minister

Head Bearer in PM’s House

Raj Darbari

Thakur Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhaal Singh

Arvind  Karishmawala

Sarvatra Kankar Prasad

Peetaram Bachury

Jee Two Raja

Bhramawati

Alu Prasad

Kshamata Didi

Vasant Yadav

 Sriyut Ganana Shastry, Psephologist

Professor Murmur Gappodhyaya,

Students 1,2 and 3

                                                  Scene  1

(A room in Prime Minister’s House. Enter Principal Secretary to P.M. and Cabinet Secretary, talking)

Cabinet Secretary: (boiling over) What a joke! What a bloody joke! You mean you have called me this early in the morning so that I can help you choose a proper slogan for the next elections! Is that what the premier service of the country has been reduced to?

Principal Secretary: Come on, Sam, don’t be melodramatic. We are no longer room-mates in the Allahabad University hostel. This is real life. This is what we are supposed to do.

C.S.: Sometimes I wonder if my babuji had the foggiest notion of what he was getting me into.

P.S. Oh I am sure he did. The people of that generation were pragmatic men and women. He wanted you to draw a good salary, get an attractive match and enhance the family’s status. All that has happened. You have even ended up as Cabinet Secretary. You have really nothing to crib about. But, even in College, you were always the neurotic; you had grandiose dreams of making sacrifices for the country.

C.S. (reflectively): Well, dash it. I am damned if you are not right. I have always had exaggerated notions of what kind of mettle I had. 

C.S.  Oh, the Crown Prince? Hasn’t he been ready and willing for a long time? Will the mere change of a slogan help?

P.S. Well, parents are always hopeful about their progeny. Remember how Panditji groomed Indiraji, how Indiraji tolerated Sanjay’s escapades and how Rajiv was more or less persuaded into the takhte-tawoos against his innermost desires!  

(Enter Raghunathan, P.A. to Principal Secretary, with tousled hair and disheveled look)

Raghunathan (highly apologetic) He has not served coffee here, Sir? We were served coffee ten minutes ago and one thought that they should have served here first. Apparently they got the impression that …….

P.S. (sternly) I am not interested in the reasons. Go and get it now.

(Thus rebuked, Raghunathan leaves the room precipitately).

C.S. Come on, P.K. don’t take it so seriously. Raghu is not to blame. It is so obviously the Head Bearer’s fault.

P.S.  (to D.C.)  See? The Cabinet Secretary has held the enquiry and fixed the responsibility also. He has shifted the blame to the lowest rung possible. So predictable!

C.S. What to do? That is how we are all trained. If it is the Commissioner of Police who is responsible, suspend the Sub-Inspector. Contain the damage, contain the damage, somehow!

(The coffee arrives, the Head Bearer a trifle apologetic. There is silence while coffee   is poured and handed over.)

D.C. (taking a huge sip sibilantly) Oh superb, fantastic! (almost reverentially) What coffee? It is surely a spiritual experience. (Looking up at the ceiling) It is coming, it is coming!

P.S. What, already?

D.C. (triumphantly) Yes, Sir. The slogan has come.

C.S. What, what?

D.C. It is what the Crown Prince instinctively chose in the 2009 elections. Hamari sarkar aam aadmi ki sarkar!

P.S. But I thought you were opposed to aam aadmi on the ground that it could not be quantified.

D.C. You are right. Our whole mindset  was conditioned by the World Bank thinking. All their economists believed in measurability. But my experience in India showed that affluence cannot be measured merely in Rupees.

C.S. He is right. India is the country that invented the zero. If you fix anything as the measure of the poverty line, some mathematician will prove that you have regressed.

P.S. That is so true. See, what a fiasco we had on the number of families who had crossed the poverty line. Far from making progress, we seemed to have deteriorated!

D.C. That is the time we started playing with the definition of the poverty line itself. First it was based on food intake, then we raised it to 32 rupees, then brought it down to 28 rupees. But whatever we did, the economists found that our standards had come down.

C.S. At last we concluded that poverty was too measurable and dangerous a concept. We thought of many synonyms like hoi polloi, peasants, marginal farmers, agricultural labourers, landless labourers, unorganized labour, lower middle class, proletariat, working class and so and so forth. But they either had a pejorative connotation or would not fit into the political lexicon.

D.C. (smiling an enigmatic smile) That is the time the Crown Prince started talking about the common man. At first, I wondered who this common man was. When I asked him about it, he said, “Aam aadmi” and would not elucidate it any further.

P.S. I quizzed him further. All he would say was that “aam aadmi” was everyone who was not a “khaas aadmi”.

D.C.That was a very clever way of avoiding a straightforward definition. Didn’t you tell him that?

P.S.  You bet I did. But he had been coached well by someone. He said that there was no definition of a “non-cognizable offence” in the Code of Criminal Procedure. It had merely been said that any offence that was not “cognizable” would be treated as “non-cognizable.”

D.C. ( clapping his hands) My, my, my! That is dashed smart. Obviously, Rahul Baba is growing up. And who is this clever Dronacharya who has been coaching him incognito. Didn’t you find out?

P.S. Well I tried, but he didn’t let on. He went on to explain that NGO also had no defining feature except that it was not a Govt. organization.

C.S. (smiling broadly) He had obviously not heard of GONGOs yet. The so-called Govt. Owned NGOs.

P.S. Apparently not. Whoever it was, any Dronacharya who could teach an absentee pupil the art of shutting up a barking dog by letting fly a shower of arrows, without spilling a drop of blood, was worth cultivating. I have even now not been able to guess.

C.S. (briskly) Okay. Let us cut out the polemics. And who then was a “khaas aadmi”?

P.S.  He said that everyone in India was trying to become a “khaas aadmi”. All VVIPs were, of course. Similarly, all VIPs. And even all “IPs”.

D.C. He also insisted that all anti-poverty programmes were for the benefit of the aam aadmi.That was for me personally a very illuminating statement. It showed that the Crown Prince had come of age.

P.S.  Shall we then inform the P.M.  that our consensus is for aam aadmi?

D.C. Do you doubt it still? Ask the Cabsec. I would trust his horse sense any day.

P.S. What you say, Sam? Are you for it?

C.S. Yeah, sure I do. It fulfils my four-fold test. It is simple. It seems to mean something profound. No one knows what it means. It cannot be quantified or measured.

P.S. (on phone) Raghu, find out if P.M. will receive us now. Oh he has, has he?

 (To the others) He has been expecting us. Let us go!

                                              (Curtain)

                                                      Scene 2

(We land straight into the sets of India at 9 news bulletin of The Truth And The Only Truth TTA- TOT Channel)

Raj Darbari;(briskly) Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the India at 9 News Bulletin being broadcast from TTA-TOT headquarters at New Delhi, India.

Our top story today is the announcement by the Vice President of the UPA that the UPA will fight the elections in 2014 on the Aam Aadmi platform.

In order to discuss the ramifications of this announcement, we have with us a panel of Thakur Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhal Singh from the Congress Party, Sarvatra Kankar Prasad of the BJP, Arvind Karishmawala of the Aam Aadmi Party, Peetaram Bachury of the CPI (M), G Two Raja of the DMK, Alu Prasad of the RJD,. Bhramawati of the BSP, Vasant Yadav of the UJD, Kshamata Didi of Trinamul Congress and Shri Ganana Shastry, noted psephologist.

To start the debate I first call upon Arvind Karishmawala to explain  how he feels about the very name of his party being hijacked so blatantly by the grandmother of all political parties in India.

Arvind Karishmawala ( with characteristic smugness) This is only for starters, they will borrow so many other things from us, as we go along.

Thakur Sab Dishaon mein Uchhal Singh (interrupting) Sorry to interrupt.( He does not sound at all contrite) The Congress Party has been in existence for 128 years, Mr. Karishmawala would be lucky if his party survives that many months. The Congress was, as usual, the first to campaign for the aam aadmi. Our youth leader has been personally talking about him since 2009.

Raj Darbari: All right. If we concede that you invented the phrase, have you ever bothered to define who an aam aadmi is?

Thakur Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhal Singh: That is the first thing we did.  The youth leader clarified that the aam aadmi is the one who has no connection with the system that exploits everyone. He is unique in that he does not even wish to be connected. He said that India cannot progress unless a person succeeds on the basis of what he knows, not whom he knows.

Karishmawala: The first thing I did on starting this new party was to define the aam aadmi. The aam aadmi is an ordinary person with ordinary desires. Aam aadmi wants free education and health care. If he is a farmer, he wants a system that calculates his costs of production accurately and fixes the procurement price in a way that the farmer earns something and is not driven to suicide because of recurring losses year after year.

Raj Darbari: All right, let us see what the BJP which leads the NDA alliance thinks of the aam aadmi.

Prasad :( glibly) On the aam aadmi you will find all of us united. We all wish him well. Why did the BJP oppose FDI in retail tooth and nail? Because we thought that the big malls would not pay a reasonable price to the farmers. We also felt that the neighborhood Mom and Pop retail shops would go out of business.

Bachury (his voice dripping with sarcasm): The BJP’s concern about the retail and wholesale traders is well known. It has always been a party of shopkeepers.

Prasad: If we had been a party of shopkeepers, we would not have captured power and retained power at the Centre and the States.

Bachury: (smiling broadly) If the British whom Napoleon called a nation of shopkeepers could rule a vast empire for centuries, why not the BJP?

Prasad: We have provided a positive definition of aam aadmi too. Anyone who has a stake in the system, but does not have an effective say is an aam aadmi. The term includes members of the unorganized sector and marginalized sections of society.

Bachury: That is as vague a definition as possibly can be. The CPI (M) has a limpid definition. Peasants, agricultural labourers and members of the lower middle class, whose family income falls below the poverty line as defined by the Government from time to time, would be an aam aadmi. Can anything be more precise? No scope for hera pheri.

Raj Darbari:  Aluji, what are your views on the subject? Even the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and the Harvard University held special training sessions of their management graduates with you, after you claimed to have turned the Indian Railways around.

Alu Prasad: Our eggheads recognize local talent only after Western intellectuals have showered praise on them. Or else yog would not have to be reborn as Yogaa for being accorded appreciation.

