Mahendra Ved, Author at Lokmarg - News Views Blogs

Is Rahul The Last Mughal Of Gandhi Dynasty?

By Mahendra Ved 2nd September 2022

These are dire times for democracy thanks to happenings in the two Grand Old Parties (GOPs). America’s Republican Party remains captive of Donald Trump, despite the havoc with the presidency, ‘invasion’ of the White House after he lost and the outcry over his carting away state documents. And in India, the Congress is on a precipice.

Defeated in two parliamentary and 39 of the 49 elections to state legislatures, the Indian National Congress is losing mass support and senior members, mostly to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The record of three generations of the Gandhis and the Nehrus who preceded is being omitted from history books. The current leadership is being challenged from within.

Whether they cannot quit or will not, is the crux of an internal churning and much public lampooning. It’s Catch-29: arguably, the party cannot grow with them, and it cannot survive without them.

The Congress is in desperate need to carry out a rigorous internal review and acknowledge that a root-and-branch re-organization and a grassroots revival are both imperative for its survival.

The Gandhis are a fair game, accused of greed for power. But as much as them, if not more, criticism ought to be directed, but is not, at the parry’s men and women who refuse to find among themselves an acceptable leader. This is from a party that elected, despite internal quarrels and factionalism, a new president and a working committee every two years. That culture died long ago.

Ironically, Sonia Gandhi, who never wanted her husband Rajiv and children to join politics, is the party’s longest-serving chief, for 24 years. Though not the first not born in India to head the Congress, she has virtually dictatorial powers in the organization. For a decade, she even influenced the policies of the government headed by a hand-picked prime minister.

Frail and ailing, she is now called the “nominal figurehead” who has yielded authority to her children, particularly her son Rahul. He is openly called out for lacking the ‘aptitude’ required to lead the party and for “childish behaviour.” He is charged with shunning responsibility but taking all key decisions, surrounded by a ‘coterie’ of politically inexperienced aides.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, the latest stalwart to quit, is being quoted here because, with his harsh, even personal criticism, he has shown the mirror to the party. He has exposed the desperation of many more Congressmen who are afraid to speak up. If nothing else, he has nudged the leadership to announce firm dates for the much-delayed election, albeit only for the top post.

If not a Gandhi, who? Shorn of most stalwarts, having none with a pan-India image, the party is groping. An alternate plan is not in sight. The final choice may still be called, rightly or otherwise, a ‘proxy’. The seniors among the loyalists are reluctant. Truth be told, they are too used to a Gandhi to pick up the gauntlet.

Sonia’s woes do not begin or end with party affairs. The government’s revenue enforcement authorities have interrogated her several times, for several hours, on trusts and the dealings of the National Herald newspaper firm, allowing her relief only when she tested Covid-19 positive.

For once the party galvanized into action, with thousands protesting and courting arrest in many cities across the country. Leaders who have forgotten mass contact programmes were in action. The adversity augured well for the party.

But that leaves a vital question: why can’t they display the same spirit and action to protest against the government’s many actions, at the central and state levels? Many opportunities were simply wasted.

The party was squeamish about supporting protests against the citizenship laws, the farmers’ agitation, and a host of issues, including remission of the sentences of those convicted for 2002 gang-rape of Gujarat’s Bilkis Bano. Joining these and other protests, if nothing else, would have given a sense of purpose to the party cadres and allowed for mass contact.

ALSO READ: To Survive, Congress Needs A Major Split

Raising some hope amidst the gloom, beginning September 7, Rahul will ‘participate’ in the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra covering 3,500 km from Kanyakumari to Kashmir through 12 states. Its success will depend upon the consistency with which it is conducted, the slogans raised and the message sent out, the public response it gets, the effectiveness of the follow-up done on the ground, and lastly, the media projection.

Congress’s record in recent years has been dismal on all these counts. For one, Rahul’s absence from the daily political activity is too frequent to allow for consistency. The state leaders failed to garner ground support during election campaigns.

Spirited though, Rahul’s 2019 polls campaign was no match for Narendra Modi’s relentless rhetoric. His up-front attacks on Modi’s persona, like “chowkidar chor hai” did not go well. The public shows deference, if not always respect, for office. In the media, Rahul, by his own admission, is the country’s most ridiculed person. By all accounts, he is a good person, but that is not enough in politics – not in these days of media’s weaponization and more.

In hindsight, Rahul should have launched a Yatra long ago, at the beginning of his probation in politics. He did not utilize the decade his party was in power. Suggestions that he should join the Manmohan Singh Government and gain some administrative experience were scoffed at. The family entitlement – see the Shiv Sena’s Thackerays – and top-down trajectory is difficult today.

The walkathon should keep Rahul on the move for five months. There is no clear signal if he will stick to his resolve and that no Gandhi will contest for the party chief’s post. But certainly, this may be the party’s last chance to stay relevant as a national party. Failure is a recipe for disintegration – like the last days of the Mughal Empire.

One can wish its success, not as support or sympathy for the GOP, but for the sake of democracy that needs an effective opposition and a healthy political discourse.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Cinema Dilemma: Bollywood In A Bind

By Mahendra Ved 20th August 2022

Not new to crisis, India’s film industry, the world’s largest, is beset with problems, old and new and some that have come together. Covid-19, it cannot help. Others are self-made.

It is struggling to adapt to a relatively new technology. Morbid winds sweeping the country have hit its artistic core, too. Social media trolls have a field day.

Together, it is so distracting that there are no celebrations, considering the first film made in India was in 1897, and this is its 125^th year.

For two years, the pandemic kept the audiences out of the cinema theatres and multiplexes. Estimated losses as of January this year are ₹1,500 crores. It has abetted, but cine-goers, otherwise back to normal activity, have not returned to the theatres.

Holding them back partly is the growing reach of over-the-top (OTT) platforms that distribute streaming media over the Internet. Hundreds of films, with fresh weekly releases, are available for free, or for subscriptions equivalent to the price of a few theatre tickets. People have got used to enjoying films in home comforts.

India currently has about 45 OTT providers. Before Covid-19, in fiscal year 2018, their market was worth ₹2,150 crore. In dollar terms, it grew to USD 1.7 billion by 2020. Their growth projection is USD 15 billion by 2030, with USD 2.5 billion coming from the video market and an equal amount from audio.

Next, putting things simply, audiences go to cinema halls to watch their favourite stars. What happens when the stars do not deliver? It may be a collective failure, but lead stars, some more expensive than those in the sky, bear the odium.

The star system as we know it, in vogue since the late 1940s, is under severe stress. He – it’s he, since the female star gets barely a third of his fees – is becoming more accountable. When a film fails, some return a part of their fat fee. Losses are borne by the producer and the corporates financing the film.

Heroes are becoming villains for charging high fees. Some stars have turned producers to obviate giving/receiving the fees for their labour. Now, the list of flops that are star-produced and acted, some even directed by them, is growing.

