Inheritance of Looks

The regular reflex of a rational man on receiving the news of a new born is to congratulate. But even before he is done with it, he pops up the question which creates an identity crisis. Literally. "Whom does the baby resemble?" To me, infancy is the closest that anything can get to Communism. Like puppies and Iphones, I find all the babies same. They may vary in size and shade, but they all look alike to me. It also my firm belief that they appear same to everyone. How else would you explain couples with infants changing their whatsapp DP on a daily basis. The picture is always that of the baby. Just the color of the baby's shirt changes. The only motive behind this mundane ritual is to help the parents identify their baby in case he chooses to join a melee of his friends in a mall or at a park. This anecdotal evidence saves me from being embarrassed about my personal disability.

Amongst my innumerable cerebral handicaps is my inability to identify people. The best I can get to is to categorize the faces as "familiar" and "unfamiliar". While people solve crosswords or Sodukus for intellectual stimulus, my favorite pastime is to recollect the name of the person who greeted me in the lift as I entered the office. Such puzzles often keep me engaged for days. Even a smartphone without a camera will do a better job at facial recognition than me. With such acute problem, it is too onerous a task to trace the ancestry of a baby's facial features.

It is also not always the case that a child would exactly resemble the parents. As a kid, I vividly recollect my parents telling nosy guests that I resemble my paternal grandmother while my brother got his looks from our maternal grandfather. The guests never met either of my grandparents and the conversation soon moved to other equally pointless subjects like politics and neighbours. While both of us do have certain features of our respective progenitors, I still doubt if the answer was entirely true. We would, probably, know only when we grow as old as them. However, an astute analysis of the answer reveals that it maintains the delicate balance of between patriarchy and matriarchy. An apocryphal theory is that the incessant wars between my parents on my resemblance came to an end with the arrival of my brother and the subsequent equitable settlement on the claims over the genetic propagation of their respective families. 

In my case, however, there is no such fight for supremacy. I am more than willing to let my better half take the credit for my newborn's looks for I know the horrors that lurk in the future if he takes after me. The ordeal of living with a visage that neither inspires confidence nor invokes sympathy would be the running theme of my autobiography, if I ever write one. But such self-effacing doesn't come to my rescue because people want an answer.

It took me a few falters before I discovered a bureaucratic way out of the conundrum. Pass the buck. So now, when people ask me about the looks of my son, my cheeky repartee is, "You tell me". While it has provided me some respite, it failed to throw up an answer. Well, it is stupid to expect solutions from bureaucratic processes. In the instant case, the result of the exercise reeked of participant bias. Respondents from my phonebook unanimously declared that he looks like me while those from my wife's bet their life that he resembled her.

At this point, it is only fair that a few facts be disclosed for a correct understanding of the results. It happens that the arresting feature of my little one is his nose. Broad and flat, like both his parents have. Just that it looks cute on him and functional on us. For my wife, it isn't her best feature; for me, it isn't the worst. We have made peace with ours. But our maid, who gives the boy his daily massage, unfailingly nudges his nose upwards. My mother, who has been there and done that, smirks at both her effort and my wife's hope. I, however, have no qualms with it. Long ago, somewhere around the time I realized the finality of my nasal aesthetics,  I irretrievably concluded that sharpness of nose is inversely related to that of the mind. I cite our only Prime Minister without a majority to successfully complete his term as the best testimony to my hypothesis.

So when people take his nose as the clinching evidence to settle the issue of his resemblance, it is only natural that it would throw up mixed results. The whole process further reinforced my indifference on the subject. No matter how far I look back into the genealogy of either of my son's parents, I hardly find anything that is even remotely remarkable. But what amuses me is that before he learned to talk, he managed to polarize an entire bunch of mature educated adults within a fortnight of his arrival into this world. Probably, it is the telltale sign of the times we live in.

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In Pursuit of Better Times

Most people attribute drinking to their problems. I am no different from others. I have got so many problems to ponder upon that I find seven nights a week absolutely insufficient to give each problem its due contemplation. Some problems are so complex that I have a problem in understanding the problem. Nevertheless, I try to strike a healthy balance between the sensibilities of my heart and the capabilities of my liver.

One such problem that has been troubling me for quite sometime is the fate of a dying airline. I have never understood why the King of Good Times got into aviation. The only thing that is common between liquor and aviation is that both promise you to get a high. But the similarity ends there. Liquor is an easy business. Just like Cigarette, Pan Masala, Beedi, Ghutka etc. They are all built on weakness of men. You don’t need to try too hard to convince them buy your product. Just make someone feel that he is jobless, worthless or useless, he would pick one or all of the above. And we have one billion people in this country in the guise of parents, teachers, bosses, leaders, friends, neighbours, journalists, TV anchors etc to make every other person feel guilty about his biological existence. No wonder you find half the population at a pan shop, wine shop or at a bar and the other half searching for one. Therefore, every person from the manufacturer to the retailer invariably makes profit on intoxicants.

