LOCKDOWN. OR LOCKUP?

NB: It’s long so be warned, but hey, it covers 73 years of our existence as a nation! You can do it slowly…will help you recover your breath after each section.

Everyone’s writing/speaking/memeing about the ‘Lockdown’ in India: lives vs livelihoods, lockdown vs shutdown, yoga vs Pilates, gau mutra vs dhoklas and other such riveting stuff, but most of it is concerned with material or physical issues. Though it’s been just some weeks, the general mood is it’s like a lifetime. But the sober truth is that this is only a ‘Physical Lockdown’. In this article are just some thoughts on a parallel existence. It is your choice whether you think that this lockdown is the had-to-happen manifestation of that existence. Is it what many of us may have faced for the lifetime of this republic and so-called democracy: a deep-rooted, insidious and all-pervasive ‘Mental Lockup’ of us citizens? We may be free as a country, we may tout ourselves (and mostly to ourselves) that we the “world’s largest” democracy, but in actual fact, do you think we are? Are we intellectually ‘free’, and allowed and empowered to be free as citizens and individuals, both publicly and for many, privately? 

So, this being a precis of where we have reached in the past 73 years, the culpability lies everywhere and with everyone and every government since independence. But to be honest, the words ‘icing’ and ‘cake’ do come to mind as I contemplate the past 5 years of our reality as a nation. Everything I write is based on published reports in the Indian and international media. There is no speculation. And I compare us only to the evolved democracies and republics at whose table India is desperate to sit: those are the real reference points to everything that is written here. Our penchant of comparing ourselves mostly with Pakistan is undeniable proof that our vision is petty and blinkered. Here are just a few of the bare facts.

What are the principles of a real democracy? In no planned order, and with relevant data to support or disprove, they are:

a) An elected government which works solely for the good and welfare of the people:

i) Poverty Index: India ranked 49 out of 105 ii) Global Hunger Index: India ranked 102 out of 117 on the Global Hunger Index, 8 ranks below Pakistan. India’s ‘child-wasting’ rate is 20.8%, the highest wasting rate of any country in this Report. iii)

Healthcare Index: India ranked 33: WEF noted that India continues to rank third-lowest in the world on health and survival, remaining the world's least-improved country on this sub-index over the past decade. iv) Human Development Index: India ranked 130 out of 189 countries (UNDP) v) Liveability index: No Indian city in top 100 (Pune highest at 143) (Mercer) vi) World Inequality Index: India ranked 147 out of 157 (Oxfam)

India in 2018 had less than 1 bed per 1000 people; the WHO mandates 3/1000 and India aspires to 2/1000 by…2028). In fact, India has ONLY: 1 Hospital Bed for 1,826 persons; 1 Doctor for 11,600 persons; 1 Isolation Bed for 84,000 persons

BUT INDIA SPENT (in the past 4-5 years): $ 1 bn on political party and government Ads; $ 1.3 bn on Statues; $ 400 mn on Foreign Trips for politicians; Unnamed amounts on hotel/resort sojourns for politicians; and is now planning to spend $ 2.5 bn on a project to redo the iconic Central Vista (Raj Path area) in New Delhi and $ 1 billion on two special Boeing 777s (bought recently by Air India i.e. the government) for the exclusive use of PM, President and VP. https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/aviation/new-boeing-wide-body-planes-for-modi-kovind-naidu-likely-to-cost-rs-8458-crore/story/395385.html

INSTEAD, INDIA COULD HAVE BUILT AT LEAST 17 AIIMS (All India Institutes of Medical Sciences); 35 Govt Medical Colleges; 50 Govt Hospitals, and prevented the shameful incidents of the past two months and the most searing indictment of our 73 years as a republic, as described below and depicted in the visuals taken 73 years apart: the migration because of the Partition of India in 1947 and the reverse migration because of the lockdown. The picture above is of 1947. the one below is of 2020. What has changed?

