When we have lost respect for our lawmakers and politicians, rulers and civil servants, judges and magistrates, and have less fear of the police, who can prevent us from venting our frustration and anger at everything we find around us? No matter whether we change our governments or impose President’s rule on states at different times, defiance of law will continue unabated. It is indeed a very sorry state of affairs.
3 April 1999
A nation of windbags
The one thing India will never be short of is natural gas emanating from the mouths of our netas. What they lack in deeds, they make up for by indulging in long-winded orations. They are at their best pointing out the shortcomings of rivals and covering up their own. Real issues facing the country are bypassed as being of little consequence. This was clearly evident in the debate preceding the vote of confidence in the Vajpayee government.
The Government’s failure to check pollution of the environment should have been highlighted by speakers of the Opposition parties. As it was, only one speaker alluded to the sorry state of the Ganga, the holiest of our many holy rivers. He talked of the filth, carcasses of animals and accumulation of scum along the ghats of Varanasi. You may recall that Rajiv Gandhi started his tenure as prime minister with the announcement that cleansing of the Ganga would be his first priority; that factories spilling effluents into the river would be closed down and throwing half-charred human corpses would be forbidden.
None of this has taken place. Not only has Ganga jal become unsafe to drink, even bathing in it has become a health hazard. It is the same with the Yamuna: human waste continues to flow into it as do industrial effluents. Hardly anything remains of our beloved Kalindi, as it was once known; it has become a sluggish, moving sewer. If you don’t believe me, spend a few minutes at the Okhla barrage where the stretch of water had once made it Dilliwalas’ favourite picnic spot. They have a yacht and boat club there, but those who indulge in these pastimes have to stuff their nostrils with cotton wool against bad odour.
I have little doubt that the other rivers are in as poor a shape as the Ganga and the Yamuna and that the people living along the banks of the Narmada, Krishna, Tapti and Godavari are the same, having the same bad habits as those inhabiting the regions along the rivers of northern India.
Did you hear anyone talking about the Government’s failure to check degradation of the land, deforestation, the silting of rivers and dams? Did you hear anyone talk of mounting illiteracy or poor health services? And of course no one dared to touch the most important issue of all: the urgent need to tackle the suicidal rate of increase in our population. They stick to levelling charges of corruption against each other, because there is plenty of incriminating material available on both sides for them to go so far and no further.
What the country needs are doers and not talkers. I am convinced that any government that takes bold steps in implementing what the country needs, however unpopular it may become at first, will win the respect and support of present and future generations.
1 May 1999
What a mess!
What an unholy mess we have made of our country! It is no use casting all the blame on politicians; we have to share the blame because we elected them. If they succeeded in fooling us, we were foolish enough to be taken in by their words. So we go in for yet another general election, the third in three years, and blow up another Rs 1,000 crore. Will the outcome be any different from the hodgepodge khichree of parties that we cooked up for the last Parliament? The post-election scenario may be much the same as it is today unless we analyse the weaknesses of the past coalition governments and eliminate the elements that brought about their downfall.
We know that there are many cases pending against Jayalalitha and that she indulged in arm-twisting the government to prevent them from being brought to a conclusion. Sonia Gandhi is in the same predicament. In the Bofors case, the accusing finger points towards her family. Like Jayalalitha, she does her best to avoid the truth about the kickbacks taken over the gun deal from being fully exposed. So any government which prosecutes the case with zeal has to be toppled. Thus Sitaram Kesri brought down the Gujral government. Before that Deve Gowda, Chandra Shekhar and V.P. Singh met the same fate. If charges of corruption pending against senior politicians including Laloo Prasad Yadav, Sukh Ram and a few others are speedily disposed of, their mischief potential will be vastly reduced.
The task of cleaning up the mess rests squarely in the hands of the electorate. Whatever its regional loyalties, it must look at national interests from a different perspective. The issues are fairly clear. It is Hindutva versus secularism; it is about giving high priority to family planning, preserving the environment, eradicating illiteracy, increasing agricultural and industrial output, reducing unemployment, controlling crime and corruption, avoiding wasteful expenditure on celebrations, and cutting down on holidays. If we do not address ourselves to these national issues, we will end up electing yet another Parliament without giving a single party or a combination of like-minded parties, a clear mandate to take the country forward. Ponder over this before you make up your mind whom to vote for.
Final warning
My youngest brother who owned among other things, a restaurant, kept late hours because he made it a point to stay on till closing time. He would often tell me ‘K. Singh, of two things you can never be sure: one, when a person may drop in to have a meal, and two, when death will come to you.’
