On Praveen Swami’s repugnant piece on Maha Kumbh

Say you are just chilling in a park on a Sunday afternoon with your dog, reading a book. Suddenly a fight breaks out between two people and a raucous crowd gathers.  It gets noisy and you decide to take a look.  Two youth are rolling on the ground and fighting like crazy. Suddenly someone from the crowd emerges and says he understands the reason they are fighting and says he will try to intervene. The crowd calms down at the assuring words of the mediator.  But to your utter shock, instead of moving towards the guys wrangling on the ground he advances menacingly towards you. Grabs you by your neck and starts thrashing you.  Next he tears up your book and vomits all over your beloved pet dog.

Bizarre WTF story, isnt it ?  But this is what has been happening to Hindus in recent times. Praveen Swami in a particularly despicable  article in The Hindu takes wild swipes at the holiest of holy Hindu pilgrimages, the Maha Kumbh in the context of a dogfight between the Congress party and the angry Muslim clerics over the Rushdie affair.

Here is a template many of us have been observing in the media of late.

Want something from fake secular state ? > abuse Hindu cultural symbols > Go to ATM > Spend > Repeat

This cycle has got to stop. Now. Find something else.

We wont issue Fatwas, but demonstrate to the world that these people are just clever but insecure imbeciles. Hamsters working ever harder trying to meet the insatiable demands of their masters.

Ignorant of basics

Praveen Swami after a flying recap of the Salman Rushdie affair, lands upon this.

Few Indians understand the extent to which the state underwrites the practice of their faith. The case of the Maha Kumbh Mela, held every 12 years at Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain and Nashik, is a case in point. The 2001 Mela in Allahabad, activist John Dayal has noted in a stinging essay, involved state spending of over Rs.1.2 billion — 12,000 taps that supplied 50.4 million litres of drinking water; 450 kilometres of electric lines and 15,000 streetlights; 70,000 toilets; 7,100 sanitation workers, 11 post offices and 3,000 phone lines; 4,000 buses and trains.

Source: The Hindu

He has plucked these figures from John Dayal’s blog here.  He also forgets to mention the evangelical religious affiliation of John Dayal instead referring to him as just “an activist”.  The funny part is John Dayal’s essay builds up to a case against FCRA (the act that enables you to find out Christian Aid money flows)

The FCRA has been used largely to scrutinise Christians priests and nuns, a few Muslim groups and secular NGOs who receive funding through official channels. Meanwhile, hawala dealers are able to evade FCRA checks with the same felicity that they avoid Home Ministry surveillance.

Digging further.

Is the Indian State “underwriting” the Maha Kumbh

Let rewind to these numbers , Rs.1.2 billion for 12,000, 50.4 million litres, 450 kilometres of lines and 15,000 streetlights; 70,000. Let me throw in toilets, fire services, ambulances.

What he forgets to mention, very cleverly, is this :

The Maha Kumbh is one of the largest human congregations on earth. Over 60 Million people participated in the event he is talking about in 2001. The crows of the event could be seen from space.

The state is merely providing  PUBLIC AMENITIES as its normal call of duty. The alternative would be to let millions including thousands of foreign tourists die in an outbreak of Cholera, riots, or leave behind a mountain of human waste.

The most jarring part of his essay was this line, which prompted me to write this blog.

That isn’t counting the rent that ought to have been paid on the 15,000 hectares of land used for the festival ..  ..but it is instructive to note that an encephalitis epidemic that has claimed over 500 children’s lives this winter drew a Central aid of just Rs.0.28 billion.

Lets see this from a property rights angle. What he is saying is the Hindus who participate in the Kumbh Mela event, which predates all known formats of the Indian state, have no title over the venues. Which are sand banks, ghats, streets, and nearby spaces.  In such a school of thought, the participants have to pay a fee (a tax) to the state from the proceeds of which the state will “rent these ghats” and provide the aforementioned amenities.   From time immemorial, Hindus have treated these lands as their own, not in the sense of ownership rights but being able to continue ancient traditions such as the Maha Kumbh, Chitirai Festival, and countless others.  If you demand to see title papers (most Christian and Muslim properties DO have proper title papers) then Hindus will have no choice but to create them. Territory, and traditions CONSTITUTE the Indian State. They came with the box.

Obviously, this isnt the only weakness in this piece. The state has Hindu temples under its control, so his sudden puppy love for property rights is dead on arrival.  Next, even from an economic viewpoint, the Maha Kumbh is a grand tourist spectacle with millions of people from all over the world arriving and staying for weeks.  The govt will stand to gain by spending on amenities and reaping benefits of orderly tourist activity compared to being burdened with the costs of chaos and disease if it were to listen to Praveen Swami.

Is Theism the danger to secularism ?

A complete misunderstanding of secularism follows :

Eight years ago, scholar Meera Nanda argued that “India is a country that most needs a decline in the scope of religion in civil society for it to turn its constitutional promise of secular democracy into a reality.” “But,” she pointed out, “India is a country least hospitable to such a decline”. Dr. Nanda ably demonstrated the real costs of India’s failure to secularise: among them, the perpetuation of caste and gender inequities, the stunting of reason and critical facilities needed for economic and social progress; the corrosive growth of religious nationalism.

Eight years ago, scholar Meera Nanda was wrong, as she is today.  Secularism does not depend on decline of scope of religion in everyday life.  If that were the case, then abolition of religion would be its central task.  Hindu, Muslim, or Christian individuals derive strength, confidence, pride, tide over depression, anxiety, using their respective faiths.  There is nothing in it that puts it at odds with secularism. Religious nationalism is nothing but nationalism that calls upon traditional strengths native to the land. You call it Hindu nationalism, but it has never asked for privileged treatment of Hindus.

What does not work is the state offering concrete benefits to groups based solely on adhoc communal considerations.  This and only this will kill our secular state.

Is there a workaround for quota politics

So I read an article today called “Playing quoits with quotas” by Sushant K Singh, fellow of National Security at Takshashila Foundation and Editor of Pragati.  It was written in response to the single issue in the UP polls. The tone of the piece seems to suggest that the quota offer by the Congress and subsequent re-alignment of its opponents are par for the course.

Here is the harsh truth : If you cant control the states power to confer benefits to groups at its pleasure, you cant have any  of the other goodies like a capitalist ecomony. Economic freedom is not a workaround, it is not even desirable because you wont have the political checks against cronyism.