A study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Azim Premji University in 2019 estimates that 29% of the population in India’s big cities is of daily wagers. This is the number of people which would be logically wanting to move back to their states. Professor Kundu’s estimates show that just two states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, account for the origin of 25 per cent and 14 per cent of the total inter-state migrants, followed by Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, at 6 per cent and 5 per cent. Please note that these are the northern ‘Hindi-speaking’ states, the bulwark of the ruling BJP. This means that around 4-6 million people would be wanting to return to Uttar Pradesh, and 1.8-2.8 million to Bihar. Another 700,000 to 1 million would be wanting to return to Rajasthan and 600,000-900,000 to Madhya Pradesh.

What no one is asking is how and why this reverse migration started immediately the morning after the lockdown announcement. It was almost as if they knew that it was all over for them, that there would be no succour, no safety net, no one to turn to except their families. Refugees in their own country. Surely that is the most damning condemnation of where we are as a society, an economy, a polity.

And to top it all, comes this report today: https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/doctors-fighting-covid-19-got-up-to-50percent-pay-cut-%e2%80%94-and-some-of-them-havent-been-paid-yet/ar-BB14l2v8?li=AAggbRN

Siddharth Shanghvi’s article “The Migrant”, reveals much of the truth. https://www.dailyo.in/variety/coronavirus-pandemic-migrant-labourers-india-aurangabad-train-accident-lockdown/story/1/32884.html 

The only difference in 73 years is that we can see the misery in colour.

They say India lives in its villages, and the slogan that is trumpeted is 'Jai Jawaan, Jai Kisan' (Hail the soldier, Hail the farmer). The Indian agriculture sector accounts for 18 per cent of India's gross domestic product (GDP) and provides employment to 50% of the countries workforce. Yet, as per statistics by Government of India in a TOI report of March 2020, over 12,000 suicides were reported in the agricultural sector every year since 2013. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/farmer-suicides

Yet, what does a minister say?

Finally, education and employment, perhaps the most critical of the State’s responsibilities. There is no Indian university is in the global top 200. China has at least 5.

Above is a picture of a primary village school in Bihar.

Cheating in schools and colleges is an art and an industry. Note the examination hall.

What of employment? (A 'paan' shop is a small makeshift kiosk selling betel leaf and suchlike).

Over 93,000 candidates, including 3,700 PhD holders apply for peon job in UP 2018 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/over-93000-candidates-including-3700-phd-holders-apply-for-peon-job-in-up/articleshow/65604396.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Tamil Nadu: Over 4000 Applicants, Mostly MBAs & Engineers Apply For 14 Sweeper Jobs https://thelogicalindian.com/news/engineers-apply-sweeper-job/?infinitescroll=1

2016: 19,000 graduates, postgraduates, MBAs, BTechs apply for 114 sweepers’ jobs in UP town https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/50675268.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

PhD students apply for jobs to handle corpses in Bengal 2017 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/59536329.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Above and alongside are just a few answers as to why India remains a land of daily wagers, willing living in abysmal conditions so as to support their families in the villages, which are, most of them, in pitiful conditions themselves.

b) Accessible, accountable and transparent elected representatives: I have written reams about criminals in our politics and the horse trading and ship-jumping that brings down elected governments as our national pastimes, but the brazenness with which responsibility and blame is avoided or deflected is incredible. There is all honour between thieves.  

As for accessibility, try meeting your elected MP/MLA/Ward Councillor etc. Meeting the Queen is easier, and less demeaning. Note the supplication of the citizen in the picture alongside and below.

And did you know that even Trump has given around two press conferences a month as President, (irrespective of the content and separate from the daily press briefings, which he does attend sometimes)? These are unscripted, un-orchestrated and open to all questions (though of course we know his CNN fetish!).

Mr Manmohan Singh, the ‘silent PM’ held press conferences. Every Head of Government in any elected democracy holds open, unscripted press conferences as a symbol of accountability and responsibility to the people.

