2010 stands the risk of entering Indian history as the year of graft. It was a year where incidences, coverage and adjectives of corruption reached hitherto unseen limits. Instances of illegal money making were sector and space neutral. They ranged from sporting events, a cricket league, telecom licenses to the usual bad boys of real estate and mining. Some of the stories uncovered had a ‘I told you so’ ring to them, as with the 2G spectrum and license saga. Some like the Adarsh society, came out of nowhere and created a tsunami that swept all before quietly retreating into the calmer waters of middle page news. Like the scandals, their perpetrators or suspects too respected the Indian heritage of diversity. Politicians led the way, followed closely by organizers, mining barons, industrialists, high flying highly visible sport administrators and in a bit of surprise for the public at large, generals and journalists.

What stood out in 2010 was the eagerness of the corruption scandals to devour their victims, many of whom would not have been mistaken to believe that the storm was one they could ride out. Many are still battling the choppy waters, refusing to abandon ship, not realizing perhaps that the hull and the mast have suffered irreparable damage. In terms of resignations and exits, the year was certainly one of the busiest. Notable among the martyrs was a greasy Union Minister whose stubborn resistance against facts for over two years seemed inspired by a Sunil Gavaskar innings, a loquacious Minister of State who required only 140 characters to be felled, a Chief Minister who would have much wished that he could escape with the American president he was seeing off minutes before being given the pink slip, a cricket czar whose one error gave his numerous enemies the tiny sliver of opportunity they had waited all along and two senior journalists who could not keep their egos within the confines of the press club.

Towards the end of the year, the leaked Radia tapes provided a new form of online voyeurism, to which this author himself claims affliction. They provided much amusement for the listeners and much embarrassment to the conversing parties. At a higher level they brought home a painful reality we have been afraid to admit for long – the country is being run by an elite of oligarchs and politicians for whom universal suffrage is only a constitutional formality. It was not the influencing of appointments and rewards that should be a cause of worry as much the blatant system of monetary patronage of all classes of our political life. The revelations tarred all. The politician’s debauchery was only vindicated, the industrialist’s mildly affirmed and the journalist’s discovered. A smaller scale of the loot would have made the public more cynical, the current scale can only cause disillusion. The executive ran from one hiding corner to another and the legislature decided to spend time shouting for political points than discuss the corrosion. It would only be the judiciary, battling its own demons of graft more than ever before this year, that would give a call and question both the actions and inactions of the executive offices.

The Union enters the second decade of the 21st century struggling to live up to the ideals of its founding fathers and the spiritual guidance they left in the Constitution. It gasps to find substance over form. It aspires to seek its place in the world but undermines its own values at every stage. It experienced political liberation six decades ago and an economic liberation two decades ago. It will never be able to live up to its promise for all but to meet the aspirations of most, and not just a privileged few, it needs to experience a new moral discovery and liberation.

Much as it is tempting to focus on the big bang of graft that swamped all the other noise around us, the year also brought some redeeming affirmations. A high court stretched the logic of justice, summoned courage and tackled an issue that politicians, religious leaders and the society at large had refused to entangle. In their own words, the justices set foot upon ‘a piece of land where angels feared to tread’ against the advice of ‘sane elements’ who had ‘advised them not to attempt that’. They pleased none of the three litigants completely but caused much satisfaction to the man on the street. It was evidence that our noisy and chaotic democracy could find some way, even if it took decades, of tackling inflammable, contentious and religiously dividing issues. A peaceful resolution of the property dispute at Ayodha is as much a litmus for India’s social integration as Kashmir is for its political. In the valley meanwhile, the Indian state dithered, bore the brunt of stones and calls of ‘azadi’, heard calls of sedition issued from an air conditioned Delhi auditorium from a wasted socialite but in the end summoned the one quality that is the hallmark of statesmanship and is much needed for internal stability – a generosity of heart. The pain lingers but Vajpayee’s framework of ‘insaniyat’ survives. However much Pakistan, Arundhati Roy and the Hurriyat Conference think to the contrary, that framework does not stand in contradiction with the Constitution.

In Delhi, a nation held its breath and had almost collapsed out of anxiety as a mismanaged sporting event threatened to erode all the gains of the new economy. The post liberalization urban generation, used to playing with global standards of quality, watched in horror as the task of constructing stadiums and organizing athletic events turned into a business school case study of mismanagement. The world saw our lack of project management skills and for once the excuse of the slow moving democracy could not act as a cover for our exposed skins. The much heralded Indian jugaad, codified as our Sports Minister repeatedly stated, in the Punjabi wedding drama, came into play. The games and the participants, while they were on, won the city’s appreciation. The cost went to the tax payer and more damagingly to India’s image.

While Delhi went comatose in the last two months of the year, engulfed in a verbal fog of 2G, spectrum and tapes, one of the last caste outposts of the country fell and a politician swept to power on basis of a positive political perception. It will not eradicate caste from our political or social lives but Nitish Kumar’s victory will remind others that tangible development efforts have a longer shelf life than voting coalitions. Lalu Yadav discovered that this year. Mayawati and the Left seem set to discover it in the coming two. Nitish’s victory may also do the country one more benefit, if the BJP so chooses to encash it. It opens up a roadmap to victory for the wilting lotus, if only it decides to open its eyes. Gujarat and Bihar are indicative of the distance between India’s west and east and also of the political distance between the where our largest opposition party is and where it ought to be.

