Committees & Corruption, PAC & UPA

The principal objection most serious commentators have with Anna Hazare’s Lokpal Bill is that its solution to the intractable corruption assailing India is, at its core, undemocratic. A self-appointed body, accountable to no one except that most vague of entities, “the people of India”, should not be seen as a long-term answer. Spurious tapes and Amar Singh aside (and even if the body consisted only of men and women of unimpeachable integrity), it is in the nature of power to engender corruption; handing the power of oversight to any group only succeeds in enlarging the circle of those in the position to be corrupt.

Economists, in their cold, calculated fashion, do not pronounce judgment on corruption. They see it as an example of rent-seeking, a natural human activity. Any human being with monopoly access to a finite resource, such as land, will seek to extract value for use of that resource. Governmental corruption occurs because we give people monopoly power over certain decisions. At the highest level, when these decisions are worth hundreds of crores of rupees, it is in the self-interest of everyone, corporation, politician and bureaucrat, to cheat. Even the most well-meaning individuals cannot solve this problem. What is needed is the strengthening of already existing institutions.

The Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution of India recognised this human frailty. The separation of the three arms of government, the executive, legislature and judiciary is so that each acts as a check on the other’s excesses. One of the great problems of the Indian democratic experience has been the manner in which the executive (the Government of India) has established its primacy. This is less true of the judiciary, but the influence of the legislature (Parliament) has over these sixty years slowly corroded until it has reached its contemporary role of glorified gathering ground.

We often forget that the Government is not the representation of the people’s will: Parliament is. As the surprise appointment of Manmohan Singh in 2004 illustrated so clearly, we have no real say in who will become Prime Minister. Reestablishing the authority of the legislature is a necessary check on government excess. This is why the unseemly squabbling and name-calling that has surrounded the Murli Manohar Joshi-led Public Accounts Committee is especially harmful.

While most of the legislation debated and passed in the legislature is of only passing interest (if that), it is in the working of its committees that the legislature can truly exercise its influence. The Public Accounts Committee is perhaps the most important of these committees; it exists to supervise the spending of government. The UPA agreed to place the mismanagement of 2G telecom spectrum under the PAC’s scanner. Now because the most senior members of government are being held to account, it is attempting to undercut the body’s authority by maligning the individuals involved in its preparation.

The “rejection” of the report by the UPA members of the PAC is a clear indication that the executive is trying once again to influence the legislature. If Manmohan Singh’s UPA government is serious about curbing corruption – and so far there has been no indication that they are interested in anything other than the most superficial of overhauls – they must allow the PAC to do its job.

The Case of the Kidnapped Collector

(a shorter version of this piece will appear as the edit in Sunday Guardian on 27 February)

The deplorable kidnapping of Malkangiri District Collector Vineel Krishna and junior engineer Pabitra Majhi by Maoists situated somewhere along the Andhra-Orissa border, and the harrowing ongoing hostage crisis that has followed, brings light to a number of the most intractable problems the Indian state faces when attempting to deal with the armed insurgency.

From the Indian state’s perspective, its biggest concern is best explained by one of the fundamental problems of Game Theory (and hoary favourite of articles like these), the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Prisoner’s Dilemma explains why two rational actors might not cooperate even when it is in their best interests. To cut a lot of nigh-on-indecipherable probability theory short, the logic behind it is that both sets of actors (in this case, the Indian state and the Maoists) lack complete information about the other’s motivations. If both mistrust each other, each side ends up choosing the least favourable option available, because of the inherent pressure on both to renege on the agreement.

In this case, after some deliberation, the Indian state prioritised its most favourable outcome, which was to bring District Collector Krishna and junior engineer Majhi home safe. It chose to trust that the Naxalites would fulfill their end of the bargain, and so conceded to all 14 of the demands made. But the Naxals decided they would not keep their end of the bargain, and returned only the junior engineer; custody of the District Collector was their primary bargaining chip, and they chose to extract more from the state.

So how can the Indian state trust this adversary when the majority of prior dealings have ended similarly? What must it do to ensure it does not suffer for choosing the option that, given the initial conditions, would have suited both parties admirably?

