My dad was a very special man. Most people think that about their parents, so I’m not saying anything special here. However, it’s the things that made my dad an individual that differentiate him from everyone else.

I love my dad, and I will always love my dad, and I got to tell him that before his final breath; what better way for my dad to let us know how much he loved us.

The most damaging weakness of India’s political class is its lack of credibility. Regardless of the truth, people at large are convinced that the entire political class is corrupt. The government covers up corruption cases. The opposition dares not pursue them even when those in the government are involved. The Scorpene deal, the Koda mining scam, the Raja Spectrum scam, the IPL scam – the list of unresolved cases that do, or will, gather dust seems endless. The highest leadership in both the government and the opposition lacks public credibility. This is because of the curious inertia displayed by these leaders even after circumstances cloud their reputations. The biggest scam currently on the radar is of course the Hassan Ali KhanAli Khan Hawala scam.

Readers will recall this scribe had earlier drawn attention to the Hassan Ali scam and the government’s brazen cover up to bury the truth. Hassan Al is the owner of a Pune stud farm. He has 10 known illegal Swiss bank accounts, probably more in other tax havens. His money stashed abroad is astronomical. According to the government’s statement he owed Rs 50,345 crore to the tax department as on 31 March 2009. According to accountants that sum would have escalated to approximately Rs 100,000 crore by when Budget 2010 was presented. On October 20, 2009 this scribe pointed out how according to Swiss authorities while the Indian government publicly sought help in probing Hassan Ali’s Swiss account, privately it sabotaged the probe by submitting “forged” documents asked for by Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice. Swiss authorities wanted to help, but Indian authorities withheld proper documentation. Since April 2007 the Indian government has kept mum on the Swiss request for proper documents.

On March 18 2010 this scribe drew attention to Finance Minister Pranab MukherjeePranab Mukherjee’s statement to the media that the government had recovered the tax dues from Hassan Ali. But the revised estimates for 2009-10 did not accommodate the Rs 100,000 crore due from Hassan Ali in the Budget figures. Further, the existing Income Tax Act was amended to waive impediments for tax defaulters like Hassan Ali to approach the Settlement Commission for resolving tax disputes. If Hassan Ali Khan approaches the Commission it would enable the government to evade sharing information about Hassan Ali’s undisclosed foreign assets with foreign governments as required by the international tax treaties entered into by the government.

Clearly, Finance Minister Mukherjee is covering up the Hassan Ali probe. Why? The answer may have been given in the Maharashtra Assembly. On April 13th a CD showing Hassan Ali was laid on the table of the House by BJP MLA Devendra Phadnavis. The CD contained Ali’s statement to police in which he mentioned names of former Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil and Congress President Sonia GandhiSonia Gandhi’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel. In the CD Ali claimed a meeting involving RR Patil and Ahmed Patel at Juhu Centaur Hotel on 11 August 2008 to approve Hasan Gafoor’s name as Mumbai’s police commissioner. Home Minister Patil vehemently denied any association with Ali. “I have never met Ahmed Patel and never spoken to him face to face. The CID will probe if the motive of the CD was to harm Gafoor, me, Ahmed Patel or anybody else”, Patil told the assembly.

The government ordered an inquiry conducted by Additional Director General, Crime Investigative Department (CID) and SP, S. Yadav. The CD was prepared by the use of spy cam by Deputy Police Commissioner AshokAshok Deshbhratar. Predictably, the politicians named have not been questioned. Their denials have been accepted at face value. Instead the CID charged IPS officer Ashok Deshbhratar who produced the CD with trying to extort money from Hasan AliHasan Ali! In its 15 page report the CID stated that Hasan Ali’s confession has been selectively edited. The CID had sent the CD to the forensic lab at Chandigarh. Its report said the audio-visual pieces of interrogation were not inter-linked, but joined together in sequence to appear as if they are part of continuous interrogation. Inter-linked or not, the forensic report does not deny that it was Hassan Ali himself speaking the “disjointed” narrative. CID investigations confirmed that one meeting did take place involving Vilasrao Deshmukh and Ahmed Patel at Juhu Centaur on March 15, 2008. But CID comforted itself with the fact it could not have discussed Gafoor’s appointment because by then Gafoor had already been appointed Mumbai Commissioner of Police. Never mind the Police Commissioner’s appointment, how is Hassan Ali’s proximity to Congress politicians including the political secretary of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, to be explained?

Circumstantial evidence reveals therefore that Hassan Ali, the nation’s biggest money launderer, is protected by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. And Hassan Ali has links with senior Congress politicians including Sonia Gandhi’s trusted political secretary, Ahmed Patel. During his interaction with Ali was Ahmed Patel representing himself or his boss, Sonia Gandhi? If he was representing himself why has Sonia Gandhi not sacked him? If he was representing the Congress President how does Sonia Gandhi explain her party’s links with the nation’s biggest money launderer who is being protected by the Finance Minister?

