CB Unplugged

Swapan Dasgupta recently drew a sharp line between his versions of Productive & Political India.  I don’t see these two worlds as divergent as he made them out to be. Let me explain why.

Politicians, among a million other frailties, are known not to keep promises, keep people waiting and have a ready excuse for every lapse. Let’s juxtapose these infirmities with Indian job aspirants. Most of them miss deadlines when it comes to submitting their resumes to search firms. Even if the resumes arrive after several prods, the documents look more like that of their bosses.  If the resume passes muster with the front line recruiters of the employer, confirmed interview slots are suddenly reneged upon.  Should the individual make it past the selection panel, offers that are agreed upon verbally are disputed and declined in sudden U turns. At the extreme back end of the selection process, candidates very often don’t show up on the scheduled day of on boarding. In the unlikely event of the recruiter being able to get through to these evasive guys, the reasons touted could range from, “My mother did not want to relocate”, “I have a problem with the weather of Chennai”, “The office is too far from my house,” and “I have to keep going back to my native (sic) which this company won’t encourage”.

Ask a recruiting manager of a new gen company about how many candidates he has to work with to select just one. Chances are it would be more than 30.

When we castigate politicians for not attending legislative sessions, we should also reflect upon how many hours of effective work transpires in technology companies with serial interruptions for coffee & tea breaks, smoking interludes, lunch recess, sporting events on TV, private calls (mostly from placement companies) and plain malingering.

Early in our stay in Bangalore, a senior manager of one of India’s top three software exporting companies lamented to me that his job was more of a police inspector’s than a technologist’s. He had to fake client calls in his two way glass chamber to drill a sense of urgency into his work force.  It appears that even more ingenious methods are employed now to get unprofessional employees to meet client deadlines.

I am not an advocate of the political class one bit if that is what some of you are sensing. But the convergence between the political, bureaucratic and the technology sectors in terms of unacceptable work habits signals a pattern that many seem to be missing.

The backgrounds of these three genres appear to be the same. There is a distinct “sarkarI” feel to the arrogance that one has come to associate with most of our technology folks.  Is it the steep dowry that imbues coders with this attitude? Just as it does with civil services selects from some states?  Or is it the “on shore” induced fortune that manifests itself in multiple flats and cars? But to their credit, coders make tax washed money which netas and babus don’t.

In my lexicon, the real Productive India comprises Indians who work in smoke stack industries and on the farms. But there is an alarming flight from the farms to the dehumanizing cities rather than to the factories that China was able to achieve.

Services professionals with the possible exception of those pounding the pavements for new bank accounts, insurance covers and SIM cards till their souls and soles wear out, are increasingly beginning to look and behave like our politico-bureaucratic class that has killed enterprise in India.

Pluralism as a socio-cultural format is not a bad thing by itself. The litmus test of a functioning democracy is the space for diverse (and often conflicting) ideas and dissent. In a mature democracy like the US, pressure and special interests groups are clearly polarized between the two main parties and their constituents clearly know what to expect of their respective leaders. While they may differ substantially on the economic methods to prosperity and the levels of protectionism, Americans are all agreed on securing themselves from foreign adversaries and internal fifth columnists. Even though 9/11 occurred during a Republican dispensation, the Obama led Democrat regime has continued with the non negotiable philosophy of fiercely protecting Americans not only in their own country but outside of their borders too.

But in India, holding the nation together is turning out to be an insurmountable challenge for central governments. The shrill opposition to the proposed anti terror laws underlines that state governments are closer to their regional vote banks than to the greater Indian cause. Identity politics, in my book, has the potential of tearing India asunder. And it is identity politics that has brought to the national stage extremely sectarian leaders like Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, Karunanidhi, B S Yedyuirappa, Laloo Yadav, Narendra Modi, Bal Thackeray and Mamata Banerjee. The next generation of emerging leaders are even more polarizing in their appeal – Raj Thackeray, Jagan Reddy and Stalin (always wonder how his father came to name him so!) to name a few.

Imbued with a distinctly tribal hue, our regional politicians probably see less value in identifying themselves as Indians first and their sub identities later. You don’t have to look beyond Madhu Koda or Nishank to gleam the illegitimate financial advantages that formation of new states along linguistic or cultural lines brings forth to politicians. Mayawati chooses to call such decimation of India “social engineering” but really speaking, it’s nothing short of anti nationalism.

