Liar liar…..Modi kicks off his UP campaign….

Narendra Modi’s entry into UP was marked by what he is most famous for – lies, more lies and even more lies! Speaking in Kanpur yesterday, he uttered a few more. I have chosen three here, but there are many many more strewn all around his speech!

Poverty:

Today’s TOI reports what Modi said: “The Congress was at the helm for 60 years but the lot of the poor had not improved in the country” and taking a jab at Rahul Gandhi, “Those born with a golden spoon in their mouths don’t know what poverty is. I have lived poverty and felt it. I know what being poor is and that’s why when they mock the poor it hurts. It rubs salt on the wounds”.

So I decided to check the poverty figures for Gujarat and contrast that with the rest of the country. As per the latest Planning Commission figures (http://planningcommission.nic.in/news/pre_pov2307.pdf), the poverty level now stands at 21.9% of the population at an All India level. The corresponding figure for Gujarat is 16.6%, hardly the kind of number one would expect if one went by Modi’s bluster. The states where the BJP has ruled almost continuously for the last decade or so are amongst the most poor: Chhatisgarh 40%, Bihar 33% and MP 32%. Clearly, poverty levels despite long periods of BJP rule are higher in some states. What impact has his or his alliance partners’ governments had on poverty? Amongst the least poor states are Kerala (7% - Congress/Left), HP (8% - Congress/BJP), Punjab (8% - Congress/BJP-SAD), Andhra (9% - Congress) and Delhi (10% - Congress). Clearly, Congress has done better than the BJP in reducing poverty.

Lets look at declines in poverty levels, since that’s a better measure of a government’s performance. Unfortunately, Gujarat ranks 15^th in this list, with a decline of 27.7% between 2009-10 and 2011-12 (latest figures) compared to the All India level which is just slightly lower at 26.44% (http://tinyurl.com/lln3ah5). Is it because of this marginally better performance that Modi taunts the Congress? The highest declines have been in Andhra (56% - Congress), Punjab (48% - BJP-SAD), Haryana (44% - Congress) and Kerala (41% - Congress), again a list dominated by the Congress. Modi must eat crow now! Maybe that will reduce his personal poverty-of-truth!

Lets look at the annual rates of decline of poverty at an All-India level. Between 1993-94 and 2004-5, a period during which the NDA ruled for 6 years, the average annual decline was 0.7%. Between 2004-5 and 2010-11, when the UPA rules, the same figure is 2.2%. You decide!

Jobs:

The TOI reports “BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Saturday launched his crucial UP campaign with a promise to boost growth and employment”. Now I am not going to talk about Modi’s growth statistics because countless reports have shown that these are mostly fudged (earning him the #feku tag). Let me talk about Modi’s jobs growth claim.

Well, the BJP likes to taunt the Congress for the jobless growth recorded during UPA-1 (highest GDP growth, but low jobs growth). This is sadly true and different economists/journalists have given different explanations for this (rural female employment has dropped with higher prosperity, more females enrolled in educational programs till later etc etc). It’s a matter of concern no doubt. Going by Modi’s pompous statement, one would expect that the messiah would have prevented the same in his state and would have added millions of jobs. The truth: Growth in Gujarat has been jobless as well!

Journalist and Blogger Rajiv Shah writes this in his blog titled “Gujarat’s experiment with jobless growth” (http://tinyurl.com/k2hykw8): “Basing on National Sample Survey figures, the authors – Ruchika Rani and Kalaiyarasan A – say that the growth rate of employment in Gujarat during 1993-94 to 2004-05 was 2.43 per cent. However, this came down to nearly zero in the latter half of the decade (2004-05 to 2009-10). Further, they say, employment in key sectors, agriculture and manufacturing, witnessed negative growth rates at – 1.59 per cent and – 2.23 per cent per annum, respectively”. What??? Modi’s much touted industrial growth – the core of his development model – hasn’t yielded any jobs???!

Adding salt to the wound is this “Hemantkumar Shah, an academician considered close to the Sangh ideology, says Gujarat is a classic example of jobless growth. The annual rate of growth of employment in Gujarat was 2.4% during 1999-00 - 2004-05 (2.89% in India), and it fell to 1.3% during 2004-05 to 2009-10 (1.48% in India)” (http://tinyurl.com/mztojg4). Hmmm…..so Gujarat trails the All-India performance!

