The top cop of India’s ever-contentious state of Gujarat has stirred the hornets’ nest by scaling down significantly the capacity of the police department to routinely requisition mobile and fixed line phone service providers for Call Detail Records (CDRs) of their subscribers without ascribing any reason.

Reports in the local press have detailed that the Director General of Police, Amitabh Pathak – appointed to the position in February this year – had stumbled on to the discomforting fact that, over the past six months alone, mobile phone companies had handed over CDRs of almost 100,000 subscribers to police officers at various levels. Most of these details had been requisitioned without necessary documents accompanying the request.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Pic: AP.

What has added fuel to the controversy is the fact that many of the phones for which CDRs were scrutinised over the past six months include those of senior police officers and bureaucrats. The Hindustan Times quoted an executive working for a mobile phone company saying that thought rules specify that police should provide details of the case or the First Information Report along with the request. This is rarely done with mobile companies playing along to stay on the right side of law enforcers.

Gujarat has a track record of monitoring physical movement and snooping on telephone conversations of political opponents of chief minister Narendra Modi and other detractors of the state government. While I was researching on my biography of Modi, a source told me of his fascination for the historically recorded spy network of Shivaji, the 17^th century Maratha warrior king who waged a relentless battle against the Mughal Empire.

Shortly after taking charge as chief minister in October 2001, Modi fine-tuned the intelligence set-up in the state and kept a hawk’s eye on detractors – more so after the Godhra carnage and the riots that followed. One such high-profile adversary was Haren Pandya, a one-time cabinet colleague who was given his marching orders in August 2002. Those who thought that the matter ended with Pandya’s sacking were mistaken: he was gunned down in a busy park in Ahmedabad on a morning in March 2003 when returning home from his morning walk.

The media reported then that Pandya’s telephone was tapped and that Modi knew about Pandya’s interactions in real time. These included a deposition before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal – an inquiry instituted by civil society groups.

In the past decade or so there have been repeated calls for greater transparency regarding surveillance of telephones. Prior to the recent order of Pathak, the CDRs could be sought by officers as junior as Inspectors. This gave rise to the view that most of these junior officers were asking for the details to satisfy political masters. This apprehension was heightened when it was learnt that the CDRs that were supplied by phone companies include senior officials.

Though Pathak issued new guidelines regarding requisitioning of CDRs earlier this week, apprehensions remain regarding the misuse of provisions. The fresh order says that only officers at the level of Superintendent (senior most officers in smaller districts or heads of police districts in bigger cities) could obtain CDRs from mobile service providers.

India lacks transparent norms regarding tapping of telephones. New Delhi is currently gripped with a controversy over tracking the mobile phone of senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Arun Jaitley. In this case also the CDRs were acquired by a very junior police officer.

Details of who ordered the scrutiny of such a large number of phones in Gujarat are not known. But the disclosure does raise questions about violation of privacy of citizens in the state as the administration has not specified reasons behind such large scale snooping.

In March 2003, India’s election commission made it mandatory for all candidates to submit legally sworn testimonies detailing their assets and liabilities along with nomination papers. The order was part of electoral reforms after a sustained campaign to check the role of money power in elections.

It was widely expected that the declaration of assets would be a deterrent for political leaders from amassing wealth by using their political clout. It was thought that those whose assets grew disproportionately to professional abilities would be disadvantaged during polls and voters would vote for cleaner candidates. But this is not the way the narrative has evolved. Slush money plays a far greater role today than before. The difference is that it is now seen as inevitable by the voters.

Congress party leader Siddaramaiah celebrates with supporters Wednesday. Pic: AP.

Sample this: In the local elections held in the southern state of Karnataka where counting was taken up on 8 May 2013, 179 incumbent legislators were in the fray. An analysis by a citizens’ election watchdog established that assets of these lawmakers grew by 88% in the five years since the last polls in 2008. In absolute terms, average assets grew from an average of 93 million (US$1.7 million) to 176 million (US$3.25 million) Indian rupees in the years that they were legislators.

It needs to be added that one of the principal factors behind the rout of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was the corrupt regime it begot that resulted in governance coming to a virtual standstill. But why is it that people voted the Congress back to power when it had a fair share of legislators who doubled their assets and is simultaneously gripped by a series of graft allegations against the Union government headed by the party?

Has corruption in India now become just a sparring instrument among political parties and ceased to be an electoral issue that angers voters? The question is important because the verdict in Karnataka came just as the Parliament session was prematurely ended after the BJP-led Opposition prevented normal proceedings because of alleged graft-charges against key central ministers.

(READ MORE: India’s Congress party wins key state election)

Trends in recent elections demonstrate that morality standards in India have undergone a change and voters now place greater emphasis on performance. The only time when a central government lost an election on corruption charges was in 1989 when Rajiv Gandhi was unseated after a sustained campaign that Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors AB paid kickbacks for securing a contract for field guns.

Subsequent to this election, regime changes have been either due to voters’ disenchantment with the incumbent government on performance issues or because of their preference for more stable governments. A combination of these factors is behind the verdict in Karnataka as electors opted to give a decisive mandate to the Congress and not end up with another fragile coalition like before.

Corruption has become an issue to agitate for the urban middle classes – like it was demonstrated during the Anna Hazare-led upsurge of 2011 – but it rarely becomes the sole reason for voting a party out of power. The reasons are twofold primarily: Societal attitude towards pursuit of mammon has altered since liberalization of Indian economy. Second, voters believe that political leaders – barring an odd one or a party – will uniformly be corrupt and are there in the game primarily for amassing personal fortunes. The credibility of the Indian politician is at its lowest.

This is where India faces a challenge to its secular and democratic framework because any leader who pays scant regard to the two ideals but runs an efficient administration and is personally non-corruptible, becomes a front-runner.  This is a worrisome development but has become inescapable.

The study juxtaposed the number of Facebook users in each parliamentary constituency with the margin of defeat or victory in the last parliamentary poll in 2009. Based on the differential, constituencies were categorised as High Impact, Moderate Impact, Low Impact and No Impact – in so far as the impact of Facebook is concerned.

High Impact seats are those where the numbers of Facebook users are more than the margin of victory. Moderate Impact, Low Impact and No Impact are graded accordingly. Close to half the seats – 256 to be precise – have been termed No Impact constituencies.

Predictably, constituencies that the study says will be impacted by the social media are urban seats while the No Impact constituencies are those that are among the poorest in the country.

While the results of the study cannot be ignored, especially by the political class, depending too much on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to secure votes would be repeating the mistake made by the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2004. Back then, its leaders mounted a television-centred electoral campaign believing that winning TV debates was all that mattered in politics and votes would come naturally thereafter.

In terms of its poverty indicators, India presents the peculiar spectacle of a fall in absolute numbers of the poor while registering an increase from 22 percent in 1981 to 33 percent in 2010. One does not need knowledge of missile technology, on which India has significant spending, to unearth that those live in such abysmally poor conditions have no understanding of the world of social networking.

Even in the ‘Impact’ constituencies, it would be politically myopic to make political calculations and draw campaign strategies solely by focusing visibility on social media. In most urban constituencies also, the extent of urban poverty is acute and for those who live on the fringes of humane existence social media has little recall value.

