part0011

During my childhood Tanjore days, we had athai , aunty for you. She was an aunty for everyone in the ashram, from age 2 to age 70. She was of indeterminate age. During those childhood days, probably anyone over 30 was ‘old’ in my eyes; athai clearly was super-old. She was the custodian of the kitchen and all miscellaneous arrangements. One day, she was bitten by a scorpion in one of the rooms adjoining the kitchen. She was writhing on the floor, moaning and proclaiming loudly that she was dying. My uncle, a medical doctor from Palghat who was visiting, quickly came to the scene to take charge. Very ostentatiously, and gesticulating rapidly, he called urgently for hot water, opened his medical suitcase, took out his injection kit, and injected her with distilled water except that he loudly proclaimed to all present, that is the entire household of 30 or so, that the medicine being injected was the latest invention, specifically prepared for snake and scorpion bites, guaranteed to completely cure, and remove all pain within exactly one minute. He also added that if within 30 seconds it did not take hold, that was a dangerous sign, but in his experience of 40 years, it had never failed once! Actually he quietly showed me the phial which had only distilled water. For 30 seconds after the injection, he kept quiet; then asked athai if she was still alive—the moment she nodded her head, he turned to all of us triumphantly to proclaim that ‘the injection is successful’— actually this was meant for aunty’s consumption. Sure enough within a minute thereafter, aunty was on her feet and within half-an-hour she was going about her normal activities. This is an early lesson that I learnt in life that the cure administered may not necessarily be directly related to the issue at hand; that if sufficient drama is created, with enough hoopla—the victim feels that there is sufficient recognition of his trauma by the general public—a placebo treatment may work in most situations.

Governments frequently produce schemes which they know will not work, to appear to be acting, to appease segments of the citizenry. Frequently amendment to laws are resorted to as a proxy for addressing the real issue of reforming the implementation apparatus. Policies and programmes to lift people from poverty, expanding rural activities and generate jobs and ushering in development are often not meant seriously. Thus, subsidy schemes to act as palliatives are often resorted to, knowing full well that these only address some of the symptoms and surely will not result in cure. More often than not, these populist but ineffective programmes are announced with great fanfare before elections, clearly with an eye on the ballot-box and with no other objectives in mind. Surely some money can be thrown back at the poor in the country, in subsidy schemes, considering that this is only a small fraction of the massive transfer of resources from the rural/agri sector to the urban industrial sector. There are many games that are played to lull the population into thinking that serious attention is being given to basic problems, frequently through ‘placebo schemes’. I have given some illustrations in the chapter, though the inventiveness of the system in throwing dust into peoples’ eyes is very high, honed by decades of experience.

Sometime in 2012, there was massive public outrage in Delhi, echoed in many other cities, at the brutal gang rape in a moving bus right in the middle of Delhi city, of an unfortunate girl, given the name ‘Nirbhaya’. While crime against women is rampant all over the country, and most of these go unreported, unrecorded, uninvestigated and unpunished, the attack on this poor girl generated a massive outcry. It was a revelation to see people of all ages, particularly boys and girls, marching peacefully, protesting the helplessness of women in India and confronting the atmosphere of crime against womanhood. The establishment was taken aback; there was no standard operating procedure (SOP) to address such large outpouring of anger and sympathy.

As is standard practice, the government had apparently no desire to do anything serious or worthwhile in response. The objective was to contain the anger, buy time, divert the attention of the agitators and finally ‘yield’ nothing. This ignoble objective has been successfully accomplished. The government established a committee under the chairmanship of an ex-chief justice, with the main terms of reference relating to changes in rape-related laws. It was quite obvious at that point that the government had no desire or will to do anything substantive in the matter. The other major action was to get the Nirbhaya case hearing expedited; so after nine months of court hearings, four of the accused were handed the death sentence. Thus addressing one instance of the malaise in an aggressively ostentatious manner, the illusion was created that the government had successfully addressed the question of women’s safety in India.

