A window with a view

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The other day I woke up to a beautiful and picturesque morning. As I shook off the winter coverings and sat up on the bed tolookout of my widebedroom window facing the beautiful Upper Lake a scene of extraordinary beauty was seemingly awaiting me.

A clear turquoise blue sky above with not a spec of cloud and beneath it the equally attractive sheet of blue water that I could see over the green tree-tops was breathtaking. And beyond the azure waters the undulating greens of Shamla Hills made for a beautiful setting. A young Sun was shooting its yellow rays down on to the houses hitting their white-washed walls that faced it that looked like blotches of yellow paint. These yellows stood out in the surrounding blues and the greens of the trees. What a marvelous sight! And to top it all, four enterprising young men, braving the cold, were out sailing with their white sails unfurled. The whites of their sails, the blues of the skies above and the Lake below, the yellows of the houses and the greens of the trees, their branches dancing in the breeze made an incredibly beautiful sight.

This is perhaps the best season for the town when the rain-washed skies are at their bluest, shorn off of all the muck and mist and the sun shining brightly has yellow in the morning rays and amber in those in the evenings. The evenings, in fact, are more dramatic as the sun prepares to go down in the Western skies. Fluffy cottony clouds acquire a golden hue reflecting the dying rays of the sun as it dips below the horizon. Within minutes the Western sky takes on a pinkish tinge, only to change over to purple and then crimson as the sun goes further down to light up the other Western lands.

It has been more than twenty years yet I, it seems, cannot get enough of the dramatic play of colours over the millennium old Lake. I have marvelled at its beauty in winters, summers and the monsoons and it hardly ever fails to amaze me. I cannot thank enough the legendary king who thoughtfully had it built  for his subjects.

From the scrap book :: 16 :: Mona Lisa - a master piece or a "fiasco"?

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A New York Times (NYT) write-up, reproduced in a domestic newspaper, on Louvre in Paris, perhaps the greatest of museums in the world, was somewhat disconcerting. It seems, the Museum was show-casing the “decade-in-the-works - Leonardo da Vinci” last year and the tickets were sold out by November. And yet, Leonardo was described in the write-up as the “least productive of Renaissance masters” and his most famous painting Mona Lisa as a “fiasco”.

Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, the latter being her husband’s name, is considered a masterpiece painted by the 16^th Century Renaissance artist-cum-engineerLeonardo da Vinci. While the author of the piece in NYT has said it is a “fiasco” yet, according to him, some 80% of the visitors to Louvre go there only to see Mona Lisa. Around 80% of the visitors is not an insubstantial number when one considers that in 2018 as many as 10 million visited the Louvre. Yet the NYT author has used pejoratives for Leonardo’s work of artartcalling it “Kim Kardashian of 16^th Century Italian portraiture”.

Last summer Paris was hot with the mercury topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In the midst of the heat the Louvre undertook renovation of the Mona Lisa gallery in the Museum’s Denon Wing which once housed the French Parliament. Relocated to Richelieu painting wingthe sweaty crowds of Mona Lisa viewers, ignoring the Flemish collection, were so large that guards had to shoo them off – the selfie-snappers who had endured a half an hour line. The overcrowding was so bad that the museum had to shut doors for several days.That, if anything, shows the fame and popularity of Vinci’s creation.

Leonardo is believed to have commenced working on the portrait of Lisa del Gioconda, the model of Mona Lisa sometime in 1503. The West is very sanguine in its belief that the model bore strong resemblance to Virgin Mary who was at that time considered as epitome of feminine beauty. In those far away years portraits of women would be mostly of the gentry from the aristocracy. These would generally be heavy on the eye as they were extravagantly embellished with ornaments and other items of personal decoration. More often, they were portraits of stern looking matrons. Mona Lisa, on the other hand, looks like a woman from the normal gentle folk of those times with hardly any ornament on her person. It is also claimed that, perhaps, for the first time in portraiture the model has been made to sit in front of a landscape – probably of Florentine provenance. 