Connect the dots and the picture that emerges is not pretty. Either the Congress is so stupid that it deserves to be removed from power, or it is so corrupt that it deserves to be removed from power. Wittingly or otherwise the BJP until now has served only Hassan Ali’s interests. Publicizing the CD will act as a powerful disincentive for the government to act against Hasan Ali. By not pursuing the matter at the national level the BJP has failed to serve its own interests. Therefore the BJP is either so corrupt that it deserves to perpetually remain out of power. Or it is so stupid that it deserves to perpetually remain out of power.

Corruption has become so widespread and brazen that it is destroying the foundations of the Indian Republic. India can stand on the roof and watch its neighbour’s house in flames. Why doesn’t it look below its feet to realize that its own house is burning?

BEFORE THE HOME MINISTRY RAISES NEW PARAMILITARY BATTALIONS, IT NEEDS TO ASK WHY THE OLD ONES ARE QUITTING IN DROVES.

Surinder Kang joined the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) as a constable in 1990. Twenty years later, he’s risen no more than just one rank: he’s a havaldar now. What has risen dangerously over the years, though, are his chances of dying on duty.

So Kang, at 40, has sought voluntary retirement. He wants his pension (even if it is just 2/3rd of what he would otherwise get), an easier job — and he does not want to die. Needless to say, Surinder Kang has a different real name.

What makes Kang’s story extremely disturbing is that it is not an individual story of disillusionment: it is symptomatic of a rampant and growing feeling in the paramilitary. At a time when the Home Minister is speaking of raising dozens of new paramilitary battalions, apart from Kang, hundreds of other men with real names and real fears and real grievances are queuing up to quit the services. In fact, according to official data, an unprecedented 14,422 jawans applied for premature voluntary retirement from service (VRS) in 2009 — up 85 percent from the previous year and 112 percent from 2007. Compare this with the fact that only 4,622 soldiers sought voluntary retirement from the Indian Army — which is three times larger than all the paramilitary forces put together — in the same period, and the contrast becomes painfully stark.

So, why the exodus?
A few days ago, EN Rammohan, former Director General of the Border Security Force (BSF), submitted his one-man enquiry report to Home Minister P Chidambaram on what went wrong in the recent Dantewada massacre, in which Maoists ambushed and killed 76 CRPF jawans. Predictably, the report blamed “leadership failure” and “a lack of coordination between the CRPF and the state police”. Based on this, a few individual heads down the ranks will roll. But if the government stops at that, it will have misread the crisis and lose a crucial opportunity for introspection and drastic overhaul.

The truth is the Dantewada massacre is only one kind of cautionary tale about what ails the Indian paramilitary. The cautionary tale of Surinder Kang runs much deeper and is more alarming.

IF ONE were merely to read the surface signs, it might seem a fear of dying is propelling the exodus. The year 2010 has barely begun and already 79 CRPF men have died.

The number was 58 in 2009. The stark contrast with Indian Army VRS figures also seems to suggest that battling one’s own countrymen has become much tougher and more wearisome than battling enemies outside — both physically and psychologically. As Gautam Kaul, a retired IPS officer who served as Additional Director General of CRPF in 1997-98, says, “Both death in action and voluntary retirement are higher in the CRPF and BSF than in the Army. The spurt in political and civil unrest in the country does not match [the] planning and preparedness of these paramilitary forces. The demand is massive and the paramilitary forces just can’t meet the demand.”
But fear of dying does not seem to be the key reason Surinder Kang wants to leave the CRPF. Something deeper nags him. Kang has 20 long years of fighting guerilla wars and insurgencies. He has been posted thrice in Jammu and Kashmir, twice in the Northeast, and two times each in Lalgarh and Bastar.

Besides this, he has been on election duty in Gujarat, Bihar, Delhi, West Bengal and Orissa. Kang is 40 now and has grayed a little. He is extremely fit and no amount of training can bring you his experience. But Kang has queued up for VRS. He is resolved to leave the forces and work as a small-time private guard at some ATM or private industry. Kang has realised the country does not honour those who serve it. Now, he wants to be with his family at any cost.

“I spent one third of my 20 years in the CRPF just travelling. Of these 20 years, I could spend only three years with my children. I took medical leave to get married. I could only reach my village five days after I received news of my father passing away. I am the eldest in my family but I couldn’t even perform the last rites. I couldn’t COVERSTORY attend three of my four sisters’ marriages. I had to arrange a separate house for my wife and kids after my father’s death because my brother threw them out from the joint family house. But if you take any of these problems to your officers, they just shoo you away.”

Kang is not the only one. Disillusion is simmering like an epidemic beneath the disciplined skin of the paramilitary, and its reasons straddle a wide spectrum: poor work conditions; demeaning terms of service; long years away from families; arbitrary orders and a niggling sense that their life is cheap and death would come without honour.

Just walk around the paramilitary headquarters in Delhi and this honour fatigue begins to unravel. Talk to a constable under a tree and word spreads that someone is asking about their troubles. The jawan inside the canteen, the jawan walking with heaps of files to the grievance department, the jawan loading trucks, all stop to listen in. Everyone wants your number on a scrap of paper. They can’t talk now, but they all have a story to tell.