A vaidji whom I often visited in his shop while taking an after-dinner stroll, disagreed. He said death gives you many signals before it finally arrives to take you away. He narrated an anecdote about a wealthy man who became a friend of Yama, the messenger of death. One day he made a request to Yama, ‘You and I have been close friends for many years. I ask you for just one favour: please give me timely warning that my time on earth will soon be over so that I can arrange my worldly affairs before I go.’ Yama agreed to do so. However, one day the wealthy man died suddenly leaving his business in a mess. When he met Yama, he complained bitterly of having been let down by him. ‘Not at all,’ protested Yama, ‘instead of one warning, I gave you several. First, I made your hair turn grey. Then I deprived you of your teeth; then I made you hard of hearing and vision. Finally, I made you feeble of mind. If you still ignored these warnings, you have only yourself to blame.’
It is true that an enfeebled mind is, as it were, the final alarm bell for the start of the long march towards the unknown. A mindless existence is like being dead while breathing.
We begin to think of death only in our old age. In our young years time hangs heavy and we delude ourselves into believing it will go on for ever and ever.
8 May 1999
Sonia: Bahu not beti
As far as I am concerned, whether she was born in Turin or Tuticorin should be of little consequence. She is a better Indian than Sharad Pawar, Sangma, Tariq Anwar or I, because while she chose to become Indian, we are Indians by accident of birth. I am sure if we had had any say in the matter, most, if not all of us, would have preferred to have been born in countries more prosperous and peaceful than ours. Consequently, this patriotic chest-thumping about being Indian-born and therefore fitter to lead the country, is arrant nonsense.
My reservations about Sonia Gandhi arise from statements she made at different times in the past about entering Indian politics. To start with, she kept her options open for many years after she had married Rajiv Gandhi. She made no secret of her distaste for politicians and threatened to divorce her husband and quit India if he joined politics. He shared her views and kept his distance from people who surrounded his mother, Indira Gandhi and younger brother Sanjay. The couple was extremely upset when Mrs Gandhi imposed Emergency on the country; and when she was humiliated in the polls after Emergency was lifted, they seriously contemplated leaving India. Their plans changed when Sanjay, who hogged the political scene, was killed in a plane crash.
Rajiv filled the vacuum created by his brother’s death. S
onia became a dutiful and the favourite bahu of the prime minister. It was at this stage that she decided to accept Indian nationality. The assassination of her mother-in-law and her husband would have ended the hegemony of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty if Sonia had not agreed to assume the mantle. She became the icon of the Congress party. The Opposition, which disliked the dynasty, was nevertheless eager to exploit the warm feelings the masses have towards the family: they put up the other bahu, Maneka Gandhi, as their anti-Sonia ballistic missile. It is common knowledge that Mrs Gandhi disliked Maneka and threw her out of the house. Parties opposed to the Congress hated Mrs Gandhi and decided that if the Congress could have Sonia as an icon, Maneka would be theirs.
Since all is fair in the dirty game of Indian politics, I can understand why super patriots who stand for everything swadeshi from womb to tomb, should make an issue of Sonia having been born in Italy. But it is difficult to see Messrs Pawar, Sangma and Anwar toe the same line. Pawar has a history of ditching his leaders. Having exploited Sonia’s popularity and seeing new life in the Congress, I am not surprised at his gambling for the top post by doing the dirty on her. Sangma joining him leaves me baffled. Tariq Anwar does not count for very much.
29 May 1999
Men are brainier
Girls do better than boys; men do better than women. That sums up the performance of males and females in their lives. Year after year we learn from results of the final school-leaving examinations, that girls outshine boys. The simple explanation is that school girls do not waste as much time as boys on playing fields. In college, sports are not compulsory; so boys spend more time poring over textbooks and less in kicking footballs about or playing cricket. By then, most girls’ minds are preoccupied with thoughts of marriage. Their level of performance in examinations drops while the performance of boys picks up. They end their college years almost at par. This is evident in the results of the combined civil service examinations. Although some girls are occasionally among the top ten, the proportion of boys who succeed is much higher than that of the girls.
By their mid-twenties, girls become women, boys become men. Women begin to fall behind as achievers, men forge ahead in every field: science, engineering, medicine, arts, literature, music, commerce, industry, law, politics—just about everything including activities which are considered women’s domains like cooking and stitching clothes (have you ever heard of a woman head chef of a hotel or a woman master tailor?) When women rise to the top in their professions, they are looked upon as specimens as rare as albino tigers.
There is more to male predominance as achievers than women having to perform household chores and looking after children. It would seem that male superiority is designed by nature. In the recent issue of The Journal of Human Evolution, scientists have been able to establish that males of all species have bigger brains than females. They started with examining eighty-three rhesus monkeys (higher primates which possess similar patterns of mental and sexual development as humans). The leader of the team of scientists, Dean Falk, asserts that while it had previously been assumed that male brains are bigger because their bodies are bigger, this is not true. ‘Eighty-eight per cent of the difference is attributable to sex rather than body size.’
Falk’s study further shows that female brains grow to adult size at 3.57 years; male brains attain full size at 6.08 years. Dr Falk believes that men out-perform women in all fields because of the difference in the sizes of their brains. Dean Falk is a woman.