ALSO READ: Bollywood Studios Fading Out

Some stars are in hibernation. Pandemic and injury have kept Shah Rukh Khan without a new release for four years. Ranbir Kapoor returned to the screen after four years, but his dual-role Shamshera flopped.

A distraught Akshay Kumar, billed as India’s highest-paid and the world’s sixth-richest actor, insists he carries the film on his shoulders. It is the public taste that is difficult to predict. He would rather return to doing Anari-Khiladi potboilers after the multi-million Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan tanked. But so did his mindless Bachchan Pande.

Questions are being asked whether actors’ fees that make over half the film’s cost, be trimmed. “It should happen,” young A-lister Alia Bhatt recently said. The actor’s fees should be determined by the film’s budget — not the other way round. Women actors seek a relative male-female parity. But it remains a man’s world.

Next, male actors of Bollywood (read Mumbai-made Hindi films), face a veritable invasion from the South. The likes of Rana Dagubatti, Prabhas and NTR Junior are entering the pan-India market. Bollywood heroes are not as welcome as Dilip Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar and Jeetendra were in the last century. In a drawn match of sorts, the National Award for Best Actor this year was shared by Bollywood’s Ajay Devgn and Tamil actor Suriya.

Bollywood women, by contrast, are doing better in the South. Tapsee Pannu, Rakul Preet Singh, Tamannah Bhatia – all Punjabis to boot — have learnt more than one southern language and found their niche.

The star system that carries exorbitant fees, besides lavish treatment for their entourage, has afflicted Telugu and Tamil cinema as well. Against a few successes like S S Rajmauli’s Bahubali 1 and 2, RRR and Kamal Hasan-starrer Vikram, many more have sunk. Starting August one, the Telugu Producers’ Guild has stopped the shooting of all films to seek a post-pandemic “restructuring” of the film industry, including the remuneration demanded by actors.

ALSO READ: Spotlight Shifts To South

Yet, with better content overall, films from the South are doing better. The important thing is that they are reaching all-India and international markets. Call it national integration — Bollywood can no longer claim to represent Indian cinema, or ‘mainstream’ cinema, superior to the ‘regional’ one.

On the margins so far, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Assamese films have better audience acceptance. Rooted in their local milieu, many with good content, without Bollywood’s big budget and glamour, have done well. The streaming platforms have truly gone OTT, breaking not just national, but also regional/language barriers.

How can Bollywood – or Telugu’s Tollywood and Chennai’s Kollywood — tame this elephant in the room? Actor-director Aamir Khan embraces OTT, but has separated the theatre release of his latest, Laal Singh Chaddha, from the OTT by six months.

“According to me, we’ve been making a simple error. There’s nothing wrong with OTT. As a platform it’s very nice and it will complement cinema. OTT is not a challenge to cinema, we are making it a challenge to cinema. What we are doing is, we are saying our films will be released in theatres but you don’t really need to come because in a few weeks you can see it at home. How do you expect me to come to the theatres when you’ve already told me, wait for a few weeks I’m coming to your house, you don’t have to come to the theatre?”

There, perhaps, lies a solution. It is time India’s film and TV producers get on the OTT bandwagon of producing not only films, but also series on an increasing scale.

One is seeing a representative picture here, not an exhaustive account. Always a risky business, cinema has become riskier in the new century. With star system in disarray, and “anything goes” films flopping, filmmakers in general realise that their product must have content to win credibility with the audiences.

Last but certainly not the least important, is the social media troll. It has of late attained monstrous reach and destructive capacity. Any film is fair game for a campaign with declared intention to ‘cancel’ or ‘fail’ it. ‘Insults’, “hurting of religious sentiments” and being “anti-national” are cited before police and court to demand action against films. The state remains silent, unless it favours the film’s political message. Whether this succeeds is a different question; it injects toxicity in public discourse that mainstream media and web sites also join in.

If “Netizen’s verdict” is to determine who is ‘patriot’ and who is “a good Hindu” and who not, why have the government’s film certification?

Why have rule of law when mobs – real and virtual – are to decide others’ fate? There are numerous instances and enough warnings to heed for politicians and law enforcers alike, if they want to prevent the film industry becoming ‘floppywood.’

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Ceiling Glass: Half-Full Or Half-Empty

By Mahendra Ved 2nd August 2022

In the week Droudadi Murmu was declared elected as India’s second woman President, Delhi’s Class XII results were out. As usual, the girls topped. Among the successful students, 95 percent were girls, leaving behind the boys at 91 percent.

That same week, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Raipur in Chhattisgarh, scored a remarkable first, even for the reputed IIMs. It admitted more girls than boys to its flagship postgraduate management course for the 2022-24 academic session.

It has 205 girls against 125 boys. Of the students enrolled for its two-year course in the current academic session also, 62 percent were girls and 38 percent boys. The selection process was gender-blind.

At the older IIMs, considered India’s best B-schools, for decades, women have had a marginal, almost a token presence. But a silent revolution may be brewing at some of the younger IIMs that are now raising the bar on gender diversity and helping women smash another male bastion. Leading it, not unexpectedly, is Kerala’s IIM Kozhikode, says a report.

In the coming years, managers and managements will need to adjust to the idea of being ruled – and overruled – by women. It is not going to be easy given India’s deeply patriarchal culture. Even as women’s managerial workforce grows, the change in attitude so far remains superficial.

Of course, there are Indian women politicians, astronauts, athletes and writers, who can be role models for young women. But they entirely reflect individual endeavour and in some, family and/or institutional support. Economic (same work, equal pay) and social inequalities still prevent many women from fulfilling their potential.

As the hype goes, India “breathes, eats, drinks” cricket. But it has been confined to men. Now, well-deserved, but much-delayed, recognition has gradually come to women’s cricket. A film on Mithali Raj, who captained the Indian women’s team at the World Cup, Shabash Mithu has not done too well, though. But evident of recognition is the warm send-off Indian women’s cricket team received as they left for the Commonwealth Games 2022 at Birmingham. But this new-found limelight may vanish if the team returns without honours.

Still confined to their traditional homemaker role, women now think for themselves. Indeed, juggling with the two roles is their biggest challenge. This is their litmus test; not so much their managerial or innovative skills. Read any media interview they give.

Pilots, soldiers, film-makers and many more areas see an increase in women workforce. It is more visible in entrepreneurship, and the new buzzword is startup. As of July 19, India is home to 105 unicorns – (each worth one billion-plus dollar, but not listed on the stock exchange) with a total valuation of $338.50 billion.

ALSO READ: Muslim Women Can Positively Impact Indian Indicators

That makes India South Asia’s shining beacon of startups. Over 150 unicorns are projected by 2025. The exciting part is the lead being taken by women, either individually, or as husband-wife team. Many, though not all new “startup stars”, are women who are not family members of the established ones headed by male entrepreneurs.

These pioneers contribute to women’s empowerment and economic growth but also bring their unique set of skills and expertise – different from men – to the work environment.

