Nandan Nilekani - stay on the deck

I put this up first as a note on my Facebook account. Why not on this blog?

So here it is:

Within hours of the launch of the UID and assignment of IDs to ten tribals in Nandurbar of Maharashtra, a cacophony was heard on national news network - it would lead to profiliing, invasion of privacy et al.

To such of those who have fears, I say, please listen to this reasoned plea:

Of course, privacy invasion is a serious issue. People need to be protected from such breach. But here, the UID is a basic biometric ID more foolproof than the Know Your Client ( KYC) norms which the banks need. It tells everyone who needs to deal with him to deliver his entitlements that the person he says he is he is. That obviates possibilities of leakages.

For instance, foodgrains meant for the poor via the public distribution system (PDS) leaks into the private markets not because the poor foregoes his claim but is helpless when someone else robs him of his entitlement. Now, if the PDS card has his UID and the shop is linked to the system, no one except the ration card holder can draw the rations. If the ration is then not sold - because every sale would have to be recorded thus to a central computer, then the mischief stops.

If that is possible, then I am happy with the invasion of the poor's privacy and find out if the entitlement reached him.

Likewise, with NREG.

The poor can have bank accounts and the government can ensure payment by wire - no middle man, no cuts taken.

The fears of privacy are outweighed by the real gains of the poor who are deliberately robbed because they are the helpless without a voice.

Nandani Nilekani - go to it. Ignore the Cassandras.

Media as a vulture? Why, yes!!

A post on the Facebook this morning has set me thinking about the media's role in the Ayodhya issue.

The post they simply said the person was "convinced that the only people interested in tomorrow's Ayodhya verdict is the media.... Just like vultures are the only ones interested in dead bodies! Everybody else is keen to bury and move on!"

That imagery of the media as a vulture is quite appealing.

What makes the notion interesting is that he is not a mere reader, a conscious citizen or a thinking person but apparently involved in Public Relations, a business which used media extensively to mould public opinion. While those who buy newspapers or see television news channels are consumers, this person is a user of the media - that is an interpretation stemming from the role and function of PR. He ought, therefore, be quite in tune with the media.

After much mulling, and replaying things that I saw and read over the past few decades on the issue of Ayodhya, I think the view is bang on target. The media, it seemed then and it does now, just wanted to keep the story alive. And if that sustained the communal strife, so be it - more grist to the mill. One did not have to go and look for a story to tell; they just developed, fuelled by the media itself.

I too have reported communal strife, the one especially in Ahmedabad in 1985 and then the readers demanded that going by convention, no reportage of the events there ought to be written in a manner as to cause a reaction elsewhere. There was a clear embargo on identifying communities, if a person was injured or dead, the name was not to be mentioned. It was set that a communal incident should be reported with restraint. If you ask me, rightly too. We were told that the best reference was "a communal incident" and a temple or a mosque had to referred to as only a "place of worship". Sensible.

The early 1990s riots in Mumbai put an end to that restraint. The communities were freely mentioned, the death tolls helped identified the scores and if you please, the media did not emphasise that soon after the structure was demolished in Ayodhya, the anger of the Muslims was directed at the state or its visible instruments - from the police to the bus stops. Even the Srikirshna Commission report is unable to point out at which point the first phase of riots - remember, they were two, the second being after the or due to the killings in Jogeswari slums - became communal.

About that Commission's report - more some time later.

Journalists at that time, either because they felt seriously upset because at one point the Muslims became clear targets of the majority Hindus, that all stories had quotes from one community and not another, the ignored getting space only when something provocative was said by that section. Of course, hardly anything non-provocative was ever said by any since those days.

Everything was seen from the prism of the communal riots ever since, be it elections or be it policies. For much good has been done in Gujarat in the past decade but even pro-people issues well handled get a short shrift because the policies stem from Narendra Modi. There is this marked refusal to separate the two - the assumed, presumed, alleged or yet to be proven crimes of Modi and the public policies and efficiencies brought into the delivery mechanisms. The media which made much of the lathis carries by RSS workers at their shakas were seen as instruments to bully others but when Lalu Yadav took one, and said, come on, I'll deal them a blow, it was carried with pictures. Not necessarily because of his buffoonery but it was a bias.