Data is cited to contend that India, which has currently around 66 million social media registered users is bound to see this number rise to 80 million by the time polls in India are likely to be held in mid-2014. Indian voters are poised to swell up to the 800 million mark by the next hustings thereby meaning that 10 out of every 100 Indian is a user of social media. But then these 10 do not speak to the 90 others, but they primarily make ‘friends’ within the elite group.

Moreover, even regarding the numbers of registered Facebook users, there is an anomaly. For instance in the Thane constituency adjoining Mumbai, there are 400,000 registered social media uses while the total number of electors in 2009 was 1,800,000. On the face of it, at 25 per cent of the electorate, Facebook users are an impressive number. But therein lies the larger story that unless accompanied by overall economic uplift, users of technology – both hardware and software – is reaching the saturation point.

There is also the issue that all registered users of Facebook are not regular users. A significant number of those who have registered have rarely lasted more than a few visits but information pertaining to them and their traits have become open secret after the data has been harvested. Making formulations on likely electoral behaviour on the basis of such questionable figures belittles the political acumen of the Indian voter.

Campaign techniques have evolved constantly from the first parliamentary poll in 1952. The one for the next House will also witness a huge blitzkrieg which would be lapped up by the media, especially television channels because its consumers would believe that they are shaping India’s destiny.

But there is a lot of India that is outside the realm of the social media which is silent and whose responses never surface in the run up to the polls because the media rarely reaches out to them. Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites would give fuel to the evening discussions of the chatterati, but the poll outcome will resonate with the lot of teeth gnashing that is ignored because it carries with it uncomfortable reality of large tracts of India.

Six months ago Savita Halappanavar died in an Irish hospital after she was refused an abortion despite “real and substantial risk” to her life. While there has been anger and calls for changes to abortion laws in Ireland it has also been a time for introspection in India on the issue of abortion. There are several reasons for Indians to have looked within before going the whole hog in campaigning against a faulty system that caused a needless death.

Several thousand abortion rights protesters march through central Dublin in November. Pic: AP.

For starters, India and its people do not take adequate care of mothers and female children. The indignation at the completely preventable death of 31-year-old Savita thus needed to have been two-pronged – with the main focus being on assessing the ‘homework’ that India needed to do itself.

It took India a quarter of a century after securing independence to make abortion legal. In August 1971, abortion – under medical supervision – became legal when Parliament passed the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP Act). The government – and lawmakers from the Opposition – acted on the recommendations of an official committee which saw it as an essential tool for population control and not as a means of giving women control over their lives.

In the past four decades not much has changed for the average Indian woman. On the contrary, advances in medical technology have made the world a more precarious place for girls in Indian society as the demand for sex-selective abortions rises. Despite legal impediments new technological breakthroughs and little enforcement of the law have made sex determination of foetuses common practice – so much so that it is the single biggest cause of India’s gender imbalance.

The campaign in India for change in Ireland’s abortion laws and securing legal accountability for Savita Halappanavar’s death may also comes from a sort of anti-west sentiment that prevalent in India. There is certainly a tendency to highlight the shortcomings of Western countries while similar deficiencies in the Indian system are ignored.

The issue is also a very emotive one. An Indian woman lost her life because the law prevented a termination even though the medical opinion was that it would save her life. But the debate in India to utilise the incident and reignite the demand for relaxing Indian abortion laws has been muted. Under Indian laws abortions are allowed only up to 12 weeks after conception under normal circumstances. Thereafter, a woman can be allowed to abort up to 20 weeks of her pregnancy, but only for medical reasons and with testimony of doctors. In February this year the statutory National Commission of Women recommended to the Union health ministry allowing abortions till 24 weeks of pregnancy. So far there has been no further progress on the issue.

There was a well reported case in 2008 when a woman went to the Bombay High Court in the 24th week of her pregnancy wanting to be allowed to abort her foetus as it was detected to be suffering from a congenital heart defect. There also has been an occasion when permission was sought for a mentally ill woman being allowed to abort after the permissible period.

The irony is that at a time when the inquest into Savita Halappanavar’s death is under way in Ireland, there is stony silence on abortion reform in India.

Fourteen months before a scheduled parliamentary election that is widely expected to yield a regime-changing mandate, has India begun a series of manoeuvres that would result in a major departure from the political consensus since 1947 on the stance towards the religious minorities in the country?

The poser is not being articulated by India watchers as a theoretical postulate but evidenced in swiftly increasing political legitimacy of Narendra Modi, one time antithesis of multi-cultural India and a political pariah outside his own fraternity. The strongman from the western Indian state of Gujarat, which accounts for less than five percent of parliamentarians, is no longer short of allies outside his home terrain because of the perception that Modi is no longer a political liability. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Narendra Modi. Pic: AP.

Modi is the first Indian political leader after Indira Gandhi who has chosen – and dared – to play the political game by the rules that others abhor. Like his predecessor, Modi believes in flowing against the tide, defying logic and political convention. In business transactions, sale or exchange of properties or commodities on a ‘as-is-where-is-basis’, smacks of supreme arrogance.

Democracies are best suited to leaders astute in the art of negotiation. Compromise is not a dirty word for them because political diplomacy is all about accommodating the viewpoint of others if persuasion fails. The goal of the moment is always to sail to the next port of halt. But for close to two decades – in varying degrees – Modi has broken this norm. He has always insisted on charting his own course and forced others to accept his ways.

(READ MORE: India’s Hindu party elevates controversial leader)

In the early days he used this strategy in a limited manner within his party, but since the communal riots in 2002, Modi’s approach found expression outside the state also. He has implicitly and consistently argued that the reaction to the Godhra carnage – 59 people were burnt alive by an unidentified mob in a railway coach when Hindu activists were returning from a political campaign – was on expected lines, that Hindus would retaliate by killing any Muslim.

In interviews with me, Modi did not shy from saying that minority groups, in search of a dignified existence, must accept idols (and ideals) of the majority as their own. In the period since 2002, Modi has not altered this stance remotely in contrast to the assertion of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) one-time undisputed leader, L K Adavni who recently argued that his party must make a charter of commitments to minorities.

There are uncanny similarities to Indira Gandhi’s decision in 1975 to suspend fundamental rights and Modi’s resolve to stick to majoritarian politics. India, by Mrs Gandhi’s assessment, had moved beyond day-to-day display of democratic rights. Similarly, Modi and his supporters believe that an increasing number of people believed that a ‘mistake’ had been made during Partition when India opted to become a ‘secular’ state.

Just as Mrs Gandhi argued that ‘discipline’ was the panacea for all ills, the policies of exclusion and the strategy of browbeating is Modi’s hallmark. With Indians seemingly getting impatient with failure to contain terrorism, seeing every terrorist as a Muslim (if not every Muslim as a terrorist) and endorsing the policy of social exclusion as the correct approach on development matters, Modi is beginning to appear as the ‘solution’ for a large number of Upper Caste Hindus.