         Raj Darbari, my definition of aam aadmi is a man who lives in a village which has neither roads nor electricity nor water nor school nor dispensary. He should go into the fields, lota in hand, determined to personally add natural manure to the soil. He should take a bath not more frequently than once a month, when the fire brigade van comes to the village for a community bath where children of all castes take part. Every couple should add at least one cricket team to the world population.

Raj Darbari: Thank you,  Aluji. These are all fresh ideas. Hopefully the UPA alliance will keep these considerations in view. Now, Bhramawatiji, will you throw some light?

Bhramawati: You would have noticed that all other parties want to limit the benefit of Government schemes to the Savarnas, members of the so-called higher castes. Bahujan Samaj Party would like the term aam aadmi to be limited only to the Harijans and Girijans.

Raj Darbari: And you, Kshamataji?

(The camera pans around the vacant space where Kshamata Didi was seated so far. Her seat is vacant)

Bhramawati: I think Kshamata Didi left in some haste. She mumbled about some other engagement. Perhaps she felt offended at the order in which she had been placed as a panelist.

Raj Darbari: Can we have Mr. G Two Raja of the DMK?

Yechury: Mr. Raja had to leave in a tearing hurry as he received an urgent SMS from the President of his party that he had been replaced as party spokesman by Ranimozhi. But Madam Ranimozhi is still at Chennai Airport, waiting to board a flight. She might be delayed for this programme.

Raj Darbari:  Such things do happen. Let us then hear Vasant Yadav Ji.

Vasant Yadav: The UJD is all for the aam aadmi. Our main emphasis is on secularism. We would like to include the minorities, specially the Muslims, as aam aadmi to receive the benefits of special Govt. programmes.These may be provided irrespective of the income.

Raj Darbari: Thank you, Mr. Yadav. Why, if one may ask, do you wish benefits of govt. programmes to reach minority households irrespective of income?

Vasant Yadav: Minorities, especially Muslims, fall in a distinct category, as they have been systematically discriminated against for centuries. For example, their loyalty to the mother country is always suspect and they are not ordinarily welcome in the uniformed forces.

Sarvatra Kankar Prasad (with a sedate smile): All this is merely window dressing. Why don’t they say up front that they would like the Muslim vote to fall into their lap in the form of a vote bank?

Vasant  Yadav: There is no such consideration. These are facts of history.

         (Both shout at each other. Pandemonium)

Raj Darbari (with a broad smile): Hon’ble Members, please address the Chair.  It will be better if we stop shouting at each other.  Hon’ble Members, nothing is being recorded.

(The warring Members gradually subside into silence)

Now I request Sriyut Ganana Shastri, noted psephologist to provide his learned inputs.

Sriyut Ganana Shastri (with a faint smile): The history of the common man is much older than 2009 when the Congress Party used aam aadmi as a slogan for the first time. The common man was actually invented by the noted cartoonist R.K.Laxman who started his daily cartoon “You said it” in 1951 on the front page of the Times of India. Gradually the persona of the common man evolved into the now world- famous figure of a middle-aged man in a check shirt and crumpled dhoti, with his hair and glasses askew and a perpetually puzzled look, who was a silent witness to all that was happening in this country.

Raj Darbari: Yes, the silent witness part is what we have all seen in the past. But the recent upheavals by the youth of the country, whether as a crusade against corruption or a rage against the gang rape and murder of a brave heart in Delhi have changed the mood of the common man. If Laxman had been still active as a cartoonist, he might have given an audible, stentorian voice to the aam aadmi.

Let us now go to some viewers for their comments on the UPA’s announcement today.

(Camera pans to a viewer in Mumbai)

Interviewer: How would you define the common man?

Viewer: To my mind, the common man is the man in the street.

Interviewer: Man walking in the street, running in the street with stones and brickbats in his hands, sitting with a begging bowl in the street or trying to sleep in the street under a flyover on a cold December night, are these all pictures of the aam aadmi?

Viewer: All of them, as they would fall under different levels of penury. Certainly, the man sleeping in the street without a roof on his head must get top priority.

(Camera focuses on a drinking water scheme, where there is a crowd of villagers, with scant access to clean drinking water)

Interviewer: Are you short of water only or do you have other difficulties and problems also?

Villager: There are so many problems. We don’t have a road connecting us to the regulated market. There is a school but the teachers do not attend classes.  Medical insurance is still unknown to the saadharan vyakti.

Interviewer to a plumpish lady in a small town: How do you respond to the phrase “mango man in a banana republic” coined by an important person?  Does it illuminate your condition in any way?

Viewer: (smiling) Well, it is good if some of us are lucky enough to find humour in a situation of malnutrition, starvation and hunger.

Interviewer: Don’t you think it as an apt description of your unimportance, your marginalization in the present context?

Viewer: On the contrary. How many of us can afford to live in a banana republic, when the mandi price of an individual, emaciated banana in Delhi is 7 rupees. The mango proper is much worse; even the lowliest species is unaffordable.

Raj Darbari: Well, we can check out this story in a minute. Our correspondent visited an elementary school run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Here is a student of Class II trying to learn the Hindi alphabet.

Correspondent (To child): Bete, अ,आ,इ,ई सुनाओ

Child: अ से अमरुद, आ से आम.

Interviewer: तुमने अमरुद और आम खाए हैं न?

Child: कहाँ ,अंकल. दूर से देखे भर हैं.

Raj Darbari: See? They have not tasted even the lowly guava, not to speak of the high and mighty mango.

Ganana Shastri: You must have interviewed college students too. How deep is their knowledge?

Raj Darbari: See for yourselves.

          (Camera pans out to college campus.)

Lady interviewer: (To a passing girl): You are a student of M.A. in Economics. Tell me, how would you recognize a common man?

Girl: What is the big deal, Mam? The common man can be recognized in a jiffy. She has no ability to influence others politically or financially. She is used to suffering the misdeeds of the high and mighty.

Lady interviewer: Can you give us some synonyms, so that we understand the concept well?

Girl (with exuberance): Oh sure! Let us see. How about common person ,nobody, nonentity, cipher, everyman, man in the street, plebian, rustic, peasant , Joe in the Street,  man of the masses and so on?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Raj Darbari (from the student) Is a common man the same as a garib aadmi?

Student: (with a discomfited air): It should, should it not? But one has heard our leaders use it in a very flexible way. It seems to include the neo-rich, or at least some of them. Also the middle classes or more appropriately the lower middle classes. It seems to be a populist platform, in which anyone not having roti, kapda aur makaan in sufficient measure can be provided with these.

Raj Darbari: Thank you for your candour. We move back to the studios. Now, honourable members of the panel, we are running out of time. You can make one last comment. Mr. Prasad.

Sarvatra Kankar Prasad: (with irony pouring from each phrase) The NDA feels that, like everything else, this is a clever ploy to divert the attention of the voters from the misdeeds and corrupt practices of its leaders. When the Govt. tried the norms fixed by the World Bank, they found that the number of families whose family income exceeded the poverty line increased rather than going down. This was a failure of the anti-poverty programmes.

Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhal Singh: (Unfazed) This was a numerical failure. For the UPA, this kind of assessment based on mere arithmetic was not important. What we needed was a qualitative assessment. A few chintan shivirs later, the situation became clear. A one-dimensional attack on income levels alone would not do. We had to attack the basic underlying causes of poverty, penury, malnutrition, absence of food, clothing and shelter, the lack of access to basic amenities like a road leading to an urban area, employment, housing, etc.

That is why we launched a combined onslaught on the negative factors. The Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana for rural roads, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
for employment, Indira Aawas Yojana for rural housing, and so on and so forth. The list is virtually endless.

Raj Darbari: We have run out of time. We shall listen to the list some other time. In fact, we shall be listening to nothing else, till the date of the poll.

With this we come to the end of the programme “India at 9”. Thank you

So when I ask you a question, you have to click your tape-recorder, only to show that you are conscious and wide-awake. It does not indicate that you have grasped or understood the concept or the theory. If unwittingly, you happen to understand, please indicate it with your vocal chords. Is that clear?

Students: Clear, Sir.

Prof. We do not tell you which year we are in at the moment, whether we are talking of the past that has already happened, or the future which is still waiting to happen.

It is my statutory responsibility to inform you that this course is being conducted under the Cyber Courses Act recognized by the UNESCO and all universities approved by it. The qualification earned hereunder does not entitle you to a job as a qualified Futurologist. Is that understood?

Students: (click the tape-recorders in unison).

Prof.(with surprising amiability ) Well then I shall proceed. The General Elections in India planned to be held in 2014 were actually held on schedule. All the parties exerted their best to win.

The UPA went to polls with the anointed Crown Prince as their declared Prime Ministerial candidate. The Congress was able to muster support from Kshamata Banerji, Nirish Kumar and Bhramawati, besides AIADMK, National Conference etc. Shared Power tried to stage a revolt, but a scandal surfacing at the right time, put paid to his ambitions.

The NDA brought together some of the smaller parties, but it could not unite behind one charismatic leader. Narendra Toady had the charisma, but he was not city bred and was too much of a rustic to catch the imagination of the Generation Next. Sukshama Swaraj was too roly-poly Bharat Desh ki Nari to fit the bill. Kaitley’s following was limited to Delhi. Murli Manohar Doshi was too identified with the RSS, Ladvani too old.

 Student 1: What about the Third Front?

Prof.: The Left parties tried to forge a third front with the help of Samajwadi Party and DMK, but it had no leader having an all India image.

Friends, politics is a lot like films. You have to have at least one face that sells, one of the Khans for example.

      Student 2: Then the story does not matter?

Prof: The story also matters, but a macho hero or sexy heroine matters a lot more.

Student 3: And what about the theme like the welfare of humanity, the struggle between good and evil? Isn’t that where the cast of thousands counts. The aam aadmi with whom the average viewer identifies himself?

Prof. That is a myth some directors try to propagate. But the average cinegoer does not like to identify himself with an extra whom no one notices. Everyone wants to be like the hero—- handsome, a singer, a dancer, a Formula One racer, a horseman, a warrior proficient in any weapon, and above all a romantic who wins over the beautiful princess with sweet nothings on moonlit nights. Who wants   to be just an aam aadmi?

Student 3: Obviously, none.

Prof:  Tell me, who won the 2014 elections?

Students: (click their tape-recorders loudly).