To the known names like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon) and Vandana Luthra (VLCC), add more – Aditi Gupta, Anisha Singh, Shradha Sharma, Upasana Taku, Ghazal Alagh, Neeru Sharma and Sugandha. But the list for the year 2022, about 35, is still modest. On the other hand, this is confined to two cities. Only Bengaluru (rank 40th) and Delhi (at 50th) have made it to the list of the 50 most favourable global places for women to work.

Overall, the movement is still nascent. According to the National Sample Survey, only 14 percent of the businesses in India are run by women entrepreneurs. Most of these companies are bootstrapped and run on a small scale. The global disparity is evident in another report which says nearly 126 million women have their own business across the globe, while Indian women linger around the eight million mark.

When you read all this, you think Indian women can push forward with a bit of encouragement. They are not, if you see the larger picture. It is glass half full. Now, read on what needs done, even if it only bullet-marks the issues.

As per a UNICEF report on India that takes an overall view, there are risks, violations and vulnerabilities girls face just because they are girls. Most of these risks are directly linked to the economic, political, social and cultural disadvantages girls deal with in their daily lives. This becomes acute during crisis and disasters.

What has been prevailing in normal times became more acute during the pandemic that has not gone away. Women at work had to manage multiple fronts, of nursing the families and keeping their jobs, working from home. It is not difficult to imagine the pressure on the lady of the house of being home, and available 24×7, feeding spouse and children, even managing the latter’s online studies.

Many women work twice as many hours as men because they carry out most of the household responsibilities as well as working outside their homes. Their household work is unpaid and unrecognised.

Largely exclusive to women is poor availability of toilets. No space will suffice to write about them, although Mahatma Gandhi wrote about it in the last century and Prime Minister Narendra Modi took up eight years ago.

Perceptions about women’s place in Indian society vary. As per a March 2, 2022 survey by Pew Research Centre, 23 percent Indians say there is “a lot of discrimination” against women in their country. Sixteen percent of Indian women reported that had they personally faced discrimination because of their gender in the 12 months before the 2019-2020 survey.

Three-quarters of adults see violence against women as a very big problem in Indian society. To improve women’s safety, about half of Indian adults (51 percent) say it is more important to teach boys to “respect all women” than to teach girls to “behave appropriately.” But roughly a quarter of Indians (26 percent) take the opposite position, effectively placing the onus for violence against women on women themselves.

Overall, Indians seem to share an egalitarian vision of women’s place in society. Eight-in-ten people surveyed – including 81 percent of Hindus and 76 percent of Muslims – say it is very important for women to have the same rights as men.

Yet these views exist alongside a preference for traditional economic roles. Indians generally agree that when there are few jobs available, men should get preference to a job than women (80 percent), including 56 percent who completely agree with this statement. Majorities of both men and women share this view, though men are somewhat more inclined to take this position.

First Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said: “You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.” Six decades after he said this, the status remains uneven, heavily skewed against women in terms of health, education and opportunities.

The glass remains half empty.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Who Will Risk A ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ Today?

By Mahendra Ved 15th July 2022

It is finally curtains for Mughal-e-Azam, 62 years after it released on August 5, 1960. Dilip Kumar, who played the rebel prince Salim, died a year ago, at 98. Shapurji Palonji Mistry, who financed the film at great risk, passed away this month at 93. There is none who can talk, first-hand, about what all went into its making. Others who contributed to this film, rated as one of the greatest, if not India’s greatest-ever, left long ago.

Mughal-e-Azam has slipped into the realm of nostalgia, as part of India’s rich, century-plus, film culture. But there will always be critics and cineastes who enjoy cinema of a by-gone era. Anyone would agree that another Mughal-e-Azam cannot be made, just as you cannot re-make Cleopatra or Ten Commandments. Technology is available, but finances?

Over 80,000 feet of film footage had accumulated by the time it was completed, enough, it is said, to make four more Mughal-e-Azams. Even the current crop of the Mistry clan, though richer than it then was, would shudder at the risks involved in its re-making. And there is logic, not just nostalgia, which counsels against tinkering with classics.

Above all, where does one get a director like K Asif, nursing an unparalleled passion for the project for long years and at the end, delivering a masterpiece that generations have watched with awe?

Rare for a movie, Mughal-e-Azam is now a metaphor for those times. Six decades is a long time. The passage has changed values; more so in the recent times, sharply and divisively. It was part of the Idea of India as one has known.

That idea is being challenged now. Agreed, it is not all fact/document-based. There is history, and there is popular lore that has devolved over time. Essentially separate, but when they get enmeshed, and ideological agenda is tagged, confusion has arisen and disputes have occurred.

This is being re-written from the contemporary prism. While more information and research should be welcome, what we are witnessing are attempts to turn it into version of the victor – mind you, victory not of a king of a queen, but an electoral one in a democracy, subject to renewal every five years. Meant to suite a political agenda, it is being changed from the top, to percolate down, in the name of ‘nationalism’.

Cinema that remains India’s most popular and pervasive medium, is being co-opted in this. This is reflected in some recent films on subjects that deal with the past. They are not necessarily based on history. Even loud disclaimers that they are only ‘inspired’ or based on literature on those personalities, events and those times, have not prevented controversies, some of them turning violent.

“Hurt feelings” and “wounded pride” have been advanced among the reasons for protests. We have seen politics-laced controversies by people of one caste or community or the other.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has been among the worst ‘offenders’ or ‘victims’, depending upon how one views his films. His Padmavat (2018) angered some Rajput groups. Bajirao Mastani (2015) dissatisfied some claimants of Maratha Empire’s glory. They felt Bajirao’s wife Kashibai was short-changed to glamourize Mastani. Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Devdas (2002) hurt Sharatchandra acolytes who found the England-returned protagonist outlandish.

ALSO READ: Pakeezah – The Courtesan Classic

Bhansali grew wiser by the time he made Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). Nobody really wanted to own up a red light district’s ‘madam’. By comparison, Ashutosh Gowarikar has been lucky to escape controversy, though unlucky with his films’ success. Critics didn’t delve deep enough into the ancient Mohenjo Daro (2016). None was ‘hurt’ by his more recent Panipat (the 3^rd battle, in 1761). That battle altered the course of history to a great extent, if not as much as the Battle of Plassey (1757). Afghanistan’s Ahmed Shah Durrani dealing a humiliating defeat on the Peshwa’s Martha army went unchallenged.

Samrat Prithviraj (2022) is, perhaps, a better ‘representative’ of the changed times. Claimed to be based on Prithviraj Raso composed in praise of the king by his favourite bard Chand Bardai, it has satisfied those who had pitched for ‘purity’ in the depiction of Rani Padmini or Padmavati. But it left the film audiences cold.

This could have been box office failure of a big-budget venture, except that its director, Chandra Prakash Dwivedi, injected controversy. The man who had made that brilliant serial, Chanakya, for Doordarshan long ago, found a political alibi for his financial flop. He reportedly blamed it on the theme being about “a Hindu king”.