But aviation is a serious business, where history tells us that loss making is the norm and profit is an exception. It is a serious business where the likes of self-anointed kings and me shouldn’t be getting into. He was better off making beer and I was better off buying it. He did not stop there. He changed what we saw and redefined what one could show. He made calendars where one looked for everything other than the date. He launched satellite channel that made FTV look like channel for the grannies and taught that Bikini was the new blouse. He made dropping cloths not just fashionable but a way of life.  In fact, at times, some of the brand ambassadors started to even forget wearing them. He empowered thousands of women by giving them a career which provided them with mindboggling salaries with negligible expenses since they lived on minimal food and cloth and often slept on beaches. They were singularly responsible for increasing the savings rate and the healthy CASA ratios boasted by our banks.

After the success of such a revolutionary business model which generated wealth by selling wine and women, the obvious way to grow would be on the same lines. An astute move in this direction would be to go for a forward integration by starting a chain of premium dance bars. With both liquor and ladies already in place, all that would have been needed was the real estate, which is definitely much cheaper than those Airbuses that are as helplessly grounded as the passengers they ought to been carrying. Unfortunately, instead of a gradual progression into a related sector, there was a tectonic shift whose tremors are yet to subside. I feel really sad at the thought that the beer which gave me, and an entire generation, its first sip of forbidden pleasure would no longer be available. Life wouldn’t be same if we allow the group to collapse. We will be forced to go back to the grey hues of FTV and stay contended with the sepulchral marches of anorexic women with deadpan expressions. Calendars would be back as sheets of paper that record your missed deadlines and miserable appointments. Bikini will be a chapter in South Pacific Handbook and Bagpiper will be a member of the ceremonial music bands. A socio-economic revolutionary who redefined Roti, Kapda aur Makan as Beer, Bikini and Beach would be a martyr on the altar of stupidity.

With recession and inflation already looming large, tragedy of such epic propositions would be too cruel for a generation which is as clueless as the Deccan Chargers team. However, I still think that all is not lost. The forward integration can still be pursued. All those planes which stranded in the hangars could be converted into Flamenco Lounges. Well, “dance bars” sound so Udipi restaurant-ish, which our King of Good Times wouldn’t like even in his not-so-good times. The svelte flight attendants, who are wasting time reading morose letters explaining why their salary cannot be credited, could be gainfully reemployed as bartenders. For these poor ladies, whose sizes have gone from zero to sub-zero ever since the in-flight meals got reduced to water and fermented sandwich, this would be the best poverty alleviation scheme they could dream of. Further, for an efficient and competitive service, just announce that the whole thing is actually a part of the reality show, Model Hunt. Considering the scarcity of real estate in metros, having ready 200-seater place is a bonanza. The no-frills Red planes could be parked at non-metros and even district headquarters. Occasionally, if their turbines are still not rusted and the pilots not poached by other airlines, they could take off and you have new product – Sky Bar. Trust me, the airports would be raking in more moolah from parking and valet charges of customers than the UDF.

Please don’t dismiss this as a compulsive rambling of a mind woefully entangled in the affinities of ale. If the same thing was put across by a MNC consulting firm, whose consultants charge millions to state the obvious, it would be treated as a recipe for redemption. The stock values would soar and venture capitalists would appear like the ants after rains. Sadly, it is the natural order that anything that comes unsolicited and without a price tag is never valued. However, it is difficult to rein in your prattles when you find your earliest enchantress slipping away into the mists of oblivion. 

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Doubt IV: Telangana Revisited

Three years ago, I made this post on Telangana. I, then, spoke from my observations as one among the hordes of engineering graduates who aimlessly join colleges and aimlessly pass out of it. Today, I will not claim to be wiser than I was then. But, I am, slightly, better informed. I am posted at Vijayawada and I hold the additional charge of Khammam. One in Andhra, the other in Telangana. Every week, I shuttle between the two places. Double work, double responsibilities, double reprimands, but single salary. Thanks to my jurisdiction which is predominantly rural, I got the opportunity to meet more than a dozen farmers. Farmers from both Telangana and Andhra regions. I must have spent, on an average, half an hour with each of them. The motive behind the interaction, or interrogation as they would call, was to ascertain their income. I have questioned them in an excruciatingly detailed manner about their families, lifestyles, crop cycles, credit facilities, past, present, future etc. And like any typical loquacious villager, they would tell me more than I would ask. I have also interacted with a lot of civil contractors from both the regions who execute irrigation projects in both the regions. It is these interactions which form the basis of my present post. I am not a sociologist or a political scientist. My observations could be totally wrong. But I will say, what I have to.

In this post, like in many others, it has been projected that a separate Telangana will fetch more water to the farmers in the region and, hence, greater prosperity. But, irrigation projects have become extremely complex in the present era with issues like environment, displacement of people (especially tribals), rehabilitation, resettlement, compensation etc. The separatists often project those from other regions to be shrewd, dominating and successful lobbyists. But even these attributes could not help them in making Polavaram a reality. Last year, when I cruised on Godavari from Rajamundry to Perantalapalli, all that was visible of the project were the concrete blocks placed by the survey teams indicating the extent of submergence. Polavaram is a testimony to the compounding complexities of mega projects in recent times. A new state would just be an addition to the existing hurdles. Every proposed project will reach the hallowed portals of the apex court, with the downstream farmers appealing for a stay. Yes, I understand that the constitution clearly leaves river water sharing to the legislature. But that did not deter Karnataka and Tamil Nadu from knocking the doors of the Supreme Court. And to overcome all these, political stability is crucial because decision-making becomes the first causality of political instability. Empirical observation reveals frequent leadership changes in smaller legislatures.