There are limitations – the biggest being that in the coalition era, leaders have to follow more inclusive polities to draw bigger groups into their fold. India is historically a fractured nation and in recent years fissures have become wider. Modi believes that hegemony of the majority would be the uniting factor. But if that happens – and for a fairly long period of time and not in a transitory manner – then the India whose idea is universally accepted, will cease to exist.

The next 14 months will determine if Modi is able to redefine India or if pursuit of power eventually forces India’s great polarizing figure to become more ductile and malleable. The latter option will be good for Modi and his career but the first possibility raises Kafkaesque prospects for India and its believers.

***

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. The book is available at here and here.

Villagers carry Dynul Ali, who fainted, while describing to lawmakers how his 13-year-old son Akram Ali was killed in ethnic violence, at a relief camp at Bijni in Chirang District, Assam, India, Thursday. Pic: AP.

I asked people if my presumption was correct. I got answers in the affirmative – coverage of the situation in Assam was inadequate and in place of hysterical reporting the emphasis was on talking heads inside studios and handout reporting.

One tried to understand why the pitch of reporting was several octaves lower than the recent Guwahati molestation case. There also has to be an explanation why the majority of reports from Assam continued to have the Guwahati dateline and not Kokrajhar well after it became evident that this was not just another small round of skirmish that Lower Assam has repeatedly seen in recent years.

It is not as if Kokrajhar is a great distance from Guwahati. At less than 250 kilometres which most people say can be normally done in a shade more than four hours, it is easily accessible. Yet the media chose to stay away for long.

There has been a debate that the violence cannot be called communal violence because the communities involved are tribals and Muslims. Firstly, this is a very narrow view of communalism – which after all is an ideology and a riot is an extreme manifestation of it. Calling only a Hindu-Muslim conflict as communal violence would be extremely reductionist.

Secondly the violence has been dubbed ethnic conflict with the basic struggle being for control of land among aboriginal tribal residents and migrant Muslim settlers. But the presentation of this argument does not take into account that the trend of Muslim settlers arriving from what was then overcrowded districts of East Bengal, began from the 1820s with the British occupation of these territories. Contemporary settlers cannot be penalised for a phenomenon that is almost two centuries old.

In contrast to the present violence in Assam, social unrest in the late 1970s and early 1980s during the AASU led movement drew greater attention of the national media probably because it was more in the realm of the classical Hindu-Muslim conflict.

It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that the reason behind the relatively less coverage – when compared to the riots in Gujarat is because the BJP is a favourite whipping boy of the media – and that the Congress is far more adept at media management.

While not being completely true, the fact of the matter is that the BJP has a more villainous tinge to its saffron and khakhi association. Symbols and colours of other political parties do not have connotations beyond the electoral realm. Moreover, Assam is no economic powerhouse like Gujarat and Tarun Gogoi is not a polarising politician like Narendra Modi.

Unfortunately, just as the media weighs those who are alive to decide what is a good story, it also first labels the dead as sexy before deciding to rush resources for coverage.

Twitterer Two (in reply to One): Her successor looks as if he will sock your skull back with the same ball.

The two are samples of disparaging comments that technology now makes it possible to be made in the public domain while previously they were restricted to college canteens and in office washrooms.

However crude such PJs may appear, the fact is that public personalities have to contend with the reality of oddballs coming out with one-liners that may destroy their image and credibility. They have to learn how to insulate from vitriol. The solution does not lie in the strategy used by Mamata Banerjee some months ago when she got a professor hauled up for circulating a cartoon making fun of her.

Pratibha Patil. Pic: AP.

Though no public figure can completely insulate oneself completely from online ridicule, they can – by better management of their public image – project a more amiable image by better management of the media tools available. Understanding media is imperative and projecting an image is essential.

This thought crossed the mind a couple of days ago when I – with some members of my family – got a chance to be part of a select group of people to meet the Indian President – Pratibha Devisinh Patil. There was no agenda to the meeting and it had been arranged by an old friend and colleague purely as a courtesy call before the President demitted office. The group comprised a journalist or two, some scholars, some members of voluntary action groups and a few children.

The first thought that came to my mind after the meeting – and I cross-checked with the better-half afterwards – was that the President, in person, appeared in complete contrast to her public image as seen for the past five years. Gone was the stern plastic face and in its place was an extremely amiable person who mingled with the children in the group – including our little granddaughter, and heard all the people with real intent. The multitude of last minute ceremonial farewell functions prevented President Patil from spending more time with us but what lingered on after she left the room was the complete failure of her public relations team in projecting her persona.

Every person has her or his own strengths and weakness. President Patil succeeded a flamboyant person who made it a point to break protocol and specifically wooed the middle classes with such success that APJ Abdul Kalam found rousing support among them when his name surfaced in the course of the just concluded presidential poll.

Five years down the line, it is evident that the image managers of President Patil had no clear strategy to ensure her permanence in history. This blog is hardly the space that can assess President Patil’s presidency. A few hundred words is also not sufficient space to evaluate her role as President. But the experience at the meeting was sufficient to conclude that as far as her image building was concerned, it has been a case of wasted opportunity.

Ironically, in her farewell speech on July 23, President Patil told members of Parliament that the past two decades has seen “changes such as an information explosion” and that unless there was an attempt to reflect on these changes “our systems and institutions could be out-of-size and out-of-time”.

Late Bollywood star Rajesh Khanna. Pic: AP.

Rajesh Khanna therefore came very late to our town. By then Vividh Bharati had introduced the Khanna-Kishore duo and the few odd copies of film magazines that were available in the reading room of the Staff Club had his pictures. But by and large, Rajesh Khanna arrived in our town by the word of mouth. When his first film was released in my town, filmgoing was a chore for me because of horror and fighting scenes.

My mother convinced me to come along – and I was gratified that it did not have gory violence. But that was the end as far as I was concerned. It is only when we reached home and while on the dinner table that I could make out from the conversation between my parents that Mom had brought Rajesh Khanna home.

He remained in her home – and her heart – until fate erased a portion of her cognition. After initial rejection, Dad came to terms with her fondness for the superstar though he tried to argue that the films were mainly escapist. Till his last days he remained too much a Ray loyalist to appreciate what he considered kitsch.

In the years that I went to college, film appreciation had snob value in the campus and only the very brave talked about Guru Dutt being important enough to study – a mention of Rajesh Khanna was downright decadent.

I came across the superstar of the tinsel town in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls when he gave a real scare to the political superstar of that election – LK Advani (the Victor Who Came Second) – from New Delhi losing eventually by only 1589 votes. In the by-poll that followed – Advani chose to retain Gandhinagar – Khanna outgunned Shatrughan Sinha. But in 1996, Khanna bit the dust after BJP fielded former LG Jagmohan. Thereafter it was political oblivion for Khanna.

We stayed in the same colony in the late 1990s but he was a recluse and did not encourage attempts at conversation. From what one has read, he was lonely till the sudden media attention began some weeks ago. In tinsel town, one is lonely at the top and even when one’s been a has-been.

In recent years, middle path Bollywood has received critical appreciation and is now considered worthy of serious study by scholars. But that would have been of little consolation for Rajesh Khanna. I however am happy that my mother never lived to see his passing. She would have been heart-broken.

The manner in which the Guwahati molestation horror has unfolded suggests that the current credo for a significant section of the media may well be: ‘Any PYT here who wishes to be pushed around and may consider to be molested.”