Consider the Congress’ promise of a Muslim sub quota ? What are the issues involved ?

UPA government’s announcement, put on hold by the Election Commission, does not cover all Muslims or Christians. It carves out a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minority groups already included in the list of OBCs, from within the existing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in government employment. The unreserved component of jobs thus remains unaffected.

Source : Mid Day

Should it not matter how the reserved components arrange themselves ?  Is it okay if  just a few groups within the 50% duke it out ? I am going to show you how easy it is to overlook the adhocism that lies at the root of this.

Some facts first

• Muslim groups are today part of the 27% OBC quota
• Based on some study, it was determined they they are not adequately represented in the 27% quota.
• So it was decided to allocate a sub quota of 4.5 % to all muslim castes to ensure a near proportional representation for this group.

Here are the main issues:

a ) Why should only Muslim castes be analyzed for representation ? What if there are Hindu castes who are also being clobbered by the dominant OBCs ? What if they dont have the numbers to matter at the poll ?

b) Why should the new group be along religious lines ?  Why not a MBC or EBC model here ?

c) What are the checks to prevent almost all castes of Muslims being notified as backward ? (TN/KL style)

d) If Muslims have indeed been grossly underrepresented after 20 yrs of quota, that is a damning indictment of the ‘lets not scrutinize this’ policy of the court.  So, how do we find out other groups that arent represented ?

Dont worry if you dont have the answers. No one does. The whole thing is adhoc with benefits purely at the pleasure of the politician. If each community receiving benefits  (including Muslims) were in a scrutiny regime, issues of under representation would never arise. Lack of representation would feedback into the system. There is no role for politicians because data drives the car. In the UP elections,  Congress are offering the Muslims a special social justice deal that others are being denied.

We looked at adhocism, next the growing powerlessness of the free agent to direct things.

To contain the divisive politics around job quotas, the next best alternative then is to make government jobs both unattractive and irrelevant. Evidence from southern and western India shows that economic growth and rise of private sector is the best way to reduce the relevance of government jobs. These growth models can be replicated across the country only by initiating the second generation of economic reforms.To inverse the cliche, it will be a case of good economics leading to good politics.

This paragraph pretends like quotas only apply to government jobs. In reality, it pervades everything from education, scholarships, loans, panchayat elections, petrol pumps, even Lok Pal.  But lets stick to jobs because it doesnt diminish my point.

The quota system determines which set of humans sit in parliament and legislatures. This group  and only this group represent the Indian state.  It would be naive to expect them to desert the interest groups who voted them in and focus on policies that undermine the very system that got them in.  The benefit regime is not about government  jobs (or any of the other benefits such as petrol pumps or gas agencies,which were announced between the time I began the draft of this post and now!). It is about who gets to sit in parliament and the concentration of big interests in the Indian state.

By the same yardstick, how can you expect them to measure the system

Thats a good question. This hits at the very core of the contemporary Indian state.  The state (which is nothing but a bunch of humans) will encroach as much on your fundamental rights as the judiciary allows it to.  That is their nature.  The judiciary is shirking its constitutional duty to scrutinize the benefit regime even thought it impinges on rights of equality and social justice.  Why else do we have another pillar of democracy ?

We have statistics to prove

Wondering why none of these are on the voting block in UP:  Sky high prices, all around filth, no power, pollution and sickening drone of diesel gensets, corruption, or complete lack of infrastructure. Read on.

It appears, they have recently come into possession of data.

We are very much reaching out to a number of castes within the dalit group to build our base. A number of social activists have been working with us. We have statistics to tell the people that only a particular caste in UP has got benefits, which include representation in the state council of ministers and also in government recruitments,” said a senior Youth Congress functionary.

Source : Rahul copies Nitish social engineering

What statistics ? How did you get hold of this ? Why isnt this public and actively feeding back into social justice ?

A “senior Congress leader” tells us that this secret data shows that only one group is benefiting from quota. If this is true, the Indian state led by the Judiciary has committed an unpardonable crime by cheating tens of millions their share of social justice by giving a wink-wink to scrutiny.  This is injustice by design.

It isnt too late, such disaggregated data must lead social justice programs. Delivery must be automatic so politicians can step aside and let people vote on bigger issues. Our democracy will never rise beyond “low grade” will sink lower until it suffocates itself from its own anomalies.

The Lokpal quota and the Indian state

I am glad that the Lokpal protests building up over months culminated in a completely farcical quota fight in Parliament. Who on earth could have thunk that exactly zero clauses of the Lokpal bill would matter to our elected representatives ? Did we not write them enough letters explaining the nuances ?  Their attitude can be summed up as, “It doesnt matter what the bill is, as long as we get to subject it to the adhoc quota system”.

I anticipated exactly this denouement within hours of seeing the Jan Lokpal draft, but then I am special. I recognize with awe that the adhoc quota system is the man behind the curtain in every issue in India.  He is there in every room, driving every policy, controlling your life in unimaginable ways,  laying down his tyranny on backward people, all the while claiming to protect them.  You are accustomed to his presence. Sure it gets weird at times, what with his shoes sticking out from under the curtain and  the unnerving movement of the drapery.  But you trudge along. Refusing to let him reduce your brisk intellectual arguments to mere noise.

On Thursday, Dec 22nd you were forced to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. It would be futile for me to point out that Lalu Prasad has 4 MPs and Paswas had lost his own seat for them to be relevant.  It doesnt matter. On that day, they represented the sum total of all benefit protectors.

A small digression to explain some terminology. Free agents are those who arent attached to any concrete benefits extended by the state, or who are so unfortunate that any such benefits have no hope of reaching them, or those enlightened individuals who despite having access to these benefits choose to defect. Adhoc benefits are concrete identity based benefits that exist solely at the pleasure of certain people, mostly front ended by politicians. They are “adhoc” because they are not subject to scrutiny. If they were placed under a scrutiny regime the benefits become automatic and the politician loses his sheen. So the primary goal of the benefit protector is to maintain the arbitrariness of the platform and thereby preserve his own relevance. Back to the post now.

The Muslim sub quota non issue

First, are we okay with having a quota at all for the Lokpal ?  Certainly if we are against any kind of quota , the Muslim quota question is moot.  On the other hand, if you are okay with OBC quota and are against a Muslim subquota, you will look foolish and hypocritical.  The minority quota can be presented as a fine tuning of the OBC quota to ensure a guaranteed slice for a group that is apprehensive of under representation.  The burning question is : Why have a quota at all for a body such as the Lokpal ?