Hypothetically, let us assume a utopian scenario. There is an unbelievable consensus among the leaders in the proposed state. They exhibit imaginative statesmanship and succeed convincing all the stakeholders to agree for the irrigation projects. The projects are completed well within timeframe and the cost escalation is so less that the projects become a case study for schools of governances in the universities across the world. Will it usher in prosperity in the agrarian lives?

During my interaction with the farmers, both from Andhra and Telengana regions, the problems faced by them had little to do with water and more with other issues like increasing balkanization of farmlands, salinity of soil, raising prices of agricultural inputs etc. Since, most of them have to endure months at a stretch without seeing a single rupee of income, they just can’t wait for remunerative prices to arrive. Initially, I was very happy to notice the presence of large number of cold storage units in this part of the state. I was happy that finally technology has empowered the poor farmer to fetch him the best price for the crop. But my joy was short-lived, when I enquired a little. I was told that produce in the cold storage mostly belonged to the non-farmers. The real beneficiaries are the commission agents. And except a few large farmers, who have the financial strength to wait and preserve them in cold storages, the rest can never avail the best prices. The middlemen procure and preserve them in cold storages. Officially, the commission agents earn 1% of the transaction. Remember, it is one percent of the transaction, not the profit. (So they make money, irrespective whether the farmer makes profit.) But, the actual earnings would be much more due to price fluctuation, discrepancies in weighing and discounting on the account on “poor” quality of the produce. I have come across agents who earn Rs 35-40 lakhs a year. Now, consider this. A person makes Rs 35-40 lakhs a year, without having even an office. He does not have to bear the vagaries of nature. He does not suffer from risk of pests. Most importantly, he does not have to wait for six to nine months. This man does not have an identity, unless the UID cards give him one. Some have registrations. But many don’t. They don’t file their returns of income. There are thousands of such faceless agents who thrive on the sweat, blood and misery of the farmer. Yes, you have market yards, legislations, rules, bye-laws, vigilance systems and many other systems which aim to protect the farmers and ensure they get the right price. For example, the rice millers are barred from procuring paddy from persons who are not farmers. The Government has framed every possible law and rule to protect the farmer. But farmer is in such desperation for money that he would be more eager to cooperate with any deviation if he assured of instant cash.

Do those, who have burnt public property worth in the last few weeks, have any imaginative solution to such issues? I am surprised that none of the blogs have addressed these issues. Can you remove these faceless agents from Telangana? There are many of them who belong to other states, let alone other regions of Andhra Pradesh.

People speak of the employment which the irrigation projects would generate. Again, on the surface it looks very attractive. And when you apply a dash Keynesianism, it appears as if it is time-tested. Scratch a little, the facts become different. I deal with a lot of civil contractors who execute irrigation projects. And they do not use local labour. Most of them get labour from states like Maharashtra, Chattisgarh and Orissa. They claim that the labour from these regions is cheaper than local labour. Further, since the workers are away from their native, they turn up regularly for work and consequently, the absenteeism is low. Let us leave aside the genuineness of their reasons to opt for labour outside the state. The fact remains that execution of irrigation projects in a region may not necessarily translate into employment opportunities for the residents of the region.

Therefore, there is no guarantee that the new state will benefit either the farmers or daily wage labourers. These form the bulk of the poor and impoverished.

So, please enlighten me, in whose name, the public property worth crores are being destroyed?

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Krishna Connection

Vijayawada. That is the place chosen for me to begin my career. Everyone would like to work in metros and big cities. That is where the action for IRS lies. Big cases, complicated issues and ingenious chartered accountants collude to sharpen the learning curve. But small towns have their own charm, I was told. If you dispute my terming of Vijayawada as a ‘small town’, all I can say in defense is that small is relative. The last time I referred to Vijayawada as small, the listener broke into a sarcastic laugh. An accomplished bureaucrat who retired as Chief Secretary, he must have felt that I was being snobbish. I can’t blame him much. Even my batchmate in the IAS, who is posted in Eluru, protested instantly at my judgment of urban sizes.

It is characteristic of my service that we don’t begin with places like Rampachodavaram. Atleast not till the Government thinks of taxing collection of honey and sale of wild jackfruits. And that, considering the reluctance to bring agriculture in the ambit of taxes, seems very remote. So for IRS, where a lot of our colleagues start their careers at places like Mumbai and Delhi, Vijayawada is a small place.

So what is it that makes small places charming? It is the people. The day I was to reach here, my train was scheduled to arrive here at 4:45 in the morning. I called the office the previous day and asked if they could send someone to the railway station as I was new to the place and was arriving at an odd hour. In about an hour’s time, I got a call from the driver. I asked him to be at the station by 4:30 in the morning. He said he would be at 4 am. And he was. It was just the beginning. It is ten days since I came here. And I have never come across anyone who thinks twice when you ask him for something. People here respect you to the point of embarrassment.

One reason could be because officers of my rank are few. There are five officers of the rank Assistant / Deputy Commissioners in Vijayawada. The corresponding number in Hyderabad is more than 50. Other could be historical. During my interaction with a senior officer, who hails from this place, I was told the behavior of people towards Government officials is result of the colonial history. Since the region, unlike Hyderabad, was under the colonial rule, the people are well-acquainted with administrative machinery and are more conscious of the power, potential and the reach of Government. This is something which would be put to test soon. How?

