Letters

Dear Abheek Barman

Dear Abheek Barman

In an editorial article in the Times of India today, justifying Indira Gandhi’s centralization of power in the 1960s, you ask: “How would Indian politics – indeed, the Indian nation – look like today, if say, Morarjibhai or Nijalingappa had become prime ministers in the late-1960s?”

Allow me present to you a list of some of Indira’s achievements. 1969: Nationalization of banks. 1976: Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. 1976: Urban Land Ceiling Act. 1976 and 1982: amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act. 1975: The Emergency. And so on.

Mr Barman, surely you’re aware of the massive cost that these measures inflicted on our poor country. If so, let me ask you just one question: How on earth could anyone have been worse?

Regards

Amit Varma

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PS: The Nehru-Gandhi Legacy of Shame.

Dear Pratibha Patil

Dear Pratibha Patil

I read in DNA today that 400 trees have been chopped off in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as preparation for your visit there. The report says that some of these were cut “since they blocked the view of the beach from where the President would be sitting.”

I hope you enjoy your stay there. Have a great 2008.

Regards

Amit Varma

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Previously…

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Update: Reader Rex Mathew draws my attention to what Ms Patil’s predecessor did in a similar situation.

Dear Cynthia Mort

Dear Cynthia Mort

In a recent story in the New York Observer, you’ve been quoted as saying, “A guy’s penis is the same as a woman’s breast or vagina. I don’t understand the difference in respect to showing something.”

Here’s the difference: Breasts are beautiful. Penises are ugly. I can barely stand to look at mine, in fact, despite the huge amounts of pleasure it has given me. I’m sure most men share my feelings—especially those whose paunch obstructs the view. And for the opposite sex, it is simply not as much of an object of desire as breasts are, which is why there is no such thing as a penis cleavage.

Also, for sound evolutionary reasons, there is a far greater market for shots of bare breasts than of uncovered penises. It’s your prerogative to show what you want on your show, of course, and I respect your view that actors should be “honest and authentic in every way.” But please don’t say there is no difference between the two.

Regards

Amit Varma

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Link via email from Sanjeev.

Dear Sitaram Yechuri

Dear Sitaram Yechuri

In an article today in the Hindustan Times, you state that those who “compare Nandigram with Gujarat are not only belittling the tragedy of the 2002 carnage but are, in fact, extending support to Modi and giving a degree of legitimacy to the communal carnage.”

I fail to see how you can come to this remarkable conclusion. It is like saying that those who compare Stalin’s murder of millions to Hitler’s murder of millions are “extending support” to Hitler and “giving a degree of legitimacy” to him.

It may be difficult for you to fathom, but it is possible to be against both Nandigram 2007 and Gujarat 2002. In both events, the state allowed the law-and-order machinery to stand by as their own goons took matters into their own hands. In both cases, people were raped and murdered. The details may differ, but there is no moral difference between what the governments of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Narendra Modi did. Both deserve our highest contempt.

Equally, it is possible to feel contempt for both the Hindutva Right and the Communist Left. In different ways, both deny individual rights and freedoms. And contrary to what you would like us to believe, there is a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

In the rest of your piece, you take task with the BJP for being hypocrites when it comes to free speech. I agree with you there. But after your party’s hypocrisy on Nandigram, you can hardly claim the moral high ground.

Regards

Amit Varma

Dear VK Malhotra

Dear VK Malhotra

In your official capacity as deputy leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha, and its parliamentary party spokesperson, you recently made a demand that Taslima Nasreen “be given full protection and citizenship.” You also said, “India believes in freedom of speech.”

I would like to applaud your sentiment. I have just one question for you: Does this mean you no longer have a problem with MF Hussain?

Regards

Amit Varma

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Link via email from BV Harish Kumar.

Nalanda

Dear Jeffrey Garten

Nalanda is in Bihar.

Regards

Amit Varma

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Link via email from Arjun Swarup.