Beyond crude territory grabbing, the kindest explanation for this quota is this :

The Indian state represented by the humans in parliament on Dec 22 2011 officially acknowledges that its citizens are incapable of investigating or adjudicating with fairness across caste lines.

I will let the ramifications of this sink in for a moment.

Team Anna is making the fatal mistake of humouring the above.  They should have immediately retorted that a good faith effort at diversity is far more desirable. I have seen the diversity of the crowd in these protests.  Team Anna has nothing to be defensive about here.

Playing along with the quota will destroy whatever they are trying to achieve with the bill :

• The constitution of every Lokpal bench will be called into question.
• The sheer anomalies of the system will bite making one grab the nearest Delhi super lawyer and run to the Supreme Court. Here are samples – you need a roster system for the Chief Lokpal so every community gets a shot – you need to reflect other staging groups such as MBC/EBC  in it, bench corum, etc.
• 5 reserved seats out of 9 cannot mean 4 seats are reserved for Hindu upper caste males. So, some have to be counted against the open category. This insanity will render the whole setup prone to more litigation push the judiciary and fatten the lawyers.

Beware the insidious

A natural extension of quota in Lokpal is quota in the judiciary i.e the Supreme Court. In fact, Keshava Rao (Congress) an elected representative blasted a fellow guest on TV rubbishing all his arguments by saying “you went to a better school” and that he supported quota in the judiciary. Lalu Prasad claimed “We are there to change the constitution no – dont worry” when an anchor posed some weak constitutional issue to him. In due course, it would be considered “curiously amusing” if a judge does not recuse himself from hearing a case across benefit lines.

Moving on, if you concede that expecting an Indian to adjudicate across caste/religious  lines is foolish, then obviously you cant expect Indians to have a sense of justice to investigate  across these lines. So we will setup police corps to reflect these lines. Paraphrasing Arun Shourie’s words.  As the edifice rises, what you think is todays ceiling is tomorrows floor.

All together now

Lets see what we got.

The country is split vertically such that the new benign socialist state plans for each group its own route.  Just the right length and width. From childhood education, scholarships, to college admissions upto the post graduate level. From food rations for the poor   to  bank loans. From contesting in elections from reserved constituencies, to public jobs in the services. From getting caught in corruption and getting investigated by Lokpal bench of your group, to be investigated by a police corps from your caste or religion, to a final judgment in the Supreme Court by a bench of your caste.

When this happens,

We will cease to be a country,

But multiple countries sharing a territory.

Thank you Google from India

Dear Google Sir,

Thank you for standing up for free speech in the face of severe pressure brought to bear upon you by Mr Kapil Sibal the Telecom Minister in the Congress led UPA government.  I noted with dismay that not enough people have thanked you and I dont want you to get the impression that we are a thankless nation. Hope this letter encourages you to stand your ground in the days to come.

The internet as we know it today, one which allows anonymous dissent, is the most crucial weapon we have to help this country climb out of third world hood.  In the coming days,  people might accost you and offer ideas to tweak the nature of the internet to suit “Indian communal sensibilities“.   But Sir, we dont want tweaking, we want the same internet that the free world has.

Like you Sir, any casual visitor to India from the west, once he or she gets over the visual sensory overload is left to wonder why a liberal democracy has failed so miserably and visibly.  Deep answers are’nt forthcoming and the wisecracks are never convincing.  Some things in India cannot be discussed openly.  Yet exactly those things guide us towards our destiny.  Free speech breaks this gridlock and allows us to aim for an alternate destiny which we hope is not permanent third world status. We heard that in your country, great things were accomplished by Benjamin Franklin, Hamilton and your other founding fathers by writing anonymous letters.  Thanks to your product, I was able to find a list of Mr Franklin’s pseudonyms.  We are in a similar stage of political maturity in India.  We need to have the tools to circulate ideas where they can be debated and judged solely on their merits.  If we are forced to attach our identity – which is not what they are actually looking for as I will explain – these ideas however skilfully constructed will be simply cast aside by ad hominem ascription of prejudice such as those of caste, religion, professional, or monetary.

Our government has said that they are calling a round table on December 15 with big people from all sides including the mainstream media attending. The Hindu a leading newspaper proposed an independent regulator and this idea seems to have found traction.  See this interview Sir

Karan Thapar: Could you invite the press to be party to the round table?

Kapil Sibal: I will love to have the press there.

Source : IBN

Many of us are wondering and deeply suspicious of what the Indian mainstream press is doing in this particular issue.  Believe us when we say the mainstream media does not have a dog in this fight. There are no curbs sought to be imposed on the press, yet they are raising the demons of emergency day press freedom.  It is quite bizarre that they want to inject themselves into this issue which does not concern them at all but impacts us at a most fundamental level.  If you think this is an unfair “us” vs “them” argument, you are correct.  Let me give you a recent example.

As your product “crawled” Indian news sites you might have noticed that the words “Bail and not Jail” vanished once all the politicians and business men were granted bail. Magically, lawyers who appear on TV wearing a shroud of impartiality forgot all about two government bureaucrats who are still in jail. Even a remarkable court staying of bail already granted by a lower court attracted only radio silence.  This may sound petty, but let me put it this way. Say, if  for months you have been debating on prime time TV the judicial principle of “Bail and not Jail” you would expect the debate to intensify when the highest court cancels a bail already granted.  1.93 Lakh undertrials are still in jail and two from this very case are in jail.  The coverage stops as soon as their bucket is full even if the tap is still running.  Maybe this is too much detail, apologies let me get to the point.

We are experiencing a national uprising against corruption and we arent clear which side the Indian mainstream media is on.

In defence of curbs, they may rattle out stats that only 4% of people watch English TV and of them only 10% of them care about what is written online. This is a ploy to shrink our numbers and show that some checks on 10,000 internet people should not matter considering 100M internet users who dont care enough to blog/tweet/or comment.  On closer inspection, you will find that the most passionate and aware of the English TV audience are the same ones that are online.

I am going to throw some examples on the table.  (all emphasis mine)

Ashok Malik says

“Could, say, Twitter incentivise users who tweet under verifiable names by perhaps giving them access to more services, quantitative or qualitative? The answer lies in nudging the industry towards such options, not in the Government’s sledgehammer approach.