My jurisdiction consists mainly of old parts of the city and adjoining rural areas. The economic growth is not very vibrant in these parts. But that doesn’t grant me immunity from upward revision of revenue targets. My predecessor felt that collections have reached optimum levels and are likely to plateau. The only way to increase collection was to widen the tax net. So I have sent about 400 letters to assesses, who were not filing returns to do so. Non-filing of Income-tax returns when you have a taxable income or when you belong to particular class of assesses like companies could lead to imprisonment. The response to these letters would reveal whether the people here are truly respectful of the authority of Government.

Personally what I like the most about small cities is their contribution on the professional front. You get to deal with all types of cases. In big cities, there is an element of specialization in the jurisdiction. Some charges deal with only salary cases, some with business cases and others with companies. However, in small cities, the jurisdiction is territorial. So one gets to deal all kinds of cases and consequently the experience is more varied. Secondly, the workload is relatively more manageable. Not that every colleague of mine in the metros are getting buried under the piles of files, but a few of them do have quite a Herculean task ahead of them. And for me, after two years of slumber at Mussoorie and Nagpur, keeping myself awake when sun is still high is in itself a Herculean task.

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Ayn Rand in Wonderland

This month, Atlas Shrugged completes fifty years of its existence. It reminds of my non-iterative love-hate relationship with Ayn Rand. I was in high school when I completed this book. It was the first piece of serious literature I ever read. And, expectedly, I was blown off by it

When I look back, the book resembles like an intellectual version of a bollywood potboiler. A fantastic escape for the ordinary into extraordinary. Everyone is exceptionally talented in the book. Some even exceptionally rich. Common man has no place in her society. He is a passive sheep who has to be led by the ‘minds of the world’. Only people who are the ‘best’ of the society need to be talked about. Sounds like an intellectual Page 3. Doesn’t it? Such artistic liberty may be fine for a book like Fountainhead which deals with objectivism at an individual level. But when you try to extrapolate it to the wider canvas of society, characterization should be representative. Rand easily forgets that all those “talented” businessmen and artists need the man on the road for their survival. Her conception of Atlantis, completes her denial of the common man. It is surprising that she chooses a fantasy land as a ‘rational’ solution to the problem.

Despite the flagrant contradiction, Atlas Shrugged comes out as the most influential book after Bible for the Americans. But I don’t find any influence of Atlas Shrugged on America. Rather, America stands for everything that was denounced in the book. Instead of innovation and ingenuity, the American corporations now rely on non-tariff barriers, strategic superiority and even brute force to make money. The nation that has a statue for liberty is holding thousands under indefinite detention violating principles of natural justice. The biggest joke is that while Rand celebrates the Dollar as the proof of infinite superiority of the human mind, every dollar itself states that “In God We Trust”.

The only visible influence is that most people just pick up Rand’s hedonistic morality to justify their ways and views of life. For this, Rand creates numerous characters to reinforce her idea of morality. One excellent example is, Hank Rearden, a man who invents some strange blue steel, which is supposed to be the elixir of infrastructure. The society, externally, and his family, internally, are depicted as thankless leeches who suck him for their survival. And just like the gullible readers, this man of munificence, suddenly realizes that there is nothing wrong in abandoning his factory and family. I say, he should actually be thankful to his family members for giving him a chance to be their savior and stoke his ego.

Societally speaking, what if Hank Rearden invented a cure for AIDS rather than that silly blue steel? Would all those who worship him still agree if he refuses to sell the drug at a price other than that he determines and only to people whom he chooses? Or still further, what if my happiness lies chopping the fingers of persons whose name begins with “H”? After all, by the Randian philosophy happiness should be the only guiding principle. So at close quarters, the whole philosophy becomes animalistic way of life. (May be that is why their sex is characterized by violence, rape, BDSM and adultery.)

Randians might argue that your happiness should be pursued only to the extent that it doesn’t hurt others. But who will draw the line? A neutral regulator? That can’t be. As Anaconia in his celebrated speech says “production cannot be decided by those who do not produce”. So unless you are a serial killer, you can’t regulate my homicides.

May be Ayn Rand did not know how to find answers to all these. So she very simply created an imaginary isolated land where all like minded people get away. Great. But why will the world stop? If Newton did not wonder about apples, Clinton would have. I wonder how all her “extraordinary” minds were so like-minded. Why did not their intellectual superiority have different perspectives of life and happiness?

She calls those who tax the ‘productive’ population to fund welfare schemes as ‘looters’. Her naivety doesn’t get better than this. It is because of the ‘looters’ that the ‘minds of the world’ had law and order and social and physical infrastructure on which their genius could blossom. Again, my friends on the other side of fence would love Rand as she gives them a reason to cuss the tax collectors.

Ayn Rand understood neither man nor the society. She knew neither economics nor politics. Yet she set off to paint a grandiose philosophy and, expectedly, it was neither rational nor sustainable. She should have done some reading of her compatriot, Dostovesky. The consequence of assumed intellectual superiority, and the resultant liberty to act by personal judgment alone, was beautifully brought out through Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. While he showed how one Raskolnikov was an abberation, Ayn Rand fills up the Atlas Shrugged with umpteen Raskolnikovs and claims them to be the saviors of the world. Atlas Shrugged is interesting, but, as Abi calls it, a hoax. To sum up, Mark Skousen could not be more correct when says,“John Galt – it's time to come home and go to work.”

