Wednesday 26 December 2012

Snippets

                    November 2008 was a memorable time. The Delhi winter hadn’t set in. I was getting ready to take a leap into the unknown- preparing for a year long sabbatical to Australia with family. My job got a bit boring and I lost faith in the policy making architecture of Indian bureaucracy. Meanwhile, a coloured gentleman ran for the office of President of the USA and won. My eyes were moist when I heard his powerful acceptance speech. My joy was tempered with realism. Deep inside, I knew that this change, widely celebrated as a historic moment, was largely symbolic. For the rest of the world, the man at the top of the most powerful nation in the world, made little difference. This time around it made little difference to even Americans. The issues were largely symbolic. Like who constitutes America.
   When I watched the two gentlemen slugging it out at a debate, I soon realized what a carefully choreographed event the US Presidential election is. Much like a ballet, a fight sequence in a Jackie Chan movie or mass gyration of pelvic muscles in a Bollywood movie. You soon realize that  you suffer from fatigue of word play. Then you start paying attention to their shoes, the cut of their suits, colour of the ties. There is very little to distinguish between them. The accents are same, the vocabulary employed is same. There are references to private affairs- Anne, Michelle, kids and pet dogs figure a lot in their respective speeches.
  Back to Indian television. Everyday brings a new surprise. Women ought not be given mobile phones, said the smug Haryana politician. 71 Lakh rupees too small an amount for a Central Minister to be accused of stealing said a candid but politically incorrect colleague Minister. (well... he soon ceased to be a Minister too) One year old newspaper stories were rehashed as fresh corruption allegations by activists- nobody did their research. Petty corruption is OK said a State Minister, and there was locker room humour alluding to prices for girlfriends/wives. Rural women don’t make the grade in the looks department and hence stand no chance of winning elections, said an ex-Chief Minister. (I beg to differ). Our politics offer spicy entertainment. Meanwhile life went on. Floods and cyclones came and went. Some Ministers went, some others came in. But there is never a dull moment. While the US politics is full of Media specialists, image consultants, research analysts and campaign managers, Indians  were content with electoral arithmetic largely defined by regional satraps, caste leaders and vote banks. The leaders come in all shapes and sizes.  Our politics is so much more fun. And in case you forget, we had universal adult franchise even before US implemented it.

***************
Why do I buy hardbound books 600 pages long paying a fortune when I can buy a paperback few months down the line or even download the Kindle edition free? Salman Rushdie is not everyone’s favourite writer. His biting satire and lofty airs don’t help his image. His memoir Joseph Anton was a very interesting read.  As I waded through the book, Rushdie almost appeared human, especially when his relationship with his children Zafar and Milan are dealt with. The book is about his fatwa years when he went under the protection of Scotland yard. A time when many world governments were not willing to have him set foot in their country, despite professing liberal democratic values. His ex- girlfriends/ wives do not look good, especially Marianne. But then let’s give the writer his due. Rushdie displays his skill at dark biting satire. This is really a worthy read.

I read Patriots and Partisans by Ramachandra Guha. Although the title is misleading, Guha is an engaging writer. He has an easy style. He often repeats himself or emphasizes things which we might consider of little significance. As he says, he represents the liberal, moderate viewpoint and presents it with intensity. But he represents an important constituency....of people who are neither in the throes of communal politics nor in the grip of the dogmatic left. Is he a congress stooge? Not really. A great admirer of Nehru, he rues the state of the congress which has, in his words, become a family firm.
  This blog has become so infrequent that I have forgotten a book that made an impact on me. The Ruins of the Empire by Pankaj Mishra is an interesting new book on historical figures who shaped our thinking from pre-colonial past.  And the bundle of unread books near my bedside grows bigger. I have Perry Anderson’s Indian ideology, autobiographies of Andre Beteille and Bob Dylan (The latter presented by a dear old friend on my birthday) and several other books in English and Malayalam. I promise myself not to buy any more books until I finish reading what I have already got. I then go ahead and cheerfully break my resolve while browsing through flipkart.
*************
  It is the music season in Chennai. The sounds of tampuras, Mridangam and violin rend the air. Listening to Carnatic music can be addictive. I went for concerts of Sudha Raghunathan and Sanjay Subramanyan. Getting away from Office can be difficult. I work in the other side of the city and all the action is in the heart of the city- it takes me an hour and a half to get there. The audience are typically on the wrong side of 60s. If you thought Classical music as metered, structured and complex, then Carnatic music can spring a few surprises. There is a lot of spontaneity during the Kutcheri session, that is rare in, say, Western Classical music. This blogger is still in the early stages of the Carnatic music appreciation learning curve. I can barely identify a dozen ragas.  And the sound of the Mridangam truly gives me goose pimples. I could listen to it all day.