Shashi Tharoor says

It means anyone can say literally anything and, inevitably, many do. Lies, distortions and calumny go into cyberspace unchallenged; hatred, pornography and slander are routinely aired. There is no fact-checking, no institutional reputation for reliability to defend. The anonymity permitted by social media encourages even more irresponsibility: people hidden behind pseudonyms feel free to hurl abuses they would never dare to utter to the recipients’ faces. The borderline between legitimate creative expression and “disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content” becomes more unclear.

Rajdeep Sardesai says

Fake accounts/trolls/anonymity, when will social media grow up?

 

Ignoring cheap attempts at shaming the more refined journos take this line.  “How can I take you seriously if you are scared to put your real name and take accountability?”   Attached to this is an implicit consensus that if something concrete were to be done about this, it wouldn’t be all that bad.  After all it would finally place bloggers on a level playing field with them. Certainly they have a limited point in that anonymity isn’t an ideal situation.  Look outside your window, do we live in an ideal world ? But it is easy to turn the tables on them too.

Why do you care who the idea comes from ? How can I take you seriously; one who attaches so great a value to identity that it can completely render worthless in your eyes years of work, cross links, thousands of comments, and never before heard analysis of issues .   Obviously the lakhs of people who have visited this and other anonymous and pseudonymous blogs are able to comfortably engage with ideas without the encumbrance by having to own up everything. It is not just about the bloggers (thousands) but also about participants (millions).

Sir, you may hear the following argument too. “India is a free country and not a police state.  Dissent will not be punished.”  Sir, we have a scheme in India called Right To Information (RTI). In this scheme citizens transform themselves into sitting ducks by having to disclose their name and address to find out information. Information that ought to be really under mandatory disclosure and public.  A quick search of your product reveals 12 deaths this year and numerous harassment cases. This cowardly blog was the first to flag this the dangers of this act extensively while the courageous and independent media was handing out RTI awards. On issue after issue media houses place  groupthink over critical and independent analysis.

Just yesterday, the media here ran a story like this Sir.

“Congress sources say that if the home minister comes out of this case he will emerge stronger”.

The media thinks nothing to grant anonymity to their sources for such an innocuous story.  The politician making this “startling remark” probably also has top police officers and media heads on speed dial. Yet, he feared his organization would somehow take action against him for attaching his name to this precious non-story.  Journos then turn around and call little guy a coward for fearing his employer for talking about deep state issues.  Is it fair that those who hide under popularity and press protection tear to shreds a common man who cannot even name a councilors brother to save his life?   C-est-la-vie sir. Lets move on.

 

Obviously there can be no disagreement that what isnt legal in real life cant be legal online too. But Sir, the government does want to approach the court system to take action against online crime because it is cumbersome !  How do you think that makes the 1.93 Lakh undertrials feel Sir ? Sample this :

Kapil Sibal: You know Karan this is the procedure that will not work. By the time an FIR is filed and the investigation is done, we will have to get to know what the source of that content is and Google and Facebook refuse to provide that source to us. So who are we going to prosecute? Number two, assuming they give us the source many of them are outside our jurisdictions. So how do we prosecute? It will cost millions of dollars to prosecute.

Source : IBN

 

They want to remove things that might be perfectly legal to the point that it would cost millions of dollars for the prosecution to argue that it isnt legal. Have you heard anything more ironic ?

Allow me to point you to the fact by and large the Indian internet is clean.  We have demonstrated a great ability to reject the outright trash and accept humour and engage with probing questions. If an mere internet post can trigger  “catastrophic riots of a magnitude you and I cannot even imagine” a pamphlet can do the same thing.

The politicians are actually calling into question the very humanity of the Indian people and their verified media friends are too dumb to even realize it !!

So, I believe the consensus might be to somehow penalize internet content that cannot be attributed directly to an individual. Obviously, attribution requires much more than merely someone using a human sounding name or even a phone. Perhaps some kind of digital certificate issued by the Press Authority or the Independent regulator  to be discussed by big people in media on our behalf ?  See how quickly this dissolves into insanity Sir.

If I may indulge in a bit of turf protection. This blog and many like this currently hold the top search positions for over a dozen burning issues impacting this country deeply.

• Unmonitored social justice that reaches the wrong people.
• Adhoc benefits based purely on identity that permanently cleaves the Indian people and prevents voter consolidation around ideas.
• A SEZ policy that promised Shenzhen and Jebel Ali but delivered solitary buildings amidst squalor.
• A corruption scam of such brazenness that threatens to rip institutions apart.

I am erring on the side of paranoia but in the event they seek degrading our blogs on search positions,  I hope you will not agree to that.  We are not after money because there are no ads on these blogs.

 

Finally, reasons might be forwarded about poor troll-like quality of content on anonymous blogs and tweets.  They may say forcing people to verify accounts will result in better content. Sir, speaking for myself, if the content on this blog is poor in quality atleast when compared to authenticated blogs , I can assure you that it is because the humans writing those blogs are smarter or better educated than me. If I were to blog under my real identity the quality would be exactly the same because I am incapable to do better than this.   But I am smart enough to understand that the real motivation is to place new rules in the hope that the content itself changes.

You will be no doubt be approached by technocrats gleefully offering to “expose this person to reveal the sad little guy or girl behind a screen”. They are correct Sir, this is exactly what you will find. Sad, unremarkable,  little, but optimistic people like me peeping at a monitor. Who after a long days work, after a tiring conference call, instead of going to sleep like everyone else, write about issues they hope will make this country better.  Writing stuff mainstream media ought to be writing about. Unlike them winning for us is not collecting vain career-points or visibility. We define victory in being able to find others like us who are willing and capable to elevate themselves onto a plane, way above the trappings of identity,  onto a realm where only ideas matter. And boy have we been successful, the debates on twitter and blogs (almost all of them from unverified accounts) have completely outclassed the media. If we are to be called cowards hiding behind a mask by career journalists, debutante politicians,  and columnists – so be it. 

Speaking of masks sir, you may have seen this picture in your inflight magazine.