Mr Modi has given none in his six years as PM of a democracy. None. Why could that be?Two possibilities: either he thinks he is above all questioning, or he is afraid of being questioned. It’s your call and your view on the implications of either.

BTW, did any one of you wonder why no time given after the first Lockdown announcement on March 24 night at 8pm? No time for families to respond, for people to return to their homes, for anyone to manage the essentials of their lives? It was a peremptory, heartless act, redolent of government by fiat. How many Ministers’ families have been stranded elsewhere? Had the PM a family, would he have done this? Singapore gave 3 days for people to manage their lives before the actual lockdown there. That was a caring, thinking decision. After all, people are the reason why the lockdown is there in the first place! The whole of the previous week before March 25 could have been employed by the administration to ready transport, food and medical aid for people who wanted to return to their homes.

But instead, they have been walking in pitiable conditions, dying and starving, while, in the most heartless of ironies, Indian Air Force aircraft spend crores flying up and down the country strewing flowers while people die on railway tracks. Why could they not have distributed food and supplies to migrants instead?

Dear reader, along with fiat, is it smoke and mirrors that are the avowed strategies of the State? Are they being callously and casually employed by those in charge to obfuscate, deflect, and deny? Has it become a habit? Perhaps three examples could help:

1) The Rs 20000 lakh crore ‘package’ grandly announced this week included our income tax refunds! Thank you! And naturally the package itself contains our direct and indirect tax payments. 2) 50% of this number had already been factored in when the FM made her announcement (Indian Express 13 May) 3) Now, on May 16, after the above sermonic ‘stimulus package’ was intoned on TV, comes this to take your breath, if there was any left, away: Rajiv Bajaj, Mr Rahul’s son, speaking on TV to Rahul Kanwal, about fear, lack of openness and transparency and even saying that if this carries on perhaps he should move to North Korea!  https://youtu.be/z5_YVYIf2Rc 

“The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over. Provided too that its passions, hatreds, fears are catered to. Nor need one try to stay within the limits of plausibility: on the contrary, the grosser, the bigger, the cruder the lie, the more readily is it believed and followed. Nor is there any need to avoid contradictions: the mob never notices; needless to pretend to correlate what is said to some with what is said to others: each person or group believes only what he is told, not what anyone else is told; needless to strive for coherence: the mob has no memory; needless to pretend to any truth: the mob is radically incapable of perceiving it: the mob can never comprehend that its own interests are what is at stake.” ― Alexandre Koyré, Réflexions sur le mensonge

“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” - You Should Know Who

https://theprint.in/opinion/why-modi-government-gets-away-with-lies/422211/  

c) Free and impartial judiciary: The Judiciary, which till recently was the only bulwark against the creeping but brazen usurpation of individual rights, has, alas, finally succumbed to the pressure exerted by the ruling party through the police and the CBI and blandishments of plum retirement sinecures. How else would you describe the reality that the Courts gave dates many weeks later (sometimes months and for some not even yet) for hearing cases on the Delhi riots of Feb, the clampdown in Kashmir since October, (including the erstwhile CM who has been under house detention for over nine months under the Public Security Act, with the government saying she it was because she was was a 'daddy's girl', and the previous CM was detained citing his ability to get voters to vote, amongst other sins);

the sinister, videotaped attacks inside premier universities on hapless students in Jan-Feb, but agreed to hear a plea within 24 hours for a police FIR filed against him by an establishment-toady, hate-spewing journalist? And is hearing the case expeditiously on a regular basis even today? Read this article by a senior Supreme Court advocate. https://theleaflet.in/korematsu-and-cricket-a-critique-of-indias-supreme-court-during-the-pandemic/ 

d) Freedom of speech: A couple of gems now. In Oct 2019, the police registered a case against 50 persons, including filmmakers, artists, social workers and individuals from different fields, for writing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi sharing their concern on growing cases of lynching.  https://keralakaumudi.com/en/news/news.php?id=164411&u=fir-against-50-including-adoor-for-writing-letter-to-modi-on-lynching

Historian Ramachandra Guha said last month that he would no longer be writing his fortnightly column in the Hindustan Times, explaining that the newspaper had decided not to publish his article about the Central government’s Central Vista project to reconstruct an iconic section of New Delhi. Just a critique on a government project! And the Press was frightened of a backlash! 

