Our Life, Our Times :: 35 :: Modi again

http://www.bagchiblog.blogspot.com

The 2019 General Elections have returned Narendra Modi with a thumping majority. It was a remarkable set of elections that will be talked about for long. In all probability, this is going to be Modi’s last elections as he has a self-imposed restriction on candidates of more than 75 years of age. He will be more than 75 and hence ineligible to contest by the time the next elections appear on the horizon in 2024.

The fight for these elections was bitter, fierce and frightful. Rahul Gandhi, the president of the Indian National Congress tried his best to “shatter” Modi’s image of being incorruptible but that did not bring any dividend to him. Congressmen later thoughtfully confessed that the negative campaigning against Modi was perhaps overkill and had eventually started sounding repulsive. “Chowkidar chor hai” (Chowkidar is a thief), a jibe at Modi coined by Rahul, was used to its limits of saturation and yet Modi and his alliance fetched record number of votes. There was not a single election meeting or a rally where Modi was not abused and branded as corrupt and helpful to his cronies. Modi largely returned the compliments by citing the corrupt regimes of UPAs I and II wherein practically every alliance partner made fortunes at the cost of the public exchequer. But amidst all these allegations and counter allegations Modi never accused the former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh of corruption – not during the election campaigns. He had, however, once mentioned in the Parliament Dr. Singh’s capability to remain dry without a raincoat when all around him there were showers of corruption. That is when the Congress members walked out in protest.

The stunning victory against the Congress President Rahul Gandhi in what is known as the “Gandhi Pocket borough” was another outstanding feature of these elections. Smriti Irani, who had lost to him at the 2014 Elections got the upper hand this time getting a handsome win against the Gandhi scion. As it was a VIP constituency the officials at the counting booth were extra cautious and the results were announced only late in the evening. But before that Rahul Gandhi at his press briefing conceded defeat to Smriti and there was a rumour that he would announce his resignation from the high Party post. That, however, did not happen; He submitted his resignation to the Congress Working Committee. Though the resignation was rejected by none other than Sonia Gandhi yet he has not withdrawn it. The reverberations of the resignation were yet to die down at the time of writing.

Quite clearly the defeat at Amethi made Rahul Gandhi ashamed of himself. He, therefore, resigned and has so far stood his ground refusing to withdraw his resignation. Sycophants, who sustained him and the Gandhi family, however, are deeply reluctant to let him go. Possibly in the absence of a Gandhi from the top position in the Party they would lose all their clout and influence over the lesser party men. Nonetheless, it must be said in favour of Pappu, as Rahul is endearingly and sometimes scornfully called by the media, that he has not budged from the position he has taken. More importantly he has raised a very valid question as to why a Gandhi family member should always be occupying the top position of the Congress Party with sycophants taking no responsibility apart from fanning the ego of whoever from amongst the Gandhis was occupying the top party post.

Be that as it may, the fact, however, is that 2019 Parliamentary elections have caused a severe tectonic disturbance in the Grand Old Party of India like of which it had never witnessed earlier. Even if it comes out of it somewhat unscathed, it would certainly not be its self-confident self. That appears to be a correct assessment as the Party has since announced that it will boycott all TV debates. Nonetheless, for all that, it may present itself in the future only as sycophants – the boot-lickers and self-serving politicians – might like to project it. One cannot but recall the way Sitaram Kesri, the last non-Gandhi president of the party, was deprived of support by the Sonia Gandhi supporters and was stripped of the trappings of powers of Congress President yielding a well-laid path for the latter to be elected to the post.

The loss of Jyotiraditya Scindia from the traditional Scindia seat of Guna in Madhya Pradesh was also an extraordinary feature of these elections. The defeat was a first one for a Scindia. Neither his father, Late Madhavrao nor his grandmother, Late Smt. Vijayaraje Sindia ever lost any parliamentary election. In fact, Jyotiraditya’s loss was only one of 24 losses from Madhya Pradesh which returned only one Congressman, the chief minister’s son, from Chhindwara. Likewise in Rajasthan all the 28 parliamentary seats were lost by Congress to BJP. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are two states which only around six months ago formed Congress governments beating BJP at the Assembly elections. These losses have attracted Rahul’s ire who has accused the two chief ministers of concentrating on their respective sons’ elections sacrificing the interests of the Party. He forgets that he being a Gandhi scion used up far greater amount of Congress resources of men, material and party’s finances and yet lost the elections from a seat that returned one or the other Gandhi year after year.

