Bangalore Rising

The privilege of being an administrative service officer in the sub-continent are many. While the usual seniority-driven protocol exists for promotions and postings, they all come together when it comes to perks such as overseas jaunts, and membership to elite clubs.  I have a pretty dim view of some of these bureaucrats. I know a number of them in the service, but the administrative and foreign service breed are a tad different from officers who belong to the revenue, or railway services; the latter are what I would term technical specialists, with measurable, outcome-driven jobs. Some in the IAS too have such jobs, but a huge number of them seem to, at least to the public eye, very little accountability, and a lot of authority. And when I see them lounging around in clubs, ostensibly talking governance over a beer, or at the ninth hole during regular working hours, I wonder. I wonder whether our terrible dislike for the political class has been exacerbated by the under-perf...

It is evident to even the blind that the media is not particularly in love with Modi. I wondered what was so different about Modi that the media hated this particular politician over a hundred others like him. So here is my half-baked take on this subject. This theorising is obviously just to get a conversation started. So here goes... Their philosophy: From my little tour of the web (most people call it research), I found that some of the more notable media persons in India today are products of left-leaning educational institutions, were flag-waving, and possibly card-carrying members of NSUI, SFI, and similar student unions that are far left of centre. And many of these journalists became journalists not necessarily out of choice, but were misfits in corporate India, or were unqualified for government jobs. And as journalists, they carried their political philosophies into their jobs. This probably holds good for Hartosh Bal, Purnima Joshi, Harshvardhan Tripathi, Nalini Singh, K...

I recently read an Economist article headlined “India’s prime minister is not as much of a reformer as he seems”. Coming from a reputed international newsmagazine, it was a bit surprising that such an impactful headline, was not followed up with depth or detail to make the point stick. From an economic standpoint, almost every ill - near bankruptcy of large PSU banks, poor tax compliance, massive bureaucracy in state sales tax (to a point that almost every state collected just about enough sales tax to pay the wages of the taxmen - yes, does it not surprise you?) that delivered zero meaningful revenue to the state, are a throwback of the past. Whether it was due to 63 years of Congress rule, 2 years of Janata Party rule, or 5 years of the previous BJP rule is not relevant; this, and every previous government inherited a plethora of problems that were/are extremely tough to untangle. It is a fact that every government of the past, especially the one with Janardhan Poojary as a min...

Sundarbans. 27 th December, 2016 Just as the needle edged past ten p.m. on a still, dark, moonless night, a small fishing boat slid silently out of its berth, with a party of nine aboard – the boatman, the tour guide, and seven wide-eyed city-bred men & women. As the boat swished its way into the deep and murky waters of the Gangetic delta, it kicked off two of the most magical hours I’ve ever spent in my life. A few hours back, eighteen tired bodies had returned to our temporary home in the Sundarbans eco village, after a ten-hour day on a modified fishing trawler, touring the various islands of Sundarbans, wonderously taking in the flora and fauna that the mangroves offered. After resting our tired limbs for a few minutes on bamboo beds in our room, we headed to the dining hut fifty yards away. Mowgli (yes, he is one of the threesome that runs this very interesting tour/village) and Om were on hand, dishing out plates-full of piping-hot pakoras and black tea (milk is a ...

While parts of Indian Kashmir is on the boil again, with national media focused on giving us an unbiased view, I paused to understand how different life was on the other side of the border, in what is euphemistically called “Azad” Jammu & Kashmir – an Azad J&K that some Kashmiris on the Indian side desire to be part of, through what Pakistan terms as a ‘UN plebiscite’. By the way, I learnt that the plebiscite, that has since been superseded by the post-war 1972 Gandhi-Bhutto Simla Accord which requires India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue peacefully and bilaterally, states unequivocally that Pakistan must completely demilitarize its side of the border, which obviously, it cannot, and will not let happen in the foreseeable future. Back anyway to what I gleaned about Azad Kashmir. Azad Kashmir is lead by the President of Azad J&K, who takes oath of office, swearing that his office is lower to the country and to the cause of accession to the State of Pakista...

Mom turned 80 today. And she ran off to Chennai a couple of days back, to avoid any potential hoopla around her birthday.  And I wondered whether I should put this news up in a public forum. But then, there is no other way I could say all the things I want to say to her, without either embarrassing me or her. So here goes... Savithri, as she was known to all, was the epitome of hard work and perseverance. Made to stop studies after her 10th grade back in Madurai, she got married to my dad and moved to Lucknow for a year in 1956, and then to Calcutta, which was my dad's home base even before. Mom was keen to study, and dad encouraged her. She enrolled for private classes for her PUC, and then joined Shivnath Shastri/City College for her BA. Somewhere along the way, dad's business took a nosedive.  Amma would be up by 4.30am, cook breakfast and lunch for us by 6am, and be in college on time. And then she would be on her rounds doing tuitions to school kids till late ...

The drive to Turtuk was a good 70kms from Hunder. The sand dunes at Hunder were nice, but it somehow did not fascinate either Ratan or me. So we took a couple of pictures, skipped the camel rides and headed to TurTuk. The winding drive north east along the Siachen river was nice, very quiet, and calming. Large army facilities are seen almost for 50 Kms. But for fallen rocks on the road, and the company of two soldiers for a short distance, the trip was fairly uneventful. About 55 Kms into the drive, we signed into a military check post on a really narrow wooden cantilevered bridge. This point onwards belonged to Pakistan, which India captured and retained as part of its '71 victory. Siachen merged into Shyok river, and we followed its path up to a point; the river of course benefits by not having to deal with political boundaries and so enters Pakistan about 10 Kms after Turtuk village. Turkut is as different from the rest of Ladakh as it can possibly get. To begin with...