Sardar? Sultan? Sphinx?
Moot question is, what was PM fiddling with, when scams came in thick and fast, asks ANTHONY SIMOES
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About 55 years ago, I had a teacher called Julie D’Costa. She was my English teacher and also our class teacher. For some strange reason, she looked upon us, her class pupils, as budding poets who only needed some prodding from her. She loved the poems of John Masefield. So even today, I remember her every time I see a sailboat on the Mandovi.
A little while ago, I turned on the TV and saw for the umpteenth time, pandemonium in parliament over the call for a JPC to look into the 2G scam. As I hit the red button on the remote control, the camera shifted to the front row of the treasury benches. The picture went off the tube but in my mind’s eye, a picture lingered. Two pictures, really.
One was that of a white lady draped in a sari. Like an Italian marble statue. Cold, motionless, emotionless, inscrutable; almost lifeless. So near and yet so far. And yet the lifeblood of her party. The kingmaker with a conscience and an inner voice. Like still waters that run deep.
The other was that of a hirsute-faced turbaned potentate-like presence. Only the hint of a smile, like the Sphinx, showing through the facial hair. That hint of a smile took me back to Julie D’Costa and her poetry. In those early years, we sometimes felt the need to counter Masefield, Longfellow, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Shelley, Browning and others of their ilk with our own irreverent poems like the one about the Sphinx.
The sexual urge of the camel
Is far greater than anyone might think
And at the height of the mating season
He’d even fancy the Sphinx.
Now the posterior passage of the Sphinx
Is blocked by the sands of the Nile
Which accounts for the hump on the camel
And the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.
Our science teacher did his best to convince us that the camel’s hump was an adaptation for storing water during long journeys through waterless deserts. That the camel’s hump was not the result of the camel’s alleged amorous advances towards the Sphinx.
Coming back to this latest Emperor/Viceroy of India, he has me intrigued. The poker face with the hint of a smile reminds me of the Sphinx. Secretive. Certainly not bewitching like the Mona Lisa variety. As if he knows that he heads a government which is a compromise between a functioning anarchy and a benevolent dictatorship. With a lot of kleptocracy thrown in. Built on a foundation of cronyism, casteism, credulousness and a casino culture.
His behaviour in the face of so many financial frauds reminds me of the apocryphal story of Nero fiddling whilst Rome was burning. The fiddle had not yet been invented and so many historians have implied that Nero was given to extended bouts of masturbation. The moot question is: what was Manmohan fiddling with when scam after scam was being pulled off right under his nose? Even by his cabinet colleagues over long periods of time. And such mind boggling numbers from the CAG no less. Rs70,000 crore! Rs176,000 crore!!
Then I wonder about his classical economist/World Bank background influencing his behaviour. His coziness with the American economic system based on rapid economic growth, in turn, based on laissez-faire practiced by Robber Barons. Where the government uses public funds to cover private losses but allows private profits to stay ‘oh-so-private’! The Americans had their Rockfellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts… Now we are being ripped off by our very own Robber Barons. The Ambanis, Birlas, Tatas, Mittals, Agarwals… With Manmohan as their common godfather backed by his own fairy godmother. Hence the Rs500,000 crore tax benefits for the Robber Barons in the last budget.
These Robber Barons of ours have a political, socio-economic and environmental ideology that places them only slightly to the left of Genghis Khan. Their depredations and devastation inflicted on the land, water, air and forests of the country reminds me of the raids of Ghazni, Ghor and Tamerlane at the start of the second millennium or thereabouts. At the start of this third millennium, history is repeating itself. Except for the fact, that the aggression is internal rather than external. Instead of armies of mercenaries, elephants and horses, we now have armies of lawyers, lobbyists, PROs and accountants. Instead of tribute and colonisation, we have liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.
What do we make of the ‘Ooh-Aah’ adulation by our politicians, elites and their lap-dog media persons during the Obama visit? What was the big deal about deals worth $10 billion creating 50,000 jobs in America? In the last 35 months since December 2007, over 10 million Americans have lost their jobs due to meltdown/recession. So why that big song and dance about creating 50,000 jobs which is just half of 1 percent of the 10 million jobs lost due to greedy CEOs? And all the time, not a word about 50 million unemployed Indians or about 250 million underemployed Indians in India, that is Bharat. Have they been effectively hidden behind the fig leaf of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme?
What about the other fig leaf? When the Chavans, Rajas, Kalmadis, Deshmukhs… are asked to resign after pulling off massive frauds? Will there be arrests, trials, prosecutions, imprisonments…? Or just siphoning of funds for the party coffers? Maybe even promotions. Manmohan has created many such precedents where perpetrators of massive frauds (like Enron) have been rewarded with huge promotions and perks.
We have all heard and even seen the magician David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear before a live audience of powerful, eminent and knowledgeable people. Everyone makes a big deal about this trick. What about our Generals, Admirals and Marathi chief ministers making a 35 storey building out of a 6 storey one? Concrete evidence of nation building? Action taken? One resignation!!! Ashok Chavan.