Despite its simplicity the painting has become famous. Men have researched it, written thousands of words on it and have even written songs for the very pleasant-looking lady. She has been described as “enigmatic” and her smile has been found tobe “mystic”. Because of the world-wide fame of the painting it has been subjected to thefts and has faced attempts at vandalisation. They had generally failed barring probably once when the pieces of shattered glass damaged the pigment in a microscopic area of the painting. This happened despite the strict security in Louvre and museums across the world to which it had been taken for display.

I got familiar with Mona Lisa when I was still in college by way of a write—up in a newspaper. Later, the picture of the portrait appeared in some magazine – perhaps the Life magazine. Then I came across the song “Mona Lisa” sung melodiously by Nat “King” Cole in his what-seems-like cold-affected voice. It was so impressive that it continues to be one of my favourites even after sixty—odd years.

When we went to Europe in 1987 we visited Paris and, of course, Louvre was in the itinerary. I happened to come across the statue of Venus de Milo on my way to the free-standing grey wall where Mona Lisa was mounted. There was no crowd unlike what the NYT write-up mentions. The author, it seems, hardly had a minute to carefully look at the painting and was pushed and shoved to get going. It reminded me of what happened at Thirupati in front of the deity. In a second I was pushed away and resultantly I do not even know how the deity looks. At Louvre we had no such problem, there were only half a dozen people and we had a very good view of the painting from up close. I took a few pictures of it and we came away happy and contented.

Howsoever critics may try and run down Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa it has been one of the masterpieces to come out of the Renaissance and has been admired for the last five hundred years – thus winning the test of time. One feels sure that the painting is unlikely to be knocked off the pedestal it has been placed on in the coming decades or even centuries.

*Photo from internet

Our Life, Our Times ::48 :: Misguided students

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It appears from what the newspapers say or what the media shows that the entire country has become secular in mindset and that all participating individuals in demonstrations and rallies against the Citizens Amendment Act would go all out to uphold their secular beliefs against all odds. They would not flinch from taking recourse to even violence if it ever came to that.

If all this were true one would have all the reasons to be happy. A secular mindset is always welcome as it shuns prejudices and hatred for other communities as is normally witnessed. It is a liberal and harmonious way of life thatpromotes efforts to try and understand the opposing antithetical views. Diversity of views is welcomed and each is allowed to coexist along with the contrarian and prevailing majoritarian view. Basically, it is a tolerant society that has a place for every way of looking at things in a society. It also has to have the majority with a very large heart that has the capacity to accommodate various opposing viewpoints without any rancor or bitterness or heartburn.

This would be an ideal society but unfortunately it just does not exist anywhere. Human beings being what they are they live through their lives with all the emotions of love and hate, likes and dislikes and all their biases and sense of fairness. Hence, if onewere to scratch a secular person one would find underneath the thin veneer of secularism all the ills of prejudices and hatred for other compatriots. Many of those who are taking part in the rallies and demonstrations against the CAA and/or NCR are certainly not secular in the true sense of the word as they are unwilling to appreciate the contrarian point of view. The recourse to violence in the demonstrations in Uttar Pradesh confirms that beyond doubt. A secular individual would argue it out rather than be violent and use force to bring home  his opinion.

The ongoing agitations against the Citizenship laws have mobilized massive crowds. Worse, various places oflearning have seen violent students and others destroy public and private property. Unfortunately, the students have been mobilized by various political parties through their subaltern units in the universities or colleges or other places of learning that exist in the shape of students’ unions. Each union toes the political line of its master causing confrontation with the opposing union. The places of learning have thus become kind of war zones as exemplified by what happened at Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi. Students came for the “fight” wearing masks and wielding lathis. These students are certainly not secular.In fact they came for a “war” against those who happened to hold opposing views.

Students should not be out on the streets, they should be in theclassrooms. They should be kept out of various societal controversies where political parties of various shades push their agenda. Politicisation of an issue only divides the nation – more so the student community. Such divisive actions need to be avoided. Similar sentiments were given expression to by the cricketing icon, Sunil Gavaskar recently while delivering the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture. Hinting that it was not for the students to take sides in the current agitations against the controversial citizenship laws, Gavaskar said, “The country is in turmoil. Some of our youngsters are out on the street when they should be in their classrooms. Some of them are ending up in hospitals for being out on the streets”. He went on to say, “We as a nation can go higher only when we are all together,when each one of us has to be simply Indian, first and foremost. That is what the game (Cricket) taught us….We win when we pull together as one” Gavaskar’s advice to the students was that they should go back to the classrooms. That is their main duty. Pithily he observed “They have gone to the university to study, so please study”.

