From the Western Ghats to the Andamans, we're playing a greedy, losing game

Prepare to lose not only our mountain-protected west coast but also the Andamans. Not because of terrorists or China, but because the greed of our politicians and business lobbies will make them go under the sea. So reckless is the exploitation of these regions that we can already see signs of the ultimate catastrophe taking shape.

The Western Ghats is the water source of the south, the Himalayas of the south. If there are no Himalayas, there will be no Ganga, and if there is no Ganga, there will be no Gangetic plane and no human settlements from Haridwar to Kolkata. Similarly, if there are no Western Ghats, there will not be any of the great rivers of the south or the rains that sustain coastal Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala.

Irresponsible handling of these life-giving natural resources became a scandal in Maharashtra recently because unprecedented drought conditions and farmer suicides drew attention to Irrigation Minister Ajit Pawar's shenanigans. The tragedy was handled politically and the chapter closed with a "clean chit" to the Minister. But the tragedy on the ground continued because Pawar remained unrepentant and unreformed.

Warning signals from Kerala are worse. Last December, for the first time in history, all the districts of the state were declared drought-affected. Previously drought was experienced only in one or two districts and only once in a decade. Perhaps the warning signals were heard in the proper quarters. Delhi appointed a team headed by Madhav Gadgil to study the Western Ghats from the sustainability angle.

India's most authoritative ecological scientist, Gadgil proposed a series of protection plans including a ban on big construction projects like dams. Immediately vested interests rose in revolt. Delhi quickly appointed a new committee under former ISRO chief Kasturi Rangan. No ecologist, the career physicist gave the Government what it wanted: A report rejecting most of Gadgil's recommendations. Now there can be more destruction of forests, of rivers (by the sand mafia) and of paddy fields (by the real estate mafia). Stretches of the coast are already going under the Arabian Sea's angry waters every year.

The Andaman Sea is angrier than the Arabian Sea. Its remoteness from the mainland -- it is beyond the range of even our fierce television anchors -- has for long allowed government leaders to exploit the Andamans with impunity. Whole forests have been felled to feed plywood mills. Copper and chromite quarrying have left stretches of land looking like craters.

Coal allocations by Delhi's mandarins became a big scandal because the media followed the story. In Andamans the arbitrariness of the authorities was worse, but no one -- except those in the islands -- became aware of it. Last December 38 quarry sites were auctioned off. Not only was "auctioning" something new; it was done in secrecy. The rewards that went into private pockets can be imagined. Even imagination will fail if we try to go into the details of the concessions and facilities given by the authorities to the quarry lobby. Andamans is on the way to becoming, like Goa and Bellary, a hole in the ground.

The sea is watching. Andaman beaches, famous once for its clear blue waters, are now toxic. In the most popular areas swimmers feel itchiness, burning eyes and sliminess on the skin. The rubbish from Port Blair is haphazardly dumped near a beachside site from where poisonous chemical fumes spread and solid waste quickly turn harmful. Some of the major quarries are also along the seafront. Only a rock wall left by the quarriers stand between the sea and the hollowed land. If the quarrying picks up as a result of the recent "green signal" or if a tidal surge comes, the sea will devour the land.

What's puzzling is the attitude of our politicians. After all, they make money for the next five and ten generations of their families. Shouldn't they also preserve the land for all those generations to enjoy? What's the use of all the money if the country disappears? Politicians are a mystery inside an enigma.

When fools still pay to watch cricket, it is time to dream of mosquitoes

Most of us will dismiss it as wild imagination if someone said that the ongoing cricket scandal was unleashed to save Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh from embarrassment. True, the Ashwini Kumar/Pavan Bansal disgrace had brought the trail of corruption to the doorstep of the Prime Minister, from where the doorstep of the Congress boss was not far. But now no one talks about the coal scandal or the Italian helicopter deal. All talk is about Srinivasan and Meiyappan, Sreesanth and cheer girls.

Does burying one scandal with another make any difference to us, the battered millions of this ancient land? Is there a difference between getting defrauded by politicians in the morning and by sports people in the evening? One way to answer that question is by asking another: Is there a difference between gang-rape in a taxi and gang-rape in a bus? The truth is that citizens are abused and exploited by everyone in a position to do so.