Of how they have lived in torn tents with no drinking water. Of how the holes were big enough for heat waves and pouring rain. Of how the officers live in concrete houses with three servants. Of how it’s not the government, but their own departments that ensure the welfare schemes never reach them. Of how salaries are cut even when they are injured on duty. Of how a jawan does not get paid if he is in hospital for more than six months. The recurring theme is “pressure: — of how there is too much “dabav” from commanders to blindly follow orders. Of how most of these orders are things that fall outside the purview of duty. Of how they are never consulted even while their lives are at stake. Of how they all plan to take voluntary retirement as soon as they complete 20 years of service.

There’s a jawan from Uttaranchal who has been trying to get a transfer to his home state of Gujarat for the last five years. His wife is mentally ill and unable to look after his three young children. “The officers tell me to get my wife treated in Uttaranchal,” says he. “But our camp is in the mountains, in the middle of a jungle. How is this possible?” Once he returned a few days late from a visit home. His wife’s ill-health was not a good enough shield. He lost an entire month’s pay.
Another jawan has spent 16 years in the CRPF — six in Jammu and Kashmir, three in Assam, three in Tripura, and three in Manipur. Too scared to talk at the CRPF headquarters, he calls late at night to share his story.

During a posting in Srinagar, he was charged with indiscipline and lost 15 days of pay for daring to complain about inedible food and cockroaches in his dal. When he fell sick in Tripura, he couldn’t get a car to get to hospital. “I had to hire a jeep,” says he. “Only if 15-20 constables fall sick and need a car together, there’s a chance of us getting it. Otherwise the cars are busy ferrying the officers’ children. This country got independence in 1947, but we still live like slaves. Our officers order us to do unauthorised things; we have no right to express ourselves. They tell us to barge into people’s homes and pick up bricks and cement and construct our quarters. They pocket lakhs of welfare money; they take commissions from ration shops.

We pay Rs 1,326 per month for food. The bills are for A-grade rations but we get C-grade food. The commander is like the king of a battalion. He runs it the way he wants. As a driver, I am sent all the time for unauthorised pick ups. All the risk of being caught is on me. You live under so much pressure, you either shoot yourself or shoot someone else. I am just waiting to complete 20 years so I can get a part of my pension and then I’ll quit.”

The angry stories duplicate endlessly. A jawan from Gorakhpur with 17 years of service behind him speaks of how he was not granted leave to be in time for his first child’s delivery, though he was posted just a few hours away in Allahabad. When he reached a week later, his son was dead. “After the 6th Pay Commission, we were supposed to be given Rs 2,000 education allowance and a travel allowance, but I haven’t got it yet,” says he. “The officers find ways to make sure we don’t get this education allowance. Just a school certificate is not enough. They ask for bills for the child’s uniform, shoes, notebooks. How are we going to run around getting all this when we barely get leave?”

(A jawan is entitled to two months of earned leave in a year but they rarely get leave on time. “A battalion has seven companies and all the seven companies are located at different locations. The battalion commandant sits at Chandigarh. How can a jawan get leave on time if he is located in Dantewada and his commandant is in Chandigarh,” says Gautam Kaul. “Better systems have to be thought through.”)

Clearly, the issue of family — and an inability to provide adequately for them — looms large for the jawan. “We had witnessed an exodus in the paramilitary forces in 1991 too when violence had escalated in Jammu and Kashmir,” says Prakash Belgamkar, retired DIG (Operations), CRPF. “We had discovered then that a soldier’s motivation revolves around his family. But he becomes a nomad after joining the forces. The nucleus of his nuclear family goes away. He has no fixed address, his life gets fragmented.”

But no lessons seem to have been learnt since 1991. Far from any internal memos in the Home Ministry sounding alarm signals about the surge in VRS applications, or directives in paramilitary headquarters urging officers to motivate jawans, the dominant mood seems to be callous complacency: there’s more where those came from. “Yes, we have seen a spurt in voluntary retirements,” says CRPF spokesperson Ajay Chaturvedi. “But there are enough applications coming in of boys who want to join. We have filled in the vacancies. We have raised six new battalions in a year. We don’t have a crunch anymore. There’s nothing to worry.”

A wise administration would stop men like Kang, if it could. Their experience is hard won, and no training course can duplicate that. But the official position seems to be just about numbers. Building morale, quality and pride in work is not on the radar. Retaining experience seems unnecessary. In a poor country, there will always be replacements. There will always be fresh fodder for all cannons.

To get a real sense of the implications of the diving morale of the paramilitary jawan, one needs to understand first the nature and work of the paramilitary forces. India has about 7 lakh paramilitary forces which include the Central Reserve Police Force (strength 2.30 lakh); Border Security Force (strength 2.15 lakh); Central Industrial Security Force (strength 1.12 lakh); Assam Rifle (strength 50,000); Indo- Tibetan Border Police (strength 74,000) and a Sashastra Seema Bal (strength 29,000). The tasks of these battalions range across fighting internal counter-insurgencies, protecting heritage sites and national installations, providing relief during calamities, controlling riots, providing VIP security and executing election duties. (Their motto is ‘Any Task, Any Time, Any Where’ and ‘Duty unto Death’ — as opposed to the army’s which is ‘Shoot to Kill’. But far from pride, this seems to evoke cynical scorn in jawans now.)

