Lessons from an ongoing federal crisis

Lessons from an ongoing federal crisis

Jawhar Sircar

Ananda Bazar Patrika, 22^nd  March, 2108

English Version

          The recent constitutional conflict in Delhi state is taking new and dangerous turns even after legal action was promptly taken and two MLAs who assaulted the chief secretary in the presence of the chief minister were arrested. Assaulting the administrative head of a state government is unprecedented in its audacity. It is a criminal offence in terms of Section 351 of the Indian Penal Code that defines even threatening gestures and pushing around as ‘assault’. But for the chief secretary to come to the next meeting with CM and his cabinet colleagues with a dozen policeman, who owe their loyalty to the central home ministry, shows a total breakdown in relationship. The chief minister’s unequivocal power to appoint the chief secretary has been settled by the the question long ago by the Supreme Court judgment in E.P. Royappa (1974) where it stated that as “the post of Chief Secretary is a highly sensitive post…and smooth functioning of the administration requires that there should be complete rapport and understanding between the Chief Secretary and the Chief Minister” Later, in Salil Sabhlok (2013), the highest court supported the power of “the Chief Minister......to appoint a ‘suitable’ person as a Chief Secretary or the Director General of Police…because both .... the Chief Minister and the appointee (must) share a similar vision of the administrative goals and requirements of the State. The underlying premise also is that Chief Minister has confidence that the appointee will deliver the goods, as it were, and both are administratively quite compatible with each other.”

    This provision does not exist for appointing Central government secretaries who are selected on rigorous but impersonal assessment of their career records. If senior officers so want, they can opt for central deputation, instead of spiking projects taken up by their duly-elected state governments. There are, of course two issues: first is that they have to qualify through strict standards and the second is that CMs do not want to release officers from the state IAS or IPS cadre. Narendra Modi set the biggest roadblocks to his officers joining the central government when he was CM of Gujarat so he cannot blame other CMs. They may seriously consider releasing officers who oppose or sabotage legitimate policies, provided they get a berth at the centre. While civil service associations rose in angry protest against the criminal assault on the chief secretary, no one protested when the the Lieutenant Governor usurped the powers of CM and appointed the chief secretary, obviously at the behest of the central government. The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had declared in Shamsher Singh vs State of Punjab (1974)that the Governor has to discharge his functionsonly in accordance with the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Chief Minister.

       The BJP has neither forgotten nor ‘forgiven’ Kejriwal for stopping Modi’s tsunami of 2104 and single-handedly wiping both national parties from Delhi state just eight months later. That is the unpredictable Indian voter. But it is not for IAS and IPS officers to join the central government’s do-or-die battle even though Kejriwal is unpleasant to them and stops at no trick himself. This conflict is surely straining the very nerves of the our federal constitution. Different nationalities and linguistic cultures came together on the understanding that diversity and regional variations would be respected. Even though both contestants in Delhi belong to more or less to the same culture and language, precedents that are being decided in this ugly war gain some ‘legal respectability’ and are sure to be used elsewhere where the two parties may differ widely in cultural systems and in approaches to plurality.

        Delhi is not a normal state and it is run according to Article 239AA of the Constitution and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act of 1991. Bothare meant for good governance of this sensitive state but they are regularly interpreted in a one-sided manner to favour the central government. This tramples the spirit of federal co-existence but officers of the IAS and the IPS, who head all critical posts in the Union Home Ministry or in Delhi administration, are duty bound to serve their state government. It is true that their postings are determined by the central government but could not some of them stand up for what is right? So many DMs and SPs have done so in north and central Indian states and paid the price. Two young IPS officers in Uttar Pradesh have shown their boldness and arrested hoodlums belonging to the ruling party. These two Senior Superintendents of Police of Saharanpur and Agra were heckled by communal goons who even attacked the residence of one and traumatised his family. Obviously, these two were transferred by the government but their children will respect them more. Lately, the DM of Bareilly and the SDO of Amethi have suffered as they showed more guts than their seniors in Delhi administration, who dread being posted to the Andamans.

       On the other side, Kejriwal is known for his domineering style, but then, what about Modi or others? And, to be fair, the tradition of central governments stymying state regimes opposed to them was not begun by the present regime. It started in 1959 when Nehru dismissed Namboodiripad‘s elected communist government and later when Indira Gandhi packed off United Front governments in Bengal in 1967 and 1969. Several officers have served in West Bengal and the centre with equal success during the last 41 years when this state created a Guinness record for electing governments that were invariably opposed to whoever ruled the centre. Most such officers were never blamed as being agents of either governments. Entering the civil services is not just passing a tough examination and serving mercurial ministries elected by the people. It also means that one has to weather such stormy constitutional relations and still uphold the values of the federal constitution. The IAS has no right to treat Kejriwal like “just a Revenue Service officer” who resigned, because he has earned his legitimacy the hard way, through the ballot box. The fact that he is cunning and disruptive are not sufficient reasons to undermine his legitimate government. In fact, the IAS and the IPS have tackled bigger mavericks and volcanic ministers and parties in the last 50 years. All those who worked in the districts during turbulent times, especially in politically volatile states, have faced violent mobs, often led by legislators and many officers have been badly roughed up by hotheads. It is an occupational hazard that doctors and hospitals face nowadays.

       What officers need to realise is that the expectations of the people have gone up manifold and no one will listen to why something that is fair and equitable cannot be done because of some colonial or post-colonial era rules. And also that powers in democratic India have definitely shifted in the last five decades from the English educated elite and upper class civil servants to whoever is elected from the bottom of the pyramid. They have their own style and demand immediate delivery but they hold the real India together, however unsophisticated be their style.