Crime:

The Indian Express reports “Modi said that the situation of law and order in UP could be understood by the fact that more than 5000 have taken place in the state over the past one year”. Now unfortunately, this is true and UP does see the maximum number of murders in the country. Part of the problem is its huge population (20 crores). A better measure of the murder rate is the number of murders/lac of population. Even here, UP hangs its head in shame with a rate of 2.5 per lac. And Modi is right – Gujarat’s record is better at 1.9 per lac.

Now the way Modi uses numbers, it looks like the BJP is responsible for the lower murder rate in Gujarat and SP/BSP/Congress for the higher rate in UP. But if this were true, how does he explain the high rates in Bihar (3.1), Chhatisgarh (4.3), MP (3.5) and Punjab (3), all ruled by the BJP for the last decade or more? And if Modi were to share the dias with Jayalalitha, would he make the same point on murders in TN – which has a rate higher than UP’s (2.6)????!

When Modi is not blatantly lying, he is revealing only half the truth. Modi perhaps agrees with PCI Chairman, Justice Markandey Katju who once famously said “Ninety per cent of people in India are fools.” (http://tinyurl.com/kdo428t). Maybe he’s right. Most poor people – ferried by thousands of buses to create the impression of huge crowds at his rallies – may not realize these lies. But what about our media? Why does our media not call Modi’s bluff?

The real truth is that Modi resembles the character that Hollywood actor Jim Carrey plays in the movie “Liar Liar”. Everytime this character opens his mouth, a few lies fall out! Like Jim Carrey, Modi can be a good comedian, but to take his speeches seriously would be to behave like fools. One has to give credit to him for one thing though. He is consistent, even in his lies!

How does “overturning a decision” amount to corruption?

After three days of the FIR getting filed against ex Coal Secretary PC Parakh, noted industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and his company Hindalco, I still cannot understand what the grounds for this FIR are. It appears that the fact that Parakh overturned the screening committee decision on allotment of a mine to Hindalco is the basis of this FIR. This is bizarre for several reasons.

Firstly, if the Coal Secretary is legally authorized to overturn the decision of the screening committee, then why is that provision there at all, if not to be exercised at times? If the screening committee was the final authority, then no matter what Parakh or the PM wanted to do, they could not have overturned it. The reality is that the final authority is the Coal Secretary and the Coal Minister, who are deemed to be more competent than the screening committee. In that case, one may wonder, why have the screening committee at all? The answer of course, is that such overturning decisions are rare, and made usually when the authority feels the screening committee has erred, as in this case.

Secondly, if the Coal Secretary did not overturn a decision even when he was convinced it was a wrong decision, then what kind of an authority is he? He would be better called a clerk. If we had to have a government of clerks, then why even have such a celebrated cadre as the IAS in place?

Thirdly, to establish any criminal case of corruption, there must be someone charged with giving money and someone with receiving. Who are those people here? Is the CBI saying that Birla and Hindalco paid a bribe? And Parakh and the PM received it? Then surely the CBI can show us some money trail? If the money trail isn’t there, then what kind of a charge is this? Then the “Why was the decision overturned?” question would become merely a case of administrative decision making, and not corruption. Sure, the authorities would have to reply to the public about why the decision was overturned, but the CBI would have no case at all.

So why did Parakh overturn the screening committee decision? I think the mid 2000s was a period of when the government was hell bent on achieving a high growth in investments. The government was pushing all segments of the industry to invest, build capacity and increase production. This would lead to job creation, alleviation of poverty, distribution of wealth, social equity etc. It is such policies that led to the fastest growth India has seen since independence. It is such policies that brought alive the India story in the first place. Had India continued to grow at the BJP growth rate of the previous six years, it would never have attracted the kind of foreign investments it did since 2004. Likewise, the reason the number of coal mines allotted was so much higher than during the UPA period was the same – there was much more investment-spurred demand for coal.

The answer to Parakh’s action is very clear. But before I come to that, it’s worth mentioning that it was probably the same reason that made Naveen Patnaik recommend that Hindalco be given a share of the mine, after the screening committee had turned it down. It’s the same reason that made the PM ratify Parakh’s decision. None of these people needs to worry; nor run away from what was clearly a legitimate decision.

