Citizenship Amendment Act, Dec. 2019 and attendant issues – The state of the Hindu in India

The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past

                                                                                                            Milan Kundera

As horses run true to form, the Citizenship Amendment Act passed by the Parliament has run into a predictable storm. As buzz words like bigoted, sectarian, fascist, unconstitutional etc. are bandied about, it will be in order to take a critical look at the singular underpinning of the strident criticism (accompanied of course by riots, arson, vandalism and incendiary): all said and done, shorn of all cacophony and breast-beating, it all boils down to one single point: India is not the natural home of Hindus (they ought to rank on par with other nationals) and to maintain so is to be non-secular and counter to the precepts of the constitution. And if you discern in the orgy of violence that has ensued shades of the Direct Action of Jinnah, you are not far off the mark. This is one of their trusted tactics down ages.  

The attempt here is to study the state of the Hindu in India today. 

Secularism

The country was metamorphosed into a ‘socialist secular’ Republic by the 42^nd Amendment in 1976 at the behest of Indira Gandhi. The towering stalwarts who deliberated threadbare every tenet of the constitution did not feel it necessary to declare the Republic secular, leave alone socialist. Adequate protection for minorities, religious and linguistic, was ensured through well defined Articles. And as for the original and governing ethos of the country, suffice it to say that they had, inter alia, illustrations from Ramayana ornate the constitution.

Now, it will be no nobody’s case that Indira Gandhi was more secular or perspicacious than the original authors of the constitution.  Those who tinkered with the Constitution later clearly did not match their sagacity, breadth of vision and elaborate consultative process and more often than not expediency rather than conviction informed their actions.

Now, if secularism has been turned into such an exalted touchstone in our narrative and become the yardstick of the moral fiber of the country, how can its inextricable twin sister. socialism, be ignored? Those who selectively set so much store by secularism cannot shut their eyes to the secularism’s conjoined sibling in the 42^nd Amendment. Unless they strive with equal vigour to turn India into another bankrupt Venezuela or Greece or a totalitarian regime like (the erstwhile) USSR, they are doing a disservice to the very Amendment they swear by.

And terming India secular through a constitutional amendment was as absurd as painting the lily white. Hinduism is the only religion in today’s world that welcomes noble ideas from all directions, as opposed to the pagan, heathen, kafir (ineluctably us-vs-them) concepts of hard-currency predatory religions. It endorses any path, quest for God, as valid, the cardinal principle being like all rivers from different directions flow into the sea, all paths ultimately lead to one God, the Paramathma. There is no claim of monopoly over God.  For millennia, secularism has been the bedrock of Bharath. Be it Ashoka or Shivaji, right through modern times, secularism has continued to be an integral part of Hinduism, despite the subjugation and torment of alien rulers. It bears repetition that those who fled religious persecution, Zoroastrians and Jews for instance, were welcomed and accommodated and allowed to practice their religion without let or hindrance.

The Nehruvian norm that self-abnegation is sine qua non on the part of the Hindu to be secular has held fast. Thus, a Hindu is by default communal and is perpetually on trial as to his secular credentials. The irony cannot be missed that the followers of religions of book, with their fundamentalist belief other religionists are non-believers condemned to perdition unless saved through conversion, pass easy muster as secular.

Pluralism, multi-culturalism etc.

There is a patent fallacy in Indian context about the western terms like majority, minority, pluralism, multi culturalism etc. being mindlessly tossed about today,

Pluralism happens to be the very character of Hinduism. To cite a representative example, in the Mumbai apartment where hundreds of us lived, most of us Hindus, we did not worship the same Deities, and even if we did, our manner of worship differed, we did not celebrate the same festivals, even in cases where we did, like Deepavali, our customs differed widely, our Acharyas were different, we did not speak the same language, but we lived in peace, taking a keen interest in others’ customs and beliefs and sharing the reverence they held for their practices. The temple architecture in the South differs from the North and the East. For thousands of years people from South have been travelling to Varanasi and people from North to Rameswaram. Aadi Sankaracharya who traversed the length and breadth of this country on foot sanctioned different streams of worship: Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Devi, Karthik and Sastha. Multi-culturalism is interwoven into Hinduism. The truly integrating aspect of the country is veritably the religion; as early as circa 509 BCE, he appointed priests from Kerala to officiate poojas at Badrinath, Maharashtrian priests at Rameswaram, Karnataka priests at Pasupathinath, a custom still being followed.  

The pretence of the liberals to be standing guard to pluralism and multi culturalism is thus as grotesque as someone claiming credit for the sun rising in the east.