Though law and order are State subjects that, ideally, should be handled by the State police, the National Crime Record Bureau confirms there is a shortage of two lakh policemen in the country. This places an added burden on the paramilitary forces. As former Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta says, “There is a diversity of challenges from terrorism to insurgency today, which has affected rotation and training of these paramilitary forces. This does lead to stress. The private security business has also attracted them away from the forces.

This is an evolving situation and the government has to take major initiatives to improve things.” The story about the diving morale of the jawan then is not just a story about individual griping. It should be of national concern. The jawan is the primary interface between civilians and the State in a conflict zone. Their conduct is crucial to the history of these conflicts. They need to be sensitised not brutalised. Kashmir, the Northeast, Chhattisgarh, Lalgarh (in West Bengal), Narayanpatna (in Orissa) are all rife with stories of malafide behaviour by jawans. But how can any virtuous cycles set in? As a jawan in Lalgarh says after his friend was refused a visit to his pregnant wife, “I was so angry, I wanted to shoot someone.”

Difficulty in getting leave and family anxieties though are not the only reasons jawans are quitting in droves. The terms of service, over all, seem to need a major revision. A retired IPS officer who has served in the CRPF, ITBP and CISF in different capacities says, “Why shouldn’t the paramilitary jawans leave? I pity them for sacrificing their lives when our pay commissions do not even recognise them as ‘skilled’ workers.”

This seems merely the tip of a huge iceberg of service dissatisfactions. Army men are considered skilled workers, while paramilitary jawans trained to fight in some of the most dangerous and difficult circumstances are not considered “skilled” enough. A jawan gets a salary ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000 (same as a civilian clerk); and an additional Rs 3,000 if he is on a ‘hard posting’ in a ‘difficult area’. (It is typical of Indian bureaucracy that while J&K and the Northeast are considered ‘difficult areas’, Chhattisgarh, Bastar and Lalgarh are yet to feature in this category though many more jawans have been killed in service here than elsewhere.) A jawan also gets Rs 1,100 — Rs 1,300 for rations but has to pay for his own mess expenses on the field, often having to find rations and cook for themselves.

Apart from these living conditions, many veterans say the essential command structure of the paramilitary forces is flawed. Kaul believes too many agencies have authority over a jawan and that contributes hugely to the low morale. “As director general of a paramilitary force, I am only entitled to perform house-keeping jobs for a jawan. I can train him and monitor his service record, but I have no powers to decide on his battalion movement and deployment,” says he. Only Home Ministry officials perform this critical job: they have the list of battalions, they assess the demand and assign locations.

This can lead to many Kafkaesque situations. One retired jawan remembers a tortuous journey in 2004 that stretched 8,000 kilometers over two months as the Home Ministry ordered his company like a pawn to move from Agartala to Gujarat via Bangladesh, Delhi, Kashmir and back to Agartala. Crowded trains, no reservations, no accommodations, no sense of why they were being deployed anywhere, and, most of all — no sense of respect. “I have fought insurgents for 20 years,” says the jawan bitterly, “but this one journey showed me my standing in my country’s eyes. How can you fool around with so many human beings on the pretext of an emergency situation?” Other jawans speak of being summoned to places for six months and being asked to stay for six years.

“Battalion movements are very frequent in the CRPF and this often leads to individual hardship. The very nature of their duty is temporary and is bound to dislocate them constantly. In the army, soldiers undertake an operation then go back to the base camp; the CRPF jawans have no fixed place to return. They are always on the move,’’ says Kaul.

This sense of the ad-hoc permeates every aspect of their lives. (For instance, it appears the Home Ministry had no idea that the CRPF had only three satellite phones till former Home Minister Shivraj PatilShivraj Patil went to Amarnath and had a sudden desire to speak to his family from the shrine. A phone was found with great difficulty for him. This is the only reason he came back to Delhi and remembered to sanction 68 satellite phones for the CRPF and an equal number for other paramilitary battalions.)

But often, this can have much more ominous implications. Kang speaks of his dread in being asked to go on an ‘area domination’ exercise in Chhattisgarh. “We hadn’t slept for days. We landed, and our induction was cut short midway, because there were no policemen for patrolling. We had no clue about the local language, culture, terrain, and most importantly, we had no intelligence about the enemy. We were there physically but had to rely on local intelligence. The paramilitary does not even have its own intelligence. So if the input is good, we succeed; if not, we become sitting ducks.”

This idea of being a ‘sitting duck’ is a powerful and repetitive leitmotif. Another retired jawan who has seen service in J&K, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand, says, “Naxalites fight with military precision. They commit mistakes but they never repeat them.” He recalls an incident in Erabore in 2005 when 200 Naxalites tried to bomb a police armory and the CRPF bunker near it. The jawans resisted the attack and informed their base camp. Help came quickly and the Naxals were repulsed.

Three months later, the CRPF battalion raided a Naxal hideout and found a document titled: Why we failed in the Erabore Police Armory Operation. The document said they had failed because they had underestimated the strength of the armory and bunker wall, and so had taken insufficient explosives, and, secondly, they had not anticipated that the CRPF’s base camp could send help that fast. A few months later, Naxals killed 23 CRPF jawans in a landmine attack. The jawans were on their way to rescue policemen trapped in an attack: the Naxals had anticipated this and laid landmines to blow the vehicle.