 

Let me tell you about this mask sir. It is called Kathakali, and it takes an enormous effort to put this on, hours to paint their faces, arrange pieces of the facial ornaments and to put on the costume. In India, we walk around with this mask on permanently in real life.  Except it took half a lifetime to put it on.  We are carefully prepared in school to be ashamed of who we are and accept overbearing control as punishment.  Crucial questions are never answered and communities are raised to be suspicious of each other. Life is like an orchestra where everyone is trained by instinct to look over the shoulder at each other and to crave for approval from the socialist conductor. Post liberalization, big business has merged with the socialist conductor to take over all aspects of your thought and opinion.   Differential access to leisure, to police, to law make it impossible to free your mind of the yoke of the Indian reality.   Political correctness and sidestepping contentious issues by being facetious are just grease paint we must don. We dont see the paint in others because everyone has a different version of it, but we are startled when we see anyone without the mask and paint.

Sir, when the Kathakali performance is over, the artist carefully removes his mask and uses thinner to get rid of the paint.  That is when they really speak their mind. It could be cheap or of the highest intellect – it really doesnt matter. What matters is the mask is off and finally we have the real Indian speaking.

Thank you Sir for your time,

Sd/

The little guy behind the screen.

Poverty. Poetry. Policy.

Act 1 : Villain intro

I stumbled upon this poem yesterday :

Reminds me of a Bengali poem, Daaridra-rekha (Poverty Line) by the late Tarapada Ray. It goes:

I was merely poor, very poor.
I had no food to eat
No clothes to hide my shame
No roof over my head.
You, the very soul of benevolence,
You came to me and said:
“No, ‘poor’ is an ugly word,
It robs people of human dignity,
No, you’re actually poverty-stricken.”
Stricken by relentless poverty,
My days of suffering,
My days of pain,
Ran on day after day,
I wasted away.
Suddenly, you appeared again, and said:
“Look, I’ve been thinking about it,
‘Poverty-stricken’ isn’t a good word either;
You’re impoverished.”
My days and nights in chronic impoverishment,
Panting in the furnace of summer,
Shivering in the chill of winter nights,
Soaking in the monsoon rain
I became more and more impoverished.
But you are tireless,
You came to me again, and said:
“Impoverishment makes no sense.
Why must you be impoverished?
You have always been deprived,
You’re deprived, historically deprived.”
There was no end to my deprivation,
To bed half-fed year after year,
To bed in the street, under the naked sky,
I had a skeletal existence.
But you did not forget me,
This time, your clenched fist raised high,
You called out:
“Awake, arise, ye dispossessed!”
By then, I had not the strength to rise,
Hunger had almost finished me,
My rib cage rose and fell like bellows,
I could not keep up with
Your enthusiasm and excitement.

Source : Antara Dev Sen “Below Sarkari Line” DC

 

Act 2 : The honourable men enter scene

 

Congress led UPA government.

For the simple reason that what was the entire telephony position of the Congress party and the UPA government must be very clear. Our position based on Planning Commission documents was ‘we were not there to make money. We were there to ensure that there should be maximum coverage. There should be affordable telephony available to people’.

Source : Karan Thapar interview on CNNIBN

 

Act 3 : The internet villians making a devilish connection

Mr Ironic : That in a country with Rs 32/day folks inspire poverty poetry, the Congress led UPA governmet  chose to consciously leave tens of thousands of crores on the table.

Mr Dubious  : There exists no body of research that supports your policy decision to leave tens of thousands of crores on the table will led to increase in teledensity or other social objectives.  Is a level playing field in a mature industry more important than revenue for the Rs 32 man ? Even the level playing field argument is preposterous – because then I need 2 Acres in EC Bangalore for 6 Lakhs & 20 years tax holiday that incumbents have enjoyed.

Mr Suspicious : Those op-ed writing, left leaning, NGO payrolling,  liberati do not see ANY CONNECTION WHATSOEVER between real wretchedness and policy. Totally disconnected things.

 

 

 

 

2G Scam – The arbitrary and capricious policy test

It looks like the government is going to brazen it out and here is the grand strategy.

There is no scam because what was executed was exactly the policy of the UPA government.

What about the gigantic loss pointed out by the CAG, you might ask ?

There was no loss because the policy was never to make money. Put another way, the so called “loss” you talk about is factored into the policy agreed by the then duly elected Congress Finance Minister , Prime Minister and A. Raja and D. Maran of the DMK.

If you are like me, you would come away with “Maybe the policy itself is the scam ?”   Can you call a policy decision a scam – isnt it sacrosanct  ? That is the topic of this blog.

I know the United States is not India, but here is how they deal with challenges on policy decisions. If an agency (such as DoT/TRAI) makes a decision with as far reaching revenue implication as the 2G auction it must be prepared to pass scrutiny. You cant forward a post facto ‘electromagnetic social justice’ argument unless that argument can be shown to have been the driving force and all other views were adequately factored in.

Here is a overview of how USA/Canada/ deal with this issue :

A reviewing court may set aside an administrative decision if it is unreasonable (under Canadian law, following the rejection of the “Patently Unreasonable” standard by the Supreme Court in Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick), Wednesbury unreasonable (under British law), or arbitrary and capricious (under U.S. Administrative Procedure Act and New York State law). Administrative law, as laid down by the Supreme Court of India, has also recognized two more grounds of judicial review which were recognized but not applied by English Courts viz. legitimate expectation and proportionality.

Mark this : The Supreme Court of India has two extra grounds – legitimate expectation and proprotionality.

Source : Internet

Lets look a bit more at the American Law here, as I think this is most apt for the 2G case. The US standard of scrutiny is called the “Arbitrary and Capricious Test”.  Check out the book Administrative Law by Jack Beerman for more on this. Again I beg you to stay with me – I know India is not the USA.

“Courts will set aside agency decisions found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). As the Supreme Court has explained: “The scope of review under the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ standard is narrow and a court is not to substitute its judgment for that of the agency. Nevertheless, the agency must examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action including a ‘rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.’” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983). Agency action is arbitrary and capricious “if the agency has relied on factors which Congress has not intended it to consider, entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, offered an explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency, or is so implausible that it could not be ascribed to a difference in view or the product of agency expertise.” Id. Reviewing courts “may not supply a reasoned basis for the agency’s action that the agency itself has not given.” Id. (quoting SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196 (1947)).” — Fox v FCC, Docket No 06-1760-ag, slip 18-19 (2nd Cir. June 4, 2007)

 

I imagine the entire Congress Party is getting ready to forward that they knowingly dropped revenue consideration in favour of increased spectrum user fees. Note that I am purposely sidelining the “level playing field” . This is a bogus argument which will be dropped somewhere along the way. As soon as they realize this will lead them into the legal trap of unjust enrichment of private individuals.  Besides it is highly debatable if it is indeed a level playing field if new entrants can gatecrash into a market that was proven by others without partaking in any of the risks.