I have often criticised Sirji Manmohanji for placing various fraudsters and scamsters in charge of enquiry committees of the same fraud. Or of promoting these rascals to higher and more prominent positions. I have often accused him of placing the foxes in charge of the chicken coop. Maybe I misunderstood Manmohanji. He is probably working on the Akbar/Birbal principle of ‘you set a thief to catch a thief’. Emperors are allowed to behave like this. This is for the benefit of people who have not heard any good Sardarji jokes lately.
The real tragedy for India though, unfolds on a regular basis in what can only be called a travesty of parliamentary proceedings. With shouting, throwing papers, paper weights, chairs and microphones at the speaker’s podium, fistcuffs and abuse. Often not allowing parliament to function for days together on some pretext or the other. However, our parliamentarians never forget to collect their salaries and allowances even though parliament did not function due to their unruly and disruptive behaviour.
The country loses on another count which is entirely disastrous to our future well-being. The treasury and opposition benches spend most of their time trying to prove that the other is more corrupt and therefore, absolve themselves of any wrongdoing. This is the most dangerous aspect of parliamentary proceedings today. This dangerous downward slide on this most slippery slope of competitive corruption is eating into the vitals of our society and polity.
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Who Changed our Regional Plan?
By Venita Coelho
The RP2021 was released and already, we have had several reams of newsprint telling us how wonderful it is. Congratulations and thanks have been handed out on all fronts. My question to all the journalists and opinion leaders who were so quick with their responses is this – have you even read the final RP2021 document? How are you so sure it is good news without taking any time at all to analyse it, and when the plans for the two talukas haven’t even been released? As the GBA starts the process of studying the final document, there seem to be several worrying issues.
The biggest issue is the ways in which the final plan deviates from the draft plan. The mandate of the state level committee set up to finalise the plan was simple. It was to take the existing draft plan, look at the village level plans that had come in, incorporate the suggestions made and produce a final plan. What they have done is to fling in some innovations of their own – which did not exist in the draft RP2021 and which they had no business in doing so. None of these innovations has been opened to the public for their feedback or been part of any sort of participatory process. Most of these have not been adequately explained either.
The first is the abandoning of the VP3 category. This plan has repeatedly been trumpeted as having ‘people’s participation’ and a key cornerstone to that claim was that villages had been allowed to choose the VP status they would like. Why has the VP3 category been dropped? No proper explanation. How can a category that was part of a draft plan that had been notified (and so has legal standing) be dropped? No explanation. When villages have expressly opted for VP3 how can this expression of people’s participation and be over ridden? No explanation. The question begs to be asked – participatory planning or a compromise with the building lobby? The final plan suddenly adds three new categories. Huge chunks of pink appear on the map marked as ‘zone plan’. There is no proper explanation of what a zone plan is. There is a second new category ‘Non PDA ODP areas’. Again, there is no precise explanation of what this is or under what rules and building categories will this fall into. The third and most suspicious category that has been added is Micro Industrial Development Zone. This sounds like it is meant to encourage small scale industries until you read the fine print. These will be governed by ‘a unique policy’. This one could go either way. It could actually be used to encourage small scale industry – or it could be a nice little loophole to bring the SEZs back under another name.
The draft plan was scathing about the effects of mining on Goa. It recommended that mining leases close to water bodies and other sensitive areas be phased out in three years. And that, all mining be phased out in five years. This has gone entirely missing in the final notified RP2021. Instead, we have two recommendations that sound suspiciously like they came from the mining lobby. The first is the recommendation that a new four lane ‘state highway’ be built through the sensitive ghat area. What exactly is a state highway? How is this different from the expressway that is already planned? And who will benefit the most from a highway that runs straight to the most densely mined areas? If the expressway is already being bulldozed over people’s protests, why do we need another state highway?
The second is the push to add one more rail line. Sounds like good planning; until you learn that in response to an RTI, the Rail Vikas Nigam clarified that the line was part of a ‘port connectivity project’. Read ‘to transport iron ore.’
These are just some of the issues that are emerging. It took us months of intense study to understand the implications of the draft plan. It was overall a good plan which would have done much to preserve and protect – but now it stands changed. The implications of the changes in the final plan are yet to be understood – do they water down the draft plan? Radically alter it? Undermine its spirit? It is very premature to begin the celebrations. On the other hand, neither do we wish to throw out years of hard work, which have gone into getting a decent plan, by a knee jerk reaction of rejection. All the various business lobbies would love a stay order, which would allow them to continue with the rules that currently apply – outdated ones from RP2001.
Once again the original demands of the GBA sound more and more like good sense. Put the final plan in public domain for 30 days for us to give our feedback. Until the final issues are sorted, let the eco sensitive zones be marked and preserved immediately. Let VP3 status stand for all the villages that opted for it until the entire plan is completed and notified to everyone’s satisfaction. Throw all the new innovations in this plan, open for debate and discussion. Until the government does this – let’s not celebrate.