12 June 1999
Loving one’s neighbour
Now that we have overcome our phobia of losing to Pakistan in cricket, Kargil has become our national obsession. It disturbs our nights’ sleep and our moon’s repose. As bodies of our jawans and officers who fell on the battlefield are flown in for burial or cremation, the distance between us and our not-too-friendly neighbour Pakistan increases. If a little pimple erupts on our small toe, pain wracks our bodies and we remain restless till it’s removed. Kargil is not a little pimple on our little toe; it is a big bump on our foreheads which throbs with pain. We cannot think about anything else except Kargil; we do not talk about anything except Kargil. We cannot wish it away. We ask ourselves: ‘Is this the way a country should behave towards its neighbour?’
The paradox is that we are and we are not at war with Pakistan. We describe it as ‘a war situation’ (whatever that means). However, two things are clear and incontrovertible: one, that the fighting is taking place entirely on our territory and not a single bullet has been fired in Pakistan; two, the men who are fighting us are not Indian nationals but aliens who sneaked into our territory through Pakistan either with its knowledge or connivance. Pakistan owes India and other nations of the world an explanation as to why it allowed this situation to develop. If Pakistan means to cultivate good neighbourly relations with us, it must help us to get rid of these intruders. Knowing the internal pressures under which the Pakistan government functions, this is asking for the impossible.
While we must not rest till the last intruder has been expelled or slain, we should not let war hysteria overtake us. We were caught napping in Kargil; we must not be caught napping again. Nor peevishly indulge in actions which could be construed by Pakistan as hostile. The decision to undertake naval exercises in the Arabian Sea rather than the usual Bay of Bengal is one such unwise act. It might have been wiser to invite the Pakistani navy to conduct joint exercises with ours, and so allay their fears. We are the bigger and more powerful neighbour; we should teach Pakistan how neighbours should behave towards each other.
19 June 1999
Sweat and blood
There is a Chinese proverb, ‘If you sweat more in times of peace you lose less blood in times of war.’ They taught us this lesson in 1962. The Pakistanis are teaching us the same lesson again in 1999. In 1962, the Chinese occupied many areas we claimed were ours. They laid roads in this area and stationed their troops. It was after many months that we discovered their armed presence in our territory. We raised a hue and cry around the world. Our leaders, mainly Nehru and Krishna Menon, made war-iike speeches about ‘vacating aggression’ and driving the Chinese intruders out. Nobody believed us: ‘If it was your territory, how is it you knew nothing about the Chinese being in it?’ they asked.
The Chinese gave us a bloody punch in the nose. Our noses bled because the Chinese had sweated in times of peace to prepare for war. We did not, and lost face.
The scenario is repeating itself. We never had any illusions about Pakistan’s intentions towards us. We should have watched every move they made and countered it promptly. We did not. While we were napping, they stealthily occupied many strategic points in our territory, fortified them and stocked them with arms, ammunition and rations to last them for many months. Now we are having to pay a heavy price in blood to get them out. However, let us make it clear to them that no matter what it costs us in terms of human lives and money, drive them out we will—to their last man on our soil.
How long will it last? We get conflicting accounts. We are told the intruders are being pushed out; they are running out of ammunition, food and water. In the same breath we are told to be prepared for a long action lasting till the onset of winter. If the latter is more likely than a quick end to the confrontation, then we must put aside our preoccupations which detract our attention from the important task of driving out hostile elements from our soil.
The pending general elections is going to be a major distraction. If action does not end till mid-July, it would be sensible to postpone it by a Presidential Ordinance or an Act of Parliament, but with the clear understanding that a national government comprising all the leading parties will replace the present one with Atal Behari Vajpayee still at its helm, and George Fernandes continuing as the defence minister—the façade of continuity must be maintained. It would be ideal if Sonia Gandhi could be persuaded to accept the deputy prime ministership and thereafter induct men like Manmohan Singh, Sharad Pawar, Sangma, any one—Communist, Akali, Samajw
adi, Bahujan Samaj, DMK or AIADMK.
A truly national government would send a message to Pakistan and the rest of the world that when our frontiers are threatened, we stand together as one people.
Garbage called astrology
I do not think we Indians will ever get out of the clutches of astrologers, palmists, numerologists and other charlatans who live by making forecasts. It is clear as daylight that planets do not influence human behaviour in any way, and all that is attributed to people according to the signs of the zodiac is absolute hogwash. In 1962, when eight planets were in conjunction (ashtagraha) and every single astrologer pronounced that the end of the world had come, nothing happened. The planets were in similar conjunction earlier this year.
This time, soothsayers did not predict doomsday and were saved from being proved wrong again. But no matter how wrong they are proved over and over again, our gullibility is such that we continue to repose faith in their predictions. Every newspaper and magazine has its paid astrologer. Readers pore over their predictions day after day, hoping for a windfall in their fortunes or in dread of an imminent catastrophe. Nothing happens. Nevertheless we continue to call astrology a science which it most certainly is not. We have become mentally sick.
Big Book of Malice Page 12