Divides between the rich and poor, the fair and dark, the believer and the non believer go back to medieval times. India has added to these divisive forces by pitting language, caste and ethnicity against one another. Central and state governments have exacerbated the strife by running patronage rackets around these sub identities. It’s almost impossible to be the DGP of Karnataka without being from the Lingayat caste. Non Lingayat IPS officers have to seek the intervention of courts to get their due. Fanning the Lingayat fire further is the Congress President who arrived recently in a Lingayat temple in all her regal splendor to woo this caste.

V P Singh, often touted as the harbinger of transparency in government procurement was paradoxically the villain of the piece in truncating India along caste lines. Singh’s divisive politics gave birth to unapologetic casteists like Mulayam, Laloo & Mayawati. One is not sure if Singh had anticipated the hydra headed monster that he has bequeathed to the nation. History will not judge him kindly at all.

Down south, Brahmins have been virtually ostracized. “Tam Brams’ ,being intellectually evolved as they are have taken the harsh fiat in their stride and excelled in almost every profession outside their state and even the country. Karnataka has merely replicated what Periyar did in Tamil Nadu in the late 50s. Each time a political leader has carved out a narrow identity or sub identity based constituency for himself, he has belittled the concept of India. Like Modi has with the majority community of Gujarat and SP with the dominant minority of Uttar Pradesh.

The more recent fault line is the digital divide which won’t go away as long as the government does not soften the cost of broadband services. The proposed re-auction of 2G won’t help the cause of internet penetration as one can sense.

As politicians attempt to create an increasing number of fault lines among Indians, a few of us are left wondering who and what will unite India. Sachin Tendulkar, in his hey days, held the country together with his batting brilliance. Having been recently “co-opted” by the establishment, he is set to lose a large part of his support base that identifies Congress and UPA as the fountainhead of all things corrupt.

The only institution that resonated of India and not of a particular identity, caste or religion was the Indian armed forces. But following recent upheavals, their fan following has also ebbed. One suspects that the politico-bureaucratic was bent upon vandalizing the burnish of this institution going by the way fourth rate politicians (Laloo Yadav & Ram Gopal Yadav), fifth rate bureaucrats (Brajesh Mishra & K C Singh) and compromised journalists (Shekhar Gupta & Karan Thapar) tore into incumbent COAS.

Among the motives imputed to the COAS was his affinity for officers of the Rajput regiment who he allegedly posted close to the capital to engineer a coup. Will Messrs Yadav, Mishra, Gupta and Thapar carry out a headcount of the number of Rajput officers in the Rajput regiment? And compare that data with the number of Yadavs in Akhilesh’s top bureaucracy?

The silent coups of politicians and bureaucrats who are united by identity and greed are going on behind our backs for most our 65 independent years. Our politico-bureaucratic class has launched an internecine war within Indians where the winner will only be a adversarial neighbor. To lead us to our doom even sooner, they have now closed ranks to disempower the only credible institution that we still possibly have – the armed forces.

India does not need a hostile neighbor as long it wages a war of attrition with itself.

The finger pointing of Congress cabinet ministers towards the disgraced Raja is an admission of the abject failure of collective responsibility within the union government. All cabinet ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister who, in this case, happens to be a Congress sympathizer, if not a leader. The party’s decision to practice diarchy is its own problem and not for the citizens to suffer. Bal Thackeray has perfected the art of assigning unbridled power to himself without even a shred of responsibility many moons back. Sonia merely followed the path charted out by Thackeray, perhaps following a gentle refrain from former President, Dr Abdul Kalam who has his finger far closer to the pulse of the nation than residents of glass houses like Sonia, Rahul & Priyanka Gandhi.

Coalition partners like DMK were not thrust upon the Congress. Theirs was a pre poll alliance and the associated risks of teaming up with a wily and avaricious Karunanidhi would have been apparent to anyone with political sense in the Congress during the courtship period. Therefore, to lay the blame at DMK’s door for all the tribulations of 2G does not wash with the educated electorate. The other key alliance with TMC is also on rocky surface and could split wide open anytime. Once again, this was a pre poll alliance and the Congress will have known that Mamata’s regressive views on foreign capital and development would block any move at FDI in multi brand retail or the next generation of financial sector reforms.

This is not to suggest that post poll alliances are more morally acceptable. Rather, they are totally opportunistic and invariably predicated upon money changing hands as is evident from the ring fencing of legislators by their respective parties whenever there is a fractured mandate. The only beneficiaries of these hung legislatures are deluxe resorts and hotels who are happy to host the cattle like legislators that trade as briskly as bargain deals in an Arabian meat market.

