THE BEST AND THE WORST ON SHOW

How many will learn how many lessons from the floods that devastated Kerala and Kodagu? The most important lesson is bound to go unlearned -- that, ultimately, these were again examples of Nature collapsing under the impact of human greed. We were warned of it five years ago when cloudbursts and landslides turned Uttarakhand upside down, killing nearly 6000 people. It was adjudged a man-made disaster with hydroelectric dams, illegal mining and construction activities upsetting Nature's balance.

The same greed-driven factors have been threatening most of the Western Ghats as Madhav Gadgil warned seven years ago. Land exploitation and illegal quarrying had reached dangerous levels. But the profiteers behind such exploitation always get support from government leaders and political parties. So the Gadgil Report was subverted. Gadgil has pointed to the Kerala disaster and warned that Goa would be next. To see what he means, we only have to take a drive along certain areas of interior Goa that have been turned by mining companies into gaping holes in the earth. The miners and their political friends earned Rs 35,000 crore in profits as an inquiry commission found.

The story is the same whether it be Kerala, Goa or Kodagu where entire plantations have disappeared in flood fury. Converting paddy fields and forest lands into resorts is an easy way to make money. When the natural movements of water are blocked and when hill slopes are cleared of vegetation, Nature breaks into landslides, debris flows and rock falls. But we refuse to learn lessons as greed dances with corruption.

The depredation that wrecked Kerala threw light on the best and the worst that make up our country. The way the local people rose to the occasion was both inspiring but humbling. Individuals and groups plunged into rescue operations disregarding all political and religious differences. Coastal fishing communities transported 700 boats by lorries to the affected areas and helped move 65,000 people to safe shelters. Social media groups set up online control rooms and call centres manned by hundreds of volunteers. Prisoners in the state's jails prepared food in vast quantities in addition to contributing Rs 12 lakhs from their prison-work wages. The authorities closed the gates of a dam to save a flood-trapped elephant. Four men risked their lives to save a dog that couldn't swim against a strong current. The media did a great job combining responsibility with dedication. The Chief Minister showed timely leadership and instilled confidence in people while coordinating relief activities. He was even courteous to the media. What the world saw was a spontaneous people's movement with the "We shall overcome" theme as a driving force.

This groundswell of voluntary action by a people who refused to be cowed down by catastrophe added weight to the help that rushed in from outside. The armed forces, central teams with special skills, and flood relief experts from Orissa were so brave that the locals took to them as family. The message was: This is a country that citizens can be proud of.

But one sinister streak marred the whole scenario. Discordant notes came from the religious right and, astonishingly, from the Central Government. A Swamy's comment that Kerala was punished for eating beef may be dismissed as the ranting of a mental case. But what about a man from the BJP's IT cell who uploaded an audio clip and text saying that the flood-affected people were mostly from well to do families who therefore deserved no assistance. He still asked for donations, but to a BJP-sponsored platform. There were others who said contributions should not be sent to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund because the money could go to the minorities.

Just as BJP voices went against the public mood, the Central Government took positions that seemed partisan. Was Delhi piqued that its Rs 600-million aid to Kerala was followed by the UAE's Rs 700-million offer? It saved face by announcing that the 600 million was only a preliminary step. It caused outrage when it said that it would charge rice allocations to the state, then saved its face by saying the rice would be free. Its ban on foreign government's contributions marred its face beyond saving. There are rules and precedents that make the ban decision untenable. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is that the Government of India has given the impression that it is inimical towards the Government and people of a state. This is unprecedented and it bodes ill for the future.

THE PRIME MINISTER AS GENTLEMAN

My Lord,
Never let me climb
so high
that I'm unable to
embrace a stranger

The humanism in Atal Bihari Vajpayee made him taller than a prime minister. In the vastness of his mind the ephemerality of political glory counted for what it was. He once said: You might become an ex-prime minister one day, but you will never become an ex-poet. He was a universalist, his literate self dwelling above his political persona.

Vajpayee was reared in the RSS school, attending a four-year officers' training course from 1940 and qualifying as a fulltime pracharak the year India became independent. But he was seldom seen as an activist pracharak preaching the prescribed gospel. He looked more like a dreamer, reaching out to people in ways that went beyond his training. Although he is on record as saying "The Sangh is my soul", sensibilities of a larger mission seemed to be working within him. Above the pracharak and the politician was the poet. His spirit roamed free.

This drew wider attention as Vajpayee entered Parliament. It is part of legend that the young MP's flowing oratory turned Jawaharlal Nehru into an admirer. The oft-repeated story is that Nehru would rush to the house when Vajpayee rose to speak and that he once told the BJP leader: One day you will be prime minister. Nehru sent him to the UN General Assembly one year to help him get international exposure and some useful training in diplomacy.