Prof. (shouts) To this question, I demand an answer, not a bloody click!

Student 1: You said that we were discussing not the reality, but alternative scenarios.  In the scenario you just described, the winner must have been the Crown Prince. He is so obviously the nearest the UPA had to resemble the desired Khans. No one else fits. He is drop-dead handsome, like a hero or an eminent model who has arrived. Although he is not yet married, he would be a hundred times if he wanted to.

Prof. That is what all the psephologists predicted. They gave him a three fourths majority, like his father before him, and although he did not have the advantage of an assassinated mother, he had almost everything else.

Student 3: You might have heard the humorous ditty on the internet about the elections?

Prof. Which one? There were so many.

Student 3 (singing with aplomb, other students join him):

Rama killed Ravana. Both start with ‘R’

      Krishna killed Kamsa. Both start with ‘K’.

Obama killed Osama. Both start with ‘O’.

Corruption killed Congress. Both start with ‘C’

Toady killed The Youth Leader. Both start with ‘T’.

Prof. This is neither psephology nor futurology. It is wish fulfillment, by a Toady acolyte. Imagine, can corruption kill parties, when all parties thrive on black money? If this ditty was to be taken seriously, even then only an ‘R’ could defeat the UPA’s Prince. The only ‘R’ the NDA had to offer was Rajnath Bingh.

Student 2: But how did the Prince get the aam aadmi to put the stamp on his election symbol?

Prof. He remembered his father’s oft-quoted statement that the man in the village got only 15 paise in a rupee. The rest was gobbled by the various vested interests. He concentrated his attention on how to reach all the hundred paise to the aam aadmi, or as many of the hundred paise as could be managed.

Student 1: How did he succeed where so many had faltered in the past?

Prof: His master-stroke was the Aadhar Card. Everyone got an Aadhar Card. Some got two or three, but everyone had to have at least one. This card was linked with the banks. All Govt. assistance was released to the beneficiaries by electronic transfer, directly into their bank accounts. So there was no question of any pilferage. Simple! (Smiles a beatific smile).

Student 2: How did he ingratiate himself into their good graces?

Prof. Simple. In urban areas he traveled by the University special, the Metro and the suburban train and mixed with the students without any security surrounding him. In the rural areas, he sat on the charpoys with them, broke bread with them and slept overnight in the huts of the so-called “lower castes”.

He declared himself opposed to professional student leaders who pretended to be youthful even when they had crossed the age of 35 years. No one had the temerity to ask him about his own age.

He announced that dynasty would not be a consideration in the distribution of tickets and followed this principle in say ten percent cases. No one had the guts to question him about his qualifications for the various posts he held.

Student 3: How did the UPA deal with the Lok Pal Bill?

Prof:  Through discussion in Chintan Shivirs, inter-party conclaves and the Standing Committee of Parliament, but the various parties could not arrive at a consensus. So the draft Bill just lapsed.

Student 1: Did Anna Pazare not pose a problem?

Prof: (breezily) Providentially, he met with a road accident just a day before he was to sit on a fast unto death. And Karishmawala was persuaded to drink a glass of orange juice on the 7^th day of his fast.

Student 1: Did the Government relax its hegemony over the CBI?

Prof. It proclaimed the CBI’s autonomy by issuing a gazette notification, but continued to appoint the director and other senior officers unilaterally.

Student 2 :   How did it deal with the Dynasty issue?

Prof.: (with a wicked leer on his face) Oh, it was so cutely managed, you won’t believe it.The Govt. got a Presidential reference made to the Supreme Court of India. That Court held that no citizen of India could be disentitled from holding any office merely on the ground of his dynasty. Nor could belonging to a dynasty be made a necessary precondition to the holding of a post. All parties being interested in clarifying the related issues, it was child’s play for The Indian Dynastic Succession Act being passed by a unanimous show of hands.

Student 3: (an impish gleam in his eyes) Sorry to take you back a little, Professor. Was the UPA able to take 100% grant to the beneficiaries?

Prof. (stammering a little) To be frank…well. No…not exactly.

Student 3: Can we say in what percentage of cases was 100% achieved nearly or substantially?

Prof: The exact data is not yet available. You see, the following snags were encountered:

Ø   Aadhar cards could not be completed in time for the elections.

Ø   Some cards had to be rejected because there was no power, or computer was down or fingerprints did not match or iris did not match etc.

Ø   Bank employees went on strike demanding an Aadhar Card allowance.

Ø   Initially, money was released liberally, as the elections were fast approaching or end of financial year was approaching and so on. As the entitlements started pouring in and were lesser in amount, entries had to be written back. Bankers insisted on a cash refund, while the beneficiaries demanded temporary adjustment entries or loans.

Ø   All along, the bank employees had felt that they were distributing largesse among undeserving people. As the election cacophony grew, their regional offices started leaning on them and they were compelled to make payments. So they did what had to be done and charged their normal informal commission.

Ø   Once the system got on track, everything was normal and everyone was happy.

Student 1 (not relenting one little bit) : So did they take an informal survey on how much juice the aam aadmi was able to squeeze from the system now?

Prof. (reluctantly) Well yes…The Crown Prince insisted. And believe it or not, the figure was the same bloody old fifteen percent. Can you beat it? It is almost like Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages, which was the philosophical-statistical underpinning of the communist ideology, as if it was an irrevocable law, divinely ordained!

Student 2 (voice dripping with sarcasm): Would it be improper, Sir, to take 85% as the historically proven legitimate administrative expenses of managing the various aam aadmi schemes?

Student 1: 85% appears too high.

Student 3: Not if you consider the large number of beneficiaries and the petty amounts involved in each case.

Prof. So what really changed? Everything seems to be the same.

Student 3: Well, we have a new Prime Minister and a youthful one too.

Prof. Did I say that? I only said that the youth leader had won the 2014 elections.

Student 2: Does that not mean…?

Prof. Not necessarily.As things turned out, the NDA went to polls with Sukshma Swaraj as the Prime Ministerial candidate. Before the poll, she went on a whirlwind tour of the country, threatening to shave off her hair in case the Italian Mafia was voted to power. When the UPA won, she promptly went to a hair dresser. It turned out that a bald Sukshma looked cute and modern like the Bollywood actress Persis Khambatta rather than the Chhinnamastika she had conjured up for her countrymen. She looked almost Italian herself.

Student 1: So what happened?

Prof:  The UPA leaders were deep in discussion with the President in Rashtrapati Bhavan when the news broke. Instead of mass protests, the Indian masses responded with hysterical laughter.. It suddenly occurred to the ever-diffident Crown Prince that Mommy was still around. So he persuaded her to don the mantle herself. He would be content to be Minister for Youth Affairs. And that is how it was.

Student 3: So the ditty has been proved right after all.

Congress created Corruption, both start with C

Sonika beat Sukshma. Both start with S.

Prof:   And the aamaadmi…?

Student 3: (smiling) He is no worse than before. He has an Aadhar card, a bank account and still takes home his fifteen percent!!!

         (The students click their tape recorders in unison)

                                   CURTAIN

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(6696 words. Last edited by the author on 20^th April, 2013)

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The Aam Aadmi Syndrome

A one act play by M.K.Kaw

Cast in order of appearance:

Principal Secretary to Prime Minister

Cabinet Secretary

Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission

Raghunathan, P.A. to Principal Secretary to Prime Minister

Head Bearer in PM’s House

Raj Darbari

Thakur Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhaal Singh

Arvind  Karishmawala

Sarvatra Kankar Prasad

Peetaram Bachury

Jee Two Raja

Bhramawati

Alu Prasad

Kshamata Didi

Vasant Yadav

 Sriyut Ganana Shastry, Psephologist

Professor Murmur Gappodhyaya,

Students 1,2 and 3

                                                  Scene  1

(A room in Prime Minister’s House. Enter Principal Secretary to P.M. and Cabinet Secretary, talking)

Cabinet Secretary: (boiling over) What a joke! What a bloody joke! You mean you have called me this early in the morning so that I can help you choose a proper slogan for the next elections! Is that what the premier service of the country has been reduced to?

Principal Secretary: Come on, Sam, don’t be melodramatic. We are no longer room-mates in the Allahabad University hostel. This is real life. This is what we are supposed to do.

C.S.: Sometimes I wonder if my babuji had the foggiest notion of what he was getting me into.

P.S. Oh I am sure he did. The people of that generation were pragmatic men and women. He wanted you to draw a good salary, get an attractive match and enhance the family’s status. All that has happened. You have even ended up as Cabinet Secretary. You have really nothing to crib about. But, even in College, you were always the neurotic; you had grandiose dreams of making sacrifices for the country.

C.S. (reflectively): Well, dash it. I am damned if you are not right. I have always had exaggerated notions of what kind of mettle I had. 

C.S.  Oh, the Crown Prince? Hasn’t he been ready and willing for a long time? Will the mere change of a slogan help?

P.S. Well, parents are always hopeful about their progeny. Remember how Panditji groomed Indiraji, how Indiraji tolerated Sanjay’s escapades and how Rajiv was more or less persuaded into the takhte-tawoos against his innermost desires!  

(Enter Raghunathan, P.A. to Principal Secretary, with tousled hair and disheveled look)

Raghunathan (highly apologetic) He has not served coffee here, Sir? We were served coffee ten minutes ago and one thought that they should have served here first. Apparently they got the impression that …….

P.S. (sternly) I am not interested in the reasons. Go and get it now.

(Thus rebuked, Raghunathan leaves the room precipitately).

C.S. Come on, P.K. don’t take it so seriously. Raghu is not to blame. It is so obviously the Head Bearer’s fault.

P.S.  (to D.C.)  See? The Cabinet Secretary has held the enquiry and fixed the responsibility also. He has shifted the blame to the lowest rung possible. So predictable!

C.S. What to do? That is how we are all trained. If it is the Commissioner of Police who is responsible, suspend the Sub-Inspector. Contain the damage, contain the damage, somehow!

(The coffee arrives, the Head Bearer a trifle apologetic. There is silence while coffee   is poured and handed over.)

D.C. (taking a huge sip sibilantly) Oh superb, fantastic! (almost reverentially) What coffee? It is surely a spiritual experience. (Looking up at the ceiling) It is coming, it is coming!

P.S. What, already?

