View from the Ivory Tower

Ministry of Consumer Affairs is running a campaign on consumer awarenes: "Jago Grahak Jago". Great idea!

Today, the message was "Insist on your Entitlement". "Antodaya" card holder families are entitled to 35 kgs of wheat / rice per month at the the issue prices of Rs. 3.00 per kg of rice and Rs. 2.00 per kg of wheat.The entitlement for "Below Poverty Line" families is up to 35 kgs per month at issue prices of Rs. 4.15 per kg of wheat and Rs. 5.65 per Kg of rice, plus distribution cost fixed by the State Governments. The entitlement for "Above Poverty Line" families is also covered.

Three questions:

Are the entitlements fixed irrespective of the size of the family?

When the issue prices could be set nationally, why not the distribution cost? From my knowledge of Kerosene PDS, this is where lots of bureaucrats at State and Disrtrict levels make money. How is it that the element of distribution cost for "Antodaya" families is set at zero?

How many people from "Antodaya" families and BPL families read the Economic Times?

Indian School of Mines: Convocation 2002

"Thank you for the privilege to participate in this celebration of knowledge. Learning has always been an adventure. There was a time, going back several millennia, when clans of people would walk away to new horizons, searching for food or to escape the advancing ice sheet. May be an intrepid hunter would reach a new river or an unknown sea. The routes would pass into the collective memory of the tribe. For the humans, challenged to survive without claws or fangs, knowledge became the weapon, and the brain - the memory - became the armoury. The clans walked across the continents, setting up the building blocks of civilization. They tamed horses and elephants, and traveled faster. They learned to build rafts and boats, and ventured to the lands across the seas. Air was the next frontier. Balloons first lifted men off the ground, and then came powered flight. As the centuries went by, migrations for survival stopped and conquests for supremacy began. Instead of fleeing the ice, men went on adventure to discover glaciers. They discovered mountains and islands, even continents. Thousands of years passed before the surface of the Earth was fully, accurately mapped. There was practically nothing left to discover, except in deep waters. The armoury in the brain kept expanding. The knowledge to understand the howl of an animal, the knowledge to transform a lump of ore into a weapon and the knowledge to predict the seasons -the ever increasing inventory of information and understanding crossed the capacity of tribal memories. Schools and libraries came up. As time passed, bhurjapatra became history, and magnetic media became the tool for inheritance of knowledge. One potent tool, perhaps exclusive to the humans out of all the species that we know of, has remained trapped in the ions of the brain. So far, the electrons on the tapes and disks have not captured this. One dreads the day when that happens, if it happens, because the intrinsic difference between men and machines will vanish. That tool is imagination. The ability to visualize what does not exist, what is beyond the known, what may never happen, or what may happen again. To my mind, the champion of imagination, at least in the last millennium, is Jules Verne. One who could imagine going from the Earth to the Moon when Lillienthal was lifting off. One who traveled Twenty Thousand leagues under the Sea, when steamships represented the state-of-the-art. One who went on a Journey to the Center of the Earth, when the first oil wells were being drilled. One man who described all the physical frontiers that remain to be conquered - space, deep waters, inner Earth. Many of the graduating students of this great institution are stepping out on the exciting journey to the frontiers of the inner earth and the deep waters; others are going on to equally challenging careers in arts, sciences and technologies. On each road, in ever direction, there are risks and rewards, penalties and prizes. You will be measured for success by many people and by many yardsticks. The true measure will be only one, the yardstick by which you will judge yourself. How many dreams you have realized, how many fears you have overcome, how many lives you have touched with joy. Remember the ancestors who crossed the continents, with only the sun and the stars to guide them. Often, they had no choice but to go on. But some of them traveled from one horizon to another because they were just curious, or because they were driven by imagination. Many discoveries have happened by accident but all inventions happened because someone first developed a mental image of the outcome. Today, discoveries also happen because someone first creates an image in his mind. All the knowledge and all the experience gets focused on that image. How do you discover a new reservoir or oil? with all the data that you acquire, using all the hardware and software that you have, what you get to on the screen is the way the rock is stratified down below. You go to the armoury in your brain and build an image of entrapped hydrocarbons in some strata. That is discovery. There are times when conventional wisdom is questioned because someone lets his imagination fly out of the box and builds a different image in his mind. Like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, who imagined that the collective wisdom is not necessarily correct just because all the members of the flock accept it. He becomes unpopular, he gets isolated, he suffers, but he flies. He flies alone and he achieves. I am certainly not talking of idle speculation, or someone arguing for the sake of argument. I am talking of a responsible process when an individual uses his training and expertise to make a logical case and dares to speak up. That's how the giant Gandhar oil and gas field was discovered. A colleague told me about it recently. He had questioned the conventional wisdom that there cannot be any entrapment in these formations. He stood up and made a case for his imagination. The discovery, when it came, was infinitely more satisfying than any promotion. The one success also more than made up for all the times when the process failed, when the image turned out to be a mirage. But, that is part of the game. That, in fact, is the game. My young friends, as you go out to win the World, be brave. You will certainly face many disappointments, you will know many frustrations, and you will also earn victories, some remarkable, some inconsequential. That is the game. When you are down and out, remember Christopher Columbus, facing a mutiny when the New World was just beyond the horizon. When you are disappointed, remember Vasco de Gama, who went looking for a New World, and discovered an old one. When you feel deprived, remember Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, and the credit that Marconi received. When you feel elated, remember the sadness of Oppenheimer when he saw a light brighter than a Thousand Suns. Remain honest to yourself, and make the Indian School of Mines proud of you. I wish you God speed. Thank you. Jai Hind."

