Can India be redeemed?

If the ordinance to protect convicted legislators becomes law, the men who raped and killed Nirbhaya in Delhi can theoretically become your MP or MLA one day. It’s a shame that a government can even contemplate such a law. 

I think the thieves in the UPA in general, and the Congress Party in particular, realised soon after 2008 that they would lose the elections in 2014, and decided to make hay while the sun shines. Development and governance were thrown into trash cans and ministers and their cronies joined a gold rush. A series of mega-scams followed. Two-G, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing, Robert Wadhera, Bellary, Coal, Sharda Chit Fund, … we Indians can suffix any goddamned noun with “scam”. There have certainly been many more, the august names I have mentioned are just the peaks. India is blessed with two great mountain ranges of the world, the Himalayas in the north and Corruption throughout its length and breath. Can we ever move the second mountain?

It was a welcome relief to read in today’s papers that Rahul Gandhi, the crown prince of the Gandhi Dynasty, says this ordinance should be torn up. Given the power structure in Congress, it will be. But it raises a question: is this a stage-managed show to propel the young scion into the election battles? Or is this a genuine conflict between the old and the new, the relatively uncorrupted and veteran criminals seeped in sleaze?

We don’t know the answer, at least as yet. But I have always thought that Mr Rahul Gandhi is a well-meaning idiot. I apologise for using the epithet in the public domain, but at times, you cannot make a point if you are politically correct. The point I am trying to make is, in general, I would rather vote for an honest fool than a brilliant crook. But isn’t “honest politician” an oxymoron, like India-made-foreign-liquor?

I do believe everything isn’t lost. For every thief, most political parties also have some honest leaders. Some of them are capable persons too. One of them happened to be my neighbour once. Let me say a few words about him.

In the early 1990s, a multiple-time chief minister of Kerala, Mr AK Antony lived in a tiny two-storey house which his wife, a bank employee, had built in Thiruvananthapuram. I used to cross his house every day. There were a few sleepy policemen, but no picket, no crowd of favour seekers or hangers-on in front of his house. Once, when Antony was the CM, the state government employees went on a continuous strike. The babus frothed in the mouth shouting slogans in front of the state secretariat, but the no-nonsense CM remained cool. His only point, you-don’t-work-so-it-doesn’t-matter-whether-you-are-in-office-or-outside, turned out to be correct. After 40 days or so, the employees returned to office, tail sadly limping between legs.

Is it too late to redeem the situation in our country? Let’s hope not. In 2014, we can and we must vote for the most honest or the least corrupt politician on the rogues’ list, irrespective of their political affiliation. But what if every one of the vote seekers is a big crook?

Well, the Supreme Court’s verdict yesterday, in which the Election Commission was instructed to add a “None of the above (NOTA)” option on voting machines / ballot papers, shows the way. The people of India must prevent the present rogue government bringing in another law to overturn this ruling! However, even if we presume this ruling will not be challenged by politicians, there is still a glitch.

The honourable Supreme Court hasn’t said what will happen if Mr NOTA wins an election!

Kolkata, 28 September 2013

Goddess of Letters

Michael Madhusudan Dutta

What treasures abound

In your boundless universe,

Know only those,

Who have embraced the feet

Of the Goddess of Letters.

The original verse in Bangla by is:

Kato je aishwarya tabo e bhabo mandole

Sei jane, banee pado dhare je mastake

Translated on 19 July 2013 at Kolkata

An environmentalist or an enemy of the people?

Santanu Dasgupta


One evening while taking a stroll, I came upon a daab or tender-coconut seller. He was winding up his business for the day. Seeing so many tender coconuts, I felt thirsty and he agreed to cut open the last one for the day. I sipped it with the straw he gave me and continued on my stroll.

About ten minutes later I walked back the same way and saw the daab seller picking up straws that lay strewn all over the place.

‘Now, that’s a man who loves his environment’, I murmured to myself. I felt guilty too, because just a few minutes ago, I had carelessly thrown away my used straw.  ‘He deserves my compliments’, I thought, and walked towards him.

But as I came closer I saw him packing all the used straws that he had picked up from the street back into the packet that contained the unused (?) ones. The street was clean of all plastic straws.