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Edukotla Andhrula Atma Gauravam

It is disgusting to hear YSR, saying that the issue of separate statehood for Telangana would be decided by Sonia Gandhi. The State Congress Chief even says that “she would be the ultimate word on it.”

Irrespective of the outcome, can someone please tell me who is she to decide. Does she belong to this place? Did she win an election from here? Is she aware of the history of this region? Or can she atleast spell “Telangana” without looking into a prepared text?

Shame on the CM and rest of the Sonia Sycophants a.k.a Congress legislators. You are worse than those who fall at the feet of Amma. Unlike you, atleast, they don’t sell themselves to an outsider.

Worse. The party founded on the premise of restoring aarukotla andhrula atma gauravam, is totally silent on this shameless outsourcing. Neither are those who raised hue and cry over her Italian origins.

They might be in favour of Congress’ refusal to grant a separate Telangana. But that doesn’t mean that they should be mute spectators of a political party transferring the mandate given by people to someone who cannot even speak their language.

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Telangana - Whose Cause is it Anyway

Seven years ago, on a cloudy but warm winter afternoon, a bunch of sophomores barged into our class. They finally managed to snatch a time to get themselves introduced to us, en masse in our classroom, in the typical engineering college way. A short bespectacled guy ordered us to introduce ourselves giving details of our school, intermediate college, academic aggregates and our future aims. We were a class of 60 and I am sure on that day there were atleast 50 of them in the class. At the end of the session, I found except for 5-6 students, the rest professed their ‘aim’ to be ‘MS in US’. They all echoed each other just as if they were doctored in a community school of a communist state. It didn’t require great brains to decipher that most of them were not using their brains. They were merely repeating what the society instilled in them. And there lies the greatest curse of Andhra Pradesh in general and Telangana in particular.

High industrialization, and subsequent development, of neighboring Tamil Nadu is often attributed to their colonial advantage. But strictly speaking, the British never bothered beyond the ports of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised when a decade back I found the best of stationary stocked at Walden, which was targeted, both in its pricing and packaging, at the upwardly cosmopolitan, being produced not at Chennai, Bangalore or NOIDA but an interior town in Tamil Nadu, Sivakasi. And that’s not a lone example. You find towns like Erode, Thiruppur, Dindugul etc booming with various small and medium scale industries. And these don’t lie in the Kaveri delta, which can be the nearest analogy to the Andhra Region, if and only if, Karnataka releases water that year. One reason I could figure out is the entrepreneurial streak in them. The will to create and do something on their own rather than work under someone, even if the pay isn’t quite appealing. Self-pride, something that is synonymous with the Tamils, looms large in them, though often it turns into jingoism. Even the politicians there chip in their bit. The country’s only steel plant which has neither an iron-ore mine nor a coal mine in its proximity is the Salem. The politicians from Tamil Nadu managed to force the Centre to invest in something that defies economic logic, just to ensure there would be regional development. What has been the contribution of the TRS in this regards? It is more than two years since the party has been in the Union Government. It holds two portfolios which directly deal with fate of poor and downtrodden, Labour Ministry and Rural Development Ministry.

Some of you might site the examples of numerous ITES firms being started by NRIs. But, investing in a booming sector with seemingly perpetual rosy prospects can by no means be called entrepreneurship. It is being plain opportunistic. Just the way people are making quick bucks out of the booming real estate business. Those NRIs who profess their ‘love, admiration and concern’ for their ‘home’ and its ‘development’, would do well to invest in ventures that are more locally relevant, that would help in the development of entire region and region does not mean the boundaries of Cyberabad municipality. Start projects which would be able mitigate the plight of displaced and deceased farmers, whose land is being given to the gyms and pool rooms of your offices. Whose MSPs are kept stagnant so that you get subsidies to take your spouses to exotic locations on the pretext of visiting industrial exhibitions. Who would have to wait for a generation to get power and water, so that you can run your premises with uninterrupted power supply.

So, my fellow classmates/ batchmates - turned-NRIs, I guess it should be pretty clear to you now why Telangana is backward. If you can do something on these lines, please do. Else leave it us. We have enough politicians out here and we don’t plan to outsource our politics to you.

This post may be very similar to what Kuffir posted. But what I am trying to say is that the attitude of people hasn’t changed much. Those who leave the shores today aren’t very different from those who left during the time of Kuffir’s graduation. Atleast, I wish that the present lot doesn’t indulge in distorting the facts in the guise of representing of people, of whom they know little.

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Affirmative Action and Reservations – The Missing Links

The recent reservation debates, while drawing comparisons with Affirmative Action (AA) of USA, fail to highlight the proactive facet of AA. AA is superior to our reservations both in letter, spirit and scope. While the Indian reservation system extends to the Government sector alone, the historic Executive Order 11246 issued by President Lyndon Johnson covers almost 200,000 government contractors and sub-contractors.