In this sad and at times depressing year, one can be cynical and say the winner of the year was the Chief Minister of Karnataka – the only man who successfully managed to brave the corruption windstorm and keep his chair, if not his image and integrity. But a happier event towards the end of the year provides an escape from that gloomy conclusion to this post. The greatest Indian sportsman reached a landmark many of his contemporaries and those to come in the future will view as the Mount Everest of batting accomplishment. Sachin Tendulkar completed fifty test centuries, scored a one-day double hundred and at age thirty seven pulled a fair distance away from his current crop of challengers into a summit of his own. Like always, he stood out in contrast to the negativity around us. He bore the burden of showing the discipline, fortitude and dedication that many in our public circles chose to abjure. He bloomed when many expected him to gracefully wilt. He summoned reserves of energy when the competition began to tire. He explored no short cuts and summoned no privileges. He lived up to the one lesson every dedicated teacher and parent instills into their ward – there is no substitute for hard work and honesty. It is a lesson worth recalling this new year.

|

So how does a nation, a community and a society react to uncertainty, scarcity and risk? Specially when the feeling of not having enough for everyone is something that it is not used to. A curious atmosphere prevails in the United States as I write this. The second summer of the great upheaval has unraveled and is about to end. Newspapers still carry pessimistic outlooks, report rising unemployment numbers and flattening economic activity. Economists hold their silence on what the near future holds, whether it is the upward climb of the V or the second drop of the W. Many commentators worry about the rising spending and many want more of it. Around the town in New Jersey where I stay, roads are being rebuilt or expanded, all under the aegis of the Obama Stimulus plan. It seems America worries. It has travelled a dark tunnel but is unsure whether to take the time spent walking as a sign of sufficient distance having been covered. It broods but does not want to show. It hopes but is not sure of the outcome.

Individuals and societies seek refuge in the familiar when uncertainty strikes. One of the most striking comments made by Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush at the onset of the economic carnage of 2008, was that unless the government stepped in decisively, the crises had the potential to permanently alter ‘ the way of life’ as many Americans knew it. ‘The way of life’ – so what is that way of life whose alteration every American perhaps fears deep down? We all have our stereotypes of burger grilling, SUV driving, holidaying, moderately (and sometimes devoutly if it is the South) religious suburban American. But is that the familiarity that the American craves? Or does he search for a feeling of reassurance that, left to the world and his ability, things will take care of themselves?

On one of my rounds at a golf course close to my hotel, I meet Waldo. A middle aged American in his early 50s, Waldo is actually a Chilean, who spent all of his growing up years and some of his adult ones in his native country. At the risk of being slightly race and color conscious here, I would admit that on the ‘face’ of it, you would never imagine Waldo to be anything other than an American. So perfect are his features and his English. As we tee off and get more familiar with each other, a fascinating conversation commences. It begins with a trifle discussion over professional golfers keeping notes that they refer to when they play in the tournaments.

‘It’s a bit like Sarah Palin reading notes from her hand’, jokes Waldo. I respond with a light laugh, careful not to assume any political preferences, lest I am drawn into a right wing vs. leftist debate. ‘Did you see her speaking today in Washington?’ he enquires.

Sarah Palin spoke last Sunday at a rally organized at the Lincoln Memorial, a rally titled ‘Restoring Honor’, that was essentially a Conservative platform to discuss and outline what is wrong with America and what it needs to do. Palin wasn’t the main speaker – a Fox News conservative host named Glenn Beck was and the rally attracted a host of people with a common underlying theme of piety and patriotism. Politics appeared thickly disguised and any criticisms of Obama and the Democrats appeared veiled. Waldo though was not convinced – ‘I saw her speaking, I saw the others too. They talk of religion, of Christianity, but it is almost as if they think that it is the path to everything. It is almost as if they want us all to go back to Christianity’. He stopped here as I sinked in a 5 feet putt. ‘They almost sounded xenophobic. It was not really like this before…’

Waldo perhaps has reason to reminisce. His story, like many others, begins at an American University – Ohio to be specific, where he recounts the enormous diversity he saw and how it amazed and delighted him at the same time. He recounts the story of a roommate who was from Bolivia but had the facial appearance of a native Indian. That roommate did a Master in Physics and went on to work for the Pentagon, and went back home temporarily, only to be derided by his countrymen as his ‘clan’ was lower in the social hierarchy. ‘It is the land of opportunity’, Waldo concludes. ‘People still judge you by your accomplishments but we seem to be headed somewhere wrong.’ And what is that wrong?

If there is one reality that the economic crisis has brought to the surface, it is that income disparities are far wider in America than many of us sitting in the developing world believe to be. The top 0.1% of the American population took away 6% of the total wages for 2007. The top 10% of the population accounted for almost half of the total wages. These are levels believed to have been last seen only in the years preceding the Great Depression. ‘We do not realize,’ says Waldo, as we make our way to the 7th tee, ‘but we are going the way of the developing countries – something we always wanted to avoid. The unemployed do not have jobs and are struggling, the rich are getting richer.’ Waldo incidentally is an indirect beneficiary of the much maligned US banks. His wife works in one of those. ‘We never had any difficulty in getting access to funds,’ he admits, but goes on to add honestly ‘there are people who struggle. And then we see all the executives who lost millions of dollars walking away with the bonuses’.

One of the things Americans rarely do outside of their operating systems is ‘save’. The personal savings rate of the average household in the US slipped to as low as 1% in 2008 before recovering mildly on account of post recessions adjustments to 5% in 2009. Radio and television programming is filled with advertisements of agencies offering ‘debt reduction’ services. And these are not mortgage debts, but credit card debts. And the rider? The agency only wants you to contact them if your debt is over $10,000. Just to add some context, the per capita income of the United States is $46,000.

Of course consumption is not bad per se and neither is the capitalist system, even if equitable distribution is not the greatest strength of the capitalist society. It still, compared to most other economic systems, rewards each accordingly to his/ her skill and ability. As we reach the green on the 7th, I tell Waldo about a term that was a favorite with my Economics teacher in school – Conspicuous Consumption. We have been quite familiar with it in India, with the socialist economy deriding the rich and the liberalized free economy now bemoaning it as a consequence of unleashed new wealth and that too not all legal.