India’s Second New Year: Ugadi & Gudi Padwa

India’s Second New Year: Ugadi & Gudi Padwa

Jawhar Sircar

Published in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 1^st April,2016

          Many Indians sincerely believe that the 'Indian New Year', as distinguished from the western date of the first of January, starts with Baisakh in mid-April. After all, it is celebrated from Punjab to Bengal and Assam and all the way up to Tamil Nadu. This is, however, not true as a large number of Indians actually celebrate new year a few weeks earlier on Shukla Pratipada. This is at the beginning of the bright lunar fortnight of Chaitra, the month preceding Baisakh. This new year is observed as Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra and Goa; Ugadi in Andhra, Telengana and Karnataka and the Sindhis call it their Cheti Chand. The Kashmiris also call it Nav-Reh or new year and In western India, this phase marked the end of the Rabi season. This is when the crop was ready and it certainly called for festivities. Surely, religion had also to step in and the Brahma Purana mentions that on this day the Lord created the world after the great deluge.

       The lunar calendar date for Chaitra Shukla Pratipada often coincided or came close to Spring equinox and India’s official Saka calendar also begins on the 22nd of March, coinciding with Spring equinox. This equinox has been respected for several millennia and the ancient Egyptians and Persians started their new year from it. Even Easter was always quite close to it and so is Navaratri. The popular Hindu almanac, the Panchanga (panjika), follows the Saka reckoning but, frankly, India has  special problem of Eras. The Hindu tradition believes in colossal yugas or cycles of millions  of  years,  through  several  stages  of  'formation'  or  kalpa and ‘dissolution’ or pralaya. There was also a 'Vedic' new year that began Agrahayan, in celebration of the Vernal equinox. Astronomers Aryabhatta, Varahamihira and Bhaskara who also contributed to the "Indian calendar". Yet, more than a century ago, British commentator, MM Underhill observed in her excellent treatise 'The Hindu Religious Year' that there were still "several eras reckoned among Hindus, but the great majority follow one of two, either the Saka or the Samvat”. This Vikram-samvat is popularly believed to have been started by one Vikramaditya of Ujjain in 57 BC, but Kielhorn says that this era was hardly known till the 9th century AD. India had so many different calendars based on either solar or lunar days and months and finding a uniform calendar with a common starting point was thus a Herculean task. Attempts were made at different times to unite the solar and lunar calendars, to determine days and hours for the observance of fasts and other religious rites, but they failed. Most common Indians, however, do not bother as they remember dates in terms of important events, like "my son was born in the year of the great flood".

         Nevertheless, we still required an agreed date for the year to begin, at least for accounting purposes. It is interesting that India's official calendar had to be triggered by invaders from the Kazakh steppes  of Central Asia, the dreaded Sakas or Indo-Sythians, who swarmed into this land in the first century B.C.. They settled here and one of the by-products was the Saka era, reckoned from 78 A.D. After Independence, Nehru was keen to settle this vexatious problem of finding a common "Indian Era" and he  entrusted  the  task  to  Astrophysicist  Meghnad  Saha.  After   several debates, the Saha Committee decided to end the long journey from the Vedas to Vikramaditrya in favour of the Saka calendar. But India’s official new year has flopped as even officials hardly know or care about it. Even so, it travelled to Bali without a passport and stayed back with more respect. Indians prefer Chaitra or Baisakh as religious dates matter more than babu directives.

          But we need to be clear that, despite convergences, the Chaitra lunar-based new year does differ from the solar Spring equinox and this year, for instance, the Chaitra new year is as late as the 8th of April, so close to the Baisakhi new year. A hundred years ago, Underhill noted two interesting practices in western India during the Chaitra new year day. One was the the mandatory eating of neem leaves. This must have been for some immunity against deadly small-pox and for the same reason, many worship Sitala at this time. Even now, this paste of neem leaves with jaggery and tamarind is passed around, to purify the blood and strengthen the immune system. The second was the erection of a pole (dhwaja) on  this Gudi Padwa, where Padwa is a derivative of Sanskrit Pratipada. The gudi or pole is what distinguishes the Marathi style of celebration and even the poor stick little rods out from their windows. Marathis believe that these ward off evil and invite prosperity into the house. The poles are ornamented with bright green or yellow cloth and shining brocades or even sugar crystals, neem leaves, mango twigs and colourful flowers. People  take out time to spruce up their homes and draw intricate rangoli designs near the doors.

          While raising the gudi, the ‘Shiva-Shakti’ principle in the universe is invoked because the orthodox insist that this enables all the constituents of the gudhi to accept divine principles. My interpretation of why Marathas stuck victory poles outside their homes at the end of harvest and the beginning of the dry season is that it was a "call to arms". The dreaded Maratha light cavalry was a lightning force that struck havoc in Bengal, Odisha and the southern states in the 18th century. It was based largely on the voluntary services of two classes of peasant soldiers, recruited by the ruling Peshwas, the Shiledars who were given arms and stipends by the State and the Bargis who joined in for whatever they could get. The dry season after Chaitra was most conducive to light cavalry as horses could sweep over the dry soil of the east in summer and the same ground became wet and soft from the first rains. The gudi stuck outside the house was probably a sign that the peasant was ready to join as a part-time raider, the Bargi.

          Chaitra Shukladi is another name for this new year, while Ugadi can be explained as 'Yuga', the word for 'epoch', and 'adi' stands for 'the beginning'. The festival marks the new year day for people between the Vindhyas and the Kaveri river, who follow the South Indian lunar calendar. The day usually begins with ritual showers (oil bath) followed by prayers.  In Karnataka, a special dish called Obbattu or Puran Poli is prepared on this occasion which is a paste of gram and jaggery is stuffed into a flat, roti-like bread and topped with ghee or milk. In Andhra and Telengana, special dishes called Polelu or Puran Poli are prepared on this occasion. A interesting mixture called Ugadi Pachhadi is made of six tastes, including bitter neem, sweet jaggery or ripe bananas, hot green chilly or pepper, salt, sour tamarind juice and unripened tangy mango. It will be clear that this is a medicinal potion, as the season of spring brought in not only joy but sorrow as well: because it carried deadly viruses and diseases.