No society can advance till there is a basic level of security. Not that the existing laws are perfect, but the real issue relates to implementation of laws and processing the punishment of lawbreakers. Having a law with near-zero enforcement is completely meaningless. The issue with offences against women, indeed the issue relating to crime in India stems from a fundamental weakness of the machinery to undertake seriously and effectively any of the necessary steps involved. Thus, registering a FIR, a fair and quick investigation, providing comfort to witnesses that they will not be harassed or attacked, mounting a credible prosecution swiftly and ensuring that the case goes to court with a strong chance of success are fundamentals of the ‘process’. Sadly every part of these gets vitiated, as a rule. There is corruption at every level, collusion, FIRs are auctioned, investigations influenced heavily by money and political power, prosecution procedures are suborned, where for a consideration the prosecuting agency colludes with the accused—these are basic evils permeating the system. These problems have been examined repeatedly and many recommendations are forthcoming. The government has clearly no desire for any reforms. In the event mentioned earlier, they resorted to the convenient and superficial process of ‘amending’ the rape laws. This was done with great speed, as if by sleight of the hand—presto, the government had ‘handled’ the crisis—it could now coast till the next outcry surfaces. Who is being fooled? Can anyone expect the slightest change in ground conditions? Can a woman feel safer, one wee bit more? The answer, sadly, is a resounding ‘No’.

The government has promulgated a food guarantee scheme, another programme to hood-wink the public. This programme, which will provide heavily subsidized food grains to about 70 per cent of the population is a tacit admission that real poverty is of the order of 70 per cent in the country, as opposed to the 30-odd or so per cent hitherto claimed by the government. Essentially, an agrarian country is now going to be on food-dole for most of the population—what a tragic irony, seven decades after independence! This also means that we accept that most of the farmers do not produce enough food grains for themselves; that creating infrastructure (power, roads and irrigation) in rural areas has been so tardy that it has not contributed to agricultural growth, or stimulated new energies to be unleashed in this sector. The ultimate impact of this programme will be to inhibit growth of agriculture, and contributing to greater poverty.

Of the four elements in the ‘revolutionary’ new scheme, three are already being implemented, wholly or substantially. Even heavy-subsidy food distribution schemes have been in existence for a while. The programme is clearly an eye-wash, a sleight-of-hand trick to conjure up votes.

The much vaunted Right to Education programme is another shell project, long on slogan and very short on substance. It promises the moon to a citizen and delivers absolutely nothing. It is akin to a ‘motherhood’ statement—a self-evident proposition, nobody can object to it—the entire issue is its implementation. The programme has not been funded; the states, already strained for resources are left to their own devices to implement the ‘right’, without being given the wherewithal. Having made this grandiose announcement, the Centre is sure to blame the states for ‘non-implementation’, as this is a ‘State subject’ under the Constitution—the kind of shallow reasoning resorted to by the Centre in every instance of national failure.

The official purpose of the million wells scheme of the mid-1960s—the precursor to the much later MNREGA—was to improve irrigation and the availability of drinking water by constructing kachcha wells. In the event, less than 10 per cent of these wells were actually dug. In general, two adjacent pits were dug and the mud transferred from one to the other. The real purpose was to grease the palms of party functionaries at the field level and show great concern for generating ‘employment opportunities’ and show commitment to ‘development’. MNREGA is not much different. The latest National Sample Survey Organisation’s surveys comparing 2009–10 with 2011–12 indicate that there was actually loss of women’s jobs in rural areas during this period. Regular jobs were lost in a significant way, with a marginal gain in temporary jobs. This has been the net impact of MNREGA, apart from creating a large number of new millionaires among Panchayat secretaries.

The aim of course is to show lip-service to development, simultaneously spending money on doles with a view to improving electoral prospects. MNREGA actually does not produce new jobs, nor is it designed to create permanent assets in rural areas—it is tantamount to a free subsidy. While none can seriously object to money being passed on to the needy, one should recognize it as such. The old adage ‘it is better to teach a person to fish, than to give him a fish to eat’ is valid in this case. A recent government sponsored study has brought out that MNREGA has not generated new rural jobs—a shattering indictment of the philosophy of the scheme. During British days, the ‘test works’ programme used to be introduced at times of severe drought or agricultural failure to provide immediate relief by organizing local agricultural work in rural areas. This was a device resorted to only in crisis situations to test the level of agrarian distress. With MNREGA, it is now clear that agricultural distress is permanent, widespread, endemic and has affected every part of the country. Can there be a stronger indictment of our governance model?

Dalit memorials in Noida and Lucknow: the ostensible noble purpose was to give expression to ‘Dalit pride’—the celebration of the emergence of Dalits from the shadows of society to one of equal partnership with other communities. In reality, as the Lok Ayukta has formally pointed out, the exercise was mainly geared to generate illicit money—at least 40 per cent of the expenditure was siphoned off to private pockets. The allegations are that some senior ministers and other officials have used the massive constructions to corner large leakages for personal benefits.