D.C. (triumphantly) Yes, Sir. The slogan has come.

C.S. What, what?

D.C. It is what the Crown Prince instinctively chose in the 2009 elections. Hamari sarkar aam aadmi ki sarkar!

P.S. But I thought you were opposed to aam aadmi on the ground that it could not be quantified.

D.C. You are right. Our whole mindset  was conditioned by the World Bank thinking. All their economists believed in measurability. But my experience in India showed that affluence cannot be measured merely in Rupees.

C.S. He is right. India is the country that invented the zero. If you fix anything as the measure of the poverty line, some mathematician will prove that you have regressed.

P.S. That is so true. See, what a fiasco we had on the number of families who had crossed the poverty line. Far from making progress, we seemed to have deteriorated!

D.C. That is the time we started playing with the definition of the poverty line itself. First it was based on food intake, then we raised it to 32 rupees, then brought it down to 28 rupees. But whatever we did, the economists found that our standards had come down.

C.S. At last we concluded that poverty was too measurable and dangerous a concept. We thought of many synonyms like hoi polloi, peasants, marginal farmers, agricultural labourers, landless labourers, unorganized labour, lower middle class, proletariat, working class and so and so forth. But they either had a pejorative connotation or would not fit into the political lexicon.

D.C. (smiling an enigmatic smile) That is the time the Crown Prince started talking about the common man. At first, I wondered who this common man was. When I asked him about it, he said, “Aam aadmi” and would not elucidate it any further.

P.S. I quizzed him further. All he would say was that “aam aadmi” was everyone who was not a “khaas aadmi”.

D.C.That was a very clever way of avoiding a straightforward definition. Didn’t you tell him that?

P.S.  You bet I did. But he had been coached well by someone. He said that there was no definition of a “non-cognizable offence” in the Code of Criminal Procedure. It had merely been said that any offence that was not “cognizable” would be treated as “non-cognizable.”

D.C. ( clapping his hands) My, my, my! That is dashed smart. Obviously, Rahul Baba is growing up. And who is this clever Dronacharya who has been coaching him incognito. Didn’t you find out?

P.S. Well I tried, but he didn’t let on. He went on to explain that NGO also had no defining feature except that it was not a Govt. organization.

C.S. (smiling broadly) He had obviously not heard of GONGOs yet. The so-called Govt. Owned NGOs.

P.S. Apparently not. Whoever it was, any Dronacharya who could teach an absentee pupil the art of shutting up a barking dog by letting fly a shower of arrows, without spilling a drop of blood, was worth cultivating. I have even now not been able to guess.

C.S. (briskly) Okay. Let us cut out the polemics. And who then was a “khaas aadmi”?

P.S.  He said that everyone in India was trying to become a “khaas aadmi”. All VVIPs were, of course. Similarly, all VIPs. And even all “IPs”.

D.C. He also insisted that all anti-poverty programmes were for the benefit of the aam aadmi.That was for me personally a very illuminating statement. It showed that the Crown Prince had come of age.

P.S.  Shall we then inform the P.M.  that our consensus is for aam aadmi?

D.C. Do you doubt it still? Ask the Cabsec. I would trust his horse sense any day.

P.S. What you say, Sam? Are you for it?

C.S. Yeah, sure I do. It fulfils my four-fold test. It is simple. It seems to mean something profound. No one knows what it means. It cannot be quantified or measured.

P.S. (on phone) Raghu, find out if P.M. will receive us now. Oh he has, has he?

 (To the others) He has been expecting us. Let us go!

                                              (Curtain)

                                                      Scene 2

(We land straight into the sets of India at 9 news bulletin of The Truth And The Only Truth TTA- TOT Channel)

Raj Darbari;(briskly) Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the India at 9 News Bulletin being broadcast from TTA-TOT headquarters at New Delhi, India.

Our top story today is the announcement by the Vice President of the UPA that the UPA will fight the elections in 2014 on the Aam Aadmi platform.

In order to discuss the ramifications of this announcement, we have with us a panel of Thakur Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhal Singh from the Congress Party, Sarvatra Kankar Prasad of the BJP, Arvind Karishmawala of the Aam Aadmi Party, Peetaram Bachury of the CPI (M), G Two Raja of the DMK, Alu Prasad of the RJD,. Bhramawati of the BSP, Vasant Yadav of the UJD, Kshamata Didi of Trinamul Congress and Shri Ganana Shastry, noted psephologist.

To start the debate I first call upon Arvind Karishmawala to explain  how he feels about the very name of his party being hijacked so blatantly by the grandmother of all political parties in India.

Arvind Karishmawala ( with characteristic smugness) This is only for starters, they will borrow so many other things from us, as we go along.

Thakur Sab Dishaon mein Uchhal Singh (interrupting) Sorry to interrupt.( He does not sound at all contrite) The Congress Party has been in existence for 128 years, Mr. Karishmawala would be lucky if his party survives that many months. The Congress was, as usual, the first to campaign for the aam aadmi. Our youth leader has been personally talking about him since 2009.

Raj Darbari: All right. If we concede that you invented the phrase, have you ever bothered to define who an aam aadmi is?

Thakur Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhal Singh: That is the first thing we did.  The youth leader clarified that the aam aadmi is the one who has no connection with the system that exploits everyone. He is unique in that he does not even wish to be connected. He said that India cannot progress unless a person succeeds on the basis of what he knows, not whom he knows.

Karishmawala: The first thing I did on starting this new party was to define the aam aadmi. The aam aadmi is an ordinary person with ordinary desires. Aam aadmi wants free education and health care. If he is a farmer, he wants a system that calculates his costs of production accurately and fixes the procurement price in a way that the farmer earns something and is not driven to suicide because of recurring losses year after year.

Raj Darbari: All right, let us see what the BJP which leads the NDA alliance thinks of the aam aadmi.

Prasad :( glibly) On the aam aadmi you will find all of us united. We all wish him well. Why did the BJP oppose FDI in retail tooth and nail? Because we thought that the big malls would not pay a reasonable price to the farmers. We also felt that the neighborhood Mom and Pop retail shops would go out of business.

Bachury (his voice dripping with sarcasm): The BJP’s concern about the retail and wholesale traders is well known. It has always been a party of shopkeepers.

Prasad: If we had been a party of shopkeepers, we would not have captured power and retained power at the Centre and the States.

Bachury: (smiling broadly) If the British whom Napoleon called a nation of shopkeepers could rule a vast empire for centuries, why not the BJP?

Prasad: We have provided a positive definition of aam aadmi too. Anyone who has a stake in the system, but does not have an effective say is an aam aadmi. The term includes members of the unorganized sector and marginalized sections of society.

Bachury: That is as vague a definition as possibly can be. The CPI (M) has a limpid definition. Peasants, agricultural labourers and members of the lower middle class, whose family income falls below the poverty line as defined by the Government from time to time, would be an aam aadmi. Can anything be more precise? No scope for hera pheri.

Raj Darbari:  Aluji, what are your views on the subject? Even the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and the Harvard University held special training sessions of their management graduates with you, after you claimed to have turned the Indian Railways around.

Alu Prasad: Our eggheads recognize local talent only after Western intellectuals have showered praise on them. Or else yog would not have to be reborn as Yogaa for being accorded appreciation.

         Raj Darbari, my definition of aam aadmi is a man who lives in a village which has neither roads nor electricity nor water nor school nor dispensary. He should go into the fields, lota in hand, determined to personally add natural manure to the soil. He should take a bath not more frequently than once a month, when the fire brigade van comes to the village for a community bath where children of all castes take part. Every couple should add at least one cricket team to the world population.

Raj Darbari: Thank you,  Aluji. These are all fresh ideas. Hopefully the UPA alliance will keep these considerations in view. Now, Bhramawatiji, will you throw some light?

Bhramawati: You would have noticed that all other parties want to limit the benefit of Government schemes to the Savarnas, members of the so-called higher castes. Bahujan Samaj Party would like the term aam aadmi to be limited only to the Harijans and Girijans.

Raj Darbari: And you, Kshamataji?

(The camera pans around the vacant space where Kshamata Didi was seated so far. Her seat is vacant)

Bhramawati: I think Kshamata Didi left in some haste. She mumbled about some other engagement. Perhaps she felt offended at the order in which she had been placed as a panelist.

Raj Darbari: Can we have Mr. G Two Raja of the DMK?

Yechury: Mr. Raja had to leave in a tearing hurry as he received an urgent SMS from the President of his party that he had been replaced as party spokesman by Ranimozhi. But Madam Ranimozhi is still at Chennai Airport, waiting to board a flight. She might be delayed for this programme.

Raj Darbari:  Such things do happen. Let us then hear Vasant Yadav Ji.

Vasant Yadav: The UJD is all for the aam aadmi. Our main emphasis is on secularism. We would like to include the minorities, specially the Muslims, as aam aadmi to receive the benefits of special Govt. programmes.These may be provided irrespective of the income.

Raj Darbari: Thank you, Mr. Yadav. Why, if one may ask, do you wish benefits of govt. programmes to reach minority households irrespective of income?

Vasant Yadav: Minorities, especially Muslims, fall in a distinct category, as they have been systematically discriminated against for centuries. For example, their loyalty to the mother country is always suspect and they are not ordinarily welcome in the uniformed forces.

Sarvatra Kankar Prasad (with a sedate smile): All this is merely window dressing. Why don’t they say up front that they would like the Muslim vote to fall into their lap in the form of a vote bank?

Vasant  Yadav: There is no such consideration. These are facts of history.

         (Both shout at each other. Pandemonium)

Raj Darbari (with a broad smile): Hon’ble Members, please address the Chair.  It will be better if we stop shouting at each other.  Hon’ble Members, nothing is being recorded.

(The warring Members gradually subside into silence)

Now I request Sriyut Ganana Shastri, noted psephologist to provide his learned inputs.

Sriyut Ganana Shastri (with a faint smile): The history of the common man is much older than 2009 when the Congress Party used aam aadmi as a slogan for the first time. The common man was actually invented by the noted cartoonist R.K.Laxman who started his daily cartoon “You said it” in 1951 on the front page of the Times of India. Gradually the persona of the common man evolved into the now world- famous figure of a middle-aged man in a check shirt and crumpled dhoti, with his hair and glasses askew and a perpetually puzzled look, who was a silent witness to all that was happening in this country.