Two other extraordinary feats of the relentless BJP campaign were registering wins in a substantial share of West Bengal’s Parliamentary seats. Winning 22 of the 42 seats Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerji did not do too well whereas BJP with 18 seat was at her heels doing exceptionally well. From the figure of 1 in 2014 to go to 18 in 2019 was very creditable. Likewise winning 25 out of 28 Kanataka Parliamentary seats is certainly a result of a massive effort. Karnataka is the only state in the South where BJP has enough space for maneuvering a collapse of the alliance partners of Janata Dal (Secular) and Congress.

What had looked like initially as a feeble Modi wave it later assumed sinister proportions swamping and drowning all that came in its way.  The map of India kept changing as the results came along and the colour that was eventually predominant was BJPs saffron. Modi had been claiming from before the polls that this time people had decided against a fractured mandate and wanted to equip him with enough muscle to enable him to complete the business that has remained unfinished. One does not know from where and how did he get such inkling but the truth of the matter is that it proved to be prophetic. The slogan of “abki baar, teen sau ke paar” (this time around, beyond three hundred) was spot on.

*image from internet

Our Life, Our TImes :: 34 :: Knifing the "Maharaja"

http://www.bagchiblog.blogspot.com

An Air India Super Constellation

The news has just come in that the Government of Maharashtra has offered Rs. 1400 crore for the iconic Air India building at Nariman Point in Mumbai. Though the amount offered is Rs. 200 crore less than what was declared as the reserve price the Air India authorities were seemingly inclined to give away the building to the state government. The Life Insurance Corporation had offered Rs.1375 crore and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust had put down its offer at Rs. 1200 crore. Hence, by June-end one could hope the Maharashtra Government offices to move into the building. Perhaps even the chief minister is likely to relocate to this building and one might find the National Flag on top of it instead of Centaur of the logo of Air India.

This building has been a remarkable structure dominating the business district that came up on what came to be known as Backbay Reclamations. I can recall that during my first visit to Mumbai (which was then Bombay) in 1955 tetrapods used to be built there as the work of reclamation went on. It was a vast expanse of sand and tetrapods would be lined up for being placed next to the parapet of Marine Drive along the Arabian Sea. Then this iconic building slowly took shape designed by an architect from New York. Facing the beautiful Marine Drive it came to dominate it, adding more sophistication to an already sophisticated artery lined by art-deco buildings.

Air India is steeped in debt of around Rs. 50,000 crore and had decided to monetise its physical assets. It had put up its lease-hold rights over the land and the building for sale last December with a reserve price of Rs.1600 crore. The sale was open to only the various governments, their departments and public sector units. None of these entities, however, could muster an amount equal to the reserve price; the offer of Maharashtra Government happened to be closest to it. In all probability, therefore, the Maharashtra government offices are likely to move in in a few months time.

Air India hit this sad predicament largely because of politicians who came to control the airline. Time was when Air India, to use a cliché, used to rule the skies and other up-and-coming airlines would try and learn micromanaging their assets from none other than its chief JRD Tata. Tata was a freak in so far as flying was concerned. His commitment to the airline from its initial days when it had only 2 pilots and a few sundry employees was basically the reason for its becoming an exemplar for others. In the 1960s when Air India was still flying propeller-driven planes connoisseurs would still opt for the slower Indian planes than the faster jets for the simple reason that the Air India would pamper them. For the sake of the high quality service they would think nothing of sacrificing a few measly hours that could earn them a few thousand dollars.