Wednesday 17 October 2012

The Woman Sutra

A sign of changing times is the access to books, music, movies and ahemm..pornography that has transformed our world. But the land of Kama Sutra still holds the world cup for hypocrisy in matters sexual. Khap Panchayats, rapes, acid attacks, dress codes prescribed by religious leaders, pub attacks due to intermingling of sexes all point to the perversity that lies beneath the surface calm of Indian manhood....(no pun intended).
 Kushwant Singh said once that he was not impressed with the Kama Sutra. If I recall correctly, he couldn’t understand why simple acts of passion have to be performed with complex physical contortions.  He had some unkind things to say about the Khajuraho sculptures. The protagonists in those rock sculptures appear listless and  devoid of passion- as though they are grinding atta- chakki. It is true that the Khajuraho sculptures feature some faces which appear as though they are involved in grinding grains, all in a hard day’s work, to be performed and done away with. But it is good to know that the world, once upon a time,  learned a thing or two about sex from this ancient land. In the West, sex has metamorphosed into many splendoured things. Gay sex, kinky sex, casual sex and other such deviations from the straight and narrow acts. But the Western world is honest about matters sexual while the land of Kamasutra wallows in rape-a-minute cities and hypocrisy. What an irony! We have an apology of sex education in our schools. If nothing else, some degree of permissiveness helps to tackle perversions among hot blooded, depraved males who are on the hunt in our towns and villages.
I read “The Ascetic of Desire” by Sudhir Kakkar. It is the story of Vatsayan who is credited with the ancient treatise Kama Sutra. Sudhir Kakkar is known as a social psychologist. But his two books that I read in rapid succession puts him in the territory of social historian turned fiction writer. The other book being The Crimson Throne- a tale of Mughal India seen from the eyes of two European travellers with disparate backgrounds.
               Born in a home of courtesans, Vatsayan, turned out to be an ascetic. The upbringing in a home of women of pleasure- Mom and an aunt- gave him a rare understanding of sex. An itinerant father takes him on long travels, but tragically such tours are cut short. He basked in the patronage of King Udyana and married the king’s sister in law. He experienced sex from his guru’s wife. As fate would have it, his young wife finds her pleasure in his favourite student, while he spent his days honing and polishing his study of pleasure and the body. At the end of the story, one couldn’t miss the irony of a life spent in handing down a great work on sex- by a man who lived without it. The man who wrote a period work on how to entice a woman, how to bring her pleasure,how to treat your body as a temple, strangely enough, lived a sage’s life...
 The popular translation of Kamasutra was by Sir Richard Burton in the 19th century.(Isn’t it amusing that much later, another Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor, a woman whom many men wanted to bed, twice in his lifetime ?) This treatise of sex was primarily dedicated to the male libido. The enticing and the bedding arts of the masculine sex. Woman was the receptacle in Kama Sutra. Man,  the dominant partner. When you read the story of the ascetic who wrote it, one would be shocked at the contradictions. At many layers one could see the social inequities in society and within sexes. While it is ok for the male to bed someone beneath his standing, the woman’s pleasure was defined by where she is slotted vis-a-vis a largely male dominant society... consisting of warriors, Kings, horsemen, cooks, guards and priests.
I heard about a female Malayalam writer K R Indira who had written a woman’s Kama Sutra. It gets a lot of mention in vernacular media. The book contains several sketches. While the first several chapters describe the original work, the last few chapters dwell on how the modern woman ought to handle sex. She goes on to describe how to gain favours by using sexuality but never getting emotionally involved in the process. But the Indian woman is also trapped in a society that spurns multiple sex partners or love partners...She prescribes four basic postures as against the complex contortions outlined in the ancient treatise.
Indira (a woman closer to fifty) outlines the modern symbols of sex. The mobile phone message  from a lover that silently blinks in the late hours of night while she lies beside her husband, trapped in a marriage that ran out of passion... The woman has to compartmentalise her urges into many pigeon holes. She needs to see through the male urge to pamper himself with conquests of sex. It is really a rare book written with clinical detachment. Sex for the modern woman is a weapon to confront a cruel world, she says. Sex is a means to achieve a woman’s needs and lastly sex as a secret weapon to be unleashed and withdrawn at will....If the original Kamasutra is the treatise for man- the provider, this latter day feminist Kamasutra is for the woman with a career, body and mind she cherishes. For Vatsyayan’s male, the act of sex is incidental, a minor trophy of celebration of manhood. Modern women have as much choices today.  Indira writes of women in Indian society, groomed to ensnare an eligible, successful male into everlasting marriage, thus closing her options of an independent life dedicated to causes, hobbies, passions, ideologies etc. She visualises a society where women independently exercise their sexual preferences, remain unattached and pursue their life’s calling. An interesting thought....hmm..
   As young hot blooded males, we read pornography with voyeuristic delight. In old age we read it for interesting turns of phrase. As callow youth we didn’t pay much attention to details. We skipped pages or fast forwarded video movies to the real act. In old age, we savour the act of enticement; the building up of passion, the post coital affection... The real act don’t matter much any more. Reading through the woman’s Kama Sutra, the middle aged man is likely to go through a process of catharsis. How the wild passionate moments of youth coagulates into a deeper understanding of sex. Sex after all, is a subtext of the larger thing called love. The fastening heartbeats, the murmurs, whispers, the exchange of fluids, all merging into a feeling so sublime. Kudos to Sudhir Kakkar for that insight into an ascetic’s life and K R Indira, for that ruthless woman’s perspective.