“We are never debriefed so thoroughly,” says the jawan. “We are constantly pushed into mindless ‘area domination’ exercises without any intelligence. We never seem to learn from our mistakes.”

What can reverse the tide then? What can stop the attrition and turn this force into a humane, yet proud and efficient line of defence? Former Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta says some initiatives were underway in his time: raising more police force, providing housing, reducing telephone rates for calls home, and counselling (when more than 10 jawans from a company apply for VRS). Prakash Belgamkar re-emphasises the need for this: “A jawan has other alternatives today. If the State wants to retain him, it has to free him of his worries about his family. If this is done, he’ll be yours for the rest of his life.” That might be only the first of many urgent correctives. The most primary one will have to be an essential change of attitude — wherein retaining men begins to matter more than merely replacing them.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has said that the environment and bio-diversity in Sikkim have been threatened by construction of hydel power projects and absence of government safeguards.

The state government has not taken sufficient precaution against degradation of environment and bio-diversity by drawing up a catchment area treatment plan and protection of riverine fishes, the CAG in its report for the financial year 2008-09 said.

The CAG criticised the forest, environment and wildlife management department in particular as well as the independent power producers (IPP) for failure to set down a plan to address potential degradation of the environment.

The department, the CAG says, has failed to prepare an annual plan for protection of wildlife, preservation of bio-diversity and development of infrastructure although it received Rs 26.37 crore from six IPPs towards cost for compensatory afforestation and catchment area treatment. etc.

The CAG also pointed out that the aquatic life in Sikkim faced a grave threat in the wake of change in the ecology of the river system due to creation of reservoirs, fluctuation in natural river discharge and diversion of river water through closed tunnels.

The recent observations on Live-in Relationship and gay rights favored by the Supreme Court, the trails and tribulations of the working mothers and the neglecting aged people in recent times have been the topics of discussion by many people through the media. All these provide very interesting reading not only because of their topicality but also how our Indian population holds different views on life and relationships.

‘Changes are the permanent things in this world’ is the most accepted dictum. But the human relationship is something which has always been complex notwithstanding that many holds the view that love and affection were deeper in olden days than today.

I am also a senior citizen now and have experienced and witnessed the changes that are taking places in lifestyle and relationship around me. It is true with the economic independence the first causality was the joint family system. Leaving the in-laws and having nuclear family was considered once a taboo or rebellion; but today it is an accepted norm and many parents themselves set houses for their children once they get married with special care. Family dramas have been replaced by action movies and live-in relationships have been part of many of the Hindi movies released in recent times. In fact, nuclear families avoid the unwanted ruckus in the joint family and the maturity to accept the dignity and privacy and personal space has come to many now.

The Supreme Court and laws and the Constitution of India pose many morals and ethics, no doubt. Have they been strictly followed in the completely disorderly country like India? According to law murder, mayhem, adultery, bigamy, dowry, polygamy, misappropriation of public funds, bribery, arson, looting, treason, brothel, cheating, female foeticide and untouchability all come under criminal offences. Have we done away with all these in the last 60 years of our own democracy? Irrespective of the laws and punishment in a ‘really’ and ‘totally’ democratic country like India people continue to live the way they like.

Just because the Supreme Court favored Live-in Relationship and declared Homosexuality cannot be termed as crime, the society is not going to take a sea change. India’s cultural moorings and ethos have been ingrained in the blood of most of the Indians. If one looks at the percentage of live-in couple in the total populace of 1100 millions of Indians how many would be indulging in it or will try to take advantage of the statement of the Judges and start revolting to the parents on this issue? In India, honestly speaking, marriages are best business propositions than holy institutions for the men folk since they get money, free sex and a servant maid who can bring monthly income too in case she is employed. Similarly, we are not reading any same sex marriages or thousands of men and women coming out of the closet just the court approved gay and lesbian relationship. Inter caste and inter religious marriages were scorned at one point (even today in some places!) but the movies with this theme are still popular.

For the upstarts of the present society whose sons and daughters are earning in dollars and staying abroad this sort of live-in relationship is confined to the foreign land as long as it is not going to trouble them much. Only if it happens in India, the parents need to prepare themselves with answers for the nosey relations and the curious society they have around.

Regarding the grand parents to help the grand children and engaging them with tales and extra cultural activities, those days have gone long back. Even my grandma was a very docile, home loving and polite woman who knew nothing but to work from morning to evening. She was an illiterate and my advocate grandpa never bothered to educate her. She has been a slave to her husband and in-laws in her early life, then to her husband and in the last leg of her life to her sons and daughters. I am not ashamed to tell this but I know many grandmas were like her in my own family and relative circles.

It is true with single child syndrome, the uncles and aunties may not be there. But definitely the friends’ circle is large for most of the younger generation and they come and help them in difficult situations without hesitation. Relationship can be valued not based on blood but on the good nature and willingness of the persons to share the happiness or sorrow.

