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.

Tragedy of Errors?

We are commemorating 26/11. The media are busing crafting fancy theories about how terrorists came, how the Mumbai police and security agencies fared and how much vulnerable we still are to a terrorist attack. Some bravehearts walked straight into a line of fire on that fateful night and some faint-hearted just fumbled in responding to the call of duty. We are taking stock of what actually happened. We are still picking up the pieces. A year has passed since Indian's very own 9/11 played out in Mumbai. Here is a snapshot of the contours emerging from the event that shook all of us.

(1) The incumbent political party at both Centre and State has been voted back to power (Wasn't 26/11 serious enough to be an important poll issue?)

(2) It's not very clear what the government is doing about doing up the intelligence apparatus and fixing the fabled 'inter-agency co-ordination' problem. A new bureaucratic body called NIA has been created which would take time in finding its feet. What about reforms in the existing institutions?

(3) We did not stand our political class when 26/11 happened. If one looks back at the events that happened during last 12 months, our mistrust of our political class has only trebled. (Koda scam, Maharashtra assembly oath-taking ceremony, Shiv Sena's nativism and violence, Spectrum allocation scam, Manu Sharma's parole......). Are our ministers capable of organizing an efficient and motivated security apparatus? Can they lead by example?

(4) America still helps Pakistan no matter how hard President Obama would try to placate and pacify Indian government. We cling on to the N-deal and avoid 'straight talking' with the US while our neighbour continues to plot new designs of bleeding us, motivated by the stupendous success of 26/11.

(5) We do not know if we would be able to thwart another 26/11 in future. This is where lies the singular failure of our governments. Whatever they're doing and are seen to be doing fails woefully to reassure us, the Aam Adami (common citizen) of India.

Mandate for a Strong PM

I would like to reproduce the following words of my blog dated 5 July, 2008:

It is heartening to see our government hanging on to the US nuclear deal. It is not very common to see national governments finding a mission and leaving no stone unturned to achieve it. These are the qualities we usually identify with private sector. Isn't it an example of management by objectives?

Yes, Manmohan Singh's UPA government saw the deal through in a manner one usually associates with the fabled efficient functioning of private sector. I know N-deal is too intellectually hefty an issue to influence results of a General Election in a country like India. But N-deal certainly stands as a metaphor of efficiency, integrity and purposefulness of the UPA government which came to power in 2004. The mandate won today by the Congress led political formation brings the issue of 'performance' to the fore.

Sonia Gandhi did a brilliant job of putting together a team of extra-ordinary gentlemen tasked with executing the liberal socialist political programme laid down in NCMP. Dr Manmohan Singh's role was largely technocratic. May be he was not a heavy-weight political leader but he handled the implementation of the UPA agenda well and at times saw through the difficult decisions in the teeth of fierce opposition. And average Indian anyway hates politics. So we did not mind having a political lightweight but an intelligent, knowledgeable and honest economist as our PM. Also, Sonia Gandhi was never seen throwing her weight around. The Gandhi family, on the whole, has astutely supported the PM during the five year term. This may be the reason the UPA is being voted back to power despite several shortcomings of the previous UPA government. With much political experience gained during the first term of UPA government, we can look forward to seeing a more confident and resurgent Dr Manmohan Singh in the next five years! As someone who lies behind the victory of 2009, as someone who does not just understand economics but also the business of governance.

The Verdict of 2009 should be remembered as a victory of the leadership model Sonia Gandhi has experimented, as a personal victory of a good politician and human being who is not a rabble rouser but an honest and clear- headed leader. He is not and has never been a weak Prime Minister...!!

REALITY CHECK

India is in a state of frenzy. Fumbling to respond to the global meltdown (not knowing fully how much the country is affected by it), India is gearing up for yet another phase of chaos called General Elections. The policy measures are culled from the economic textbooks and thrust upon the bemused public. As the anxious policy makers wait for the results to seep down the various segments of life, problems continue to spring up from various directions and plague the Asian 'superpower'. In the last few years, we had got used to calling ourselves a superpower. The only cues available were a near double digit economic growth and the youthful and brash IT sector which had started putting India on the global map. Acquisitions of foreign firms by Indian corporates only added to make our pride swell. A confident and resurgent India, with its army of savvy and English speaking techies, waited in the wings to dislodge the incumbent superpowers and transform the strategic equations across the continents.


Though the high flying India which ruled the world for the first eight years of this decade was not a flash in the pan, the so called success story had been stretched too far by the cheerleaders. The story fled the realm of reality. It crocked and floundered only to seek refuge in the dazzling and magical world of fiction. Who would not remember the days when the financial papers would headline, in mega bold fonts, the rise and rise of the fabled Sensex? As if there is no life beyond Sensex. And a five figure Sensex meant India's nirvana, a panacea of the all the problems the Indians faced. We were living in a world of inflated expectations and oversimplified postulates. We had started judging ourselves by the yardstick of the salaries IIMA or B graduates would be offered in campus placements. By the unprecedented revenue figures our finance ministers projected in every Budget. By the ultra mega projects the Cabinets or the 'empowered groups' of our arthritis-ridden, hypertensive or diabetic ministers would clear with an unfailing regularity and unflagging pomp. But, for a man on the street, has India really changed? Are we really not a Third World country any more?

Here is the reality check!

1) Governance (Satyam): The fraud revealed once again the gap between 'prescription' and 'description' which is one of main defining characteristics of a developing society. A maze of laws and regulations overseen by an equally complex maze of 'ministries/departments' and 'regulators' is no deterrent at all. One can coolly bypass them and make the agencies look like buffoons.

2) Quality of Life: Just hit a road every evening in a city like Mumbai. There are highways, expressways, sea links and flyovers in the city but streets in a suburb leading to or fanning out of a station make mockery of our tall claims about improvement in infrastructure. You will be enveloped by clouds of smoke and the noise of lound restless honks of the vehicles trapped in traffic hold ups. It's a mayhem one comes across as one steps out of his or her home or office. People are seen standing crammed in crowded buses (which appear not be advancing even an inch) and sitting huddled in rickety auto-rickshaws, groping for a semblance of life which their political leaders promise them every election year. They have a capsulated existence which starts everyday with newspapers and end with saas-bahu serials with a few songs on FM radio or MP3, a couple of hurried meals, a few hours of half baked discussions on cricket, stock market and politics and a few tiffs with bosses and colleagues and neighbours and fellow commuters stuffed in between.
Life on streets is a potentially carcinogenic, high decibel chaos.

3) India is still known for corruption and bureaucratic red tape. The bright and incorruptible social activists manage to influence policies (UPA deserves some credit for this) but we are yet to see them taking the helm at our ministries. The sane, sensible and liberal voice still remains at the margins.

4) Farmers commit suicides in this country. Skilled workers of diamond industry are slogging under the scorching sun on road construction sites. We do not have a policy and action plan in place to address the social security issues of the informal and unorganized sectors of our economy. We are more concerned about pink slips that dread our BPO and IT workers who throng swanky office buildings in Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Noida everyday.

5) Internal Security: There isn't any area which has been more mismanaged than this since our independence. There is no federal level, pan India strategy or will to combat this menace. The debate still remains lost in 'State List' and 'Union List' inspite of 26/11. A homeland is a homeland. Chandigarh is no different from Chhatisgarh when it comes to dealing with national security.

Can we still say we have left our THIRD WORLD status far behind? There is a long way to go. Is it not?