Friday 31 August 2012

The river of romance


The bridge across the river looked like a concrete monstrosity. It was a late, moonlit night. The milky light from the sky lit up the white expanse of sand. The river flowed quietly. The huge banyan trees abutting the river watched on, carrying tales of a million years within their ancient trunks. It was a still moment. There are vast expanses of green paddy fields on either side and the wind blows ruffling the fields in unique wavy patterns. Then the train came rushing forth, with noisy clatter, breaking the stillness of the night. Then all was quiet...That was Nila river or Bharathapuzha known in local parlance. A river that spawned great poetry, a river that witnessed the tectonic shifts of history.
 In our collective memory, the river always flowed, filling it with moments of  romance. A romance where you don’t share the presence of a human to share your anguish and pain of this life....of beauty that one day fades...of emotions and tempers that might break the rhythm of a workday life. This was romance of a strange kind. It is the romance of communion with life, with nature.... Ten kilometres up the river, a tributary called Mangalam river flows.. a good 200 metres away from the home I was raised in. Often I remember of a lonely childhood with only books and crazy dreams for company. Often, late at night, we would sit on the white sand. And listen to the rumble of the train, a faint sound 15 kms away from Lakkidi bridge, where the Nila flows. Nila is the poet’s river. Great many poets and writers drew their inspiration and sustenance from the river.
In monsoon, the river changed its’ colours. It looked darker. The sky is overcast and it is raining for days on end. The wind is cold and harsh. The sand banks have disappeared from sight. Twigs, logs and branches got washed away in the wild flow of the river.  One could no longer see the the bottom of the river or little fish that would brush against your legs when you took bath in the flowing water. You could no longer cross the river walking. Little boats are pressed into service.   The river today is ravaged. When I barely stop on the bridge, my memories go back in time. How the river looked then. The sand has vanished today, a victim of the inexorable process of development, building concrete homes for humans. Twenty five years back, if someone had told me that man’s primary urge to have a roof over his head, a shelter to keep his family safe, could plunder the river of all its’ sand, I wouldn’t have believed it. The paddy fields are dotted with concrete homes. The moonlight has a tinge of tears. In summer the river is dry. There are patches of vegetation and water along the river. The river no more flows...  
  Around five years back, when I was working in Delhi, I saw an article by a journalist called Akber Ayub in The Hindu on the slowly dying Nila river. I wrote to the journalist and asked him if I could do something to save the river. He said he gets lot of mails of similar kind. I kept a few copies of the article and gave it to friends who, I knew, cared for the river. I spoke to a senior bureaucrat in Kerala government, who swore that there is little that civil society can do. The government has already put in place plans to save the river. But each year I go back to my home town, I see the river a little more denuded. A little less in its element. A little closer to death. We can do nothing but grieve over something that has died inside us...
**********