There are two dimensions of the horrifying incident: First, it shows the levels to which the business of media has trained its journalists to stoop to in order to get a juicy story. Second, and this is politically more disturbing, the incident is part of the moral policing that has seen its emergence in a widespread manner for the past two decades. It started innocuously with calls for banning Valentine Day’s celebration in the early 1990s and has been punctuated with infamous incidents like activists of Sri Ram Sene attacking girls in a Mangalore pub in 2009.

Journalists – especially photographers – have always partially sexed up stories. In my early years of reporting, I had come to realise that the toll was directly proportional to the amount of space and display that the story would get in the next day’s papers. Suffering of others has always meant glory for the media. But the rot had not set in so deep. Pablo Bartholemew and some others like Raghu Rai who had taken those burial-ground pictures in December 1984 in Bhopal, had not staged those pictures. I wonder what would have happened if the likes of the Guwahati TV reporter had been around in that circa.

The problem is that the media industry encourages employees to resort to unscrupulous methods. Instead of pillorying the reporters alone, questions also need to be asked of their employers – did they ask the reporter how he had secured the footage, what was his role in the incident and if he had also been a participant – as Akhil Gogoi has claimed. Will the News Broadcasters Association take up the matter with Newslive? Moreover, if the State or court – on the prompt of a PIL, begins a probe against the channel, would it be contended that this was an attack on the freedom of the press?

Moral policing has deeper implications because there are no limits to neo-conservatism. The feudal groups ubiquitously called Khaps – as if they are constitutional bodies – are presented as being custodians of social morality. Be it Ram Sene activists not allowing women to drink in public places or Khaps issuing Diktats (political patrons are quibbling over words and insist that these are mere ‘suggestions’) against use of mobiles, all such incidents epitomise the resurgence of patriarchal conservatism.

For want of any other phrase, we can argue that Indian society is witnessing Talibanisation of sorts. The political class has remained ambivalent and is likely to continue leaving scruples at the doorstep of electoral pragmatism. Leaders in the media are in a Catch-22 situation as editorial control has been wrested by business interests.

We will wait for this round of din to subdue when it no longer generates TRPs. That is, till the next incident. And this would in…?

Maybe in your own house.

They go there in collectively chartered trucks that are adorned with garishly painted motifs of gods and goddesses and they carry flagstaffs that are carried on shoulders. Hung on the two ends are earthen pots, a small bag or two holding a change of clothes and some bare essentials.

Once they reach the holy city, they go for a Holy Dip in the River Ganga, fill up the pots with water from it and begin the trudge back. While returning they wear saffron coloured clothes –not necessarily religious robes and walk either barefoot or in sports shoes. Some enthusiastic ones do not walk – they either run or cover the distance by alternating between standing upright and lying prostrate on the road.

At times, the devotees walk for as much as three hundred kilometres and they cover this distance in a matter of a few days. For those who suffer from sudden bouts of exhaustion there are resting places – make shift tents that spring up on outskirts and the middle of towns and cities – and some vehicles that enable devotees to cover short distances while getting rejuvenated.

Haridwar’s district administrators say that hundreds of thousands mill about the city before heading home with the two casks of ordained water for ritualistically dousing idols of Lord Shiva in their village, town or city.

On the highways that the devotees throng, disco Bhajans blare out from speakers not particularly noted for their audio quality. Makeshift tents are the initiatives of local Hindus with sponsorship coming from companies and organisations who routinely advertise in B-Grade media platforms.

Barring those devotees who go of their own volition and look different from others – because they mingle less with the others – most go on the sojourn through sponsorships. The hardware they carry is paid for and people buy them new clothes and sports shoes to wear. Since Lord Shiva is also believed to welcome purveyors of goodies that other puritanical gods shun, those heading to Haridwar – especially youngsters carry their little bundles in pockets. It magnifies the make-belief and enables them to walk long distances without feeling the grind.

I grew up in a town on this kanwaria route. The crowds were thinner and highways were not banned for public traffic then. Of course this has partially to do with the burgeoning population – my hometown has grown almost seven times in terms of the number of people in the three decades since I left the town. Even Delhi has grown manifold – as have all villages, towns and cities that participate in this annual tamasha.

The fortnight long ritual is the north Indian parallel of Maharashtra’s Ganesh Utsav and Bengal’s Durga Puja. The more the merrier, the louder the better! Just as the origins of the Ganesh ritual coincided with the emergence of Hindu revivalism in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the kanwarias became such a major draw in the years when the BJP-led NDA was in power.

Whoever says religion in India does not have a link to politics has little idea about reality. Moreover, most public display of religiosity is little beyond kitsch.

Disclaimer: A similar ritual is also held at the same time in Jharkhand’s Deoghar, but this piece has no link with that.

Advani, referred to the controversy over the excerpts from the forthcoming book of former President APJ Abdul Kalam in which he claimed that the prime minister of that time – Atal Bihari Vajpayee – implicitly suggested that Kalam cancel his planned visit to Gujarat. Advani wrote: “I have often felt that in India’s political history no political leader has been as systematically and viciously maligned as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Bhai Modi.”

Critics of the BJP, Advani and Modi would remark snidely that this is just an outburst of someone who feels that he also has been one of the much maligned leaders on the BJP. After all, Advani has carried the albatross of a hardliner all his political life,

When Advani was the ascendant star of the BJP and beginning the programme which made him an internationally known political leader – the Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra in September 1990, Modi was just a junior party functionary in Gujarat. That was the first time that he got to be known outside the state when he was deputed to coordinate the Yatra in Gujarat.

Advani played a crucial role in two important stages of Modi’s shift from being a party apparatchik to Gujarat chief minister. The first time Advani lent a helping hand was when the decision was taken by the national leaders to replace Keshubhai Patel with Modi in October 1991.

The second time that Advani came to Modi’s rescue was after the 2002 riots when a section of the BJP was braying for Modi’s head. A key role was played by Advani at this stage by leading the campaign to keep Modi at the helm of affairs in Gandhinagar.

In the years following the defeat of the BJP-led alliance in 2004, the ties between the two grew frosty. The differences stemmed from personal and ideological reasons. The difference on issues was due to the controversial Jinnah statements of Advani.

Advani had made this remark because he thought it would wash away his image of being a hardliner. Modi distanced from Advani at that time because proximity to him at that stage would not have been acceptable to Modi’s political constituency. In subsequent years the schism between the two widened on personal matters – one felt that the younger one was being too ambitious and too fast while the other felt that the veteran was holding on for too long.

The coldness was palpable last year during Advani’s Jan Chetna Yatra and again in the National Executive meeting of the BJP in May this year. Advani defence of Modi has come close on the heels of RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat arguing that there was nothing wrong in a Hindutva mascot being a prime ministerial candidate. The two statements – the seniority of the two – suggests that these are not exactly straws in the wind.

The reason then was simple: Shettar wanted to be chief minister and when he failed in his efforts, a large contingent of MLAs loyal to him did not attend the function. Shettar could not become chief minister because he did not have the blessing of BSY – essential for survival and promotion in the state BJP.