Communal riots take place in many states with a fair degree of regularity. Whereas historically communities have lived in peace and harmony, in the past four or five decades, with the perception of communities as ‘vote banks’, much politics is devoted to engineering or sponsoring or creating riots so that waters can be muddied, and fishing may be resorted to—if one may be forgiven for saying so. Usually there is a clear indication in advance about the build-up to a riot and generally adequate time is available to pre-empt it, or cool down the situation. No doubt a small local event may develop into a disturbance but a vigilant local administration can douse the fire and not let the conflagration spread. However, sadly some state governments, with their own political logic, foster and create a tinderbox atmosphere. When a minor event inevitably occurs, it explodes into a major riot. Generally in these situations, the local authorities—the DM, SP, SSP, DIG and Commissioner have all been given, very subtly and indirectly, instructions as to which community or group to support, in the build-up to a vitiated atmosphere. In other words the state government and the politics of the day is the main, though possibly not the proximate, cause for the conflagration.

When an inevitable large explosion takes place, with significant loss of life, injuries to many, damage to property and general public distress, the ‘placebo’ reaction of the authorities is predictable. All the ten or 12 local authorities are immediately transferred. This is the first activity designed to show how vigilant the state government is. They are replaced by new incumbents, who do not know the local area, who take over at a time of much confusion. They are supposed to ‘hit the deck running’, and ‘control’ the situation. Very soon a state VIP visit takes place, disrupting the local machinery, the law and order apparatus as well as refugee management—to provide a photo-opportunity, to exhibit ‘grief’ and to announce ‘financial relief’. The chief minister usually orders an ‘inquiry’, with the main objective of showing to be keen to ‘get to the bottom’ of the issue, but really to send the matter into limbo. This is soon followed by further visitations from officials in the Government of India—depending on the scale, the home minister or PM/party president or others visits the spot and does his share in disrupting local operations; depending on the complexion of the state government, either condemns the state or praises it for good handling of a ‘situation’ created by 'opposition' forces. These are played to a script well laid out, well rehearsed and practiced over decades of experience. The basics are never addressed—fostering communal harmony, giving independence, authority and responsibility without interference to the local police and magistracy, as well as punishing them for failure. We can see this pattern, with many variations and innovations depending on the circumstances, in nearly every riot anywhere in India. This is in general the anatomy of an Indian riot and the standard ineffective response to it.

‘Transfers and postings’ are officially done in ‘public interest’. In reality most postings away from the district and in the secretariat are on the demand of one or the other local mafias, who find a particular official ‘inconvenient’. Ashok Khemka in Haryana has been transferred 43 times in 21 years’ of service. He has an excellent ‘service record’, he has been approved on merit to be a Joint Secretary in the Government of India. If he is really competent, why should he be transferred so frequently? If he is incompetent, why hasn’t he been dismissed or given adverse annual remarks? The situation stinks and requires major corrections. In many states, the minister has understood well that money is to be made in transfers and postings.

In mid-2013, two notable instances of abuse of the transfer and disciplinary powers of state governments came to light in the way in which Khemka in Haryana and Durga Nagpal in Uttar Pradesh were shabbily treated. Both of them were merely doing the work assigned to them. However, their official actions were extremely inconvenient to the powers that be, in that they were interfering in the free-run given to local mafias who are often the benefactors and associates of the parties in power. It should be noted that just as in the Nirbhaya case, the Khemka and Nagpal cases are merely instances of widespread abuse of powers for managing the services by the state governments. The central government is not too different, as seen later in this chapter.

The other purpose of effecting a transfer or starting a disciplinary proceeding is to divert attention from the real issues. Thus, for example, Durga Nagpal aggressively confronted the sand mafia in her district and became highly inconvenient for a powerful local politician. She had to be transferred out, obviously ‘in public interest’. In the event a false charge was leveled against her on a totally unconnected issue. The government successfully diverted attention from the nefarious activities of the mafia, as the media focused on the injustice to Durga Nagpal. This is part of the government’s standard armory for manufacturing a new issue with the primary purpose of diverting attention from inconvenient situations.