That is when it suffered the first assault from a politician. In the 1970s Morarji Desai as the prime minister issued a dictat that no alcohol could be served on Air India’s international flights. JRD Tata fought the fiat tooth and nail but had to resign as Morarji was as, if not more, resolute than Tata. With the exit of Tata, service standards dived southwards and the clientele that Tata had built up progressively deserted the Airline. At the same time competition hotted up and those who were pigmies when Tata was around put more heft in their operations and left Air India miles behind.

Then came the era of “coalition compulsions” – UPA’s two terms at the Centre that administered blow  after blow to the Airline that had the sobriquet of “Maharaja” and was soon enough to lose all the trappings of royalty leaving, people asking “who killed the Maharaja?” No, none from the outside; it was a well executed inside job.

While unaffordable order for as many as 111 planes were placed the Airline inexplicably surrendered profit-making routes to Middle-East/ South-East Asia and Europe to its competitors. The Public Accounts Committee, when seized of the matter, found that it was the Ministry of Civil Aviation that would not listen to protestations of the Air India and Indian Airlines and surrendered to their competitors what were essentially milch cows for them. Thus we had a situation where Indian planes would fly half empty to these destinations airlines like Emirates would rake in unconscionable plane-loads of air traffic from the Indian hinterland in the new environment of generous “bilaterals” under India’s curious version of “Open Skies”. Air India, thus, lost out to foreign airlines under the direction of the Ministry of Civil Aviation the traffic that legitimately was its own.

Everything that was done to bring the Airline down was done by the Ministry of Civil Aviation which in those turbulent days was being headed by Praful Patel who was a contribution to the United Proressive Alliance I government of Dr. Manmohan Singh of, ironically, Nationalist Congress Party, headed by that old predator Sharad Pawar. No “nationalist” with the slightest of feelings for the nation and its people could ever have shot down a high flying asset of the nation like Air India in the way Praful  Patel did.

R Jagannathan, Editor in-chief of the perceptive First Post wrote in a feature the technique adopted by Patel to kill Air India. Basic proposition was to load it with heavy loans that it could never raise its head again. An airline with a revenue of Rs. 7000 crore was asked in 2004 to take on debt of Rs. 50000 crore – the cost of the new aircraft the number of which was arbitrarily inflated from 28 to 68 without any revenue plan or route map for deployment of the additional aircraft.

Likewise, Jagannathan says Patel was a great promoter of merger of Air India and Indian Airlines by pitching up the synergetic operations of both. However, in the process he forgot that both the airlines were incurring losses and were in every other way were unequal. Their manpower was differently trained, the compensation mechanisms were different and so on. The ultimate result was neither could pull the other up from the morass each was sinking into. No wonder, both, together, have run up a huge resources crunch that, many experts feel, is impossible of mitigation.

In the midst of this unmanageable crunch again the Ministry (read Patel) decided to withdraw Air India from the profit making routes that largely sustained it. What one gets to feel is that it was the best example of crony capitalism; for example, the lucrative S-E Asian routes were surrendered to Kingfisher Airlines – an airline that Patel used to patronize while flying between Delhi and Mumbai. Vijay Mallya was apparently much more than a friend; in fact, a crony.  

While bringing down the “Maharaja” Patel seems to have covered his tracks very well. In achieving what he achieved he moved his files at supersonic speed from one authority to another. Every establishment concerned was kept in the loop so that the murder of the airline could be presented as a “collective and consensual” effort.

Even the prime minister was kept aware of the moves. Any other right thinking PM would have sat up and taken note of the merry hell that was being played around by one of the reps of his coalition partners. But under his dictum of “coalition compulsion” he kept his eyes, ears and mouth tightly shut and allowed the loot to go on not only in the civil aviation sector but in many other sectors too. One is probably yet to see a man presiding over an Indian government oblivious of the rot that his cabinet colleagues were facilely inflicting on sector after sector of the economy.

 He now has the temerity to say that Modi has ruined the economy. Huh!

*Photo of Air India Constellation from the internet

Bhopal Notes :: 74 :: Commissioner's fiat - city needs more trees

https:..www.bagchiblog.blogspot.com

Three years after the report on the study of the Indian Institute of Science on Bhopal’s tree cover was published the authorities seemed to have woken up and have shown signs of stirring. The initiative to save the city’s green ambience has come, of all the people, from none other than the Divisional Commissioner, Bhopal.