Perhaps the most ironic of all incidents was earlier this year, when Aatish Taseer, the Time Magazine columnist, and son of noted Indian columnist Tavleen Singh, wrote a damning cover story on Mr Modi titled “India’s Divider in Chief”. His OCI Card was immediately cancelled by the government and he was prevented from entering India. And this was an American journalist! So you can imagine the plight of Indian ones. Tavleen was a strenuous Modi cheerleader till that date. Overnight she changed colours….Blood is thicker than water, but hubris is thicker than everything.

A similar incident concerns the comedian John Oliver, who satirised Mr Modi in one of his TV shows. The OTT channel Hotstar-Disney withdrew the entire episode suo moto, so worried was it of censure.

Now, whatever you can blame Trump and Boris for, the one action they cannot take is disqualify journalists for critical articles. In fact, when Trump suspended CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s Press pass, there was a furore, CNN sued Trump, and a judge ordered the pass to be reinstated. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-restore-cnn-reporter-jim-acostas-white-house-press-pass.html Imagine that ever happening here? And so on to…

e) Freedom of the Press: In the World Press Freedom Index 2020, India is at #142 (Pak 145), falling below its 2019 rank and below Ghana, Burkina Faso, Congo, Malawi, Tunisia, Panama, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, UAE, CAR…even Eswatini, if you know where that is.

The Report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), states: “There have been constant press freedom violations, including police violence against journalists, ambushes by political activists, and reprisals instigated by criminal groups or corrupt local officials. Ever since the general elections in the spring of 2019, won overwhelmingly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, pressure on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line has increased. Those who espouse Hindutva, the ideology that gave rise to Hindu nationalism, are trying to purge all manifestations of 'anti-national' thought from the national debate. The coordinated hate campaigns waged on social networks against journalists who dare to speak or write about subjects that annoy Hindutva followers are alarming and include calls for the journalists concerned to be murdered. The campaigns are particularly virulent when the targets are women. Criminal prosecutions are meanwhile often used to gag journalists critical of the authorities, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124a of the penal code, under which “sedition” is punishable by life imprisonment.

India’s score in this year’s World Press Freedom Index is heavily affected by the situation in Kashmir where, after rescinding the state’s autonomy, the federal government shut down fixed line and mobile Internet connections completely for several months, making it virtually impossible for journalists to cover what was happening in what has become a vast open prison.” Notwithstanding that the world’s largest democracy is ranked where it is, the last few words ring coldly true for many across the land.  https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-ranks-142nd-on-global-press-freedom-index/articleshow/75279460.cms https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/world-press-freedom-index-2020-india-ranked-141-rsf-cites-hindutva-and-kashmir-for-low-position

The above article also mentions the widespread filing of ‘Sedition’ cases against citizens by the government as a key factor in the low rank India ‘enjoys’. Here are some hard facts. ‘Sedition’ has become the savage new whip with which to excoriate the citizen. Official data reveal as many as 332 people were arrested under the sedition law between 2016 and 2018, though only seven were convicted, suggesting that police have struggled to gather evidence against the accused. No other country, certainly not any democracy, has numbers even close to this, if any at all. Globally, it is increasingly viewed as a draconian law and was revoked in the United Kingdom in 2010. India’s sedition law, like its equivalent in other former British-ruled countries, offers a legal framework to categorise a citizen as a threat to the state. 