Another term in need of elucidation in Indian context is ‘minority.’ The word minority conjures up visions of, say, a black in USA or a Jamaican in Britain, of a different sock, distinguishable by appearance and colour of skin. In India, a Robert, Ram or Rahim cannot be told apart unless of course they display overtly their religious affiliation. The term religious minority is a misnomer in a secular nation. The Muslims are not mere minorities; they were the iconoclast rulers to whom the Hindus were slaves. Impact of seven centuries of Islamic reign on the enslaved is inevitable in terms of religious conversion, be it through force, to curry official favours, or as an escape from the pains of slavery. The converts, being of the same stock, bear an unconscious unreconciled antipathy towards their mother religion. The burden of the converted necessitates that they deride their former faith, if only to justify to themselves their conversion, they flaunt holier than thou attitude to be one up on the originals; as a Hindi proverb has it - a new Musalman wears his beard longer. Thence the inexorable hostility of Pakistan towards India (as opposed to the accommodative stance of, say, Indonesia, UAE etc). The convert often exhibits a latent, irrational adversity to the community he deserted. And in the absence of the alien rulers whom they embraced, the raison d’etre is effaced, certain unease takes hold.

Distinct sets of Indians

The present Indian populace can be broadly divided into three distinct categories. Those who converted to the religion of the rulers, Hindus who tried to escape the humiliation of slavery by aping the very rulers, though not through conversion (WOGs as the Britishers derisively called them) and their descendents in free India, urbane, mouthing platitudes, copybook liberals who have distanced themselves from the history of conquest and enslavement of the nation. After all, who would like to identify themselves with the losers, the enslaved?  The victor has many takers, the vanquished none, even the kin deserts them. (In Edgar Reitz’s epic film Heimat, the bust of the unknown soldier in the town square quietly disappears giving way to ‘development’ after Germany is defeated in the second world war).This group of elites is the one which, for instance, discovered the virtues of India’s ancient meditation techniques after Maharishi Yogi marketed it successfully in the West and had Beatles (more popular than Christ as they claimed) in tow to the Himalayas. The third lot is the hoi polloi, common ingenuous Hindus, browbeaten,   ridiculed, talked down to, derided, dubbed lumpen elements if they ever exercised the right of self-defence.  Certain subtle snobbery, concealed contempt, condescendence, variously imbued the words and acts of the elites towards the Hindus.

And the Hindu internalized the inferior status. The Hindu has thus a lower amour-propre, still searching for a tangible mark of affranchisement. Seventy years of independence is too short a period for the ghosts of slavery of a millennium to be exorcised from the collective psyche of a race. Have you ever heard of anyone trying to prove as scientific the parting of the red sea or conversion of water into wine or the immaculate conception or the sky being held by God from collapsing on earth? It’s the Hindu who is at pains to prove that his religious beliefs are in fact compatible with science.

And the collective humiliation of the millennium of slavery of India has fallen squarely on the shoulders of Hindus.

For the Muslims still identify themselves with the Moghul rulers and their leadership has for a long time been unable to come to terms with no longer being the rulers. They consider themselves subjugated by the British and resent it deeply as the sword slicing through swathes of land celebrated by poet Iqbal had obviously been blunted. The Indian Muslim leadership still grappling with coming to terms with no longer being rulers and their continued identification with the Moghul rulers is one single factor inhibiting a complete, genuine rapprochement. Babri Masjid, which was like a monument for Hitler in the heart of Tel Aviv, was the subject of such protracted bitter contention. Abolition of triple Talak, already effected in Islamic countries including Bangladesh and Pakistan, was held as anti-minority in secular India.  What we should have had is a Truth and Recondition Commission as in South Africa to iron out the bitter memories of the humiliation the majority suffered at the hands of Moghuls and the Muslim population should have been weaned away from the invader-conquerors..

The Indian liberals pride themselves to be counterpart of western liberals – but an imitator can never be the original. They affect the same mannerisms, same diction, embrace the same causes. Muslims who receive their love in embarrassingly abundant measure were once the pitiless masters and the Hindus their slaves and any liberal sympathy should lie with the former slaves. It is of course beyond the liberals’ ken that their overkill of effusive concern in fact militates against the interests of Muslims (honourable, patriotic citizens barring a few exceptions like in any other community) and pushes them deeper into ghettos. Their undue alacrity to defend Muslims from imaginary majoritarianism is in actuality a disservice to the community. Adorned with unmitigated hypocrisy, they shed copious tears for ouster of Palestinians from a non-existent country called Palestine, they advocate lebensraum for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, but the forced exile of Pundits from their home land merits no kindred sympathy in their conscience. 

Incidentally, should there be any resistance to unbridled conversion to Christianity, American Senate hectors to us immediately, Vatican thinks it fit to advise us, about religious freedom; if something is perceived to be affecting the Muslims, Pakistan, OIC and now the Malaysian PM line up to voice concern and lecture to us. The Kashmiri Pundits’ issue did not evoke any significant reaction even within India.