It is well-known that parties in power in states regularly treat certain communities or castes or groups as vote banks. The local administration is given the signal that a particular caste or community needs to be treated with ‘kid-gloves’—in every situation, they should be given preferred treatment. Very often, when local incidents take place, the DM or SP is reluctant to discourage the wrong-doers if they come from the preferred group and they frequently resort to excessively enthusiastic action against those from the non-preferred group. Every now and then this results in a riot, sometimes quite serious as the Muzaffarnagar riots of summer 2013. Usually the army and the para-military forces are called in, ‘peace is restored’ (after engineering the destruction of peace in the first place). Then ‘action’ is taken. Generally this means that the Commissioner (who incidentally has absolutely no role in law and order matters), the DM, SP and the DIG of Police are transferred, ostensibly in ‘public interest’. Local officials pay for the sins of the party in power. At the end of it all, the party chief sanctimoniously proclaims that ‘the security forces and administration reacted with great sensitivity and promptness; the situation is well under control; our response has been prompt and swift’, or words to that effect. These are charades which are regularly played. However, many of them are quite deadly.

While the next example does not exactly fit into the mould of the theme of this chapter, it is illustrative of the rot that has set in the system. In April 2013, the nation was shocked to know that the nephew of Pawan Bansal, the Union railway minister, was caught taking a bribe from a Member of the Railway Board. Enough evidence had emerged that the nephew was close to the minister, used to hang out in the room of the minister’s private secretary much of the time and that there was a direct connection with the promise made to the officer of promotion for cash! The minister promptly ‘denied’ any knowledge, loudly proclaimed his own ‘honesty’, protested that he was innocent and refused to resign. That he was forced to, was a result of a public outcry. If one wants to be charitable to the minister, one can argue that he was the biggest idiot in the world, unfit to hold the lowest level job in the Ministry of Railways, since he did not know what was happening under his very nose; or as the overwhelming probability is, he was corrupt to the core—take your pick. The real point is that a direct cash connection with transfers and postings had apparently reached the highest level of governance—a Railway Board Member has the rank of a Secretary to the government. Even if one cannot accept it, one can grudgingly comprehend cash-related postings and transfers at the block or tehsil clerk or industry inspector level, or to accept that some thanas get ‘auctioned’; It is a shattering thought that the disease has reached the highest levels of the Government of India.

Much like illusory action is taken by governments in India, ostensibly trying to show how helpful they are to the citizenry, the same kind of skullduggery is indulged in by developed countries, which want to demonstrate their ‘concern’ for developing countries by bilateral aid and through multilateral UN and other agencies. Most of the bilateral aid is actually tied directly to the business generated in the country of the donor, with hardly any altruism. Likewise most UN agencies like UNCTAD and UNIDO are shell institutions, designed to ‘demonstrate’ the goodwill of developed countries towards their poorer cousins. Much like the central government in India throws crumbs to the rural agriculture sector, developed countries make a big show of support for development of the ‘third-world’ through these agencies. Even these are ultimately designed to benefit the ‘donors’ in various ways. While in the commerce ministry, dealing with the Trade Policy Division, I got to know from the inside how the developed countries exploit the ‘treaty organizations’ to further their own interests. In the following paragraphs I recount my personal experience in this regard.

It was 1981, I had already worked for two years as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce. I do not know how I came to the notice of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London but out of the blue I had a semi-formal message from them, whether I would be willing to go to Lesotho on a three-year assignment as Trade Advisor. I quietly researched as to where Lesotho was, and to find some details about this landlocked country within South Africa. I discovered that the ‘country’ was not much bigger than an average Indian district, with a similar population. It, however, had about 20-odd five-star hotels, a large number of golf courses and was a ‘ holiday’ destination for South African males to let themselves go on a binge from time to time, away from the more strait-laced conditions prevailing at home. I was inclined to accept the offer, particularly as the salary suggested was far in excess of what I was getting paid by the government. In addition every middle-level government servant covets an ‘international’ assignment, as it signifies recognition, and status!

P.K. Kaul, one of the ablest, finest administrators I have ever come across was my boss as Commerce Secretary. Presumably he knew how pigheaded and obstinate I was in most matters. One afternoon, walking into his office room, I was surprised to see my wife sitting in the visitor’s chair. She was getting a lecture from Kaul Saheb as to how inadvisable it was for me to go to Lesotho at this stage of my career. He wanted her to convince me against the move by putting her foot down. He realized that it would have been of no avail if he had spoken to me directly. His ploy worked—Lalitha ‘convinced’ me not to go, and the matter was forgotten.