            As we study Indian festivals more and more, we wonder how Brahmanism managed to bring such varied and often conflicting rituals into one common refrain: unity in diversity. Diversity is quite clear when we see so many different dates and celebrations, but 'unity' is also evident from the fact that more than a hundred crores celebrate their disparate new year all within a band of just one month, or even less. Amazing !

Smriti Irani is Only the Latest Star in the I&B Ministry’s Serial Wars With Prasar Bharati

Smriti Irani is Only the Latest Star in the I&B Ministry’s Serial Wars With Prasar Bharati

By Jawhar Sircar

(The Wire, 4^th March, 2018)

The latest serial that Smriti Irani is playing out as the minister for information and broadcasting is certainly more interesting than all her previous saas-bahu soap operas. It is heartening to find that she has lost none of her talent for histrionics, and that scoring several self goals means nothing to her as long as the trishul can run through the heart of the adversary. 

Her adversary, in the instant case, is A. Surya Prakash, chairman of Prasar Bharati – a pedigreed BJP-RSS loyalist from the ‘Vivekananda Foundation’. When he retaliated in equal measure, he certainly showed a mettle that few knew he possessed, but then, his very existence depends on this battle. As chairman, he refused to believe he has no executive role or powers and that all he needs to do is to chair board meetings. 

Since Narendra Modi felt the Prasar Bharati CEO he inherited when he became prime minister protested too much and was taking the much-assured but never-granted autonomy of the public broadcaster a little too seriously, he decided to implant an ‘executive 24×7 chairman’, though it ran contrary to the law as it stood. Prakash gets a salary and first class travel benefits. Within days of his installation in Prasar Bharati in October 2014, the highly-politicised flock of Doordarshan, All India Radio and even the corporate office of PB headquarters at Mandi House made a beeline for his door, seeking the benediction of the new regime. 

The I&B ministry and Prasar Bharati may have worked in tandem in those first days – especially after a ‘dissident’ CEO was smoked out before the end of his protected tenure – but the ugliest spat in the history of Prasar Bharati now unfolding tells us how wrong the ruling establishment was in hoping peace and harmony would reign merely because the chairman was aligned to it. The fact that Surya Prakash and Smriti Irani are at each other’s throat underlines the adage that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests. And since the adversaries are well matched in terms of political connections, the top management of Prasar Bharati has been forced to deactivate their right and wrong buttons and swear allegiance to both Irani and Prakash. 

The I&B ministry’s increasing stranglehold over a statutory body like Prasar Bharati shows its obsessive urge to control, not improve. It is also a prime example of how politicians and bureaucrats in post-liberalisation India can compensate for the loss of powers they enjoyed under the previous permit control raj. The hard fact is that as long as bloated ministries exist and are staffed and controlled by powerful mandarins, they are genetically propelled to exercise their hegemony — notwithstanding all the Modi jumlas of ‘minimum government’. Public sector undertakings, banks and ‘autonomous bodies’ have now to bear the brunt of the megalomania of ministers and babus. This comes in the form of erratic government directions, unabashed interference and the incessant grilling of the officials of public bodies. 

To be fair to ministries, their domination has often been encouraged by their appointees on the boards as return favour and there is no question the Prasar Bharati board is packed with people whose loyalty is to the PMO or the RSS. After all, every little or big appointment is tightly controlled by the PMO, which takes years to decide even if it brings the organisations concerned to a standstill. No more can one expect a fearless journalist like B.G. Verghese or a film maker like Muzaffar Ali to grace the Prasar Bharati board. It is well known that no minister has any say in these matters, except to function with such appointees he or she never chose and this is where the roots of the present conflict lie. This same board that is so ‘injured’ by the ministry today had, in fact, ganged up with it in the recent past to kill positive proposals put forth by the PB CEO, just because “the minister so desired”. A huge pile of written evidence exists that can substantiate this. 

But if Prasar Bharati was set up by an Act of parliament, how can Smriti Irani continue her depredations on it? To begin with, the Prasar Bharati Act itself provides for political appointees on the board. What is more dangerous is that it has two sections (32 and 33) which ensure that all major decisions require the ministry’s approval. A former bureaucrat related rather proudly how such hidden buttons are required in all such Acts to ensure that “autonomy does not get out of hand”. 

An important mandate of the Act requires a 22-member parliamentary committee to be constituted under section 13, to supervise Prasar Bharati on behalf of parliament. It’s members are to be from both houses of parliament, through proportional representation. No government has, however, set up this committee as it does not want to give up powers and allow Prasar Bharati an opportunity to explain, a bit like the BBC, its problems and projects directly to parliament, thus bypassing the ministry. This would militate against the prevailing narrative as every minister is coached by babus to insist that she/he alone is responsible to parliament and therefore, she/he can summon officials any time, for any reason. Even section officers exercise these powers quite vicariously and the whole idea is to grill the officers of Prasar Bharati, Doordarshan and AIR and to question every act of theirs, until they succumb to the ministry. 

It is almost certain that members of parliament are not even aware of this provision for a parliamentary committee which could cut bureaucratic interference substantially and avoid recurring wars with the I&B ministry. Nor is anyone aware that there are other parts of the Act, such as sections 14 and 15 that require the setting up of a Broadcasting Council to ensure political impartiality. Successive I&B secretaries and ministers have taken pains to play down or forget to mention this vital information — that sections 13, 14 and 15 of the Act enjoin the mandatory democratisation of Prasar Bharati’s supervision before parliamentary committees. How else can all powers remain locked up in Shastri Bhavan? 