Raj Darbari: Yes, the silent witness part is what we have all seen in the past. But the recent upheavals by the youth of the country, whether as a crusade against corruption or a rage against the gang rape and murder of a brave heart in Delhi have changed the mood of the common man. If Laxman had been still active as a cartoonist, he might have given an audible, stentorian voice to the aam aadmi.

Let us now go to some viewers for their comments on the UPA’s announcement today.

(Camera pans to a viewer in Mumbai)

Interviewer: How would you define the common man?

Viewer: To my mind, the common man is the man in the street.

Interviewer: Man walking in the street, running in the street with stones and brickbats in his hands, sitting with a begging bowl in the street or trying to sleep in the street under a flyover on a cold December night, are these all pictures of the aam aadmi?

Viewer: All of them, as they would fall under different levels of penury. Certainly, the man sleeping in the street without a roof on his head must get top priority.

(Camera focuses on a drinking water scheme, where there is a crowd of villagers, with scant access to clean drinking water)

Interviewer: Are you short of water only or do you have other difficulties and problems also?

Villager: There are so many problems. We don’t have a road connecting us to the regulated market. There is a school but the teachers do not attend classes.  Medical insurance is still unknown to the saadharan vyakti.

Interviewer to a plumpish lady in a small town: How do you respond to the phrase “mango man in a banana republic” coined by an important person?  Does it illuminate your condition in any way?

Viewer: (smiling) Well, it is good if some of us are lucky enough to find humour in a situation of malnutrition, starvation and hunger.

Interviewer: Don’t you think it as an apt description of your unimportance, your marginalization in the present context?

Viewer: On the contrary. How many of us can afford to live in a banana republic, when the mandi price of an individual, emaciated banana in Delhi is 7 rupees. The mango proper is much worse; even the lowliest species is unaffordable.

Raj Darbari: Well, we can check out this story in a minute. Our correspondent visited an elementary school run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Here is a student of Class II trying to learn the Hindi alphabet.

Correspondent (To child): Bete, अ,आ,इ,ई सुनाओ

Child: अ से अमरुद, आ से आम.

Interviewer: तुमने अमरुद और आम खाए हैं न?

Child: कहाँ ,अंकल. दूर से देखे भर हैं.

Raj Darbari: See? They have not tasted even the lowly guava, not to speak of the high and mighty mango.

Ganana Shastri: You must have interviewed college students too. How deep is their knowledge?

Raj Darbari: See for yourselves.

          (Camera pans out to college campus.)

Lady interviewer: (To a passing girl): You are a student of M.A. in Economics. Tell me, how would you recognize a common man?

Girl: What is the big deal, Mam? The common man can be recognized in a jiffy. She has no ability to influence others politically or financially. She is used to suffering the misdeeds of the high and mighty.

Lady interviewer: Can you give us some synonyms, so that we understand the concept well?

Girl (with exuberance): Oh sure! Let us see. How about common person ,nobody, nonentity, cipher, everyman, man in the street, plebian, rustic, peasant , Joe in the Street,  man of the masses and so on?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Raj Darbari (from the student) Is a common man the same as a garib aadmi?

Student: (with a discomfited air): It should, should it not? But one has heard our leaders use it in a very flexible way. It seems to include the neo-rich, or at least some of them. Also the middle classes or more appropriately the lower middle classes. It seems to be a populist platform, in which anyone not having roti, kapda aur makaan in sufficient measure can be provided with these.

Raj Darbari: Thank you for your candour. We move back to the studios. Now, honourable members of the panel, we are running out of time. You can make one last comment. Mr. Prasad.

Sarvatra Kankar Prasad: (with irony pouring from each phrase) The NDA feels that, like everything else, this is a clever ploy to divert the attention of the voters from the misdeeds and corrupt practices of its leaders. When the Govt. tried the norms fixed by the World Bank, they found that the number of families whose family income exceeded the poverty line increased rather than going down. This was a failure of the anti-poverty programmes.

Sab Dishaon Mein Uchhal Singh: (Unfazed) This was a numerical failure. For the UPA, this kind of assessment based on mere arithmetic was not important. What we needed was a qualitative assessment. A few chintan shivirs later, the situation became clear. A one-dimensional attack on income levels alone would not do. We had to attack the basic underlying causes of poverty, penury, malnutrition, absence of food, clothing and shelter, the lack of access to basic amenities like a road leading to an urban area, employment, housing, etc.

That is why we launched a combined onslaught on the negative factors. The Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana for rural roads, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
for employment, Indira Aawas Yojana for rural housing, and so on and so forth. The list is virtually endless.

Raj Darbari: We have run out of time. We shall listen to the list some other time. In fact, we shall be listening to nothing else, till the date of the poll.

With this we come to the end of the programme “India at 9”. Thank you

So when I ask you a question, you have to click your tape-recorder, only to show that you are conscious and wide-awake. It does not indicate that you have grasped or understood the concept or the theory. If unwittingly, you happen to understand, please indicate it with your vocal chords. Is that clear?

Students: Clear, Sir.

Prof. We do not tell you which year we are in at the moment, whether we are talking of the past that has already happened, or the future which is still waiting to happen.

It is my statutory responsibility to inform you that this course is being conducted under the Cyber Courses Act recognized by the UNESCO and all universities approved by it. The qualification earned hereunder does not entitle you to a job as a qualified Futurologist. Is that understood?

Students: (click the tape-recorders in unison).

Prof.(with surprising amiability ) Well then I shall proceed. The General Elections in India planned to be held in 2014 were actually held on schedule. All the parties exerted their best to win.

The UPA went to polls with the anointed Crown Prince as their declared Prime Ministerial candidate. The Congress was able to muster support from Kshamata Banerji, Nirish Kumar and Bhramawati, besides AIADMK, National Conference etc. Shared Power tried to stage a revolt, but a scandal surfacing at the right time, put paid to his ambitions.

The NDA brought together some of the smaller parties, but it could not unite behind one charismatic leader. Narendra Toady had the charisma, but he was not city bred and was too much of a rustic to catch the imagination of the Generation Next. Sukshama Swaraj was too roly-poly Bharat Desh ki Nari to fit the bill. Kaitley’s following was limited to Delhi. Murli Manohar Doshi was too identified with the RSS, Ladvani too old.

 Student 1: What about the Third Front?

Prof.: The Left parties tried to forge a third front with the help of Samajwadi Party and DMK, but it had no leader having an all India image.

Friends, politics is a lot like films. You have to have at least one face that sells, one of the Khans for example.

      Student 2: Then the story does not matter?

Prof: The story also matters, but a macho hero or sexy heroine matters a lot more.

Student 3: And what about the theme like the welfare of humanity, the struggle between good and evil? Isn’t that where the cast of thousands counts. The aam aadmi with whom the average viewer identifies himself?

Prof. That is a myth some directors try to propagate. But the average cinegoer does not like to identify himself with an extra whom no one notices. Everyone wants to be like the hero—- handsome, a singer, a dancer, a Formula One racer, a horseman, a warrior proficient in any weapon, and above all a romantic who wins over the beautiful princess with sweet nothings on moonlit nights. Who wants   to be just an aam aadmi?

Student 3: Obviously, none.

Prof:  Tell me, who won the 2014 elections?

Students: (click their tape-recorders loudly).

Prof. (shouts) To this question, I demand an answer, not a bloody click!

Student 1: You said that we were discussing not the reality, but alternative scenarios.  In the scenario you just described, the winner must have been the Crown Prince. He is so obviously the nearest the UPA had to resemble the desired Khans. No one else fits. He is drop-dead handsome, like a hero or an eminent model who has arrived. Although he is not yet married, he would be a hundred times if he wanted to.

Prof. That is what all the psephologists predicted. They gave him a three fourths majority, like his father before him, and although he did not have the advantage of an assassinated mother, he had almost everything else.

Student 3: You might have heard the humorous ditty on the internet about the elections?

Prof. Which one? There were so many.

Student 3 (singing with aplomb, other students join him):

Rama killed Ravana. Both start with ‘R’

      Krishna killed Kamsa. Both start with ‘K’.

Obama killed Osama. Both start with ‘O’.

Corruption killed Congress. Both start with ‘C’

Toady killed The Youth Leader. Both start with ‘T’.

Prof. This is neither psephology nor futurology. It is wish fulfillment, by a Toady acolyte. Imagine, can corruption kill parties, when all parties thrive on black money? If this ditty was to be taken seriously, even then only an ‘R’ could defeat the UPA’s Prince. The only ‘R’ the NDA had to offer was Rajnath Bingh.

Student 2: But how did the Prince get the aam aadmi to put the stamp on his election symbol?

Prof. He remembered his father’s oft-quoted statement that the man in the village got only 15 paise in a rupee. The rest was gobbled by the various vested interests. He concentrated his attention on how to reach all the hundred paise to the aam aadmi, or as many of the hundred paise as could be managed.

Student 1: How did he succeed where so many had faltered in the past?

Prof: His master-stroke was the Aadhar Card. Everyone got an Aadhar Card. Some got two or three, but everyone had to have at least one. This card was linked with the banks. All Govt. assistance was released to the beneficiaries by electronic transfer, directly into their bank accounts. So there was no question of any pilferage. Simple! (Smiles a beatific smile).

Student 2: How did he ingratiate himself into their good graces?

Prof. Simple. In urban areas he traveled by the University special, the Metro and the suburban train and mixed with the students without any security surrounding him. In the rural areas, he sat on the charpoys with them, broke bread with them and slept overnight in the huts of the so-called “lower castes”.

He declared himself opposed to professional student leaders who pretended to be youthful even when they had crossed the age of 35 years. No one had the temerity to ask him about his own age.

He announced that dynasty would not be a consideration in the distribution of tickets and followed this principle in say ten percent cases. No one had the guts to question him about his qualifications for the various posts he held.

Student 3: How did the UPA deal with the Lok Pal Bill?

Prof:  Through discussion in Chintan Shivirs, inter-party conclaves and the Standing Committee of Parliament, but the various parties could not arrive at a consensus. So the draft Bill just lapsed.

Student 1: Did Anna Pazare not pose a problem?