There can be various and even differing views on the matter but one has to consider the facts that the parents of the students have spent their hard earned money to send them to colleges and universities. Even the State expends large sums of money to provide for their education. They just cannot avoid their responsibility in this regard. No society would ever like them to abstain from the classroom and fight on the streets against the arms of the law. Most of us have gone through this stage of our lives and have now come to realize that all that orchestrated recalcitrance and anger against the established authority were futile and were of no use in building a good future for any of us. In no way such conduct could be considered as doing a good turn to the parents who, inflicting great pain on themselv, spend their last bit to have their wards properly educated.

It is politicization of campuses that is at the bottom of this problem. Students’ unions have become nothing but political arms of various political parties holding varied ideological views distracting the students from their basic reason of being in educational campuses. I recall the pre—independence days in Gwalior where the college used to have a union of students. It used to be guided union with a faculty member guiding it. The union generally would deal with affairs relating to students’ welfare, their extra-curricular activities, sporting events and so on. The union never indulged in politics and, since it was a princely state, the organisations like Students’ Federation of India were kept out of the campus. Yet the College produced politicians like AtalBehari Vajpayee who not only was a great debater and a fiery speaker he also collaborated with the member of the family of the same ruling feudal to form a political party and later rose to become the prime minister of the country.

Politicians are a bane for the campuses. They try and mould the young minds to suit their conveniences. They vitiate the environment causing antipathies, dividing the student community. Howsoever one might say that the campuses are breeding grounds for future politiciansnone could objectively say so. The students are misguided and misdirected only to form the bulk for political parties,lending them weight in so far as numbers are concerned and, worse, they are used only as their foot soldiers.

Arvind Subramanian, former Chief Economic Advisor to Government of India and currently teaching at Harvard University writes from the US about the anguish caused to him as he saw the imagesof Indian educational institutions in turmoil streamed across the globe. Quoting a protagonist from a Mira Nair film he asks “Aren’t these our children who need to be protected from ourselves, from our instinctsto hate and harm? These young our college students, need to be nurtured, educated and equipped to build the wealth and the future that we want for our country”.

Surely, students are our human capital which needs to be nursed and cared for. Instead of dissipating their energies in futile fissiparous warfare they need to be encouraged to build an economically strong nation making the country proud.

*Image from internet

Bhopal Notes :: 82 :: Traffic chaos

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Traffic in the town, especially in the old Bhopal area is reported to have become increasingly difficult because of encroachments. The other day a report appeared in the vernacular press that it took for  an ambulance 50 minutes to cover the distance of half a kilometer between SadarManzil and Hamidia Hospital. All through, the road was encroached upon and traffic police was not to be seen anywhere.

After the annual Tablighi Ijtema, a religious congregation that is attended by hundreds of thousands of Muslims, concluded in December last as usual the eponymously temporary Market was set up on the opposite side of the gate of the Hamidia Hospital. It offer  cheap goods that attract enormous crowds and with crowds in front of various kiosks and at the bus stop next to the Hospital gate it becomes difficult to negotiate through the multiple obstructions. This has been going on for years but no preventive action has ever been taken to ensure a smoother flow of traffic.

 In the instant case since an ambulance was involved, presumably carrying a patient, it made it to the newspapers. But this is what is happening on various roads particularly in older parts of the town. Since this is a regular feature, obstructions or blockages of traffic hardly ever are reported by the media.

Take for instance the road to Karbala from the GAD Square. This may not be called an artery but is an important road that connects Shahjehanabad with New Bhopal through the VIP Road. There are certainly alternatives available but because those are already chocked a major proportion of the vehicular traffic, including cars two-wheelers, big buses of Cambridge School and St. Joseph’s Convent and other sundry vehicles, take this road for speedier commute to New Bhopal But, of late, this road too has started to show signs of getting choked.