‘But Ma’am must have been briefed, surely?’
‘Of course,’ said the Queen, ‘but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject. Reading opens it up.’   
- Alan Bennet in the ‘Uncommon reader’.
 I read the above lines several times. It struck me as very relevant to Delhi bureaucrats, who come with little domain knowledge and are briefed by specialists. Policy making evolves through several rounds of briefing which closes down the subject instead of opening up, as Bennett’s Queen would say.    
      I have been reading this short book and the book sort of grew on me.  When I ordered it on flipkart for a princely sum of Rs 577, I expected a hardback tome. When it arrived, it was all of 120 odd pages, a paperback, half the size of an A4 size paper. I also had this vague feeling that I had read this before, but had forgotten about it.
        Possess this book. It will possess you surely. It is about the Queen of England who, in old age, falls prey to the joys of reading and its’ unintentional, but comic fallout. The Palace staff, cabinet ministers, Archbishop of Canterbury and others are put to severe inconvenience, having an erudite Monarch, who dares to improvise her speeches. How would it be if the Queen were to ask, by way of polite conversation, what you thought of Bronte or Jean Genet, instead of asking you whether you had come far and whether the traffic was nasty? A chance visit to the travelling library sets off a hilarious sequence of events. This is a great book. A Bibliophile’s book.

Monday 20 August 2012

The Contrarian Babu


The contrarian Babu is almost always a misfit in polite society. Life in the bureaucracy is getting increasingly difficult. Accountability grows, discretion reduces and one is always exposed to public scrutiny. In a world full of worshippers of First world ways and success, it is hard to strike a jarring note. When I talked about misdirected policies to invite FDI in education in this blog, many of my good friends chided me. They call me a commie, a medievalist and what not. What rankles most is when they accuse me of having acquired a foreign degree for myself and is now arguing against letting other countrymen from getting one. I had also written about how foolish it is to expect those who clear IIM/IIT entrance exams to fund their education by loans. Recently two of my colleagues(including my Office peon who sent his son to Engineering, paying a modest amount as capitation fee in a second rung college) have failed to get education loans from State Bank despite being government servants with steady income streams. Proves my point, I suppose..

My reasons for opposing FDI in multi-brand retail are similar. In the real world, none of the arguments for it hold water. It is the lazy Babu’s fancy solution to show growth in numbers.  Some standard arguments for apologists of the proposal are-  it would help to channelize investments to establish cold chains, it would beget fair price for farmers, it helps disintermediation of markets and it helps employment generation. I see it more as a failure of administration. If we can send rockets and missiles, can’t we set up cold chains? If we can set up science labs, IITs and IIMs, can’t we set up institutions that facilitate access for farmers to markets and slash the role of intermediaries? Employment generation is the most specious of all arguments.

While in Australia, I realized that mostly available jobs for students were that of checkout counter staff in supermarkets. Students would be paid 8-10 dollars per hour. The other alternative is to get into stacking inventory or packaging. Slowly these jobs were also vanishing. In big city markets, billing was being automated to such an extent that one could dump a bag full of purchases into a huge enclosure and the total bill amount would be displayed. One could then proceed to pay with credit cards. In other words, big retailers, while thirsting to grow, do not want to employ humans. Employing humans is a problem as the violence in Maruti plant in Manesar has shown. For a country with so much entrepreneurial energy and huge reservoir of manpower, asking Walmart to set up shop is like a huge admission of failure of governance. It exposes our faulty vision and lack of imagination. Soon teeming millions dependent on farm incomes or small retail shops will move to checkout counters of Walmart and from there they would vanish one day, unsung….un-mourned.
                                                             ******
When Metallica played in Bangalore, I was there with my son.    The huge towers of speakers were very close, from where every clash of cymbal, every roll of drum and every thrum of the lead or bass guitar was emanating with deep unexplored depths. If one suffered from minor heart ailments, one particularly sustained roll of drums could dispatch you to early death. The song Nothing else matters sent the crowd into raptures. It was a slushy day and the ground was wet. As I came out of the concert, I realized that except for the band members of Metallica, none were in my age group. We made an odd  combination. The entire crowd was in the twenties and thirties. My son is 17 and I am 49. As for Chathu, he hadn’t progressed to imbibing beer and letting his hair down.  So he was saddled with his humorless father. One realizes slowly what embarrassment one turns into in old age
*********