Prof: (breezily) Providentially, he met with a road accident just a day before he was to sit on a fast unto death. And Karishmawala was persuaded to drink a glass of orange juice on the 7^th day of his fast.

Student 1: Did the Government relax its hegemony over the CBI?

Prof. It proclaimed the CBI’s autonomy by issuing a gazette notification, but continued to appoint the director and other senior officers unilaterally.

Student 2 :   How did it deal with the Dynasty issue?

Prof.: (with a wicked leer on his face) Oh, it was so cutely managed, you won’t believe it.The Govt. got a Presidential reference made to the Supreme Court of India. That Court held that no citizen of India could be disentitled from holding any office merely on the ground of his dynasty. Nor could belonging to a dynasty be made a necessary precondition to the holding of a post. All parties being interested in clarifying the related issues, it was child’s play for The Indian Dynastic Succession Act being passed by a unanimous show of hands.

Student 3: (an impish gleam in his eyes) Sorry to take you back a little, Professor. Was the UPA able to take 100% grant to the beneficiaries?

Prof. (stammering a little) To be frank…well. No…not exactly.

Student 3: Can we say in what percentage of cases was 100% achieved nearly or substantially?

Prof: The exact data is not yet available. You see, the following snags were encountered:

Ø   Aadhar cards could not be completed in time for the elections.

Ø   Some cards had to be rejected because there was no power, or computer was down or fingerprints did not match or iris did not match etc.

Ø   Bank employees went on strike demanding an Aadhar Card allowance.

Ø   Initially, money was released liberally, as the elections were fast approaching or end of financial year was approaching and so on. As the entitlements started pouring in and were lesser in amount, entries had to be written back. Bankers insisted on a cash refund, while the beneficiaries demanded temporary adjustment entries or loans.

Ø   All along, the bank employees had felt that they were distributing largesse among undeserving people. As the election cacophony grew, their regional offices started leaning on them and they were compelled to make payments. So they did what had to be done and charged their normal informal commission.

Ø   Once the system got on track, everything was normal and everyone was happy.

Student 1 (not relenting one little bit) : So did they take an informal survey on how much juice the aam aadmi was able to squeeze from the system now?

Prof. (reluctantly) Well yes…The Crown Prince insisted. And believe it or not, the figure was the same bloody old fifteen percent. Can you beat it? It is almost like Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages, which was the philosophical-statistical underpinning of the communist ideology, as if it was an irrevocable law, divinely ordained!

Student 2 (voice dripping with sarcasm): Would it be improper, Sir, to take 85% as the historically proven legitimate administrative expenses of managing the various aam aadmi schemes?

Student 1: 85% appears too high.

Student 3: Not if you consider the large number of beneficiaries and the petty amounts involved in each case.

Prof. So what really changed? Everything seems to be the same.

Student 3: Well, we have a new Prime Minister and a youthful one too.

Prof. Did I say that? I only said that the youth leader had won the 2014 elections.

Student 2: Does that not mean…?

Prof. Not necessarily.As things turned out, the NDA went to polls with Sukshma Swaraj as the Prime Ministerial candidate. Before the poll, she went on a whirlwind tour of the country, threatening to shave off her hair in case the Italian Mafia was voted to power. When the UPA won, she promptly went to a hair dresser. It turned out that a bald Sukshma looked cute and modern like the Bollywood actress Persis Khambatta rather than the Chhinnamastika she had conjured up for her countrymen. She looked almost Italian herself.

Student 1: So what happened?

Prof:  The UPA leaders were deep in discussion with the President in Rashtrapati Bhavan when the news broke. Instead of mass protests, the Indian masses responded with hysterical laughter.. It suddenly occurred to the ever-diffident Crown Prince that Mommy was still around. So he persuaded her to don the mantle herself. He would be content to be Minister for Youth Affairs. And that is how it was.

Student 3: So the ditty has been proved right after all.

Congress created Corruption, both start with C

Sonika beat Sukshma. Both start with S.

Prof:   And the aamaadmi…?

Student 3: (smiling) He is no worse than before. He has an Aadhar card, a bank account and still takes home his fifteen percent!!!

         (The students click their tape recorders in unison)

                                   CURTAIN

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(6696 words. Last edited by the author on 20^th April, 2013)

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publish

which swami?

Kawcaw

                 Which Swamy

You never know when your old age will catch up with you. One of its manifold signs is the tendency to forget names.

And when you are in public life and meet new people every day, the problem gets compounded even further. Then you remember what Dale Carnegie taught you when you were still a callow youth. He said and I quote, “A man’s name is to him the sweetest sound in the English language.”

And you have just entered a hall full of important people. With some people you are all right, their face and name come simultaneously and automatically to mind. There is no time lag involved.

With others, there is 50% lapse of memory. You remember the face all right. But try as hard as you might, your mind does not yield a single authoritative  clue about the name .Is this chap a Saxena or a Srivastava? Mishra or Sharma?  Kachroo or Kichloo?  Taneja or Chopra?                                                                                                           

 There was a time when two persons seemed to know. Now only one does. God.

All this occurred to me when we were looking out for a good photographer to record a family eve\nt on film. I immediately thought of Swamy, whom I used to patronize when I was in the Sathya Sai International Centre, Lodhi Road. I got his number , rang hin up and booked him. But the Missus was not satisfied till he came home and discussed all the details with her personally.

So I had to ring up Swamy once again.I did not want to trouble the lady who had given me his number the first time. The only option was to locate his number in my telephone diary, where I remembered to have made a note of it. .But several investigations later, I was no wiser. The directory did not have any entry of a Swamy.

Having failed myself, I decided to draft my son Anurag.

“Was he a pure, simple and complete Swamy or was Swamy  a tail attached to something else?” he asked briskly.

Now that he had raised the point, I was not so sure that we were looking for   a Swamy pure and simple. What then was he? A Sethuswamy or Muthuswamy? An Arghaswamy oe a Krishnaswami? A Sivaswamy or a Ramaswamy? Good God, there were a zillion possibilities. How could we ever locate the elusive Swamy?

Seeing my hesitation, Anurag flipped the pages of my directory. Quickly,.he put his finger on one name.

+”His name is Ponuswami and he is your man.”

I  was amazed by his skill and  speed. ”How… how..?”I spluttered.

“Simple, my dear Watson. You had looked up Swamy several times and failed to locate him.. So it could not have been a pure and simple Swamy. It   had to be something-Swamy.

The other fact was that it had to be the last entry under any letter of the alphabet.You had made the entry only yesterday.

Right?”

Dazzled by the brilliance of his intellect, i mumbled “Yes”.

“So I flipped the pages and lo and behold there was an entry Ponuswami under ‘P’. In the brackets, you had written photographer. So that was that.”

“Now why did I not think of that?” I said to myself in my usual self-pitying manner, while consoling myself that Anurag must have inherited some of my genes too!

                                           8888888888888888

The other day Jyotir Aditya Scindia, a youthful Congress leader, made an original remark about the trade he plied. He said that when he looked at the Ministers in the Madhya Pradesh cabinet, the expanding girth of their waists gave them away. He could tell at a glance which of them was honest and which not. It was obvious that if a man was corrupt, he ate more, he ingested larger portions of oily pakoras and     parathas and sundry other salted and fried   stuff, all of which was frighteningly fattening. So the fatter a minister was, the more corrupt he was bound to be.

I wish such a linear relationship between the size of a man’s waist and his moral depravity could be scientifically established. For it would render the task of CBI sleuths infinitely simpler. No need to dog a man’s footsteps day after day, notching up the sundry assets he had gathered over the years„ valuing each item and totalling up the booty, in order to build an iron-clad case of owning assets disproportionate to  his known sources of income.

And all that a judge would be required to do is to call the Court Tailor Master and order him to measure the man’s waistline and certify the measurement. Depending on the provisions of law, the Judge could then declare a man “dishonest” if the measurement was between 35 and 40 inches, “very dishonest” if it fell between 40 and 50 inches, and “dishonest to the core” if it exceeded fifty inches.

And all that a man had to do to escape punishment under law was to join a gym and take one of those courses that promise the moon if one spent a certain amount of money on scientific slimming programme.Thus money would pass from the illicit moneymakers to the licit gym trainers.

 This would also set up a new trend for people with weak willpower who did not have the necessary self-discipline to go for the jogging, huffing, and puffing, running on the treadmill etcetera, coupled with a tremendous control over one’s eating and drinking habits that normal slimming programmes entailed. A piece of paper conveying a summons to a court of competent jurisdiction would send him jumpimg, dieting and fasting to the nearest gym..

Those readers who have even a nodding acquaintance with English literarature will recall the famous story “The Truth About Pyecroft”by H.G.Wells. In this story, Pyecroft was ashamed to confess to his friends that he  was getting fat. Instead, he would tell them that he was gaining weight. The protagonist got a bottle of medicine from an Indian vaidya who promised miraculous results if the medicine were taken regularly for two weeks.

He gave the medicine packet to Pyecroft. Some days later he received an emergency call from   Pyecroft, requesting his immediate presence at his house. Rushing to the house of his friend, Wells was astonished to find that he was nowhere to be seen, although he could be heard.

Looking towards the ceiling, he was flabbergasted to find his friend hanging upside down from the ceiling like an inverted balloon. Pyecroft had lost weight and had become totally weightless, while his girth remained the same as before. He could be brought down to terra firma only when two fat ( oops! Sorry, not fat but heavy) volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica were hoisted up to him. Wells had to have special clothes stitched for him with lead in the lining so as to lend weight to his flimsy, frothy, fluffy, feathery, buoyant structure.

Let Scindia also not forget that we have it on the authority of William Shakespeare that slim-waisted politicos are dangerous.

In Julius Caesar, the poet says: 

Caesar: Let me have men about me that are fat;

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights:

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

And when Antony remonstrates on behalf of Cassius, Caesar repeats:

Caesar: Would he were fatter?

Perhaps Jyotir Aditya needs to brush up his Shakespeare!

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

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

   Silly Point                           Who am I?

                                                From Adi Sankaracharya to Nandan Nilekani

         India is an ancient civilization. Over the millennia, we Indians have suffered from a definite identity crisis. So our savants have asked the only question that is worthy of exploration: Who am I ? The Upanishads asked this question and after many false starts came up with the famous “Tat twam asi, Shvetaketu” ( Thou art that, Shvetaketu).