So the entire defence is going to eventually rest on this :

You cant fault us for policy – there is no loss because the goal was teledensity and not revenue on licence.

Once they do this : The case is cleanly split into two – 1) the policy decision and  2) Raja’s manipulation. On the second case, the damage is limited because cancellation of all licenses can not be on the cards. On the first case, the government will  enter into a familiar standoff with the judiciary questioning its authority to entertain challenge to policy decision.

The hope is the court doesnt miss the irony here : On one hand, the UPA government is saying Rs 32 per day is the standard of wretchedness and on the other it says forgoing 50,000 Cr on capital account can be justified for teledensity and level playing field.

 

Arbitrary and Capricious policy Vs Wrong Policy

I noticed this article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta in todays paper. The way the questions are framed should bother us all. Consider this :

It puts Chidambaram on the spot only when you assume three things: that the policy was wrong, that being associated with the policy does put a question mark on your integrity, and that the decision was not the responsibility of the prime minister or cabinet as a whole.

Source : IE (emp mine)

There is no wrong policy. Because Wrong isnt a working word. The question should be – “Was it an arbitrary and capricious policy?”  This nuance is important.  What is right for PC/Raja/Unitech  may be wrong for Indians.  On the other hand,  a  policy can be fairly tested as Arbitrary and Capricious .  If you accept this nomenclature – the next question will be. Is there enough evidence to prove that the policy, of forgoing tens of thousands of crores in exchange for teledensity, can pass a ‘reasonable basis’ test ?

The stakes are this :

If the policy is found to be arbitrary and capricious – then the policy can be cancelled. The fruits of the policy will be voided and they can be redone to benefit the Rs 32/day wretched people who have the most to lose.

Can the government’s teledensity argument stand up to the test ?

What happens if an equivalent to the American standard of “Arbitrary and Capricious” is applied by the court. As mentioned in my previous blog post – we have the former Finance Secretary Dr Subbarao on record stating that teledensity was neither an objective not a factor at any point of time.

But I think that has to be an explicitly  objective and indepth study of costs and benefits of foregoing a certain amount of revenue against what would be the returns by way of increasing teledensity.  We had not done that at any point of time.  We were always arguing on the basis of level playing field rather then on the basis of any growth dimensions this might have subsidise that a..

Source : RC – TRAI says cant price spectrum

 

I leave you with a short comparison of 2001 vs 2008 – the governments defence should start from these points.

 

2001

Subscribers : 40 Lakhs

Those who want spectrum : 12

Available  : 210 licenses based on free spectrum

Demand from operators : Zero

2008

Subscribers : 24.9 Crores

Those who want spectrum : 575

Available : 157  (122 new + 35 crossover)

Demand from existing : Severe – 150 existing operators in queue

(Source : Rajeev Chandrashekar’s presentation)

 

 

Next ?

A point by point rebuttal of all arguments of the Delhi Super Lawyers club – all of whom stand to make windfall profits from any confusion they can introduce into the case. Amazing they get so much airtime to put forth their clients interests before a gullible country.

 

2G scam – TRAI says cant price spectrum

See important updates at end of this post.

Two news items that might give you an idea of where CBI is going with this

Maran gets clean chit (well almost) without even questioning him. Aides say Maran delayed files.

In what comes as some relief for former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, the CBI on Thursday told the Supreme Court that no element of coercion was found in sale of Aircel. The CBI, told this to the Supreme Court, in the status report filed today in the 2G spectrum allocation scam.The CBI said that it has so far found no evidence that Dayanidhi Maran misused his office to ensure that Aircel was sold by its owner to an entrepreneur who was close to Mr Maran and his brother, Kalanidhi.

Earlier, Maran had to resign as Union textiles minister in July after C Sivasankaran, who owned Aircel in 2006, complained against him and the CBI began investigating tha matter.

Source : HT

I am going to ignore the Maran story for now.  There seems to be great hurry for the CBI to wrap up a weak case because the accused have threatened to call in the PM and FM as witnesses.  One wonders if the case will even go to trial at this stage.

Lets focus on the other story. About the TRAI.

TRAI toes Raja’s line

Exonerating the former minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader, TRAI has told the CBI that his methods of selling and not auctioning spectrum were indeed according to rules and also it was not possible to estimate the revenue an auction would have fetched, reports said.

TRAI’s stand could weaken the CBI’s attack on Raja, when a special court, hearing the 2G case, will decide on Sept. 15, whether charges against the former minister and 16 others are valid enough to mandate a trial.

Source: IB

But the people of India are smarter. Way smarter than that.

Consider the issue on the table.

The Indian people have taken a 1.76Lakh Crore hit.

We are told that revenue generation is not good for us even though the money could have directly gone into constructing schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. 

A levy on AGR  instead of making money on sale is the better way it seems. We are also told that increasing tele-density and allowing rural poor to own a phone demands this hit .

This is where the genesis of the scam lies. The DMK ministers were adamant from day one on control of the pricing and allocation methodology. The CON leaders pushed for a while, probably alarmed at the scale of the wrongdoing, but suddenly fell in line.

Lets assume for a moment that the twin goals of a) inclusive telephony and b) a level playing field were worthy indeed in a country where teeming millions live in squalor. So worthy, that the government felt that leaving $40B on the table was a bargain.

That leads us to this question  :

Where is the study that balanced the two goals ? If there was no study at all – then it just means this whole line of teledensity, rural poor, inclusive telecom is a bogus argument.  We also know there was no study done – because inclusive telecom wasnt even a goal. Just a post facto alibi after being caught.  There was no homework done because the teacher gave no homework.

Dr Subba Rao puts it across the best in his testimony to the PAC.

Dr. Subbarao summed up:

“There is an argument to be made that if your forego revenue, you can gain on the welfare side like creating  teledensity and providing telecom access to lower income people.  Providing them opportunities would not only enhance growth but also made them more inclusive.  But I think that has to be an explicitly  objective and indepth study of costs and benefits of foregoing a certain amount of revenue against what would be the returns by way of increasing teledensity.  We had not done that at any point of time.  We were always arguing on the basis of level playing field rather then on the basis of any growth dimensions this might have subsidise that and if they have chosen to do that, then, as a civil servant, it would have been beyond my remit to contest that”.