This brings us back to Mughal-e-Azam, but not without touching upon Gowarikar’s immensely successful Jodhaa Akbar (2008). The most remarkable thing about that film is that it put a seal of confirmation on the message of Mughal-e-Azam. Mind you, based on available records and popular lore, neither claimed perfection in historical terms.

Both celebrated the story of Jalaluddin Mohammed Akbar (1556-1605 AD) the third Mughal Emperor and his Hindu Queen Jodhabai. Both films stressed on mutual respect and tolerance among the Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects.

British academic, Professor Rachel Dwyer, author of the book Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema, says Mughal-e-Azam highlighted religious tolerance between Hindus and Muslims. Her examples include scenes depicting the presence of Queen Jodhabai, a woman and a Hindu, in Akbar’s court. Celebrating Janmashtami, Akbar is shown pulling a string to rock a swing with Krishna’s idol. Anarkali, the courtesan Salim loves and to get whom he rebels against the father, sings a Hindu devotional song.

It wasn’t ‘secularism’ as we know it today. Akbar’s move was political, driven by enlightenment and not by altruism. History calls him ‘Great’ because rather than fight the Rajputs, he had consciously struck alliances with them.

Akbar is not-so-great and Mughals are the villains today. Social media, some of it owned by major media houses, is full of calumny against them. Historical accounts of Akbar’s defeating Mewar’s Maharana Pratap in the Battle of Haldighati (1576) are being disputed. Already, some history books declare Pratap the victor.

Again, it was a significant military effort by Akbar to establish his rule across India’s North. The Haldighati battle is a case-study at the Indian Army’s College of Warfare. If Akbar had Hindu generals, Pratap had Muslims. Now, it is viewed as a clash of communities.

This type of jingoism begets extreme reaction, equally guilty of distortion. Akbar is called a ‘fake’ Muslim who blocked his son from marrying Anarkali, a Muslim, but allowed idolatry by Hindu wife Jodhabai.

Agreed, that those who control the present can rewrite the past. But as George Orwell says: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

The Presidential Suite Is Booked

By Mahendra Ved 2nd July 2022

In electing Droupadi Murmu, a tribal woman, as the President, a college of India’s lawmakers will be maintaining a record far better than Britain, the United States and others who swear by democracy, gender equality and diversity, and vigorously prescribe it for other societies.

In the unlikely event of her losing, she will, at least, not be called a ‘b…ch’ the way Hillary Clinton was, before and after being defeated. Sadly though, calling names and targeting women and the weaker sections of the society is on the rise in India as well.

No need to bother that it is called Rashtrapati Bhavan, denoting a male occupant. Murmu will be the second woman to enter it after Pratibha Patil ended her tenure a decade back. What was derided as tokenism then will become the norm. But whether that helps women and tribal remains to be seen.

Talking of norms, India’s past record has been one of religious diversity with two Muslims and a Sikh. Although chosen by the prime minister of the day – which makes Indian democracy, essentially a “prime minister-o-cracy” – past presidents have not necessarily been politicians and not always belonged to his/her party.

Look at their eminence. The first, Rajendra Prasad, a front-line freedom fighter, chaired the Constituent Assembly. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was a philosopher whom even Joseph Stalin heard with respect. Zakir Husain set up educational institutions. Scientist APJ Abdul Kalam, a devout Muslim who also visited Hindu temples, remained a national favourite, enough to be considered for a second run, long after demitting office.

Giani Zail Singh, although not a part of the social elite, defied a mixed assessment of him before, during and after his tenure as the president. He bore the pain of witnessing his faith’s most revered shrine being stormed.

Few would remember that Murmu was also in the reckoning in 2017. In selecting her, Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led ruling alliance made a deft political move, wooing an undecided Odisha, where Murmu was once a minister, and Jharkhand that has 27 percent tribal population. The opposition-ruled Jharkhand was a “swing state”, to use the lexicon of the American elections. It now bridges the modest shortfall in voters’ and ensures her victory.

It wasn’t so before. Many of the 14 past presidents won after token contests. Opposition candidates resigned top positions to contest, although the outcome was foregone. That, in itself, testifies to India’s democratic tradition.

The opposition did have a chance – arithmetically, though not politically – but frittered it away. Differences – ideological, individual and ego-fed – led to some parties treated as untouchables. Opposition’s Mayawati will vote for Murmu. Unsurprisingly, two octogenarians, Farooq Abdullah and Sharad Pawar declined, and so did Gopal Krishna Gandhi.

Yet, the choice of Yashwant Sinha, an administrator with vast experience who, at 84, continues to fight, ‘relentless’ as the title of his memoirs suggests, symbolises a contest, not for votes, but of ideas and changing values that the polity is currently witnessing.

Times are a-changin. That BJP president J P Nadda introduced Murmu on the party platform and not as the NDA nominee. The other is her comparison with Radhakrishnan, as she was once a teacher.

India has come a long way, in terms of the candidate’s curriculum vitae (CV), but it has also traversed from the hallowed portals of Oxford and Cambridge universities to the classrooms of its much-neglected tribal belt.

Murmu’s choice, it is being said, falls well within the ‘Hindutva’ plans of appropriating non-Hindu, and majorly Christian, tribal population across the heartland to the North-East. Only time can tell if this goes beyond tokenism and benefits those who form eight percent of the country’s population. And how it furthers the majoritarian agenda.

ALSO READ: Modi 2.0 – Majoritarian Agenda Is In

Nobody has talked of a second term for the outgoing Ram Nath Kovind. For the record, no President has been repeated except the first, Rajendra Prasad. He was Jawaharlal Nehru’s political equal. Nehru’s attempt to elevate the then Vice President Radhakrishnan after Prasad’s first term was disallowed by the Congress seniors.

Indeed, the two had differences in their respective roles. Prasad consulted experts who told him that the Indian Constitution did not envisage an activist president. That has settled the issue.

This time on, there is none of that animated coffee house debate canvassing more powers to the President vis-a- vis the Prime Minister. It is a useless political exercise.

The Constitution prescribes an all-powerful Prime Minister and his/her cabinet and a President who is generally titular and ceremonial, playing a key role only in the formation of a government.

To that, one must add troubled times that befall us from time to time, when he/she is also the conscience-keeper of the nation – but one who must act only within the Constitution’s ambit.

Some, but not all, Vice-Presidents got elevated to the presidency. Among those who did not were Justice Hidayatullah, B D Jatti, Krishan Kant and Hameed Ansari. Ansari got two terms as the Vice President.

Whatever their functions and powers, the offices of the President and the Vice-President are political in essence. This necessitates that they are in tune with the thinking and actions of the elected government of the day. This does not always happen and even if the institutions do not clash, those occupying them have differed on issues time and again.

Zail Singh did convey his unhappiness at the storming of the Golden Temple and wished to visit it. His vibes with Rajiv Gandhi were iffy and a coterie in the Congress party exploited it. Those were turbulent times, but wiser counsel prevailed to prevent a political face-off that would have set a wrong precedence.