Budget and finance are two areas where all public-funded bodies which receive grants from parliament through ‘their respective ministries’ are made to grovel before the ministries. I have had a long stint as secretary of the Union ministry of culture and more than half my time was spent fighting many of my own babus who were periodically harassing the autonomous bodies under the ministry. It is not that Prasar Bharati or other autonomous bodies are filled with saints but the irresponsible power exercised by assistants, section officers and under secretaries of the ministries is definitely the most negative force that stymies any positive progress in India. They have no idea what the real India outside Delhi is, but they flourish because IAS and Central Service officers are too busy attending to the many desires and diktats of the PMO, Niti Aayog and their own ministers to find time to control them. Or, they enjoy the power of adjudicating between the perpetrators and the victims, both of whom are equal in their myopic view. This condition applies to every ministry and every autonomous or public body in India (except atomic energy and space) and the mechanics of hegemony have actually become more intolerable under the present regime. 

In the current imbroglio, it is clear that Prasar Bharati’s back is to the wall. An imperious minister, who can teach babus several tricks in repressive techniques, has embarked on a rather whimsical, scorched-earth policy aimed at bringing the chairman and the board to their knees. This is taking some time, though even the senior-most PB officials have accepted the nuisance of being at the beck and call of the ministry. 

It does not need a former soap star to discover that DD’s serials are mediocre. One of the main reasons for this lies in the decisions taken in the 2000-2003 period when the I&B ministry ran Prasar Bharati by ensuring that only its own tightly-controlled additional secretaries could be CEOs of the public broadcaster. Some unscrupulous Doordarshan officers advised them to junk the outsourcing of serials that had elevated this bland governmental TV channel to historic heights, serials like Ramayan, Mahabharat, Buniyaad and Hum Log. DD decided to file cases against many iconic private producers even though they were literally their golden geese. One Mandi House Machiavelli, who is no more, ensured that private TV channels gained at Doordarshan’s expense. 

DD then started ‘commissioning’ serials, though almost no one inside it knew how to make a box office-busting serial. This meant that instead of earning hugely from (say) a Yash Chopra serial, DD now paid large sums to new producers, many of whom were sub-standard. Some of the tales of how these B-class producers were sent to DD with chits from VIPs or from Shastri Bhavan (where the I&B ministry is located) were found to be true when the CBI raided the PS to an I&B minister in his office. The user friendly CEOs of the last decade and many DGs who ruled DD with the ministry’s blessings had certainly joined the chorus. As expected, more money was paid to these new breed of producers than what DD could earn from their serials, but no one seemed to mind or notice, as long as other pleasures existed. Herein lies the beginning of the end of Prasar Bharati and DD. 

It goes to the credit of Surya Prakash’s board that it finally agreed with the CEO’s persistent proposal to stop the bleeding losses on account of mediocre serials and the corruption that went with it. In 2016, the board finally approved, after several months of discussion and hair-splitting, the policy of sale of DD’s serial slots to the highest, qualified bidder. Some in DD spiked progress several times and a board member fought to extend the patronage raj of serials, as some of the new regime’s followers had started tasting blood. But even this transparent bidding process passed by the board and agreed to by the ministry earlier has now been stymied by Irani and her bureaucrats, with no explanation or justification for acting well beyond their powers. 

Another main source of DD’s revenue, namely the money it earns from its Free Dish satellite slot-auctions, has also been stopped by the minister for reasons not clear. The cumulative result will be to pauperise the gasping organisation. In 21 years, the ministry has not found time to frame rules to operationalise the transfer of assets to Prasar Bharati under section 16 of the Act and who knows how many crores have been lost when vacant or unused lands were encroached upon by various ‘interests’ in this man-made confusion. 

On the personnel front, Prasar Bharati was afflicted with deliberate incapacitation at birth as 48,000 government servants who were recruited by the ministry over decades for AIR and Doordarshan were ‘transferred’ to it in 1997, without consulting either the employees or the public broadcaster. Under the law, their salaries have to be paid by the ministry, even if they work from home. Prasar Bharati was chosen unilaterally to accommodate all of them, without any option to refuse many who were unwilling or who just do not fit into the cut-throat competitive world of modern broadcasting. 

As Mrinal Pande, former chairperson and journalist mentioned, the cream within left for greener pastures in private television and radio and there is no doubt that Prasar Bharati could have done better if it did not have to inherit so many rights-conscious, rule-obsessed babus. For 25 years, no promotions were permitted by the ministry, sadistically quoting rules, until Prasar Bharati revolted a few years ago and gave ‘ad hoc’ promotions to lots of employees: mainly to pep up their morale. 

Smriti Irani’s Tughlaqian decision to stop the salaries of Prasar Bharati employees is not only unjust but quite contrary to the legal obligations that her ministry has to bear. It was bad enough when successive secretaries and ministers complained loudly in public that Prasar Bharati’s salary bill eats up 80% of their budget, for they were being miserly with facts. But no minister can insult parliament which voted for this expenditure of Prasar Bharati as there is really no option, even if it is shut down. This is real life, not a serial where tantrums come with a loud melodramatic clang. 

While Prasar Bharati itself is a glaring example of how a broadcaster should not be run — rife as it is with mediocrity, intrigues and petty corruption — in the present scenario, it is correct to resist the minister’s attempt to force it to hire high cost journalists, even if they are saffron. The ministry’s tit-for-tat order to Prasar Bharati to terminate all its hired hands is ludicrous, as many of these people ensure that the organisation is still alive despite all attempts to finish it off. It was compelled to set up numerous installations all over India for over two decades on the orders of whichever government was in power but no staff were sanctioned. DD and AIR run most of these with contractual employees. 

Another glaring misuse of the minister’s powers has come to light. DD may dish out tasteless fare but on special occasions like Independence and Republic Days, it’s coverage is as good as the best anywhere. Irani arbitrarily stopped DD from covering the opening and closing ceremonies of the International Film Festival of India in 2017. Now DD is being told to pay Rs.2.9 crores to NFDC – a corporation under the I&B ministry – so that it can pay a firm (whose directors are reportedly close to Irani) for the work. But nothing matters to the minister even though parliament is about to meet once again. Because, the more the din, the better it is for the government to claim that it is unable to function and then hustle through all Bills, without debate. 