Firstly there are any number of handcarts selling vegetables are parked on one side of the road. This is after the Municipal Corporation provided pucca shops for hawkers on the other side of the road. But no, the city roads are like mints for the municipal councilors. They informally allot spaces for the handcarts for a consideration and the Police winks at this brazen irregularity and allows them the use of road-space for, again, some consideration. The same is the case with what are known as “gumties” or kiosks. The city is full of them and Karbala Road has a fair share of them. They are portable shops and can be towed with facile ease. But the need for that seldom occurs as none ever challenges them. If somebody, by a mistaken notions of his duties, does challenge them everything is settled by exchange of a little bit of cash. That makes everyone happy. These kiosks, too, are obstructive of traffic, occupying as they do substantial areas of the road.

Worse, however, are the hole-in-the-wall shops of about 150 or 200 square feet area that came up about five or six years ago. Most of them are automobile repair shops where the owner doubles up as the mechanic or the mechanic may be a hired hand. Whatever might be the arrangements in regard to the personnel, the vehicles that come for their attention are attended to on the road occupying a sizable portion of it. If there are a dozen shops doing the same thing right on the road one can imagine what happens to the genuine road users. Then add to these shops at least a couple of car washing outfits which generally have a waiting line. The waiting vehicles are merrily parked on the roadside without a concern for the commuting public. One would seldom see a traffic policeman on this road. I have never seen one.

The Karbala Road boasts of an office of a DIG Police as also bungalow of a minister. But, for years an informal market of used cars has been operating from here without let or hindrance. One would find numerous vehicles heavily laden with dust parked up there. Obviously these vehicles have remained parked there for quite some days or months. Surprisingly, on occasions I have seen even buses joining the crowd of vehicles awaiting prospective buyers. There are always hordes of people hanging around and driving through this melee is a nightmare. Surprisingly, the hardships that commuters face in negotiating Karbala Road hardly ever makes its way to the pages of newspapers.

This is sheer misuse of public roads for private profit and none seems to be bothered about it. If for some reasons the Municipal Corporation is unable to clear the road and banish from it all those who irregularly ply their trade on it it should at least charge hefty rentals from them. But is there anybody in the Municipality gutsy enough to try and do that? After all, it is the politicians – petty or big – rule the roost.

Memories of an ordinary Indian :: 31 :: Nagpur (Pt II)

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The department is one of those rare ones which measures its staff requirements on the basis of principles of operational research. It was a difficult process and the operative offices would seldom find a worker who could fill up the forms and project the staff requirements for the office. The result was offices would mostly function short-handed even though the work load would increase with efflux of time.This was a constant complaint. The excess work would be managed by payment of overtime allowances. As under the regional scheme officers of my rank could create Groups C and D posts I launched a campaign to have the overdue reviews of establishment carried out. Even during inspections I used to have such reviews carried out simultaneously. The result was around 80% of the Circle’s budget meant for the purpose was consumed by Nagpur Region. There was a little heartburning in other regions but I could not have helped it.

I knew I had to change the location of my own office. We were too short of accommodation and were very uncomfortably off. The junior members of staff were also keen to move out of this departmental building. Soon we got an offer of a house on the famed Cement Road of Nagpur owned by a former judge. Finding it adequate we organized a meeting of the Rent Assessment Committee. Even the Internal Financial Adviser was amenable to the shift. It went through the processes of examination at the headquarters like a shot and the office moved in quickly to the new location with brand new items of furniture. Nevertheless, a chronic complainant, one SC and ST association chief, complained to the CBI about my alleged ulterior motives. The CBI seized the file from Bombay headquarters but returned it after a month without any comments. My colleagues rang up to say that I was on the clear.

Assaults on matters that had been pricking the staff for long quickly paid dividends and the reputation of the Region in respect of the works that were being carried out spread throughout the Circle. Union leaders of other regions would come and meet me whenever I would be in Bombay. During my two and a half years three PMGs came and went. Each had come with a little trepidation about Nagpur. After arrival, however, they found Nagpur was largely quiet. The kind of steps taken by our office, examples of which have been given above, enhanced the level of satisfaction among the staff.