         This answer held sway till the 8^th century A.D. when Adi Sankaracharya tried to improve on it, by declaring “Chidananda rupa shivoham shivoham”(Consciousness and bliss combined, that Shiva am I).

         Come 1947. With Partition came rationing and the ration card became the arbiter of a new identity: “I am a ration card-holder”.

         Later, the various garibi hatao programmes were launched and many of them needed a new identity. Now you flaunted a special certificate, “I belong to a family living below the poverty line’. It was another matter that around half the holders of BPL certificates actually belonged to APL families.

         Many of the poverty-stricken youth were compelled to migrate to foreign climes. They needed passports to sport   their newfound identity as a citizen of India. On the other side, there were even more unfortunate people who wished to immigrate into India, illegal migrants from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. They also needed an identity as citizens of India.

         Within the bureaucracy there are always megalomaniacs. One such was Seshan who thought he would issue a voter identity card but it would be valid to establish all other identities. The CBDT issued a Permanent Account Number for those paying income tax, but gradually tried to make it a condition precedent for all kinds of transactions.

         Then came the redoubtable Nandan Nilekani who retired from Infosys but, unlike Narayan Murthy, was not satisfied with a mere mentor’s role. He wished for a larger-than-life persona. He found a promoter in Montek Singh Ahluwalia.Suddenly the Planning Commission sprang into action in the unlikely role of an administrative department. All the Rules of Business were forgotten.

         There was no legislative sanction behind the Aadhar yojana. There was no budget or plan provision for a scheme which was supposed to cost Rs.18, 000 crore. There was no legal provision saying that an Aadhar card was essential for certain specified purposes. There were no legal consequences for having or not having an Aadhar card. It was not clear how the Govt. could access data including biometric data relating to individuals, keep it on a central database and exchange the same with other databases.

         A Bill to legalize Aadhar was introduced in Parliament. The Standing Committee of the Ministry of Finance pointed out the many defects in the law. They asked for a revised law.

         Meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs woke up. They had conducted the National Census, 2011 and were supposed to maintain a National Population Register. They had legislative sanction to float a scheme for a biometric smart card that would achieve all that the Aadhar card was supposed to do without having any legal authority.

         When they tried to operationalize their scheme, they came against the substantive argument that such a card was already in existence and in advanced stage of implementation. There was then a fierce turf war between the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

         As the war was between two stalwarts, the matter was referred to a special Group of Ministers, headed by the PM himself. The GOM took note of the duplication of effort, but decided to let both programmes run full cry, so that after a while

the entire NPR data is ready for use in the Aadhar cards. We will then have two sets of smart cards performing more or less the same functions. Can anything be sillier than this?

But we have a precedent and that too from China.

Two engineers met at an international conference. The American bragged about the accuracy of their construction technology.

“We started a 20 kilometer bridge from two ends. When they met in the middle, there was a teeny weeny difference of alignment, a mere .00005 millimeter.”

The Chinese engineer laughed at this. “That is nothing compared to us. We started making a tunnel from two opposite ends of a mountain. The two tunnels missed each other and came through on the other side.”

“So what is the big deal?” the Yankee laughed in derision, “You call that accurate technology?”

The Chinese was flabbergasted at the denseness of the American’s remark.  “Don’t you see? We have two tunnels!”

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

                                        From Adi Sankaracharya to Nandan Nilekani

         India is an ancient civilization. Over the millennia, we Indians have suffered from a definite identity crisis. So our savants have asked the only question that is worthy of exploration: Who am I ? The Upanishads asked this question and after many false starts came up with the famous “Tat twam asi, Shvetaketu” ( Thou art that, Shvetaketu).

         This answer held sway till the 8^th century A.D. when Adi Sankaracharya tried to improve on it, by declaring “Chidananda rupa shivoham shivoham”(Consciousness and bliss combined, that Shiva am I).

         Come 1947. With Partition came rationing and the ration card became the arbiter of a new identity: “I am a ration card-holder”.

         Later, the various garibi hatao programmes were launched and many of them needed a new identity. Now you flaunted a special certificate, “I belong to a family living below the poverty line’. It was another matter that around half the holders of BPL certificates actually belonged to APL families.

         Many of the poverty-stricken youth were compelled to migrate to foreign climes. They needed passports to sport   their newfound identity as a citizen of India. On the other side, there were even more unfortunate people who wished to immigrate into India, illegal migrants from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. They also needed an identity as citizens of India.

         Within the bureaucracy there are always megalomaniacs. One such was Seshan who thought he would issue a voter identity card but it would be valid to establish all other identities. The CBDT issued a Permanent Account Number for those paying income tax, but gradually tried to make it a condition precedent for all kinds of transactions.

         Then came the redoubtable Nandan Nilekani who retired from Infosys but, unlike Narayan Murthy, was not satisfied with a mere mentor’s role. He wished for a larger-than-life persona. He found a promoter in Montek Singh Ahluwalia.Suddenly the Planning Commission sprang into action in the unlikely role of an administrative department. All the Rules of Business were forgotten.

         There was no legislative sanction behind the Aadhar yojana. There was no budget or plan provision for a scheme which was supposed to cost Rs.18, 000 crore. There was no legal provision saying that an Aadhar card was essential for certain specified purposes. There were no legal consequences for having or not having an Aadhar card. It was not clear how the Govt. could access data including biometric data relating to individuals, keep it on a central database and exchange the same with other databases.

         A Bill to legalize Aadhar was introduced in Parliament. The Standing Committee of the Ministry of Finance pointed out the many defects in the law. They asked for a revised law.

         Meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs woke up. They had conducted the National Census, 2011 and were supposed to maintain a National Population Register. They had legislative sanction to float a scheme for a biometric smart card that would achieve all that the Aadhar card was supposed to do without having any legal authority.

         When they tried to operationalize their scheme, they came against the substantive argument that such a card was already in existence and in advanced stage of implementation. There was then a fierce turf war between the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

         As the war was between two stalwarts, the matter was referred to a special Group of Ministers, headed by the PM himself. The GOM took note of the duplication of effort, but decided to let both programmes run full cry, so that after a while

the entire NPR data is ready for use in the Aadhar cards. We will then have two sets of smart cards performing more or less the same functions. Can anything be sillier than this?

But we have a precedent and that too from China.

Two engineers met at an international conference. The American bragged about the accuracy of their construction technology.

“We started a 20 kilometer bridge from two ends. When they met in the middle, there was a teeny weeny difference of alignment, a mere .00005 millimeter.”

The Chinese engineer laughed at this. “That is nothing compared to us. We started making a tunnel from two opposite ends of a mountain. The two tunnels missed each other and came through on the other side.”

“So what is the big deal?” the Yankee laughed in derision, “You call that accurate technology?”

The Chinese was flabbergasted at the denseness of the American’s remark.  “Don’t you see? We have two tunnels!”

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

                         Indira Gandhi once said famously, “Corruption is a global phenomenon”, as if by being global it ceased to be an anathema. The bhrashtacharis of today speak of corruption being universal, both in respect of time as well as space.

          Now if corruption has always been there, it would be interesting to analyze whether there are ups and downs in this journey. It is our humble assertion that periods of high economic activity also witness a higher level of corruption.

         Take the period of the Emperor Asoka and Chandergupta Maurya. Kautilya says in his Artha Sastra that bureaucrats are like fish that live in water. The revenue of the State passes through the hands of the bureaucrats in the same way as water passes through the gullet of a fish all the time. Thus it is but natural that a bureaucrat would imbibe part of the water, wittingly or unwittingly.

         The other peak in the imperial tradition was the reign of Akbar.No wonder there are all kinds of stories rampant in our folklore. Many of these come as interesting arguments between Akbar and his legendary courtier Birbal. But the cake would be taken by the story of the high official who was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe. The crime was so blatant that Akbar wanted to make an example of him.

         To make this high erstwhile potentate a laughing stock of the empire, it was decreed that he would henceforth function as controller of waves. Akbar felt that he had punished him adequately and the official must have become a butt of ridicule. Birbal, being a shrewd man of the world was not so convinced of this. He proceeded on tour and reached the new headquarters of the official. He was not surprised to find him in the midst of frantic activity.

         All along the sea-coast there were huge hoardings declaring that such and such officer had been designated by the Emperor as the “Accountant General of Waves”. As the plying of all kinds of boats like ships, sail-boats, fishing boats, dinghies„vessels, cargo boats etc would interfere with the counting of waves ordered by the Emperor, no such vessel, boat, ship and so on would be permitted to ply in the ocean except with the prior written approval of the aforementioned Accountant General of Waves.

         Birbal was not surprised to find that this brigand was making huge profits much more than in his earlier assignment and laughing all the way to the bank. And soon enough the emperor Akbar learnt the lesson that you cannot keep a good man down.

         Interestingly, when I went to the Internet to get an authentic version of the story, I came across two apposite comments. Akbar’s centralized administration became the basis of the British style of administration, by which Rule Britannia, Britannia ruled the waves. Thus the ruler ship over the waves gave the British Navy the hegemony over the entire world.

          The second comment related to the control over the air waves. One was immediately reminded of the 2G, 3G scandals which also pertained to control over waves!

         Cut across to the British conquest of India and remind ourselves of the numerous scandals, of which those relating to Robert Clive and Warren Hastings were only the tip of the iceberg.

         Post independence, so long as we had the Hindu rate of growth, corruption was in two digits. Witness the furor generated by the Bofors scandal that cost Rajiv his crown, It involved a two- digit scam worth Rs.78 crores.

         As we moved towards 9% rate of growth, the size of the scandals grew, till we entered the era of six—digit scams, calculated by the CAG himself as involving the respectable sums of 1,75,000 crores. With this, we can be said to have entered the Age of Respectability and International Comparability.

         The recent decline in the annual rate of growth has already started adversely affecting the size of the scams.

On the whole, one can say that the size of corruption is one of the important determinants of economic growth. The exact relationship is being worked out by top teams of economists in IMF and World Bank. Informed observers of the scene have predicted that the next crop of Nobel Prizes would concern this all-important topic.

The time when the Planning Commission fixes an annual target of 5, 00,000 crores for the Central and State scams put together is not far off. It is expected to raise the annual GDP increase to 10%. That will put China effectively out of the race for leadership of Asia

!