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Update: I would normally never bother to actually explain a quip, but at least 15 readers have written in assuming that I implied in this post that Garten said that Nalanda is not in Bihar. Nothing of the sort. I was simply making the point that Nalanda happens to be in a state where the rule of law is absent, and therefore it is strange to think of building a world-class university there. I wasn’t clear enough, I guess, so mea culpa!

Dear Rahul Gandhi

This is the 36th installment of my weekly column for Mint, Thinking it Through.

Dear Rahul

Congratulations on your recent elevation as general secretary of the Congress party. Yes, I know, it was just a formality, and there’s more to come. Still, it’s a start, and one that you used to make a statement.

Shortly after getting this post, you took a delegation to Manmohan Singh and asked for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) to be extended to all 593 districts of this country. A couple of days later, the Prime Minister announced that extension. With this, you demonstrated your clout in the party, and you also made a gesture of commitment towards the poor people of this country.

I have a question, though. Have you had a chance to look at the reports evaluating the NREGS that have been released recently? One of them, by the Society for Participatory Research in Asia, found that just 6% of the households registered under the scheme actually got 100 days of employment in 2006-07. Another, carried out by the Centre of Environment and Food Security (CEFS) a few months ago, is even more worrying.

“(A)bout 75% of the (NREGS) funds spent in Orissa have been siphoned and pocketed by the government officials,” it reports, “and this loot has been very participatory and organized.” The CEFS could not find “a single case where entries in the job cards are correct and match with the actual number of workdays physically verified with the villagers”. The report concludes: “(O)ut of Rs733 crore spent in Orissa during 2006-7, more than Rs500 crore has been siphoned and pocketed by the government officials of executing agencies.”

These figures are astonishing, for one-third of the money has not been reported as siphoned off. As your father, Rajiv Gandhi, once remarked, only about 15% of government spending on the poor reaches the intended beneficiary. India’s chief justice, K.G. Balakrishnan, recently spoke out against the Public Distribution System, saying that in some states, “not a single grain reaches the common man”.

A common reaction to these findings would be: “Oh, the programmes are OK, it’s the implementation that has been faulty. We just need to fix that, and all will be well.” But Rahul, surely you know that these are not aberrations that can be sorted out with a committee here and an inquiry panel there. This corruption is written into the system itself.

It is in the nature of government to want to increase its power, influence and budgets. This is exacerbated when government servants are unaccountable and tenured, as they effectively are in India. Government servants, like other rational human beings, look to their self-interest first. All their incentives are tailored towards misuse of power, with no safeguards built into the system against it.

Even if you could magically transform every bureaucrat in India into a paragon of honesty, a scheme like the NREGS would still be a mistake. That is because the scheme has a cost: The money spent on it doesn’t come from the heavens, but from your maidservant and your driver and millions of poor people in this country, who may never file returns, but are constantly assailed by hidden taxes.

Leave aside the many ways in which you could spend this money better: solving India’s power shortage, building roads to connect India’s hinterlands so that smaller urban centres can take the load off the big cities, and so on. If you just leave this money with the taxpayers to begin with, they will put it to more productive use than an unaccountable government spending someone else’s money. Also, individuals will have more incentives to work hard if they are taxed less, and businesses will have more resources available for expansion, all of which benefits the economy, raises productivity and creates jobs.

Indeed, if it’s employment you really want to provide, the best way to do so would be to remove the barriers to private enterprise that exist in this country. Put an end to the licence and inspection raj, reform our labour laws, abolish the laws that agricultural land can only be used for agricultural purposes, remove the restrictions on many goods being manufactured by anyone other than “small scale units”, and welcome foreign investment. All of these will provide far more employment than the well-intentioned but ill-conceived NREGS.

Rahul, in the same breath that the media acknowledges you as a future leader of this country, it mocks you for having nothing but your family name as your qualification. Prove us wrong. Reject received wisdom, learn from the lessons of the past 60 years, and convince your party that the key to India’s prosperity lies not in the actions of its government, but in the enterprise of its people. Set them free.

All the best.

Amit

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Also read: My WSJA Op-ED on the subject that appeared today, How Not to Help India’s Rural Poor.