As I mentioned earlier there was not one place in the region barring Wardha that could claim to be important. Wardha had Mahatma Gandhi’s Ashram and yet it seemed to have lost traction with visitors. There were two wildlife National Parks, one each in Chandrapur and Amravati but these did not have much of wildlife then. In fact, once I drove through TadobaAndhari sanctuary in Chandrapur without making eye-contact with any animal. Tadoba now seems to have a flourishing presence of wildlife with a thriving population of tigers.

With a fresh redistribution of units four more from Western Maharashtra were transferred to my jurisdiction. Among them were Nanded, a place of Sikh pilgrimage, and Aurangabad, known for its rock-cut temple at Ellora and Buddhist cave paintings of Ajanta. Aurangabad had pretty good traffic of tourists, especially from abroad and hence there were a number of starred hotels. All the four units were districts that were again economically backward.

 What was evident was that the Western districts of Maharashtra suffered from apathy and neglect. Although Aurangabad used to get substantial numbers of tourists yet the tourist sites like Ajanta, Ellora, Tughlakabad or Kultabad were not properly looked after.I recall having asked the tourism receptionist at Ajanta for a rest room. He directed me to a cave converted into a cubicle by curtaining it off with a torn and frayed jute cloth. Inside there was an enamel pot which was full to the brim with urine. After managing somehow I came out only to see a large elderly American follow me into the same cubicle. On inquiry I was told it was none other than Robert Goheen, the then US ambassador to India. I couldn’t help feeling terribly ashamed about the shoddy and thoughtless arrangements.

One of the happiest experiences was a visit to the rural office at Virud, a village in Chandrapur district. Here a Sikh gentleman had settled down as a forest contractor. He had migrated from Pakistan at the time of partition. Over time he became prosperous and bought around 10 acres of land. Here he developed a flowering and fruiting garden. The remarkable thing about the garden was it grew temperate and tropical fruits at the same place. He grew apples and mangoes together. Likewise, he had cashews and almonds growing side by side. Even coconuts would grow in profusion with very sweet water. He had arranged for watering the roots by laying pipelines underground all over. He would play music for his plants early in the morning with the belief that it kept the plants in happy “frame of mind”. For his expertise in horticulture he was made a member of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research even though he did not possess any formal degrees or diplomas.

I was soon asked to move to the Indian Institute of Public Administration at Delhi to join the Advanced Professional Programme on Public Administration. After around two and a half years it was time for me to leave Nagpur. The departmental staff gave my wife and me a very warm send off. It reminded me of the send-off I got at Ahmedabad in 1965.

(concluded)

*image from internet 

From my scrap book :: 15 :: Tram services in Gwalior?

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The other day a heartwarming news item came, of all the places, from my hometown, Gwalior. It was reported that the Gwalior municipality is planning to introduce tram services like those in Kolkata making use of the tracks that were laid during the reign of the Scindias. Some of these tracks even now run through the city. Earlier, however, many more areas were covered by these tracks many of which have since been uprooted as they fell in disuse.

 The reporter, apparently, was unaware of the fact that all the four metro towns of the country were served by trams, the most efficient of which was the BEST of what was then known as Bombay. The authorities of Bombay, Delhi and Madras were quick to remove the tram lines to provide for more road-space for the burgeoning automobile traffic. Kolkata, for some reason lagged behind and failed to do away with the tram services. Perhaps, the pressure of the commuters who did not wish to lose a cheap mode of transport did not allow the authorities to discontinue the services. Soon, however, with the rise in environmentalism the authorities saw new virtues in these services that ran on non-polluting electric traction. The tracks had already been removed from quite a few areas of Kolkata before the city woke up to the system’s advantages and the services that are now being run are, necessarily, a bit too truncated.