Its use to silence critics in India isn’t new. During previous governments, people were charged with sedition for liking a Facebook post critical of the administration, criticising a yoga guru, cheering a rival cricket team, drawing political cartoons, and not standing up in a movie theatre for the national anthem, which is often played before films. But in the current regime, critics say, India is growing notoriously intolerant, its crackdown on critics unprecedented in scale. Leaders of Modi’s party routinely label critics as “anti-national.” The government has rejected demands from civil society and opposition to repeal the law, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

More recently, police investigated those involved in a school play that voiced opposition to the citizenship law and arrested a primary school teacher and the mother of a student for sedition. The students, aged 9 and 10, were interrogated by police over several days for participating in the play. The charges were later dropped. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/karnataka-school-sedition-anti-caa-play-6240176/

"We are slapping sedition cases at a time when the draconian law is either being scrapped or rendered toothless in most modern constitutional democracies around the world," says P.D.T. Achary, constitutional expert and former secretary-general of the Lok Sabha. New Zealand has got rid of the law (see graphic: Sedition Around the World). 

Australia has narrowed its scope, eliminating imprisonment. In the US, some laws have been repealed, some have been made a dead letter. In the UK, although the last sedition trial took place in 1947, the law was abolished in 2009, 217 years after Thomas Paine was convicted of sedition for writing the Rights of Man. "It puts India at par with countries with the worst human rights index," adds Achary, "Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Iran, Uzbekistan...."

Nevertheless, India’s notoriously slow criminal justice system ensures that the movement and speech of the accused are severely hamstrung as long as cases remain pending. While charged, people can’t obtain passports or government jobs, and must show up to court as required. “The real punishment is in the trial where a person has to spend days, sometimes even months, to try and prove innocence,” said Chitranshul Sinha, an Indian lawyer who has written a book on the history of the sedition law. “This is enough to harass or silence people,” he said, calling it an “oppressive, black law.” See also: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/the-big-story/story/20160919-sedition-law-india-government-offence-829548-2016-09-08

f) Free media: According to Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project data by accessnow.com, a website based on Internet activism, 67 per cent of the world's Internet shutdowns in 2018 were in India. Data collected by the same organisation from January to July 2019 showed that India continues to be the Internet shutdown capital of the world. By the end of July 2019, there were 80 Internet shutdowns in India, which again forms 67% of the world's total Internet shutdowns (120). https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/more-than-350-internet-shutdowns-in-india-since-2014-1629203-2019-12-18

g) Freedom of action (diet, dress, movement, gender): The sober truth is that we are and have been a nanny-state, with the powers-that-be wanting us to forever be in kindergarten, fostering a ‘mai-baap’ (read as ‘mother-father’ or just ‘my father’) mentality.  

Gender Gap Index: India has been ranked 108th in the WEF gender gap index. India ranks 142/149 countries in the Economic Opportunity and Participation sub-index.

At the household level, we are largely a paternalistic, feudal society where even today only the parents know who will make the best spouse for their child; where the men eat first and the rest get the leftovers; where women are still veiled even within the household – and I don’t just mean Muslim women wearing hijabs; where decisions on education, food habits, clothing, sporting activity, social interaction, even the use of mobiles by women are dictated by the paterfamilias; so when the child becomes the adult, it is his/her turn to - pardon the pun - turn the screw and he/she grabs it with alacrity. The tyrannical mothers-in-law of Hindi movies and TV serials who burn brides for dowry (among other things) are not figments of the imagination, and neither are the parents who ‘honour kill' their own children for marrying outside the caste/community. That being locked up leads to repressive crimes like rape is a fact. Just one stat will do for now: of the countries studied by Maplecroft on sex trafficking and crime against minors, India was ranked 7th worst. 

Even personal preferences are grist to its (government) mills. From what we can eat, to what we should wear, to what we may see, to where we may go and when (especially for women), to when and where we may imbibe (if at all), to the gas for our vehicles, to the trains we suffer in, to the daily and petty web of corruption that snorkels through our administration and society, they control virtually every aspects of our lives. There is nothing too small, too trivial, too personal to be left solely to the citizen to decide. 

h) Freedom of religion: No discrimination due to caste or creed is a tenet of the Constitution of India. What then comes to your mind when the PM himself says on Dec 15, 2019, remarking on the anti-citizenship Bill demonstrations: "The Congress and its supporters are spreading fire. When they are not heard, they spread arson. You can easily make out who is spreading violence by the clothes they wear." Is that not the worst form of discrimination? By a Head of government? In a democracy? Who is supposed to see all his ‘subjects’ (sic) in the same light?