The reason for the overturning was the huge capital investment that Hindalco had planned in the steel sector. As per ET dated yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/42bjvkk ) “A coal ministry official said Hindalco has invested as much as Rs 17,000 crore in the attached 900-mw captive power plant, a 1.5 million tonnes aluminium refinery and a 3.5 lakh tonne smelter in Odisha”. What’s wrong if a mine was provided under extant policies to Hindalco to facilitate this investment? Maybe the question one should ask is why the screening committee took the wrong decision. Why did it favor the government’s own companies, when there is no such provision under any law. PC Parakh himself said this in The Mint dated October 16^th (http://tinyurl.com/n5cgk6z ) “We decided in favour of Neyveli Lignite because it was a government company; it was also my own ministry’s company, so we have considered Neyveli (over) Hindalco”. That’s hardly a fair reason to allot a mine to Neyveli.

Also, the overturning was not as if Neyveli was thrown out. All that it amounted to was allotting Hindalco a 15% share in the mine. If corruption was the reason for the decision, what stopped Parakh and the PM from allotting 100% to Hindalco? Or 75% or 50%? Why only 15%? The answer is obvious: the 15% was sufficient to take care of the requirements of the attached power/aluminium plant. It was a specific allocation for a specific project.

So we have no money trail. No grounds not to believe the overturning decision. And yet, what does the CBI do? It files an FIR alleging corruption. How do they even do this? Of course the SC will have to be convinced. And of course, the SC will ask the same questions. Chances are that if this is all that the CBI has got, then the case will be thrown out. But even though so many cases get thrown out, it takes so long that the reputation of the accused gets sullied for good. Would the CBI have anything to say then? Our media will certainly not given any weightage to the acquittal. It would help if the SC expedited its own working, and brought a closure to such silly cases quickly.

The real truth is what I have written twice in the last three days. The CBI has shot itself in the foot and in fact, justified why it should remain caged. The institutions – CBI, CAG, SC – have all failed us at different points in time. If this continues, we should be prepared to see an exodus of our biggest businessmen (ever wondered how difficult it is for Ambani/Tata/Mittal/Birla to shift base to a Singapore or HK or London or NY?). And for India to return to the Hindu rate of growth of 3% per annum…..

Institutions wreak havoc on business, government….

Since the 2G “scam” broke out, we have been fed ever larger corruption numbers. Apparently 2G was as big as Rs 1.76 lac crores; Coal even higher at Rs 1.86 lac crores (if the CAG had had its way, it would have called it a Rs 10 lac crore scam). Unfortunately for India, its institutions (CAG, SC, CBI) have all failed to behave responsibly, preferring to toss up ludicrous corruption numbers. Another important institution – the media – has also behaved irresponsibly, blindly amplifying such bizarre projections. And finally, our Parliament hardly ever functions, held to ransom by every major and minor party. Such irresponsibility on part of all our democratic institutions has led to the growth rate plummeting and the overall sentiment skydiving.

Look at 2G. Does anyone even know what the basic CAG charge was? It was that the government chose to give away spectrum cheap (at 2008 prices), instead of conduct auctions. The emphasis unfortunately was on the price. Not on the “process” – First Come First Served – followed which was undoubtedly rigged as investigations have now shown. The government was well within its rights to give spectrum cheap, in the interest of increasing teledensity. If it chose to forego Rs 1.76 lac crores for the good of the people, as it does even today with fuel subsidy, no one can fault it. The scam was in the way Raja manipulated the FCFS system – changing timelines, giving very little time to applicants to produce large-value Demand Drafts, etc. Investigations have shown that corruption of the order of Rs 200 crores may have taken place (the DB Realty – Kalaigner TV loan issue). Everything else was a chosen government policy, from which only the public gained. The Rs 1.76 lac crores (assuming it was true, though subsequent auctions have shown it was all baloney) was distributed amongst the people, not pocketed by telcos or even ministers and politicians.