It should be noted that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a theoretical tool, at best providing insight into why actors behave the way they do. It does not allow for a number of real-world complexities that cloud almost every instance of hostage-taking (if interested, see Reuben Miller’s study of the 1972 Munich Olympics attack). The most urgent difference in the assumptions made above is that the Maoists are not a unitary actor. This is a nebulous collective (if that) of different groups with differing agendum. Clubbing them together can have grievous implications on life and livelihood in the heartland of India, and must be avoided.

Delving into ground realities reveals a second disturbing aspect of the case, this one a sharp indictment of the role of the Government of India in this Indian heartland. Take a look at the 14 demands made by the Naxalites on the state. Apart from the (almost mandatory, in hostage situations) demand for prisoner-exchange, much of the rest are demands that have been made on behalf of marginalised communities in India. The Naxals ask for: Scheduled Tribe status for certain Andhra communities; the closure of the multi-purpose Polavaram irrigation project; pattas (record of rights) of dispossessed groups; irrigated water supply to two villages in Malkangiri; compensation to two villagers who claim to have been tortured while in state custody; compensation to farmers living in areas submerged by the Balimela reservoir; better governing laws for the out-of-control bauxite mining industry; and the minimum displacement of tribal groups – and their adequate compensation – when development projects close in on their existence.

Here, then, are the failures of the Indian state placed in sharp relief. Indian citizens are being forced to request manifesto-waving brigands to make what are entirely legitimate demands on the state. These are citizens who feel so disempowered, so disenfranchised, by the industry-state nexus that they feel they must use Naxalites, and by proxy, kidnapping, as a conduit. What is this corner that India has painted its own citizens into?

Additionally, viewing the Prisoner’s Dilemma from the Naxalite perspective for a second, they could be entitled to argue that all they have received from the state is a commitment to fulfill their demands, one that might easily be reneged upon once the state functionaries were back home safe. In that case, they might argue that they would be entitled to hold onto the prisoner’s until the fulfillment of the 14 demands the Indian state committed to, including long-winded processes like remedying mining laws and putting an end to Operation Green Hunt. After all, the Government of India’s track record in providing social justice to the unprivileged is hardly more favourable than the Naxalites track record in keeping their end of bargains.

One final disturbing aspect of the case was the reportage that surrounded it, which could be faulted on two issues. A crude rendition of the manner in which the major national newspapers portrayed the 14 demands of the Naxalites is: “release our Naxalites cronies, plus 13 others.” While Times of India did carry an edited list of the demands (on an inside page) the headlines and major chunk of the stories in the national dailies prioritised this solitary diktat. Given the nature of the full set of demands, the media's unwillingness to analyse the Indian state's failure in this regard is shocking. The Naxals ask for an end to Operation Green Hunt. Is the media not required to ask if the Home Minister has now given up on a policy he deemed of paramount importance to national security, even in the diminished form in which it exists today?

Second, a major national newspaper sought to construct a narrative around the Collector’s release, claiming tribals had campaigned to have him released. No other reports from the ground have suggested this is the case; indeed subsequent reports in the same newspaper have failed to develop this angle, suggesting the initial report might have been misleading. This is the kind of patronising approach the Indian State has often been accused of when dealing with tribal communities, viz. presuming to know what is best for them. The media does not do anyone favours by creating a message, favourable or unfavourable, about this battle. What India needs now, as in most wars, is Truth and Reconciliation.

Dousing India in Kerosene

In English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s superb novel about a year in the life of a young Stephanian who has just joined the Civil Service, there is a revealing passage where the District Collector of Madna, Ravi Srivastava, refers to a sweaty underling of theirs as “just a promotee”. In the uniquely abstruse language of the Indian Adminstrative Service, a promotee is someone who joins the Service via promotion from one of the lower grades of the Administrative Services, usually State-level; an officer who has not cleared the much-hyped annual Civil Service exam but works his way up the ladder. It is testament to Chatterjee’s skill as a novelist that he is able to show through a single throwaway remark the sneering disregard officers of Srivastava’s ilk have for these junior officers. But, having come through the State ranks, often these junior officers are the ones who know the areas they serve best. Their knowledge of the minutiae of the political, social – and criminal – dynamic in an area can be of invaluable aid to the Collectors and Additional District Collectors who hop from posting to posting around the country. Additional Collector of Malegaon Yashwant Sonawane was one of these “promotees”.