In other words, the government did no due diligence at all before selling a most precious national asset.

What is a fit punishment for this gross negligence ?

Wont cancellation of the fruits of this malfeasance be the  most just ?

We will get to that in the next post.

Back to the TRAIs statement in the Supreme Court

Seven months after the Central Bureau of Investigation asked telecom regulator TRAI to quantify the loss to the exchequer in the 2G spectrum case, the latter has said that it is not possible to predict with certainty the precise values of spectrum that would have emerged in an auction.

Source : IT

In other words, TRAI is claiming to be incompetent. This is standard issue for those who are caught with their pants down.  This a complete U-Turn by a new chairman secretary Mr Arnold and contradicts TRAI’s own affidavit to the Supreme Court in March. Well guess what, this line is bogus too because it is trivial to deduce a fair value of the spectrum based on a number of parameters.

Some of these points were also made in the PAC hearings.

1. The USA made $32 Billion from selling spectrum just a few months before our own 2G. So there you go – an exact value. Update: See footnote.

2. Even  naive student of economics will apply indexation (based on inflation or PLR) to reprice the 2001 figure.  This, by itself would have priced the 2008 spectrum anywhere between 3,600 Cr to 4,400 Cr.

3. Total Indian market capitalization of all telecom companies in 2007-08 was $200 to $250 B.  Several orders of magnitude more than in 2001. That factor can be used to reprice the spectrum.

4. By 2008, all aspects of running the business were ironed out.  Technology winners had emerged. New vendors slashed prices of base stations and central equipment since 2001. Incumbents were bursting at the seams due to lack of spectrum. Airtel was begging for more spectrum even before 2008.

5. Vodafone paid $10B for a ~55% stake in Hutch in order to enter India. This values Hutch at $20B, it would have been straightforward to value their assets and isolate a figure for the spectrum. In hindsight, they could have entered India for $1.5B like Telenor and Etisalat did.

The CBI chasing down the NDA government is most unfortunate, not because they are doing such a bizarre thing. But because the Indian people are now awake to this sham. The anger will get reflected in unknown ways.

The government of the day being duly elected has every power to reframe and tweak any policies of any previous government.

Please rest assured we will do whatever it takes to spread awareness about the true nature of this monumental scam. Cancellation of all licenses is the only way the country can get justice and recover its lost assets.

Two Updates :

1.  Thanks to twitter.com/ChandrusWeb for pointing out this error. Mr R.K. Arnold is the Secretary of TRAI and not the Chairman. Mr J.S.Sarma is the Chairman.

2. The USA figure of $32 billion was cited by Chairman of VSNL during PAC hearings. I think he combined the numbers from two FCC auctions : Auction 73 and the AWS auction.  Auction 73 raised $19.3 B for the US government (Rs 90,000 Cr), this was won by AT&T  and Verizon. The AWS auction was won by T-Mobile ($4.2 B) and Verizon Wireless ($2.8B) and others – netted $13.2 B (Rs 52,000 Cr) for the US Treasury. It must be kept in mind that the USA is a smaller market than India even though ARPUs are higher due to value adds.

Nevertheless, the point is -  TRAI is misleading the country that it is impossible to reasonably value the spectrum by using a false dichotomy. The TRAI feels (now) that either they  should be able to predict with 100% certainty the precise value or they should be allowed to do nothing.  We are told, they did nothing because “it is impossible to  predict with certainty the precise values of spectrum that would have emerged in an auction“  Obviously such an dichotomy doesnt exist at all, because if it did then there is no need for auctions.  We can just invite TRAI to use its supernatural powers of precise prediction.  The awakened Indian people understand that just because you cant predict with 100% certainty does not mean you cant put a reasonable value on it.

I have never met a person who refused to leave the house because he didnt have an Audi A-8 to go out in.

The media ignores everything and instead of taking TRAI to the cleaners, claims the 2G case is dead.

Introduction to Gandhigiri

Img from : NYT AFP

Till recently Gandhigiri was the purest form of protest.  Now it is blackmail.

Look at what Anna Hazare himself thinks about it being blackmail.

Many people have accused him of blackmailing the government through his fast, we asked. “Yes, so?” he shot back. “As long as I’m alive and as long as it benefits the people, I’ll keep blackmailing the government. What’s the problem?” he chortled gleefully.

Source : Times of India

 

Deal with it.

——

I’d also like my readers to check out Vinod Sharma‘s excellent take on the protests. Refreshing to read about the protests and not getting caught up in a discussion on merits of the bill.

The media – honorable exceptions apart – is being compelled to cover Anna; for the first time, it is following, not leading a campaign. Even more importantly, for the first time, people are not being influenced by the propaganda regularly unleashed by ‘experts’ and shallow, opinionated anchors who have held sway till now: the fast-growing web of social media is their new voice, one that will only grow louder. In fact so stung are some media stars by the almost brutal manner in which they have been sidelined, and their ‘Radia’ agenda lit up, that they have refused to cover this unfolding of history from Ground Zero right outside their doorstep.

 

Go to India Retold

FAQ : Why I fully support the Jan Lokpal protests

Protests are legitimate and welcome (Img : Yahoo)

Acorn has a blog post up “FAQ: Why Anna is wrong and Lok Pal is a bad idea”. It is very well written and convincing in his usual style but ignores what I think is the core of the issue.  The protests are neither intricately tied to nor are  the protestors mobilized on the merits of the Jan Lokpal bill.

This is my humble attempt to balance the debate.   I stole the Q&A format from Acorn, who probably stole it from Karunanidhi.

What is the significance of these protests ?

This is the first time since independence that people are protesting without seeking anything for themselves.  There have been thousands of protests over the years but they have always been about extracting some form of benefit  from the state or regional protests for a narrower political space.

Are you being clever by trying to delink these protests from the merits of the Jan Lokpal ?

Look at it this way. The main point of the other side is that the misguided protestors have no idea about the hazards lurking in the Jan Lokpal; some op-eds even claim that 99% of the protestors haven’t read either the UPA’s version or the Hazare version. Tell me, if none of them have read or bothered to read the Jan Lokpal bill – how can the protests be about the Jan Lokpal bill ?.  Discrediting the bill whether in a FAQ or in a press conference will have no effect on the protestors. Ask the trio of Mr Kapil Sibal, Mr P.Chidambaram, and Ms A. Soni, they tried.