The anti-minorities sentiments have grown shriller and more vicious over the past few years. Lynching of minority citizens for ‘alleged’ consumption or possession of beef, for example, has become a sport. Even policemen have not been spared while trying to preserve the law. https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/searing-questions-from-son-of-slain-cop/cid/1680418

What beats me is why this visceral hatred, especially of the Muslims, is there at all. Their reasons are that India was conquered and ruled by Muslim kings for 700 years, and Hindus were treated as second-class citizens, so here’s payback time. But surely this actually shows the majority community in a poor light! After all, till 1000 CE, or thereabouts, India was predominantly ruled by Hindu kings (some Buddhist), with a few million subjects. That cannot be denied. So how come this grand old land, where we are assured there were the internet and telecommunications and plastic surgery and airplanes and whatnot in ancient times, choc a bloc with Hindus, allowed a few rag-tag armies to come and conquer them? Even if they were not rag-tag, surely they did not bring a million soldiers in their armies? And they certainly did not have air cover! Yet us Indians allowed ourselves to be conquered. What does this say about us? History does detail the machinations between the Hindu kings, the rivalries and the jealousies and the readiness to undermine each other, and the fact that some joined hands with the invaders to further their own interests. There is surely some gau-mutra for thought here. 

And the ultimate irony is that one of India's most iconic patriotic songs, "Saare Jahan Se Achcha Hindostan Hamara" was written by Muhammad 'Allama' Iqbal, who eventually became Pakistan's national poet!

i) Equality in the eyes of the law and its functionaries and due process of law: Just one example will do (of thousands). Kunal Kamra, the stand-up comedian, harangued (but did not abuse or physically assault) Arnab Goswami on a flight. He returned to his seat immediately when instructed by the cabin crew. 

IndiGo, the airline concerned, tagged Union Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Puri on Twitter while announcing its decision to impose a ban without even waiting for its internal crew report on whether Kamra’s behaviour threatened passenger safety. Then SpiceJet, Air India and Go Air followed suit after being prodded by the Minister, Mr Puri, himself. Nothing better illustrates how the corporate sector buckles to political pressure, no questions asked. It also underlines not only government overreach but a contempt for due process. For Puri, just the video posted by Kamra was evidence enough to accuse, indict and convict all in a tweet.

As per guidelines, when airlines receive complaints of unruly behaviour from the pilot-in-command, the incident is referred to an internal committee which shall decide on the matter within 30 days. Pending the decision of the committee, the airline can ban the passenger, though such a period may not exceed 30 days. But in this case, the process went out of the window. The pilot-in-command Rohit Mateti has, to his credit, documented the chain of events and has stated that while Kamra’s behaviour was “unacceptable and verbally abusive”, he complied with the crew’s instruction and that the offence “cannot be classified” even in Level 1 category. The pilot further noted that the airline did not consult him and took a decision solely based on social media posts.” (Indian Express Feb 1, 2020). Only one airline stood up to this (Vistara), but it too had to bow its head in the face of political pressure.

Now, I am not condoning what Kamra did, not at all. But I ask, if it was the other way round, and were I, just an ordinary citizen, or let’s say Ram Guha, an erudite scholar and outspoken critic of the current government, who had been harangued by Goswami, would the Minister have stood up for either of us with such alacrity, if at all?