Laws in India are unfortunately used to punish only the timid, vulnerable and unwanted persons or to settle scores with those who try to fight the establishments. Otherwise, everything existed in all periods and will continue to exist. Similarly, women with native intelligence irrespective of education or employment have been courageous to face the society and fight for justice and those who lack self respect and courage still remain doormats for men notwithstanding their social status. I was surprised to learn that a popular writer in Tamil who seriously promoted the views on the uplift of women had to go through the ordeal of proving herself as the legal heir of her dead husband because she had no children and was unaware of the fact that the husband had not nominated her name during his life time. Ulitmately she had been cheated by her own kin and finally landed in a old age home with the help of some well wishers.

The present day society is mainly driven by media publicity and patronage. So they see to that no stone unturned to fan debate and counter arguments as much as possible. But the truth is man or woman lives the life they want, prefer and choose in India.

The Indian Premier League auction rigging scandal is the first postmodern event in India that has both pitted, and brought together, enlightened secular education and pragmatic bania enterprise, directed towards making huge profit at any cost. Whether it is subterfuge, entrapment or simple greed only time will tell, or may not tell. The new IPL mega-model of ostentation and profit, now in turmoil, has drawn the attention of the entire nation in the wake of the terrible fight for survival or revolt of the tribal communities, urban poor or rural farmers. The IPL fiasco has also highlighted the fact that those who have either power or money in India can dip their fingers in the pot of honey created by the busy bees of cricket. Meanwhile the rest of the country can go to the dogs.

Cricket which was once an innocent sport enjoyed by millions across India has in recent years attracted liquor barons, greedy Bollywood actors/actresses, politicians of all persuasions, erstwhile cricketers, the august royalty and their pretentious siblings from the north to the south. It has become Ali Baba’s treasure grotto of greed and intrigue. They all want the treasure but no one wants to get caught. When the coulter of destiny fell on IPL, various political and business shadows of IPL mascot Lalit Modi left him in the lurch. Sunanda Pushkar, the pretty consultant of IPL Kochi and supposed girlfriend of Shashi Tharoor, who was to get 70 crores for offering business advice, withdrew into the shadows of Dubai! Though IPL tweets have been silenced temporarily by national investigation, the murky plot refuses to fade away from the media as stories of greed, money, sex, orgies, favoritism and envy surface regularly. It is not the size of the money but its style and modus operandi that has captivated modern India.

Corruption has been a part of our DNA even since independence, if not earlier, but so has idealism. Remember we had the insurance scam in 1947 when private companies made huge profits that led to nationalization of the insurance system in India. But we also had a self-sacrificing Gandhi who brought a contentious idealism into Indian politics. The clash of sleaze and idealism resulted in rampant low-grade corruption.

What has changed in the last twenty years is the arrival of corruption sans idealism. This opens up a whole new world of fantasy and magic—from the Pied Piper to Cinderella syndrome. Most risk takers are obsessed with the belief that no one will say no to their offer or else some miracle will happen that will save them finally from the tax-man’s noose or the legal system. It is generally believed that money should be made at any cost as any and everyone can be seduced by the lure of money and quick profit. It is argued that when the scale of profit is huge, running into 150 to 2000 crores, there is no need to worry about the law and rightly so. Modern forms of digital technology have further exacerbated both the volume and scale of profit-making. Profits can be generated across the country and transferred across the globe in no time. You can Facebook your feelings like Pushkar or Twitter it into confrontation like Tharoor or Modi but this is just the surface reality. After the controversy has died down you can still walk away with the loot. See some of the big scams —

1992-96: The Chain Roop Bhansali Scam 1200 crores
1992-98: The Harshad Mehta Share Market Scam 4600 crores
1992: The Securities Scam, 3500 crores
1993-96: The Initial Public Offers Scam 5000 crores
1994-2006: The Telgi Fake Stamp Paper Scam 30000 crores
1995: The Preferential Allotment Scam 5000 crores
1997: Jain Hawala Scam 650 crores
1998: Teak Plantation Scam 8000 crores
2000: Home Trade 300 crores
2000: The UTI Scam 4000 crores,
2001: The DSQ Software Scam 600 crores,
2001: The K-10 Securities Scam, 1500 crores
2002-3: Taj Heritage Corridor Mayawati Scam 175 crores
2005: IPO-Demat Scam 146 crores
2005: Oil for Food Scam (Natwar Singh) 8 crores
2005: Scropene Submarine Scam 18,978 crores
2006-08: Koda Money Laundering–Mining Scam 4000 crores
2007: Army Ration Pilferage Scam 5000 crores
2008-9: Illegal Money in Swiss Bank Scam 71, 00.000 crores
2009: The Satyam Scam 2009 12000 crores.

The list is long, but it contains just a few scams that happened in a seven year period between 1992 and 2009 in India. Even after whistle blowers give the kiss of death to scamsters few got indicted. Over the years both the scams and the scamsters have either been forgotten or replaced by more sleaze and amnesia.

If we analyze the nature of human psychology and the highly intricate world of modern finance it is surprising that financial scams are not more than what we have now. Weak financial controls coupled with cursory auditing and political pressures to provide credit to undeserving encourage the predilection for gambling. Clandestine bank accounts, black money, uncertain financial controls, shredded/burnt documents can further complicate detection and indictment. The concealment of black money or money laundering is made more elusive with a dubious system of double accounting—actual and doctored account books. Even when people know that schemes which are essentially scams will collapse, they still invest with the twin promise of exit anytime and receive high end dividends. There is nothing wrong in making money from equities. Incentives are necessary to keep business going but sweat equities or undeclared money and influence that political establishment enjoys is another story.