Dreamz Grounded!

The Law prohibiting Child Labour came into force in October 2006,. This was the provocation for this write-up, published in the Asian Age on 14th October.

"The Obligation to Inform

Chotu is seven years old. He washes cups and plates and pots and pans at Ramlal’s Famous Hotel in Bhandara. He works 14 hours a day, seven days-a-week. He was not informed that the Parliament of India had passed a Law prohibiting child labour, and the law has come into force. Ramlal also does not know about it; if he somebody had informed him, he would have uttered some choice abuses and waited for one more inspector to come around collecting ‘hafta’. 

Chotu’s mother, Hema, carries headloads seven-days-a-week, 12 hours a day, at Shyamlal’s Great Building Company. She gets barely one-fourth the prescribed minimum wages. She does not have any information about the Minimum Wages Act and the Rules framed thereunder, as they write in Bureaucratish. Shyamlal factors in all the ‘haftas’ in his contract price, and the savings on the labourers’ wages is his reward for entrepreneurship. Shyamlal is a conscientious contractor; he delivers the cuts, as per established tariff, to all the inspectors on schedule; the inspectors are quite pleased with his dependability, and they take their allowances without actually doing the tours as their entitled CTG i.e. cost-to-the-Government.  

Chotu’s elder sister, Tina was married off when she was barely twelve, and in stead of paying a dowry, Chotu’s parents received ten thousand Rupees from Babulal, the Munshi of the Collector Sahib. Babulal knows that there is a law forbidding child marriage but obviously didn’t care. The thanedar actually pays him so that inconvenient complainants or complaints do not reach the Sahib’s office.

Chotu’s father, Govinda is a coolie at the Mandi. He has ration cards for the family. Last week, he had to shell out two Rupees extra for a bottle of Kerosene. The shopkeeper told him that the price has gone up because Amrika is fighting where the Kabuliwalas come from. Govinda does not know that he is paying two-and-a-half times the administered price nor about the Essential Commodities Act and the Kerosene Control Order framed thereunder. Govinda has no clue of the unique political consensus to subsidize kerosene to poor people like him, nor the political identity of the wholesale dealer, Munnalal.

Chotu had a younger brother, Mithun who died last year because the Government Hospital only issued a prescription. The free medicines were not available because the public tender for purchase was under ‘negotiation’ for last year-and-a-half. They cremated the small body, wiped their tears and went on with their lives. No one told them that there is full-fledged Department for Public Grievances. They remembered Mithun’s death anniversary but did not know of the celebration of the anniversary of the Right to Information Act.

I am not writing the plot of a Bollywood masala-mix where Chotu grows up to be Amitabh Bachchan who becomes Collector Sahib, bashes up Ramlal and Shyamlal, rescues Tina and reforms Munnalal. He goes chasing Priyanka round the bend on distant shores, and the inspectors, wearing Dockers, join the dance sequence. The Dockers are colour-coded for departments, and the pockets are labeled for specific account-heads. Since the producer took only thirty inspectors for the jaunt, scores of departments went unrepresented and there was serious discussion in the Department for Prevention, Detection and Correction of Bovine Lunacy to file a PIL. Back to the main story-line, Amitabh goes on to become Chief Secretary and then, as is customary, becomes Information Commissioner on retirement. At this point, the classic line “… and they lived happily ever after” slowly rolls up on the wide-screen.  

The Parliament has passed a series of Laws for the benefit of the disadvantaged. Successive Governments have launched a series of welfare programmes. In recent years, the Prime Ministers have made a practice of announcing grand schemes from the ramparts of the Lal Killa. All the Budgets provide thousands of Crore of Rupees for the benefit of the poor. Why, then, Chotu and Tina and Hema and Govinda remain without hope, without the knowledge that there is hope?  Why did Mithun have to die?

In “The Fountainhead”, Ayn Rand defined the concept of the sanction of the victim. The premise is that victims knowingly accept victimization. Chotu, Hema, Tina and Govinda accept victimization because they do not know and therefore, they accept. When they come to know, they go into the liberated jungles.