It's all about getting rich. Politicians become rich by robbing people, cricket becomes rich by cheating fans. When robbers joined cheats, cricket turned evil. This happened well before Cement Srinivasan became the Master of the Mess. Even those who engaged in blood feuds in Parliament became soul brothers in cricket's boardrooms. If the Congress, the BJP and the NCP could show in running the country half the cooperation they show in running cricket, our country would have been a happier place.

Actually they cooperate in cricket to milk the country. Their combined influence has kept the BCCI beyond routine laws such as the Right to Information. The richest club in the world, it gets largesse, exemptions and concessions at the expense of tax payers. All for what? To invent aberrations like Cheer Girls' Cricket and Fixers' Cricket? The chief inventor of this travesty of sport can't even live in the country because he would be jailed. They are the clever ones. The fools are those who still buy tickets to watch this insult.

Don't let the argumentative Indian tell you that you can't blame cricket as a whole for the transgressions of a few. Of course you can. The intransigent Srinivasan represented cricket as a whole, as did the steamrolling Sharad Pawar before him, and the cronies-first Jagmohan Dalmia before him. The great stars of old times who now bask in the BCCI sun without uttering a syllable symbolise cricket as a whole. So do the shining stars of today. The man who is dubbed God kept silent for two tumultuous weeks. The man who deserves to be dubbed Captain Cement is still silent, while pretending otherwise.

Those of us who look for a way out look in vain. For, ousting cement will solve nothing; sugar will take the spot, or jute, or politics. So, all we can do is dream -- of cricket getting banned, of politicians becoming decent. Why not dream of the lot becoming mosquitoes? Researchers are developing strategies to destroy the "notoriously keen sense of smell" of mosquitoes. If the magnetic pull of money, no less notorious, can similarly be destroyed, our country may be saved.

Mosquitoes teach us about parasitism, a phenomenon that afflicts everything from cricket to governance. Scientists tell us how parasites an also be parasitised. "A protozoan living in the digestive tract of a flea living on a dog is a hyperparasite". It is easier in public life. A protozoan party worker does not have to go inside the digestive tract of an MLA to live off him in hyperparasitism.

Cuckoos don't build their own nests, preferring to deposit them in the nests of other birds for hatching. This is called "brood parasitism", a familiar feature of politics. Yeddyurappa deposited his BJP eggs in Kumaraswamy's JD (S) and, after hatching, took his brood and flew away. There is also "social parasitism" where one species exploits another -- like bureaucrats fattening themselves on ministers and ministers returning the compliment, both species living happily ever after.

Moral of the story: Only science fiction holds any hope for our money-crazy, cricket-crazy land of crazy politics.

When hopes are dashed by foul politics, chaos looks like a good option

In classical tragedy -- Greek, Shakespearean or Indian -- the underlying theory is that the tragic hero cannot help himself. Antigone and Hamlet knew they were drifting into suffering but were unable to avert tragedy. Duryodhana alone understood and explained the trap in which he was caught. He knew what was dharma, he said, "but I have no inclination to follow it". The only inclination he had was to do whatever came to his mind at any given moment.

Even in their villainy the heroes of classical tragedy commanded our sympathy and admiration. The heroes of modern political tragedy have villainy without the redeeming features of character and catharsis. Unlike Macbeth and Othello, the likes of Omprakash Chautala and Janardhana Reddy knew that they were not victims but makers of destiny, and that they had the option not to abuse power. Yet, they displayed neither the understanding of Duryodhana nor the discretion of Ravana. They just went power-mad. Thousands of such abusers of power are still at large.

Party labels and professed ideologies make no difference to this cult of foul politics. Consider the two parties that claim the right to rule. Corruption charges led to the exit in disgrace of two BJP presidents and to the party's humiliation in Karnataka. Yet it strikes a moral pose as it campaigns against Congress corruption. The focus this week is on jail bharo. It is a pity that jail bharo means going in and then out of jail, whereas a lasting stay behind bars would have been more appropriate in many cases.