So why is collective responsibility not working in India? There are gross imperfections at two levels. The first is that ministries like election tickets are sold. The highest bids are naturally for ministries that have the power to licence and procure.  So you will always find a crusader like Jairam Ramesh adorning the humdrum office of rural affairs while his more commerce savvy cabinet colleagues will covet finance, defense, communications, commerce and industries.  It is quite like the capitation fees that are characteristic of colleges in South India “have the undeserving rich subsidize the meritorious poor”.  But modern day Robin Hoods don’t share the loot with the under privileged as they owe their allegiance to a still higher form of extra constitutional authority who expects to be cut into the deal as the majority partner. Once these “deities’ are adequately compensated, the trader minister can have a free run like the Doon school alumni who almost inevitably grabs a prized ministry does.  The Prime Minister is only a minor irritant for such cabinet ministers who consider themselves above the cabinet with the covert blessings of the presiding deities.

The second is the split in loyalty when it comes to a minister from a coalition partner.  Raja owes his entire existence to Karunanidhi. A small time brief less lawyer from the Nilgiris, Raja’s Dalit origin has been played to the hilt by Karunanidhi to propel him to Lutyen’s Delhi in a remarkably short political career. Likewise, Dinesh Trivedi takes his orders only from Mamata and the Prime Minister can go to hell for all he cares. He is emboldened by the continuing insults than Mamata heaps upon the PM, the most damning being her refusal to travel to Dhaka with his delegation after all arrangements were in place.

In a perversion of the corporate construct, most cabinet ministers are like CEOs who roll up to different bosses who occupy different positions. Some grovel in the presence of their deities, others to high priests of the deities and still some others to fixers who are more proximate to party honchos than party leaders.

When you have such a disharmonious reporting structure, we have not seen the worst yet. 2G is only symbolic of what awaits us if we allow political parties to remain feudal, dynastic and oppressive in their mindset. Many believe that if the Congress party were to conduct a free and fair intra party election on the basis of universal adult franchise, the incumbent leadership could well be dethroned.

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From a distance in the 90s, Bangalore looked like the party capital of India with its thronging pubs, youthful cosmopolitan working class chilling out on tech induced income & genteel manners of the Raj that one associated with the elegant Kodavas (also known popularly as Coorgs) and retired civil services and armed forces seniors for whom the city was a destination of choice once they shed their “bundh galas” and battle fatigues but still maintained their stiff upper lip and fondness for pink gin.

They say distance lends objectivity but that is one of the many myths that have exploded in my face ever since we moved to Bangalore at the turn of the new millennium.  We were not complete strangers to the city as we had visited the “pensioner’s paradise” at regular intervals from the eighties. But as holiday makers you barely scratch the surface of destinations that you take in.

The first of the many surprises was the fecundity of the police force which refused to file FIRs for petty thefts at home as they were clearly after the big game where they could be cut into the deal. The newspapers were awash with reports of lowly police sub inspectors being culpable of amassing a fortune that was well & truly beyond the earnings of a CEO of a transnational technology company.  It became apparent to us that the entire police force was an enthusiastic accomplice in sharp land deals that have finally come home to roost with the recent imprisonment of the ousted Chief Minister.

Bangalore has always boasted of its “32 engineering colleges”. S M Krishna and Vivek Kulkarni  had flogged this show pony dead while selling the city to F 500 technology companies looking to cut costs by doing work at the cheapest end of the wire. But the products of these colleges were primarily outsiders. Very few locals qualified for engineering courses. The quota system in Tamil Nadu drew a phenomenal number of engineering aspirants to this city while rich brats from elsewhere in the country could pay for their way through the dubious capitation route. Do a quiet reality check with the HR departments of marquee tech companies and you will discover that locals constitute barely 10% of the skilled workforce.

The state had, in what could be described as an unhappy déjà vu for us from the moribund state of West Bengal, abolished English from the primary and middle school curricula of state funded institutions. West Bengal had embarked on a similar path of self destruct from the late 70s but one was really bamboozled to find such retrogressive policies in what the rest of India looked up to as a progressive state. The short point was that locals hardly ever secured jobs with MNCs or progressive Indian companies.