I read “Beyond the lines”by Kuldip Nayar. It is an easy read, which gives interesting insights into several important phases of the nation’s history. A bit pompous in patches, the writer is wont to name-drop occasionally. For instance, the Press Officer to Minister would not have as much access to the Minister these days. When the writer talk of his proximity to Shastri or Pant, it is hard to believe it- especially since yours truly has worked in the silly building called South Block. Nevertheless he married well (A Governor’s daughter, no less), developed great connections and went to jail during emergency. But what I found heartrending was his nostalgia of undivided India. As a Pakistan buff, I thought Kuldip Nayar’s peace constituency is shrinking in this country. We have to live with the ghosts of the past. When I read the Dawn (Pakistani newspaper), I realize how much the ordinary citizens of that country cherish the shared past.  It is only with peace that both countries can get down to the business of development. Instead of lighting candles at Wagah, I would like to hear the youth of India and Pakistan play and sing Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the wind at Wagah one day.

  I also read “Dividing Lines by K N Raghavan- a book on the China war recommended by an acquaintance. The book is kind of a ready reckoner of the China war of 1962. It is neatly organized into the buildup, the war itself and the various perspectives around what caused it and how it panned out. It was amusing to learn that the author is a fellow bureaucrat one batch junior to self and the Missus from the Civil services- a medical doctor and a customs Official. I wonder where he got the time to write a book. It must have taken tremendous self-discipline. I had read most of the stuff he relied on to write this book. But it takes a lot of thought and research to neatly put it into a book. Hats off to K N Raghavan!!

  I also read two Malayalam books. Both came heavily recommended. One was by Subash Chandran- (Introduction to man- Manushyanu oru Aamukham) and Benyamin (Goat Life- Aadujeevitham). Both are young authors. I was impressed by the confident handling of language of Subash Chandran, his ability to shrink the whole sweep and magnitude of several ordinary lives into a tightly written tale, the characters leaving a lasting impression on the reader’s mind. Benyamin tells a touching tale- of a Malayali who landed in the Gulf and ends up being a shepherd, ruthlessly exploited and tortured. The tale brings tears to one’s eyes. It is a story straight from the heart.  Both these young, confident writers had one thing in common. They do not follow any method of world-prize winning literature. I see a great future for these writers. That they are at least ten years younger than me gives great hope about the future of Malayalam literature.
********

The sedate Bureaucrat is usually full of self importance- for he is the Master of all he surveys... Along comes the odd event that exposes him as the straw man; full of flaws and it embarrasses him terribly. Failures ought to be remembered, for they contain valuable lessons in them. Embarrassments are best forgotten. When I am confronted by failures in the workplace, I want to throw it all away, retire to my village, sit under a tree and read books. When I am confronted by embarrassments on the personal front, I want to kick myself to death. When life is on a roll, it helps to remember one’s embarrassments and failures and laugh at oneself. When the chips are down, you can always draw solace from the fact that in the end, you are nobody. As the book of Job in the Bible says, you came unto earth with nothing; you go from here with nothing…- No property, no gadgets, no shares and debentures; only a handful of experiences; of joy, sorrow, heartbreaks, fleeting jealousies and oceans of love....

Thursday 5 July 2012

Now reading


 
It has been some time since I wrote about what I am reading. In the months gone by, I had vegetated in my staid existence, went to work everyday - I mean everyday; Sundays included- I don’t get a break- my daily schedule would leave those wall street bankers red faced. Cynical journalists would be shocked to learn that in Government we need to put in so many hours for so little compensation.
   Although this blog has dipped to a trickle, the reading hasn’t stopped. I read the morning papers during the long morning commute. I read at night. I read for about 45 minutes during lunch break. A reading man is not everybody’s idea of a bureaucrat. Eating Moongphali(hindi for peanuts), drying oneself in the winter sun and not turning up for work are contemporary images of babus- driving the angry middle class towards hunger fasts against corruption.

I try to find time to hit the gym for about an hour each every alternate day. I am also learning the theory of music from Trinity College of London. It is almost like learning advanced mathematics in old age. Chathu has also got so far along with me but he gives serious signals about dropping out since he is in 12th and has plenty to study. We are yet to take the practical exams in Classical Guitar, our choice of instrument.