This article, while quoting Adarand Constructors v. Pena fails to inform the background of the case. The case challenged one of the remarkable components of AA, the minority set-aside programs. These require the Federal, State and Local Governments to set aside a percentage of funds exclusively for minority contractors. Such provisions are glaringly missing in our reservation system. Public Works Employment Act, 1977, which was the first legislation to implement set aside programs, was challenged in the Supreme Court by white contractors and the Supreme Court upheld the law in Fullilove Vs Klutznick. Sadly, the Bhopal Declaration, which touted for such measures, hibernates in the UPA's Common Minimum Programme.

On the AA front, the Supreme Court of USA has played a pioneering role upholding it and ensuring that it is followed in various aspects inter alia education, recruitment, entrance tests etc. Some of them deserve a mention here.

The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, in addition to ruling in favour of racial preference for disadvantaged groups, also held that “the goal of achieving a diverse student body is sufficiently compelling to justify consideration of race in admissions decisions” and that being a minority group could “be deemed a plus in a particular applicant’s file”. Unfortunately, in India, instead of recognizing the role reservation in ensuring diversity, it is treated as a sop to the deprived classes.

In the United States v. Paradise, the Supreme Court upheld the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama’s rulings with regard to discrimination in the employment of black trooper. In 1972, the court ordered to hire one black trooper for every white trooper till the percentage of black trooper reaches 25, when it found that in the past 37 years not even a single black trooper was recruited. After 11 years, when the District Court found that the progress had been tardy, it followed up with the order of promotion of one black trooper for each white trooper elevated in rank. On the contrary, in India, most of the reservations go unfilled and administratively get reclassified as “Backlog Vacancies”.

On the issue of entrance tests for employment purposes, the U.S Supreme Court, in the Griggs v Duke Power Company (1971), ruled that the Civil Services Act banned discriminatory employment practices that cause exclusion of disadvantaged groups, when it cannot be shown that those practices relate to job performance. The employment practices include intelligence tests and minimum education qualifications. Further, to ensure that the practices followed relate to job performance, the court ruled that the correlation between high scores in tests and high job performance must be shown by the employers.

In Albemarle Paper Company Vs Moody (1975), the Supreme Court ruled that culturally biased tests were illegal even if the employer was not discriminating intentionally. In Connecticut et al Vs Adele (1982), the same court said that using culturally biased tests were illegal even if the state promoted more blacks than whites. Infact, till the Civil Services Act, 1991 was passed, most recruitment processes followed a practice called Race Norming where additional marks where awarded to the minorities to offset the cultural bias in the tests. In sharp contrast, glaring cultural biases like testing English vocabulary in exams like CAT and predominant usage of English as the medium of tests have gone unchallenged in our country where most of the disadvantaged students are tutored in vernacular medium.

Such comprehensive and detailed implementation of Reservations is sorely missing in India. Yes, we can’t compare AA with reservations. They have a far wider, deeper and more honest reach.

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OBC Reservation - Replies to the Editor

The following are the letters that appeared in The Hindu yesterday. Surprisingly, not a single letter was in favour of the proposed OBC reservation. It seems to be consistent with the latest biased reporting of The Hindu. OK, that would make the topic for another post. For now here are my responses to the letters.

The report that the Human Resource Development Ministry is considering the Mandal Commission formula of 27 per cent reservation for the Backward Classes in Central educational institutions, IITs, and IIMs is shocking. It comes at a time when India is ready to take off as an economy. The proposal, if implemented, will harm the very institutions that have contributed the most towards India's resurgence.
Reservation is the easy way out for successive governments that have failed to provide infrastructure at the grassroots to the backward communities to improve their competitiveness. The move will affect the quality of engineers and managers in future.
Shubhasish Chattoraj,
Kharagpur, W.B.

But the quality of our engineers and managers would remain intact when seats are bought with huge capitation fees. Right?

The furore over the proposal is quite justified. If a student ought to be recognised, it should be on the basis of his merit alone. One of the reasons for the dilution of standards in education is the quota system.
We Indians bemoan the constant exodus of bright students to countries abroad. But if a student's merit cannot secure for him a seat in the premier institutions of his country, he is perfectly justified in leaving for distant shores.
Anuradha Rajan,
Bangalore

Even otherwise no one is staying back here. Majority of them migrate for money. A few for better opportunities in terms of research and quality of education. I am yet to see someone who goes to the US Embassy because he just lost his seat due to reservations.

While our politicians have not proactively invested in capital assets like new institutes of higher education, they have no qualms about robbing seats in the name of social justice, discounting merit in the process, and pushing India further into the abyss of policy-induced incompetence. Discounting merit is no way to become a global knowledge society.
K. Chandrasekar,
Chennai

Where did these IITs, IIMs come from? They were established by the Government with the tax payers’ money. Taxes that were collected on every bar of soap and packet of salt that the teeming millions paid even during their poverty. Taxes that were collected with the promise that they too would have a share in fruits of development. Taxes that were collected 50 years ago when they were poorer than they are now. How much have these investments benifited the poor?

What do you call the numerous Kalinga Nagars and Gangavarams. It is today, after the terms such as “sustainable development”, “equitable growth” etc have become popular, that people are raising the issues of displacement and rehabilitation. The injustices of Bhakra Nangal or Nagarjuna Sagar are so bad, that the Government doesn’t even have a record of its rehabilitation program. So the foundation of the modern prosperity has been built on perpetuating poverty. Let us acknowledge and take affirmative action against that.