Apparently Kaul had told her that I stood out among the joint secretaries in the ministry and that sooner or later I would be selected for a ‘better’ foreign assignment. Sure enough, within a year I was selected for the post of Indian Ambassador to GATT (now WTO) in Geneva. Kaul had left the commerce ministry to go to the defence ministry well before then. In due course, that posting to Geneva for me fell through, details of which I have written elsewhere. I had taken all steps to go for that assignment, including undergoing a security briefing, authorization for tickets. The move was so imminent that one of the Hinduja brothers, usually resident in Geneva, called on me, offered me ‘all facilities’, including accommodation, a vehicle etc. ‘till I settled down’ in Geneva; presumably the Hinduja family was dedicated to pursuing the ‘interests’ of the Government of India even in foreign shores! Much later I discovered, in another context, as to how an Indian business family, with a branch in Geneva kept a strong watching brief on India’s negotiations on various issues in WTO GATT and lent their ‘good offices’ to ‘mediate’ between Washington and New Delhi in ensuring that India took the ‘right posture’ in Geneva international trade negotiations. Who said our multinationals are not ‘patriotic’? !

Curiously, as my assignment in the commerce ministry was coming to an end in 1984, I received two offers during the course of one day: one to go to ESCAP in Bangkok and the other to International Trade Centre (ITC) UNCTAD GATT in Geneva. Again I did furious research. The advice I received was that ESCAP was a ‘defunct’ toothless organization, with no useful contribution to anyone or any country, except to the welfare of its own employees. That ITC was at least a ‘business-like’ organization, where one can learn something new, and may be able to contribute to its work. In the event, I naturally chose to go to Geneva, where I spent six years.

At the end of it all, I learnt that nearly all the international organizations that I came across from fairly close quarters, were mainly established to look after their own interests. The raison-d’être of their creation is to benefit the developed countries; while the ostensible reason is to provide development assistance, the main preoccupation of the employees of these prestigious agencies is to draw substantial salaries, plan their holidays meticulously and generally appear to be busy while doing nothing. Their unwritten motto is ‘self before service’. While this comment may be unfair to a few, most of the employees who had been selected were close to or related to senior government personnel in developed and developing countries—the assignment was as quid-pro-quo for some favour done, in an elaborate scheme of mutual back-scratching. As one Indian colleague pointed out, the salary levels in these organizations is of the order of a 100-times that of working for the government, while the work, responsibility and accountability was 100-times less than in government. These postings were really rewards for some good done decades earlier by the ancestors of these fortunate deputationists. I discovered that nearly all the agencies like UNIDO, UNCTAD, WFP and ILO fit the same description that was given for ESCAP earlier. These agencies may have been relevant four or five decades earlier, but now are mere appendices, irrelevancies and parasites on the international system, serving no purpose except the welfare of their employees. These, including the Bretton-Woods Institutions—IMF, the World Bank and GATT—were originally established by developed countries in a post-second-world war era, ostensibly to support ‘developing countries’, but in reality to create a fora for continuing and expanding the superiority of developed countries and extending their reach over their economies. They were part of the neocolonial instruments for exercising control over poor countries, at a cheap price. By now this ought to have been abundantly evident to all decision-makers in developing countries.

It is astonishing how out-of-date our national perception on such matters is, when India still hankers to be a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN, and is willing to make sacrifices for it. It merely requires China to hint that it may not oppose India’s membership to the Security Council, for us to down-pedal any major issue that we have against that country. Too much of the energy in our external interface is wasted in working for this objective. The surest way to be recognized as a major power in the world is to become one through strong domestic development—education, health, infrastructure, industry and society without social tensions. The shortcut of permanent membership of the UN Security Council may avail us of very little, though it may have to be purchased at a high cost.

One comment on the utility and value of UN organizations. I would be untrue to my salt if I did not mention that I got to study for my master’s degree in public administration at Harvard only due to a fellowship by UNDP, for which one is grateful. I recall that calculations showed 90 per cent of ‘development aid’, in some form or the other, gets spent to benefit developed economies. Aid is thus, per se not altruistic, even not accounting for the other major indirect benefits to the ‘donor’!

The annual pension that I earned for working for five years in Geneva, was higher than the Government of India pension for 33 years of work in India. This was the main reason why on return, I had no sense of personal monetary insecurity, and could stand up in higher reaches of the government, holding my own and not needing to buckle down to pressures. This is the psychological advantage that the foreign posting allowed me to have. In the final analysis, is this the only benefit received by developing countries from such international organizations?