“This matter will be taken very seriously. He was a very upright officer and this probe will continue until we take all the required action.” - P. Velarasu, District Collector, Malegaon.

Smack in the middle of that quote crops up another favourite word in the IAS lexicon, though their officers have less cause to use it: “upright”. From the use of this adjective, the astute reader will immediately understand that Sonawane, in contrast to the wide majority of his colleagues, was impeccably honest, dilligent and guided by such foolish values as patriotic pride and right and wrong. A look at his years in government reveals that Sonawane was all that and much more; it is open to conjecture, but it is just as likely that he was not only the most “upright” officer in Malegaon, but in all of Maharashtra.

By every account Sonawane was a truly remarkable man. Born into a poverty-line poor rural Dalit family, he managed after college to get himself a job as a clerk in the Mantralaya in 1988. In 1994 he cleared the state civil services exam, where he worked dutifully for fifteen years before being promoted to the IAS rank of Additional Collector in Malegaon.

Recognising that one of the major impediments to development in Malegaon was Hindu-Muslim tension, he worked hard to reduce the faultline, campaigning hard for a branch of Aligarh Muslim University to be set up there. He was also the driving force behind a plan to set up a unit of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation there. If his life had not been so cruelly interrupted, he would have had the chance to do a great deal of good in one of India’s most troubled areas.

At the very least, Sonawane’s story should strike against those who oppose caste-based reservations in low-level government jobs (self-regarding elitists like Anish Trivedi, please note). Here was a man who worked himself up from penury to a position of undeniable influence by dint of hard work and honesty. He lost his life taking on a dangerous mafia because he was fighting for poor people’s right to government-subsidised kerosene. How easy it would have been for him to turn a blind eye and extend an open palm, as surely most of the other administrators, “promotee” or not, were in the area.

Sonawane believed he could alone wage a war against the venality of India. Yet we continue to laud a system when he has been proven so tragically wrong.

Review: Serious Men by Manu Joseph

One of the recurring themes debutante novelist Manu Joseph explores in Serious Men is the nature of marital love. He tells the story of two couples of vastly different backgrounds into whose conjugal lives the arrival of third parties threaten havoc. For the Dalit hero of the book, Ayyan Mani, it is his cherished son Adi who signposts the damping of his wife’s ardour; this is when Ayyan recognises the paucity of the life he has given Oja. For his boss Arvinda Acharya, an ancient pachyderm of a physicist who once almost won the Nobel Prize and now heads the Institute of Theory and Research, it is meeting the young, voluptuous astrobiologist Oparna Goshmaulik that throws into sharp relief his decades long union with his patient, loving wife Lavanya.

As the title indicates, it is not so much a story of the couples as it is of the two men, Ayyan and Acharya. And as the novel progresses, both these serious men embark on elaborate deceptions. Ayyan Mani, who defines his Dalit idenity through anti-Brahmanism, needs to prove to his wife that there is life beyond BDD, the tenement slum in which they live. So he teaches Adi, a lonely boy with a hearing disability, to blurt out words like ‘Fibonacci’ in class, and ask questions about Relativity as his peers learn about fractions. Through periodic, inspired, prods by Ayyan, the myth of the Dalit boy-genius spreads, and Ayyan and his wife’s stature in their community grows. Newspaper and TV reporters arrive in their slum, and his wife Oja once again begins to believe her husband is a man of worth.

Ayyan Mani is a fascinating character, a poor Dalit with tremendous powers of observation and ready intelligence. His overwhelming desire, apart from creating a better life for his son than he had, is to be mistaken for a member of the middle class. So he drops his son to school in taxis he can barely afford, practices phrases in English, carefully reads everything he can get his hands on.

