Author: Mahendra Ved

Pulling India Out Of Poverty Pit

By Mahendra Ved

‘Hungry India Prays for Rain’, a headline in The Times, London, deeply embarrassed me during my first trip out in the 197Os. The reality was not unknown. But it hit hard as it needed explaining to foreign friends who would wonder: India won a war in 1971, but how come its people remain hungry?

Half-a-century hence, India still prays for rain. Dependent on the monsoon cycle, it swings between droughts and floods, at times visited by both in some regions. Home to rivers, big and small, but divided into adversarial states, India has failed to share available water resources.

But India is no longer ‘hungry’. Two ‘revolutions’, ‘Green’ (food and farm), and ‘White’ (milk) have made all the difference. No reports of starvation death have come for many years. ‘Extreme’ poverty, it is now claimed, has reduced to less than one percent.

India is better-off in a world where over 735 million people live in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 a day. But, extreme poverty isn’t just about economic hardship and lack of opportunity. It also leads to malnutrition, chronic illness, disease, violence and abuse. India’s record is mixed.

In the 2021 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 101st out of the 116 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2021 GHI scores. With a score of 27.5, India has a level of hunger that is still serious.

Poverty persists, no matter how high India flies with its burgeoning list of billionaires, its economy growing, its trade scaling top positions of many items, including in food et al. 

From a country that imported and even received free food (remember the American PL 480?), India’s food grain exports are impressive enough to make it a food-giver to the world. Wheat exports alone have risen from 200,000 tons to hit record 7.85 million tonnes in 2021-22. There is food security, even though the consumer does not always benefit as several factors determine retail prices.

No longer left to “God’s will” poverty remains a sensitive issue. India grappled with it even when colonized. Dadabhai Naoroji damned the British rule in his scathing book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, something Shashi Tharoor does today, embarrassing Britons – only slightly, if at all. Naoroji, who died in 1917, would have damned the British again had he witnessed the Great Bengal Famine of the 1940s, caused by just one man – Winston Churchill.

India could then blame the British, but felt responsible post-Independence to have what is called the “Great Indian Poverty Debate.” It remained a hotly contested topic in the statistical as well as the political realm. Garibi Hatao was the slogan on which Indira Gandhi won her parliamentary election in 1971.

The debate accelerated through the 1990s, post-liberalisation. The claim that India’s extreme poverty reduced from 36 per cent to 26 per cent of the population thanks to the economic reforms generated several academic studies.

In 2009, economist Suresh Tendulkar’s report furthered the debate by including expenses on healthcare and education as part of poverty determination. This report set ₹4,824 and ₹3,904 as the urban and rural monthly income levels for a family of five as the poverty baseline. It triggered one of the earliest loud discussions in the then-nascent Indian social media.

Narrating the evocative debate’s time-line, economist-diplomat Aashish Chandorkar quotes late journalist Anil Padmanabhan who wrote in the Mint newspaper in 2013 – “The business of fixing poverty runs into billions of dollars and there is obviously a lot at stake if poverty is no longer the country’s primary social and developmental challenge.”

The “great Indian debate” has been revived this month. Two different estimates of poverty and inequality were published by authors affiliated to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). The IMF one, co-authored by its Executive Director for India, Surjeet Bhalla, with Karan Bhasin and Arvind Virmani, places the population still suffering extreme poverty at 0.8 percent, while the one for WB says it is 1.4 percent.

The World Bank paper’s title is self-explanatory. “Poverty in India has declined over the last decade but not as much as previously thought,” Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide argue in their paper. While the levels may vary, the conclusions on the trend in poverty reduction, although reached through the use of varying data and methodology, are not very different.

Both conclude that poverty reduction has slowed down in the last seven years of the present NDA government compared to the 10-year period of 2004-2014 of the UPA. While Bhalla reports 26 million people moving out of poverty every year during the UPA regime, this number is one third at 8.6 million for the NDA government. In terms of percentage point per annum (PPA) reduction in poverty, it is 2.5 PPA for the UPA declining to one fourth at 0.7 PPA for the current NDA.

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Both are being hotly contested on several counts. Most controversial, perhaps, is in IMF study that concludes that India eradicated extreme poverty even before the 2020-21 Corona-19 pandemic.

Those who disagree, argue that the economic growth had declined well before the pandemic, from 8 percent in 2016-17 to 3.6 percent in 2019-20. Unemployment had increased. Ten million people turned jobless migrants. Real wage growth declined. How could the poverty have declined at the bottom?

While the broad conclusion of a sharp slowdown in poverty reduction during the present NDA government compared to the UPA period may be valid, there are differences in the level and extent of poverty reduction claimed, with some studies actually showing a rise in poverty. The real issue is not just what happened to poverty and inequality but also what factors contributed to poverty reduction.

There appears to be a consensus that many of the initiatives during the UPA era, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MNREG) programme and the Food Security Act have contributed to improvement in the lives of the poor, pulling them out of poverty pit. Bhalla also agrees and documents the stellar role of the in-kind transfers through the subsidised food scheme under the Public Distribution System (PDS).

The expansion of the PDS during the pandemic certainly contributed to reducing the misery of the poor who suffered through a sharp slowdown of the economy and the subsequent disruption in economic activity during the pandemic. This calls for strengthening the social safety nets and expenditure on food and livelihood schemes given the challenge of economic recovery coupled with rising inflation.

The IMF study assumes that the ‘in-kind’ food grain transfers to the poor can be tabulated in monetary terms since those who have food in surplus can barter it or sell it. Is this really possible when economic conditions are adverse for a rural beneficiary?

Finally, one is tempted to make a political comment. Much of the poverty alleviation is attributed to the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), which is currently in its fourth edition. Welcoming that with a hearty applause, one is tempted to recall rejection by the present rulers of past poverty alleviation welfare measures, named after one set of leaders, as ‘doles’ that denied the recipient ‘dignity’. Does the change of label now ‘dignify’ a ‘dole’?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Naya Pakistan, Old Script, Chronic Crisis

By Mahendra Ved

The record of Pakistan’s top judiciary may have been more chequered than in many other countries. However, even though it validated the martial law imposed in the past after the military seized power, citing the “doctrine of necessity”, it has also righted many wrongs of the civil and military governments. Now, it has a task on hand.

Among its epoch-making actions will be the manner in which the Supreme Court took suo moto notice of the dismissal of the no confidence motion against the Imran Khan Government in the now-dissolved National Assembly on April 3.

Going by reports, within minutes of these developments, Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Umar Ata Bandial, had the Supreme Court opened on a Sunday. He constituted a three-judge bench and directed that all orders and actions initiated by the Prime Minister and President regarding the dissolution of the National Assembly will be subject to the court’s order.

They include National Assembly Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri’s order, followed by President Arif Alvi’s ‘approval’ of the Prime Minister’s ‘advice’ to dissolve the legislature. The entire process is now open to legal and constitutional scrutiny.

The court took note of the Opposition complaint and a petition of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and gave notice to the government officials concerned.

The apex court had earlier returned to the government a presidential reference on the powers of an elected lawmaker to vote against his/her party. Although it did not say so, it was a clear misreading of the relevant provision by the government meant to brow-beat dissident lawmakers.

