English

In 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office he could have—and should have—pushed through urgently required structural reforms to improve India’s conservative bureaucracy. He had an unprecedented mandate and had charmed voters into believing that he would cleanse Indian governance as none before him ever had.  In reality, however, he appeared quite comfortable with the creaky bureaucratic apparatus that he had inherited, for he had assumed that his first-hand experience in running it at the State level for over a dozen years would suffice.

Jadavpur University is now surely a metaphor for both excellence and unrest that once characterised Presidency, more as a college than as a university, though it is sad to see how its present rulers are so ill at ease with the first and have steamrollered the other. History tells us that academic excellence and perpetual discontent have strange links, both licit and illicit, and also that the teaching community bristles at commands — real or imagined.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mastered the art of utilising insecurity as an instrument of his state policy and needs to demonstrate this at frequent intervals. Or else, when he has better things to do — and rather quickly, as time is running out — he has decided to rattle the complacent and over-secure babudom of New Delhi. That may explain his intention to recruit 10 new “professionals” — the definition of “professionals” has been kept delightfully vague — for lateral entry as joint secretaries in the Central government.

Now that Pranab Mukherjee's controversial visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters at Nagpur is over, we may do well to focus on the best takeaways from this risky gambit. He underlined again the unique position he commands in Indian politics. No one else could ever have swung it and all criticism only magnified the event. Statesmen rise above politicians by skilfully converting events of their choice into landmarks in political history - to magnify the message they seek to convey.

In India, we are passing through a traumatic period when the very ‘idea of India’ is being challenged by forces that are ignorant of the contribution of different communities to the architecture of Indian existence.

A severe existentialist crisis is presently tormenting the fish-loving and (later) meat-gorging Bengalis — and many are seriously looking at the vegetarian option. A tragedy of epic proportions has visited everyone, rich and poor, Hindu or Muslim, just when the Registrar General of Census declared that Bengalis are the most non-vegetarian people in India. In all, 98.55% of them eat meat and fish, while at the other end, only 25% of Rajasthanis touch non-vegetarian food.

What amaze every liberal in India and abroad are Narendra Modi’s unending and brazen attempts to centralise all power and decision making in a federal, democratic setup. To achieve this, he has been systematically weakening or subverting every national institution that has flowered and flourished in Independent India. Their autonomous and professional functioning apparently stand in his path towards an unabashed one-man rule.

By opting and qualifying for the civil service implies the voluntary acceptance of certain restrictions and a rather harsh discipline — the crux of which is to internalise pain without demur. What is less known is that the job also entails facing the raw heat of democracy’s raging furnace — elected representatives with a pre-set agenda. While appreciating the compulsions of political bosses to override the often-mindless worship of rules by babus, one cannot deny the fact that officials have learnt to live with reprimands, tantrums and worse.

When a retired DG of Police feels that 49 retired IAS, IPS and Central Service officers have over-reacted to the Kathua rape case — of an innocent Muslim girl of just eight years — clarifications are inescapable. We refer to an Op-ed article in the Indian Express on May 12, 2108: A Case of Selective Outrage. Comparisons of the heinousness of crimes are messy and subjective, but if we look for defining moments in India’s media history in recent memory, one could break down to two, straightaway — Nirbhaya’s rape on December 16, 2012 and Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.

In 1947, the two parts of Bengal could avoid the merciless massacres and incredible violence that the two halves of Punjab inflicted on each other not just because Gandhi was the world’s most effective single man peacekeeping force – remember the Noakhali riots of 1946 – but also because the Bengalis are not naturally intolerant or communally-charged all the time. However, when dark forces work overtime to create discord and manufacture riots, bloodshed does happen, even though better sense prevails within a very short time.

Most people outside Delhi may have forgotten that the chief secretary of this small but highly-publicised state, Anshu Prakash, was assaulted by two MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party in the presence of Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister in the residence of the CM. Some could not care less and those who believed the CM’s version must have felt that lessons like these are required to teach the high and mighty bureaucrats to be more responsive to the people’s needs. But the IAS officers and other civil servants have not forgotten the ugly incident and their State and Central associations have condemned Kejriwal and his party in no uncertain terms.

The recent public fight between A Surya Prakash, Chairman of Prasar Bharati and Smriti Irani, the minister for Information and Broadcasting reveals that even when both swear allegiance to the same BJP and its parent, the RSS, their interests and differences can be deadly. It rudely belies the fond hope of the ruling establishment that peace and harmony would reign once a ‘dissident’ CEO was smoked out before the end of his protected tenure. From the self goals made by both sides emerges an interesting case study of how the Indian state functions after the biggest historical electoral mandate brought Modi to the Centre.

The middle of February is when spring travels to Europe to tell the snows that it is time to start leaving and then rushes to India to a grand welcome. It is also the time when two festivals, the Christian Valentine’s Day and the Hindu Maha Shivaratri also arrive, but they take care not to meet each other, face to face.

The middle of February is when Spring travels to Europe to tell the snows that it is time to start leaving and then rushes to India to a grand welcome. It is also the time when two festivals, the Christian Valentine’s Day and the Hindu Shivaratri also arrive, but they take care not to meet each other, face to face. But this year, they have decided to break this rule and will arrive together on the 14th. So, let us see what we can expect.

Those who fret that community pujas in Calcutta are getting highly politicized must remember that they had been started in 1910 to support a political ideology. The first community Durga Puja at Balaram Basu Ghat Road in the Baghbazar area coincided with the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress. Bal Gangadhar Tilak had led the way by organizing large-scale Ganpati Pujas in Maharashtra to attract the masses to the new creed of nationalism. Calcutta adopted this model of utilizing festivities for a political purpose.

In this world of deafening din and amidst the beastly brutality that is perpetrated every day every where in the name of religion, what keeps the faithful going are the soft gongs of the bell of love. We strain to hear its gentle peal above the depressing cacophony for it reassures us not to lose heart for humanity is but one. For centuries, poets, prophets and singers have revelled in the songs of mystics who have grasped, in flashes that come and go, the essence of our existence that lies essentially in its oneness with the Creator.

I was in college when Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 private banks in 1969, and there was wild cheering. Even students like us who were not in the Economics department could understand that the avowed purpose of this dramatic measure was to ensure that the savings and other funds deposited by citizens and businesses in banks were utilised for the greater public good. A few years later, I joined the Indian Administrative Service or the IAS in 1975, after giving up a far more lucrative private sector job in a fit of youthful patriotism.

Museums began in the 18th century as a very European manner of displaying the pomp and glory of kings and emperors, as an extension of the same extravagance with which they built their grand palaces and luxuriant gardens. They were meant to overawe the visitor rather than to welcome him. The sheer wealth of the great empires like the Austro Hungarian, the Ottoman, the French or even the British spurred the need to display the artefacts and antiquities that the empires had collected, acquired or simply looted from other parts of the world.

December 18 will surely be an interesting day. Millions in India and abroad would love to know how Gujarat actually voted after displaying the first signs of dissonance in over one-and-a-half decades. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its well-rewarded journalists have started taunting liberals and secular forces - they have been branded 'sickular', a phrase that itself is rather sick - to 'wait for the results'.

The recent report of the National Crime Records Bureau that Kolkata is the safest among all major cites of India is indeed very welcome news. Technically, Coimbatore is the safest, but it is hardly a major city. But what is more noteworthy is that the rate of crime here is less than one eighth of Delhi’s, in spite of the fact that more money, manpower and resources are heaped on the nation’s capital. Kolkata's crime rate is one fourth of that of Bengaluru which is a much desired destination and when compared to Mumbai, this city is far better off.