A Pat on the Back

The glitches-free CWG in Delhi and the positive mood which now prevails makes one wonder if the woes of the Games preparations were real or imagined. There were indeed problems and mess was far from being an imagined one. Several city projects are still unfinished. Planning was certainly not inspiring confidence amongst us. Corruption charges are yet to proved 'wrong'. May be the media overdrive made our authorities get their act together and finally pull off a successful and memorable CWG. Or they were ready but the bad press in the run up to the Games was a mere PR or marketing communication disaster which now pundits have to analyze and learn their lessons from. The truth lies somewhere in between. May be we were ready on some counts but were measuring badly on others. There are questions and there will be answers. For a while, India (not only Delhi) can bask in the glory of medals our sportspersons have bagged in the competitions. The last ditch efforts paid off and we again emerged as good crisis managers and damage controllers, if not good planners and administrators. Now, see overleaf for a list of Olympic aspirations and keep debating on if we can....!!!!

Mantriji

He walks past you with a half smile on face and with mobile phone slightly pressed to the ear. He enters the lift and looks at you as if to say 'Hello' to you. He is one of all of us travelling in the lift, hurrying to reach office in a morning hour. No 'khadi' kurtas or Nehru jackets. No Gandhi topi. No assistants or sidekicks. No secretaries or gun-wielding commandos in attendance. His car does not blare loud noice of siren. He holds the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister of India, the world's largest democracy. He need not force down your neck any ideology. He does not need to be a rabble rouser. He does not care what he should do to win any election or woo voters. He is Nandan Nilekani.

He is in lift today. Tomorrow, you may well find him climbing up the stairs to reach his third floor office in New Delhi. Is this a coming of age for India? May be. Let's pray, it is indeed..!

ALL IZ WELL ?

2nd October (birth anniversary of the Mahatma) had a calming influence on the anxious city which was god send considering that the following day the much-maligned Games were to be inaugurated with fanfare. The Games, the preparations of which will go down in history as a case study in poor management and misgovernance, have begun finally. It is generally observed and felt that India does well in crisis like situation. The rains vanished in Delhi and things started looking up under the moderate October sun. Hate them or love them, the Games were there to be there at any cost. Management pundits may call this 'effectiveness': getting things done. Do not ask how and at what cost. Do not ask how efficiently the tax payers' monenies were spent. Do not ask how many hours our labourers could sleep in a day. Do not ask how may abuses rolled down the tongues of our embarrased and worried officials and ministers to get the Village cleaned up. The 'effectiveness' means that you were ready on the evening of October 3 to welcome the world and diffuse the feeling amongst the citizens of Delhi that ALL IZ WELL.

I recall having read something about the handling of Mumbai floods being rated higher than the handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We don't have planners in India, we have crisis managers, fire fighters and damage controllers. Smoke does billow out but it's not a conflagration that you run into eventually.

TAILPIECE

Delhi 2010 are supposed to be 'green games'. I do not know how and why. An event of this scale is bound to guzzle much more fuel and energy than activities of the normal times, no matter how nicely you dress up your city with jute sculptures. Being green can't be just a fad or PR statement.

Delhi's very own "1984"

Delhi is living in typical Orwellian times. CWG is staring in the face and the organizers still not instil any confidence in public and players. The Central Government has entered the scene lately to save face. An individual is brutally subjugated to the whims of the ruling class who was hell bent in organizing the Games in the city (and never took stock of the ground realities until it was too late). People have either empty foot overbridges with escalators (which nobody is using) or demolished subways which are not yet done up. Pedestrians and commuters are having nightmarish experience every day. Construction debris are spawning dengue and malaria and nobody seems to be enjoying monsoon in Delhi nowadays. Traffic is a mega chaos. And at the helm are the people whose ability to run even day to day governance is questionable, let alone organization of such a mega sports event as CWG.

Next time, you want to have Games in any city of India, please conduct referendum on the issue. So, we don't start barking up the tree which turns out to be a wrong one. The Games is anti-Aam Adami except, of course, some 'New Deal' effect on employment generated by building stadia and demolishing and rebuilding roads, bridges and pavements.