Such non-partisan functioning in the larger interests of the country is difficult to imagine nowadays. Nehru's very name has become taboo in patriotic circles and young leaders of opposition parties are ridiculed as childish. One reason Vajpayee rose to greatness was that he lived in an age that valued political courtesies and did not allow pettimindedness to cast shadows upon it. That age is behind us. What the poet in Vajpayee described as "darkness in the middle of the day" has come.

It started sending early signals in the middle of Vajpayee's term in office. His stature had grown as he progressed from frustrated short terms to full term as prime minister beginning 1998. The Pokhran atomic explosion that year and the Kargil War the following year put garlands of glamour round his neck. He asserted his personal supremacy over his party hardliners when he took a bus to Lahore in 1999. His initiatives for peace provoked a Viswa Hindu Parishad secretary to call him a "pseudo Hindu".

The ultra Hindus got their chance to punish him in 2002. When Gujarat exploded into communal violence that year, Prime Minister Vajpayee was outraged. Within a month of the atrocities he visited the state and said at a press conference that the king's duty to uphold rajdharma had not been carried out. He decided to seek the resignation of the state's chief minister when the national executive of the BJP met in Goa a few days later. The flight to Goa turned out to be one of the most historic in India's aviation history. L.K.Advani and Arun Jaitley strongly opposed any action against the Gujarat chief minister. A rattled Vajpayee was further rattled when slogans were raised at the meeting in favour of the chief minister. Vajpayee had to forget his concept of rajdharma and watch his critics celebrating their triumph.

The post-Goa Vajpayee was a politically enfeebled Vajpayee. Advani now became Deputy Prime Minister. RSS demanded a meeting with the Prime Minister and got it, establishing the restoration of its political influence which Vajpayee had kept at near-zero level all along.

It is now 14 years since Vajpayee retired as prime minister. It can be seen that Vajpayee's India was different from today's India. Vajpayee's BJP was different from today's BJP. Democracy itself was different, allowing space for opponents of the government, dissent playing its essential role in public life, the spirit of freedom never suppressed overtly or covertly. For these extraneous reasons as well as for the vibrancy of his mind, Vajpayee's place in history will be above that of all others in his party. He represented the ethos of the nation -- spiritualism without zealotry, tolerance, liberalism. Such was the roundedness of Vajpayee's makeup that we could stand up and say to all the world: This was a gentleman. And sing with him: It's dark in the middle of the day / The sun is defeated by its shadow / Squeeze the oil from your soul and feed the wick / Come let's light the lamp again.

WHY KARUNANIDHI WAS IMPORTANT

With Karunanidhi's death, a chapter turns in history. That is rare because most political leaders constitute mere footnotes in history, let alone a page. Karunanidhi was more a cultural reformer than a politician, a recognition that led people to confer on him the popular title of Kalaignar, man of the arts and letters. He was an ideas man alongside Periyar and C.N.Annadurai. The Trimurtis nurtured a previously unarticulated Dravida civilisational value system, thereby contributing a lasting component to India's socio-political ripening.

To see how complete has been the Trimurtis' conquest of Tamil imagination, we only have to look at the way C.Rajagopalachari and K.Kamaraj have been overtaken by time within one generation. Giants of the south and pillars of national politics once, they left footprints on the sands of time that were washed off by the next wave. They were warriors who got us freedom. But what to do with that freedom was an issue that left most of their generation confused. Some like Jawaharlal Nehru hatched on to socialism. But he was ambivalent; his cabinets included some of the most committed capitalists of his time while the genuine socialists who formed the Congress Socialist Party were kept out. Beyond Nehru freedom merely became an opportunity to enjoy power.

Dravida leaders stood apart because they were intellectuals who believed in a cause. Both Annadurai and Karunanidhi were writers and orators with a command over language that could only be called phenomenal. They could move masses with a movie dialogue or just the way they addressed the audience at a public meeting.

Both used their literary formidability to pursue transformational goals. The pros and cons of the goals can be debated. But there can be no dispute about the sincerity or the wisdom with which they pursued them. The aim was to build on the richness of a culture that had not only produced the magnificent temple architecture of southern India but had also influenced the development of Khmer, Thai and Javanese scripts. They tried to do this without creating animosities against non-Dravidians. The anti-Hindi agitation was not against Hindi but against Hindi's forced imposition in authoritarian ways. While anti-brahminism was a principle, one of chief ministers Annadurai's first acts was to thank Brahmin civil servants and request them to carry on with renewed confidence.

No doubt it was the mass popularity of cinema that gave Annadurai and Karunanidhi their hold on public emotions. That was also true of MGR and Jayalalitha, the mega stars who subsumed the Dravida cause, first as comrades of the preceptors, later as adversaries. The split in the DMK leading to the birth of the AIADMK was not over ideology, but over power.

It was a rivalry that gave MGR an advantage. His hold on mass emotions was unrivalled because, as a hero who appeared on the screen, he related directly to the audience; Karunanidhi, the story teller and the dialogue writer, was out of sight in the theatre and was therefore a lesser god to worship. MGR had no doctrinal contributions to make to Dravida postulates, yet his power to stir mass emotions made him unbeatable. That edge helped Jayalalitha throughout her legendary enmity with Karunanidhi.