Shettar has now become chief minister because in the past eleven months, Gowda fell foul of the kingmaker. Meanwhile, Shettar sensed a better deal for him by swearing allegiance to BSY.

The entire episode, beginning with the legal imbroglio involving BSY through his resignation and and up until the latest chapter, has shown the national leadership of the BJP having little option but to ratify a decision already taken. It does not even have the power of a sovereign organisation that has the right to send back a decision taken by a lower body.

The present national leadership of the BJP is the weakest ever been in its history – right from the time of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, formed in the 1950s. The weakness is not only because of the dwarf-life status of the party president when compared to his predecessors, but because the BJP has in the past few years – especially since the defeat of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, resembled a conglomeration of several regional parties.

The BJP’s national leadership is today beset with strong regional leaders who want to run their units as they will it. Be it Narendra Modi, Vasundhara Raje, Shivraj Singh Chauhan and even PK Dhumal, the national leaders of the party have become mere endorses of decisions already taken by the state unit (read THE state leader).

In a way, this is the manifestation of political federalism within a party. The Centre at best is a coordinating agency when it is not in power. The situation will however change if and when the BJP comes to at least handshaking distance of assuming power at the Centre. At that time a weak leadership will not be of any use. Chaos can then be avoided if the present leadership either makes way or creates space for most powerful satraps.

The BJP in its pursuit of power in the late 1980s, began its march under the leadership of strong national leaders – LK Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the state chieftains followed. But now the party has no option but to look for charismatic appeal and vote drawing ability from state leaders.

BSY therefore will remain a force and be out of power only till courts keep him out. Till that time only his nominee will survive. If national leaders do not play ball according to his diktats, or that of other straps, they will branch out and float their own outfits.

Akhilesh was expected to be a harbinger of a new style of politics. He was expected to be the one who would script the policies of the state government in such a manner that no anti-incumbency sentiment would accrue on its edifice in the run up to the next parliamentary elections due by 2014 and thereby ensure a significant role for this father at the Centre. Given the fact that despite a major electoral setback for the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Mayawati-led party was not many points behind the Samajwadi Party when it came to vote share, Akhilesh was expected to insulate his party from this by innovative governance.

More than a hundred days after coming to power, Akhilesh Yadav is yet to display indications of breaking free from the largesse-distribution style of government that Mulayam Singh Yadav used to run in his terms as chief minister. Two recent steps of the state government have indicated that neo-feudalism is thriving in the Yadav-Raj in UP and this could turn out to be its undoing sooner than expected.

The first indication obviously was the decision – hastily rescinded within a day – of allowing legislators to buy cars for private use from public funds available to them for constituency development. The state government’s decision indicated it had not moved beyond its philosophy of keeping legislators humoured and on the right side of the ruling party after the election is over and uses them as an intermediary to deal with the people. This negates the principles of democracy where governments are answerable to people.

The second indication of neo-feudalism is dependent on reports that say the misery of acute power shortage in most parts of the state is significantly because of diversion of power to pocket boroughs of the Yadav clan.

If one has to make a comparison between the first months of Mayawati-government’s in 2007 with that of the present government, Akhilesh has worries on several counts. A process of breaking down of system of governance is visible in large parts of UP – be it in terms of returns of petty and big crimes, or in terms of mismanagement of basic citizen. Hubris got Mayawati – Akhilesh has not had to wait for it to set in. Youth does not always herald freshness.

The counting of votes on July 17 for the recently concluded election to the three-tier urban local bodies will indicate whether the disenchantment against the SP is beginning to reflect electorally.

Singh’s decision to retain the finance portfolio with himself and not allot it to a colleague fuelled this thesis. It has been contended that Singh had been a prisoner of his own government and the chief warden was the person who will now go for morning walks in the gardens of his choice – in the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The basic fault of such simplistic assessment is that it does not take into account the new model of relationship that the Congress Party tried to evolve with the government controlled by it ever since it came to power eight years ago in 2004.

Previously, the relationship between the ruling party and its government was based on two models: the Congress model where after the advent of Indira Gandhi in the late 1960s the party became completely subservient to the government; and the model developed by the Left Front where the government became an implementing agency of the ruling party.

In 2004, the Congress was saddled with two power centres when Sonia Gandhi opted out. A structure was also created to give space to the party in the government by establishing the National Advisory Council headed by Gandhi. In the past eight years, the party at times exerted control over government and on occasions the government did not bow to the diktats of the party.

The media played up the Sonia vs Manmohan tussle but political theorists have tended to look at the relationship as an experimental one and that of mutual dependence. In the context of the situation after the elevation of Mukherjee and the fact that the government has to stage a recovery on the performance yardstick, it is unlikely that there would be a major departure from the political line established by the Congress party.

Elections are due and any economic policy perceived to be exclusive or favouring industry is going to be a strict ‘no-no’ at a time when parliamentary elections are due anytime before 2014.

The difference is that while Singh previously watched others conduct fire-fighting operations, he would now do so personally. The ruling establishment also has to contend with the fact that in the public perception, Gandhi is considered more pro-people and Singh is a seen more as a champion of the upper classes. Singh speaks of the Aam Aadmi because of pressure from Gandhi while the party accepts neo-liberal policies because of Singh’s balancing act.

But Singh and Gandhi have complimented each other but with elections in sight, a greater say of the party boss is likely to be in sight. The spin being added by various writers due to Gandhi’s undisclosed ailment is unlikely to alter this equation. Even in the doubtful scenario of Singh becoming party boss, political prudence suggests that it is important to be seen to be pro-people and pursuing inclusive policies.

It is very difficult to ensure that such accidents do not happen in future. Borewells are routinely dug by people on their own and there is little administrations can do to ensure them not being hazardous and that proper care is taken to seal them. These accidents always occurred but rarely found a mention beyond the local pages of newspapers and news items rarely went beyond a paragraph or two.

The Kurukshetra incident was however a game-changer. For the first time, the agony of a child, his family, the measures undertaken by local administration and the Indian army became a TV spectacle. For two days, all news channels had their Peepli Live moment (ironically very close to the ‘real’ Peepli village in Haryana).

Thereafter, it almost appeared that teams from news channels scrounged countrysides for open borewells – waiting for a child to come playing and slip into it. It appeared like that apocryphal story about western journalists in Africa – when a bus load of them got down in a remote hamlet and shouted “anyone here who has been raped and can speak English.”

Indian TV reporters must have rushed to these ‘sites’ and surely would have shoved rescue teams for better position for their DSNGs to give PTCs.

I perfunctorily read about similar accidents prior to these becoming TV spectacles. One story that I came across reported same kind of efforts as in the case of Prince or the other children like him – right up to the tragedy at Manesar.

Clearly, live TV coverage of such incidents does not add to pressure on local administration to rescue the victims. They moved in the past with same alacrity and also enlisted army’s assistance in the rescue whenever needed. It cannot therefore be argued that TV coverage has pressurised administration to swiftly launch rescue operations.

For all accounts, TV coverage has also not resulted in increased awareness among people to make their borewells less hazardous and cover them up adequately to ensure that children do not slip into pit-less holes.