As far as the I&B ministry is concerned, the current controversy is no skin off its back as it is genetically programmed to dominate the public broadcaster. Without Prasar Bharati, the ministry would be left with boring tasks like registering newspapers or tom-tomming the limited achievements of a government that sold so many rosy dreams. As for Smriti Irani, let us wait for the next episode of this tragic-comic serial.

(Please Click Here to read the article of The Wire's Website)

A cosmetic corporatisation will do nothing to improve Doordarshan or AIR

                            

A cosmetic corporatisation will do nothing to improve Doordarshan or AIR

 

                                                   Jawhar Sircar

(Published in Hindustan Times on 12.01.2017)

                If small but repetitive news items are to be believed, then Prasar Bharati may either given a fresh "corporate status", or it may head be for the chopping board. The former would actually degrade a battered body even further, as a PSU or a sarkari corporation, which is often summoned to bestow favours that financial rules hardly permit, is held way down in the pecking order of governance. But, who or what is Prasar Bharati? The opening line of Edward Lear's nonsense rhyme comes to mind: "Who, or why, or which, or what / Is the Akond of Swot?" This amusing creature has successfully bedevilled any clear understanding of its role and functioning.

           On the whole, it may not be a bad idea to corporatise it, except that the law as pronounced by the Supreme Court in 1995 may stand in the way. The Court had freed air waves from state control and had mandated the constitution of a "public body". It thus needs to be seen if a private company or a PSU would fit the bill. Five years before this, VP Singh had passed the Prasar Bharati Act promising to liberate and modernise orthodox AIR and DD, little realising that the Act had been surgically injected with a polio-type virus by officials anxious to ensure state hegemony. Right from November 1997, when Prasar Bharati became operational, the ineradicable government mindset of its 48,000 employees transferred in one stroke from the ministry to the new autonomous body, did its bit by ensuring that security and subservience would always be preferred over performance and innovation. Can the proposed corporate delete-abort them?

         When Indian viewers started deserting a prosaic DD for more colourful private TV channels in early 2000, Prasar Bharati actually aided this exodus by driving away many talented producers. Its  control-raj pomposity and never ending 'demands' resulted in numerous, indefensible court cases that weigh it down till today. Every government has declared that it is keen to improve Prasar Bharati but many have also ensured, or winked at, losses made by patronising sub-standard programmes. If someone is serious about DD, it has to decide once for all whether its has to maintain some 50 mini-TV stations, with hundreds of trained staff and enormous public investment in equipment, land and buildings in prime urban locations: to produce just 6 hours of programming in a whole week. It is easier to sight a rare Malabar Parakeet than come across an old-world roof-top TV antenna, but can a new corporate entity be free to shut down most of DD's 1400 analogue TV towers because of negligible viewership? Not only would it save several hundreds of crores, but what's more interesting, it would prevent expenditure on eager but entrenched suppliers of obsolete technologies. One simply cannot fathom what mysterious force or what ALS paralysis prevented DD from jumping headlong into India's multi-billion 4G race, by offering 20 digital TV channels that it beams every day from the four metro cities, without a single paisa or any viewer. Enterprising broadcasters could reach their inexhaustible saas-bahu serials or never-ending cricket matches to 250 million smartphones, with no talk-time bills, and it would be win-win for DD, broadcasters and viewers.

         If reams of sweated-out proposals containing precise steps for the improvement of DD and AIR are lost in the labyrinthine corridors of power, either by neglect or by design or even an adroit combination of both, one wonders whether a well meaning committee decision can do the trick. "The fault, dear Brutus," rued Caesar so wisely, "is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

(PleaseClick Here to read article on HT’s Website)

Prasar Bharati Vs The Ministry of I&B

Prasar Bharati Vs The Ministry of I&B   

Jawhar Sircar

(Published in The Lokmat Times, 27.02.2018)

        

                 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 information ministry’s increasing stranglehold over a statutory body like Prasar Bharati shows its obsessive urge to control, not improve. It is also prime example of how bureaucrats in post-Liberalisation regimes compensate the loss of powers they enjoyed under the previous Permit Control raj. As long as there are ministries, that are manned and controlled by powerful mandarins, they are genetically propelled to exercise hegemonic strength, even if the PM goes on giving assurances of ‘minimal government’. Since the license-patronage has gone, it are the public sector undertakings, banks and ‘autonomous bodies’ that have to bear the brunt of the megalomania of ministers and babus. This comes in the form of erratic government directions, unabashed interference and incessant grilling of the officials of public bodies.  To be fair to ministries, their domination has been whetted by their appointees on all boards, and the Prasar Bharati board is packed with people whose loyalty to PMO is without question. After all, every little or big appointment is controlled by PMO that takes years to decide and no more can one expect a fearless crusading journalist like BG Verghese or a film maker like Muzaffar Ali to grace the Prasar Bharati board. It is well known that no minister has any say, except to function with such appointees he never wanted and this is where the roots of the present conflict lies. This same Board that is so ‘injured’ by the ministry today had, in fact, ganged up with the ministry in the past to kill positive proposals put forth by the executive, just because “the minister so desired”. A huge pile of written evidence exists that can substantiate how this.  