Be honest.

j) Ability to open and run a business without fear, browbeating and honesty: After Independence, when India was a ‘socialist’ economy, it was the ‘licence-raj’ that emasculated businesses and led to the predominance of everyday corruption (# 80 on the Global Corruption Index) and black money (estimated at 50% of India’s economy). But even after 1991 when the economy ‘opened up’ and we went around the world with our sweaty little hands spread wide for investment funds, touting our ‘200 mn middle class’ and 1.3 billion population as a ‘demographic dividend’ (which, as the CV19 Lockdown and subsequent reverse migration of millions has shown is a demographic disaster), sadly the world didn’t really beat a path to our door because in the Kearney ‘Global FDI Confidence Index’ we ranked # 16 in 2019, down 5 places from 2018 and well below China at # 7. The GFICA Country Attractiveness Index for 2020 puts India at # 61, lower than Vietnam, and China at #16.

But perhaps the stat that not very many people know is that India has 63 mn registered companies but only 18500 have a paid-up capital of $ 1.5 mn (HT May 10)! I was gobsmacked when I read that, as I hope you are.

Why is the Business situation as it is? Naturally the Licence Raj, political interference, archaic labour and land laws etc contribute handsomely to it. But the greatest reason is that the organs of the State are used vigorously and regularly to bend businesses and their leaders into submission. The Income Tax department is the iron mace of the administration. It has the unbridled power to enter and conduct raids in your premises including your homes to search and seize, and which do not need any legal authorisation. Mere suspicion is enough. The person who is raided, however, has to file a petition in the High Court if he thinks injustice has been done. The IT Dept, along with the CBI and the Police form a triumvirate that comes close to rivalling those of the more authoritarian States we have read about in political thrillers, because they are controlled fully by whichever government is in power. 

The fear (and there is no other word to describe it), which the powers-that-be instil in everyone, can be summed up by what Rahul Bajaj, a corporate and industrial patriarch who helmed his Bajaj Group through the marshes of socialism over the past 60 years and is one of the most respected and important personages in the business world, said in the presence of Ministers Shah, Sitharaman and Goyal at an event organised by The Economic Times in Mumbai, where the industrialist also expressed concern over the absence of effective action against lynchings, and the remark of Bhopal MP Pragya Singh Thakur praising Nathuram Godse in Parliament.

“Nobody from our industrialist friends will speak, I will say openly… An environment will have to be created… When UPA II was in power, we could criticise anyone… You (the government) are doing good work, but despite that we don’t have the confidence that you will appreciate if we criticise you openly.”

The rest of the gathering was silent. They were indeed too scared to speak. What price the common man? Why is this state of affairs spreading like poisonous weeds across the nation? The main reason, I believe, is the insecurity of whoever is in charge, essentially the politicians supported by vengeful and aggressive religious forces.

Insecurity manifests itself in imaginary (or created) fears and foes. Let’s take the religious divide. Now, if 80% of the population (not everyone for sure, but at least quite a few), is apprehensive of the balance 20% and seeks to grind it into submission, what can you say? One can understand if it were the other way around. But why should the vast majority fear the minorities? Surely there is a strong sense of inadequacy! And yet, most top Bollywood heroes are Muslims, and have frenzied followers across the country and across all sections of society. 

Insecurity manifests itself as hypocrisy. Most of the above Bollywood heroes are married to Hindus. Yet, there isn’t a peep from the masses. But when non-celebrities try and marry outside their religions, there is always a huge to-do, they are killed, lynched, separated by force, you name it. 

Perhaps the most defining irony and hypocrisy of us as a people is that when Trump visited India in Feb, to which two places of importance was he specially taken for a VIP visit?

? Sabarmati Ashram, the adopted home of Mahatma Gandhi for many years after his return to India. For the trivia buffs, here’s a nugget: The Sabarmati Ashram is sited between a prison and a crematorium, and Gandhi believed that a satyagrahi has invariably to go to either place. He said, "This is the right place for our activities to carry on the search for truth and develop fearlessness, for on one side are the iron bolts of the foreigners, and on the other the thunderbolts of Mother Nature." It is ironic because an elected BJP MP, Pragya Thakur, called Gandhi’s assassin, Godse, a patriot. This, to most Indians, and perhaps the world, is akin to calling apartheid an act of charity. She was censured (lamely and after much outcry), and remains in Parliament. In fact, thereafter she was chosen to be on a select Parliamentary Panel on Defence till another outcry dissed that.  