Marxists with transnational loyalty, who ruled the intellectual space in India unchallenged, of course never considered themselves Indians except to the extent India represented an ideal land for revolution that they just could not bring about because of this Goddamned Hinduism. How they hate it, the stumbling block between them and the apotheosis of revolution! They thought nothing of entering into a pact with the British to sabotage the Quit India movement.  Gasping for relevance at present, they still pull their levers from academic institutions and media. They didn’t lag behind the invaders in any way in persecuting the Hindus. Remember for instance how they ruthlessly hounded the Ramakrishna Mutt in West Bengal that the Mutt was forced to declare itself a denomination different from Hinduism so that they can invoke the constitutional protection available to minorities. Remember how they cornered, thrashed and foisted false cases on Aiyappa bhakthas in Kerala for no sin of theirs except being Hindu pilgrims, who simply wanted traditions of thousands of years not to be trampled.  

The irony however is that the self-effacing Hindus have handed over the authority to define what secularism is to these very people who defected from their fold.

Religious affiliation of nations unstated and understood

The religious affiliation has never been in any doubt for other democracies, not reckoning the Islamic countries. After the 9/11, a healing service was conducted in a Church, to which evangelist Billy Graham, not known exactly for his ‘secular’ views, was an invitee, counting among the attendees the President and all the past Presidents and US Senators. A similar healing service after 26/11 would have brought the ceiling down over screams of communalizing terrorism. Archbishop of Canterbury is an organ of the Royalty and England. It is customary for Governments in Europe to set up Christmas trees and wooden houses for celebrations without entailing the label of being communal. American President and First Lady usually open a giant Christmas tree and pose standing on either side in the White House.  The Congress session on impeachment of President Trump opened with an address by a Chaplain. When the eglise Notre Dame de Paris was devastated by fire, much to the chagrin of everyone across the globe regardless of religious affiliation, the French Government initiated expeditious steps to restore it to its former glory. Contrast it with the outcry against rebuilding of Somnath temple, repeatedly plundered and desecrated.  The eventual Moghul reign began with the raids on Somnath and rebuilding Somnath could have only symbolized the affranchisement of the nation. In India it had to be dubbed communal.  

What is to be acknowledged is India is de facto a Hindu nation - just as Israel is to Jews, United States is to Anglo Saxons, Britain and Germany are to Protestants, Ireland is to Catholics, Russia is to Christians of the Russian Orthodox Church denomination. Any refugee, any prospective immigrant, who traces his ancestry to undivided India has a natural right to settle in India if he happens to be a Hindu, as Mahatma Gandhi himself said when he realized partition was unavoidable; and in Pakistan if he happens to be a Muslim since the nation was amputated precisely to create a separate country for Muslims of the sub-continent and the natural home for Muslim refugees can but be Pakistan. Nehru admitted that much, partition of the sub-continent into Pakistan and Hindustan. The public sector monoliths, his grand idea of industrialization, were prefixed with Hindustan – Hindustan Petroleum, Hindustan Aeronautics, Hindustan Teleprinters etc. etc.  Hindustan has always been used alternatively for India.

When the occupying forces are ultimately driven out, it is par for the course for the local populace to turn against the fellow citizens who supported the invader conqueror. For instance, after Iraq was driven out from Kuwait, the Kuwaitis who had collaborated with the Iraqui forces were hunted and thrashed publicly. When Paris was liberated from German occupation, French women who were at the German army quarters were shaven and paraded nude. Examples can be multiplied. In India, no such reprisal ever took place. The Hindu never got the credit for this magnanimity.

No other country would be home to (at a modest estimate) 30 million illegal immigrants as India is. As Arun Shourie observed pertinently (before the advent of Google map) while we, bred in a city, find it difficult to locate an address elsewhere in the same city, Bangladesh refugees knew exactly where to land in a foreign country, where to pitch their tents, whom to approach for assistance. Illegal immigration of such stupendous scale was obviously aided and abetted by human traffickers with the blessings of sympathetic politicians in power. No other country would accept with such stoic indifference the radical demographic changes to the disadvantage of its own citizens.

The orgy of violence orchestrated in the wake of the passing of Citizenship Amendment Act bears no connect whatever to the import of the Act. No Indian Muslim is deprived of any of his rights. The Act opens the door to the religiously persecuted minorities of neighboring Islamic nations where it is routine for families to have their daughters abducted and converted and married to much older men; to desperate escapees from societies where a Christian like Aasia Bibi could be sentenced to death for blasphemy (prompting Presidential intervention from America) heedless of her denials.

The Government is face to face with a flagrantly scabrous problem. It is interesting that no one has till now spelt out clearly how exactly the CAA affects the Indian Muslims, pinpointing the provisos perceived inimical, in order that the doubts could be clarified, fears allayed, issues discussed, corrective measures, if needed, implemented. This is how a civilized society conducts itself, not by hurling stones, molotov cocktails, resorting to vandalism, destruction of public property and conflagration. Disinformation, lack of knowledge, visceral hatred of Modi drive the current turmoil. Given the engineered disquiet among Muslims, unrest in the wake of passing of the Act is seen only as an opportunity to latch onto to put the Government on the mat, no matter at what cost to the nation.