For its part, the Congress has never been as widely distrusted as today. Most of the scams have been unforgivable. It seems certain that its fate in the next election will be somewhat similar to its fate in the post-Emergency election of 1977. Yet, unaware of the popular mood, the party is busy attacking the BJP for corruption and celebrating its own ninth anniversary in power.

We celebrate success, not failure. For Manmohan Singh to complete two terms as Prime Minister is indeed a statistical consummation. But which Government in recent history had such a long period to achieve things for the country and failed to do so? Which Government notched up a list of scams, each more damnable than the other? The Congress celebrates what the people regret.

The procession of scams pointed to an unusual trait in the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress: Its refusal to recognise public sentiment and march on regardless. Even Indira Gandhi yearned for public approval in some form, some time. Sonia Gandhi has appeared uninterested in popular approval. Her style of brazening it out could be seen in the appointment of CBI chiefs and Central Vigilance commissioners, and again in the latest appointment of the Comptroller & Auditor General.

Vinod Rai had done to the CAG what Santosh Hegde had done to the Lok Ayukta and T.N. Seshan to the Election Commission -- set benchmarks that would always be held up as models. Congress mandarins put Shashi Kant Sharma in Vinod Rai's chair. This gentleman held key Defence Ministry positions for as long as ten years including a post-retirement extension. Those ten years saw the Defence budget skyrocketing from Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 2 lakh crore. Many big procurement deals hit the headlines for the wrong reasons despite Mr Clean, A.K. Antony, being at the helm. What credibility will the auditing of defence purchases have under the new CAG? It's that public-feelings-be-damned attitude again.

Bad days are ahead. The Congress will find it hard even to get a workable coalition going. Disgust with the Congress may drive some voters to the BJP, but there is no salvation there either. With several months to go for elections, we have to be wary of coalition predictions. But perhaps it is not too weird to hope that the present chaos will get worse. The problem with functioning anarchy is that it functions. If it stops functioning, chaos may become unbearable and out of it may emerge order. That was true with other countries.

From Manmohan-vintage rouble scam to Narendrabhai's 'ethical incapacities'

Reminiscences by civil servants are often marred by the 'I' factor. The eagerness to justify their mistakes usually detracts from the credit side. Javid Chowdhury (The Insider's View-Penguin) falls outside the pattern. He does talk about the positions he held, but mostly to illustrate the wider philosophical view he presents about governance. His canvas is large and his approach analytical. This earns him the reader's trust.

He pays touching tributes to the government servants he came to admire -- from Atmarambhai, the headclerk so experienced and diligent that he was known as the 'working collector' to the famous M. G. Pimputkar, held in awe by IAS trainees for his sense of integrity. But he also criticises the tendency among sections of the higher civil service to butter up Corporate Captains for post-retirement sinecures. He decries lobbyists for not contributing "a lawful or ethical value addition" to cases under consideration. The lobbyist operates "through a mix of trade-offs and pay-offs".

Chowdhury shares with the reader the insights he gained from his vantage position. In the notorious Jain hawala case, 62 politicians and 18 government servants were found to be receiving hawala payments on a regular basis. These were not bribes on a quid pro quo basis as many of the recipients were not in positions of power at the time. In other words, there was no evident corruption in the transactions, but there were serious violation of foreign exchange laws.

Yet the CBI pursued the cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the cases "were thrown out by the court at the threshold itself". Chowdhury cites provisions of the much stricter Foreign Exchange Regulation Act and asserts that prosecution under FERA would have produced immediate results. So why didn't the CBI do so? Good question.

For that matter, how many of us knew that the Indo-US Rupee-Rouble Trade Agreement was "the largest value foreign exchange scam using a single modus operandi that has been played out in the history of India"? It led to "the draining away of about 40 million US dollars from the country in one year".

India imported defence equipment from Russia against rupees, but under an arbitrarily denominated exchange rate. Russia built up a huge credit balance which it surreptitiously auctioned off for payment in US dollars. Officials in both countries benefited and so did the Russian Government and financial fixers. The losers were Indians.

Chowdhury, who was Director of Enforcement then, proposed a simple solution to keep out the racketeers. An unusually quick reply from the Department of Revenue expressed outrage at the suggestion. Evidently top officials were interested in the racket.