K R Narayanan was unhappy with the Gujarat riots of 2002. His wife received and consoled in the Rashtrapati Bhavan women of the victims’ families.

Pranab Mukherjee and Ansari were critical, but kept well within the ambit of public and political correctness, of the spirit and intent behind some of the omissions and commissions by the Modi government and/or the impact they caused. Both stressed on the need for rule of law to prevail at all times and on the wisdom of the government carrying all sections of the people along.

Both sought to hold the mirror to the government leadership, stressing the need for an inclusive approach in times of protests by many sections of the society over perceived acts of intolerance by members of the government, the ruling party and their numerous front organisations. All that has ended with their exit.

Ansari’s emphasis on treatment of religious minorities earned him much trolling in the social media – mainly because he is a Muslim. He also earned from Modi a farewell, loaded with sarcasm and political messaging.

Mukherjee and Ansari have told their stories in their memoirs. Whether they got paid the way the Clintons ($15 million) and the Obamas ($80 million) is a different matter. But for sure, they did not descend as Members of Parliament like Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari. Nor did they launch a political party or turn on TV anchors like General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf!

Come August, there will be a vacancy for the Vice President’s office. Will Venkaiah Naidu, like Ansari, get a second term? The “prime minister-o-cracy” may have already worked that out.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Pervez Musharraf – A Warhorse and a Peacenik

By Mahendra Ved 17th June 2022

Lord Tennyson’s line, “Home they brought her warrior dead” needs tweaking to suite the likely home-coming of Pakistan’s former ruler Pervez Musharraf. How about: “home they brought their warrior ill?”

Self-exiled in Dubai, the once-powerful army chief-turned-CEO-turned President has ceased to matter as an individual in Pakistan. But he is an exalted member of the institution that actually rules the country. Sentiment is one of forgive-and-forget, now that he is terminally ill and may want to pass his last days at home.

Only some hot heads want him tried for treason. As former premier Yousaf Raza Gillani said, the decision on Musharraf’s return will be taken ‘somewhere else’. No need to elaborate: such pointers are part of Pakistan’s political lore.

If ousted from power, unless jailed, exile on health ground is an intermittent theme in Pakistan. Musharraf has won unsolicited support from former premier Nawaz Sharif whom he had ousted and exiled to Saudi Arabia. Nawaz, now self-exiled in London, has asked that Musharraf’s return be facilitated by the government which his brother, Shehbaz Sharif, heads.

Actually, the brothers, like everyone, well understand the army’s mood. The army wants back its erstwhile chief. In that context, Musharraf remains relevant in Pakistan.

For, the country’s all-powerful force is under unprecedented strain, facing criticism from the very people that it pitch-forked to power through political and electoral engineering. If Nawaz was on warpath in 1993, 1999 and from London in the winter of 2021, the summer of 2022 witnesses Imran Khan’s scorching campaign.

The army says it is ‘neutral’. But Khan uses ‘neutrals’ as a plural pejorative, to keep on his firing line the men in uniform that are supposedly divided over him. He is defying conventional political wisdom that requires him to keep his tongue in check.

Media reports indicate a tussle between the chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lt Gen. Hameed Faiz, the corps commander whom he forced out of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Worst is the speculation that the influential middle brass backs Imran and want to give him another chance.

It’s a moot point if Musharraf would have allowed such a situation. He launched the Kargil war on India, keeping some of the top brass, also his prime minister, in the dark. He lost, but he was still able to convince them all to rally to oust Nawaz.

For that matter, even Zia ul Haq, who removed Zulfiqar Bhutto was able to keep on the leash his generals through 12 years as the army chief, including a decade as the country’s President. Who knows, Zia would have held the two posts indefinitely, had he not been killed in a mysterious air crash. Bajwa has managed two extensions as the Chief. But caught in the political melee, he has been forced to announce that he is not ready for a third tenure.

ALSO READ: Pakistan Army Can’t Be Confined To Barracks

Times have changed. If direct army rule was relatively easier, although eventually bad for Pakistan, the one with politicians providing a democratic façade is proving to be increasingly problematic, and worse.

The army cannot just walk away – assuming it ever wants to. See the special powers just conferred on the ISI to vet all key civilian appointments. It was always there, informally. A formal government notification, makes it obvious, and embarrassing. A mix of appeasement and passing-the-buck, it is open to civilian criticism.

All this does not happen in India that is the other side of the South Asian coin. But interest has never lagged. Indians viewed Pakistan’s first army takeover by Ayub Khan with alarm. The civil servants threw a protective ring to insulate the political leadership from the military, and keep the latter away and down-graded. This ethos got cemented thanks to the conflicts in 1965 and 1971.

The Indian public interest in Pakistani generals grew from the 1980s onwards when the latter sought to reach out. Zia’s cricket diplomacy caused ripples. He managed to soften perceptions about himself by hosting many an Indian, among them, scribes.

This was despite the fact that Zia, keen to avenge the 1971 debacle, set the Indian Punjab on fire with militancy. His period saw hijacks of Indian aircraft, their release along with the passengers. This left Indians relieved, but seething and red-faced in the eyes of the world.

There was certain envy as Pakistan under Zia reaped the fruits – both money and military – for aiding the West-backed ‘jihad’ against the Russians in Afghanistan.

A Punjabi, Zia was from Jalandhar. But Musharraf, with his Purani Dilli roots, was special. He talked in-your-face to Indians. He surprised them, and the world, by joining George Bush Jr’s “war on terror” in Afghanistan.

If his dealing with Americans was time-serving and full of cunning, that with India was upfront and hostile. Indian aircraft being hijacked to Lahore and then Kandahar had the Musharraf stamp.

No Pakistani leader attempted battling India as did Musharraf. Four months after Nawaz hugged Vajpayee (whom he did not salute) in Lahore, Musharraf staged Kargil. Although he lost, he toppled Nawaz thereafter.

Though Pakistan initially claimed mujahideen were responsible for occupying the Kargil heights, Musharraf subsequently acknowledged in his autobiography In the Line of Fire that regular troops were part of the operation. He also admitted to Pakistan’s use and ‘export’ of militants as “state assets”.

His dealing with India was full of contradictions that remain difficult to fathom fully, objectively. From being the architect of the Kargil War, he was the architect of the closest ever deal India and Pakistan came to making on Jammu and Kashmir.

The December 13, 2001 terror attack on Indian Parliament complex took place under his watch. Just three weeks later, on January 6, 2002, with armed forces positioned eyeball-to-eyeball, he shook hands with a flummoxed Vajpayee, at the eleventh SAARC summit in Kathmandu.

To be sure, he was in charge when preparations for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks were made. India-Pakistan ties were never really the same again. He was politically downhill by then, and his peace initiative with India had unravelled.

Yet, his legacy must include the bold conciliatory moves, especially when he talked to Manmohan Singh, thinking and making “out of the box” proposals.