To deal with this full-blown constitutional crisis, the apex court has constituted a full bench. While it is too early to comprehend the legal and constitutional complexities, with this turn of events, a veritable debate has been opened that would impact, for now and for the foreseeable future, Pakistan’s polity.

There will be no government worth the name. Its actions, aimed at winning the next election, whenever it takes place, will place various state institutions under pressure to act in a partisan manner and only add to the political turmoil.

At the centre of it is a renowned cricketer of yore who entered politics to remove corruption and give the country “Naya Pakistan.” The man who promised to “play till the last ball,” tried to run away with the ball when the parliamentary match was not going his way. His hubris has done in, not just him, but also the country.

There are many reasons Khan cannot return to power. For one, he has annoyed and embarrassed the all-powerful army, his mentor and benefactor that put him up as a proxy. He has named the top brass which, having tired of him, sought to caution him, but failed.

It has brought no credit to Pakistan’s only organised institution, called ‘Establishment’ by Khan and anyone who wants to use an honorific, leaving it vague, yet obvious. The army, by its silent neutrality, has indicated its regret at having installed him in the first place as its proxy – Ladla in the local lexicon that means a favourite.

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This crisis is as much a lesson for this elephant in the room, but to no avail. Pakistan seems destined to be ruled, remote-controlled by the men in khaki who use pliable politicians in colourful headgears. Together, they must stay on the right side of the conservatives and the clergy and appease the “state assets” among the militants.

So, to use a well-known phrase, Army and Allah are sought to be kept “on the same page.” But what about the third ‘A’?

By repeatedly alleging “foreign conspiracy” behind the no-confidence move against his government, and naming the United States, even the State Department official who allegedly conveyed a ‘threat’, Khan has deliberately kicked up a diplomatic row. He has played to the anti-American gallery, hoping to win votes in a future election. He has talked of being thwarted from pursuing an ‘independent’ foreign policy. In popular imagination, jingoism against the US, India and Israel, and ultra-nationalism tantamount to independent foreign policy.

The hard fact is that Pakistan’s feeble political elite, remote-controlled by the military, has pursued nuclear programme and more, but has failed to evolve political stability, set up institutional watchdogs and create a self-sustaining economic base to be able to run an independent foreign policy.

Annoying the US, Khan plans to fight another day, but that has not happened in Pakistan. Recall Benazir Bhutto’s failed attempts to get close to Washington. Neither the US, nor the Pakistan Army that retains tremendous goodwill among the US decision-makers – and benefits immensely – may want to touch him.

Whatever the Supreme Court’s verdict, elections are inevitable. But those that are ranged against Imran Khan today must await another Laadla. The next premier will be in a similar position as Khan found himself in, part of it his own making: high inflation, low prospects for sudden economic turnaround, and a complicated international political economy. The “iron brother” cannot be of much help in this.

That prime minister, and those that come in foreseeable future, will have to contend with the realities of an overpopulated, under-educated, poorly-led and a citizenry easily misled in the name of faith. All political parties need to learn that spouting speeches that begin with promises and end with petulance cannot suffice.

What is in it for India? Almost nothing till Pakistan’s elections are over. Much will depend upon the next prime minister and the elbow-room he/she enjoys with the army.

Nobody can afford to get friendly with India. Forget a civilian, even Musharraf’s downfall began with his controlling cross-border movement and resumption of trade, including films, with India.

The core foreign policy issues including India, Kashmir and Afghanistan, shall remain in the military’s domain. All Pakistani PMs have blown hot and cold with India, and this is destined to continue. A semblance of bilateral trade and cooling down of daily tensions would suffice.

But this suits India, too. Under Modi, it has decided to pursue a tit-for-tat policy. Although conscious that the army actually rules in Pakistan, India, like the western democracies, finds it convenient to respect the democratic fig-leaf and is averse to even open a dialogue with the Pakistani military brass.

On the hand, there are unlikely to be any candle-light vigils on the India-Pakistan border. India’s Left-Liberal sentiment of ‘strengthening’ Pakistan’s democracy itself needs viewing by candle light. It has retreated before an aggressive right-wing dominance where every Indian Muslim is a “Mian Musharraf”. This, too, is likely to continue – so for the time being forget “Aman Ki Asha.”

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Gangubai, A Quest For Legitimacy

By Mahendra Ved

Aurat Ne Janam Diya Mardon Ko, Mardon ne Use Bazaar Diya
– Sahir Ludhianvi

Sahir, unlike Saadat Hasan Manto who did, may or may not have drawn inspiration from Kamathipura in Mumbai that, after ‘reforms’, relocation attempts and revamp, in remains Asia’s largest red-light area.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali says he lived nearby. Mumbai’s citizenry, like this writer, travelling by double-decker bus, couldn’t help watching those hapless women behind the caged windows of dingy homes, and not be overcome by pity and anger.  

Bhhansali is the latest to deal with prostitution after filmmakers V. Shantaram (Admi in 1936), Guru Dutt (Pyaasa), BR Chopra (Sadhana), Shammi Kapoor (Manoranjan), Shyam Benegal (Bhumika and Mandi) and Lekh Tandon (Angulimal). Many “Muslim socials” dealt with tawaif, the courtesan. Hollywood’s tribute came in Butterflied 8 with Elizabeth Taylor and Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts. Raj Kapoor and Satyajit Ray did not touch the subject.

Bhansali, for whom mother Leela is key to his identity, usually depicts strong women characters. They shine in all their complexities. His latest film is about a prostitute in Kamathipura.  This is risky at any time in India, especially when Bollywood and the citizenry are frequently subjected to moral policing.

He has been lucky. He was thrashed and his Padmavat set was destroyed. Spared of a major controversy, the risk taken in making Gangubai Kathiawadi has paid off.

Premiered at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival last month, it has won critical acclaim for him and for the lead actor Alia Bhatt. It has entered the “hundred crore” club in the first fortnight.

It is a real-life tale of a teenage Ganga who flees her well-off family aspiring to be in films. She is cheated and sold to a brothel, starved, beaten and tortured till she succumbs. “Ees dhande mein koi time nahin hota,” – there is no fixed working hour in this trade – she is told.

In her battered body resides a soul that feels for co-workers. She finds a protector and an ally in a local don and is smart enough to contest an election to emerge as their leader.

Two scenes stand out. One, where this debutante is coached by fellow-sex workers, how to stand at the brothel’s door on a single leg, the other folded back, one arm raised and rested at the door and the other extended to make lewd gestures to woo the costumer.

In the other, a mature Gangubai, unable to forget her roots, trunk-calls her mother, yearning to be accepted.  She yells at the telephone operator, but actually in deep sorrow at being rejected. A fallen woman has no place other than the brothel she has been forced into, like in Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan.

Prostitute she is, but she is intensely human. Fallen she is, but she rises in solidarity with her trade. She fights to secure a place for them in the society, allowing their children, ‘illegitimate’ as they are, education.

She fights for their right to work and education for their ‘illegitimate’ children. They are “your children, the society’s children,” she says defiantly. She doesn’t hesitate to use the word ‘prostitute’ – the world’s oldest trade – to introduce herself.

That her success is minimal is stark evidence of the reality that no society, howsoever democratic and liberal, accepts prostitution. Even where legal in some countries, the absence of social acceptance is real.