Tailpiece: What should be disquieting are the reports from Hyderabad a few months back that a group of Rohingyas managed to obtain Indian passports. Evidently, our borders continue to be porous and the illegal refugees have powerful well-wishers. 

Sabarimala - Supreme Court's verdict

Un certain regard – SC verdict on women’s entry in Sabarimala shrine

It is a cruel irony that Hinduism should be faulted for gender discrimination

Of all the major religions in the world today, Hinduism is the only religion, with the extinction of Greek and Roman civilizations, that has Goddesses,. Islam has no room for worship of women while the other Abrahmic religion says it only ‘venerates’ mother Mary and does not worship her.

The issue, not being temporal, is not judicable. It remains entirely outside the microscope of judicial system, being an essentially religious belief, just as the belief of immaculate conception or resurrection. No judicial body ever tampers with these.

Even with due respect to the Supreme Court, one cannot help wondering if you can ever see it ruling that women should be allowed into the mosques for Friday prayers or directing the Church to appoint women priests and Bishops.

Arthanareeswara is not just about equality of genders, an exultant Fritjof Capra (Tao of Physcis) explicates it as the unity of opposites in modern science.

The ruling deity of all arts is Saraswathi, wealth and well being is Lakshmi. Slayer of evil is Shakthi.

All rivers in India bear woman’s names, except Krishna.. There are temples where women are the priestess and men devotees bow before them.

The status of women in Hindu religion should be considered in a holistic manner. In a religion that worships Goddesses, if there is a qualified restriction on women’s entry in a particular shrine, there ought to be special reasons. This is common sense, as barring of entry of certain age group is an exception not a rule in Hindu temples.

Besides, every temple is a distinct entity. Just as you have the right to decide who can enter your house and who cannot, the agamas governing the temple, centuries-old practices and the temple tantris have the last word on the subject. The practices at temples too widely differ, even temples of the same sect. The priest at Thiruvanaikaval in Tiruchirappalli, for instance, wraps himself in a sari during the afternoon feeding of the cow, a practice not prevalent in other Shaivite temples.

The case’s staple support comes from the ruling Marxist dispensation in Kerala. In all fairness, in the interests of justice, the Marxists, avowed (but selective) atheists, anti opiate-religions (read anti Hinduism alone), should have recused themselves from the case as they are an interested, a prejudiced party ab initio. They cannot, for obvious reasons, be trusted to take a balanced view in a religious issue, that too one concerning Hindus. In deference to the sentiments of the masses, if it’s a people’s Government, it should have filed a review petition.

The pilgrimage to Sabarmala has always been an eyesore for the predatory religions. People of all castes, languages, regions congregate as a mass of humanity chanting chorus of a single Mantra. This unifying factor unnerves them so much they even once tried to halt the pilgrimage on its tracks claiming there was unearthed on the traditional route a cross of St. Thomas era. The cross turned out to be of very recent origin and their lie laid to rest.

There are distinct possibilities that sooner than later you will hear about cases of misconduct and molestation. Given the difficult terrain, the inevitable jostling, the passage through woods, planted agents will leave no stone unturned in wreaking blemish on the yatra. Like piranha they would chip away relentlessly till the yatra itself comes under a cloud.  

Hindus were slaves for a millennium. They suffered the ignominy of paying tax to practice their religion in their own land. Even after attainment of independence, they still do not have say over their own religious affairs.

And how can the Government of a secular state control the religious affairs of only Hindus?. Why the case filed by Swami Dayanand Saraswatrii questioning the legality of secular Governments controlling the Hindu temples is yet to be dusted off?.

Razing of Lenin's statue in Tripura - H.D. Raja's comments

As the dust settles down on H.D. Raja’s comments on Periyar statue, some sober thoughts on the twitter post and connected issue will be in order.

The comment was strictly in the context of the near eclipse of Marxism as a political force in India and razing of Lenin statue being symbolic of its demise. The comment can only be construed as the hope that in the near future a similar fate awaits the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu.

Now, the Periyar statue is not merely a statue. Beneath the statue, his principal enunciations are inscribed in bold letters:

 ‘There is no God, no God at all. He who believes in God is a fool. He who propagates God is a scoundrel’.

Now, Periyar is entitled to his views and propagate them. The statue with this denunciation of believers was put up, not in front of a Church or a Mosque, but  in keeping with the Dravidian cowardice, in  front of Kanchi Mutt. There was a great deal of heart burn, and a few murmurs. Then, it was installed in front of Ranganathar temple in Sri Rangam. There were loud protests and an attempt to defile the statue. But the statue remains there.

Installation of the statue in front of these two places was a deliberate, intentional provocation. According to the latest census, less than 3000 people declared themselves as Atheists in Tamil Nadu. A minuscule minority enjoys the liberty to trample the sentiments of millions of believers.

Compare what Raja said with what the stalwarts of the Dravidian movement have said. For example:

‘When will the day dawn

when with a cannon we will smash to smithereens

the Ranganathar of Sri Rangam
and Nataraja of Thillai (Chidambaram)’.