My Op-Ed from two years ago: Good Intentions, Bad Ideas.

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My thanks to Prem Panicker, fellow Warrior Against Wastage, for sending me the reports referred to in this piece.

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You can browse through all my columns for Mint in my Thinking it Through archives.

Dear Navjot Sidhu and Hu Jintao

This is the 28th installment of my weekly column for Mint, Thinking it Through.

Dear Navjot Sidhu

Recently on a television show, I am told, you criticised the Indian Cricket League (ICL), and the players signing up with it, on the grounds that “they are in it for the money.” You found this reprehensible, clearly feeling that the profit motive was a bad thing. I wish to congratulate you on your beliefs. They were once shared by no less than Jawaharlal Nehru, who described “profit” as “a dirty word.” Indeed, I have heard that when he got angry at someone, he would abuse him or her by shouting, “You, you… you Profit!” But that could be apocryphal.

Mr Sidhu, allow me to express how much I admire your values. Shunning profit, as you surely do if your actions mirror your words, takes immense fortitude. You are always smartly dressed, with your turban matching your tie, despite buying clothes only from people who manufacture and sell them as a social service. When you eat out with your better half, who is also named Navjot and is therefore the better Navjot, you only eat at restaurants that were not begun to make a profit, but to help needy diners like yourself. Indeed, you buy no goods or services manufactured with the profit motive, and I really must ask you sometime where you shop. You also clearly accept absolutely no money for the entertainment you provide us on television, which is very kind of you. Your magnanimity has moved me.

I also admire how, being a man of principle, you do not allow reality to distort your beliefs. The BCCI has just announced a massive raise for its players, as well as greater prize money in domestic tournaments. This is clearly because they have felt the heat of competition that the ICL provides. It is good for the players, who now have more options, and will earn more money no matter what they choose. It is also wonderful for us cricket viewers, who also have more choice. But you have seen through these narrow, selfish considerations, and have stuck to the principle of profit being a bad thing, regardless of its consequences. Wow. It takes great conviction to stick to one’s beliefs in the face of reality, and I applaud you for doing so.

That is all for now. To my great shame, I need to now write a column for profit, and am not capable of the renunciation you clearly practise. I look forward to seeing you again on television, it is always a profitable experience for me.

Oops.

Yours sincerely

Amit Varma

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Dear Hu Jintao

Hao du yu du? I write to you today both to congratulate you and to express a complaint. I shall begin with the complaint, which is, in a sense, a compliment, for it could be made about few totalitarian leaders. I sincerely hope you will not take it amiss, or I will be in trouble after I die.

Recently while surfing the evil capitalist website of the exploitative Reuters Newsweek, I came upon the news that your government has “banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.” The report went on to state: “‘According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is ‘an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.’”

My complaint is this: I make my living as a writer, and one of the genres I like to try my hand at, no doubt with great ineptness, is satire. But with this move of yours, you have made satire redundant. What manner of satire can match this reality? What can I ever write again without looking at that news item and saying, “Aw, but I can’t be as good as Hu.” And you weren’t even trying!

My complaint is a minor quibble compared to the admiration that gushes out of me. For long, people have protested at the “fatal conceit” that the state can control the economy, and fulfil the needs of its citizens. History has shown that prosperity and freedom go hand in hand, a notion that was a threat to you – until now.

You have now made a magnificent conceptual leap that renders any opposition futile. The earthly domains may be hard to control directly, but by regulating the heavens, you have finished all resistance. Who will dare to fight against you when they know that it is not just their life at stake, but also their afterlife. As that popular Hindi song goes, “Bachke tu jaayegi kahaan.”

Indeed, I hope with all my earthly heart that the Indian government follows your example, and outlaws all unauthorized reincarnation, or even ascents to heaven in those religions that have them. I will apply for the job of the babu granting reincarnation licenses. People will pay anything for a suitable afterlife, and there is surely much money to be made there. That is a heavenly prospect.

Yours sincerely

Amit Varma

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You can browse through all my columns for Mint in my Thinking it Through archives. I’d earlier blogged about the reincarnation story here.