Now that the main players have left the stage, it is easier to see the distinction between the writers and the actors. The articles of faith fostered by the writers became a defining persuasion of our time. The glamour that gave the stars their primacy seems to have been an exceptionality. Why didn't Shivaji Ganeshan acquire the same potency as MGR although his histrionic capability was second to none and his dialogues, not just in Parasakthi, remain classic? Karunanidhi wrote the dialogue for both Parasakthi and Manthiri Kumari, the 1950 film that catapulted MGR to stardom.

For that matter, why did N.T.Rama Rao become the sole film-star politician that succeeded in Andhra? Others tried, but in vain. It cannot even be argued that it is part of Tamil culture for film stars to rise to the top and stay there. If that were the case Rajani Kant would have been chief minister by now instead of floating around like Pirandello's six characters in search of an author; given his more evident earnestness, Kamal Hassan would at least be Leader of the Opposition. It is not irrelevant to ask whether people's perceptions are changing, whether Karunanidhi was "the daintiest last, to make the end most sweet". Now that he is beside Annadurai, he can rest in peace, the last battle won and poetic justice ensured.

START WITH HOW TO MAKE A RIFLE

We pay a price when we let other countries set our pace. One day Donald Trump includes India in the list of those "who are robbing America" and threatens to levy high taxes on "thousands and thousands" of Indian motorcycles imported into America. This was when India cut duty on the glamorous Harley-Davidson from 75 percent to 50 instead of the 0 percent Trump wanted.

Another day Trump praises India and green-signals the sale of unmanned aerial combat vehicles to India, a deal that was previously denied. These missile-firing drones have a sea variant reputed to be effective in coastal defence. No doubt, they can be decisive in beating back attacks such as the 26/11 terror strike in Mumbai.

Is India expected to cringe when Trump threatens it, and feel elated when Trump flatters it? Our concern should be not that this is a man the world mistrusts because of his unpredictable mood shifts; our concern should be the assumptions that are taken for granted, seemingly by all, in US-India dealings.

The American turn-around on the sale of hightech weapons such as the drone is a case in point. This looked like a systemic shift rather than a Trumpian twinkle. Nevertheless, India needs to be cautious for at least three reasons. First, America now recognises India as a full partner in its defence strategies and considers this as an "upgradation" of India. Secondly, Delhi sought a favourable nod from Washington before moving to buy an anti-missile defence system from Russia. Both these factors are linked to the third: Washington's eagerness to block China's growth as a world power.

Barack Obama's America had formally accepted India as a "major defence partner". But the partnership gained muscle only when Trump moved India into America's tier-I list of countries to which sensitive weapon systems could be exported without special licences. Trump has repeatedly stressed India's importance in what he calls the Asia-Pacific region. This recognition led to Washington waiving its sanctions provisions and thereby enabling India to buy Russia's Rs 39,000-crore air defence missile system.

What does all this really mean from India's standpoint? It is easier to see what it means to America: It opens a big market for American weapons and gets a major regional power to be involved with American defence policies in the region. There could well be a section of Indians who see it as a sign of progress when (a) America upgrades Delhi to tier-I for military sales and (b) permits Delhi to buy Russian weapons. Other sections may see it as demeaning when (a) India is expected to feel good about upgradation for purposes of buying American weapons and (b) sanction-scared Delhi seeks American permission to buy Russian weapons.

Both schools will have to see as unacceptable the extent to which India is dependent on other countries for its essential defence needs. The proud exhibit on our weapons front is the Brahmos missile. But 65 percent of it consists of imported components. INS Vikramaditya, the pride of the Indian navy, was formerly a Russian vessel mothballed because of age. Arihant, our first "indigenously built" nuclear submarine, took in extensive help from Russia. HAL, a competent public sector company, has received discouragement from successive governments. Its Tejas aircraft has been waiting for decades to get operational clearance. Its plans over Rafale jet fighters fell flat when the project was taken out of its hands and given to Anil Ambani's company. Last year an Indian-made rifle was rejected by the Indian army. Even bullet-proof jackets made in India are unpopular with our defence personnel. Despite a long history of defence research, proud achievements in rocket science and slogans like Make In India, India remains the world's largest arms importer.

When America recognises as a "major defence partner" a country that cannot produce even a rifle, it is clear that it sees India as a profitable market for its pricey weapons. In the process India loses opportunities to develop foreign policy, especially China policy, for India's benefit as distinct from the benefits of "Asia-Pacific". China is currently producing weaponry so sophisticated that the US has started to worry. India need not have been left so far behind. The achievements of its space programme and of its scientists in Silicon Valley point to the talent available to India. But the defence ministry is manned by IAS generalists while the country is at the mercy of parties and politicians who put their interests above the nation's. How can one get more than what one deserves?