‘When you see a snake and a Brahmin, strike the Brahmin first’.

The first call to destruction of temples thousands of years old and pride of Tamil Nadu, was given by Bharathi Dasan and the second call for direct physical assault was given by Periyar himself. Timid, self-effacing by nature, Hindus swallowed the humiliation.

Then, they took out a procession beating Sri Ram with chappals with the blessings of Government headed by Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi in turn called Sri Ram a drunkard.

Compared to this sort of vile blasphemy, what Raja said is but a minor traffic offence.

Muscle power and capacity for violence alone determines the how the media reacts to any given incident. While selective blasphemy is rampant against Hindus, the media retires into reticence conveniently. Poor Raja, defenceless and sans support, media turning the heat on, had to retrieve his words and offer an apology.

THE PADMAVATHI MOVIE CONTROVERSY

Deepika Padukone - India has incredibly regressed

Thus spake the Pythia of Dephi. The High Priestess of the exclusive enclave of evolved Bollywood beings has deigned to bestow on us a pearl of her infinite wisdom: India has incredibly regressed.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Yes, India has regressed, it has so deplorably regressed that debasement of the raw valour of a statuesque Queen who killed herself rather than allow a lecherous Milechan touch her, is not being accepted with due meekness and deference by the regressed.

It has so irretrievably regressed as to celebrate, romanticize the savages who led marauding hordes into India.

Yes, it has so execrably regressed as to shamelessly witness a phalanx of progressive perverts justify the fallacious portrayal of invading slaughterers of infidels.  

Yes, Honourable Lady, you have never been more right. 

STATE OF THE ECONOMY

With the former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha letting off steam about the state of economy, the habitual and professional Modi baiters in politics and academia lost no time in gleefully latching on to the hoopla and painting a dooms day scenario. If one were to go by the expert views echoed in electronic media, NDTV and CNN 18 in particular, one would but conclude that the skies have fallen, Indian economy is on the brink of collapse and a financial emergency is around the corner. It’s a field day for the Cassandras.

What then is the truth?

The economic growth has certainly slowed down vis-à-vis the previous quarters. For a Government that prided itself on the fastest growing economy in the globe, logically the responsibility for the decline can only land on its lap.

Still, given the current grim global economic scenario, 5.7 in itself is not a mean achievement. There is no impending gloom; the economy is not bottoming out. The situation is not as alarming as the 1991 crisis that had the Government scraping the bottom of the barrel and not in a position to honour the maturing foreign currency deposits, attendant sovereign default looming large.

There is, nonetheless, ground for concern and need for some sober thinking.

Two ostensible reasons are advanced for this decline. One is the demonetization and the other is implementation of GST rather hastily on the heels of demonetisation.

The efficacy of the demonetization drive can be debated endlessly, depending on the side of the spectrum you are in. It has been discussed ad nauseam. No conclusive, incontrovertible view about its prudence or otherwise has emerged. All said and done, you cannot burke the fact that quite a sizeable amount that was hoarded earlier has now come into banking channel and is thus available for productive activities. One thing that can be said with utmost certainty is that a Government that works will take decisions and all decisions will not be judged correct, particularly in hindsight. Some of the decisions will lend themselves to criticism as being ill-thought and ill-advised, but that is the risk a decision-maker takes. Only a non-functional Government can escape a similar criticism. Quiescence is not a substitute for risk of committing mistakes. The situation is certainly not like the policy paralysis accompanied by monumental corruption that we witnessed during the UPA second term. TIME magazine listed the 2G scam in the Top 10 of the swindles ever. The coal scam had not surfaced when the list was drawn up!

With such a distinguished record, for the Congress to comment on the decline so disparagingly is rank hypocrisy. The Congress’ heir apparent while holding forth to a left-leaning audience in USA ascribed the Congress defeat in the election to people’s anger (as was Trump’s win, in his erudite view). The wiseacre did not of course mention the scandals that kept tumbling out of cupboard with every passing day. For a political party that ran an unbridled kleptocracy for a decade and led the economy to ruin, Congress is least qualified to comment in the matter.

GST has been in the works for a considerable length of time. It was on the anvil during the Congress reign.  The present Government tried to introduce it but was thwarted repeatedly, Congress disowning its own baby. It has to be brought into force one day or the other. Finally, when it has been introduced, to think that there would be no teething problems would be imbecile. It was well known that there would be transient disruption, slow-down in the growth rate before the system stabilized The only question should be whether the Government is adequately seized of the problem and addressing it.

On the flip side, it must be said that even when the growth was around 7 and more, the resultant feel-good factor was not palpable on the ground.  The GST has had unintended ramifications, hitting the lower middle class. Even bus tickets have not been spared. In some self-service restaurants, even the cost of coffee and tea has gone up. An auto-driver in Bangalore quipped the other day that next the public conveniences would come under GST.