The film shows Kamathipura as it was in the 1950-60s, post-Independence, after foreign prostitutes made way for thousands of Indians. Set up by the British in 1765, it is also part of the city’s history. It grew as its seven islands merged, where commerce and industry thrived, which meant migrants with basic needs.

British-enacted law was imposed. For colonial masters, a veshya, tawaif or nautch girl was not okay, but prostitution within confines of a district was fine. Most cities across India have such neighbourhoods. To this day, it is governed by that Victorian-era morality that, unsurprisingly, combines with the Indian society’s moral norms.

When Bombay prostitutes offered donations to the Congress party, Mahatma Gandhi advised them to spin charkha. The dozen-plus women members of the Constituent Assembly took a firm stand against prostitution.

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India’s sex industry is worth multi-billion, and is one of the fastest growing, available data and research tell you. Most of the research by the development organisation Sanlaap indicates that the majority of women work as prostitutes due to lack of resources to support themselves or their children. Most do not choose this profession but out of necessity, often after the breakup of a marriage or after being disowned and thrown out of their homes by their families.

Prostitution is legal in India, with right to work, earn and own property. They are also voters. But several related activities including soliciting, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, prostitution in a hotel, child prostitution, pimping and pandering are illegal. Laws have not fully evolved. It is silent about male prostitution and bisexual acts of prostitution.

The rights of sex workers have no place in any statute. Husna Bai, a prostitute, challenged the constitutional provisions and sought right to work in 1958. After much debate, and concern expressed by politicians and police, the judiciary rejected it. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1986, replaced Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act of 1956 after India signed the United Nations’ Declaration on the suppression of trafficking. It aims to “limit and eventually abolish prostitution in India by gradually criminalising various aspects of sex work.”

In 2012, the Central Government opposed the Supreme Court order granting the “right to live with dignity” under the Constitution. Last November, the apex court directed relief for the children of prostitutes affected by Covid-19.

Kamathipura remains there after the real Gangubai supposedly met then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and sought a stay. But conditions – corruption, crime, lack of education and hygiene – remain pathetic.

Kamathipura becomes the location of most of Bhansali film’s run-time, with the frames which look like art deco paintings, and, most crucially, the very youthful Alia Bhatt.

It is an author-backed effort. Bhansali has added nuances to the chapter in Mumbai’s Mafia Queens by S. Husain Zaidi. Critics have rated his effort among his best, but he may have more in store.

Bhansali’s choice of Alia surprised many

The production value is top-notch. Each song is masterfully and colourfully picturised, while Gangubai stands like a vision in white in the midst of it all.

Bhansali’s choice of Alia after Priyanka Chopra reportedly opted out, surprised many. For one, she is too young and small-built to make a brothel Madam. But she has acted and danced her way with aplomb. This is her best, but like Bhansali, she has much more coming. Her performance is not perfect, is confused and faltering at times. But so is the character she is portraying.

If Pakeezah and Umrao Jaan were the toast of the last century, Bhansali-Alia’s Gangubai Kathiawadi is meant for the millennials.

Let’s face it. Women (and men) of pleasure have been there down the ages and will be there. They need to be viewed with empathy and their dependents given basic rights.

Gangubai, with a film on her now on the entertainment network, is a milestone. But the society has its task cut out — if it chooses to do it.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Russia-Ukraine: Indian Neutrality Under Strain

By Mahendra Ved

As the world hurtles down the road to a violent cold war 2.0, no speed-breakers are in sight. Explosions in the latest war zone and furious diplomatic postures have failed to muffle the cries of hundreds killed and a million-plus rendered homeless — and the fears of students, no matter which nationality, ejected from their classrooms.

As one worries over prospects of a possible World War III with nuclear weapons, no lessons have been learnt from the previous two. As part of a colonial empire, India contributed hugely with resources and soldiers, thousands of whom never returned home.

The stakes are many times higher now. Not a distant thunder, the conflict in Ukraine poses India a big diplomatic challenge with prospects of huge economic fallout. The immediate worry is of Ukrainian supplies of the sunflower oil. More significant are the fuels from Russia that has invaded Ukraine.

Objectively viewed from India, one cannot condone any invasion. But it is equally difficult to ignore what has led to it.  Russia has been pushed to the brink ever since the Soviet Union dissolved. Within limited space available here, it must be stated that a triumphal United States-led West has reneged and disregarded each treaty it has signed in the last three decades.

Despite clear understanding, 14 countries that were either part of the erstwhile USSR, or were its allies under the Warsaw Pact, have been admitted to the European Union and/or the NATO. Moscow has been systematically sought to be emasculated of its military and economic strength. The West has ignored warnings from its own scholars and security experts who warned of Russian reaction. That has finally come.

President Vladimir Putin saw his now-or-never chance to push back when the West knocked at its Ukraine doors. Ukraine is the resumed cold war’s prized-pick, a football, and encouraged and armed by the West, also a willing participant in the big-power tussle.  

Tacit support from China, now the Number One challenger to the US/West, has bolstered Putin’s response. But Beijing will not help cushion the damage the conflict has brought Russia in military, economic and diplomatic terms.

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On the other hand, China could be the biggest beneficiary. Like the US that has pushed more and more arms into Ukraine and will continue to profit by playing on European fears. Moscow, hit by Western sanctions, will become heavily dependent on Beijing. This is foregone, whatever the outcome of the current conflict.

Putin miscalculated doubly when he failed to force a regime change in Ukraine and did not find the local support, even from ethnic Russians. To his dismay, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, an actor-dancer-turned-politician till 2019, is fighting back. Zelenskyy has refused to be evacuated and become another Cao Kỳ (South Vietnam) or even Ashraf Ghani (Afghanistan), and is Europe’s new hero.

One recalls intense Soviet pressures on India in 1971 to achieve the military objective and end the conflict fast. India did that in two weeks with Bangladesh’s liberation. Moscow had held out with the UN Security Council vetoes and ensured China’s inaction, if not neutrality. It worked then. Nine days since Putin’s “special military operation” was launched (as this is being written) is too short a time to conclude if Putin has attained his objective.

It is likely that the Russian war machine may eventually gain Ukraine’s notional control. But it will be a pyrrhic victory with uncertain, violent borders. The regime change that Putin wants will require him to deploy more soldiers on the ground to retain control, even more so, if it leads to insurgency. The prospects are daunting, and Russia cannot afford another Afghanistan.

A question nobody seems to ask is, what would happen to President Biden if Ukraine is lost, so soon after the humiliating evacuation from Afghanistan. Too early to predict the 2024 elections, but the US has a strong political system.

By comparison and contrast, what if Putin loses out completely? A strong political system that makes his answerable is absent in Russia, like the erstwhile Communist Party that could replace him. Supreme, Putin can get away – at the expense of Russian people.

As of now, Putin has lost the battle of perceptions. The global media, well under the control of the US/West, is painting him as the aggressor. Coupled with social media, the discourse is heavily anti-Russia. Anyone can take a photo with cellphone and circulate. That makes the cold war’s resumption stark.

Excluding the sane and objective minds (including many in the US/West), nobody lends an ear to Putin’s fulminations on how and why the world witnessed conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, other trouble-spots, and fomenting of faith-based rebellions across Asia and Africa. The media’s world is unipolar.