For a developing country like India to imitate a flawed capitalist model of America often leads to disastrous consequences. Hyman P. Minsky pointed out that the fundamental flaw of capitalism was its “instability.” It cannot quantify human emotions like greed, fear or excess. Capitalism, Keynes argued, was therefore always prone to collapse. The recent collapse of the financial institutions in the US has questioned the very foundations of the global system introduced after World War Two. Minsky introduced the Financial Instability Hypothesis which stated that during financial depression financial institutions become more conservative but speculative borrowers increase (Minsky, “The Financial Instability Hypothesis,” 1992). Using freely available credit some borrowers called Ponzi borrowers can only pay their bills by borrowing more. As this category increases economy goes from profit to a freewheeling one. Any economic panic called the Minsky moment could wreck the economy (Stephen Mihm, “Why Capitalism Fails,” 2009). The Ponzi scheme has neither core organization nor promise of profit. We have seen the collapse of the Lehman Brothers and the bail out of Wall Street business. We are aware that the dollar is not secured and the US debt has grown to over 11 trillion. But we do not have another viable economic model to supplant it. The only option is to overhaul it as best as we can.

Greed, fear and excess have been the main stumbling blocks of the IPL catastrophe. India is a poor country but the greed of corporate India is not meager. This greed is fired by the glamour of wealth in big cities and further excited by the fantasies represented by Bollywood and beauty pageants. India now suffers the full-blown brutality of a corrupt capitalistic system like any other developed nation in Asia. In India 37.2 percent of the population is below the poverty line but people continue to accumulate wealth illegally and display it most callously. It is corporate India against the rest of India. In Japan 15.7 percent are below the poverty line, its population is less than one-ninth that of India but its scams are no less.

The greed is writ large on the fabric of democratic India whether you are suave and deracinated or boorish and raucous. The opportunities to make a lifetime fortune at one stroke are more than ever before, so are the arguments at self-justification and methods of concealment. Every day we lose talented people who can do good to India but end up doing good to themselves alone. Will India change or need a revolution to change? You ask corporate India and they have hope. You ask the urban poor, tribal communities or rural farmers and they have none.

India with only four months into 2010 does not present a promising political picture and this extends to a wide spectrum of Indian politics from the record of governance of the Congress Government in the last seven years to the performance of India’s political class as a whole and the continuing downslide of overall political integrity in India’s political class. Such is the deplorable state of Indian politics that the emotions that are aroused today are one of anger, anguish, agony and disgust. Overall, the Congress Government has failed on all fronts from foreign policy, national security, internal security and overall political governance as a whole. The principal Opposition Party, the BJP, too has failed to harness the rising groundswell of political disgust in the Indian public into a sustainable and focused political pressure against the ruling Congress Party’s failures on all fronts. While in this Column one has dwelt at length on the failures of Indian foreign policy, national security and internal security, one has not touched the political scene for some time and political musings therefore is the focus this week.

Topically, nothing highlights more the Indian public’s cynicism with the ruling Congress Party politics than the widespread reactions all over India in the wake of the sentence of death to the surviving Pakistan terrorist Kasab. While an overwhelming cross-section all over India has voiced demands for speedy execution of the death sentence of the Pakistani terrorist mass murderer of Mumbai 28/11, Indian public opinion is currently apprehensive that the Congress Government will again soft-pedal and delay the execution of death sentence on political grounds as it has done in the case of Afzal Guru. It needs to be recalled that Afzal Guru’s death sentence stands confirmed by the Supreme Court even on appeal. Yet the Congress Government offers the disgusting excuse that Afzal Guru’s file is still pending for presidential clemency as his turn has not yet come.

Since when have Pakistani terrorists or their Indian accomplices qualified for clemency under the Indian Constitution when they have indulged in murderous attacks on the Indian Republic. They need to be hanged like war criminals. The United States did not squirm when they had to hang President Saddam of Iraq as in American perceptions he waged war against the United States. Why does the Congress Government squirm when it came to hanging Afzal Guru and may do the same in Kasab case?

Moving to India’s domestic politics, in recent weeks one observes the curious spectacle where on political issues made contentious by the Congress Government, one finds the BJP and the Communist Parties on the same side of the political fence opposing the Congress Government. The Congress Government manages to maintain its wafer thin majority by cajoling the regional parties’ leaders to side with them by soft-pedaling the alleged corruption cases against them. The Congress Government survived the Cut Motion against it in Parliament by this ruse which does not portray it in good light as far as political integrity is concerned.

Well they may cynically argue that when was Indian politics about political integrity, any way?

The BJP and the Communist Parties have earned more respect politically in the process while the Congress Government’s image stands diminished. One wishes that the Communist Parties under a more youthful leadership would learn new lessons of not blindly supporting Congress Governments and not being accommodative where political convergence exists between them and the BJP. Such a trend would be a healthy development for Indian democracy

The Congress Government like in its first spell of governance is repeating its record of not having the guts to remove corruption-tainted Ministers because of coalition politics pressures and not endangering its political survival. What is the use of having a Prime Minister of impeccable personal honesty and integrity if he has to carry for political compulsions tainted baggage in his Cabinet?