            But, since Prasar Bharati was set up by a Act of Parliament, how can Smiriti Irani continue her depredations on it? To begin with, the Prasar Bharati Act itself provides for political appointees on the board, but what is important is that Act also requires a 22-member Parliamentary Committe to be set up. It should be constituted under Sec 13, to supervise Prasar Bharati on behalf of Parliament and its members are to be from both houses of parliament, through proportional representation. No government has set up this committee as it does not want to give up powers to Parliament and allow Prasar Bharati an opportunity to explain, a bit like the BBC, its problems and projects directly to Parliament, bypassing the ministry. This militates against the prevailing narrative as every minister is coached by babus to insist that he alone is responsible to parliament. Thus, he can summon officials of Prasar Bharati, Doordarshan and Akashvani and question every act of theirs, until they succumb. It is almost certain that members of parliament are not even aware of this provision of a Parliamentary Committee which could cut bureaucratic interference substantially and avoid recurring wars with the information Ministry. Nor is anyone aware that sections 14 and 15 of the Act requires the ministry to set up a Broadcasting Council also, to ensure political impartiality. So fed up was an earlier Information minister, Manish Tiwari, that he made several public statements that his ministry should be wound up. 

              Budget and finance are two areas where all public-funded bodies that receive their grants from parliament through ‘their respective ministries’ are made to grovel before the ministries who act like thanedars. I have had a long stint as Secretary of the ministry of Culture and more than half my time was gone in fighting my own babus who were harassing the autonomous bodies quite periodically. It is not that Prasar Bharati or other autonomous bodies are composed of saints but the irresponsible power exercised by Assistants, Section Officers and Under Secretaries of the ministries is the most negative force that stymies any positive progress in India. They have no idea what the real India outside Delhi is, but they flourish because IAS and Central Service Officers are too busy in attending to the many desires and diktats of PMO, Niti Aayog and their own ministers to find time to control them. This applies to every Ministry and every autonomous or public body in India (except Atomic Energy and. Space) and the mechanics of hegemony have actually become more intolerable under rather present regime.

             Prasar Bharati was afflicted with deliberate ‘polio’ at birth as 48,000 government servants who were recruited by the ministry over decades for Akashvani and Doordarshan were ‘transferred’ to it, without consulting either the employees or the broadcasters. As Mrinal Pande, former chairperson and journalist mentioned, the cream of broadcasters left for greener pastures in private television and radio and there is no doubt that Prasar Bharati could have done better if it did not have to inherit so many rights-conscious and rule-obsessed babus. For 25 years, no promotions were permitted to them by the ministry, sadistically quoting rules, until Prasar Bharati revolted a few years ago and gave ‘ad hoc’ promotions to lots of employees: mainly to pep up their morale. Under the law, the salaries of this huge army has to be paid by the appointing authority, the Ministry of I & B, but Secretaries and Ministers complain loudly that Prasar Bharati salaries eat up 80 percent of its budget, omitting to mention that their predecessors created this problem. 

             In the present imbroglio, it is clear that Prasar Bharati’s back is to the wall. An imperious minister, who can teach babus several tricks in repressive techniques, has embarked on a rather whimsical scorched-earth policy until the chairman and the board are on their knees. This is taking some time, though even the senior-most officials have accepted the nuisance of being at the beck and call of the ministry. It is a reported that the main source of DD’s revenue, namely its revenue from its Freedish satellite slot-auctions has been stopped by the minister for reasons not clear. Other revenue measures like the open transparent auction of its prime and near-prime slots have also been choked. The cumulative result will be to pauperise the gasping organisation. In 21 years, the ministry has not found time to frame rules to operationalise the transfer of assets to Prasar Bharati under section 16 of the Act and god only knows how many hundreds of crores have been lost when vacant or unused lands were encroached in this man-made confusion. 

            While Prasar Bharati itself is an glaring example of how a body should not be run, rife with mediocrity, intrigues and petty corruption, in the present case, it is correct to resist the minister’s attempt to force it to hire high cost journalists, even if they are saffron. The ministry’s order to terminate all hired hands, many of who ensure that the organisation is still alive despite all attempts to kill it, is just mindless retaliation. But then, the Ministry has to dominate as without Prasar Bharati, I&B would only be engaged in lack-lustre film festivals and boring tasks like registering newspapers or tom-tomming the limited achievements of a government that sold so many rosy dreams. As for Smriti Irani, let us watch the next episode of this tragic-comic serial. 

 (Please Click Here to read the article on The Lokmat Times' Website)

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Valentine’s Day, Maha Shivratri and the Perennial Problem of Love in Patriarchal Orthodoxies

Valentine’s Day, Maha Shivratri and the Perennial Problem of Love in Patriarchal Orthodoxies

By Jawhar Sircar

(Published in The Wire on 14.2.2018)

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.

But this year, they have decided to break this rule and will arrive together on the February 14. The morning is for Valentine and the night of February 13 and 14 is for Shiva. So, let us see what we can expect.

Hindus celebrate Shiva’s wedding anniversary for it is on this day that he is said to have married Parvati. On the other hand, the Christian Church has been rather embarrassed with this mid-February festival of love. For several centuries, the Church tried to suppress this basically pagan celebration called Lupercalia by ancient Romans, which permitted a lot of sexual liberties. The Church naturally condemned as downright immoral this open free mixing of the sexes and it denounced the goddess Juno Februata in whose name this ‘fever of love’ went on.

It did not succeed fully and so, according to scholars like Barbara Walker, “The Church replaced the goddess with a mythical male martyr, Saint Valentine.” He had conflicting origins and one of them said that he was a pure, handsome Roman youth who gave his life for his chaste sweetheart. One may notice how the central character changed from female to male, as all religions have an overriding patriarchal streak, and how relationships between lovers were sanitised to become more respectable.

That reminds us how the Nimbarka sect of Vaishnavas and several poets of northern India declared that Radha and Krishna were actually a married couple and how many noted religious leaders endorsed this stand. Love has been a perennial problem with patriarchal religious orthodoxies, especially if it dares to come before or outside legitimate marriage or beyond caste or class. Can we forget the tragedy that visited Shiva and Sati in Daksha’s yagna and the cost that they had to pay for ‘love marriage’?