The news item made my mind travel back in time more than 70 years to the early and mid-1940s when we as children used to travel in Gwalior State Railways for visiting the Gwalior Fair or to see the Scindia Gold Cup hockey matches. We used to catch the train as it came from Kampoo at the cute little Elgin Club Station (right in front of Victoria College across the Private Road) and go rocking and swaying as we went through the Jiwaji Club, the                                  Jhansi Road, the Gwalior Railway Station on to the Race Course or a little further up, the Gwalior Fair. It was a very enjoyable ride for us children in a mini train. The Scindia Gold Cup and the Gwalior Fair would be held in the month of December – the season of jujubs and roasted peanuts. The children would fill themselves up with either of the two and muck up the compartments.

While the narrow gauge trains did not serve the city so very well they did connect the outlying areas like Kampoo where the Gwalior Potteries was located or MotiJheel about four miles away which had the water works. But it was out of the town and was frequented by tigers. The Old Gwalior and Birla Nagar townships were also served through GolaKaMandir. The town has now expanded on all sides and the surrounding rural areas have now been included in the town. While the city has become an educational hub it has since acquired an industrial area at Malanpur as also an air force base.

 As I see it tramways will suit the town immensely. In the US they call them “light rail” and the system of Portland, Oregon was in the news sometime back wherein it came in for praise for providing clean, non-polluting, efficient public transport. I have had the good fortune of using some of the US and European systems and found them efficient. The one in Vienna is very good. The Viennese system also offers an alternative mode for visiting the neighbouring spa town of Baden. The tramways are cheaper than metros as one doesn’t need to provide stations at every stage – a stop like a bus-stop would be just fine. Besides, one does not need to go in for costly tunneling or building over-bridges.

Kolkata tramways are now offering a mobile restaurant as well as a stationary one as also one for tourists for their sight-seeing forays in the town. Possibilities are immense, what one needs is only imagination. That is not the case with a metro system which generally runs somewhat removed from a city’s boisterous life and prevailing confusion.

A growing town has to have profusion of public transport so that people do not have to use their personal vehicles and foul up the city’s environment. These are the days of multimodal transport for the benefit of commuters. Each mode satisfies the need of its particular clientele. Take for instance Bangkok. Forty years ago it had only buses which now reportedly have been converted to run on gas. It also has developed a metro system that is still expanding. In the meantime it came up with another mode of transport – the sky train. Chinese have all kinds of sky trains – running on tracks or suspended from tracks. Hence mobility in a metropolis like Bangkok is not a problem.

One can only wish that the Gwalior municipality completes its preliminary work on drawing boards and launches the tram services as early as possible. I, for one, would like to wish it God speed!

*image from internet

Memories of an ordinary Indian ::31 :: Nagpur (Part I)

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Nagpur GPO

I was back in Nagpur in March 1978. This was about 17 years after I left the place which. I had to do as I was given a regular posting at Ahmedabad after completion of the two-year training. Nagpur was the place where I cut my teeth in the Department.It was something special for me.I kept coming back to the place for some reason or the other even during the intervening two years. Here, after all,I had lost my father in 1962. This time I came here as a middle-level officer in the Junior Administrative Grade of the Service in charge of a region of the Maharashtra Postal Circle.

Maharashtra had four regions each headed by a Director in Junior Administrative Grade with more or less like numbers of divisions or units under each. All the regions barring Nagpur had their headquarters located at the circle or state headquarters in what was till then known as Bombay. In fact, under a new experiment three regions of the country, viz. Kanpur, Coimbatore and Nagpur were detached from the headquarters and were brought closer to the units they were required to supervise and control. It was generally because of the insistence of the officers concerned that the regional headquarters were soon wound up with Nagpur standing out as the only region continuing to exist away from the state-level headquarters. The credit for this deviation has to go to the local staff unions which fought tooth and nail to keep the regional headquarters close to them. To say that the Nagpur Unions were strong would, therefore, be an understatement. That is precisely why the post of Director Nagpur had remained vacant for months as no officer would like to accept it. It was in these circumstances that I landed up at Nagpur.

Things had changed quite drastically since I left Nagpur in 1963. The PMG’s office was moved to Bhopal and the units of Vidarbha Region were put under PMG Bombay. This had to happen after the Re-organisation of States on linguistic basis in 1956. The entire upper floor of Nagpur GPO that was in occupation of the PMG’s office fell vacant and was occupied by the non-operational branches of the GPO, short of accommodation as it was. Since there were no posts of PMG and directors the sprawling bungalows in Civil Lines and the Seminary Hills were made use of to build staff quarters. I had, therefore, no place to stay and had to hire accommodation. The regional office that came into existence during the interregnum too was accommodated in a cramped space on top of a sub-post office.