Live coverage of human tragedy and drama – like these incidents – has resulted in increased eyeballs and possibly greater advertising revenue. TV channels – like all media enterprises – are primarily in the business to make profits. But there is an ethical dimension of business. If manufacturing companies can be hauled up for spurious good and services sector pulled up for inadequacy, then TV channels can surely be expected to function within an ethical framework.

Unless there are dramatic developments, the race for the Indian Presidential House – Rashtrapati Bhavan – will remain a two-horse canter with one clearly trundling along. At the stage where the election for India’s 13^th President is poised, all developments from now on would be to complete constitutional formalities and go through motions of the colonial pomp and show.

What is the most significant feature of the presidential election that was coming for five years – in the sense that it cannot be advanced like parliamentary polls unless in the event of the passing of the incumbent?

The most striking aspect of the poll is that both candidates have one commonality: they never hid their desire to contest the poll and succeeded in enlisting the support of political parties by an orchestrated campaign – and proper backing from select groups with vested and non-vested interests. Political parties played second fiddle to the candidates.

Pranab Mukherjee is a political stalwart and there is unanimity that his candidature is appropriate as he would make a very good President. But it must be recalled that he did not hide his ambition. In an interview with The Economic Times – as early as May 25 – Mukherjee “appeared to confirm, though in an elliptical manner, widespread speculation that he would indeed be interested”.

In the same interview he added: “”I love to walk in the morning… all by myself and my thoughts. I take 40 rounds of my lawn measuring 90 metres, which, I am told, makes about three-and-a-half kilometres. The President’s House, Rashtrapati Bhavan, has large lawns. One would not need 40 rounds.”

This statement was made more than a week before the Congress Working Committee met to authorise Sonia Gandhi to select the choice of the party. Even after that meeting, Mukherjee kept up his campaign – the day after the googly thrown by Mamata Banerjee, he was busy trying to enlist support and spoke Buddhadeb Dasgupta among several other political leaders.

What does this suggest? Either that Sonia Gandhi decided long ago that Mukherjee was indeed her first and only choice and asked him to drum up support from other parties or that Mukherjee left Gandhi with no other choice. The first possibility is less believable – though the truth may never be known unless one of the two opens up at some point. The second possibility demonstrates the complete crumbling of authority in the largest political party of the country.

The Bharatiya Janata Party too cannot escape the sentiment that it was forced to back PA Sangma because of lack of a well-thought strategy. The party was left with no option but to either back the former Speaker or not field a candidate. The two main political parties in India have been found to be wanting and this shows the growing weakness of the party-system that is becoming subservient to individuals with the right backing.

Among the NDA partners, BJP won most seats – 67, followed by SAP and JD(U) with 34 and 21 respectively. The NDA contended that the verdict was against the RJD and so it should form the government. The leaders of the alliance decided that they would stake their claim to form a government and later cobble together a majority. By virtue of being in power at the Centre, NDA leaders presumed – this would not be Herculean task.

Paradoxically, the BJP decided not to nominate any of its leaders to become chief minister. Instead it was decided to anoint the Union Agriculture minister, Nitish Kumar. On March 3, 2000 he was sworn in amid a howl of protests led by RJD and the Congress. There was no doubt that the government had no moral right to stay in office as majority in the state assembly would remain a pipe dream. In seven days, Nitish Kumar resigned leaving on a note of ignominy.

In two months Nitish Kumar returned in the NDA cabinet with the same portfolio. He remained in office till the NDA lost the election in May 2004 – being given complete charge of the Railway ministry in July 2001. In April 2002, Coal Minister, Ram Vilas Paswan quit the government Cabinet protesting against the Gujarat Governments failure to control communal violence and continuation of Narendra Modi as Chief Minister.

In March 2000 when Nitish Kumar became chief minister, Modi was general secretary of the BJP and remained in that position till he shifted to Gujarat in October 2001. In the early 1990s when the united Janata Dal began splintering into small outfits, Nitish Kumar went along with Fernandes and benefited from electoral alliances with BJP in the 1996, 1998 and 1999 parliamentary elections. In all the elections, Nitish Kumar won his parliamentary seats with support from the BJP – the same party that had been dubbed communal by him and his party colleagues in the past.

His present utterances are matters of convenience. Today, Nitish Kumar is able to consolidate his position vis-a-vis the BJP and political adversaries in Bihar by raising the bogey of Modi. By calling for a non-sectarian person at the helm of an anti-Congress alliance, he is also throwing his hat in the ring because the BJP is a house divided.

Modi and Nitish Kumar are almost the same age and thus the intense rivalry. However, attacks on Modi will in all likelihood further strengthen the Gujarat strongman in the year when he faces the most decisive assembly elections. This is not the last that one has heard in this narrative.

The verdict from AP is simple: the electorate rejected Congress and Telugu Desam Party – the two parties that have alternately held power for the past three decades and also almost defeated the candidate of Telangana Rashtra Samithi – a party that carved a presence by championing the cause of a separate Telangana state.

The awesome sweep of the YSR Congress has thrown up new possibilities in the next parliamentary election at the national level. This is because the state is scheduled to go to the assembly polls around the same time as the next parliamentary elections are due – unless of course the Congress loses majority in the state assembly before that.

Jagan Reddy is politically unknown. Besides being the son of his father YS Rajasekhara Reddy who died in a helicopter crash in September 2009, little is known about his political views any issue except his wanting to become chief minister. The raison d’être of his political existence is that the Congress party denied him the chance to be chief minister after his father’s death. Since then, his relationship with the Congress party deteriorated and finally led to a parting of ways in November 2010.

The almost hysterical support that is being witnessed in the state for Jagan and his kin is a throwback to the time when NT Rama Rao, had come to power in 1983 on riding on Telugu pride that was seen to have been hurt by Indira Gandhi’s penchant for frequent change of the state’s chief ministers.

Just as political parties had to come to terms with the emergence of NTR, they will now have to recognise that Jagan Reddy has emerged as a legitimate political force and is likely to have a fair share of the 42 parliamentary seats.

In the case of the next parliamentary election yielding a hung parliament, the chances of Jagan Reddy emerging as a significant satrap cannot be ruled out. In all probability, the numbers in his kitty may be the same – if not more – when compared to the present regional leaders like J Jayalalithaa, Naveen Patnaik, Naveen Patnaik, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati.

The victory of the YSR Congress also demonstrates that the main two political parties at the national level are being increasingly challenged by their regional units. The Congress has so far had lesser share of this woe when compared to the Bharatiya Janata Party, but the success of Mamata Banerjee and now Jagan Reddy only shows that the old dictum – there is no life beyond the Grand Old Party – is no longer valid. This process shows that India is unlikely to return to a bipolar political system in the near future.

Current Indian President Pratibha Patil Pic: AP

For starters, middle-class Indians who have grown up to believe in the Anglo-Saxon notion of being presentable would heave a sigh of relief at the United Progressive Alliance’s choice. There is peculiar contradiction in India that despite moving towards empowering previously underprivileged sections of the Indian population, when it came to public positions that needed interaction with the international community, the Indian middle classes felt more comfortable with those who are more urbane and have a stiff upper lip – even if it meant typically Inglish pronunciations.