With its experience of evacuating people from war-hit zones and airlifting 170,000 people during the 1990 Kuwait crisis, India has done well to evacuate the students who went through harrowing time. The government has been accused of not foreseeing the crisis. Nobody has pondered whether students who spent precious money to be in Ukraine would have agreed. The better-off Indians stranded in Kuwait were reluctant.

Fending off Western pressures, India has stayed neutral at the UNSC and rightly so. It has to strike a balance as it did, under varying circumstances, in the past. But the question is, how long, on the current crisis? India has signaled willingness to counter a Russian claim, made by none less than Putin, of Ukrainian authorities holding Indian students hostage.

Besides the need to deal with Eurasia, India is the biggest among 45 other nations that import Russian defence systems. India’s dependence on Russia, estimated at anything between 60 to 80 percent, may reduce only over time.

The US waiver on Delhi’s defence purchases from Moscow will become more difficult. Reports are that some deals with Russia have already been cancelled. It may capitulate, like it did over Iranian oil imports. With an adversarial China on the Russian side, the pressures will multiply. What will be India’s role in multilateral bodies like BRICS, Quad and Shanghai Cooperation Council? When it comes to diplomacy, it’s a cruel world that kills you with a smile.

Among many things, this exposes India’s medical education muddle. Some 20,000 Indians studying medicine in Ukraine needed to be evacuated. As one of them succinctly put it, a Ukrainian medical degree is accepted all over Europe. Saying this is not to rubbish the students whose families spend hard-earned money, but much less than what is needed for an Indian degree. The truth is there are too many wannabe doctors chasing too few seats. And these seats come with ‘donations’ collected by politicians who own these colleges.

Foreign policy, save Pakistan that most governments have exploited for political and electoral gains, has always been peripheral to India’s politics. Considering that, a semblance of consensus has evolved on the Ukraine crisis.

The Congress distanced itself from two of its stalwarts, Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tiwari who questioned India’s posture at the UN. It does not wish to be seen as taking sides. A generally combative Mamata Banerjee has extended “unconditional support” to the Modi Government. The Left parties, who would have normally condemned the ‘imperialist’ US/West, are silent. But surely, everybody will respond after the outcome of the state assembly polls, especially in Uttar Pradesh, gets known.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Poster Boys Of India’s Space Quest

By Mahendra Ved

Did Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, secretly approve making of the nuclear bomb? Was his closest confidante on that mission, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, killed in a ‘staged’ air-crash by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)?

These issues raised, or recalled, in a new web series, Rocket Boys, have not set the Jamuna on fire. But dwelling on independent India’s early strides in the field of science under Nehru, when Nehru-bashing has acquired new and powerful dimensions of the art of political skullduggery, is a brave act.

For the same reason, to recall that Cold War-era ‘conspiracy’ of 1966 in the year 2022, when India and the US are getting closer than ever before, is an equally brave act. And the bomb, by itself, is forever an explosive subject.

But the cumulative impact of these acts is greatly softened because they are performed in a web series on an OTT (over the top) platform. They are seen in a new century by people who have only heard or read of Nehru, and are now witnessing his systematic demonization. And to them, what the CIA did, or did not do, in that era of Nehruvian “non-alignment”, may be no different from poor man’s James Bond’s exploits on the cinema screen.

Author-editor Raj Chengappa, who researched for his book on India’s nuclear weapons history says records of that era show that if bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked Nehru, failure to prevent the Big Powers to end the nuclear weapons’ race and then, the Chinese quest for the bomb, contrary to popular perceptions, also alerted him into giving the green signal. He died soon after.

Speaking to those who worked with Nehru — Indira Gandhi, biographer S Gopal, advisor P N Haksar, Ashok Parthasarathi, politicians, scientists, diplomats and armed forces personnel – Chengappa concludes that “Nehru proved to be both an idealist and a pragmatist. While he was dead against the bomb, he believed that when India called for a nuclear-free world, it must do so from a position of strength.”

Bhabha, who called Nehru ‘Bhai’, pioneered the atomic energy mission, and greatly influenced him on the bomb. He was killed when his Air India Boeing ‘Kashmir Princess’, flying over Swiss Alps, crashed. It was shown to the world as “an unfortunate accident”. Conspiracy theories abounded then. The pilot who survived the crash believed the crash was engineered. But an India surviving on American PL 480 free food, did not react.

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Rocket Boys director Abhay Pannu cites former CIA operative Robert Crowley’s book that carries a ‘confession’ buttressing a ‘conspiracy’. Tomes have been written, mainly in the West, on espionage and international affairs. Circumstances, yes, and the prevailing cold war compulsions, certainly point to it. But whether they add up to firm evidence remains in doubt.

This is true of most ‘conspiracies’. The world knows of Mossadeq (Iran) and of Patrice Lumumba (Congo). No conclusive evidence has emerged whether Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s 1975 assassination was a CIA operation. The alleged role of Philip Cherry, then the CIA Chief in Dhaka, and his denial, leave the matter there.

This was supposedly American response to the breakup of Pakistan that it could not prevent. A sneering Henry Kissinger comment calling Mujib “history’s favourite fool” may sound triumphant, but proves nothing.

Reflective of the mood in that era and conscious of suspicion and hostility with which India was treated, Indira Gandhi did what she did on Bangladesh, defying them all. She supported the South Africans against their apartheid regime. She hosted Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh and Chile’s Hortensia Allende after her husband, President Salvadore Allende, was killed in what was acknowledged as a CIA-sponsored coup.

Two things remain undisputed. One: India turned to the then Soviets Union because it helped, when the British did not, and the US and Western Europe preferred ally Pakistan.

Two: By the end of the last century, unwilling to, or unable to, influence the big-power rivalry, even the much-bombed Vietnam went into a forgive-and-forget mode. As the cold war takes new avatar, new hot-spots keep cropping up – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine….

All this needs balancing. Along with the CIA, Rocket Boys also goes for a tactical ‘balancer’. It alludes that under Nehru, the prime minister’s office (PMO) was ‘infiltrated’ by the Russian KGB as well. That, and some more, may have operated – as they do, anywhere, even today. They get away, till caught. Director Abhay Pannu admits to creating characters and situations, as artistic licence and to boost ‘marketing’.

Full credit to Nikkhil Advani who has created this web of developments that involved, besides Bhabha, his younger buddy and another renowned scientist, Vikram Sarabhai. And since the latter focused on reaching new frontiers in space science, APJ Abdul Kalam, the future President of India.

With Nobel laureate C V Raman shown shaping the early years of the trio, with able support from the House of Tata, never before have so many science pioneers, and their feats and follies, been crowded into a single cinematic space.

Excellent performances by a somewhat better known Jim Sarbh who does Bhabha. Sarabhai is played by emerging OTT actor Ishwak Singh. Sarabhai cannot be complete without Regina Cassandra playing his dancer-wife Mrinalini. Rajit Kapur is Nehru and Arjun Radhakrishna plays Kalam.

All that is made palatable and popular, even populist. As the Bollywood buzzword goes, it is entertainment, entertainment, entertainment – not to be taken too seriously. There are more serious issues to worry about, after all, like the climate change, Covid-19, conflicts that bash and belittle ancient civilizations and faiths, and of course, suffer political discourses that divide.