The custom of Shivaratri became more pronounced mainly in the last two or three centuries after Brahmanism was restored in Bengal following the defeat of Muslim rulers by the British. The philosophy was that marriage is so serious and complex that it was best left to parents to consult gods, caste rules and horoscopes to locate husbands like Shiva for good girls who prayed and kept fasts.

At the same time, we see glimpses of how, throughout history and legend, societal respectability had to gulp and accept cheeky (bearaa) characters like Kama and Rati in India and Eros, Cupid or even Priapus in Europe. Kāmadeva, for instance, is linked not only to Shiva, but also to Brahma who created him, according to the Shiva Purana. He can be traced to the Rig Veda and the Atharva Vedaand while the Vishnu Purana says that he is a side of Narayana, the Bhagavata Purana claims that he is an aspect of Krishna. This just reveals that his existence and symbolism could not be denied by the high and legitimate schools of Hinduism. If we go just by the dates of these texts, that span a period of two and a half thousand years, we see that Kama or Madana was in considerable demand and did not disappear from the stage like Indra or Varuna.

It is interesting to note that, like the handsome Roman youth who was visualised as Valentine by the Christians, Kāmadeva is represented as a good looking young man with green skin who wields a bow made of sugarcane and has a string of honeybees following him. His arrows are decorated with five kinds of fragrant flowers like Mallika and Ashoka and he arrives with the symbols of spring like cuckoos, humming bees and the gentle breeze.

More fascinating is the fact that civilisations so distinct and distant from each other like the Hindu and the Graeco Roman had the same bow and arrow motif for the god of love, who was called Eros by the Greeks and Cupid by the Romans. In fact, Cupid appeared in ancient Europe as a phallus with wings, and it was much later that Renaissance art converted it with a new visual form: as a cherubic baby angel flying around with a sweet little bow and arrow. The heart pierced with the arrow of love remains the most widely understood symbol all over the world and card manufactures make millions of dollars from it on Valentine’s Day, which is basically a highly commercialised festival.

Coming back to India, we now encounter aggressive fanatics policing public places to control couples on Valentine’s Day, without realising the roots of their own religion. Renaming it as Kama-Rati Divas may make sense to this mentally weak tribe. It is my submission that while the powerful Vaishnava sect absorbed various aspects of troublesome love through Radha-Krishna and Holi in the heady spirit of spring, the rival Shaivas also tackled the issue of desire through a very virile Shiva, who also has his tales of frolics.

But without restraint and order, society cannot function and it is usually thought that Shiva’s punishing of Kāmadeva was like showing the ‘red card’ to uncontrolled players. We have heard the story of Madana-bhasma or Kama Dahana, that appears in the Matsya Purana, where Kāmadeva is burnt to ashes by Shiva for tempting him with lust while he was deep in meditation.

Hinduism is basically the management of contradictions and this is evident in this story as well, which also says that all Kamadeva was doing was performing a sacred duty by arousing lust in Shiva. After all, the gods had sent him on this sacred mission so that Shiva and Parvati could mate and produce a super hero, Kartikeya, who alone was destined to defeat the unvanquished Tarakashura, the terror of both the worlds. In a way, therefore, it was not Kama-Dahana, but Shivaratri with all its vratas that was supposed to bring in an order into the matter of desire, through a religiously regulated festival.

Further contradictions are evident in the next part of the story, where Shiva listened to the wailing pleas of Rati, Kama’s devastated wife, and resuscitated Madana, but in a disembodied form. Hence Kāmadeva is called Ananga or Atanu, i.e, one who has no body. The spirit of love embodied by Kama, however, fills the cosmos and humans remain afflicted with lust, on and off. Incidentally, the legend of Kama was exported with all other fascinating stories when Shaiva dharma went abroad, and the Hindus of Java-dwipa celebrate in their 12th-century poem Smara-dahana. Kama and his consort Rati are called Kamajaya and Kamarati in Kakawin poetry and later Wayang narratives, that Indonesians perform with their famous shadow puppet shows, with leather characters.

Before we end, let us observe how an original god of fertility in Greece was represented by a phallus, like Shiva. He was the brother of Eros and his name was Priapus, which is also a medical term for the male organ. He was supposed to have gone from the present day Turkey and was worshipped in the Roman Empire as well, where he became the patron of merchants. The worship of this phallic god continued among rural folk, even after Christianity removed all pagan gods or absorbed them as saints.

There were other phallic gods like Hermes in Greece and Mutunus Tutunus among Romans whose role was to ensure satisfaction within marriage. Even earlier, the Egyptians worshipped Isis and Min, while the Norwegians had their extra-manly deity, Freyr. The Balkan kingdoms celebrated their phallic Kukeri and distant Japan still has fertility shrines with this symbol.

Wallis Budge states very clearly that in Europe, “giant phalli were adored up to the 17th century as saints” and he produces a long list as well. Sir William Hamilton describes the rites of worship of phallic saint, Cosmo in the 18th century. When bomb ravaged English churches were being rebuilt after the Second World War, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments discovered several phallic stones buried under the floor. Therefore, the shock that Europeans visitors to India expressed at even the civilised version of Shiva worship, especially on Shivaratri and in the month of Sravana, appears quite uncalled for.

As an ancient civilisation, Hinduism has shown remarkable tolerance towards all needs of humans, and it is tragic that this accommodative spirit is being perverted by some. Ancient India mastered the art of accepting all facts of life and embedded their spirit into festivals that celebrate them with maturity: quite openly, cleanly and without any self righteous shame.