What are the protests about ? What is bringing people on the streets ?

The protests are a generalized expression of rage against the corruption. The Jan Lokpal bill and the iconic figure of Anna Hazare provide the glue to bring people on to the streets.  I would also say that this is not about retail corruption that you and I counter in day to day life. Most of us have become comfortably numb to that and I see no trigger for such an outpouring on that account.   A casual visit to the protest sites in Chennai see a wave of anger against  big ticket corruption like 2G and CWG.  I see placards in all cities and Delhi that slam specific ministers involved in big loot.

Why then are media outlets like CNN-IBN and intellectuals like Mr Nilekani harping on retail (everyday) corruption ?

Because if the protests are about you not putting up with a personal inconvenience – then the protests lose their moral high ground. The media and intellectuals will go “Look selfish guy cant easily get passport or gas cylinder for himself so goes on street. “. The new “I am a shameless Indian I paid a bribe” campaign of the TV channel will fail. There are already new tricks which try to paint the protests with a casteist or religious brush (hailed by Acorn as “bandukwala rocks”). That too will fail. This is the first truly free agent protest we have seen.  Analysts who bemoaned the inability of Indians to mobilize big crowds without political support are now suddenly shy.

You wrote one of the first posts slamming the Jan Lokpal bill. You called it a lemon, now why are you playing a different tune ?

I haven’t changed by views on the Jan Lokpal bill.  I still think the bill suffers from the fatal flaw of selection.  If the proposed Jan Lokpal setup works exactly as expected, we would be level. But if it doesn’t, we would be utterly devastated. The chances of it being level are about 10%. So in my view it isnt a risk worth taking.

Is any kind of Lok Pal a good idea ?

Yes, I think the a civilian investigative authority is a great idea.  Designed properly, it can be made to work in such a way that even if compromised the downside is limited. I have blogged about it in this post “Report Generator Lokpal or Jail Sender Lokpal” in detail. A report generator Lok Pal with extensive investigative and subpoena powers can be very effective.  Is this a magic pill ? No. Nothing in the world except a magic pill is a magic pill. I find such characterization annoying and lowering the level of debate.  I think a good example is the recent report produced by Mr Santhosh Hegde. I have read the entire report and I congratulate him for that work. A Lok Pal would have allowed his team more teeth in the investigative process. Unlike Acorn, I dont think CBI/CVC can be strengthened independent of the political system being strengthened any more. Our train passed that station long ago.

Reforms 2.0 should do the trick, correct ? Acorn says the 2G scam is due to the UPA balking at reforms ?

No amount of reform could have stopped the 2G scam.  This isnt an economic problem. The duly elected government displayed a wilful absence of good faith curating of a precious national resource.   It is clear there were no studies undertaken to justify the pricing or the methodology, even if the purported benefits of increasing rural coverage were true.  All institutions CVC/CBI/TRAI were managed. It is our enormous good fortune that the CAG happened to be free.   An independent Lok Pal too can be managed with some effort but if its charter is to produce a report, the quality of its output will determine the extent of its damage.  Here is an example : Lets say the CAG had been managed around the 2G scam timeframe. Its report would have produced arguments akin to what Sibal and Chidambaram are putting forth. The managed CAG report would tell us how this isnt a scam because no illegality took place and the winners issued new equity and did not sell the preferred stock. The public would have duly dumped the CAG too like it is dumping the duo of Kapil Sibal and P.Chidambaram.

What about calling your representative instead of coercive street protests ?

This theme is lifted straight from the United States.  We dont have a culture of phoning our representatives. They take their commands from the party leadership. This works in cleanrooms when there are so many free agents in an area that individual phone calls can make your representative stand up and listen.  I remember reading an angry voice in the comments section of a news site recently.  Pushed on the unconstitutional means of protest – he retorted.  “I am pissed about corruption and I want to go to the streets. You got a problem with that m**f***r ?”  Can you argue with him ?

About the hunger strike being blackmail. I dont think so at all. If the government cant handle this how is it going to handle a border crises ? If push comes to shove – and Anna’s health parameters drop – step in and evacuate him to AIIMS.  Also remember that our history syllabus has drilled into our heads how noble hunger strikes are. Culturally we are conditioned to accept this as a highest form of protest.  Too late now.

How about the middle class vote instead of these charades ?

This is one of my pet themes and I have hundreds of posts on this blog on the subject of what I call  “a free agent voter“.   What Acorn and his ex? colleague Offstumped say will only work in a cleanroom. A mostly sterile state where all voters vote solely on big ticket items that affect everyone like corruption, price rise, terrorism, foreign policy and such.  The problem is : It turns out it takes extreme hard work to get to that place.  Things go downhill dramatically when the stakes include adhoc benefits that exist purely at the pleasure of a protector – namely the person on the ballot. You have to pay a price for defecting, voting against your tailored benefit.

There is no such thing called the middle class in the electoral sense.  It is merely a consumption category.  Even if there was a middle class votebank there is no evidence to suggest they are the protestors. Even if all protestors are middle class, there is no evidence that they do not vote.

This brings me to the conclusion of this FAQ.

How did it come to this  ?

It came to this because a cornerstone for a constitutional democracy is being disrespected and the judiciary is doing little about it.   This cornerstone is the right to equality. It has come to such a level that just uttering these words will brand you a casteist or a right wing fanatic.  It goes without saying that in the Indian context, the right to social justice is also important. The trick is to balance equality and benefits based on a high bar of evidence and monitoring. This way the free agent voter population will continue to be high across all groups. Those really backward will be free to vote on corruption secure in the knowledge that their social justice is on autopilot and they are no longer beholden to their benefit protector.  Freedom.  Once a critical mass of free agents are in place (not necessarily middle class) – it is game over for blatant maladministration.  A new India will arise and the climb up the positive spiral will be rapid.

In the meantime, these protests represent to me :

• the only way the government can be cornered
• raises awareness and hopefully puts a lot of people over the free agent threshold
• warns future government that corruption may not scald them at the hustings but such protests will

So people,  Say “Hi” to the Era of Free Agent Protests where Indians protest as Indians. On things larger than themselves. I am in.

–

Thanks for reading this post and props to all those who blog and read blogs.