Vidarbha districts had very little to commend themselves. Inhabited largely by Maharashtrians, the district headquarters gave an appearance of poverty, besides I found them filthy. Nagpur had hardly changed in appearance. Earlier known as “the largest village in Asia” its appearance had not changed during the intervening sixteen or seventeen years. Nonetheless, it continued to be the biggest market in Central India – after Indore. Vidarbha thus was a backward region and the departmental establishments also reflected the same backwardness. It needed to be lifted from its boot straps.

Soon after I took over the PMG was transferred to Delhi. He took a flight that touched Nagpur on the way. That’s when he thanked me for opting for Nagpur as he said he was being inundated by telegrams by various staff unions of different levels. But, he said, soon after I joined the telegrams stopped. He was sympathetic to them and said my predecessors had not given them anything. One couldn’t always look at the demands of the unions with a pre—conceived negativity. The telegrams did stop but the tide had turned in my direction. Everyday some union or the other would land up with some petty demands. With show of some understanding, they would leave happily having been able to extract an unofficial meeting from the regional director.

There, indeed, was a long list of their demands – some petty and others somewhat weighty. Slowly, with hard work and dedication of the officers of the inspectors’ cadres, we could nibble away at the long list of demands. Within six months or so the union meetings at my level had no pending item but a meeting would be held nonetheless. Nobody wanted to forego the tea and biscuits at government expense. Likewise, I used to travel overnight to Bombay to attend the quarterly meetings of the unions with the head of the circle but my region would have no item.

While I put the sub-divisional inspectors on the job to bring about operational efficiency I advised the superintendents to choose some big offices for improvement in their ambience. During my casual visits I saw how miserable the office furniture were and naturally the staff wouldn’t like to hang around for a minute more than what was necessary. I asked them to use sunmica – a kind of laminate – for topping up the working tables and give the rest much needed coat of varnish. I also suggested the use of air coolers which were available practically everywhere. Vidarbha is a hot place with the noon temperature often topping 45 degrees Celsius in summers. In that heat the offices were still using the khascurtains to be watered by a daily-wage employee. I thought this had to change as better working environment was likely to improve the standard of performance.

Most dramatic change took place at the Nagpur GPO where the staff and officers seemed to have been infused with new enthusiasm. While the massive front yard which once had a lawn was being worked on by the P&T Civil Engineering wing preparing flower beds and re-grassing the dried up lawns inside the office carpenters were busy with rolls of sunmica to be glued on table tops. The contractor himself was seen supervising scraping off of old accumulated layers of paint and polish which had successfully concealed the beautiful and even grains of the around 70 years old CP teak  counters. The potential of the heritage counters was knowneven as it was thoughtlessly overlaid with layers and layers of paint and polish.

I had told the Postmaster of the GPO, who was of gazetted rank that he would have to get rid of the Khas curtains and the complementary daily-wage staff for the summer. True enough during another visit to the GPO I saw massive coolers at twoends of the office were being tested. The effect was remarkable. It was the month of April when day temperatures cross 42 degrees Celsius. Inside that massive hall it was very comfortable, in fact, a trifle too cool. No wonder, later I was informed that even in May they would shut off the coolers for a while when the temperature outside would be around 46 degrees Celsius.

(to be continued)

*Photo from internet

Happier tidings after grievous familial loss

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Around the time my eldest brother was losing the battle for his life happier tidings came from distant Pokhra in Nepal. Here my nephew, Amitabh Bagchi (son of my late second brother, Ajoy Bagchi) was awarded the DSC South Asian Literary Award, 2019 for his fourth novel “Half the Night is Gone”.

His first novel “Above Average” was about life of students in an IIT. It got what are generally called rave reviews. Even well-known story-teller-cum-anthropologist Amitav Ghosh wrote a very complimentary comment about the book. Since then Amitabh has written three more books, the last of which fetched him the South Asia Literary Award, 2019.