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

                          The entire nation has been mystified by the shenanigans of the Prime Minister. Manmohan Singh of UPA2 has not  been even a distant cousin of the Manmohan of UPA1. Naturally, this has raised eyebrows.

                          Reams of paper have been devoted to an analysis of his inactivity, his lassitude, his laissez faire, as if it is the result of a well thought out policy. Even his silence in the face of criticism has been variously ascribed to a gag order by Sonia Gandhi, the natural reaction of a noble soul being forced to preside over an empire of evil, or even a desire to appear sphinx- like and let the latter day oracles of Delphi speculate to their heart’s content!

                          His sudden spurt of activity in terms of resuming the reforms process, permission to foreign direct investment, disinvestment, reduction of subsidies on petroleum products, the new regime ordered for State Electricity Boards, his concessions to ex-servicemen and central government employees et al have fuelled further speculation on his motives. Some have hinted at the prospects of a mid-term poll, some to a desire to go under with a splash like the Titanic, while a few have hinted at far out explanations like his having imbibed a  Patiala peg too many.

                          But a recent development in the field of cricket seems to throw another kind of light on the situation. When Harbhajan Singh Bhajji, another fine specimen of the khalsa tribe, took four wickets for 12 runs in a league match preceding the T-20 World Cup series, a reporter asked him how he felt about the stupendous achievement. Bhajji just shrugged his shoulders and disclaimed any credit for the achievement. The fact is that he had been out of form for the last more than a year and was waiting for it to come back. It had suddenly returned and how!

                          Bhajji is not alone in speculating on a mysterious entity called “form”. In an ad , Yuvraj Singh says something similar. “ It all depends on the bat. So long as runs keep on getting scored by a bat, the player is in demand. The moment this flood of runs gets obstructed, the player too is finished.” Mark his words. It is the bat that is responsible, not the player!

         Even the redoubtable Sachin is not immune from superstition. Every time he scores a century, he raises his bat heavenwards and rolls his eyes at the skies. Whether he is giving thanks to his father , to Sai Baba or some other divine personage, he too is not claiming credit for himself!                            

                          Considering that cricket and democracy are the two most abiding passions and the two most lucrative professions of the Indian people, it is strange that political analysts have not taken a leaf from the cricket commentators’ books. One is wonderstruck at how much cricket can teach our politicians.

                          Starting with the basic initial premise that cricket is a gentleman’s game and so many practices are universally rejected as “not being cricket”, we have a host of lessons to learn.

                          Look at the manner in which the captain of the team  is nominated. There is no dynasty at work here. If it were, Saifuddin Khan would not be a film actor. Sachin Tendulkar’s son would be somewhat like Rahul, waiting for the right opportunity to take over the mantle of his father.

                          A captain’s selection is a collective decision made by the selectors. In Indian politics, we would have a vastly improved system if we had a band of selectors for the top job. A captain is selected just for a series. Different persons may be nominated for different versions of the game. A  Saurabh Ganguly might be suddenly dropped like a hot potato. A Virendar Sehwag might be nominated for the T-20 version. Even a vastly successful Mohinder Singh Dhoni did not, even in his balmiest days of triumph, feel secure on the throne. And see what he has been reduced to now. He says he is happy to be the punching bag for his team!

                         Imagine the face of Indian democracy if we had a group of selectors, consisting of Presidents of the parties forming the coalition, a few former Prime Ministers and some renowned political analysts, journalists and psephologists. Think of a situation in which a Prime Minister was nominated for each session of Parliament. Then the incumbent P.M. would really be on

his mettle. He could not afford to be off his form. If he was criticized, he could not afford to keep quiet. He would have to be at his parliamentary best.

                          The biggest lesson would be available in the manner offences are taken note of, inquired into and punished. There is a hierarchy of authorities, with appellate mechanisms at each level. Punishments are graded, immediately imposed and gracefully accepted. An international body like the ICC is also involved.

                          Imagine the G-2 scam or Coalgate being enquired into by a hierarchy of agencies, with the United Nations also being in the picture. There would be a sea change in the political environment!

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Over the years, astute observers of the political scene in and around us have commented favourably about the Indian situation. They are slightly puzzled why despite the many similarities among the countries of South Asia, our histories have traversed totally different trajectories. The specific bewilderment arises from the fact that the  Indian Chiefs of Staff have been behaving differently from their peers elsewhere. This is stated as if there is something destined about this scenario.

         People may be mystified, but only because they are not prepared to wrack their brain to crack the mystery. And if some offhand remarks are offered, you find vague, inane  observations about the political leadership provided by people like Patel, Nehru and Indira, the strict training imparted in the NDA, the tough stand taken by the Supreme Court on critical constitutional  issues, the  deliberate distance maintained between religion and the state. They are not prepared to give credit where it is due.

         This is the position even when a Jarnail V.K.Singh makes overt gestures of revolt.

The real  key to the mystery lies in the fact that there has traditionally been a distance between the Chiefs and the political executive. The much-reviled bureaucrat has acted like the Queen in the game of chess. He did not permit the military to come anywhere close to the King. The question of any infiltrator shouting “Check” did not therefore arise.

It is not that there have been no ambitious Chiefs in the Indian Army. Cariappa, Sundarji and Maneckshaw were outstanding examples of Jarnails with swollen heads. But the babus led them such a merry dance, they did not have any energy left by the time they reached the netas.

         Into this salutary state of affairs, entered two jokers in the eighties: Arun Nehru and Arun Singh. Both were close to Rajiv and played upon his ignorance of the way in which the games were played out in the Indian administrative system.Arun Singh proved to be the deadlier of the two. He established a false notion in Rajiv’s mind that the Jarnails were professionals, while the babus were generalist amateurs, trying to poke their nose into matters of which they were wholly ignorant.

         Thus it was not difficult to persuade Rajiv to issue orders equating the three Chiefs to the Cabinet Secretary in the matter of pay. In his naivete, Arun Singh did not understand the logical corollaries of this seemingly innocuous decision of the Government:

a)   The Chiefs took it that they were now equated to the Cabinet Secretary.

b)   The Chiefs now refused to attend the meetings called by the Defence Secretary, but deputed their Vice-Chiefs instead.

c)   The Vice Chiefs were unable to provide a definitive input about the views held by Service Headquarters.

d)   The matters remained undecided and took time to get crystallized.

Imagine this is the situation to which we have been reduced just by the issue of one Government Order.If tomorrow someone decides that the Chiefs of Staff should not even be equated to Cabinet Secretary, but should rank higher.

The chiefs will not then attend the coordination meetings even called by the Cabinet Secretary. They will insist that they will speak only to the political executive. Then the final buffer between the jarnails and the netas will disappear and there will be no difference between the Chiefs of India and the Chiefs in our neighbouring countries.

That is the time when India will be ripe for its first coup d’etat !

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

                       I am reminded of my years in the Department of Defence Production in the early nineties. There were four Joint Secretaries and two Additional Financial Advisers, reporting to N. Raghunathan, a 1959 veteran of the Maharashtra cadre.

                       Raghu was a topper of his batch and a gentleman to a fault. He let us do what we wanted, helping us out only when we were about to get into trouble. After we had spoken on a file, there was an unofficial zero hour, when we could discuss anything and everything. Most of us were into it and enjoyed ourselves a lot. There was just one exception, the Joint Secretary in charge of Ordnance Factories. Sometimes, one of us would raise a point about him during zero hour. Raghunathan would smile and change the subject.

                       Sometimes, if one of us persisted, he would wink and say, “Oh you need not worry about him. He will be all right.”

                       It was a few years later. Orders were issued posting this gentleman as the Defence Secretary. Some of us shook our heads in disbelief. The one person we did not think would make it even to the Additional Secretaries’ panel was now holding the all important seat.

                       In fullness of time, we all retired. This gentleman now found a berth as Governor of an important State, a post he still holds. Many of us again shook our heads in disbelief as is our wont when we encounter something bizarre and mumbled about the inscrutable workings of fate and how postings did not follow a pattern.

                       It was at a party that the key to the mystery was unraveled to some of us. We discovered to our astonishment that our friend was no less than the brother-in-law of an up and coming member of the Service. This gentleman had been the Deputy Commissioner of Rai Bareli and ever since was tied strongly with hoops of steel to the Dynasty. He was a close confidant of Rajiv, an icon of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, a high official with the World Bank and had finally landed up as the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, with a projected career graph of Cabinet Secretary, India’s Ambassador to the United States of America …going into the stratosphere. In other words, no less a person than the redoubtable You Know Who (PBUH).

                       In case a parallel example is sought, the case of Wajahat Habeebullah comes to mind. Any time any sensitive posting falls vacant, Wajahat is the logical choice.

                       That reminds  me of another Muslim officer, under whom I had the privilege of  serving. These days we talk with a sense of consternation about the manner in which Thomas was appointed as the Chief Vigilance Commissioner. But human memory is very very short. Let us recapitulate the circumstances.

                       P.V.Narasimha Rao is the Prime Minister of India. It is an unstable perch, as, by the laws of primogeniture, Rajiv should have been in that chair. Or if he was dead, the Rajmata could have kept the throne warm for the Yuvraj Rahul to grow up. Rao has to do something to strengthen his grip on the throne.

                       Rao is preparing his speech for Independence Day. Can he do something dramatic, to show the Muslims of India that his heart is in the right place? His advisers scout around. Someone comes up with the explosive idea that a Muslim officer can be appointed as the Cabinet Secretary of India. There is just a tiny snag. Z. S, who can be considered for the job has eight CBI cases registered against him. Eight CBI cases! Even the shadow of a single CBI case would cook his goose under normal circumstances. What does one do to eight cases?{ It might have been seven or nine, but eight is what got stuck in my memory)

                       Simple. Withdraw and file all the cases. Appoint Z.S. as the new Cabinet Secretary. And announce it from the ramparts of the Red Fort.

                       This is done. An officer who was perched on the shelf as Chairman, Bombay Port Trust, with eight CBI cases against him, now occupies the seniormost post in the civil service. And not even a dog whimpers.

                       With the precedent of Z.S., the decision in the case of Thomas no longer falls in the category of patternless postings! So what are we whimpering about?!

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