‘I heard Osama bin Laden speak after 9/11 on TV,’ says Waldo. ‘His message and method was incorrect but you can see the frustration the Arabs feel. They have all the easy oil money and the only way they know to spend it is the Western way. The way of consumption. They are enraged at why even with the resources, do they have to follow the western way of life. ‘

‘Strangely,’ he summarizes, ‘it is a rage against money’.

I share with Waldo the Indian middle class concept of trying to live within one’s means, of the importance of savings and piggy banks instilled in Indian kids by their parents and how we spent the first forty years post our independence deriding both consumption and money. Gandhi, I tell him, famously said in the context of Western civilization, that he would keep the windows of his open so that winds could blow in from all directions but he would ensure the foundations of the house are strong enough to prevent it from being blown away.

‘He really made things difficult for you guys’, responds Waldo chuckling. We are now on the 8th fairway and I further learn that the golfer next to me was once an artist. ‘I realized over time,’ says Waldo ‘that I had spent many years of my life in fear. Fear of hell and post life. My paintings were an outlet, an expression of the fact that such fears should not exist. That our life is here. It is about what we decide to do with it here. A friend later told me that an Iranian man saw a painting of mine at a small exhibition I had and remarked that this was the message of his religion as well. I felt glad hearing that. At some level I felt I had managed to find a connect with someone from a completely different world and different culture.’

As we reach the 8th green, the light goes dark. The sun has set and it is just about 8 in the evening. We would play the 9th hole in dwindling dusk.

‘So I tell my kids,’ says Waldo, ‘that go out and see the world. Open your minds. Do not be xenophobic. You have nothing to fear. And the more you meet people and cultures, the more you would find similarities.’

‘You know,’ he says as we walk towards the 9th green, ‘when I was growing up in Chile, we used to identify neighbors by their political affiliations. The corner house belonged to a communist, the next door one was social democrat and so on. Now we identify people by the cars they own.’
I tell him that Gandhi once wrote that a man should be known by the quality of his mind and not by the quantity of his possessions. Waldo nods in agreement. We both make par at the 9th, shake hands and walk towards the parking lot.

‘Thank you, it was very interesting speaking to you. I hope I did not talk too much’, he signs off.
Our cars are incidentally parked alongside. He opens his boot, puts in his golf set and waves a final good night to me. As he does that, he points to his BMW SUV and says with a sarcastic laugh,

‘Conspicuous Consumption’

The next day I go to a golf store and buy a brand new set of golf irons for four hundred dollars.

|

Driving a few kilometers out of the town from Leh on to the NH1 towards Srinagar, you are forced to ask yourself a question – how can barren, dry, vast stretches of mountains with not even a speck of grass on them look so beautiful? That is a question that reverberates all through as you breathe, touch and feel Ladakh. The answer is not immediate; the beauty itself is not immediate. Yes, there is snow (slightly unusual for this time of the year) on top of many peaks, but it is not so much the snow as the empty tracts of mountain land that appeal to the eye. They stand, always at a distance of a long sloping ridge and gradually exercise their pull. It is only after a few moments that you realize you are seeing a natural marvel. That barren dry lands can be as beautiful as the bountiful green ones. The peaks of Ladakh stand silent and in isolation, but are a pleasing sight for eyes that have grown accustomed to watching real estate jungles and ghastly unbridled construction on the denuded slopes of India’s other famous hill stations. In Ladakh, you almost wish that you would see nothing, that at every turn you would be greeted by even more emptiness. In Ladakh, you will always feel a sense of space.

I arrive in Leh escaping the blasting heat of Delhi on the 10^th of June (yes, this blog was a little late in coming). For those of you not adventurous enough to drive all the way from Manali to Leh, the only alternative left to reach here is through a flight. A word of advice on that – get your tickets booked at least a month in advance or be prepared to pay through your nose like me. For some strange reason, only three airlines (IA, Jet and Kingfisher) fly to Leh which leads to rates being driven up artificially. And although the lady at the check in counter at Delhi airport told me that the flight was ‘overbooked’ (what the devil is that supposed to mean? Is it a blueline bus that it is overfull?? ), I have heard from others who have travelled that often flights do carry empty seats. Thankfully, the same scarcity does not extend to lodging in Leh which has a multitude of hotels belonging to different categories. The rate for each category is fixed and that provides the assurance that you are not being ripped off with a bad deal. A more advisable thing may be to book a customized travel package that takes away the headache of finding a hotel and trying to arrange a transport. In many ways, Leh is a delightful break from other Indian tourism sectors. It provides mental relaxation from the dreadful activities of haggling for taxi and lodging rates. The Leh taxi union supplies cabs to all hotels with fixed rates and reasonably good drivers. Booking an entire package that has an itinerary for each day can save you the headache of arranging transport for each day. Either way, you can be assured that you won’t be ripped off.

It is unusually wet for this time of the year for Ladakh. My driver, Zakir, who drove me around for the entire duration of my 6 day stay, tells me that it hardly used to rain in the summer months. In Ladakh, the only precipitation is snow. Rains are unknown in this dry desert. The only greenery that you will see shall exist in the periphery of the rivers – Indus on one side and Zanskar on the other. The habitation and agriculture is also centered around these water sources. The only two things that exist anywhere away from the water sources are Buddhist monasteries and army cantonments.