There is a need to take stock after implementation of hard decisions and mitigate the unintended hardships. Demonetisation saw Government reneging on its own words of keeping the exchange counters open in RBI upto 31^st March. This didn't go down well with the public. To assess and adequately respond to a rapidly unfolding situation with agility is the test of any Government.

That said, Jaitley’s rejoinder of Sinha being an 80 year old job applicant is an uncharacteristically below the belt jibe. Sinha is a competent person, had a grip on the intricacies of the finance portfolio.  He and other seniors, adroitly eased into retirement, have contributed to what BJP is today.  Even if it were true that Sinha is an FM aspirant, even if it were a case of sour grapes, Jaitley, given his standing, ought to have had the generosity to overlook it and address the issue. Taking criticism as personal affront and resort to ad hominem is the last resort of a person who has run out of arguments. Jaitley is obviously not one. It was a very bad faux pas.

Jaitley is undoubtedly intelligent, articulate, has a quick grasp of knotty issues, is quite quick with sharp ripostes, but Finance Ministry is not his cup of tea. The requisite qualities are of a different order.  Finance is not to be intellectually or theoretically comprehended but largely instinctively.  It is not for nothing that the street wisdom has it that a Marwari or a Gujarati or a Chettiar boy can teach a thing or two about finance to a Harvard scholar. 

The possible causes for the decline including the multi-layered structural issues have been so extensively discussed and commented upon that I will touch only two issues pertinent to the downturn.

Agricultural infrastructure has been neglected for so long and we are only harvesting the bitter fruits of our criminal insouciance. Ever since independence, every student is taught and is fond of quoting in all exams, “Indian agriculture is a gamble in monsoon.” That even after seventy years, the situation remains unchanged, is an eloquent commentary on the utter failure of successive Governments. Congress which ruled the country for the better part of these 70 years has to bear the lion’s share of the blame not just for this grave neglect but more importantly for having  institutionalized the style of governance by shibboleths without ever bothering to address the core crisis. Thus we had gabri hatao, jai kisan jai jawan, so on and so forth to beguile the masses, with precious little alleviation.  But seventy years is a sufficiently long time t time for a serious Government to have successfully tackled the problem.

And let’s admit, for God’s sake, agriculture is a commercial activity. The farmer is in it not for charity, but to make money. He doesn’t deserve any more drooling sympathy than somebody engaged in a commercial or industrial activity.  With a plethora of financial institutions at his service, the Co-operative Banks, Land Development Banks, Regional Rural Banks, mandatory lending of 40% of total advances by commercial banks under priority sector et al, if he is starved of credit, then something is seriously amiss somewhere.  Add to this free electricity and massive subsidies for fertiliser and other inputs. Why isn't the farmer delivering then, but is more prone to suicide? To waive the loans with tax payers’ money is easier done than to get to the gut of the problem, apply oneself and create a conducive environment for remunerative agriculture production. It takes a different mettle than our politicians are endowed with. The unfailing annual ritual of write-off of agricultural debts is akin to the indulgence certificates of yore (paying cash to the Church in exchange of forgiveness of past sins).

The non-performing assets of banks have suddenly caught the fancy of sundry economists and policy advocates. This did not happen overnight. It does not mean that the entire quantum of bad loans is a result of injudicious lending. Political interference does entail a severe cost. Down turn in specific industrial spheres does impair the performance of heavy industries. As Dr. C. Rangarajan has been advocating repeatedly, there is a need for term lending institutions to take care of infrastructure lending. Lending for long gestation infrastructure projects is not the call of commercial banks. That’s a specialized activity in the exclusive domain of term lending institutions. Conversely, the trend has been for term lending institutions to turn into universal banks – ICICI, IDBI, IDFC for instance.

The raucous clamour for reduction of interest rates has remained steadfast since UPA II days. Successive RBI Governors have been sought to be brow beaten, hustled, into reducing the repo rate. The basic idea of low interest rates is for economies that have bottomed out, that need to be resurrected, like the USA for instance in the aftermath of sub-prime crisis resulting in a complete melt-down of financial sector,. An industrialist first finalises his project, validates its viability and then looks for funding to make it happen. Every middle class borrower first decides to buy a house, a car or a two wheeler and then starts scouting around for the lowest interest in the market. Have you ever heard of a project of proven viability being shelved because of the cost of funds? One does not induce a person to borrow, but make funds available for genuine needs. Funds made available at a low cost will only result in wanton borrowing and borrowing without pre-determined productive avenues of deployment will in all likelihood be squandered. It is trite but true that what matters is the availability of funds in time and in adequate quantity rather than the cost of it. The only assured result of this strident demand would be insulating the corporates from ravages of inflation.  In the circumstances, this is of course not a panacea it is trumpeted to be.

Modi has bought into the Congress criticism of ‘suit-boot sarkar’ (instead of retorting that theirs was veritably a loot-scoot-sarkar). Against his own natural instincts and conviction, he has allowed himself to become a welfare economist rather than an aggressive reformer in response to changing times. The repeated utterance of BJP spokespersons in TV debates of how they are helping the poorest of the poor underlines the point. But being a reformer and a welfare economist are not mutually exclusive. Major reforms on land and labour would have reignited the animal spirits. Instead of creating an enabling environment for robust growth, the Government has now to decide whether to go in for significant public expenditure to stimulate the economy.