It might be recalled that three years ago the Times of India published a report on the study conducted by the distinguished faculty of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, which undertook the same study simultaneously for three other cities in addition to Bhopal. The study related to a span of two decades during which the heaviest loss of tree cover was revealed in Bhopal – from 66% to 22% of the city’s area – and it was predicted that it was likely to fall to 11% by 2018 and could have a sharper fall hitting around 4% by 2030. Other cities that were studied were Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. None of these had a tree cover of 66% two decades ago – only Ahmedabad had 46% and it fell to 24%.

Environmentalists of the city were shocked to see the ToI report. Some of them had made their own assessments keeping for reference more or less the same parameters and felt that the proposition of 11% tree cover by 2018 was entirely possible. A noted environmentalist of the city Subhash C Pandey who is fighting to get back the city’s green cover said that unplanned urbanization, encroachment of natural water bodies in the city, depletion of ground and surface water show that the plan of sustainable development has failed.

One wonders whether there was any plan for development, more so, of sustainable development. Concerned about the continuous loss of  tree cover in the city one is inclined to believe that the authorities connected with maintenance of environmental balance of the city are ignorant of the term “sustainable development”. Every action of the city administrators is taken on an ad hoc basis without proper examination of the pros and cons. No wonder, most of the decisions of the city administrators suffer from lack of prudence or wisdom, adversely impacting the normal and healthy life of the citizens.

Take for instance the BRTS corridor which came up around a dozen years ago and continues to be a work in progress. At the very initial stage, while defining the corridor as many as 3000 huge old trees were felled. Some were attempted to be translocated but for want of the necessary expertise coupled with proper equipment many dug up trees died. This was the first major strike against the greenery in the town. The uninformed commissioner of the municipal corporation was satisfied with the action that his outfit took in greening a hill outside the city forgetting that roadside trees offer their own advantage to the citizens, particularly, by keeping the urban areas cool.

The second major strike against the city’s greenery came by way of the development of a business district by Gammon India Ltd., followed by the creation of a smart city in Bhopal. The smart city organization opted for redevelopment  instead of retrofitting and in the process a few more thousands of trees were axed. This is not all; in the name of development, urban sprawl was allowed to spread its wings all around the town and no one knows how many trees were sacrificed for the sake of colonies that were legitimate or illegitimate. Then , of course, there are isolated developments like conversion of Minto Hall into a convention centre and a starred hotel for which the dense growth of trees next to the Lower Lake was destroyed. The authorities in this town are happy to remove greenery from wherever they can, damaging the micro-climate of the town. Protests do take place but these were effective only in one respect when the site of the smart city was moved from Shivaji & Tulsi nagars saving axing of thousands of trees.

Many of the environmentalists agree with the findings of the IISc as they too had studied the problem keeping in view more or less the same parameters and had come to the conclusion of a rise in temperature by 8 degrees Celsius in 12 years. Hence one can only say that time is running out and the initiative of the Commissioner, though comming as many as three years after the findings of the IISc were published, came not a day too soon. We just do not have the luxury of time with us and sooner the initiative is translated into action the better it would be. Otherwise, the maximum temperature will in all probability hit close to 50 degrees Celsius in not too distant future. Already, April 2019 is being considered as hottest April in Bhopal with temperatures topping 40 degrees C and nothing is more responsible for the city’s this predicament than felling of large number of trees.

The Commissioner has reportedly given the responsibility of planting around six lakh trees inside the town to three entities including the Bhopal Municipal Corporation and the Capital Projects Authority. One is aware how these civic bodies suffer from inertia and how their functioning is lackadaisical. Their functioning in this regard has to be monitored so that planting and nursing of the plants are taken care of under tight supervision. Perhaps, the young minister of Urban Administration & Development could evince interest in the matter making the subordinates give all that they have towards a veritable war on progressively heating once-salubrious Bhopal.