Indians may have liked the idea of an Atal Bihari Vajpayee addressing the United Nations General Assembly in Hindi as foreign minister in 1977, but when it came to private conversations with global leaders, they would want their leaders to be attired in Western outfits and be familiar with Western etiquette. This appears assured now.

The more important aspect, however, is not how middle-class Indians want their president to look. Rather, the more significant issue is the choice that the President makes – whether to leave a stamp on history or to be what she or he is commonly expected to be by the political class – a rubber stamp.

The Indian Constitution specifies that every act of governance is done in the name of the president. Even when a small contract is signed by a private party with parliament secretariat, it is done by an officer by invoking the powers conferred to her or him by the president of India.

Despite this, there have been instances when some former presidents have not stood up to either maintain the dignity of the office or even ensure that what is laid out in Constitution. The midnight approval of Emergency as promulgated by Indira Gandhi in June 1975 was granted by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Charan Singh was allowed to remain Prime Minister for six months by Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, without even once facing Parliament, are occasions when the president yielded to the political leadership.

But there have been Presidents like KR Narayanan and even Giani Zail Singh who have refused to accept every recommendation of the cabinet or the Prime Minister. Even APJ Abdul Kalam refused to play ball with the UPA on the Office of Profit issue that caused great personal embarrassment to Sonia Gandhi in 2006.

However, on most occasions Presidents have posed political hardships for governments after there has been a change in the regime. A true president will be one who questions the government with whose leaders he has shared the political stable in the past. When that happens the credibility of the Indian presidency will rise.

On Thursday, June 14 after the sun had reached a fair height in the skies, India’s Grand Old Party began a belated three-pronged exercise. Firstly, the authority of Sonia Gandhi within the Congress party and among its partners in the United Progressive Alliance was sought to be reasserted. Secondly, it decided to discredit Mamata Banerjee by suggesting that she had misrepresented the nuance of her conversation with Gandhi on Wednesday regarding the presidential candidate besides of course revealing a private conversation. Thirdly, the Congress began moves to cement its ties with its other alliance partners while simultaneously trying to wean Mulayam Singh Yadav from Banerjee’s hug.

Efforts since morning were underway from the Congress party to allay the impression gaining ground in significant sections that Gandhi had herself orchestrated the rejection of Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature given the old disquiet towards him. Those unaware of the reason need to be informed that behind Mukherjee never scoring one hundred percent on the loyalty meter, was his reported suggestion in 1984 after Indira Gandhi’s assassination that convention had it that the senior most minister became Prime Minister till an election of the Congress Parliamentary Party was held.

In the past few months the Congress party and Sonia Gandhi personally has a taken a fair amount of beating in the public eye. The economy has gone astray, policy paralysis has seemingly gripped the government, allies have dictated issues, election results have gone against the party and Gandhi’s health has also been a matter of concern. It almost appeared that the party was limping towards the point where a regime change was inevitable.

The Mamata Banerjee challenge to dictate terms to the Congress on the presidential election is a chance for the Gandhi to demonstrate that she still calls the shots both within her party and within the ruling alliance. If Gandhi has reservations about Mukherjee as President for either his past or for the manner in which he has allowed the support for him to be drummed up, she has to state so herself and not get an ally to pitch for her.

Similarly, if she has a Plan ‘B’ meaning a name that is ready as a fallback option, it must be presented as her choice. Gandhi did not earn any kudos in 2007 by allowing others – including a journalist – to run away with the credit for naming Pratibha Devisingh Patil! The damage this time for that impression to gain currency would be much greater.

When will the world know who is likely to be India’s next President? It all depends at the swiftness with which Gandhi is able to resolve self-doubts, get assistance from aides to come up with further suggestions on alternate names and in the firmness she musters when talking to allies and other parties.

Nothing is settled and everyone is still in the race!

The dates are out, the names aren’t. I do not think any name has also been firmed up by any single party, any single individual. As political leaders assemble in the Indian capital for the final lap of the presidential race, it is evident that an intense battle of nerves is underway.

Members of the United Progressive Alliance and parties providing limited support on issues and specific occasions have so far while being broadly supporting of the Congress party, stated that they would like so name in their meeting with Madam.

On her part, Sonia Gandhi is unlikely to float any name or suggest it to any ally unless she is sure that the name would be endorsed. If the name is not seconded, it would be a loss of face for her, something that Gandhi would have always found it difficult to accept, but more so now with the government and the party being under the kind of siege it is in. This is one occasion when no one will grudge Gandhi her position and power.

History suggests that the presidency is not yet a settled mater. In 2002 when APJ Abdul Kalam was finally selected (and elected), the frontrunner for weeks was PC Alexander, a one-time loyalist of the Gandhi-Nehru family but whose candidature was propped up by a section of the Bharatiya Janata Party because of two factors: he had fallen out with Sonia Gandhi and secondly his being Christian would foreclose any chance of Gandhi in case she wished to be prime minister.

Alexander however lost out because NDA ally Chandrababu Naidu had reservations on his candidature and the BJP eventually decided not to risk his ire and thereby lose support of some other parties. Similarly in 2007, Shivraj Patil was the frontrunner till the end but the opposition of the Left ensured the search for a new candidate that ended with Pratibha Devisingh Patil.

There is two major differences between the present political scenario and what prevailed in 2007: the Left was a more dependable ally of the Congress and had a much larger block in the presidential electoral college than any of the UPA’s present allies. Secondly, the prospect of the regime change in the forthcoming parliamentary election did not appear to be such a distinct possibility like now.

With the BJP yet to put its act together, a re-run of the script of 1996 cannot be ruled out and every satrap with 30 odd members in Lok Sabha thinks they have a fair chance to be prime minister. In such a scenario, none of them would want the President to be from their state as the two top positions cannot be hogged by the same state.

Everybody still has to do some more homework before the canvas will have definite forms. Presently they are too shadowy.

Last week, the Petroleum ministry pitched for additional excise duty on diesel cars arguing that this was the only way of preventing a hike in prices of diesel. Predictably, automakers opposed the hike arguing that it would further hurt the sector that was already in the grips of a slowdown and reduced growth. The Heavy Industries ministry and the Oil ministry are both acting like lobbyists. Hopefully the Finance ministry will act like a non-partisan adjudicator and will decide on the matter after weighing various issues including usage data of diesel cars and owners’ profile.

A large number of automakers garner more than 50 percent of their sales revenue from diesel cars. Most of them further secure the bulk of their sales from passenger cars and not from commercial vehicles. While lobbying against the proposal for a one-time levy, these automakers say that the hike could lead to customers staying – or straying – away.

Let us leave the business aspect of diesel cars and instead look at some of the sociological aspects. The two biggest buyers of diesel passenger cars are people from the middle-middle and upper-middle classes and those who buy these cars to use them as taxis – either licensed ones or unlicensed ones – meaning private cars run discreetly as private taxis.

Both these sections would not ideally like to pay an extra few thousand rupees at the point of purchase. But even if the price is raised by a few thousand rupees, it is unlikely that they would stop buying diesel cars.