The pleasant surprise, however, remains. Rocket Boys, gathering critical and popular accolade, pushes science and narrates how its strides created as aspiring India that Nehru wanted to develop a “scientific temper.” Today, India can boast of having the world’s largest science-trained manpower, with a score of CEOs manning multinational giants. But whether that is because of, or despite the lack of, the “scientific temper” needs serious debating.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Pakeezah – The Courtesan’s Classic

By Mahendra Ved

What can one say about a film that took 16 years to make, its genre no longer popular when released, and its main attraction looking jaded, only a sad reminder of her resplendent beauty?

Well, you can say that despite these and numerous other debilities, it remains a classic that has grown with time. Fifty years after its release, Pakeezah (The Pure) continues to be viewed and debated by the discerning in the new century.

India was in a triumphant mood after the 1971 war when Pakeezah was released on February 2, 1972. People had no stomach for its deep melancholia. Romantic and opulent historical and “Muslim socials” of 1950s-60s (with notable exceptions Shatranj Ke Khiladi-1977, Junoon-1979 and Umrao Jaan-1981) were yielding place to contemporary themes. The “angry young man” was knocking at the cinema door.

After many expensive fits and starts, writer-director Kamal Amrohi barely managed to complete filming Meena Kumari, his estranged wife and muse. Both knew she was dying. Despite its rich artistic content and popular songs, Pakeezah flopped commercially. It marked the end of a life-time dream. Until…

Re-released after Meena Kumari died, just eight weeks later, on March 31, it stormed the cinema theatres. Not only were the fortunes revived and the fame restored, Pakeezah and Mena Kumari became synonymous. They overshadow her earlier acting triumphs and for that matter, also Amrohi’s outstanding films, with and without her.

Although it loses out in most departments except in music, Pakeezah often gets compared with Mughal-e-Azam (1960), a magnificent story of another bygone era, arguably one of the greatest films ever made in India.

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Many stories, real, apocryphal, even autobiographical, fuelled the making of both the films. Amrohi, appointed as one of the four writers for Mughal-e-Azam, abandoned Pakezaah because both had similar themes drawn from the Anarkali legend. Separated for five years from wife, he considered replacement. But he couldn’t imagine Pakeezah without Meena Kumari, and gave up again. Friends Nargis and Sunil Dutt helped their patch-up.

To lighten his burden, Amrohi engaged Satyen Bose, but couldn’t quit direction. Signing writers Akhtar-ul-Iman and Madhusudan led to disputes. He had to pay a fine to disengage with the latter. So, no Pakeezah without Amrohi as well.

The film’s German cinematographer, Joseph Wirsching, died in 1967. Technology switch was needed from Black & White to Eastmancolor. Composer Ghulam Mohammad died, requiring Naushad to complete the soundtrack, finally ‘arranged’ by Kersi Lord.

Pakeezah is the story of a tawaif, a courtesan. Unable to marry her lover Shahabuddin, she begets a girl-child before dying. Her sister Nawabjaan raises the child, grooms her as a dancer. The love story repeats, this time between Sahibjaan and Salim, a forest officer, also a nephew of Shahabuddin.

Family patriarch, common to both situations, rejects Sahibjaan. He shoots Shahabuddin who, shamed by Nawabjaan, wants to redeem himself. After this blood-letting, Salim has his way. He marries Sahibjaan, his Pakeezah. A poignant ending with justice, a rarity, for a courtesan.

Thanks to frustrating time-loss in production, Ashok Kumar, signed to play Salim, grown old, had to play Shahbuddin. From ‘stars’ of the day — Dharmendra, Raaj Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Sunil Dutt, and Pradeep Kumar – Amrohi chose Dharmendra as Salim. But well into shooting, he found the wife getting on “too well” with Dharmendra, enough to distract filming. There were rumours galore. The possessive husband-director dropped Dharmendra.

It was finally Raaj Kumar. He sees Sahibjaan sleeping on a moving train. Smitten, he leaves a note between her foot thumb and finger: “Aapke paon dekhe, bahut haseen hain. Inhein zameen par mat utariyega… maile ho jaayenge” (Your feet are really beautiful. Do not step on the ground… lest they be soiled). The dialogue is rated as one of the most romantic/erotic scenes in Indian cinema.

When released, the courtesan culture, the kothas of Lucknow et al, were passé. Not that there was no room for romanticism. But India was ready for another theme, Garam Hawa (Hot Winds-1973), about the plight of a Muslim businessman and his family, in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition. Only a year separated it from Pakeezah.

However, these “hot winds” couldn’t dampen the romance of Pakeezah and its songs. They also blew across the border from an aspiring India to a just-truncated Pakistan. Thankfully, Pakeezah helped a catharsis between the neighbours.

End-1972, I witnessed an India-Pakistan border “flag meeting”. A Pakistan Army officer, with roots in India’s Moradabad, half-seriously urged his Indian counterparts tasked to remove the explosives on the minefield, to “leave one mine only to be cleared by me, with a gramophone record of Pakeezah songs concealed underneath”.

India’s Doordarshan telecast Pakeezah from its Amritsar centre on September 29, 1973. Columnist Ibn-e-Imroze wrote in Daily Imroze: “The day Pakeezah was televised, Lahore cinemas wore a deserted look. Black-marketers sold their tickets even below the face value. Lahorewallahs had resisted (India’s) 1965 and 1971 attacks, but surrendered to this invasion of 1973. People invaded TV shops. Those who could not get one, fixed bamboo antennae on the roofs of their houses (to watch direct telecast), to console their frustrated feelings. Traffic came to a halt, pockets were picked, even doctors said to their patients: ‘If you remain alive till then, I’ll see you tomorrow. Today I am going to see Pakeezah’.”

To anyone with an ear for music, the film’s pull is undeniable. Among those gems, alas, Inhin Logon Ne seems plagiarised. It can be heard on Youtube in Shamshad Begum’s voice, sung for a 1941 film Himmat. The lyric is by Aziz.

Film analyst Gautam Kaul writes: Majrooh Sultanpuri had stolen the lyric from Aziz for Ghulam Mohammed, a contemporary of Pandit Gobind Ram, the original composer from the Lahore School.

Cut to 1972. Kaul notes: “It is the same kotha, the same assembly of men, the same musical score, the same song, the same Kathak style, but it is Technicolour, and a bloated Meena Kumari, with leathered skin due to constant drinking, is attempting to dance. The dancing isn’t a patch on the rendition by the light-footed young actress Manorama in the original.”

Truth be told, Meena Kumari was too sick to dance. She was filmed sitting. Padma Khanna performed all her dance movements, not credited to any choreographer.

None of these prevented the film’s earning five times the sum spent on production. Its soundtracks sold the best across Asia and topped the popularity charts of Radio Ceylon’s Binaca Geetmala, then a decisive benchmark.

Chalte Chalte, “Aaj hum apni duaon ka asar and Thaade rahiyo, for which she designed the costumes, remain the most memorable song-and-dance performances. A storm of protests from the film fraternity damned Filmfare that denied awards to Pakeezah because its leading contenders were dead.

In 2005, the British academic Rachel Dwyer called Mena Kumari’s character a “quintessentially romantic figure: a beautiful but tragic woman, who pours out her grief for the love she is denied in tears, poetry and dance.”