Robbing people of their lands and shooting at them is development. But upliftment of depressed sections and ensuring their assimilation into the mainstream is robbery. And what about the “policy-induced incompetence” of those “modern temples of humanity” which were supposed trickle down benefits. They couldn’t even trickle down water for drinking.

How long are we going to continue widening the reservation net? IITs, IIMs, and other such institutions have built a brand image with their outstanding quality — as reflected by recent mega salary offers to IIM graduates. If governments in the last six decades have not been able to bridge disparities and remove backwardness, surely the reservation policy is flawed or there has been lack of sincerity. Let us not politicise education for narrow ends.
Air Cmde (retd.) Raghubir Singh,
Pune

To say that the image of an institution shall be determined merely by their output is akin to rating a country by its per capita or a corporation by its profits. We have moved into an era where judgments are no more made by a single criterion, output. For a nation, the distribution of income is as important as its per capita. Similarly, for a corporation, it contribution to the society is as important as its profits. No wonder CSR is the buzzword these days. In the same length, for any institution aspiring to be world-class, it is important that there is diversity and inclusivity in its members.

Thanks to our politicians' lack of imagination and competence, reservation has been politicised to the extent where even honest and legitimate criticism is branded as anti-people. Why should the son of a doctor alone become a doctor was the question asked before the introduction of the reservation policy. Strangely the position is the same even after 60 years of implementation of this policy.
At this rate, even 100 years of reservation are not going to achieve the objective of the policy.
S. Rajagopalan,
Chennai

It is foolish to expect the injustice of 2500 years to be undone in 60 years. If anything, the inequalities have further widened in these 60 years. For 2500 years, they were made to suffer silently and you get impatient in a mere 60 years.

The move is far removed from the ground reality. Had reservation helped the children of my gardener, domestic help or driver get quality higher education, it would have made sense. The primary education system is such that their children drop out much before being able to benefit from reservation at college level.
Today those who get admission to colleges through reservation hail from a good socio-economic background, as they are second- or third-generation beneficiaries. The Government should instead focus on primary education.
Parul Bajaj,
Faridabad, Haryana

Yes. They all would have got better education if we had told them about the provisions and schemes available. If we had helped them to fill the applications. If we had taken the trouble to know the details and procedures to avail the benefits and inform them. If we had not let our miserliness appoint a child/adolescent for our chores, when he/she should have been at the school. Let us honestly admit. We don’t do anything for the depressed classes. And no scheme succeeds without people’s participation. We shift the responsibilties of policy formulation, information dissemination, efficient implementation etc to the Government. Then let them do their job to best of their abilities and resources.

Focus on primary education?

Every one knows that perfection is a mirage and in India, an impossibility. Diverting the attention to primary education, is just a tactic to delay reservations indefinitely. First, you would say primary and then secondary and by the time they achieve proficiency in that, the disparities would widened beyond repair. In any case, more than 70% of our Government's efforts go into primary education.

What one needs to understand is success of primary education is related to host of factors. It is not that you establish a school and ask students to attend. It is inherently linked to various socio-economic factors. We need multi-pronged approach to tackle it and reservations in educational institutes is one among them.

The proposal is in line with the vote-bank politics of the government of the day. If implemented, it will frustrate the youth. Students who have hitherto landed jobs on merit will get demoralised as their opportunities are sought to be curtailed.
Sankalp Shrivastav,
Karaikal, Pondicherry

Hold a referendum and this policy would get a thumping majority. Not the first-past-pole majority with which the MPs who voted for this constitutional amendment got elected. This is democracy, not vote-bank politics. The greatest good of the greatest number is the founding principle of any democracy. It is easy to blame the politicians. But we should know that they know the real India than any of the readers of English dailies.

The IIMs want to go global, increase their intake, but wouldn’t like to share a few seats for their own countrymen.

The corporate India is crying horse about merit. If they are so concerned, why don’t they establish their own institutes? They have been the single largest beneficiary of the elite education institutes. What has been their contribution to the Indian education system?

How much of funds have flown into the SSA or the Prarambhik Siksha Kosh? All that is given is to the elite institutes which anyway have a lot of funds. Again a class divide there. But even that pales in comparison to the Americans .

Every form of engineering, be it economic, political or scientific, redesigns the system for the greater good by adversely affecting a few. Similarly, social engineering would also call for the sacrifice of a few. And we should accept that just as we did not reject the previous processes.

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Minority Wins

Communal voting of ignorant masses, they say, is the secret of BJP’s electoral success. Then was the success of Congress and Communists a child of intellectual and informed voting? Simple statistics say otherwise. Decline of Congress’ vote share and adult illiteracy has been parallel. While Congress and other parties criticized, BJP is condemned. Even the allies of BJP, some as unscrupulous as DMK, still treat it as ideologically untouchable. It is depressing that in an age that is supposed to be the pinnacle of rational thought, discussions and debates on the rights of the Majority are done not with the mind, but with hearts.

Why is secularism a responsibility of the majority while unlawful, and often violent, demonstration, a right of the minorities? A handful of cartoons have taken the world by storm. But here we have an acclaimed Muslim painter who refuses to cloth Hindu deities. Artistic freedom they say. What prevents his “artistic freedom” from painting a nude Fatima? We don’t have any Fatwas against him. Why? Minority Rights.