The basic reason for continuing subsidy on diesel is that it would have a spiraling effect on prices of essential commodities given the dependence on road transport for ferrying goods from points of production to destinations of consumption. Diesel passenger cars have ridden piggyback on this benefit for decades.

The government has two choices: either abandon its responsibility of trying to control prices or think of effective means to ensure that benefits of subsidy for diesel passenger cars get somewhat reduced even if it is means a token one-time levy.

Besides a one-time levy, government could also consider an annual tax akin to the road tax of yore which is now collected on a one-time basis. At some point a proposal was mooted for differential rates of diesel for heavy vehicles and small vehicles but this would only promote corruption and reintroduce the license-quota raj in some ways.

The government must signal that those who use diesel either for personal use or to run businesses, should be willing to pay the extra amount. Otherwise, the option of buying petrol driven cars is always there.

DISCLOSURE: I have owned diesel cars for close to a decade and do not think that I or other owners like me should benefit from fuel subsidy for heavy commercial vehicles.

When I expressed disinterest, Sholmes said just as democracy gave me the right to decide on how to use the information – if at all I wished to; it gave him also the right to provide me the information: “There is no way you can stop information from reaching you – I have multiple means – mail, SMS, phone and my deductive logic which will permeate inside your mind once I reach my conclusion.”

“And pray why should your thoughts enter my mind?” To my query, Sholmes replied that since I frequently engaged as a journalist with the politics of the BJP, my conclusions would not be much different even if I did not accompany him to sites of the crime.

In the evening Sholmes called me and began by saying that since the recent National Executive meeting in Mumbai, the BJP had been in turmoil. There were several people who are upset with the turn of events and any of these could have been instrumental in – directly or indirectly – putting up the posters in an act of vengeance against those who steamrollered their way in Mumbai.

But, Sholmes said that he was not getting definitive clues to move beyond a supposition. So the posters could also have been put up by those who want to show that Sanjay Joshi could stoop to very low levels while attempting to stage a comeback.

Sholmes also added that the posters could be the handiwork of the dirty tricks departments of other political parties – may be even with the assistance of the government. The field is wide and open and anyone could be behind the posters – just like anybody could have been instrumental in preparing and then releasing in 2005 the alleged sex CD that led to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh defrocking Joshi, Holmes added with a flourish.

I took a deep breath while allowing what he was saying to sink in. Sholmes then said that the BJP had stopped its primary activity – that is to act as the principal opposition party. Instead it had virtually broken up into numerous camps and leaders are not opposing political adversaries but instead trading charges against each other.

Softly, Sholmes added: “What I am about to say is not my primary skill. But deductive logic tells me that this collective hara-kiri will not take the BJP out of the post-2004 quagmire.”

Elementary my dear Watson!

A boy walks to a makeshift toilet outside his home at a slum in Mumbai. Pic: AP.

As trains – from any direction – get closer to NDLS the population density also increases. The numbers of residential colonies that are visible from the train increases. But sandwiched between these colonies and the railway tracks are squatter settlements that have been there for years. I have seen these slums for well above three decades that I have lived in the city. Friends who have either lived longer or who are among the few surviving original inhabitants of Delhi say that the poor and the homeless have always managed to find a roof in slums – a significant proportion of which are located parallel to the railway tracks.

Many years ago, I was accompanied by a non-Indian friend during a train journey. As the train we were travelling in chugged into a metropolis in the morning, I was asked what were these people squatting behind small shrubs doing. I used a blunt four-letter word – and then converted the noun into a verb. This left the friend gaping and wordless.

No one has to go far in India to see the most dehumanising spectacle of men squatting with their faces towards the trains that pass them by. I often wondered why they faced the train and not the other way around. I found the answer on one of my curious forays into a shanty town. A resident explained that privacy had to be protected from those with whom one interacted on a daily basis. Those on trains were not even faces and it mattered little that they could see the squatter’s face – and may be more.

If anyone finds this funny, then hold your humour because in a country where millions of people do not have access to toilets (am not prefacing this with the word CLEAN), one is witnessing the strange spectacle of the Planning Commission clarifying that the Rs 35 lakh (US$63,400) it has spent, was not on two toilets but on a public “block of toilets” that have “multiple seats”.

Will anyone go to these shanties and tell them what the word seat means?

The person who explained the direction of squatting next to the railway tracks had decided to be more forthcoming. He added without any query that women from the time they were young, developed the habit of using the cover of darkness for their daily ablutions. Suddenly, forgotten images of drives along state highways during dusk came back to life in the mind’s eye. These were shadowy figures springing up the moment the headlight beam fell on them. No second guesses that these were not ghostly figures but hapless women and young girls who reconfigured their body clock because the Planning Commission does not think for them.

Spare a thought for these images that I am sure lie forgotten somewhere in your minds, whenever you step inside a snazzy toilet – especially if it is in a government building.

On Monday, June 4, 2012 the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution authorising party president Sonia Gandhi to decide on the candidates for India’s Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections. The resolution was moved by Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, so far considered among the frontrunners in the race for the President’s post. Common logic suggests that by getting Mukherjee to move the resolution, the Congress leadership has indicated that he is no longer in contention. After all, the chances that he would move a resolution giving Gandhi the authority to name him as the candidate is rather bleak.

Meanwhile the race to the Rashtrapati Bhawan is nearing the last lap. The incumbent’s tenure ends on July 24 – the same day that President Pratibha Patil’s predecessor handed the baton to her. In 2007, the Election Commission announced the crucial dates on June 13. Subsequently, nominations opened on June 16 when the formal notification was issued and June 30 was the last date for filing nominations. The electoral calendar marked July 2 as the day for scrutiny of nomination papers and July 4 as the last date for withdrawals. Polling was held on July 19 and counting on July 21. Many of these dates are inconsequential but essential in democratic elections.

In 2007 however, the presidential poll had been shorn of melodrama even before the formal notification as the Congress and Left parties jointly announced the name of Patil on June 14 – just a day after the EC announced the dates. This announcement had been preceded by 48 hours of eyeball-to-eyeball conflict between the Congress and the Left over the former’s first choice – Shivraj Patil – who the latter indicated was not be even their last choice. Whatever little element of surprise existed, ended on June 25 when Vice President, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was put up by the Bharatya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance.

The reasons for recalling the script of 2007 is that the calendar for the election this time is likely to be very similar. It could even be advanced by a few days as was the case in 2002 when nominations closed on June 26 and polling was done on July 15.

Prior to the CWC resolution, the Congress had not officially uttered a word. The BJP has spoken in several voices but none of them officially. Regional straps led by J Jayalalithaa and Naveen Patnaik have advanced the candidature of PA Sangma but even his party is yet to extend support.

The ball is clearly in the Congress court and after the CWC resolution – solely in the hands of Sonia Gandhi. The party does not have a majority of its own in the Electoral College and will have to first identify a potential candidate and then go about securing support from within the ruling coalition and outside it for her or him. In the event of the Congress not able to secure the support of a few loose-canons in the ruling coalition, the party will have to look towards big regional payers like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati who have a significant strength in the Electoral College. The Congress may also have to rope in other parties including one-time allies like the Left parties.

All in all, it will be a crucial and tense fortnight ahead. It is still too early to make any predictions.