Look at Coal. Again, the policy of “administered auctions” using the “screening committee” to decide, has been in force since 1993. No government touched this process. More mines were allocated since 2004 because the UPA was pushing for growth. More power plants, cement units, steel plants were coming up and the demand for coal was soaring. The government thought of auctioning coal mines, but the process took many years, thanks to parliamentary logjam and the general slow speed of governmental functioning. The interim period – when the government “thought” but did not “act” – is the period of corruption according to the CAG. Again, it confuses “loss to exchequer” for corruption (or maybe the BJP spun this to its “mota maal” accusation). Yes, the government lost revenues, but in return, it extracted cheap end-consumer-pricing in power (directly through bidding), steel and cement (by lowering input costs). This helped industry grow faster. Again, in Coalgate, there has undoubtedly been corruption at the local mine level (nothing proven yet), but mostly, it is administrative decisions (of the multi-party screening committee) that are being shown as cases of corruption. But where has the Rs 1.86 lac crores gone???? The answer: to the people in the form of lower prices. If it had gone into the pockets of the Congress, it would have won the next ten general elections without an effort! In reality, the party is in serious trouble because of these scams.

In both 2G and Coal, its not as if the private sector made “windfall” gains as is being claimed. The number 2 mobile operator Vodafone turned in its first profit after nearly 15 years of being in the country. Reliance Comm continues to report unimpressive margins and even other players – including the leader Bharti – are in a financial mess. Ditto in Coal. Jindal Steel, one of the companies in the eye of the storm, had a 10.7% PAT margin in FY13 (nothing unusual). India’s largest steel company, Tata Steel, largely unaffected by the scam, reported an even higher 13.5% PAT margin. If the scam had benefited Jindal, shouldn’t it PAT margin have been higher? All this talk of the private sector getting super profits is so much gibberish, it surprises me why our media doesn’t bring it out clearly.

The SC is equally to blame, stepping into policy making several times. And imposing punishment far too much in excess of the crime. For eg., canceling all 122 licenses allotted by Raja, when only a few were involved in allegations of corruption. Or canceling all mining in Goa and much of it in other parts, without setting any timelines for taking the final decision. The SC revels in the public adulation it gets when it is seen as taking “bold” decisions.

Unfortunately, it is this “public adulation” that has become the mojo of all constitutional bodies (CAG, SC). While bureaucrats in the government are painted as being corrupt, their equivalents in the CAG and SC show themselves as angels. In the public eye, ex Coal Secretary Parakh is corrupt, while Vinod Rai is a hero. Ashwini Kumar is corrupt, but Ranjit Sinha is a hero (isn’t it ironical that the BJP vociferously opposed his nomination as CBI chief?!). In a way, this public adulation of a few, started off first by Anna via his fasts, and fuelled by a media, searching for something, anything, to keep its business growing, is what is responsible for the present mess in politics, business and administration.

Its hardly fair to blame one political party – the Congress – for this. The BJP equally failed in so many states (where it lost the most recent elections). The BJP may be more  competent with communication skills than the Congress, but it cannot hide its own equal involvement in corruption. It is also responsible for the parliamentary logjam that we have seen over the last few years. The BJP has to remember that if it comes to power – and that remains a big if – then it will have to face the same political/regulatory/administrative environment. Its in its own interest to work with other parties in bringing balance back, in stopping from calling every administrative and political decision corrupt, and in calling any one party the “most corrupt in history”.

The real truth is that our constitutional bodies – CAG, SC – and important institutions – like the CBI – have hurt the country. This is no “clean-up”. This is just “self preservation” or rather “saving one’s as$”. This is a form of “Indian spring”, something that may hurt the present government most immediately, but which may leave a far longer spell of instability (like in Egypt) than we are imagining…..

Best CBI remains a “caged parrot”….

By naming one of India’s most reputed businessmen in a coal-related FIR, the CBI has shown that it is not capable of operating independently. It has made most people wonder if the so called “premier” investigation agency should be called that at all. It is also a warning to those who demand that the Lokpal (if and when it comes around) also be made “independent” and freed from any controls.

At a fundamental level, what’s happening in India is that the “way” of doing business is changing. For most of our post-independence history, being able to lobby was the centerpiece of a business strategy. The ones who could do it better, became bigger faster. Today, as bodies like the CBI and CAG investigate cases of lobbying, they make them look like cases of corruption. In the Kumar Mangalam Birla case, it is entirely possible that he lobbied. But does that make him corrupt?