It is difficult to miss the influence of either. Ladakh had a largely Tibetan population in history which was Buddhist to begin with but has now starting converting towards Islam. I was a little surprised to see two mosques bang in the middle of Leh’s central market. A substantial portion of the population is still Buddhist and the influence of its culture over the last many centuries in visible in the multitude of monasteries built on hilltops dotted in Leh’s periphery. A Japanese monk in fact was so moved by the town’s beauty that he got a Shanti Stupa built on a small rising just at the edge of Leh. Today, the balcony of the stupa provides a complete view of the town and the mountains beyond. Most of the Buddhist monasteries were built in the medieval centuries which is a remarkable effort given the fact that the region remains buried under snow for almost 3-4 months of the year making any kind of physical labor near to impossible. In a sense, Ladakh is a pilgrimage site for the devout Buddhist with its multitude of monasteries dotted all around. This is confirmed by an old American rabbi, whom I bump into at the market on the second day of my trip. The rabbi and his wife are on a Buddhist expedition, seeking to explore the various sites in the region. We chat up a bit and he is kind enough to let me explore his I-pad. He is exploring religion and I technology.

The unseasonable rainfall means that the upper reaches have received snow and as we drive towards Pangong Lake on the fifth day of our trip, we start seeing patches of snow on the hills just outside of Leh. Pangong is a 13 mile long fresh water lake with a third of its area located in China. The five hour drive to the lake from Leh is long and tiring and requires one to cross the Chagla Pass, which the Border Roads Organization (BRO) claims is the third highest in the world. As we cross, the pass is covered with about a foot of snow. A BRO truck with migrant laborers from Bihar and Jharkhand has had a rear wheel stuck in the snow and the entire traffic gets held up for half an hour. The migrants, unsuitably clad for snowy and conditions, are asked to jump off the back of the truck to give it a push. Many of them dive straight into the snow lying on the side of the road. There is much consternation among them and amusement among the tourists watching it all happen.

It is a partly cloudy afternoon as we finally reach Pangong, which means that the color of the water oscillates between green and blue. The lake is a bit of a pit stop where you can either stay for an hour, frolic a bit in the cold waters and then head back or you can choose to spend a night in the lakeside camps (consisting of Swiss tents mainly). The only source of refreshment is a small stove lighted by a ladakhi under one of those Swiss tents where you can heat yourself up with some tea or coffee or even sample some Maggi. You would be advised to carry your food when driving along Ladakh; like the topography the stomachs can get pretty barren as one swings up and down the mountains.

The Army is essentially the lifeline of the area and unlike the Kashmir valley, olive green is not a hated color here. Many of the locals in fact derive their incomes by plying jobs for the army during the harsh winter months when no one else sets foot in the area. My driver is one of those – he drives officers around the many cantonments in the area during winter and thus avoids having to move out from Leh to lower altitudes, something that I heard many inhabitants are forced to do. The Army also controls the airfield, which is operated by the Air Force and is the one transportation route that connects Ladakh to the rest of the country during all seasons. At many places, the olive greens are also traffic managers, Khardungla Pass being an example. Khardungla is claimed by the BRO to be the highest motorable pass in the world at about 18000 feet. Like Changla, Khardungla too was under snow as we approached it. The pass lies on the road that leads towards the ecologically beautiful Nubra Valley (a famous tourist stop) and the world (in)famous Siachen glacier. The narrow road passing through Khardungla can experience quite a traffic jam, as we witness on our drive, with half the vehicles driving through towards Nubra and half wanting to turn around and go back to Leh. It is the jawans managing Khardungla that co-ordinate the traffic, somehow able to halt the returning vehicles and letting the passing ones through. Since we are returning back to Leh, that gives us about an hour at the pass which I use to feed myself (Maggi) and try and climb through the snow to the board that proclaims Khardungla’s feat of being the highest motorable road.

The next day I am back at the airport for my overpriced return flight back to Delhi. Because you are flying out of a security sensitive zone, you are required to personally identify your baggage before it gets loaded on the aircraft. I would think that it would be more prudent to do this exercise also for those who land into the area, but no such thing happens on the flights into Leh. Despite the table top runway apprehensions (and Ladakh is a short runway, not really a ‘table top’) the flight takes off smoothly and lands in just under an hour in Delhi, which greets us with 40C hot air. By the time I am home after a ride in a rickety prepaid airport cab, the coolness of Ladakh has worn off. The air conditioner has been switched on. Somehow I don’t crave the cold of Ladakh after being back home, I just crave the emptiness.

|

Are you as mystified and puzzled by this entire Shashi Tharoor – Lalit Modi drama playing out on the TV screens as me? It is now into its fifth day and the matter has assumed such proportions that shoving aside the Women’s Reservation Bill, the Union Budget, Price Rise and the Dantewada massacre, the Opposition has deemed it fit to adjourn parliamentary proceedings over. The controversy ridden Mr.Tharoor found the Lok Sabha quite unlike Twitter where he holds forth without any interference from any pesky followers (you have to be Chetan Bhagat to perhaps have pesky followers on twitter). He was shouted and hounded and now it seems nothing short of his blood or the Prime Minister’s appearance will bring our legislature back to normalcy. Lalit Modi on the other hand has been displaced from his comfortable seating at Koel Poorie’s garish feathery red couch into the slightly uncomfortable embrace of Income Tax officials who, in a sudden awakening of Rip Van Winklesque proportions, have unearthed that there might be some hanky-panky with the way a lot of our IPL franchisees are owned.

So why if I may ask are we subjected to such craziness just the week after Sania and Shoaib? To me this is a classic case of ‘blow the horn and ask for details’ later. The last few days all I have seen in both the newspapers and the TV stations are loud tickers, headlines and allegations (That’s how the Times of India writes the word, italicized – it emphasizes that at the end of the day all they publish in their broadsheet are just allegations). Disappointingly, even the Indian Express, that beacon of investigative and uncomfortable journalism, has only been half heartedly reproducing the same text and claims and counter claims. As always, TV news anchors, specially those who wear indignation and self-righteousness on their face every night at 9pm have been quick to take sides and loudly proclaim conflict of interest and impropriety.