New Delhi Times

# CWG 2010 is a leadership disaster. Perhaps no event of national importance has in recent times received such a cold shoulder from the public as the Games have done. In the few days left in the run up to the Games, the patriotism may be rekindled in our hearts and we may, putting a smile on our faces, willy nilly back the Games up. After all, we do not like our country to lose face, do we? Alleged financial irregularity is just one facet of the many sided problem the CWG finds itself plagued with. Delhi is traditionally not known as a better governed place. Day to day governance takes place here at the nudge of High Court or Supreme Court. A democratically elected state government is relatively a new phenomenon here. Plus there are many agencies that keep scrambling for the space of influence and power. On the top of it you have the Big Brother, the Central Government. Add to this a leadership vacuum and moral and professional rudderlessness, and you get a sure shot recipe for disasater. People saw this coming, about a year ago, although the media has woken up only recently.

Still, we will pull it off. But there will be lessons to learn and remember forever.

#The only positive news today in Delhi is Metro. This world class MRTS has done us proud and empowered a common citizen. And surely, Metro did not have leadership vacuum. But sadly, Metro's success is an exception in the city's governance and not a rule: A lone peak in the otherwise flat, stagnant and at times even sliding performance of public systems of Delhi.

The Crusader Lokayukta

Justice Santosh Hegde's decision to quit as Lokayukta is a grim reminder of the state of the affairs in our governments. The BJP government in Karnataka is justifiably facing heat from all quarters of the civil society. But we cannot put only Karnataka government in dock. In other states either the administration is 'clean' or the Lokayukta is not interested in taking his job seriously. The probability of the former proposition being true is 'very low' given India's records in corruption and malpractice. So, it could well be a fact that Lokayuktas are not living upto the expectations of their role as corruption watchdogs in other states. Hence the calm in the corridors of power and feeling of 'all is well' amongst the citizens. Karnataka, I suspect, is not an exception. Justice Hegde chose to spill the beans and we have an 'exposed' BJP government groping for excuses and explanations.

In the meantime, the public can raise a toast to Justice Hegde because his counterparts in other states may well be the people who have simply esconced themselves in this post retirement, super-bureaucratic sort of assignment which nobody (even the media) takes seriously.

Tailpiece:

Like Kafkaesque bureaucracy in other areas of governance, 'grievance redressal' in India is also a bureaucratic jumble of government agencies. The common man is confused as to who will redress their grievance about so many agencies with fancy names: District Magistrate, Panchayats, Ministers, CBI, Police, Anti Corruption Bureau, RTI commissioner, Director of Public Grievances, Ombudsman, Lok Pal, Lokayukta, Vigilance commissioners......(I'm sure the list is long and I have missed out many 'important' grievance redressal agencies of our country)

Travesty of Justice: The Tragedy deepens

The local court’s verdict on Monday did not surprise us. But the verdict did shock many of us. Once again our laws have proved unequal to meet the challenges the modern times and technologies have thrown up. The Bhopal gas leak occurred more than 25 years ago and all we have in the name of legal framework to deal with industrial disasters is Public Liability Insurance Act of 1991. The Act lays down compensation to be awarded to victims of Bhopal-like accident (god forbid if it happens again!). For fatal accidents a maximum of Rs 25,000/- is payable to a victim. Rs 25,000/- is all a life is worth in India in the eyes of our lawmakers. Now, look at the liability limit of international air carriers for death of passengers in an air crash. The airline is bound to pay at least 100,000 SDR (about Rs 64 lacs) to a victim. This compensation quantum, which is stipulated in Montreal Convention, works on the principle of ‘strict liability’. The disparity in liability regimes across the industrial and commercial world is horrifying and shocking. It’s high time the government of the day in India set the record straight.

The story does not end here. See how our obsession with free pricing can play havoc with the letter and spirit of Public Liability Insurance Act. Industries get huge discounts nowadays- there is a price war in the market- in the mandatory Public Liability Act insurance policies as if we are living in a safe world and Bhopal like disaster is a nightmare which is never to be re-enacted again in real life. A part of the premium goes into a Fund set up under Public Liability Insurance Act. Heavy discounts in premium result into poor accretion to this vital relief fund which can come in handy in fighting at least the financial consequences of such environmental accidents.

A gas leak from a pesticide plant has consequences that span generations of human beings. The archaic framework for legal compensation has compounded the problems of our slothful and pliable investigation machinery and there is nobody around (the so called three pillars of our constitution –executive, legislature and judiciary have miserably failed in helping the victims) who can lessen the pain of those who have suffered the consequence of Dec 2-3, 1984.

The verdict has been delivered. We have debated it and lamented the travesty of justice. Life will go on. A new day will break and some government inspector will land in a factory only to be bribed away by the owner. Bhopals are waiting to happen in this country.