The proposed agreement was based on a four point formula that included no redrawing of borders, that the people of Jammu and Kashmir on either side of the LoC would be allowed to move freely from one side to the other, an end to hostility and violence and terrorism and military forces on both sides being kept to the minimum, while ensuring self-governance on both sides of the LoC and consultative mechanisms to look at socio-economic issues.

Several local and international factors helped facilitate the secret talks. There was hopeful speculation that Musharraf and Manmohan Singh could share the Peace Nobel.

That brief period was, and remains, the only time India and Pakistan were at relative peace, when infiltration along LoC almost ceased and Bollywood films filled up Pakistan’s cinema theatres and help resurrect its fledgling film industry.

After terror attack at Pulwama, Musharraf said on February 23, 2019: “If we attack with one nuke, India may finish us with 20”. Was it, then, a late realisation of the futility of permanent enmity with India? We will never know.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

My Name is Khan And I’m the Idea of India

By Mahendra Ved 7th June 2022

The success of cinema anywhere, more so in Bollywood, depends upon how effective the climax is. Everyone has been denied that thrill in the latest ‘film’ in which Shah Rukh Khan, or SRK, has neither acted, nor invested, but as things have ended in an anti-climax, it could well be about him.

After displaying all the fury amidst media fanfare, and keeping them in jail for three weeks, the government’s Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has sheepishly dropped all charges against SRK’s son Aryan and five others who were arrested in a raid on the passengers of a cruise ship last October.

It was not one-off. In the Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide case also, the NCB and other central agencies had launched parallel investigations. They were apparently given full rein to chase celebrity targets and dismantle the “Bollywood drug citadel”. In both cases, the NCB appeared to be chasing the suspected consumers, suspending its basic mandate of investigating the sources of drugs.

This is not a defence of SRK, SSR or the multi-billion enterprise called Bollywood that likely has its dark side(s). But sections of the media hinted at the impending elections in Bihar from where Rajput hailed. Aryan’s case was connected to “drug cartel with terror connections.”

Rajput’s friend Rhea Chakraborty, bailed out after stinging comments by the high court, was a “high-value asset”. Aryan was probably rated even higher. “Red flags should have gone up in Delhi early enough. The fact that they didn’t”, the Indian Express wrote, “may have had something to do with Maharashtra being an Opposition-ruled state.”

Or, given the current political/social discourse, was SRK the target?

It has been a taxing time for Khan. He remained silent through it all, choosing to fight the legal battle, not declaring innocence, seeking sympathy or scurrying for support or a pardon for the son. He remained in the public eye, his sorrow and that of his family, on display for all to consume, discuss and digest.

This silence has heightened the anti-climax. Which also makes it easy for him that after a spell of illness and enforced absence, he is completing his movies, back in public, and back on the balcony of his famous home.

It’s déjà vu for Khan. He has often used this French expression. In simple English, it means, here we go again… It sums up his agony.

Much younger Aryan figured in an interview Khan gave in 2013. His children born of a Hindu wife, were consciously given generic names that denote no religion. Aryan and Suhana asked what religion they belong to.

“… like a good Hindi movie hero, I roll my eyes up to the sky and declare philosophically, ‘You are an Indian first and your religion is humanity’,” Khan said that his family and friends “are like a “mini India”.

ALSO READ: Two Indias – With Hate And Hope

Workwise, Khan has evolved through hits and flops. The writer was among those who, through the 1990s, dismissed him as ‘ham’ and ‘commercial’, till I saw Swades (2004), a robust theme that may or may not have attracted many among the diaspora to return. I liked him in Chak De India! (2007), saga of a Muslim hockey player righting a wrong done to him by bringing glory on the field and My Name is Khan (2010).

That the United States chose to collaborate with an Indian team, making SRK and the film its global goodwill ambassadors, points to efforts at its own image correction. The film’s message post 9/11 was and remains unmistakable.

SRK has shown the temerity to ‘clash’ with the greats, enacting Devdas (2002) played by the likes of K L Saigal, P C Baruah, Akinneni Nageswara Rao and Dilip Kumar. Or, a senior contemporary, Amitabh Bachchan, doing Don (2006) and Don 2 (2011).

Noble values come forth even in his negative roles. Dhanda mera dharm hai, par main dharm ka dhanda nahi karta” (Trade is my religion, but I don’t trade in religion). This punch line in Raees (2017) could show the mirror to any society.

As a public person also, through whatever happened to Muslims in India and elsewhere since 9/11, SRK has evolved. For one, he has faced with aplomb the Pakistan-jibe, due to his Peshawar roots, the family of Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan and a Congress activist father. He responded with a mix of straight-forward logic to the unsolicited “come hither” from Hafiz Saeed, the Mumbai terror attack mastermind.

Yet, he remains immensely popular in Pakistan. When federal government banned Raees, Punjab and Sindh protested. The latest is Ms Marvel that starts streaming on June 8 on Disney+. Its co-creator Sana Amanat has said she would re-film the entire series if SRK agrees to join in.

For a while Khan was in the company of another Bollywood celebrity, Aamir Khan, whose cinema is more meaningful than SRK’s.

They are not too close, going by Bollywood gossip. But they have made enemies expressing forthright views on issues that fall well outside the world of entertainment. The two Khans are products and protagonists of a composite culture of mutual respect and tolerance – indeed, the Idea of India.

For long, both have engaged in a valiant, but as yet unproductive, even counter-productive, effort to open closed minds that abound across India and Pakistan.

Now, both have fallen silent. Besides unwelcome visits by government officials, trolling on the social media can be agonizing. One has to protect not just personal and professional reputation, but also the family. The Aryan episode is a warning.

Not including the other Khans – Salman and Saif Ali – who are not known to speak on political issues, Naseeruddin Shah’s is the only prominent Muslim voice of Bollywood that continues to speak up. There seems no way Bollywood can escape social and political polarization. Billions ride on their shoulders. This is a hazard they must face.

Why is it so?

Kaveree Bamzai, the author of book Three Khans: And the Emergence of New India points out in an article aptly titled, Shah Rukh Khan was India. Then India Changed: “If Bollywood, on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s radar since it gave it industry status in 1998, has to sell the idea of a new Bharat to the world, the old icons have to be brought down to earth, and new stars and stories created.”

That process is on – no names need be mentioned.

These challenges also carry an opportunity for Bollywood that is facing serious southern Indian challenge, in multiplex halls and on the OTT platforms. Can it tamper its risky, crass commercialism and return to its earlier role as an educator for society and a symbol for reassurance of values that it has forgotten?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Amritsar Massacre – A Rebel’s Recount

By Mahendra Ved 25th May 2022

A book written over a century back about Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh and two other massacres in British-ruled Punjab has lessons for the people and the rulers alike, of what has become of the Subcontinent today.

These lessons later; about the book first.