*Photo of a Khirni tree from internet

Memories of an ordinary Indian :: 25 :: Training at Saharanpur

http;//www.bagchiblog.blogspot.com

Imagination run wild - a plan for smart Saharanpur

The two boys who had accompanied me from Neemuch put me on the Frontier Mail at dead of the night. At Delhi I changed over to Dehra Dun Express.

Steel coaches were yet to come. First class coaches used to be made of wood and used to be four berthers or six berthers. There used to be what used to be known as coupe - a two berther presumably for a family of two. Each of these compartments used to be provided with a toilet and bath, raising the per capita availability of the facilities than what is made available now.

 With pressure of increasing volume of traffic the railways had to opt for metal coaches hauling a larger number of passengers. The wooden spacious coaches were phased out as more and more metal coaches, known as Swiss pattern, came to be inducted. I mention this since many of the current generation, particularly the millennial may not be aware that we used to have wooden coaches a few decades back. In fact the Indian railways were big users of wood. Apart from the coaches even the sleepers were made of wood. Most of the forests were lost during the British regime because of extensive use of wood by the railways.

The training centre was located in a property that once was that of Ministry of Civil Aviation for the simple reason that Posts & Telegraphs Department (which included Telephones) and Civil Aviation used to be in one and the same ministry. It was a nondescript place with barracks that were probably constructed around the War Time. Thankfully, it was outside the town which was crowded and dirty, generally like any other North Indian town. Saharanpur has been described variously but the catchiest is that “it is a town from yesterday”.

In those early days we didn’t have a college to train our officers and men of other ranks. The Centre established by the British at Saharanpur used to function as nodal agency for training of supervisory and operative cadres. A Postal Staff College was established at Ghaziabad in 1977 thirty years after independence thus separating the training systems of the two streams.

 The Centre had the facilities of all kinds of games. All seven of us of the batch made good use of them. There was cement tennis court where for the first time in my life I played tennis. Sports-wise the Centre was well provided. We played practically every kind of game from football and hockey to badminton and tennis. While on the tennis court we one day, I think it was 20th October 1962, witnessed the massive army movement by rail from Ambala. Troops were being moved right across the country to the North East to meet the Chinese incursions.

 The entire batch came together after a gap of a year and since then we never met again as a batch. This was one great thing about the sojourn in Saharanpur. We met the wife of a batch-mate while another came all by himself leaving his wife back home for reasons, I think, of logistics.

We were there for theoretical training - the training that should have been imparted in the first instance after the Foundation Course at Mussourie. The principal of the Centre was a promoted officer belonging to subordinate services and was pretty committed. He was keen on taking classes but was poor in articulation. For the purposes of the Training Centre he had acquired a tape recorder with huge spools of tape. In those days it was new technology and he was understandably obsessed with it. He asked us to write papers on professional subjects which he then asked us to read out aloud to be recorded in the recorder. When the Member in-charge of training came on a visit he had the best paper of a batch-mate played out.

The Member gave a stirring speech in top class English with a crisp accent to the new recruits to motivate them to contribute to the war effort by opting for the Army Postal Service, a vital arm of the Army. Even till today I wonder how many of those young boys being trained for clerical or suchlike jobs understood him.

The theoretical part is pretty heavy stuff, more so in respect of postal matters. There was nothing for us to while away time except our friend from Shillong, Thang Khumah Tochawng, who used to sing the English numbers that were popular around that time. His favourite singer was Nat “King” Cole and so was mine. He used to regale us with “King” Cole’s numbers. One feels so sorry to say that he is no longer around. He was a great companion and a great friend.

Our other occupation was drinking beer. It was cheap and plentifully available. We would collect enormous numbers of bottles and then one of us would go to the town trade them for more beer bottles. It was great fun – 8 weeks of paid holiday - with friends as add-ons.

When we were coming away after completion of the training the Director surprisingly praised the batch for its conduct right through the training period. It seems he had had a bad experience with the previous batch which paid scant attention to him. There was a girl in the batch who was rather tom-boyish and the boys would chase her all over the place. The Director found it difficult to bring them to order and behave decently.

*photo from internet