At no point am I to be assumed to be a votary of HIndutva politics and their belligerence but the reporting we saw then was not what made for ideal, neutral reportage of a sensitive issue. Such neutral reporting was seen as sissy stuff by spineless or gutless journalists. I was damned by my colleagues who showed extraordinary interesting in reporting on the communal issue as one of the two, spineless or gutless. Or maybe both. I only smiled then and do so now.

And that far too frank a reportage and evident biases have harmed the country a lot more than one could imagine.

Where is the artistic liberty?

Why can't, for instance, Peepli [Live] be sent as an official entry to the Oscar? Because some people think that to show a farmer readying to commit suicide is negation of the reality.

The Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti, which has been voicing the farmer's grievances now says it misrepresents the cause because farmers don't do that. They may well not take recourse to suicides to get some relief for the family in deep distress. But farmers are dying nevertheless and poverty drives them to it. No dispute about that.

Fact remains however that to make a point to a larger audience, a film-maker may take a particular dimension and evolve a story and get the message across. With Peepli [Live] the message seems to have been driven home so much so that the Planning Commission had a special screening for itself to understand what the movie was trying to convey.

Which is much more action from the authorities than all the petitions that have been sent any number of times to New Delhi and Mumbai and given even to tomorrow's heir presumptive Rahul Gandhi with little to show for it on the ground. There ought to be some satisfaction at this development.

The film seems to have advanced the cause of the group that now wants the film to be withdrawn while it ought to be thanking it for highlighting the issue of farmers' suicides so ably portrayed in the media by P Sainath in The Hindu.

It is time we let people do their job without jibes. But it is certain that in India, we in India continue to be quite intolerant. No other point of view is valid, people seem to say, than their own. Others had better shut up is what it means.

That won't do.

Best you can do with what you disagree is argue your case or ignore the other point of view, but don't demand the withdrawal of a perspective.

It would hurt us all in the long run, otherwise.

Being on time!

Lalit Bhanot, despite all the inefficiencies his Commonwealth Games Organising Committee has shown put the finger on the number: India is not a country with high enough standards of hygiene which other civilisations would find acceptable.

One point he missed, which was of some consequence with respect to the CWG 2010 was the sense of time which is largely missing in India. Time is stretchable to the extent that Indian Standard Time (IST) has been lampooned as Indian Stretchable Time, no less by Indians themselves. That is perhaps a healthy way to laugh at oneself but in the contest of the CWG 2010, we are being laughed at.

The point is that time is of the essence in everything and I have generally been conscious of that. Most often than not I am on time, possibly a few minutes before the appointed minute. The importance was stressed by Manohar Joshi, Maharashtra's chief minister when I caught him at the steps of his official bungalow years ago and engaged him in a conversation, seeking to ferret out some significant piece of information. He gamely stood there and tried to help but the time available was not enough; he had to be present at a public event and wanted to leave.

He threatened me with a simple statement. If I engaged him for a whit longer, and he was late for his engagement, he would announce that I was responsible. "I would do it with you full name and designation!" he said. That shook me.

Did a minute's delay matter? Yes, indeed, it did, he said. If you are late and another is waiting, it shows disrespect to another man's precious commodity which cannot be earned and hoarded again: TIME.

That moment I fully learnt my lesson to the extent that if I am late by a minute, I shiver at the prospect of robbing someone of his treasure. It is another matter what the other guy does with his time but I cannot recklessly poach on it.

So much so, even for cocktails which are generally "7 pm onwards", the attempt is to be there on the dot. And by doing so a whole lot of gain has been made over the years. Other early birds who trickle in early are also looking around and that is the best moment to get to shake hands, know them and what Rotarians call "build fellowship". It may not often benefit me but it at least indicates who can be approached again for anything useful. There can be a kind of sieving, the grain can be discovered amid the chaff. Haven't I often heard my wife complain when she is hastened to get ready for an event she too was to attend? Her blunt point: Are you going there to set the dishes?

Hard to explain but she sees a cocktail as something different - people just drift around and nothing worthwhile ever happens. A plastic smile, a reluctant shake-hand and then drift to another group. Unless some known friends unmet for a spell are going to be around.

Importance of time has been explained enough. But as a journalist I have often found that public figures, who decide on policy and help implement them, are most often - bar a few exceptions like Joshi - late and couldn't give a tinker's damn if the audience was waiting. Imagine the collective time lost!