Now what do I take from this incident? Is the daab-seller guilty of endangering public health? Yes.

Is he to be admired for his love for Nature? Yes.

I can see a few eyebrows being raised at this point. So, for the sake of argument, look at what he is doing for our ecosystem: he clears up the plastic waste, recycles it so that more plastic need not be produced. Of course, he does all this at the cost of public health. But if we look at thinks from his perspective, he does not think maintaining hygiene as his priority or responsibility.

I walked back home confused.

You can’t get raped in West Bengal

On 10 April 2013, a bunch of angry young men carrying Trinamool Congress (TMC) flags entered the Presidency University, Kolkata after breaking a lock at its main entrance. They had good reasons to be angry. A few days before, their party chief and the chief minister of Bengal was heckled at Delhi by goons belonging to the CPIM, their rivals. We also saw on TV a minister, perhaps the finest and the most competent of the present lot, being manhandled. And how did TMC register their protest against the reprehensible act?

They attacked CPIM party offices across the state, beat up rival activists, and burned houses. The “protest” at Presidency was a part of this big picture. The protesters vandalised the oldest physics lab in the country, thrashed male students, abused girl students in filthy language and threatened to rape them. The authorities repeatedly called the police. Kolkata Police did nothing.

The ruling party of Bengal, including its senior ministers, brazenly claim that vandals don’t become party members just by carrying party flags. The argument is incontrovertible, but so are these facts: (a) the police, whose minister-in-charge is the chief minister herself, did nothing to stop the so-called fake TMC members, and there is no explanation why they didn't respond to the frantic calls from the Univ., (b) some ruling party leaders were caught on camera pushing the main gate when the lock was still intact, and (c) the few men later arrested by the police (after a storm of protests) have all been identified as ruling party activists.

We in Bengal have seen so much violence and heard so much of obnoxious self-serving arguments from both sides of the political divide that we hardly lose our sleep over incidents like this. We accept them as fait accompli and move on. Mere mal-governance does not rile us: college principals are beaten up, a police officer is shot dead by ruling party goons in full view of TV cameras, a young student protester is killed in police custody, physical violence against women is rampant … the list is endless. And after almost every incident the CM and her cohorts either say the incident was “minor” or it was “concocted”. In West Bengal today, you just can’t get raped. You can only pretend to have been raped, and make up a case to malign the government.

Incidents of violence, which keep happening at metronomic regularity, engage our attention so completely that we hardly remember that there hasn’t been one new industry in the state in years; that hardly any new jobs are created. On the other hand, we tend to ignore the few good things the present government has been doing. You don’t worry about your long-term health when your house is on fire. Perhaps you only hope that the political opposition will articulate the public’s views and take the government to task.

But presently in Bengal, the political opposition is a joke. Except for a few pockets of influence, no one takes the bickering, self-seeking Congressmen seriously. And the Left Front, despite the drubbing they got in the last general election, has changed neither their ways nor their discredited leaders. We continue to see the same old (and elderly) faces parroting their hackneyed lines, without ever expressing remorse over the havoc the wreaked on Bengal over 34 years.

There is no political party to look up to. The ancient empty street is too dead for dreaming … people have nowhere to go, except Bengaluru for the privileged few and construction sites in Kerala or Maharashtra for the underprivileged. There are no protests, except on rare occasions when a few people stand up. Two of them are the Vice Chancellor and the Registrar of Presidency. Displaying enormous courage, they came out to openly join the students' protests. However, these are only exceptions, West Bengal today is a good place to rule. The ruling party should be happy.

Yet, our rulers have become so complacent that they often cross the limits and make people seethe in silent anger. For example, some time ago a lady minister said about a rape victim, who is still trying to get justice, that it was not a case of rape, it was a dispute between her and her clients.

Another minister did something very similar a day after the Presidency incident. He said this about the Vice Chancellor of the university: “The manner in which she participated in the students’ protest is unacceptable. Everyone knows her history, geography, and science.” [Ei Samay, 12 April]

If such language is used by a minister against a lady vice chancellor, or any woman for that matter, should we be surprised that his lumpen foot soldiers would fancy raping girls? And this gives rise to another, more serious question.

How much deeper can we sink?