Like lobbying is to businessmen, discretion in decisions is to bureaucrats and politicians. One can never take away discretion from decision making. If there was no discretion required, all decisions could be taken by computers. In the corporate world, a CEO who doesn’t exercise due discretion is accused of being “clerical”. But discretion needn’t mean corruption. Discretion must be matched with a system of checks and balances. In the screening committee system of allocating coal blocks, such checks and balances existed, with representatives of numerous ministries, the concerned state government, etc all part of that. To assume that all checks and balances failed, and everyone involved was corrupt is bizarre.

But before the CBI, it was the CAG that really wreaked havoc, creating an environment where crazy concepts like “presumptive” losses were found acceptable. In the 2G “scam”, it concocted a mind-numbing figure of Rs 1.76 lac crores, calling it to a loss to the exchequer. In reality, it was a policy decision taken by the government (discretionary) that it should bear this so called loss, so that end consumer prices in 2G could remain low. That policy led to an expansion in the subscriber base from some 250 million odd in 2004 to some 950 million odd today. For the CAG, there was no difference between the policy and the loss. For the BJP, it was a good opportunity to call the loss corruption.

The CAG did the same thing with coal. It conjured up a loss figure of Rs 1.86 lac crores when most people have faulted even the basic assumptions made. But more importantly, what was the core of the CAG’s assertion of loss? That the government took too long to switch to auctions after it decided to do so? But it’s a known fact that it takes years in our country for a decision to get implemented. For instance, we have decided to increase FDI in insurance many years back, but it has still not been implemented. Should this time delay be taken as corruption? Or should it just mean “Parliamentary inefficiency”?

If we cannot differentiate between policy and loss-to-exchequer/gain-to-public, what prevents the CAG from calling the fuel subsidy policy (which would add up to more than Rs 10 lac crores over the last decade) a massive loss to the exchequer, and hence, by extrapolation, corruption?

Because of the irresponsible conduct of the CAG and CBI and their inability to differentiate between discretion, lobbying and corruption, all of the government is starting to stall. No one in the government wants to take any decisions today, because an arbitrary CAG or CBI may get after them years after they retire. By definition, a decision involves choosing one path over another (a discretion). Even if done with the best public interest in mind, what is to stop the CAG or CBI from later calling it an act of corruption?

Kumar Mangalam Birla may well have lobbied for the coal block. There is nothing wrong with that. The government may well have conceded 15% of a block reserved for PSUs to his company. There is nothing wrong in that. These are not grounds to file an FIR. To file an FIR, the CBI must show that the lobbying or the use of discretion was motivated by corruption. There must be a money trail established. In this case, neither Birla, nor the government (PM, Secretary Parakh) appear to have broken any norms. There is no money trail.

One last word. As we changeover from an opaque system to a more transparent one, its important that we don’t dub everything of the past as corrupt. Making improvements is what makes us progress, but that does not make our earlier method stupid. If we don’t recognize this, we will end up incentivizing the continuation of the “status quo”. We will never be able to change for the better.

The real truth is that this FIR against Birla looks like the CBI trying to impress the SC. If that’s true, its best the CBI remains a caged parrot. This is no way for an investigative agency to operate. Its sad the way important organs of a democracy – the CBI, CAG, SC – are functioning these days. We need these bodies to be responsible, to be able to differentiate between discretion and corruption. We need right thinking people to man these organizations. If we falter on that, we will encourage a system where everyone is suspect, and no one takes decisions. If that happens, we will soon revert back to the 3% “Hindu rate of growth”…..

MP tragedy exposes BJP’s double standards….

I was shocked to watch the TV channels last night and see BJP spokespeople trying to deflect the blame for the temple tragedy in MP onto the “district administration”, as if that was a body alien to the government. There was no acceptance of the government’s failure, no remorse for the tragedy, no concern for the stories of police conduct emanating from the tragedy site and certainly no explanation for why the incident had recurred yet again under the same CM’s watch.

No one was blaming the CM for having personally killed the people. The question one was raising was about basic governance. Why were so few cops provided when so many lacs were expected to be in attendance? Is it true that the cops were busy taking bribes and allowing tractors onto the bridge where they were not permitted? Is it also true that no senior administration official was available to take care of the arrangements before the tragedy; and more shockingly, after the tragedy as well? And lastly, is it true that the cops – reportedly under pressure from the “administration” to report a lower body count – were pushing dead bodies, young children and the injured into the river, unmindful of the fate that awaited them? These are disgusting stories, and yet there was no acknowledgment or denial by the state government. All that Shivraj Singh Chauhan said was “The focus should be on attending to the injured”. By throwing them into the river???