As I watched the political developments from the sidelines, I was rather intrigued to see BJP come to power in Karnataka which marked their debut in South India. As I set about drilling down on the demographics, I chanced upon the fact that the highest number of “kar sewaks’ who headed to Ayodhya were indeed from this state. I am equidistant from both the Congress and the BJP in my political disposition but the antics of the ‘Sree Ram Sena” were gross to say the least. Bashing up college girls at pubs is surely not what any Hindu scripture advocates.

The BJP also introduced other forms of moral policing masked by pontifications. Night life came to a grinding halt by 2007 due to what the police authorities claimed was a “potential threat to law & order” even as they stood by when Mutalik and his henchmen ran riot.  I did not fail to notice that country liquor bars kept open well past midnight while tony clubs and hotels were forced to send their guests on their way by 10.30 pm. It’s a no brainer that the dominant section of those who are high rollers among revelers in the city are not from Karnataka. The xenophobic message could not be missed by anyone with any matter between his ears.

At an even more basic level, domestic help sought higher salaries than commerce graduates. Plumbers and carpenters priced themselves above mid level consultants. Consumer companies like Godrej, Eureka Forbes, Zicom etc looked and felt very different from what they do in Mumbai. It was hard to believe that we were indeed dealing with the same brands in Bangalore as after sales service simply sucked. We actually had a national marketing head of one of these companies come home to apologize to us for the lack of professionalism in their Bangalore office. His grouse was that “anyone who can coherently verbalize his name in English heads for a BPO job in this city” leaving them with the most rustic end of the labor pyramid to employ.

Arvind Adiga has astutely captured what attracts fringe elements to Bangalore in “White Tiger” but my abiding regret is that I read the book much too late into our stay in Bangalore. We should have also taken Kumaraswamy’s refrain of ‘Bangalore does not matter in terms of Karnataka politics” more seriously. This is a city with a seemingly impressive super structure on creaky infrastructure. Disregard this caveat at your own peril.

Anyone with even a pea sized brain in Bangalore was certain that BSY would not be arrested by the lackeys that he had appointed in key positions in the state and city administration. Gowda may be adorning the Chief Minister's chair but the composition of the state cabinet is a damning indictment of the BJP's continuing endorsement of BSY's proxy rule of the state.

What was to follow was a defining commentary on the cowardice of BSY. Those who did not vote BJP to power in this state are aghast that a man of such low ethics, morals and courage can be anointed as a leader by the powers that be of the party. From what one knows of the RSS, the organization is known to breed nationalistic leaders. BSY  was reportedly a RSS "pracharak". How come the virtues of leading by example, courage and uprightness were not imbued in him?

That said, one has come to expect increasingly less from Indian politicians but there is still some element of respect for civil servants (especially IAS/IPS/IFS) who have to endure a rather rigid selection process followed by a spell of intensive training (some if it being presumably focused on ethics and values) at the respective academies. What did Mirji imbibe at the Sardar Patel Indian Police Academy? Many of us would like to know what might have been the assessment that was recorded in his dossier by his trainers.

Here is a man whose mandate is to protect citizens from criminals who bends over backwards to protect a common criminal like BSY. And pressurizes his subordinates to comply with his patently illegal orders. What else does he owe to BSY other than his current position? Surely a lot more. Mirji is a fit case for RTI in terms of his assets and net worth.

There is a bit of anthropology that kicks in when one begins to analyze why Indians are not as agitated about gold collared criminals as many other countries are. Indian business has been defined by economic tribalism wherein a handful of communities have commandeered most of the country's resources including politicians and bureaucrats to generate super normal profits for themselves and not necessarily for their share holders. Favored share holders have, over the years, been let into the private chambers, by cocking a snoop at fragile insider trading regulations. Even as we see Rajaratnam heading for a eleven year sentence in the US, India is yet to prosecute a single promoter or investor on insider trading charges. My old friends on Dalal Street continue to maintain that the only valuable information that one can trade on is "inside information". Many SEBI Chairmen have come and gone and have made threatening noises in passing about insider trading but the stern hand of the thoroughly compromised Finance Ministry has always reined in the capital market regulator whenever it was poised to bite rather than merely bark.

I would be keen to learn from the Income Tax department how many of "Emergent Indians" (those who have ridden the post liberalization band wagon for the last 20 years) are honest tax payers. I am particularly keen to know about the tax status of the semi urban folk from Punjab and Harayana who drive into Chandigarh and Delhi in their uber luxury SUVs with private armed guards in tow to unload their stock pile of cash in fine dining restaurants and designer boutiques as I would be about most residents of Malabar Hills and surrounding areas of SoBo who have profited from Narsimha Rao's tryst with our economic destiny.