Somewhat shyly, Chowdhury records that the Rupee-Rouble Agreement was negotiated and many revisions made in the period when Manmohan Singh held a series of positions in the financial sector, from Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs to Finance Secretary and finally Finance Minister. He makes no comment other than that the nature and size of the scam were known to the top people.

Javid Chowdhury is a Gujarati and he has much to say about Narendra Modi's ideas and actions. He says it with his usual adherence to the facts he knew. Here's a gem. He was Secretary in the Union Health Ministry at the time of the 2002 riots. Modi did not allow the Union Health Minister to visit Shah Alam relief camp; the state health minister threatened to jump out of the car if the central minister insisted on visiting the camp.

Providing a succinct account of the caste history of Gujarati politics, Chowdhury says that "Narendrabhai is from a sub-sect [ of the OBC category] that is particularly excluded from the power structure" which makes his rise in the upper-caste oriented BJP "a freak deviation". He faults Modi for "his several ethical incapacities". But his main criticism is that Modi has little concept of the science of public administration, that his centralised model of governance will eventually leave Gujarat an administrative wasteland. In this year of election hype, who has ears to hear?

What is good for the High Command? What is good for the Country?

Believe it or not, some analysts in Karnataka publicly attributed the Congress victory in the state to Rahul Gandhi's campaign speeches. Narendra modi was all bombast, they said, while Rahul asked people about their problems and promised to redress them, thereby winning their votes.

This is the tragedy of the Congress, and by extension, the country. If the party had fared poorly in the election, the blame would have been put squarely on the local leaders. In victory, all credit goes to the High Command. Because of this Congress culture, we should not be overly optimistic about the state's new Congress Government. Its priority may not be to understand the public mood or to provide good governance but, as always, to please the High Command.

What indeed pleases the High Command? According to public perception, what is good for the High Command is what pleases the High Command, and what is good for the High Command is different from what is good for the country. This perception did not drop from the sky one fine morning. It grew over the years as the people watched the High Command's actions, inactions and non-actions. It grew as an offshoot of the harvest of scams in the last couple of decades and the High Command's responses to them.

The common factor in all the scams was that the Congress establishment including the Government made no serious effort to punish the guilty. On the contrary, it made every effort to let the guilty go free. The most notorious example was Ottavio Quattrochi. Despite a spectrum of evidence pointing to this Italian middleman's role in clinching the Bofors gun deal and commissions thereof, union ministers helped him escape to Malaysia. Then Indian investigative agencies disgraced themselves by contriving to lose cases against him in foreign courts. Finally India ensured that all cases against him were withdrawn and his frozen bank accounts released to him. Never did a deal-maker receive such privileged protection as Quattrochi did. The people of India saw him as part of the High Command.

Because the early scams found the Government shielding the scamsters, other more daring scams followed. The Government tried to protect the culprits in each of them. Since the Government is a creature of the High Command, the needle of suspicion in every scam pointed to the High Command. Initially politeness had prevented names being named when it came to the High Command. By the time the 2G spectrum, the coal allocation, the abuse of the CBI and the Railway Board bribery cases raised unprecedented stink in the country, the High Command's hand in high-level corruption began to be openly discussed.

How else could it be? How could the Law Minister and Railway Minister do what they did without the knowledge of their protectors? The Ashwani Kumars and the Pawan Bansals are soapy hangers-on who rose in politics only as cogs in the High Command's wheel.

The malfunctioning cogs generated as much dirt as possible. Then they were broken off and cast away, the credit of course going to Sonia Gandhi, in a replay of the Karnataka credit Rahul got. So what was she doing for seven days when those evil ministers were covering up their tracks? More likely, it was the CBI and the Supreme Court that brought about the ouster of the sinners -- the CBI by unearthing scandalous details about the Bansal family's excesses, and the Supreme Court by issuing a warning to the Government. Bring in legislation ensuring the independence of the CBI, the "caged parrot", it said, or face the Court taking action on its own.

That was when resignations -- or shall we say, dismissals -- should have taken place if democratic decencies were at work. The public could see why no such thing happened. Nothing happens unless the High Command moves because the High Command's finger is in every pie. Karnataka leader Siddaramaiah meant well when he inadvertently said after his election victory: " I wish to thank Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Gandhi". Spot on.