The whole effort of Nirmala Sitaraman was to make it a problem of the district administration. “Shield the CM” was her only mission. She had for support the BJP-leaning (or should we say Congress-hating) ex-cop Kiran Bedi, who called managing crowds of this sort “routine police duty”, something “they are trained for”. If both these ladies had the authority, they would have sacked the whole administration there and then. But none had an explanation for the inaction of the state government since 2006, when 50 people had died at the same place.

Then, there was an attempt to show that similar tragedies had taken place in Congress ruled states. Of course they had. And the BJP had not lost a second in blaming the Congress CM in those states. Even in Uttarkhand, the party blamed the “government”, not the administration, and demanded the CM’s resignation (http://tinyurl.com/klafry6). Why was it then not open to the same criticism of its own government and CM? How is it that the party loves to attack the Congress on some issue of morality or governance; but hates accepting the application of the same principle to itself when the tables turn?

The PM nominee of the party – the messiah as projected – likewise refused to take responsibility or demonstrate superior governance when floods recently ravaged parts of Gujarat. The administration was found to be sleeping. The CM was busy trying to become the PM, giving speeches on his governance style, unmindful of the truth in his home state (not without reason is he called #feku!). Maybe Modi knew of this vulnerability of his; that’s why he chose not to seize the opportunity and finish Shivraj Singh Chauhan once and for all (Modi spares no one who challenges him). Maybe that’s why the heavy tweeter chose not to tweet about the governance failure in MP, preferring ironically, to give one more speech on “Effective governance in democracy: Gujarat experience”. All he tweeted was “Saddened by unfortunate stampede at Ratangarh temple. Spoke to Shivraj ji and expressed my condolences. Prayers with victims and families”. Saddened? But what else? Why did he not cancel his speech? Why did he not fly himself and his efficient bureaucrats to the state, like he had done to Uttarakhand, to rescue “thousands” stuck there? Was Uttarakhand just political grandstanding?

Party President, Rajnath Singh was no better. In fact, he had nothing to say at all, preferring instead to tour Muzaffarnagar and demand a CBI inquiry for the riots there. What about a CBI inquiry in MP? Double standards!

And what about the CM himself? He never responded to Digvijay Singh’s accusation “Postings of Collectors and Superintendent of Police (SP) in districts have been done on the basis of money they collect. It is a common practice during BJP rule and those getting appointed in such a manner hardly care for an action in the event of a lapse on their part”. Why? If he had a clear conscience, shouldn’t he have challenged that? All he said was that such incidents shouldn’t recur in the future. But wouldn’t he have said the same thing in 2006? And when he says the “guilty will be punished”, what authority did he have left knowing full well that his own government was accused of corruption over the postings of police officials.

There is nothing particularly unique about the MP tragedy. India has seen many such under all parties. But it’s because the BJP keeps taunting the Congress on governance failures, projecting itself as being much better in contrast, that people are now asking it tough questions. If it said Bahuguna was responsible for the Uttarakhand tragedy (when in fact, it was the BJP that had ruled the state for five years just before the tragedy) and demanded his resignation, then why did it not say Shivraj Singh Chauhan was responsible, and sack him? Can the “party with a difference” (I don’t hear them claiming that too much these days!), please be different and blame even its own leaders?

The real truth is that time and again, the BJP’s double standards get exposed. On corruption, when it blew the CAG’s bizarre “notional” loss theory into “the biggest corruption scam ever”, it got exposed when Karnataka blew in its face. Now on governance as well, it has got exposed. This is what happens to parties that build their strategies only on criticizing others. One day, the shoe does get onto the other foot!

Phailin fails…..Center/state demonstrate top quality governance

If ever there could be an example of great center/state co-operation in serving the people, it was on display in the states of Odisha and AP over the last few days. The dreaded storm Phailin – the strongest ever seen in the Indian Ocean – ended up being an image booster of sorts for India, proving that when we want to, we can work wonders. On the other hand, the man-made tragedy around the temple in MP shows the reverse – poor governance, leading to unnecessary human tragedy.