India is a nation of gluttons that feeds on others' miseries. Till we have companies like Infosys contributing to more than 50% of our market capitalization, Dalal Street can have a free run with nobody to complain about over the top residences that look like rocket launch pads.

Among the rare compliments that come one's way either at the workplace or the playground is 'Tiger". Those who have had the privilege of being called so surely know the "high" that it brings on. It is a combination of guts, initiative, self belief and flawless execution ability.  Add to that a dash of the feline grace that comes with the territory. The late Nawab (Mansur Ali Khan) of Pataudi personified all these fine attributes and several other virtues that made him a cult figure for teenagers in the 60s when India was licking its wounds of the Chinese aggression and sulking from the stalemate of the frontal conflict with Pakistan.

Tiger could not only hold his own against lethal pace attacks but also wax eloquent amidst an Anglophile audience that dominated cricket. He also displayed the single minded application that tigers do to pursue Sharmila Tagore for three eventful years till she gave in to his abundant charms. Many of us wondered why it took Sharmila so long to walk down the aisle as her other romantic options were nowhere in the same zone as Pataudi. Insiders aver that the religious divergence may have been a temporary show stopper for the 'Kashmir Ki Kali". But Pataudi transcended all such divisions by dint of his inclusive leadership of the Indian team. He was the first Indian cricketer to challenge the predominance of Bombay and strung together a string of pearls from every corner of India - Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna, Venkat & Vishwanath to name a few.

I have followed Pataudi like a hawk over the years and have never heard him speak of his faith. Not once have I seen him photographed at a mosque. Even his aborted foray into politics was not bed rocked on communal lines. He chose the Jat heart land of Gurgaon (proximate to his native village of Pataudi) as his constituency when he could have easily settled for a minority dominated city like Bhopal where he had roots too. A later day captain abandoned his hometown to render himself more "winnable" from a safer seat in Uttar Pradesh.

Every move of Tiger's was a throw of the gauntlet - whether it was to introduce his  indolent team mates to the painful discipline of fielding (the reported excuse those days was that the BCCI did not pay for laundry expenses which ruled out any aerobatics on the field!), scoring a century against the awesome Aussies virtually on one leg in Adelaide, gracefully stepping aside from the England bound team after being wrested of the captaincy by the 'Bombay lobby" in 1971, never pitching himself for a BCCI office bearers' role unless it came to him at his terms and speaking his mind in an unambiguous manner whenever asked for sound bytes.

Rajesh Khanna, whose stardom coincided with Tiger's may have been the hero of the masses but the classes were truly inspired by the distinguished Nawab who never ceased being a gentleman even in the fiercest of battles.

They dont make guys like Tiger Pataudi anymore.

Isn't it ironic that our highest executive authority, Dr Singh is a "nominated" Rajya Sabha member?

The last time he fought an election in Delhi, he was summarily rejected by voters. Pranab Mukherjee too had not won a parliamentary election till the turn of this millennium even though he has been a cabinet minister since the early 80s. Do Tiwari, Mayawati & Mukherjee suffer from dementia?

Elections in India are almost always won and lost on the basis of money and muscle. My first brush with electoral politics was in undergrad college when three of us representing representing the three batches in college were prompted by the apolitical majority to contest the students' union election in 1976. Presidency was just about recovering from the toxic effects of Naxalism and the general mood on campus was to rid the union of apologists of both the Congress and the CPM who had as many crude bombs at their disposal as they did bottles of rum.

I would not like to identify the other two college mates who stood along side me as I have not sought their express consent to be named here but suffice to say, that one of them was the scion of one of Bengal's most admired nationalist families who now teaches at Harvard.

The day after the votes had been cast, I received an early morning call from a friend asking me to stay away from the college campus for a few days. His grim warning was that the both the Congress and the CPM would not allow the votes to be counted for fear of losing their control on East India's most cerebral campus. Sure enough, I heard of sheer pandemonium that over ran the campus in the course of which of which our Principal was manhandled, his office broken into and the ballot boxes snatched away, One of the Congress goons who descended upon the campus to perpetrate violence is someone who Amitabh Bachhan kept close company of till recently. He also features in the Standing Committee that will be giving shape to the Jan Lokpal Bill!!