So all we know is that Kochi won the bid, Modi says that Sunanda Pushkar and others own ‘free equity’ in the franchise, the media takes over and says that Sunanda was the one we photographed Tharoor going around with and as per our grapevine the two are close ‘personal’ friends, Modi says Tharoor asked not to question the ownership, media says that means the Minister used a woman for proxy and benefited from the franchise win and that all that talk of mentoring the franchise for Kerela was a hogwash, Tharoor denies, IPL Kochi denies, Rs 75 crs are calculated and the opposition wants a CBI enquiry. In between all this, the BCCI, completely caught unawares by a storm rapidly engulfing them, censure Modi on Day 1 and then in their own time tested way start dealing with the affair completely non-transparently and off the record. The self righteous news anchor says Tharoor cant hide behind self-righteousness (a bit rich coming from him, don’t you think?), another anchor says the Minister should have known that getting involved in the bid would expose him to such questions and so we all await the next act of the drama.

Much like the Times of India, all I hear are allegations and insinuations along with calls for the Minister to resign. So let’s take it step by step. Tharoor encouraged the Kochi franchise we all know, he himself admitted as much on the day of the bid. The franchise has given what they call ‘Sweat Equity’ (and I must admit it is time that journos open up Google and read up what Sweat equity means), not just to Pushkar but to a host of other individuals along with Rendezvous Sports themselves in consideration of management and other services. We also know that Tharoor knows the lady in question, they have been publically seen and he has never sought to deny his close personal ties. These are all the facts that we know. The rest are the allegations, which if we talk only of Tharoor, boil down to this. The Minister used his influence, either as an MP or as a member of the Union Government, to influence the sale of the franchise to Kochi and in lieu of the same, the franchise allotted ‘free equity’ to his proxy which, given the value of the bid made by the franchise comes to a cool Rs 75 crs. So let’s take the debatable questions here –

a) a) Can a franchisee offer free or sweat equity to its owners/ members? Yes, as per law they are legally permitted to do so. In fact the ESOPs offered by the companies to their many employees are also an indirect form of sweat equity where labour is rewarded with ownership.

b) b) Should franchise ownership have been declared openly by Modi? Yes, because it is in everyone’s interests to know who owns and has a pie in the IPL but also No, if Modi as an IPL governing council member was bound to confidentiality by the franchise agreement.

c) c) Is Sunanda Pushkar a proxy for Tharoor? Maybe or maybe not. There is no definite answer to this question because it is a matter of perception. Had she been a Rabri Devi to a Laloo Yadav, the answer would have been an unequivocal yes. But if the lady has a professional background that can be proven (which is itself subject to unclear answers), then the yes get a bit diluted. Make up your mind on that. The only doubt I have, is if Tharoor was so clever as to outwit Modi and get Kochi a franchise over all others, then why would he be stupid enough to get his consideration allotted to a woman who could so easily have been discovered by the media and others? I can agree that he is politically naïve, but is he so plain dumb?

d) d) The key question though is – Did Tharoor subvert a fair bidding process and get Kochi a deal over other deserving winners? And this I believe is the crux of the argument. All other allegations of consideration, sweat equity, influence peddling and seeking to keep the details under wraps stem from this one basic point. Did the Minister in any way use his office or rank to bulldoze the BCCI to allot his people a franchise over the Adanis and Videocon? The answer may lie in the silence that surrounds this question. Modi, for all his noise and claims, has not even once brought this up. Surprisingly, the media has not asked this as well, choosing to focus on Sunanda Pushkar and the Rs 75 crs. It is easy to understand the silence though isn’t it? The moment Modi says that the bidding was subverted, the entire structure of the IPL comes crashing down on both his and BCCI’s head. For what that means then is that the IPL Commissioner and the game’s governing body allowed ‘auction fixing’ instead of raising a noise or postponing it all together. (They did postpone it earlier though when the BCCI believed that Modi had set too strong a set of conditions to allow fair bidding for the new franchises, and perhaps therein lies the answer to this story). You can see why Modi will never say this and why the BCCI will always maintain that the auction was an honest affair. Circumstantially then it is evident that the allegation of influencing and subverting a ‘sealed bid’ auction, certified as fair and proclaimed as a success by both Modi and BCCI, being guided and fixed by the junior Minister for Foreign Affairs is a bit thin as of now.

The only charge which then holds is that of someone holding consideration on his behalf. If the auction was not subverted, and if Sunanda is indeed a marketing dodo in her own capacity (would the media have raised this question if she was not a half attractive woman who was purportedly ‘seeing’ a publically visible Minister?), then what pray is the consideration for? Blessings?

Mentorship? Perhaps future insurance for government benefits? But then should it not have been given to someone in the state government from whom all the clearances and ‘benefits’ will be required? Can you think of an answer to this question?

The other charge that remains is of being associated with supposedly ‘fishy’ people and exposing oneself to conflict of interest. Since when have we started pillorying any Indian public face for being connected with people perceived to be ‘fishy’? Or have we ever questioned any politician for the conflict of interest that arises that when they get into sport bodies? Last I saw, all of them were going along fine. Media anchors and owners have conflicts of interests, giving prime time slots to their blood relatives – we never question them or bring them down.

Of course I could be wrong and Tharoor could be as neck deep in muck as Harshad Mehta, but I wonder why our newspapers and news channels don’t get away from ‘allegation’ reporting to perceptive and analytical reporting.