        I read 'Our Lady of Alice Bhatti' by Mohammed Hanif. Hanif is an immensely talented Pakistani author from whom the best is yet to come. Although not in the league of his earlier work, it still ranks among good books which raises of mirror to the violence and indignity in South Asian civil society.

The rare reader of this blog might be familiar with my theory that women write great crime fiction and men are great at romance. My new find is Qiu Xiaolong, a male Chinese crime fiction writer. The protagonist in his series of books is Inspector Chen Cau, a bachelor, poet cum sleuth in the Shanghai Crime bureau in post liberalization China. The books give a rare insight into present day China - the challenges the Chinese face and the painful historical reminders of the Cultural Revolution. There are several similarities to the dilemmas of conscientious government officials everywhere in an increasingly corrupt and violent society.  Anyone interested in life in contemporary China, might enjoy this series of books. The lonely, romantic Chen reminds one of detectives like Inspector Morse (Colin Dexter) and Adam Dalgliesh (P D James). The thinking man’s crime buster- strong, romantic and brooding hero - who is inclined to finer arts and literature. Inspector Chen and his deputy Yu go on to crack some of the politically sensitive cases. Yu has a pedantic existence as against Chen’s high profile life. Together they complement so well. The books are expensive (around Rs 500 plus per book ; I bought two of them from flipkart.com) but I can’t tell you how to get all of them on your kindle, free of cost- for it might cross the thin line of legality.

 

The one book which I accidentally stumbled upon takes the prize for Porn in bad prose. While this blogger tries not to be prudish about sexual morality, as one grows older, it is the quality of prose that attracts you and not the story that the book tells. Reading bad prose certainly isn’t easy. I was guided by the New York Times bestseller list which cited Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James as having figured in the bestseller list for several weeks. The story goes like this- Poor girl meets obscenely rich and handsome guy. Apart from certain entirely pardonable character deviances, the rich guy falls madly in love with poor girl. And showers on her gifts like iPad, a new Audi, designer clothes etc and goes on to give her a good time in bed. Expressions like scowling, biting the lip, gaze fondly etc abound in the book, along with curse words like “Holy Cow” (no reference to the Hindu beliefs). The descriptions of sexual romps might titillate the western female audience. If this is the future of erotic literature, then I swear off it!!

           
              A Malayalam book ‘Othappu’ by Sara Joseph surprised me. Sara Joseph is a feminist writer known for her strong views on society and contemporary events. My theory that women can’t write great romance has bitten the dust!! Many parts of the book kept me enthralled with underlying intensity and interesting observations and descriptions. It is a about a nun who runs away from her order and finds forbidden love. There is great sadness, poverty and solitude in this tale.


    I have also been reading a series of Swedish crime fiction novels by Hakkan Nesser. What is it that makes the Scandinavians write great crime fiction? Detective Inspector Van Veeteren, the Swedish sleuth cracks high profile crimes with intuition and experience. The plots are tightly weaved and the reader is kept engrossed. The novels are not too long and so much is packed into them.  
     ****************
 Six years back, when I flew into Paris for the first time, I felt I was traveling from third world to first. That was the impression that the dirty Indira Gandhi International Airport gave in contrast to the swanky Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Last month, the Delhi Airport presented a first world picture while the CDG Paris looked drab and unkempt. I only wish India learnt how to maintain its urban settlements as well as the West does, before we learn to send missiles and rockets into space. I also visited the beautiful French city of Lyon for a week.  The two week respite from Office, travelling all over France and Switzerland, ought to have recharged my batteries. Somehow I feel tired. The Missus had gone for a course. I tagged along on a free companion ticket. Back to work tomorrow...