The genius of this book lies in the observation of people and the different worlds they build. One short scene between Ayyan and wife climbed beneath my skin, in a few lines forcing me to contemplate how we – the educated, assimilated rich – draw artificial, unseen lines, separating sophistication from vulgarity, tasteful from tawdry. Husband and wife are dressing for a function in their son’s school, and Oja wants to wear her shiniest sari and thickest gold chain. But Mani convinces her otherwise (‘Important does not mean gold any more.’) Then she says to him: “’You should wear that coat you have. You look like a hero in it.’ ‘No, no,’ he replies. ‘You are not supposed to wear a coat for something like this. You are supposed to look like you don’t care much.’

A little like the unparalleled Russian Mikhail Bulgakov, Joseph has the uncanny ability to mock those things “sophisticates” hold most dear. Science, high art, fine cuisine, literature, love; the things the educated world chooses to elevate to unnatural standing are picked apart time and again by his witty pen, and exposed, at their naked core, to be the hollow pursuits of people, not necessarily more noble or absurd than the activities of the peon who answers the phones, the journalist who writes stories for sale, the guard who covers the boss’s head with an umbrella as he scurries from his car in the rain.

Joseph is a fine political journalist (he is the Deputy Editor of Open Magazine) but this is his first novel, and I felt parts of the book began to drag, especially as he seeks to extract a nugget of philosophy out of the smallest things, such as the shape of an umbrella. It is the exposition of difference where he is strongest. Apart from the glaring material disparity between a Dalit peon and a near-Nobel winning physicist, Joseph also subtly and cleverly shows the difference their intellectual standing provides in their marriages. Ayyan is constantly relating to his wife information he has read and heard, so she could “marvel at a world so strange and at her man who knew so much.” Acharya, instead, has no longer any need to impress his wife. Years of achievement have taken care of that. Only once, when they are first married, is he as keen to dazzle as any man, and at their wedding pandaal he tells her something he has learned about the speed of light.

For a book at least notionally about science, some of the scientific thought is quite strange. Which near Nobel-winning physicist would seriously suggest that alien life could exist, impervious, in the dark vacuum of space, without the sustenance that a home like Earth can provide? Yet this construction is a reminder of the possibilities of fiction, where the only logic that must remain undisturbed is that of the narrative. Joseph is by no means a magical realist, yet his tale recognises that aligning the fictional world with the world we know is neither necessary nor even to be desired, no matter how much they resemble each other. In this book, physicists gaze out from their balconies at the stars and contemplate hot air balloons that will return to Earth with alien life forms. That is the world that Joseph must keep in balance, and he does so admirably.

2010: The Year of Complicit Corruption

(this piece appeared as the edit in The Sunday Guardian on 2 January)

2010 provided India with a multitude of options in which to define the decade to come. The decade just past was about creation of opportunity and extension of influence. We learnt, much to many of our surprise, that as India’s economic importance grew, the care with which the world addressed our concerns would also grow. No other country expanded its soft power as successfully as India did these ten years. The attention the world paid to both our folly and our triumph was notable because, finally, we were globally newsworthy. If that meant Suresh Kalmadi’s name found headlines in newspapers in every corner of the world, it also meant that Slate, perhaps the most popular magazine on the Web, could now happily devote a long editorial towards examining the enigmatic, Apocalyptic charisma of Rajnikanth.

Yet 2010 came to mean something quite different to the Indian public. This was the year of Complicit Corruption. We learnt, this time not to anyone’s surprise, that almost every avenue of influence in India was open to a most endemic form of subversion. If public outrage became the leitmotif of the year, it was not unjustified. Everywhere there was power there was skullduggery, and everywhere there was influence there was silent shenanigan. The Indian public was betrayed time and again by the people they had reposed their faith in.

The Radia tapes illuminated this most clearly. It came at the end of a year beset by scandal, yet what hurt the prevailing sentiment most was the callous, casual disregard that two of Indian media’s most trusted sentinels had for the Constitution and the role of the Fourth Estate. That the powers-to-be were for sale many people have long suspected. That those who had been tasked with bringing light to political misdeeds were equally complicit was a betrayal that became too much to bear. Traditional media, already a creaking behemoth in an age demanding nimble, reactive feet, was dealt a body blow by its own collusive tendencies. But Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi were only the manifest representations of a culture that has seeped into news media for years. Front page space and analysis is being purchased by telecom and oil companies and their proxies at the same time the features pages are being bought by art galleries, restaurants and nightclubs. The World Wide Web democratised the dissemination of information; 2010 was the year that much of India’s Web-savvy population decided they no longer needed to be preached to by charlatans.