Amritsar and Our Duty to India was the first expose in book form published within months of the events. It was accidentally discovered on the Internet and traced to the archives of an American university by Dr Mrinal Chatterjee, a writer and regional director at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) Dhenkanal, Odisha.

The Cornell University bought it with “the income of the Sage Endowment, the Gift of Henry W. Sage.” The university says that “there is no known copyright restriction in the United States on reproduction of its text.”

The name of the book’s author may ring the bell among the old timers in India and Britain. Benjamin Guy Horniman, a Briton who became known as a “friend of India”, was editor of The Bombay Chronicle. The book carried photographs of the actual happenings at Jallianwala Bagh that he had managed to smuggle out.

Publishing reports and comments in his newspapers and in the British Labour Party’s mouthpiece the Daily Herald, Horniman successfully defied General Michael O’Dwyer who, as lieutenant governor, had imposed press censorship in the Punjab province.

Horniman called out General Reginald Dyer in whose presence hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women and children, were fired upon, calling it ‘Dyerarchy.’ The word gained currency in both India and Britain.

An angry British Indian government deported him to England. He was not allowed to return. Till in 1926, when he simply boarded a ship and landed in Madras.

Horniman’s objective was to inform world, in particular implore the British people, to question the justification given by Gen Reginald Dyer who had emerged a hero to many lawmakers. The British Parliament debated at length, but finally tilted in Dyer’s favour. The House of Lords, especially, ‘exonerated’ him.

A century on, the book makes fascinating reading. Horniman calls the Amritsar massacre an ‘indelible blot on British rule in India’.

“It is impossible to believe that the people of England could ever be persuaded that a British General was justified in, or could be excused for, marching up to a great crowd of unarmed and wholly defenceless people and, without a word of warning or order to disperse, shooting them down until his ammunition was exhausted and then leaving them without medical aid.” he wrote.

ALSO READ: Jallianwala Bagh – Will An Apology A Century Late Help?

Quoting General Dyer’s defence, Horniman exposes the British hypocrisy: “He felt his orders had not been obeyed. Martial law — which did not then exist — had been flouted, and he considered it his duty to disperse the crowd by rapid fire.”

Horniman reminded the British people of their responsibility and duty. “The ‘Dyerarchy’ did not end with the Jallianwala massacre, the disgrace was brought to further depths” by what followed during the six weeks of administration of the martial law under Gen Dyer in Lahore and Kasur, but did not generate as much controversy and debate as Amritsar.

Public floggings and ‘crawling order’ were the rule of the day to be followed by arrests, bombing and firing at Gujranwala. “Floggings took place in public, and photographic records of these disgusting incidents are in existence, showing that the victims were stripped naked to the knees, tied to telegraph poles or triangles,” Horniman records.

Horniman’s power of the pen did not bend the British. But it fuelled India’s freedom movement under Mahatma Gandhi who issued a statement condemning British Raj’s treatment of the editor. “Mr Horniman is a very brave and generous Englishman”, said Gandhi. “He has given us the mantra of liberty, he has fearlessly exposed wrong wherever he has seen it and has thus been an ornament to the race to which he belongs, and rendered it a great service. Every Indian knows his services to India.”

Horniman notes that in Punjab, the oppression reached such a pitch that nowhere else than in Punjab, “the Defence of India Act, with its host of liberty-destroying regulations” was applied with such great intensity.

He rejected the government-constituted Hunter Committee’s one-sided report and called for a fresh probe. “After the revelations of the Hunter Committee, Great Britain cannot, if she is to maintain her honour before the world, remain quiescent… she will have to see whether the intention to terrorise the people of the Punjab was deliberate and prearranged.”

“British honour and good faith are gravely imperilled in India to-day. If the general character of our officials, civil and military, who are entrusted with dangerous powers in such countries as India, were such that outbreaks of terrorism of the kind we have seen in the Punjab are liable to occur at any time, we should be compelled to frankly abandon our claim to be a justice and humanity-loving people. However ugly the facts we must investigate and face them,” wrote Horniman.

The British treating India, the ‘Cinderella of the Empire’, would incite problems in other colonies, he warned. He fought, not just for the Punjab, but also for the farmers and workers in Bombay, political activists in Bengal and supported Madras-based Dr Annie Beasant’s Home Rule League.

He performed multiple tasks – of a journalist/ commentator, a participant and as an advocate of Gandhi’s Satyagraha, who explained to the Britons what it meant. He had a persuasive pen, filled with ink that smelt freedom, but not vitriol.

That he was a Briton, not part of the British imperialist system placed him in a class apart, a thorn in the rulers’ eye. It is difficult to find a parallel in independent India with his level of commitment to the cause, and readiness to suffer the consequences, including court cases and detention. For that matter, also commitment of the profit-making private media to genuine press freedom.

Horniman denounced the Defence of India Act and the Press Act used as tools by the British. Many of these laws have been retained in countries that were once part of British-ruled India. They have been updated and amended and presumably, made more stringent.

Of them, the sedition law taken notice of by the Supreme Court, is currently being debated in India. Read what Horniman had to say of the law then, and decide whether its essence has changed, no matter its current contexts and formulations.

He writes: “India is blessed with a law of sedition, which is as comprehensive and severe as one would have thought ingenuity could make it…. A seditious document is defined in the code as one which instigates, or is likely to instigate, the use of criminal force against the King, the Government, or a public servant or servants.

“Many historical works, reports of trials, or mere curiosities of literature might be brought within so vague a description and the innocent possessor of such, being unable to achieve the impossible and prove that he had no intention that they should be published or circulated, be penalised under the proposed section. They might even come into his possession as waste paper, and be used to wrap up tea or sugar with the most alarming results in the shape of a suggestion that he had discovered a peculiarly subtle and cunning way of spreading sedition,” he writes.

Horniman is one of the seven “rebels against the Raj” in historian Ramachandra Guha’s book. After essaying his life and work, Guha says of the present times: “When newspapers and television channels so routinely take the side of the state, when the government of the day resorts to internments without trial, the spreading of lies, and the promotion of sectarian bigotry, Indian journalists with a spine and a conscience can take inspiration from an editor who, as Gandhi himself put it, so “fearlessly exposed wrong wherever he has seen it”.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Where The Chalk Meets The Cheese

By Mahendra Ved 13th May 2022

Children across India, as elsewhere, missed going to school during the Covid-19 pandemic. They also missed the hot food being cooked next door at the school. Its aroma can be distracting for a class in session. But it is also a sure attraction to study if that is probably going to be the only full meal for a poor child.

Millions of children across India, adding up to nearly half the population, even those who can afford two meals and more, eat at school under a scheme that completes 62 years this year. About 118 million children are fed on at least 200 school days in a year through the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDM), making it the largest scheme of its kind in the world. With an allocation of ₹11,500 crore for FY 2021-22, it caters to children of Class I-VIII across 11.2 lakh government and government-aided schools.

Statistics for this centrally-funded scheme operated by states (since education is under their charge) with help of non-government organizations (NGOs) are fuzzy and often come as percentages that can be challenged.