Meena Kumari’s fee for acting in Pakeezah was one sovereign gold coin. Kamal Amrohi gave that to his dying wife. She clutched it till she passed away, never able to see it or the released film. Pakeezah was truly, Meena Kumari’s film.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

India’s Elderly – A Neglected Minority

By Mahendra Ved

Molkareen (Maid), a Marathi language film made in 1963 was about an impoverished widow abandoned by her son working incognito as a maid in his household, looking after the grandchild. In Baghbaan (Gardner) made four decades later, Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan expresses his anguish at being discarded by his sons and forced to live away from his wife: “Why is it that children who learnt to walk from parents are unwilling to lend them a hand in their old age?”

Some years back, a man who dispensed justice knocked at the doors of the same court. A retired Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, he and his wife sought eviction from home of their son and daughter-in-law.

Accusing them of “traumatizing” them and making their life “hell”, the old couple wanted that they move to another house, mind you, also built by the father. Probably first such case involving a judge, it embarrassed the court and hit media headlines. The son denied it all, saying some relations had misled his parents.

The court’s directing the police did not deter the son. On a fresh appeal, two retired judges and a senior lawyer were appointed to ensure that the petitioners got justice.

There are countless cases involving the sick and the aged being hounded by their young progeny. Times are a-changing in tradition-bound India. People still grow up respecting their elders. Feet-touching and respectful bowing of heads by the young is still the norm. But it hits the wall of the material and the mundane.

Woes of the aged are rising. The dispute is mostly over money and property, but also about who does what work at home, over what is ‘needed’ and what is a ‘luxury, relationship with other siblings and who pays medical bills of the old.

Lack of social welfare schemes make the old more vulnerable. The young often eye pension money, savings and the family heirloom and await, impatiently, for the old parents to ‘go’. Of the two, the survivor becomes most vulnerable.

Migration for work, globalisation and fast urbanization are contributing to joint families going nuclear and to changing of values. Yet, the latest data shows that to survive, more and more aged are having to depend upon the young.

More than four in five older Indians live in multi-generational households with their children. But surveys find that the share of older Indians living with only a spouse or alone doubled between the early 1990s and the mid-2000s.

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Within a household’s shrinking space where two or three generations live together, the old are pushed to small rooms or outhouses to make way for the younger members, be it study space for the young or privacy of the just-married. Or, as Baghbaan depicts, they are separated.

Unable to keep pace with the young, the old must accommodate and adjust. They face emotional blackmail of being denied support of the children and affection of the grandchildren to whom they are attached. 

Old people are increasingly unwanted at home. The era of grandma’s tale that educated and entertained the kids is fading. Mother is needed, but as a glorified nanny when the daughter/daughter-in-law is expecting. Grandparents are needed when that child goes to school and needs minding while parents are away to work.

They are needed as tutors too. Times of India recently reported that a grandfather, on arriving in a limousine at the office of HelpAge India, a non-government organization, broke down. His son had slapped him seven times because the child had failed despite the granddad’s coaching.  

With better health facilities available and life expectancy rising, the aged live longer. The age of retirement has been raised from 60 to 62. But the aged must work longer and retire late for want of pension, family support, healthcare and even shelter. When it comes to products like hearing aids, eye lenses or wheelchairs, most available in India are imported, and hence, expensive. Struck with serious ailment, the old resign to their ‘fate’ rather than burden the young.

Take the growing trend of senior citizens’ homes. This small, privileged section of society is not waiting for the next generation to plan anything for them; they have already planned their own old age, choosing the destination and the company in which they want to spend their grown-up years.

But it gets lonely there with nobody to talk to.  The aged are dumped, among others, by Indians settled abroad. Funds are paid, but no visiting; only video-calls. In some cases, they are just informed when the old die.

In a youth-obsessed media and start-up space, one rarely sees initiatives focused on the elderly, be it for their travel requirements, social and lifestyle needs, or tapping into their experience.

The world is getting smaller with easier travel, instant communication and with social media. This means we have family and friends around the world, but maybe, none close to us to take care of us in our old age.

A ‘young’ India has over a half of its 1.2 billion below the age of 25 and over 65 percent below 35. While China, Japan and many other nations face an aging demographic profile, the youth segment of India’s population is growing rapidly, and is projected to continue to do so for the next 30 years.

Over the next four decades, India’s 60-plus population is projected to increase dramatically from eight percent in 2010 to 19 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations Population Division. It rose from 10.9 percent in 1961 to 14.2 percent in 2011 and is projected to increase to 15.7 percent and 20.1 percent in 2021 and 2031, respectively.

There will be more women survivors than men as per National Statistical Organisation (NSO) figures. They could be more vulnerable, given India’s patriarchal traditions.

By mid-century, this age group will be 323 million people, a figure larger than the current population of the United States.

Like India, China, too, must face this. According to the UN report on “ageing in the 21st century”, by 2050, India and China will have about 80 percent of the world’s elderly.

And India is likely to pip China in the number of centenarians. Already, India is home to between 11,000 and 20,000 centenarians. It is set to rocket to anywhere between 151,000 and 620,000 by the year 2050.

Wonder where the traditional elder’s blessing, “may you live a hundred years” has led to.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Fighting The Hot-Iron Branding Of Kids As Treatment

By Mahendra Ved

Google the word ‘branding’ in India and you learn of commercial marketing of various products – till you find, somewhere down the line, that this term also refers to deliberate scalding of an ailing person, mostly an under-ten minor. Meant to be a cure, it only makes for greater pain and longer treatment than the original ailment.

Unbelievable, but true, in this modern age, parents, often untouched by modern medicine, or scared and dissuaded from it by ‘branders’, use this mediaeval custom and practice as a vaccine at child birth, in many poor countries across Asia and Africa.

It is between the ‘brander’ and the hapless ‘branded’. The authorities take little notice. The clinics and hospitals are content with treating them as burn cases without touching branding as the cause. And the politicians do not want to prevent an age-old practice that could disturb their potential voter.

A red-hot iron rod is the means for ‘cure’, though not the only one. Heated nails, wires and incense sticks are also used. An iron ring or even a burnt rope is used. Rod is pressed on the chest of the child for pneumonia, on the left side of abdomen for malaria and on the right side if it jaundice. For brain fever, it is pressed right on the forehead. The list is long.

For the uninitiated city-bred, branding would be unknown or be confined to stories. It is a traditional practice whereby third degree burns are inflicted on the skin with a hot iron rod or metallic object, burning ropes and metal rings, to treat various conditions. In several Asian and African societies where traditional medicine is still widely prevalent, branding is used. These ancient methods are crude and inhuman, causing the treatment to be more unbearable than the original complaint, and carry the risk of complications. Despite advances in medicine, crude and harmful methods of healing like Branding are still prevalent all over, especially among illiterate and poor people.

It can cause acute infection, allergic reactions and sequelae arising from third-degree burns. Indian constitution provides immunity to our children by any ‘Hurt’ under the Juvenile Justice ‘Care and Protection of Children’ Act, says a report in Indian Paediatrics, journal of the Indian Paediatrics Association. It demands “stringent action to prevent these hazardous practises to protect our children.”

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The mediaeval custom it seems has its roots in the treatment of domestic animals like cows and buffaloes, which are cured of their septic boils or wounds by wielding of red hot iron rods. But gradually, the practice also started among human beings and especially children. It attained a kind of religious sanctity among the illiterate village folks mainly from the backward communities.

A sliver line has emerged, in a small way, in the rural areas of Kutchh, India’s western-most district in Gujarat. No case of branding has been reported in 2021, thanks to the untiring efforts of a child specialist.