As for Lalit Modi, he clearly has bitten much more than he can chew and is now living on borrowed time. The one entity you do not want to confront head on is the Indian government and this is Modi’s second attempt at that after his run in with the Home Minister over the holding of IPL II in an election bound India last year. I have a suspicion that the script has not played out entirely the way Modi wanted it to and that he did not anticipate that his own neck and finances would end up on the chopping block before Tharoor’s. I also wonder whether many in the BCCI will finally see this as a chance to ease him out of the IPL or atleast cut him to size.

The Congress may be embarrassed, Tharoor maybe nervous, the Opposition belligerent but the only entity that has been harmed by this entire Modi triggered affair is the IPL. Questions will be asked and comparisons drawn with the Stanford sleaze. The tournament is estimated to contribute almost 40% of the revenues to the BCCI in the current year. No one wants a golden goose to be strangled, least of all some of India’s leading politicians who sit in the IPL governing council. Tharoor may survive if Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi can summon the patience, Modi it seems is a whistle blowing liability the BCCI can ill afford.

|

Unlike a lot of other posts that you have read on this blog, this one is going to lack a theme. These are just ramblings. I have been meaning to write but events have been out pacing me and the sudden heat that has come over North India a little too early has sapped my stamina and patience a bit. So have the mosquitoes. Summer comes and I turn into an anopheles swatter. For the first time in many seasons I did not even have the energy to stay up late and watch Barcelona and Bayern Munich play in the Champions League.

What keeps me going though is Lalit Modi's circus. The 8pm daily dose of bat hitting the ball is not exactly just and pure cricket but it is entertaining none the less. And I am a sucker for it. This season I am specially hooked. Because it allows me to watch Tendulkar in action for a few more weeks. I have been watching him since he hit those sixes of Abdul Qadir in 1989 and this frankly has been his best year - perhaps even better than 1998. Another player whom I sit in front of my television to watch is Anil Kumble, who ironically is India's best T20 bowler at the moment, at a ripe age of 39. Besides Kumble and Tendulkar, giving the timeline and conventional T20 logic a bit of a spin is Jacques Kallis, who seems set to keep that hideous looking orange cap on his head for the remainder of the tournament. And while T20 is compulsorily required to be all about sixes, fours and batsmen carting the bowlers around, I have taken a few sighs of satisfaction at how decent totals like 160 and 180 have been competitive, at how the slowness of the Indian tracks is causing the likes of Gilchrist, Symonds and other hitters to struggle, at how, once again, a lot of young Indian players (Saurabh Tiwary, Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Umesh Yadav, Rajgopal Satish) are making their presence felt and emphasizing the fact that a team in the IPL is as much about the 7 Indian players who take the field as it is about the 4 overseas ones whom the owners have splashed cash to purchase in the high stakes auction. You only have to be supporting the Deccan Chargers to realize the importance of that last point.

But I also have my irritants about the IPL - and you shall notice almost none of them relate to cricket. Why do we need advertisements between deliveries in an over is beyond me. The only time I look forward to them is when Sivaramakrishnan has mike close to his mouth. Also, I have realized that the mute button on my TV remote has a perfect positive co-relation with the appearance of Navjot Sidhu on the screen. This time around he has a new mate in Boria Majumdar at Times Now, who after a losing his patience and opportunity to speak in the first few episodes has now decided to keep rattling along just as Sidhu does. The end result is that there is more pandemonium in that show than even in zero hour of Parliament. But of course, Sidhu would not know about that. His was one of the lowest attendances in the previous Lok Sabha.

What I also fail to understand is the complete loss of proportion when it comes to describing the action on the screen. Either the commentators have written contractual obligations that say that every wicket is a moment of success, every six has to be described as a DLF Maximum and every catch is of 'Kamaal' or they have simply forgotten how to use adjectives. I wonder what the case really is since I have noticed both Harsha Bhogle and the slyly sarcastic Ian Bishop refraining from gratifying Lalit Modi's principal sponsors too frequently.

The only silver lining with respect to the IPL coverage is CNN-IBN's late night show with Cyrus and his silly jokes and Harsha Bhogle with his matter of fact analysis that escapes most of his colleagues in the commentary box. The others either shout and scream ala Messrs Sidhu and Bor(e)ia or just seem disinterested (NDTV, with their 'expert' Ajay Jadeja going on a holiday in the second half of the tournament).

Other than that, the last few days have been about the highly relevant national icons Mr.Amitabh Bachchan and soon to be the second Mrs.Shoaib Malik. Now as far as Mr.Bachchan is concerned, I can understand his anger. Even I would be irritated if despite all the acting achievements, advertisements and other performance, people deliberately fail to recognize me and get themselves photographed with me. Mr.Bachchan is a free citizen and he has every right to endorse every brand that he likes, whether it is Mulayam Singh Yadav's (and earlier Amar Singh's too) Samajwadi Party or BJP's Narendra Modi - Ok, let me rephrase that - whether it is Uttar Pradesh's development under a benevolent sarkar (UP mein hain dum, crime yahaan hain kum!) or Gujarat's vibrant tourism. The Congress should mind its own business and let the Bachchans alone! What sacrilege to even ignore and question such a national icon!