Our secularism has reached such heights that while Lal Kishen could be stop Lalu Prasad, no one could stop the provoking speeches by Owaisis at Hyderabad’s Jama Masjid on the eve of Bush visit. This is the same city whose Police Commissioner was pushed around in his own office by burkha-clad women for arresting person linked with LeT. And the women got away with their hooliganism. Why? Minority Rights.

Let me make it plain that I am no pracharak for the Sangh Privar. Get me an EVM now and my finger would, in all probability, would go away from BJP. I have neither forgotten their communal canards nor forgiven their political pogroms. But what appalls me is that except the members of the Sangh Parivar, we don’t find a single soul who would recognize the rights of majority.

Those 7+ million swayamsevaks, of whom 4+ million religiously attend the Shakhas everyday, are neither fools nor mindless rioters. Their discipline and commitment, which is espoused through their work in tribal, rural and disaster-affected areas are never acknowledged. Our “erudite” sociologists never talk about the contribution of RSS. Its Vanvasi Kalyan Kendras in the tribal areas and Ekla Vidyalayas or single-teacher schools in several villages are no objects of fiction like the state-run schools. Yet, their work is reviled as Sankritisation of the tribals, while the work of Christian missionaries in North-east is hailed.

The socio-culture impact of the RSS’ field work and their political motive is the favorite topic for research and desertion for students and academics alike. I appreciate the pains taken by them to reach god forsaken corners of this country and enlighten us about their hidden agenda. But wouldn’t it be great for these to equally enlighten us about the manichaean of the Madrassas in their neightbourhood. Why is that everything that the RSS does is bad, while similar acts when replicated by minorities hailed?

Why does the phrase “Majority Rights” sound as an oxymoron in this country? Does a majority community have no rights? More importantly, should a majority community not have rights? No. Every community, irrespective of its demographic proportions, has a right to preserve and promote its way of life. If numerical preponderance is a symbol of security in itself, then why do Indians have Fundamental Rights. After all, Indians are an absolute majority in India. The reason lies in the fact that despite their numerical strength, the interests of every community, be it religious, regional or national, suffers from an inherent danger of being compromised by vested interests. And this has been precisely happening in subtle forms with the Hindus. Hence there is nothing to ashamed for any majority to assert its rights. There is no need, cultural, ethnical or ethical, for it to sacrifice its rights to favour the propagation of other communities.

The Samajwadi Party rakes up Muslim passions, Congress massacred Sikhs and innumerable other parties indulge in communal politics. But unfortunately, it is conveniently forgotten that rousing the passions of any religious group is as communal as rousing the passions of Hindus. It is time that the self-appointed guardians of all communities should be accorded equal respect and be judged by same yardsticks and the same history.

Update: As I was surfing through various sites in search of pictures, I found this blog. I haven't read it fully nor do I endorse all that it says. But it does give interesting alternative views.

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Sania Mirza - Third Round Rubicon

Sania out of Pacific Open. Well no one seems to be bothered as long as her shirt and skirts are open. Did you say that it sounds derogatory? The innumerable unsolicited forwards of her pictures that every guy gets in his mailbox ratifies what I said. And that’s the truth. Please don’t tell me that she created new found craze for tennis among kids and youth. Paes and Bhupathi should have inspired more with their half-a-dozen Grand Slams. And our sweet Sania adamantly refuses to violate the self-imposed fatwa of “Third Round Rubicon”. But thanks to her, we now know about so many exotic opens. Earlier, the only ones we knew were the Australian, French and the US. Our own Hyderabad, where the only knowledge of tennis comes from the usage to tennis balls to play indoor cricket in order to avoid collateral damage, has also had its Open. Such a Open and so open that even those applied for passes got wildcards. Of course, Sania won. The only one which she had won. I guess she too contracted from the fear of foreign lands from our cricket team. Cant blame the little girl for that.

No. I am not into Sania bashing as my knowledge on tennis is as poor are Inzamam’s knowledge of English. And of course she is blessed with the bountiful availability of time on her side to prove her mettle. But the coverage she gets is a trifle irritating. After Indira Gandhi she must be the only Indian female whose loss makes as much news as her victory. And its not just the media, the Government has fallen for it. I am not contesting the Government’s decision to confer upon her Padma Shri. When Kissinger can get a Nobel and MGR a Bharat Ratna, anyone can get anything. But what is appalling is the neglect of other young promising sportsmen. Are the feats of Harikrishna and Humpy in any manner less accomplished? Yet everyone knows the struggle they face for funding their training, leave alone recognition and brand endorsement. Well, guess they need to hone their “attitude” and wear better t-shirts to press meets.

It is time that Government and media stop drooling over glamour in sports, which is incidentally the monopoly of sexually frustrated Indian adolescents, and put their efforts in a manner the ownership and control of the sports resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good; that the operation of the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of sponsorship to the common detriment. Does it sound constitutional? Well, it is. But that part which isn’t justiciable.

Anyways, lets keep our fingers crossed. Not for those underprivileged sportspersons. Not for Sania to win. But for Sports Illustrated to cover her. They did a good job with Kuronikova and Sharapova. And I am sure the Indian has more talent to showcase. The Opens? Aah.. They can wait and in any case none of us are going to get a pie out of the prize money or any tax benefits.

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