Keeneth Galbraith narrates in his memoirs how Keneedy asked him to prepare his presidential acceptance speech. Excited, Galbraith went into an overdrive and prepared a draft to the best of his considerable abilities. As the President stood up to make the speech, he looked around proudly, the President was going to read his speech.. To his utter surprise, Kennedy used only one line from his draft. Obviously, he had asked many others to prepare a speech and took most apt portions from each of them. Modi needs to have an independent, intrepid council of advisors, not beholden to any ideology but unafraid to play the devil’s advocate. He does not have to accept the precepts proffered. The central idea is to have a diversified cross-section of views for him to pick the best or to reject them in toto and go in for what appeals to him. There is a need to expand the range of views the present triumvirate now has its ears tuned to.

We in 21^st century are witness to the failure of all isms and economic models. Communism mutated into a totalitarian nightmare. Laissez-faire crumbed in the citadel of capitalism in the sub-prime crisis with the Federal Government having to dole out massive assistance packages, proving the axiom, ‘privatising the profits and nationalizing the losses’. Idealism can produce reams of eminently readable text, but appreciation of realty enjoins one to jettison the jaundiced glasses for a clear sight. RSS’ doctrine of economic growth is equally not free from flaws.. It has already shunted out Arvind Panagriia from the country, not that he is indispensable (nobody is), but the trend is disquieting. Its advocacy of emulating Japan is a good idea, but as writers from Nirad Choudhri to Kushwant Singh had delineated our characteristics in detail, we are different, we’re like that only. We cannot even drive a motorized vehicle with discipline, leave alone imbibe the admirable Japanese discipline and commitment to work During 1991 crisis, the honourable NRIs rushed in to encash their foreign currency deposits even pre-maturely, but during the East Asian crisis, the Koreans queued up to deposit their gold with the Government in  a bid to salvage the economy.

End of the day, what is clear is when there is significant development, percolation does take place and benefits do reach the bottom of the pyramid. If you decry an entrepreneur making 1000 Rupees but paying only Rs.5 to 100 persons for it, he will move elsewhere to make his 1000 and the 100 will be without their 5 Rupees. This is reality. The task before the government is to let the entrepreneur go on, intervene intelligently and ensure greater public good. 

The productive 20 percent of any population has to perforce support the indolent 40%. This is the law. You can’t rewrite it. Don’t be obsessed with the 40% because of the votes they have, concentrate on the productive 20%.  

Demonetization II

An enterprise be undertaken after being thoroughly thought through; to pause and ponder after the decision is taken and the ball is set rolling is a blemish on intelligence.

                                                                                                                                    Thiruvalluvar

(translation not literal)

The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer – often, indeed, to the decider himself.

John F. Kennedy

(In pursuance of Wanchoo Committee recommendations on demonetization) When Y.B. Chavan told Indira Gandhi about the proposal for demonetization and his view that it should be accepted and implemented forthwith, she asked Chavan only one question: ‘Chavanji, are no more elections to be fought by the Congress Party?’ Chavan got the message and the recommendation was shelved.

Bibek Debroy quoting in the Open Magazine

As the motley, malingering opposition smirk and simper that they have laid the Government low and successfully scuttled functioning of the Parliament’s winter session, little do they realise that this is negation of the very doctrine of democracy.

It is the prerogative of the elected Government to frame policies, introduce legislation and implement their policies during their reign. They have the people’s express mandate to do so. The opposition’s duty is to marshal their arguments and counter the Government’s policies and lay bare the chinks in the Government’s armour, given the impossibility of anything being perfect. When an issue is debated, nuances not known earlier become clear to the decider himself.

The Indian lawmakers have now brought a new, frightening dimension to democracy. Any political party with a few abject seats can effectively bring the Parliament to its knees and stonewall legislative function. In the process they can nullify the electoral verdict of the people. This calls into question the very need for elections, votes and the majority party taking over the reins. This is jugulating democracy.

Kushwant Singh once lamented that no quotable quote was to be found in any of the speeches of Parliamentarians, indicating their own intellectual deficit as well as that of the ghost writers. Now even that kind of vacuous discussion has been rendered out of question.

In exercise of its prerogative, the Government of the day will take and implement certain decisions. All decisions will not always bear the desired efficacy. Some will go wrong. Every decision is underpinned by certain variables; premised on certain reasonable assumptions and perception of behaviroural pattern of the segments targeted. Even supposing for argument sake, the present decision on demonetization has gone wrong; it is absurd to argue that velleity is preferable to venturesome initiatives. The litmus test is whether the decision was taken in good faith and sincerely believed to be in furtherance of national interests.