Wednesday 11 April 2012

The Great Indian Oversight System

If you think that the genial Sardar who comes every day by the Patel Nagar chartered bus to work in the Ministry of Defence in South Block signifies the so-called civilian supremacy in India’s defence architecture, you could be way off the mark. Or did you think it is the dhoti clad Minister who is worried about the next elections, constituency problems, party responsibilities and starred questions in Parliament? You could be even further from the truth.
      Typically the Indian government system works like this. We entrust a job to 5 guys. Then we appoint auditors, inspectors and accountants (totalling about 15 guys) to over see the work of the 5 guys. It is important that these 15 overseers have no domain knowledge of the “job at hand.” We believe that all the overseers need to be independent of any trappings of knowledge so that they are “free of prejudices”, can “bring a fresh perspective to the task” and “not be influenced” by the 5 guys. The 5 guys then start getting fidgety since they have a job to finish and there are 15 guys breathing down their necks. They think of several ways to pamper these 15 guys, thus losing sight of the job in hand. The 5 guys are tied down to a higher degree of accountability. The 15 guys constitute what is known as a wonderful scheme called “checks and balances” in government. The 15 guys then go on inspection visits, enjoy creature comforts like vehicles to ply them, guest houses to stay in; they write long reports, seek immediate answers etc etc all on government time and on the budget for the “job at hand”. In the end the job is not done. Long winded excuses are made and vetted by the 5+15 guys. Hence we have un-acquired weapons, overpaid staff, failed targets and unspent budgetary allocations. This may be an exaggeration but true insiders will swear that it is the truth. To top it all we have a hysterical media which has no clue of the actual malaise and media persons who have no time for real research. (Except for a few honourable exceptions)
          We also have a general cynicism about indigenous defence production. The uniformed soldiers and the “overseer Babus” carry deep prejudices and general air of condescension towards indigenous capabilities. This is a country which is recognized world over for software skills and engineering capabilities. We never put a plan in place; we never firm up our requirements in time; we keep shifting goal posts for domestic producers (foreign producers are endowed with the ability to shift our goal posts); we never co-ordinate among diverse agencies and we brand our indigenous research and production agencies as white elephants without knowing under what circumstances they are tasked to deliver. While we flex our muscles to take on a global super power’s role, let us stop for a moment and ponder on one small truth. No superpower has got there by importing arms from others. All of them have bet on their indigenous capabilities and slowly built on their strengths. Unfortunately, we prefer to be in “elite” company….of countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia who have either aid dollars or oil dollars to spare and to import fancy toys for their defence forces. Fixing indigenous research and production ought to have been our first priority.
      We, alas, have a permanent bureaucracy which doesn’t specialize in any field. We are rotated to various jobs; the regular bureaucrats from states acquire minimal domain knowledge in at least about 5 different fields in a career spanning 30 years or so. We add value to our bureaucrats; bureaucrats don’t add value to the system. This ossified system would have served its’ purpose in a gentler time in the 1940s and 50s, when the ICS had to take care of diverse fields. Today’s IT, Telecom, Civil Aviation or Defence need in-depth domain knowledge and cross-functional skills. We ought to think of appointing Professors in Computer Science as Joint Secretaries and Directors in IT Ministry on contract; Or Defence Research Scientists on a 5 year term as Joint Secretaries in Defence Acquisition. If the readers believe that I am ranting against IAS, please hold your horses. Even some of the finest IAS Officers who gathered excellent domain knowledge in Defence are laterally shifted to Textiles, Coal or Official Language implementation Ministry at the end of their careers- Thus leaving neither Defence nor the recipient department richer by their knowledge or experience. Hence we have Government Departments which have very little institutional memory or domain knowledge. The Sardar from Patel Nagar will be shifted to Finance Ministry soon and the IAS Officer who did a good job will go back to District administration.  Maybe the time has come to think of infusing specialists with generalist skills; not the other way around. The time has come to think of a lot of lateral induction into bureaucracy; Or to think of setting up a specialist organization consisting of professionals from IT, Defence Research, production, finance, which is exclusively tasked with Defence Acquisition. This organization may then go on to consolidate past experiences and be accountable to the MoD.
            On my maiden visit to the US on a Defence delegation, I was truly amazed to see the domain knowledge that their Defence Officials bring to their jobs. US are a country that believes in the spoils system or the “jobs for boys” system. In other words, after each change of administration, the new political leadership appoint their own men and women to crucial, senior positions in the administration including bureaucracy. Hence one would expect politicians to bring in ill-informed professionals to various jobs based on past associations and back slapping familiarity. Yet some of Bush’s important Defence bureaucrats were neither removed by Obama nor replaced by his own people.  France has a system where the DGA France is manned by personnel who are experts from various spheres of Defence and have served in various capacities in the field, thus giving them a wide perspective.
         The Army chief is giving vent to his frustration with the system. Aren’t we all? After having worked in the South Block, I stand firm in my belief. Between ill informed bureaucrats and short sighted uniformed service men, it is the politicians who come up smelling roses. They stood long hours in the sun and gave fiery speeches to get where they got. They are a microcosm of Indian society, warts and all. Why blame them? While salaried professionals like us who wrote difficult competitive exams are self serving to the point of putting the country’s interests in peril? We carve out roles for ourselves, impose illogical oversight systems, lose sight of results and generally strangle professionalism in Government.  (Also read Awards and rewards, dated 22 August 2008 in this blog)

