Gathering power of moral snowflakes

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 18)

You can create a Lokpal, but how do you change India?

Anna Hazare's movement has been among the most important developments since Jayaprakash Narayan's stirring leadership in the 1970s marked the second phase of that long historic process known as minting a nation out of a country. Anna's breathtaking contribution is that he has forced us to recognise that there is cancer in the body politic and that it is entering a terminal stage. He has withstood threat, pressure and inducement, including temptations aimed toward both ego and bank balance. He has insisted with courage and conviction that we find a doctor and fund a hospital that will begin to address this national disease. Both are essential, since there can be no forward movement until we identify and institutionalise those who can heal the patient. But diagnosis, however brilliant, is not a cure; it is only the beginning of a process. The next step, if anything, is harder.

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How do you censor a teashop?

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 11)

Spokesmen do not speak for themselves; they are their masters' voices, or they don't remain the voice for very long. Ministers, similarly, do not propose dramatic, or drastic, policy options without implicit clearance from their boss. This is standard practice. Kapil Sibal is not solely responsible for the proposed censorship of social media, currently the most effective communication system on the net.

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The 5-point Political Reform Programme

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 4)

It is time for the father of economic reform to initiate political reform. Priority Number 1: Dr Manmohan Singh should abandon the oath of secrecy which Cabinet ministers take, very solemnly indeed, when being anointed to the highest level of government. Step 2: a ban on mobile phones during Cabinet meetings. Which of the two is more difficult? The first, since it is easier to amend the Constitution of India than change the ideological commitment of politicians to their self-image. Democracy has its demands.

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Charge of the old guard

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (November 27)

If it had been only another item on the continuing agenda of economic reform, the decision to permit foreign direct investment in retail would have been taken at least two years ago. Dr Manmohan Singh's government has been in its favour from the moment it was sworn in seven and a half years ago, but was thwarted by the Left, without whose support it could not have maintained a majority in the Lok Sabha during its first term. That is understandable. No sensible government risks its survival for the benefit of a multinational's bottom line. But 2009's general elections changed the arithmetic of the Lok Sabha dramatically, and with it the algebra of policy manoeuvres. However, the Left's decimation did not alter a basic fact: that opposition to retail FDI cuts across partisan lines. The government has majority support in a compliant Cabinet, but not in the less obedient Lok Sabha. The coalition that governs India is now split, although not broken.

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The Curious Gamble of Rahul Gandhi

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (November 20)

There is one question within the complicated Uttar Pradesh conundrum that has left me completely bewildered. Why on earth has Rahul Gandhi made the results of its Assembly polls next year such a prestige issue – his own prestige, not his party's? Why has he staked his personal reputation on UP, and then multiplied the stakes, when he has no real reason to gamble his own future on the vagaries of Awadh?

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