CHALLENGE Modernize Governance System

I presume that K.Venu needs any introduction for any Malayalee.  His travel from being a staunch Naxalite to an ardent supporter of Democracy and Democratic Capitalism is spell binding. For those uninitiated ones, a small intro is given below. this appeared in the Internet

"Where religion wasn’t a convincing catalyst, economics was. K Venu was a Naxal ideologue who once debated principles with Charu Majumdar himself in Kolkata. In 1970, Venu was on the editorial board of a government publication when he was mistakenly arrested and jailed in connection with various Naxal incidents. The assaults were actually carried out by another group. During the Emergency, Venu’s group attacked a police station in Kozhikode; he was caught again and incarcerated for five years. Jail time led his comrades to God but it only convinced Venu that “a Maoist-model revolution would not succeed in a parliamentary democracy”.
Till the early 1990s he led a peaceable Naxal splinter group that did nothing more than talk tough; he finally disbanded it just about when the Indian economy was liberalised. (In 1996, he contested the Assembly election on a Congress-led United Democratic Front ticket.) Since then this former revolutionary has passionately embraced the principles of free-market economics. “Don’t call me a contractor or real estate promoter. [I’m] just constructing houses and selling them for nominal margins,’’ he says of his new occupation. But in Olarikkara village near Thrissur in north Kerala, architect-cum-engineer Venu has a reputation: good homes at good prices. A multi-faceted man, the 56-year-old zoology major is also the author of Prabanjavum Manushyanum (Universe and Man)—Malayalam literature’s first science fiction novel. His latest literary project is a Darwin encyclopedia to mark the scientist’s 200th birth anniversary.
A staunch supporter of industrialisation, his new-fangled ideas have earned him critics in every quarter, from communists to green groups and NGOs. “It is impossible to infuse democracy into Marxism. Only in capitalism, democrats can find a place. So as a real democrat, I am opposing Stalinism and all of its dogmas,” says Venu."

I saw an article in the Matrubhumi in the month of June this year. It was written when the present Umman Chandi government was completing its 100 days of governance. Though addressed to the present Kerala Government; I feel any one who aspire to have a clean Democratic Setup should be reading this.
I have made an attempt to translate the same (only some relevant portions) and present it for my readers.
Kindly share your valuable opinions

The chief minister has impressed upon the requirement of transparency in governance and the need to eradicate corruption from all quarters of the system; - a noble and appreciable matter indeed. But for the efforts to bear fruit, the approach to the subject should have a total re-look. 

Our political leadership strongly believes that the bedrock of a Democracy is its rule of law and this rule of law in turn is established and run by a bureaucracy.  Though it may ring true, there is a fundamental flaw in this line of thinking. Importantly one has to assess whether the particular bureaucracy is a democratically constituted one or not.

 The kind of bureaucracy prevalent here was first established by a feudalistic set up. It was then taken over by the colonial rulers.  If the official from peon to the top most officers in a government establishment behaves like a lord, towards the common man, it is because we are still following the same old legacy completely. They still are either not convincingly aware or conveniently ignorant that, in a democratic set up the police and other bureaucrats should be the servants of the public and not vice versa.  

This rule of law established by the bureaucrats who are not democratised will not democratic. This anti-people nature of the government cannot be abolished  or even curtailed by any of the chief minister’s programmes like “meet the people” etc.

There is one more drawback to the Kerala Bureaucracy. A good majority of them, including the Gazetted officers, belong to the unions which are left oriented. Though it may appear that their influence has improved the governing apparatus; the fact is just the opposite. 

Here the communist left wing had never stood as the saviours of Democracy. As far as they are concerned protection of their right is their Democracy. They never had even an iota of concern for others rights. They never considered ‘having respect for opposition’ as a virtue, or an important credo of democracy.  They are lead by the ideology of destroying the opposition, and not respecting them.

 This view easily gels with the doctrines of the existing feudalistic-colonial bureaucracy. In order to serve this common interest, the left unions are not only against the modernisation of the system but also encourage status-quo. Since their unions are very powerful even the up-right and able superior officers are turning out to be helpless.

It is a well known fact that if you have to do anything you have to take the help of this bureaucracy. It is understandable that if the Chief Minister says that 90 percent of the bureaucrats here are good and capable he is keeping this fact at the back of his mind. 

Anyhow it is a fact that the truth is just the opposite. Honest officers are there; but they are about 5 to 10 percent only. There may be officers who have vowed against corruption; at the most 20 to 25 percent. The remaining majority may not be corrupt; but because they are feeble are unable to resist corruption and may be also accepting small favours in the normal case. 