Wednesday 29 February 2012

Indianness

        The rare Non- Keralite readers of this blog are going to find it uninteresting to read about. But this is about a person who influenced me profoundly. He was the sounding board of the thinking Mallu's conscience ( as against the average liquor swilling, sexually frustrated type). He inspired many generations with his speeches and writings. Prof Sukumar Azheekode passed away last month. It was just last year that he finished writing his autobiography. He was proud of his good health and wrote about his many simple formulae to good health. After completing his autobiography, he was diagnosed with cancer and was ailing for sometime.
  When I was a school boy, I went walking some distance to hear him speak at a function held to unveil the statue of a living celebrity ( a freedom fighter from the nearby village). I found the whole thing about building statues to living celebrities thoroughly amusing. Out of curiosity, I went to see this silly farce. The place was jam packed with people who had come to listen to the speech of Prof Azheekode, who was the chief guest. I hadn’t heard much about him until then.It was so crowded that I couldn’t enter the hall. I heard the speech from the road through the loudspeakers. I stood spell bound, enthralled by the talk. It was like listening to a great piece of Classical music. Starting with whispers almost difficult to hear, building up the tempo and reaching crescendo. Words flowed uninterruptedly. Although I read his articles off and on, I never forgot that speech. Words are, he said, my soldiers...
        Years later when I heard that his book ‘Tat vamasi’ won several awards, I made an insincere attempt to read it. It was a distilled commentary on the Upanishads. I found it too erudite and left it half way. But it was a senior IAS Officer (one of those rare bureaucrats who reads) who told me about his book “Bharatiyata” (loosely translated as Indianness, a series of speeches given by Prof Azheekode in Thrissur town, in the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition) I was totally hooked on to the book. For many years I kept it near my bed and read a few pages before I went to sleep. The missus (who can’t read Malayalam) often wonders why this small book is always around. I tell her that I wish every Indian would read it. It would help an Indian truly understand his identity and his heritage. The speeches reveal a sense of pain and anger- At politicians who do not understand the idea of India. When I lose hope in politicians and bureaucrats I scan through the pages of this small book and derive comfort.
        He had an opinion about everything. Mostly very intuitive and driven by public perception. As the retired Pro-Vice Chancellor of Calicut University  he could express them freely. Without the backing of any political party, he could draw huge crowds. He once contested elections as a Congress candidate and lost. He harshly criticized the mainstream political parties of Kerala. Sometimes he came down heavily on movie actors. He stood by the the weak and dispossessed. His faith in secularism was deep and unshaken. But his interventions in affairs in which he had no business often invited ridicule.
                And he died a bachelor. He proudly claimed that he never had physical relations with a woman. But there is a poignant love story in his past. He loved a woman, wanted to marry her and wrote her many letters. He backed out of marriage for reasons not very clear. She waited for him. When she heard him say something dismissive about the whole affair in public, she went ahead and published those letters. (After reading those letters in a periodical, Kamala Das was supposed to have called him up to say that she wish she had a lover who could write love letters like that !!!)  Instead of maintaining a dignified silence at this rather distasteful pubic exposure, he viciously criticized the scorned lover. She, nevertheless met him a few days before he died. And said that she is still waiting for him. It is the kind of story that would bring anyone to tears; but he emerged a much diminished man from the entire sordid episode.
    This thin, frail man traveled the length and breadth of Kerala to give 16000 odd speeches in his life time. I have heard only one. He published many books. I have read only three. He was considered a giant at literary criticism and knowledgeable in Hindu philosophy. He had written somewhere that he was influenced by two people. Gandhiji and Swami Vagbhatananda (try googling that name; you’d get very few results). He remains a great influence on those who heard him or read him.
   His death is not merely a loss, but the passing of an age.