Many many people deserve to be recognized for their efforts:

First, the IMD – the much maligned, “never-can-get-it-right” meteorological department – which got it perfectly right this time. It was right about the time of the landfall (well, nearly), and more importantly about the speed of the winds (200-220 kmph, not 300+ that Western “experts” were warning). The early warning made all the difference. It helped evacuate 9 lacs people in AP alone, and maybe an additional 1 lac in AP. The IMD had been panned for not predicting the flash floods in Uttarakhand, but one has to remember that predicting floods is more difficult than predicting storms.

Second, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) created under the 2005 Disaster Management Act, and working under the Ministry of Home’s National Disaster Management Authority, made all the difference. These are a bunch of experts trained in handling natural and man made disasters. The TOI reported on Saturday 12^th October that “Over 50 teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), comprising nearly 2,000 personnel, have been pre-positioned in vulnerable areas of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal ahead of Phailin's landfall on Saturday evening. The teams are equipped with satellite phones and wireless sets to maintain smooth communication, given the likely disruption in normal communication lines due to the cyclone”. If this doesn’t make us proud, what will? The paper also reported that “The national executive committee, the National Disaster Management Authority's executive body headed by the Union home secretary and comprising secretaries of various ministries and defence brass, was on Saturday closeted in a meeting, reviewing the mitigation measures and taking stock of the approaching cyclonic storm as it hits the coast”. And also “NDRF control room in Delhi is closely monitoring the situation round the clock and keeping close coordination with state administrations”. Who says our bureaucrats cannot deliver?

Third, our armed forces, who like always stayed on the ready. Website Newstrackindia.com reports “The Army has deployed an engineering task force, six composite relief units, four columns in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The Air Force, on its part, has put in place frontline C-17 Globemasters, C-130 J Super Hercules and IL-76 transport planes to Odisha to carry out relief operations. Two Indian Naval ships, including the Landing Platform Dock INS Jalashwa are standing by.

INS Jalashwa, the second largest combatant of the Indian Navy, is ideally equipped to undertake Humanitarian Aid Distress Relief (HADR), evacuation, logistic support and hospital ship operations.

Both the ships are poised with additional divers, doctors, inflatable rubber boats, integral helicopters and relief material that include food, tentage, clothes, medicines, blankets etc, in quantities sufficient to sustain over 5000 personnel for three days. Six helicopters are standing by at the Naval Air Station INS Dega to undertake reconnaissance, rescue, casualty evacuation and air drop of relief material to the stranded”.

Fourth, the states of Odisha and AP, largely the former. Outstanding preparation by the CM and his administration. Most importantly, Naveen Patnaik kept his head down, focused on the work, and stayed away from the media.

Fifth, the learnings from the past. What warms the cockles of my heart is the data that more than half the evacuated people were placed in shelters built after the 1999 tragedy. How many such stories does one get to hear in India? In MP on the other hand, 110 people died at exactly the same place where 50 had died in 2006. Truly, shorn of the marketing, MP continues to languish as an exemplar of poor governance. Why did the CM not keep special emergency rescue units ready when he knew lacs were going to attend the religious celebration? Why were there only 10 odd police personnel at the place? How does it help to order a judicial inquiry now? This is governance at its worst….

And lastly, the close co-ordination between the central and state governments. Both attacked this like they were on a mission. There was no politics, no rush for claiming high ground, no inflated egos, no imagined turf battles….nothing. Politicians and bureaucrats at the highest levels worked together in serving the people. Whether it was Naveen Patnaik or the PM/Sonia, our leaders presented a united face.

The real truth is that we Indians have the capability to achieve a lot, if only we decide to work together. In most such cases, our semi-federal structure would have become a bother in delivering speedy relief. But in Odisha/AP, we saw what co-operation between the Center and states can achieve. If only this co-operation could be seen in more states, we wouldn’t see crores of central allocations going unused even as people continued to suffer….. 

Prime time devoted to Sachin…..our news channels lose direction again

At the best of times, our news channels make a mockery of the news business. They take political sides. They pack their panels with more members from the opposition. They misreport facts in the pursuit of speed. And they ape each other, even having identical programs. One prime example of this was yesterday after Sachin announced his retirement from cricket.

Now let me clarify. I love Sachin myself. Sachin has been one of India’s finest cricketers, and his departure is going to leave a huge emotional hole in the hearts of most of us. More than his strokes, it is his gentlemanliness that has etched a mark inside all of us. Hopefully we will continue seeing more of him, either as a commentator or something more worthy. So my grouse is hardly with Sachin. My grouse is with our news channels.