Yet the media is only one theatre for our uniquely Indian way of conducting the affairs of state. Cricket, housing for war widows, the Commonwealth Games, black money in Swiss banks, Mining, telecom, even the sale of food in a desperately poor state like Uttar Pradesh: everything was available to be bought and sold in India by a gathering of fifteen percenters in khadi. Many people cite the personal probity of our Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, which even in this besmirched age has thankfully never been in doubt. Dr Singh has helped bring to pass some of the best policies India has, such as the RTI and the NREGA. Yet he sits at the helm of a system that cultivates corruption and underhandedness. Perhaps he feels it is too much for one person to revolutionise the way government works in India. But if he is honest with himself, he will know that such rampaging thievery is the most insidious virus in the country. And now, the people are watching.

Mining for Justice

The decision taken by the Pranab Mukherjee-led Group of Ministers to ensure mining corporations share 26% of their net annual profits with displaced locals is highly laudable. The mining sector in India is in urgent need of cleanup. In almost every resource-rich part of the country, mining mafias have emerged that have vice-like control over the extraction of natural resources. Much like in post-Soviet Russia, India’s vast quantities of mineral wealth have resulted in the creation of a group of mining “oligarchs”, leaders who have utilised their local influence to control the flow of natural resources, often working in connivance with major corporate entities. As these mining oligarchs have become richer, many have chosen to enter politics; in states like Karnataka and Jharkhand, the mining lobby has direct influence on who sits in the chief minister’s chair.

Corruption in the mining sector is a top-to-bottom affair. People within the mining industry insist they need to pay bribes to everyone involved, from the thekedaar who watches over the mine to the local police officer. In states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, a lot of the most resource-rich areas are under the control of the Naxals, who the oligarchs strike deals with. This is an important source of revenue for the Naxalite movement. The failure to reform the industry speaks of a lack of political will. It also helps fund what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called “the gravest threat to internal security.”

However, the decision has not found universal approval within government circles. It was attacked by the head of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who said a 26% profit-sharing ratio would be a big disincentive for corporations looking to invest in the sector. Ahluwalia believes this will be an unwanted drain on companies just at the moment the mining sector is looking to expand its work in India. This is not an atypical decision from Ahluwalia, who seems to believe the role of the Planning Commission is to make life as easy as possible for major corporations, instead of focusing on the needs of the citizenry.

But if the government goes ahead with its plan – and with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee backing it, it should have the legs – there are a series of pitfalls they will have to negotiate. The most important is to establish clear and firm guidelines for the delivery of this 26% of profit to locally displaced populations. In an industry already beset with corruption, this is not going to be easy. It is well-known that government rewards and subsidy systems in India are prone to hijack, with allocations only occasionally reaching intended recipients.

The second issue the government will have to fight is there is now a real incentive for mining companies to not declare their profits. While this is less likely in companies that export natural resources, because it becomes almost impossible to under-invoice, companies involved in selling resources domestically will see a direct benefit in under-declaring their profits. The government needs to set up a monitoring agency to make sure local populations are not being deprived of the share they have been promised.

Mukherjee’s scheme is an admirable one in theory. If it is implemented with the care needed, it could have a great impact on some of the poorest parts of India, even as it silences one of the key arguments the Naxalite movement uses.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye. Caesar Arriveth

(a shorter version of this piece appeared as the edit in the Sunday Guardian on 7th November)



In those distant times when a toga was standard attire for the dapper gentleman-about-town, and not solely the party accessory of choice in American undergraduate fraternities, the Caesar would occasionally leave behind the magnificent ramparts and towers of Rome and tour the dominions, where he could see firsthand what life and livelihood were really like in those scattered little dots that relied on his Great Benevolence.