As for Shoaib and his new wife, I am too bored to write anything. I have never been a fan of both of them, have never admired either their looks or their sporting performances. My only reaction when I heard of this union - rotf...lmao...

tepid aint it....i told you its the summer...it does that to me...

|

One screaming hot afternoon in Chandigarh, I settled down in front of my grandfather’s eight year old, curve screened Salora television set to watch a game of cricket. The date was the 21st of May and I had reached the city to spend the summer vacations after celebrating my birthday on the 19^th. The spirits, you can guess, were high. I was in the room to the back of the house, occupied by a cousin sister who worked with a local newspaper and who every summer would be kind enough to share it with me as I spent the days bouncing around Sectors 46, 47 and 33 of Chandigarh with a set of three cousin brothers. My sister’s room was the boiling pot of the house – even the kitchen with all the cooking, burning and frying happening in it, struggled to match the temperatures and heat that could be reached there as it was serenaded by the sun post noon since it faced west. This natural anomaly was compounded by the fact that the only mechanism to control the heat was a cooler which for some quirky reason that my grandfather struggled all his life post retirement to discover, would blow cold air only from one half of its screen while spouting the atmospheric hot one from the rest.

At half past three, a delayed start to compensate for the equally blazing hot weather in Chennai, the game was all set to begin. My grandfather and I, bathed in sweat and shirts off, considered the Indian prospects while my grandmother slept comfortably in a much cooler room in the front of the house that was far away from any rays of the sun. This was 1997, India was playing Pakistan in the Independence Cup (there was a slew of them in 97 and 98 with all the four cricketing nations of the sub-continent celebrating half a century of good riddance from the British and in case of the Bangladeshis, from the Pakistanis) and this was the big ticket clash. Both teams had a win and loss under their belt by then. Sri Lanka had already qualified for the final and this was the last league game and a virtual semi. The expectation was high, even though those were the days of the disappointing 90s when victories over Pakistan had been scarce.

In the second over of the match, came perhaps the only moment of joy of the entire evening for the Indian fan. Shahid ‘Ball Chewer’ Afridi, skied a catch that was comfortably held by Ganguly at mid-off. The danger man was gone and there was a feeling of anticipation and relief. The next few hours belied all. The languid and fluid Saeed Anwar, still in his clean shaven avataar, played havoc with the bowling. Subject to an attack that comprised of the laboring medium pace of Kuruvilla, slow predictable left arm spin of Sunil Joshi and the fizzing leg breaks of Kumble, Anwar embarked on a feast. There were the side dishes as well such as eighteen overs of part time medium pace dished out by Tendulkar and Robin Singh. And of course, the icing on the cake was the lanky seamer from Karnatka who over the course of his career helped many an international left-handed batsman such as Jayasuriya, Anwar and even Curtly Ambrose to improve their career averages – Venky Prasad. Anwar reached a quick fifty and then fell down with cramps in the 18^th over, post which Afridi came back to run for him. He reached a 100, conserved energy and drank fluids, had three big partnerships and hurt Indian egos no end. Despite all the bonhomie and friendship during those IK Gujral days of 1997, this was nothing but a plain and simple humiliation. Anwar overtook Viv Richards’ record of the highest individual one day score and a prospect of India letting a Pakistani batsman hit 200 against them in a one-day game looked very real. Six shy of that, Anwar looped a soft catch to Ganguly again at short fine leg. I was 14, had watched a lot of cricket by then, but was still fiercely parochial and patriotic and took pleasure out of Anwar being denied a double. What happened in the rest of the game was immaterial. Dravid hit a valiant hundred, was denied a runner by Pakistan who very quickly forgot how Anwar had made his runs and India fell short by 35 and were booted out of their own Independence party.

Which is why, sadistically, yesterday’s knock of Sachin Tendulkar’s is a such a big jewel for any Indian fan to flaunt. Pakistan are no longer the team of the 90s, India has far more match winners in their team than the bare looking team of 97 and cricket has come a long way in the last 12 years. But still, if there was one person whom you wished/ fantasized/ prayed for overtaking Anwar, it was Tendulkar. Tendulkar, who did it batting a full fifty overs, at a better strike rate, without a runner and still came back to field in the second innings! You may call me a meano or a jingoist, but for a young fan who sat through each and every shot of that Anwar inning, this was revenge as sweet, sadistic and cynical as it comes.

|

I began my Republic Day by watching the new Mile Sur video on a news channel. Aptly titled ‘Phir Mile Sur’, it’s the same composition with the old underlying tune but suitably modified to reflect new trends in Indian music (multiplicity of instruments and fusion being prominent) as well the new faces on our Hindi movie scene. The makers could perhaps have attempted to reduce the Bollywood flavor of the video and introduced a more nuanced regional perspective (but certainly not S.Sreesanth, as one friend demanded on Facebook after seeing the video earlier on YouTube!). ‘Phir Mile Sur’, despite some tackiness quotient, is a decent reflection of how much India has changed over the last two decades. When the original was released, the year was 1989-90 and the nation was in a vortex of internal instability. A coalition government had just taken oath in New Delhi after the grand fall of Rajiv Gandhi’s super majority. Kashmir was beginning to simmer and Punjab had been festering for almost a decade. Then there were the recurring disputes of the Northeast and on top of all this was the Mandal genie released by VP Singh in the autumn of 1990 leading to self-immolations, massive protests and civil unrest in Delhi (I remember my school being closed for a few days when the situation had gotten seriously tense). For someone who would sit alongside his father and watch the state drafted news bulletin every night on gloomy Doordarshan, the words ‘Khalistan’, ‘Militancy’, ‘Encounter’, ‘Unity and Integrity’ (a favorite of the Prime Ministers of those days), ‘Tarn Taran’ (Punjab’s most violent district) and ‘Curfew’ very quickly became a part of the lexicon. And I did not even have to run to a dictionary to understand what they meant. The context of those days provided all the meaning. In the backdrop of all this and the economic uncertainty that followed a year later along with Rajiv Gandhi’s bloody assassination, India needed a ‘Mile Sur’ to make some attempt, howsoever feeble, to remind us of the clichéd ‘Unity in Diversity’ model of our political sustenance.