? The Taj Mahal: Built by Shah Jehan, the Muslim Mughal emperor. I need not say more. 

Insecurity manifests itself as a desperation for control. ‘Control’ is the driving force, and they know total control (power) can only come from total subservience and neediness. They do not want a public that can think and operate independently, making informed decisions. A public which can see through it. It wants people to be totally dependent on it, so that they have nowhere else to go. Which is why people are happy voting for corrupt candidates because they feel that under the circumstances, only those candidates can get things done…which they do, at a price and as a favour.

Raghuram Rajan, the famous economist and erstwhile Governor of India’s Reserve Bank, had this explanation: “While the poor do not have the money to “purchase” public services that are their right, they have a vote that the politician wants. The politician does a little bit to make life a little more tolerable for his poor constituents – a government job here, an FIR registered there, a land right honoured somewhere else. For this, he gets the gratitude of his voters, and more important, their vote. Of course, there are many politicians who are honest and genuinely want to improve the lot of their voters. But perhaps the system tolerates corruption because the street smart politician is better at making the wheels of the bureaucracy creak, however slowly, in favour of his constituents. And such a system is self-sustaining. An idealist who is unwilling to “work” the system can promise to reform it, but the voters know there is little one person can do. Moreover, who will provide the patronage while the idealist is fighting the system? So why not stay with the fixer you know even if it means the reformist loses his deposit?” https://qz.com/india/688474/why-indians-dont-care-about-corrupt-politicians-according-to-raghuram-rajan-and-others/

Control comes from emasculating critical thought, through programming, religious submission and fear. “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” This violence need not be only physical; it can be and is mental, economic, and emotional. 

Insecurity manifests itself as a desperation for international cachet and even reflected glory. How often do we see media articles and politician speeches proudly saying so-and-so person, including US Senators and Congress representatives, businesspersons, senior US administrative personnel, scientists and so on were ‘Indian-origin’ despite the fact their ancestors may have moved there two generations ago, could have intermarried with the locals, and be very small-part Indian? Sen. Kamala Harris is one. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is the first Hindu member of Congress and the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress, but she was much in the news in India because she’s a Hindu! They may only have entered the Presidential nomination race for their party, but that’s enough to blow the bugles! Do you think there would be similar trumpeting in Poland? Or Latvia? Or even China? Korea? Or Mongolia? Or Samoa? 

Insecurity manifests itself in citing “National Security” as the reason for much of the above. This is the default position of any dispensation that has very little else to say for itself. It is the ‘bogey man’ trope used to control children when all other logical reasons fail. But my point is this: does this mean that citizens are not invested already in ensuring national security? If they are not, why? Who has failed them? After all, if they were well fed, well educated, well employed, with public goods and services like healthcare, transport, sanitation, electricity, water etc, why would they want to upset the gobar cart? History shows that development is the best trigger for national cohesion. Unless they were insane or blinkered and easily led. Upon reflection, this could be possible. After all, blinkering is a key prerequisite of control.

And finally, there is Kashmir. Read this. It will be worth every minute of your time because it is a scorching microcosm what is really happening in India. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jammu-kashmir-4g-internet-sc-lockdown-pratap-bhanu-mehta-6411879/

Someone once said, “Man's greatest fear is the fear of the unknown.” I disagree. I think it is the fear of the known, the real, the regular. But still, I live in hope that we will be truly free someday. And of course, Rabindranath Tagore’s inspiring words written in 1910, when India was still under British rule, ring true a century later, and engender hope:

“Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high,

Where knowledge is free.

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.

Where words come out from the depth of truth,

Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action.

In to that heaven of freedom, my father,

Let my country awake.”

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' "That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

So, Lockdown or Lockup? Take a call!