The visit of the Emperor would cause huge excitement. The local chieftains and warlords (especially those not tainted by war widow housing scandals) clamoured for an audience with the Emperor. The roads, usually so shoddily built they would cave in if it rained two days in a row, would be especially reinforced; after all, the Imperial Chariot was a weighty beast, with shining spokes of gold and bulletproof windows certified by 50 Cent himself. It would not have done for the almighty Caesar’s chariot to fall through the surface, into the cesspool of muck and refuse that swirled under these poor Dominion-dwellers their entire lives.

The Imperial tours were important because this was the time when the largesse of Rome would be apportioned, and the chieftains would spend years and years fashioning for themselves begging bowls, which they would call by strange names, like SENSEX and BSE. They would shout loudly about how big their bowls had become over the last few years, and how big their bowls could be, if the Emperor, in his wisdom, decided to help them just a bit.

As it is with all men of Great Benevolence, the Emperor would play favourite, doling out his bounty with some care. How difficult it was to rule the entire world only he knew. And those quivering beards in the Senate of Rome would not allow him to do just as he pleased. Their messages would be passed on: Commodius would say: “The dark warriors of Sumeria have the thorium we need for our new nuclear-powered arrows. They must be kept happy. Give them some gold, and a new donkey cart.” Incantus would say: “but their enemies, the Assyrians, hold the key to the magical kingdom of Afpak. They are weak, but petulant. Give their king a bribe. Call it a military loan.” Then there were others, like Emmanuleus, who instead of giving advice would inexplicably leave to run for Mayor of Chicago.

Perhaps the strangest behaviour would be seen within one tiny subsection of society, the Drum Beaters. The Drum Beaters were a group who enjoyed suffixing scattered initials to their name to convey a sense of gravitas, as in, Msduttus NDTV, and Sagarikus CNNIBN, and Arnahiccupicicus TNOW, and their job was to assist the spread of information to the populace. Because debate in dominion society was always rough and ready, the vital qualification for this job was the ability to speak at the same decibel level as the trumpet of a baby elephant (the Romans had machines to measure these things); over the years, this ability to speak very loudly, and very fast, was confused with the ability to identify and solve all that ailed dominion life. Soon all the chieftains, policemen and warriors, even the best thinkers of the day, would go to their debates, and try and show everyone that they too could speak very loudly, and very fast.

Our studies show that the Emperor’s visit generated two easily identifiable reactions amongst these Drum Beaters. The more indulgent of the lot – let us call them the Liberal-Epicureans – would see the Emperor’s visit as a good chance to finally interact with someone of intellect, dignity, style and importance equal to their own. As the world watched, they would sit the Emperor and his wife down and smile knowingly, as if to say: “yes, if you can imagine, I live amongst these crude folk, who know not Sartre or Glenn Beck. It is a weary life we lead, you having to rule the entire world, me having to shout inanities incessantly.” And then, as an aside, “I came to your inauguration in Rome, you know. Did you see my NDTV van?”

The second type of Drum Beater was of the taskmaster variety, the Incautious Stoics, if you will. This people were self-acknowledged experts at the Harangue. The Emperor’s visit thus became a chance to ask why thousands of things had not been done. “Why have you given our neighbours flying chariots? And where is all the money that was promised us? And are you actually saying you won’t be solving that intractable self-determination/border dispute during your three day visit here? For shame.”

Dominion society was full of such characters. Such as the merchants, who when the Emperor visited, would quickly appliy their makeup, pull out the old leather boots & fishnet stockings and hit the streets with their finest “come here, big boy” looks. These merchants’ God, Commercius, was actually the Emperor’s poodle. If the Emperor was happy, Commercius would wag his fluffy tail, and these merchants could rest happy knowing their best Julia Roberts-in-Pretty Woman impressions were not going unnoticed.

All in all, it was a strange, mysterious time, shrouded in the mists of the past. There must be some lessons for us in the here and now, but for the life of me I can’t figure them out.

(My extensive research for this editorial involved finding a Youtube clip of that scene where Joauqin Phoenix returns to Rome in Gladiator. All complaints about the historical accuracy of the facts noted above should therefore be sent to: Ridley Scott, Director, Hollywood).