And who can cast the first stone? The grapevine had it that on the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated, an important functionary of the party left for Switzerland even before the funeral. If true, he could not have gone for an eyeful of scenic splendour.

In India’s chequered history, there have been decisions with far greater disastrous consequences for the nation. The 1962 Chinese debacle is likened by certain historians to juvenile trust in a courtship. The ideological blinkers India put on and the economic decisions flowing therefrom throttled economic growth, killed the Indian entrepreneurial spirits and India became the only country in the globe, as Time magazine put it succinctly, where excess production was penalised. (Many of the current generation may not be aware of the dreaded licenced capacity and the need for its religious adherence). The subsistence had to be helped in no small measure by American PL 480 handouts of food grains. India was hobbled in every possible way from realising her full commercial and industrial potential. Inevitably, soon enough, bankruptcy stared at our face, and in the most humiliating moment of  Indian history, gold had to be lifted and physically pledged abroad to borrow foreign exchange, as no country in the world would trust an Indian Government’s IOU. In 1991 the country was literally scraping the barrel as sovereign default on forex deposits loomed large. It was the path-breaking decision of P.V. Narasimha Rao to implement economic policies advocated by Rajaji with remarkable foresight that saved the nation. It is a slap in the face of socialist maharajas that today we boast of a 370 billion forex reserve.

There are also counter view points about the inevitability of Operation Blue Star and its tragic consequences, not the least important of them being Pakistan getting a handle on Indian secessionist groups. The resounding victory of Bangladesh war and vivisection of Pakistan is still being ascribed by certain schools of thought to be the raison d’etre of Pakistan’s inexorable thrust to avenge by inflicting on India a similar vivisection and where else will they find a more fertile ground than Kashmir.

Leave alone the UPA’s economic decisions resulting in monumental plunder of the Indian exchequer, the opportunity cost of a decade of policy paralysis of UPA is colossal.

In the vicissitudes of a nation’s journey, there are bound to be injudicious decisions just as there will be epoch making ones turning her fortunes. The way ahead is not dereliction but extricating the country from unintended consequences and setting the economic juggernaut into motion. The opposition has failed the nation in this calling.

Hail the Hoi Polloi

We are well into the seventh week post demonetisation. The winter session of Parliament has been shouted out. The queues outside ATMs have not thinned. The moment the cash van pulls up near the ATM and well before the ‘no cash’ board is taken off, the news spreads like wild fire in the neighbourhood and within minutes you find a sizeable queue outside the glass door.

The promised weekly quota of cash continues to be chimerical. Cable operators and newspaper and milk suppliers have not been paid off by the households for they could not give change for Rs.2000. No business establishment in fact gives change and insists that the purchase be made for more than Rs.2000.

In all this hoopla, we have failed to notice how our people have conducted themselves. Except for occasional outbursts of anger and frustration there has been no major incident. The queues have been orderly. People do have difficulties but they are abiding by rules of decency and decorum.

Marxist intellectuals have confided in private that during the heyday of the Soviet Socialist Imperialism they were cornered and repeatedly pilloried in all the international fora as to why despite with most ideal conditions, they could not bring about a revolution in India.  The Telengana uprising fizzled out to the chagrin but not disillusionment of our Marxist brethren.

This is a question most social scientists would be hard put to answer. Why with such disparities in income and life style and amid penury, the indigent Indian masses have tended to go about their business in a calm and dignified manner.

Is this because of the innate religiosity of the masses? The Marxist scholars squarely blamed the Hindu religious tenets, particularly the belief in Karma, for opiating the masses.

Home grown commentators have always stressed that in India crime has always been less considering the size of the population not because of Law Enforcement machinery but because of the native sense of Dharma.

The scholars with occidental optics and deracinated specialists might well come up with very impressive and eminently readable theses on the subject, but the phenomenon will always elude their grasp. The ultra liberal stranglehold on discourse in the media in the west obscured their senses to the massive groundswell of people’s discontent and disdain for politically and journalistically correct way to conduct the affairs. Be it Brexit or the victory of Trump (against the formidable lining up of media from Washington Post to New York Times), the pundits could not simply gauge the groundswell. Our own media moguls, fashioned in the best of Occidental optics, cannot fare better.

The communists could not bring about a revolution, but they were voted into and out of power. The power flowed not from the barrel of the gun but from the ballot box.

It is an inexplicable irony that India’s teeming millions have taken to democracy with such an amazing ease but her politicians still wallow in feudalistic possessiveness and swear by dynastic entitlement.

To get back to the enigma in question, is it attitudinal, as the adage our grandmas used to recite, ‘how does it matter whether it is Rama or Ravana who rules?’  or ‘how does it matter whether the dog goes to the left or right side of us as long as it does not bite’. ?

Whether it is the conditioning of a millennium of slavery or inherent qualities of patience, stoicism and urge for lawful behavior, the apodictic ground reality is that they have put up with the hardships with extra ordinary poise.

Let’s give wholeheartedly the ordinary nondescript Indian the encomiums he/she richly deserves.