It took him 19 years for Dr Rajesh Maheshwari Jeswani to convince the loving but ignorant parents in village after village of the district’s Vagad region that when a child is branded as a cure to various ailments, it grows with not just burn marks, but also psychological trauma.

Dr Rajesh Maheshwari Jeswani

Although Vagad region extends from southern Rajasthan to northern parts of Saurashtra in Gujarat, this is the story of two Talukas, Rapar and Bhachau. A large populace of Kolis, Rabaris, Bharwad, Dalits and Muslims – mostly farmers and shepherds, but also landless labour – in a remote region that is backwaters of this “Little Rann”, the desert region.

For want of a paediatrician or otherwise, they used to follow this practice that, over a period, has also acquired religious overtones. It was the norm till Dr Jeswani persevered, rendering mostly unwanted advice to parents.  

He recalls that while training as a child specialist, he was told by his peers that since the ‘case’ before him is silent’, being too small to express pain and its cause, the doctor should also be its advocate. This meant persuading tradition-embracing parents.

After much opposition and boycott, the effort has borne results. He would know, having traversed the region for long years. His hospital in Gandhidham town of the district would receive 5-6 such cases every month. The number used to be high since other doctors also received such cases.

It was not easy. For the ignorant villagers who would go to the illiterate branders, the situation was precarious as the warning that the patient would die if he is taken to a doctor. In some cases, they would be told not to approach a doctor till the brand marks heal.

The practice was rampant in many pockets of Gujarat in the early 19th century but it was eradicated in most parts as awareness in modern medical science grew. Now people of Vagad in Kutchh have joined in, and with that they have joined the modern world.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Real Buzz: Some Liquor For Thought

By Mahendra Ved

To drink or not to drink – that’s the question, with due apologies to the Bar(d) of Avon. Indians have debated it down the ages. The answer is elusive, and shall forever remain so.

In a country seeped in traditions, where food and drink are associated with piety and mistakenly, also religion, the state that imposes it, swings between periodic political propaganda to win votes and economic expediency of filling the coffers with excise revenue. It must determine whether to spend on enforcing prohibition and if yes, how to regulate the demand and supply of a commodity much in demand.

At the public level, the discourse swings between the right to drink and public outcry each time people die of excessive imbibing of spurious poisonous hooch. It fades, till another ‘tragedy’ befalls, so called because victims are the poor and their families.

It remains a matter of individual choice, whether to follow “family values” that you are born with, or inculcate a new one as you move in life, influenced by social interaction, work environment, friends, or simply, advertising/cinema-spawned glamour.

Without doubt, not drinking saves money and health in a largely tropical/temperate country. Framers of the Constitution, thinking of the poorest, stipulated it as a Directive Principle. But it is also true that alcohol has been imbibed from times immemorial, from the ancient to the modern, and from Kashmir to Kamrup to Kanyakumari. It was offered to deities and partaken as prasada in temple towns that are, ironically, now declared liquor-free.

From ancient Somarasa, Asava and Madira prescribed in Ayurveda for containing medicinal values, to Shiraz (from Iran) and brewed with grapes imported from Afghanistan, alcohol has been enjoyed by people of all classes. Who knows it better than the tribal India that has always drunk Mahua and toddy? Barring individual exceptions, kings — Hindus and Muslims (the latter despite disapproval in Islam) – and Christian colonizers – all imbibed it, encouraged it and taxed it.

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In independent India, after several experiments, only four states out of 28 and none of the eight union territories practise prohibition. A total ban on liquor has proved to be a failure, in Maharashtra, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh that periodically experimented it. They withdrew it when besides a big shortfall in excise revenues, a spurt in illicit bootlegging and spurious liquor production also killed thousands.

Gandhi’s Gujarat is the sole exception, since no government can afford to relax prohibition. But demand and illegal supply are big ‘dhanda’, even as Mahuda and Toddy are consumed, particularly by the tribals and the Dalits.

Women’s groups are pro-prohibition. “Liquor widows” of Saurashtra’s ‘Nat’ community receive help from ₹1,200 imposed as fine on an offending husband. A habitual drunkard is put in a cage in the village square. The campaign is spreading. Years ago, Anna Hazare who led an anti-graft movement, would have offenders tied to the lamp post.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who introduced prohibition in 2016, trots out credible data on socio-economic impact on the poor, with women as its fiercest advocates. But there is little he can do or say about supplies from neighbouring states that have triggered a parallel economy.

His problem is political, from alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Its ministers insist on making liquor law “more holistic”. Kumar stands firm, but he cannot ignore a tricky ally that rules at the federal level. However, his government is speechless when a former chief minister, Jitan Ram Majhi, alleges: “all ministers and MLAs (legislators) drink.”

If they do, to be sure, few politicians in India drink in public, unless they are from the north-east where drinking is part of the culture. This writer has imbibed with ministers who would keep away any unwelcome visitor, and with lawmakers who would take a swig each time visiting an ante-room, toilet or while excusing themselves to “attend to something important.”

Drinking in public is discouraged socially, also legally, under excise and policing rules. Few cities in India have European-style pavement bars. It’s tipple on the quiet. The logic that a single peg in public is better than a ‘quarter’ or more taken indoors, does not work. Social disapproval remains firm and drinking habit can influence an individual relationship, like, “he is good, but you know, he drinks!”

But it is fast fading as India gets urbanised. New entrants to the queues outside liquor vends are working women, like executives and techies, who drive in to purchase their gin and tonic, vodka or beer. Some vends are exclusive for them. This is new, digital India displaying woman-power, and why not?

To be fair, liquor is not all. The turn of the century has brought a variety of coffee and cafes as a good substitute for the young. The end of nine-to-five office culture requires longer working hours and evenings are not always young.  

Yet, queues became crowds after Delhi’s recent change in excise law that completely privatised liquor vending business.  The state has found a simpler way of collecting higher excise revenue from the producers and the vendors.

Money is undoubtedly the consideration. But to sustain the ‘moral’ factor that often sustains Indian politics, some states divert the liquor revenue to welfare schemes. They earn “blessings of the poor” — call it feat of public morality or penance of sorts. Late Tamil Nadu chief Minister Jayalalithaa, for one, would finance her schemes with “Amma’ name-tag, attaining the mother figure, none else has enjoyed.     

Like Nitish Kumar, political dilemma troubles the Congress, India’s grand old party. It feels the need to shed the prohibition’s ‘gridlock’. It was tied around its neck by Mahatma Gandhi who remains its principal guide for a century. Gandhi was obsessed with prohibition, critics say, terming drinking “more damnable than thieving and perhaps even prostitution,” he wrote in ‘Swaraj’. In ‘Harijan’, he dwelt on how “liquor has not only robbed men of their money but of their reason, they have for the time being forgotten the distinction between wife and mother, lawful and unlawful.”

Congress’ Italian-born (forget Italian wine) President Sonia Gandhi recently appointed a committee under A K Antony, a non-drinking Catholic, to study whether the party should retain the clause against admitting as member “anyone drinking or in liquor business.” Like wearing and spinning of khadi, this stipulation is gone outdated. But dare the Congress shed prohibition, the BJP is sure to attack it.