The first 5 percent group always faces all kinds of threats. Examples like the case of Sashidharan of Malabar Cements galore. Government has the responsibility of protecting this crucial minority. The Chief Minister has declared that the government will protect those who give information about corrupt practices. It is a good gesture. Making comprehensive laws to protect these whistle blowers is the need of the hour.  

  

While bringing about transparency in the functioning and the eradication of corruption, this understanding about the existing bureaucracy should act as the base for any action. Introduction of e-governance (computerisation in governance) in comparison to other states is rather a neglected area. Though there is some work done in this regard due to some efficient officers in some of the departments; the overall result is patchy and inadequate. The fact remains that any attempt to introduce a comprehensive and organised e-governance is jarringly absent. 

The reason for this is very obvious. The unionized officials are deliberately torpedoing the programs. If the government files are computerized and a computer network is established between different sections and levels of different departments, making it easy for any authorized person to access any required file with ease, the rule of the officials using the files as a bargaining chip will become nonexistent.  The powerful empire they have created and maintained so far will crumble and vanish in no time; and that precisely is their problem! 

E-governance has started in Karnataka in 2005. Within five years it reached even the remotest corners of its villages. Put five or ten rupees as fee in kiosks and you can get all information about land holdings etc without any hassles. One cannot reasonably expect such a situation in Kerala even after twenty years from now.

 Tamil Nadu and Andhra also are catching up with Karnataka. Lastly leaving every one behind Gujarat has reached at the forefront now. Even after having a head start (Kerala has started this much before any of these states) why this state now is a laggard is something the Chief Minister should ponder and investigate immediately.

    

There are differences in the methodology of governance in each state due to historical reasons. In Kerala it is a very complex one. By the time a decision in a specific matter is arrived, the concerned file has to pass through at least 60 hands on the average. In order to make computerisation viable and practical such wasteful and complex procedures has to be simplified as early as possible.

In short a comprehensive overhaul of the governance is the need of the day. Under the leadership of the present secretaries and department heads this is impossible. Stories of many such attempts to revamp of the governance falling on the way side are in front of us. For a successful culmination of this renovation and the subsequent introduction of e-governance it should be implemented by entrusting this task to a high powered Commission working parallel to the present system. 

A committed political leadership with a clear vision of their goals, government experts who believe that such a change is inevitable, and a team of high level technocrats from the IT field should constitute this Commission and take over the mission. The experiences of the vigilance wing amply prove that the present Governing system can only help corruption.

 Sibi Mathew, who is well known for being an upright police officer, was once entrusted with the task of inquiring about the corrupt practices in the Government departments while he was the chief of vigilance. He took up hundreds of cases of corruption charges, proved the culpability of the concerned, and reported. Action normally was expected to be initiated by the concerned departments. Ironically most of the departments’ whose officers were facing charges opted to shield and protect them.  The government officials are overwhelmingly protected from any disciplinary actions which is undesirable in a democratic society. Instead of waiting for a Lokpal bill to take initiative and tackle corruption inside the government machinery, the Chief Minister should bring about a system capable of and empowered to take actions against corruption immediately. .       

Taxis of Junagadh

Recently I read a very interesting column written by KL Mohana Verma in a Malayalam Business fortnightly. Though the main topic of discussion in it was about black money and the present turmoil the nation is facing; inter alia he also had mentioned about the city of Junagadh. He was narrating about his visit to this city in Gujarat some 20 years ago and a unique phenomenon, (I hope I can call it so) he found there.

I also happened to be in Junagadh towards the end of seventies i.e. about thirty odd years ago and spent some time there and was equally curious about this particular observable fact. It was the taxies of Junagadh. Barring a few modern ambassador and Landmaster they were all vintage Ford Classic 1940 models. Mr Mohana Verma claims that you will find nowhere else in the world Ford Classic 1940 being used as Taxies. As everybody I too had wondered about this uniqueness. In fact you will find them more around Kesod the only air-port of those days in that part of the country which was originally constructed by the Nawab of Junagadh.

Now before I delve more in to this distinctiveness a small historical back-ground for the story.

Before partition Junagadh was a princely state. It was one among the eighteen Muslim kingdoms getting independence from the British rule. Muhammad Mahabat Khanji III the Nawab of Junagadh desired that his country be merged with the newly formed Pakistan, though it held a minority Muslim population and was land-locked by the newly formed Indian state on the three sides and by the sea on the remaining part depriving it the opportunity of sharing a border with Pakistan. Nevertheless the Nawab insisted on merging his territory with Pakistan. The Nawab even signed an Instrument of Accession and sent it over to Pakistan after due consideration (sic) decided to accept the same and Jinnah countersigned it after the approval and ratification by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. This happened on 15^th Sept 1947.