 (Please Click Here to read articleon The Wire’s Website)

https://thewire.in/223762/valentines-day-maha-shivratri-perennial-love-patriarchy/

From Opposition to Ultra Nationalism: The Politics of The Anthem and Tricolour

From Opposition to Ultra Nationalism:

The Politics of The Anthem and Tricolour

Jawhar Sircar

Ananda Bazar Patrika, 26th January 2018

English Translation

          The recent press conference of four senior judges of the Supreme Court brought into the open, rather uncomfortably, certain defined positions within the highest court of the land: that were hitherto discussed only in whispers. The pronouncement made by Justice Dipak Misra’s bench on the 30^th of November 2016directing “all cinema halls in India (to) play the National Anthem before the feature film starts” appears, therefore, to represent one point of view. The honourable judge, who later became the became Chief Justice of India, declared then that “all present in the hall are obliged to stand up to show respect to the National Anthem” as it was an opportunity for citizens to express their “love for the motherland.” The other point of view was voiced by Justice Chandrachud of the Supreme Court eleven moths later when he declared it was unnecessary for a citizen to “wear his patriotism on his sleeves”. This order of 27^thOctober 2016 remarked that “the next thing will be that people should not wear t-shirts and shorts to movies because it will amount to disrespect to the National Anthem... where do we stop this moral policing?”He had, incidentally, shared Justice Mishra's Bench in November 2016 and this subsequent categorical judgement is, therefore, an interesting example of the dynamics of India’s judicial system and the evolving concept of ‘justice’.

           Anti socials masquerading as ultra nationalists soon utilised the mandatory order to play the national anthem to rough up those they suspected as not being sufficiently ‘patriotic’. To be frank, staring at a rather unaesthetic digital display of a fluttering synthetic flag not did generate sufficient voltage either. The behaviour pattern of the current dispensation also contrasts rather sharply with the sensitivity that government had displayed earlier in 1963, when cinema halls were first advised to play the national anthem. This was just after the shocking attack by China when a strong national sentiment had gripped India spontaneously, without the need for patriotic injections. From the archived files of the period, m it appears that the Public Relations Committee set up by the National Defence Council to improve the mood of a demoralised nation recommended that a standard recorded version of the national anthem be played in film auditoria, with the national flag if possible. But the 1963 order of the Home Ministry issued on 29^th June was only an advisory ratherthan a diktat. Its wordings were “State governments are requested to persuade the cinema houses” with the expectation that it would work. Besides, the anthem was only to be played at  the end of two shows, the matinee and evening, when audiences got up anyway, to leave: with no element of compulsion or vigilantism.

      As no standard short film of the moving national flag was readily available, the Films Division was directed to produce two versions, a colour film for the “main halls in the big cities” and a black and white one for all other halls in these cities. Cinema halls in the rest of India could play only an authorised gramaphone record. The profuse notes kept on files and the numerous letters exchanged between officials of the Home ministry, the Information & Broadcasting ministry, the All India Radio and the Gramaphone Company of Kolkata during these eight months of 1963 presents us with insights into the bureaucratic obsession for being correct, detailed and, of course, free from controversy. The files also preserve for posterity nuggets of history like how babus sitting in distant Delhi knew which 26 film theatres of Kolkata qualified as “main halls”. These included Metro, Elite, Globe, New Empire, Lighthouse, Minerva, Hind, Paradise, Priya, Basusree, Bijoli, Bharati, Indira, Purna, Sri and a few others. The second category of 71 ‘other halls’ of Kolkata included Aleya, Ajanta, Bharati, Chitra, Regent, Prachi, Uttara, Tiger, etc, but most names of both categories are just memories, except rare exceptions like Priya. People may soon forget the origins of Ujjalar Chanachur and Bijoli Grill. In 1963, the  Films Division promptly produced the desired films that were sold to the halls, at 50 rupees for the colour and 32 for the black and white. The gramaphone record that was marketed for cinema halls outside the metropolitan towns carried three sound tracks of 52 seconds each of the choral version of the national anthem where 60 artistes participated. As the reverse side of this record carried the same national anthem played by the military band, records tell us how bureaucrats spent sleepless nights wondering what calamity would befall if the cinema halls played that side by mistake.

              As we all know, during wars patriotism rises to a peak but the fact that the wave recedes when national crises are over does not mean that citizens become unpatriotic. Playing the national anthem in cinema halls followed such patterns and since India has fortunately been free of wars since 1971, the practice was discontinued. But as a sudden akal bodhan of patriotism is now sought, it may be appropriate to look up a bit of our history. It is matter of record that the  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Dal or the RSS that gave birth to the Jana Sangh and its successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party, did not participate in the nation’s freedom struggle quite deliberately. We cannot, therefore, be certain whether the current overdrive of pumped up patriotism is an act of atonement or an attempt to superimpose on historical memory with retrospective effect. In fact, in August 1947, the RSS's mouthpiece, Organiserdeclaredthat the Indian national tricolour will "never be respected and owned by the Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country."

           The logic is flawed as several holy Hindu symbols have three and even the post Vedic trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar are integral to Hindu belief and worship. Even the earlier issues of Organiserdated17^th and 22^ndJuly had also stated the RSS's opposition to many such national issues. In fact, the second Sarsangh-chalak or head of the RSS, MS Golwalkar bemoaned in his book, Bunch of Thoughts, that "our leaders have set up a new flag for the country. Why did they do so?... Ours is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years? Undoubtedly we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds?"Golwalkar did not, however, tell us what ancient flag or national emblem of India we had lost. The RSS has all along favoured the Bhagwa Dhwaj, thesaffron 'split flag'over the national tricolour, as it represents only Hinduism without any doubt.

              When exactly did the RSS remove its opposition to the national flag and why? History tells us that Sardar Patel, whose statue the ruling party now plans to set up as the tallest in the world, had slammed down on the RSS and banned it immediately after Mahatma Gandhi’s assignation on 30^th January 1948. He did not budge in the next one and a half years despite pleas from Golwakar. It was only on July 11, 1949 that he lifted the ban  after the RSS pledged to stay away from politics; not be secretive and abjured violence. More important, it had to profess "loyalty to the Constitution of India and the National Flag". It is strange, therefore, for the RSS and its political creation called the BJP to be dictating after 70 years to all Indians how and when they need to display their patriotism.