Incidentally, Amitabh is an alumnus of IIT Delhi. He did his Ph. D from Johns Hopkins and later did his Post-doctoral work in the University of California, Irvine. He currently teaches at the IIT Delhi. He is married to Ratika Kapoor who is also a novelist and was long-listed by Booker for her first novel “Overwinter”.

The Jury citation for “Half the Night is Gone” is very complimentary. It says, “This novel, written in English, feels like a book written in an Indian language and has the authenticity and interiority of a work in translation without being a translation. All sub-continental novelists since Raja Rao have striven to express in a language that is not one’s own sensibility and this novel invokes the sensibility of not one but three Indian languages, Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu. It weaves together three parallel stories interrogating the relationships between men and women, fathers and sons, masters and servants and the nation and the individual. It is epic in scope, profound in its exploration of class and gender, and elegantly assured in the way it infuses English with Indian wit and wisdom to achieve an unprecedented co-mingling of different literatures and cultures”.

For the award Amitabh received a tidy sum of $25000.

Our Life, Our Times :: 47 :: Protests galore

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The Citizens Amendment Act (CAA) has given rise to widespread protests in the country which have sometimes been very violent. Most of the protests appear to have been instigated, very few being spontaneous. The protests held in Assam can be understood as those failing to qualify for Indian citizenship run the risk of being deported to wherever they came from. Elsewhere there does not seem to be any valid ground for protests. The government has on several occasions assured that Indian citizens of any faith have no reason to fear as being citizens they obviously could not be deported anywhere. In many cities simultaneously demonstrations have been held in support of the CAA. All this makes a mockery of a law passed by the Parliament (with overwhelming majority inLokSabha). As BJP, the ruling party at the Centre has failed to garner majority in a few state assemblies the Opposition feels a little strengthened and opposes anything that the Centre proposes even if it has the backing of the law.

Something in this vein is the opposition to the Centre’s decision to build up the National Register of Citizens(NRC). The opposition is baseless as this is mandated by Citizenship Act 1955, as amended in 2003. How can political parties, even those that are governing a few, states, oppose something which is sanctioned by an act of Parliament? Besides, creation of a National Register of Citizens is an activity that is controlled and supervised by the Central Government. The state governments only have to provide the wherewithal for going through the process, financial resources for which are to be made available by the Centre. The states thus have no ground to refuse to allow the Centre to create NRC. If such a thing were to happen it would only mean breakdown of the Constitutional machinery of the country.

One cannot think of any objection by any state government for creation of the register for citizens residing in it. This only would mean that they do not wish to know how many citizens are there in it and how many are non-citizens. The NRC once created surely would help the states to better deliver their services to the citizens eliminating the irregular availing of them by people who are not eligible to do so. Besides, NRC would enable the state to determine the number of non-citizens residing in it, their origin and the purpose for which they happen to be in the state once it is checked with reference to the National Population Register. If NRC is vehemently opposed, as is being done by a few states, especially, West Bengal, it would only mean that they have something to hide. Perhaps, they have infiltrators or illegal migrants who have settled down within the state and are merrily consuming its resources with the blessings of the state and/or its agencies.

In any case, the objections to the creation of National Register of Citizens for the present is pre—mature as the Centre has not moved in the matter so far. One supposes that this will happen after the pan—Indian National Population Register (NPR) that is currently in the works is completed. Some states have even targeted the NPR as well which is not quite understandable. The NPR contains the list of all those who have lived in the country for six months or more and are likely to continue to live for another six months. All such people will be enumerated regardless of whether they are citizens of the country or not. Prepared at local, sub-district level, district, state and national levels it is, in fact, the list of all people – citizens or non—citizens – residing in the country. The NPR is actually a building block of the NRC. Those who say that it has no linkage with NRC are talking through their hat. 

Creation of the NPR is also mandated by the laws relating to citizenship and no state can refuse to create it. Those who claim they would not allow NPR in their respective state are only making a political point – just as the Kerala Chief Minister did recently by having a resolution passed in the Assembly against Citizens Amendment Act in a session that was especially summoned for the purpose.

*photo from internet