 V. P. Menon, the Secretary of the States department of the Government of India, travelled to Junagadh on 17 September 1947 to apprise the Nawab of the futility of his attempt and persuade the monarch to desist from whatever he was doing in this regard; but his effort to meet the Nawab sahab did not succeed because the Nawab feigned indisposition and refused any interview. In the mean time two vassals of the Nawab has already expressed their readiness to join the Indian Union.

When the efforts to accede the state with Indian Union in an amicable way failed India decided to apply pressure. It severed all communications including roads, and even postal deliveries were stopped. This caused unrest to brew inside the kingdom. Realising the futility of resisting, the Nawab finally decided to move to Karachi. On Nov 8^th 1947 as per the request of the Chief Minister of Junagadh the takeover of the state was formally declared. A plebiscite was held on 20 February 1948, in which all but 91 out of 190,870 who voted (from an electorate of 201,457) voted to join India i.e. 99% of the population voted to join India.
Nawab Mahabat Khanji was a great animal lover. While travelling to Rajkot in train one can observe rows and rows of kennels made for his 300 odd canines. He even notoriously celebrated their birthdays with great pomp and show. Once he celebrated the marriage of his two dogs spending many thousands of rupees, which was attended by all the dignitaries from far and wide attracting lot of flak for this act of opulence and extravaganza.

At the same time one should also be thankful to this maverick animal lover for preserving the vast tracks of Gir Forests and saving the Asiatic lions which even now is on the verge of extinction. He provided these lions a stable habitat. It may also be noted that during his reign, the Nawab saw the opening of the Willingdon Dam, the construction of the Bahadur Khanji library (named after his ancestor, the first Nawab) and the opening of the Mahabat Khan College.

Now coming back to our story, the gossip around the town is that the Nawab realising that there is no way of acceding his kingdom with Pakistan a secret agreement was struck with the government of India. Accordingly the Nawab was allowed to make as many sorties of his plane from Kesod(The air-port) to Karachi during the day in order to transport all his movable properties.. He plied from early morning sortie after sortie till evening when no more flight was possible as the air-port was not equipped for night flights, shifting everything including his collection of canines and also his women of his harem. He left all his cars which were used to transport the goods and material from the various palaces- all of them Ford Clasic 1940- behind at the air-port and the drivers were free to take them away as a reward for their loyalty. Once the Nawab left they made them into taxies of their own. Once the petrol cost shot up they promptly mounted Diesel engines and made them still viable. I do not know whether they still exist on the roads of today’s Junagadh but they were really quite a relic of the forgone era.    

Some Stray Thoughts

Some Stray Thoughts

Let me confess at the outset itself that these thoughts were haunting me for quite a while. I was afraid of being labelled as an alarmist prowling around with ideas that are wild and figments of imaginations of a mind with a perverted point of view. At last I have decided to give vent to them as I felt that keeping them to myself is rather an act of cowardice on my part. So here it is;

Lord Acton a famous British Jurist had rightly said and I quote “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” unquote.

Now a day the media is agog with one thing; and that is Team Anna and the Lokpal bill. There is no doubt that all right thinking people of this country want to join hands with Anna Hazare on his earnest efforts to create a system called Lokpal.

It is said and rightly so that our institutions such as the Parliament, the Judiciary, and the office of the Prime Minister are slowly sinking in to a cesspit of corruption and we are very much concerned about it. In order to remedy this a group of people under the leadership of Anna Hazare joined hands and are agitating in a peaceful Gandhian way  to force the hands of the present government to bring about a bill which will encompass every institution in this country in its ambit to be controlled and policed. This bill if passed as they desire will create another super institution with absolute powers called Lokpal; and there comes the rub. Are we sure that in our eagerness to eradicate something we are not creating a monster of Dr. Frankenstein?

To drive my point home let me take you to the 18^th century France. The deteriorating economy of the country, as the result of fiscal mismanagement and the long years of feudal oppression had long been testing the public’s patience. Ultimately the king was forced to summon the ancient assembly. The oppressed group, the peasants and wretched manual labours, generally called the third-class, people of France ironically who paid maximum tax, could not exercise anything through this assembly, and had finally decided to break away and enforce their right. Ultimately then it was a kind of no holds barred situation. Maximilian Robespierre an ex judge who had previously relinquished his office as a Judge, because he was reluctant to condemn a person whom he knew was innocent came to the leadership. What witnessed then was the metamorphosis of a person. A judge who could not order one man to the gallows due to his conscience; Robespierre during his regime known as the ‘reign of terror’ had ordered hundreds of thousands of people guillotined. He expounded a new maxim “virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent.”   