That incident closed my mind to any form of electoral ambitions as I was quick to realize that even if you had the potential votes, traditional parties would either not allow voters to exercise their franchise in a peaceful manner or sabotage counting of votes by means mostly foul.

However, I remained an idealist well into my thirties and faithfully showed up to vote at both state and central polls for independent candidates who were not history sheeters like those fielded by the mainline parties. On most occasions, my chosen candidate lost his deposit but that did not deter me.

With age, the idealism was snuffed out by the cynicism of "real politiks" where one had to choose the lesser of two evils. Most times, I voted against a party rather than casting an affirmative vote. In so doing, I have never identified myself with any of our mainline parties as my vote kept rotating. I have a sense that most "PLUs" have been through similar dilemmas and at the end of it, turned away from electoral politics totally.

Manish Tiwari may enjoy the cut and thrust of street politics and also have a fortune to fall back upon but most of us have to get on with our lives and professions as we dont feed off the government as do the lacs of Rajas, Kalmadis and BSYs who constitute our political leadership.

Give us the 'Right to Reject" Tiwari and we will show you that the "unelected and unelectable" can outnumber professional politicians in every legislature.

I was privileged to be part of the 150 odd boys who were admitted to the 49th course at NDA. Into our second term, one of our batch mates was struck off the rolls of NDA on disciplinary grounds. We lost track of this errant guy thereafter. It is only recently that he has resurfaced as a serial bribe taking bureaucrat who is under the scanner of investigative agencies for amassing a fortune well beyond his declared sources of income. He is not alone in this rogues' gallery of bureaucrats which is expanding by the day.

As on March 31, 2010 a total number of 84 IAS officers were facing trial on criminal charges in CBI cases. The extent of corruption in the IAS  is best personified by the CBI raid on the house of a husband wife duo in Madhya Pradesh in 2010 whose illegal assets were estimated to be over Rs 3,000,000,000 . In an another such outage in May 2011, a 1988-batch IAS officer of Chhattisgarh cadre was apprehended with illegal assets of  Rs 2,530,000,000. A reality check now - IAS officers usually take home not more than Rs 30,000 - Rs 100,000 per month, depending on their seniority.

Some eminent Indian citizens have called for reformation and even elimination of the IAS. Infosys' founder, Narayan Murthy believes that Indian bureaucrats are still trapped in a colonial mindset and feel they are the" masters" where there is no need to show fairness and transparency. Murthy affirms that bureaucrats are completely out of touch with the dynamics of the current world. He favours abolishing the system of "generalist" administrators under the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and replace them with specialists under a new Indian Management Service. The father of  India's "White Revolution" Dr. Verghese Kurien, insists on abolishing the IAS. His take is that IAS officers are "greedy people who are always looking at what post to grab".

So what gives when about three and a half lac young Indians contest for the barely 1,000 positions on offer year after year in what is probably the most competitive examination in the world?

Are these candidates driven by national duty or any such lofty calling? Do they want to morph India into a civilized, functional democracy? Are they serious about making a difference to the 80 lac slum dwellers of Mumbai who don't have access to a private toilet? Are they driven by an urge to eliminate street level extortion by beat cops who they would have encountered as ordinary citizens? Would they be prompted by the apathy of public health centers that cant even deliver a new born in hygienic surroundings?

Their post selection behavior suggests not.

Many of us "aam aadmi" are also intrigued how supposedly bright young Indians (including many from IITs) are motivated to be part of a service which is lorded over by cheats, thieves, murderers, traitors and rapists. How can a nationalist Indian be inspired to work for the likes of A Raja, Karunanidhi, Y S Reddy, Mulayam Singh, Mayawati and others of this growing tribe of contemporary Lord Clives who pillage the exchequer? Or fall in line with devious spin doctors like Prakash Karat and Jyoti Basu to deny education to those who need it most? How about those who toed the line of Indira & Sanjay Gandhi, V C Shukla and Pranab Mukherjee to deny us our constitutionally guaranteed freedom? Mukherjee of course has achieved a complete makeover during the intervening period and is hardly connected with the Emergency though he was one of its key authors.

The civil services has boiled down to business by another name. Our civil servants are really an integral part of the extortion mafia that is synonymous with our political system. There is no honor at all in being a civil servant as there is hardly anything civil about the way it conducts itself when facing off with the public.

If a 17 year old Indian is really seized with nationalistic fervor, he will still head for the NDA and stay far away from the bureaucracy.