India’s current right-wing political discourse systematically demonizes Congress’ first premier Jawaharlal Nehru who enjoyed an occasional peg of wine. But it is, significantly, silent on alcohol. The BJP’s growing political dominance across much of the country has perhaps silenced its leaders.  

The cultural czars who guide them, while encouraging “ghar wapasi” (reconversion to Hinduism) and tacitly, violence against the religious minorities, do not touch upon it.  Their vigilantes have of late stopped forcing hapless public on what to wear, eat and drink.  Forget liquor, social resistance develops when individual choices are challenged. The courts in Gujarat recently reversed civic actions taken against vending of eggs and omelette.   

Indians consumed 6.5 billion litres of alcohol in the year 2020. But the per capita alcohol consumption at 5.5 litres is much lower than the global average of 6.2 litres. But it is bound go up, market analysts say. India exports alcohol worth USD 330 million annually and imports it for the same value.

Prohibition has no price-tag. So, it’s money, stupid!

And yet, the question we started with promises to stay unresolved.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Verghese Kurien – Showing The Milky Way

By Mahendra Ved

Cattle-breeders of Patri and surrounding villages in Gujarat’s Kutchh district produce 20,000 litres of milk earning a whopping ₹700,000 daily. Chilled and transported, it adds to the national grid of millions of litres marketed across the country.

Prosperous Patri is but a microcosm of the White Revolution that began in 1949 in a run-down creamery in Anand in Kaira (now Kheda) district. Today, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) launched in 1950, is the world’s largest milk cooperative. Marketing ‘Amul’ brand of milk and dairy products, it registered a turnover of Rs 39,248 crore in 2020-21. It is the world’s eighth largest among the top 20 global dairy processors assessed by the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN).

In mythology (Krishna and his love for butter), or in history, India may or may not have been the land of abundant milk. But at Independence, it had the world’s largest cattle population, and also millions of humans with no access to milk. That need was met through long years of cooperative effort. But the man who pioneered it, Dr Verghese Kurien, is a forgotten man in his birth centenary year.

A US-trained metallurgist from distant Kerala, Kurien arrived in Gujarat in 1949. How he fought the feudal, business and MNC interests and motivated farmers ignorant of their strength is a saga that stretches from the dawn of India’s Independence to the present.

Kurien and his team invented the process of making milk powder and condensed milk from buffalo’s milk instead of cow’s milk. Amul successfully competed against Nestle, the MNC that only used cow’s milk to make powder and condensed milk. In India, buffalo’s milk is the main raw material unlike Europe where cow’s milk is abundant.

Opening the first Amul “factory” in Anand, Jawaharlal Nehru hugged Kurien for his ground-breaking work. Kurien networked with successive governments to push his projects. A hard taskmaster, he could be blunt, even ruthless.

In his lifetime, India had become the world’s largest milk producer by 1998, surpassing the United States of America, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010–2011. But Kurien died in 2012, age 90, a disappointed man, saying that he did not like milk and did not consume it.

Three days before his death, renowned IT entrepreneur N.R. Narayana Murthy sought India’s highest civilian award for Kurien. He said: “A civilised society must show gratitude when people can sense it, or it is no gratitude at all. If our country does not stand and salute Verghese Kurien with a Bharat Ratna, I don’t know who else deserves it.”

That honour has eluded Kurien. He did get Ramon Magsaysay Award much earlier in 1963, and many more. The nation (read successive governments) have stopped short at Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest in 1999. Was it because he had lobbied hard, but unsuccessfully, to block the entry of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) in India’s dairying sector? If that is so, perish the thought of his ever getting a much-deserved Nobel.

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Kurien was crucial in replicating the “Anand Model” of cooperatives across India and beyond. In 1979, Alexei Kosygin invited Kurien to the Soviet Union for advice on its cooperatives. In 1982, Pakistan invited him to set up dairy cooperatives, where he led a World Bank mission. Around 1989, China implemented its own Operation Flood-like programme with Kurien’s help and the World Food Programme. Indian premier Narasimha Rao sent him to set up a dairy cooperative in Sri Lanka.

But during Rao’s regime and thereafter, Kurien and his ideas began to be discarded by governments keen on shedding the ‘socialist’ cooperatives approach and inviting foreign funds and participation as part of the economic reforms. Critics called his managing and planning ‘dictatorial’. If these reforms that are now integral to India’s progress, have had a ‘victim’, it was Kurien.

The path was opened, under pressures from governments, by Kurien’s own long-time protégé, Amrita Patel. While Amul and its Indian half-sister Mother Dairy continue to dominate the market of milk and milk products, the MNCs are also having a heyday.

It is no longer fashionable to berate the MNCs in dairying or farm sector, but at the ground level, it does betray seemingly misplaced priorities, when milk is diverted to making ice cream and potatoes to make chips. There is a global sop, however: Amul’s curd and paneer, the Indian cheese, are attracting health-conscious Americans.  High in protein and fat, Paneer is a favorite among those on the keto diet, a market valued at $9.5 billion in 2019. 

The concept of cooperative itself has undergone change. Dominated by politicians guided only by profit motives, the farmer/producer no longer calls the shots. The marketing guy in the Board Room does.

Looking back, Kurien was a product of the Cold War era. Mother Dairy separated from Amul, the brand name the two had nurtured. Both are doing well — so are the MNCs. This underscores the tussle between the urban India and the farming Bharat — and not only in dairying. The unease in their co-existence is palpable.

Some of these and other conflicting interests and contradictions in the larger farm sector are behind the three controversial farm laws. The Modi Government first rammed them through the parliament, but after a year-long agitation, has withdrawn them. This is not out of love for the farmers, 700 of whom died during the agitation, but for winning votes in the forthcoming elections. 

The producers of fruits, vegetables and cereals have failed to unite and form their cooperative retail outlets just as Amul did in the dairy sector. This would be more profitable and economical for both the producers and the consumers. Perhaps, it needs another Kurien.

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Reforms are needed in each of these sectors. But the “human face” with which they were begun, howsoever imperfectly, is missing. There is something brazen about all this, even immoral, if morality is at all a consideration in the way people who toil and produce are, or should be, treated in a society.

The past and the present still coalesce in some ways. To tell his story to the world, Kurien co-wrote a feature film, Manthan (Churning), in 1976. Anand’s co-operators chipped in with ₹2 each. Directed by Shyam Benegal, it won both critical acclaim and money. A classic, the UNDP screened it to start similar cooperatives in Latin America and in Africa.

Amul is the first cooperative sector product, perhaps a global first, to be advertised on modern lines. The success of “utterly, butterly delicious — Amul” line remains the envy of the India Inc and the MNCs.

Amul has spelt both health and humour for half a century now. It has served delicious butter but also taught Indians to be witty and laugh at themselves. The little moppet in a red polka-dot dress and a blue ponytail has delivered on a regular basis a humorous take on everything that bothers Indians, everything that deserves a repartee.

Like a true spokesperson of the masses, she rises to every occasion, be it a cricketing double century, scandals surrounding politicians, to controversial diplomatic policies, with an infallible gut and tongue-in-cheek attitude. In the process, Brand Amul has become synonymous with honesty, purity and subtlety. As its advertiser, Kurien never pre-viewed them.

Come to think of it, Kurien’s was the first real cooperative success in an era with controls — long before humour-less economic reforms and information technology and telecom happened to India.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com