Likewise, the time lost in getting the CWG ready for the appointed date. That silly minister for sports, MS Gill thought that it would all be done in time like most Indian weddings are, which to mind is a huge confusion regardless of how well it is organised. Even the best of weddings have flaws. His predecessor, Manishankar Iyer did not thinks sports was important enough and how he hated it and allowed quite a huge chunk of valuable time, measured in years out of the seven provided on a platter, to lapse.

But even in the few years that was available after Iyer's spell, there was sufficient on the plate to dip into and organise the games without much confusion. But the innate ability of the Indians to while it away and then get into a rush seems to ingrained in the DNA that we can do anything at all only if it is in a crisis mode. Which the media ensured was indeed pushed into a crisis mode. One of the few times the media did well - thank you!

But we cannot afford to go on like this. We cannot plan only for the events. We need to plan for the things after the games. What happens to the expensive - bloated by unreasonable invoices possibly - stadia that have been built? Would we be able to convert them into something that helps spin something positive out of them, like the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing built for the Olympics which is a huge water park? I am sure when the stadium was planned, the uncanny Chinese had the contingency plan ready - it is about a year since that water park has been bringing in hoards of the population who spend and have a whale of a time.

It was alright to imagine that we can do better than the Chinese. To do that, we have to learn from the Chinese. If we had, the guys who messed with the CWG 2010, the time and money spent, would not be around there facing the cameras and getting excrement on their faces which they know how to wipe off and smile. They would have been punished. But then, even here we waste time don't we?

Knowing how this country reacts to misfortunes, I think I too wasted my time fulminating.

Or did I?

CWG: from the collapse would come a better future

I thought and said that the collapsed CWG - Delhi 2010 would be an opportunity to cleanse up the Indian image of a corrupt people. My fervent hope that it would collapse under inefficient management and lead to full-throated cry for redemption from such unscrupulous people as who make the managers - from Prime Minister down to MS Gill and S Kalmadi was dismissed as anti-national, anti-games. I was called a spoilsport but was, save for a very few who agreed with me on the Facebook. However, The Economist comes quite close to it for it sees an opportunity in this games.

In its September 25, 2010 edition, "Better if India takes the flak for the games' shortcomings not as an insult, but as a jolt that can be turned to good use, by recognising three truths edition about the country of which Indians often prefer to ignore". It lists corruption seen everywhere at every tier of the society and the vulnerability to terror, the latter being a facet pointed out to by the Australian Prime Minister as being worrisome. The third - happily - is democracy but which, from my point of view, is not functional but put to good use by the rent-seeking class.

Read on - you'd find the link in the first para.

And tell me if I am wrong.

Corruption and a minister can't see it!

It was surprising to read a view from Law Minister Veerappa Moily contradicting the just-quit Central Vigilance Commission Prayush Sinha that 30 per cent of Indians were 'utterly corrupt' and that a half were 'borderlines' cases. Which situation called for urgent attention and efforts to strengthen the laws, ensure implementation of all laws were stringent. But no, Moily stood apart and said retired bureaucrats like to play saints.

Moily (yes, the same of the infamous Moily Tapes) needed to be responded to though sadly, not a single newspaper - I read several - even managed to engage him in a dispute. I picked up the gauntlet and said my piece. The www.rediff.com gave me the space:http://news.rediff.com/column/2010/sep/15/on-corruption-moily-is-utterly-wrong.htm

A year on - revival

It has been a year since I wrote on my blog. There were too many other things to do, including help prepare the Mumbai Human Development Report 2009, the first of its kind for any city anywhere, and supported by UNDP. The Oxford University Press brought it out last year. Then came the turn of a narrative to be written which happily was supported by the ICSSR.

However, it was not as if I had no views - no, I shall have them till I am put away inside the furnace in a crematorium. Several times my angst was expressed on the portal www.rediff.com and when opportunities arose, in at seminars and when people could be buttonholed, I had my say.

Now, hopefully, I shall return to the blog.

When media gets my goat

When the media gets my goat, I express myself strongly and to the extent I can, try to be rational about it. It happened when Mumbai-based Daily News and Analysis (DNA) twisted things so crudely, I could not but go out and hang my opinion out there on a media blog, www.thehoot.org. Here is the link to that piece.

http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4803&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=5&valid=true

I am sure those who read it would have a view. I'd be happy to hear about it.