In any case, our news channels are accused of being more like entertainment channels. For them, news is fiction. They trivialize news to the point where anybody serious about news is forced to go elsewhere, mostly to newspapers the next morning, unmindful of the overnight wait that has to be endured. This is proven by the plummeting GRP ratings of TV channels. English news channels have suffered a more-than-75% erosion in viewership in the last 2 years, down from already pathetic levels. And yet the editors of these channels learn no lessons. They continue with their charade. They refuse to analyze their own performance, even as they are ever-ready to analyze the government’s performance. They can be as critical as a hawk with the latter, but they are as soft as a dove when it comes to themselves!

News channels love to spread negativity. They are quick to run up hour-long debates when the price of petrol goes up by Rs 3. But when prices come down by the same amount, they don’t spend even a minute on the subject. When an Indian soldier is killed on the borders, they put up a panel of fiery back-room boys who’ve probably never seen any action, and retired generals desperately seeking some publicity, to lambast everyone in authority. Yet, when our army repels an attack, they don’t have anything to say. We accuse Pakistan of interfering in Kashmir (and they surely are), but we never ever debate whether Pakistan’s claims of India interfering in Balochistan are true or not. For that, we have to turn to the newspapers or web publishers. When the 2G “scam” broke, our news channels became “parrots” (caged by the opposition maybe!) repeating the opposition’s charges of corruption of Rs 1.76 lac crores (the CAG disgraced his office, but he never used the corruption word himself!). Yet when years later, its become amply evident that that number was a bogus number, no one in the TV news business has the guts to put up shows saying the government has been unjustly accused; that the scale of the taint is much smaller (perhaps “only” Rs 200 crores – the amount DB Realty allegedly paid to DMK though it’s not been proven yet). For TV news anchors, negative news is the life-blood of their business. When Anna fasted in Delhi, they provided minute-by-minute coverage, as if some Indian spring was in play. Yet none of them analyzed how damaging the provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill were. This is the quality of our news TV journalism.

That’s why its hardly surprising that they lost direction again yesterday. A whole hour (and more) was devoted to Sachin. Why? If people wanted to know so much about Sachin, they could have got it online (English viewers all have access to the internet) or waited for today’s papers to come. Newspapers have also given prominent coverage on their front pages, but that’s the beauty about newspapers. They can do a lot more than TV channels can. Besides, readers have an option. They can skip the articles and move on to something else. On TV, they cant. So they just move onto something else. At this rate, English news channels will be dead in no time.

And what’s with this peculiar habit of aping each other? Why do all anchors feel like doing the same story all the time? If they weren’t so focused on each other, surely its probabilistically impossible that they would do the exact same thing again and again? All channels run their sports shows, or car shows, or food shows, or music shows, or entertainment shows at exactly the same times! There is a reason for this. I have seen this personally – news channels beam their competitor channels right inside their studios, tracking each other on a second-by-second basis. If one channel “breaks” a story, another one copies it and also claims it to be a breaking story! There is probably another reason. All present anchors have originated from the same school of news journalism – Prannoy Roy’s NDTV. Maybe, they have all been brainwashed into thinking absolutely alike!

News channels should have talked about the ongoing Telengana struggle, and Jagan’s abrupt departure from his fast. And on the anti-Congress, anti-BJP third front that is soon to hold a rally. Or the “government of youth” statement of Rahul Gandhi. Or the President shortening his visit to Bihar to avoid a clash with Modi. And a small dose of business is always welcome. Maybe they could have brought up Walmart’s decision to sever ties with Bharti. And the moves the RBI is making to steady the rupee. But they chose to talk about Sachin. Even ignoring the fact that cricket lovers were actually glued to Star Sports for the edge-of-the-seat excitement that was unfolding in the T-20 game with Australia. Pathetic.

The real truth is that much as I love Sachin, I hated the coverage devoted to him on TV last night. It made me angry. News is supposed to be about politics, and issues of national concern, and spreading the truth, and so on. Maybe these are just lofty ideals that none of our anchors subscribe to. Maybe they yearn to be in the entertainment business. Maybe they actually like the tag they are often given: “Horror Entertainment Channels”! It’s a shame really….