Two decades later, the uncertainties have changed with one critical difference. Most of them are external and not internal. The language of ‘Unity and Integrity’ has now been replaced by that of ‘Development and Growth’. The old distant terrorism that urban India knew of only through DD’s daily news is now a phenomenon that we have recognized as a daily classless danger to be lived with and confronted. Our internal contradictions of the 80s, like old skin, have been shed and our new fault lines will be a friction of ideas centering on how growing aspirations in a rising economy should be catered. Separate smaller states will be demanded, not only because they promise a symbol of identity, but because they hold the promise of overturning the economic neglect and offer opportunities for ‘sharing of riches’. The gun toting Naxal may be wiped out but discontent in rural India will not be unless we achieve a greater allocation of benefits and decide on how best to acquire land equitably. In that sense, perhaps India still needs a ‘Phir Mile Sur’ not to remind us that we share one political legacy of unity but perhaps to hold out the assertion that as the efforts of that legacy begin to bear economic fruit in the coming decades, we all are entitled to our legitimate slices of the pie.

So how much have we really changed in the two decades after that depressing autumn of 1990? I was recently watching a YouTube clip containing highlights of the games from the Hero Cup held in the winter of 1993. It’s an event cricket historians seem to have forgotten. It still remains the last time India won a five team one-day international tournament. It was also the first time that the BCCI sold television rights to a satellite TV channel (Star) instead of Doordarshan leading to litigation at one end and cricket’s TV boom at the other. On the clip I saw, the boundary hoardings consisted of the following prominent brands – Hero Puch, Modiluft, Peerless, Directors Special, Vimal, Kelvinator, Coramandel Cement, Yamaha and Pennzoil. That covers a decent number of sectors of the industry in terms of representation. Notice the one that it doesn’t – Telecom; because telecom would only be deregulated towards the end of the 90s and would go on to change lives in a remarkably similar way as the diminutive little Maruti 800 did. Notice another omission –no cola companies in the above list. While Pepsi came back into the Indian market around 1990, Coke wouldn’t come till 1993-94 and the real advertising war between the two giants for the large Indian middle class purse would begin only mid-90s onwards with star power being recruited and campaigns often turning nasty.

The cricket example above though, is only symbolic. Just as telecom is virtually a separate sector of the economy today in terms of the sheer impact it has on lives, the economic reforms of 1991 have perhaps singly overtaken any other event in defining the India of the last two decades. The reforms opened opportunities, mostly in the urban centers, brought global brands to India, gave a fillip to the economy and enlarged our wallets. Larger wallets in turn meant that the world started looking at us as a mass of people with an economic aspiration to spend and a social aspiration to climb. It is no wonder that every significant consumer as well enterprise product and service company is present in India today enamored by a market that promises top line growth of double digits which is no longer possible in a saturated market back home in the US or Europe. Good or bad, the one basic outcome of the reforms was that money was no longer a bad word. Consumption was suddenly an aspiration and not a moral sin. The political empowerment of India with the coming out of multiple political parties in the 1990s would be accompanied by an economic empowerment that would in some way, though perhaps not entirely and effectively, permeate every section of society. We only have to look at ourselves to realize the extent of the shift.

In 1991, my father’s office still had round dial telephones and there was no aspiration in my family to own a similar one at home. My father drove a white Premier Padmini (Fiat as we knew it then) that perhaps had the most awkward gearbox ever seen in a car on Indian roads. Computers and software were something you didn’t even read about in the newspapers let alone see one in your school or own one at home. TV still meant Doordarshan which would close its telecast between 11am to 2pm and 3.30pm to 7pm every day unless there was a cricket match on. Vacations anywhere in excess of 500kms meant budgeting a total of 4 days for to and fro travel by train. There were no brands of denim jeans. The only shoes you could wear were Bata, Liberty or Action. The only toothpaste you would use was a Colgate and the only soap you would use was a Hamam. The only fast food outlet in Delhi was Nirulas, the only rum my grandfather could drink was the army canteen issued Old Monk (a favorite passed on through generations) and the only decent whiskey available to him was Red Knight made by Mohan Meakin in Solan. Need I say more!

I sometimes wonder if we ourselves have grasped the impact of the last two decades. Time is never a constant and every decade or so, some nostalgic blogger like me would reflect on the years gone by and how life has changed. Every generation feels it has passed through the most impactful change. As children of the economic liberalization of this country, my generation can at least claim to have witnessed the transition first hand. How impactful it would turn to out to be for the longer destiny of India is something that as always, history and posterity can dwell upon at leisure.

P.S. – The Indian Express this morning carried a beautiful five page feature on landmark judicial cases and the personalities behind them that influenced both the working and the interpretation of the Indian Constitution. Stretching across the 60 years of the document’s existence, it highlighted the men and women, jurists and lawyers who sought to enforce the tenets of our governing document in our day to day lives. Express began the series with a case that it called the most important ever in the history of Indian constitutional law. In early 1973, a 13 member bench of the Supreme Court (the largest ever gathering of justices summoned to debate a judicial matter in the country’s history till date) decided by a wafer thin majority of 7-6 against the State and in favor of a temple priest. The judgment was historic in that it placed the Constitution above the Parliament and entailed that there was a certain ‘basic structure’ of the Constitution that Parliament could not alter even with an amendment. This basic structure included among other things the fundamental rights of life, liberty and equality. In the coming three decades, the Courts would use this principle to drive the primacy of fundamental rights (most recently in the Sec 377 case last year where the right to equality was sighted) and uphold the rights of the ordinary citizen against the high-handedness of the executive. That single judgment made the difference between the Indian Constitution being a living, thriving document impacting the lives of its citizens or being a set of rules of a banana diplomacy that a despotic government could change at will and a compliant judiciary would endlessly blink over.

|