This reign under Robespierre continued and many executions were held to stop any counter revolution taking place. Finally Robespierre himself was guillotined by his own people leaving the country rudderless till another autocrat named Napoleon Bonaparte took over the rule of France. In his own words Napoleon declared that “I found the crown of France in the gutters of Paris and I took it with my sword.” After taking over France he famously said that “France has more need of me than I have need of France”, no doubt.

To imagine that Anna or for that matter any one following him will become another Robespierre is rather farfetched I know; and that is why I for warned that I may even sound an alarmist. But that is not the point. If the institutions of this country about which we are very proud of; after sixty years can be marred with corruption who can vouch that the Lokpal will also not turn out to be the same in the course of time? 

A renowned Jurist of yester years writes in a popular English daily, and bats for an all powerful Lokpal bill. Though he accepts that the Judiciary in our country is the watchdog of any erring executive and people had full faith in it; he laments that Judiciary itself is very corrupt and no action is being taken. He recommends even a militant (sic) movement against corruption. He recommends that “the Judiciary and the Prime Minister shall be under Lokpal”. What comes to mind is a long forgotten Hindi Film song in which the protagonist laments that arson can be extinguished by a good shower; but if the shower itself gets fire who can after all extinguish it? If you can vouch that it can never happen so be it and I accept the label; the label of an anarchist.

Before I conclude let me again quote Lord Acton.

“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that”.

Nawab of Indian Cricket.

Imagine; in cricket that you are at the crease and about to face a formidable bowler like say Wesley Hall or Gilchrest or the notorious Charlie Griffith. You are protected only with an abdomen pad and a pair of batting gloves and leg pads and not with those fancy protections like a helmet with a visor chest and elbow pads etc available to all batsmen of modern day cricket. Also imagine that you are totally blind on your right eye!   How will you take that situation? Face it or run away from itMansour Ali Khan Pataudi (Tiger) was a man who decided to face it come what may and created history of sort in his chosen carrier.

When he took-up the captaincy of the Indian CricketTeam, Nawab of Pataudi  was all his 21 years and 77 days old and  the situation, to put it mildly, was very tense. Previous captain the flamboyant Nari Contractor was struck down and incapacitated in the previous match by a vicious delivery by the C. Griffith. Veteran Polly Umrigar refused to lead the team. The mantle fell on Pattaudi (Jr) as the outgoing captain vehemently recommended his name for the post. Since then he never looked back. 

I remember, as a school boy from Kerala, where popularity of cricket was just picking up, listening to all India Radio commentaries of the test matches and watching our heroes in the two minutes clips available in the Newsreels shown along with usual cinema in the local theatres. I also remember myself and my brother cajoling my uncle to get permission to watch only that portion at the local cinema where he had some friendship with the owner himself.

Now a day in my soft skill training classes I impress up on my listeners about the need of having a role model. I can proudly say now that Tiger (as he was nicknamed) was my role model who remained the same throughout.

I was in Bombay; in 1969-70 when Australia visited India and we lost the first two matches.

An arrogant Bill Lawry had predicted that in the Delhi  test, “if I win the toss, will wind up the match in four days and go for fishing on the fifth day”. Australia won the toss but lost the match in four days. The next day a famous cartoon appeared in the “Free Press Journal” daily. It was like this. Pataudi was shown fishing and finds a fish popping its head out and asking him “Where is Lawry”?    

When he got married with Sharmila Tagore, arguably the reigning diva of Indian Cinema I was rather disappointed; not because that I felt that he was not a suitable match for her but the other way round. How long he can maintain the relation with such a flippant woman I wondered. This was not only my impression. The general view in the bollywood was also that this was not going to last. But they proved the Doomsayers wrong hands down. Ms. Tagore proved that she had the capacity to keep a marriage going all through the years.

I was in Delhousie on an official tour circa 1973. A film shoot for the film “ek mahal ho sapnomka” was taking place there. Sharmila was acting in it. It was rumoured that tiger will be coming to be with his beau. I remember waiting at the hotel premises for hours to have a glimpse of my hero. 

In a touching piece of remembrance Vijay Lokapally has written that “In the 60s and early 70s, we only talked about Pataudi. We wanted to bat like him, field like him, we wanted to be (only) Pataudi.” Somewhere else I also read that children of that time used to keep their right eye close while practicing batting to emulate him in ditto. Here let me share a secret of mine. I honestly wished those days that I lost the sight of my right eye to be like Tiger my Hero.

When asked what really exited him he quipped. – “The sight of a wild elephant. With the ears and the trunk stuck out and coming at you. That really terrifies me and excites me”. 

Tiger might have finished his innings; but will definitely remain not out for a long time to come.