It matters little. The fact is that the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, MDM for short, has brought down the drop-out rate among students, both rural and urban, and contributed to the rising literacy at the primary and secondary levels. Viewed from macro level or micro, the scale is huge. Cooking and feeding requires human effort, as much as teaching. Perhaps, even more if you consider quantities of food to be cleaned and cooked, and soiled vessels to be cleaned each day.

Just compare with the family kitchen and contrast the absence of gadgetry. Think of cooking in a corner of a school that is but a tin shed, with coal or wood for fuel.

Begun in Tamil Nadu in 1960 by Chief Minister K Kamaraj and expanded in 1982 by M G Ramachandran (MGR), the MDM now covers the whole country. For Tamil Nadu, the circle is complete. Chief Minister M K Stalin was in Delhi recently to study how Delhi administers it. On May 7, completing one year in office, he announced a ‘breakfast scheme” for government school children up to class five, to curb the rise of “unhealthy, under-nourished children” in the state. Come to think of it, it was at once admission by the pioneer of the past failure and promise to better in the future.

MDM’s really is a chicken-and-egg story. It may have drawn from elsewhere and has spawned clones, based on the universal logic of combining bread with blackboard.

ALSO READ: Online Learning Failed Education For All

In the US, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) program has been around since 1946. Supply of curry meals by Manoj Raichura, an enterprising British Indian, has helped to arrest the truancy rates at schools in the city of Southampton. With numerous faults and flaws, MDM remains one of the success stories of India’s social sector.

There, indeed, are stories of stale food and of unsuspecting children falling sick. There is corruption — of food disappearing, items like milk and eggs, meant to boost nutrition content, remaining on the paper and ending up in the open market and of numbers of beneficiaries being fudged.

Insufficient food can turn a child into a modern-day Oliver Twist. It cannot be defended. In reality, however, it is difficult to ensure the quality and quantity of a meal, consumed by children, in schools small and big, day after day. Also, in each state, each region, children have differing food habits.

Then, there are social and religious taboos. Karnataka Government’s efforts to extend serving of eggs to children are being protested by the powerful Jains and Lingayats. The role of thousands of NGOs engaged in running the scheme is crucial. While the government often puts out a positive picture and statistics to support it, or when the states are finding fault with the federal government and vice versa, it is the NGOs who generally tell the real story.

Then, there are problems peculiar to India. Upper caste parents prevent their children from eating if the food is cooked by someone from low caste. Save these exceptions that make news and are derided, children eat from these casteless kitchens. It is education through the stomach.

It boils down to food and its management. The taste, the use of spices, the food habits like wheat in the north and rice in the south – so many things differ. Just like in a family. There are no easy solutions. Cooking and feeding is only a part of the task. After all, one is not running an eatery for profit.

Having to cook food makes the task really daunting. Former minister in the Manmohan Singh Government Renuka Chaudhary thought she was being ‘pragmatic’ in suggesting pre-cooked food such as biscuits. But this created a powerful lobby of biscuit and confectionary makers, some of them powerful multinationals. When the NGOs protested, the Supreme Court ruled that only cooked food would be served and that the cooking would be done daily. No junk food. No chips, chocolates and toffees.

Like other social sector schemes, the MDM too has its politics. The states, very possessive of their turf, happily accept central funds, but they will not take up its administration. Past resolves to transfer the MDM scheme to the states have not materialized.

Political preferences get injected. Each state has favourite areas for splurging. Like erecting statues. But when it comes to social sector, they throw up their hands and want the federal government alone to finance it. The MDM is just one such scheme. As the scheme evolves, standards are sought to be improved and an element of sharing is gradually coming in. But the scheme is too huge to run smoothly.

MDM is one of the flagship schemes that are central to the achievement of medium term goals in India’s social sector. “The chances of fulfilling these goals appear bleak if the trends in allocations are any indicator,” R. Ramakumar of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, has warned.

Feeding future generations better while educating it cannot be over-stressed.

The writer may be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Ukraine Conflict: India’s Global Moment

By Mahendra Ved 1st May 2022

The present-day complexities are best underscored by the impact, mostly negative, of mood and events back home whenever and wherever a leader goes abroad. The host is also not shielded from domestic developments. This is becoming routine, when even a country’s elections can be, and are, influenced by foreign governments and leaders. Ask Hillary Clinton.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted then United States President Donald Trump in February 2020, Delhi was witnessing unrest in some of its areas and Covid-19 was sweeping in. In April 2022, when Modi received Britain’s Boris Johnson – beginning with Ahmedabad, again – sectarian violence marred observation of Hindu religious festivals and the Muslims’ holy Ramzan, in many provinces. The civic authorities, allegedly in retaliation, followed up with anti-encroachment drives, demolishing the properties of many alleged trouble-makers.

Despite being welcomed by a million people in Ahmedabad and the political support Modi had extended for the impending American presidential elections, the Trump administration (like predecessor Obama’s) was critical of India. Johnson, embroiled in the ‘Partygate’ scandal back home, was keen to project his twice-postponed India visit as a success. He fobbed off media query if he would raise the demolition issue with Modi by speaking glowingly of India’s democratic credentials.

Johnson clinched the free trade agreement (FTA) crucial for a post-Brexit Britain in need of greater trade opportunities. India and Britain are now committed to sign one before this year-end. Big deal, although India recently signed FTAs with Australia and the UAE.

As for Ukraine, Johnson praised Modi, whom he called his “khaas dost”, for privately telling off Russia’s Vladimir Putin against the latter’s military misadventure. He was obviously peppering over India’s dogged refusal to condemn Putin’s action with Teflon-like posturing, brazenly trading in oil with a sanctioned Russia.

Johnson chose not to needle Modi on Ukraine, rightly sensing that India would not budge from its highly nuanced tight rope ride. He avoided being yet-another European come to lecture India. He remembered that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s India trip was preceded by frantic visits of several Western delegations, including US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh and his own Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, whose charm offensive persuading India for tougher action on Russia failed. The European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, chief guest for the inaugural session of the 7th edition of the high-profile Raisina Dialogue was patiently heard. Period.

With Johnson, the diplomatic ball was back in Britain. The BBC, still revered as the ultimate in media freedom and objectivity, at least in the former British colonies, belatedly ran four programmes on bulldozers at work in India. The memory of its listeners/viewers is not too short to be reminded of Iraq’s invasion in 2003, and/or of the massive build-up blitz each time there has been a conflict in the Gulf region. Is the British Government using BBC to boost its foreign policy goals?

But why single out BBC when governments across the world are doing their worst to control mainstream media, and join the social media discourse that they cannot control? The Indian TV channels (almost 800 of them doing 24×7 news dissemination) have long left the BBC hallow and many go for more-brazen-the-better style of the American Fox. Last week, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting felt compelled to issue an ‘advisory’ to curb sensational coverage of both, the bulldozer drive at home and the war in Ukraine. How the two got clubbed is unclear.