The RTI is potentially useful only to those who know. Information can be sought only when the availability of the desired information is known. Whether the information is revealed, and if so, whether it is the truth and the whole truth is another story. My case is that the RTI is inherently a reactive process. The disadvantaged can use RTI only through third parties who often have their own agenda. The media reported that on the first anniversary of the RTI, the President talked about a Rs. 23,000 Crore e-Governance scheme. Will the disadvantaged have access to the terminals in the citadels of the Collector Sahibs? Will they know how to log in? Will they know how to read on the screen and write on the keyboard? Do they know how to read and write?

The answer, I propose, is television. TV transcends literacy. TV reaches everywhere. Of all the media channels, only TV has a truly national audience. The idea is to have one TV channel, with national reach in all the languages except Bureaucratish, which will exclusively show and tell people what are their rights under the Law, what are the schemes for their benefit, what are the systems for rescue and relief. A National Channel where the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will together assure the citizens that the disadvantaged have hope, and this capsule will be telecast morning, afternoon, evening and night, every day of the year. A channel where every MP and MLA will be required to inform the people how their constituents have benefited from the legislations meant for socio-economic reform. The details of all the schemes will be consistently communicated in simple and effective terms so that the intended beneficiaries know what they are being deprived of. Seeing, after all, is believing. 

Mr. Speaker, Sir, why not transform the Parliament channels into Peoples’ channels?"

 ____________________________________

What happened next?

In less than two hours, I received a call from the Hon'ble Speaker, Mr. Somnath Chatterjee. He told me that tears had come to his eyes when he read my article, the best compliment I ever received for my writing. He was calling me on way to the airport, and asked me to meet him on return.

We met and the Speaker asked me to join the Advisory Committee of Lok Sabha Television and I agreed immediately.

The Committee met in due course and what transpired was strange, indeed! Almost all participants were upbeat on the success of LSTV, its' fast-growing viewership, innovative programming, fast response to breaking news and all these achievements called for much compliments and many self-deprecatory smiles! In between, I also came to know that the Secretary General of the Lok Sabha was refusing to release imprest funds to the CEO for buying crockery of his choice. This went on for about an hour and a half. 

I had sat quietly all this time, a highly demanding exercise as my friends and acquaintances will readily certify. The CEO did notice this, and invited me to take the floor just before the tea-break. I spoke my piece, acutely aware that most of the participants had switched off after the first couple of minutes. At the end, I said that if we do all these and more to truly empower the people without money or contacts to get their dues, there will be blood on the streets - blood of the parasites who have been fattening themselves on the pervasive ignorance. 

I don't know if the Committee met afterwards; I never went back. Nothing changed.

Stinking Gas

Petroleum gas is normally odourless. Mercaptan is deliberately added to LPG to give it a distinctive stink so that leaks are unmistakably detected; this is a global industry practice.


In India, bullshit is being liberally dosed into issues of natural gas from KG basin, with the same effect: leaks are easily detected. The bonus is easy detection of usual dishonesty and occasional stupidity.


Petroleum Ministry woke up in 2009 that contracts and agreements signed five years' back violate "sovereign rights". The minister and his cohorts talk of sovereign rights in voices choked with patriotic emotion - all that is missing is a new version of "... jara ankhonme bhar lo pani...". The Government as a whole, through its deafening silence, sanctifies this hypocrisy. Yes, hypocrisy: just consider applying the principles of "sovereign rights" as propounded by the Minister to coal, bauxite, manganese, zinc, dolomite, uranium and all other minerals, including oil. 


What exactly are these "sovereign rights"? The minister has not cared to define this. His actions imply that the "sovereign right" exercised by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas is a single-point agenda: to unilaterally change the substance or the interpretation of signed and sealed contracts.


Is it a "sovereign right" to turn somersault on formal submissions to the Supreme Court?


FunTime: Heard on Business TV: Kavery-Ganga basin!

Chopper rides

At some point, helicopter flights became routine events. Flying over the open sea, watching smudges becoming offshore platforms and drilling rigs or crossing the ridge just before getting into Dehradun or circling over Delhi waiting for ATC clearance while thunderstorms build up. Couple of times, the pilots couldn't locate the helipads: once we landed at Jamnagar just before fuel ran out, and the other time, I had to guide the pilots over my old station, Haldia. Landing at Jodhpur on a summer afternoon was an unforgettable experience: stepping on the hot concrete of the tarmac was the nearest I came to walking on fire.


The flight I'll always remember was a long haul from Nazira to Borjhar, in a single-engined Chetak. It was monsoon time in Assam, and the rains came pouring down. Visibility dropped to zero;  there was just a mist of water outside the glass bubble. It was like the documentaries on deep sea descent, with the difference that we had the haze of the day around us, not the darkness of the abyss. The steady roar of the engine was the only point of reference in that limbo. There was nothing to do, nothing to say. After some time, the downpour changed to a drizzle, and we could see the green fields and muddy rivers down below, at the right place!