Politically disturbing is the sordid spectacle of both Houses of the Indian Parliament where those who adorn its benches tear viciously into shreds even the least remaining modicum of political dignity and sobriety that should be the hallmarks of the Parliament of the most populous democracy of the world

India requires a complete political transformation of the Indian Republic and the complete restructuring of its political institutions and organs. The present generation of India’s political leaders including the Gen-X in Parliament of all hues has failed the people of India and their very basic aspirations.

India’s new political leaders must emerge from outside the existing political framework and imbued with a strategic and political vision to cleanse ruthlessly the ills which now define the Indian political system. Then only will India attain her ‘Manifest Destiny’.

The firm believes that the SaaS based model is the right prescription for curing the critical issues of Indian healthcare.

While large hospital chains and clinics have the capability to invest heavily in IT and benefit from it, the smaller clinics and hospitals in India have seldom used information technology to their advantage. The cost of investing in hardware and software has been a big deterrent towards automation.

Can SaaS which has changed the way software is delivered and consumed, change the dynamics of the Indian healthcare industry too? Progetan, an ambitious company specializing in the healthcare domain, believes that SaaS holds tremendous potential to transform the Indian healthcare industry.

“The healthcare industry has not taken advantage of IT as the manufacturing or financial sectors have,” says Guruprasad Sowle, Founder, Progetan. Sowle says that the speed and quality of healthcare is based on the ability of the medical fraternity to access world class back office support systems.

Understanding that smaller hospitals or clinics do not have the capability to invest in IT, Progetan has devised a SaaS based practice management solution that bundles voice, data, coding, billing, receivable management, IT support and Accounting. As this solution is offered on a pay-per-use SaaS model, Sowle says that smaller firms can cut their infrastructure costs by more than 70 percent. Efficiency too improves significantly as smaller hospitals and clinics benefit from using standardized data and processes.

When hospitals or doctors sign up for this service, Progetan ensures day-to-day support activities, including appointment setting, billing, patient monitoring and medical transcription. Using this service, doctors can even provide web based support to their patients in any location. As a patient’s case history is archived and stored online, specific cases can be referred to by doctors to deliver more effective personalized healthcare services to patients. As the network of doctors, clinics and hospital chains grow on Progetan’s network, Sowle says that this virtual community will be able to interact collaboratively with each other and provide critical advice to their peers.

Progetan is also actively using social networking technologies to create more effective relationships between doctors and their patients. “We utilize electronic communication tools such as Facebook and Twitter to inform patients about health alerts, prescription reminders, and other important information,” explains Sowle.

Using the Progetan platform as a base, a virtual medical community can be created which is always accessible to patients. For example, if a particular cardiologist is not available in a particular hospital or region, a hospital chain may contact Progetan’s call center and ask it to help it find an alternative doctor who has equal or more expertise. The firm already has a significant team of doctors who have expertise in different specialties, and Sowle says depending on the need, this can be scaled up as required.

As ad hoc tactics of a micro vertical seem to be working in more cases than not, Dataquest presents a list of the hottest micro verticals that IT vendors need to seriously start focusing on.

Between 2009-10 to 2016-17, Indias domestic air passengers number is going to swell from 105 mn to 321 mn. During the same time international air passengers number is expected to go up from 40 mn to 101 mn. Similar kind of growth is expected in cargo movement too, according to Airports Authority of India. Consequently, there has been a tremendous focus in development and modernization of airports. The 11th plan (2007-2012) itself estimated an investment of Rs 30,968 crore in development of airports, with as much as Rs 21,630 core coming from the private sector.

However, going by the recent experience of modernization of Delhi and Mumbai airports, the actual cost is significantly higher than what was estimated. In Delhi alone, DIAL, the GMR-promoted company that is modernizing the airport, has done significant upward revision to the final cost, taking it up by almost 42% to Rs 12,700 crore. Same has happened with Mumbai airport with final cost rising to Rs 9,802 crore from Rs 5,826 crore or 68%. With greenfield airports planned at Goa, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Greater Noida and Kanpur, and plans for thirty-five non-metro airports being modernized, the investment in this segment is going to be huge.

But unlike the earlier phase of infrastructure development, where it was all brick and mortar, the new infrastructure development is happening with keeping the customer experience in mind. And hence IT has become an integral part of the modernization. New airports are expected to spend anywhere between 2-3.5% of the total investment in installing/upgrading IT systems.

Not surprisingly, airports feature on top in our list of seven micro verticals to watch out for the IT industry.

So, what does that mean? Does it mean that these are the sectors that would spend the highest amount on IT? Does it mean that these segments would record the highest growth in IT spending?

Strictly, the answer is neither. And to some extent, the answer is a combination of both.

These seven micro verticals, our editors believe, are the areas where most IT vendors should focus their market development activities. So, they may not be the highly mature segments like PSU banks or existing telecom operators who are already the cash cows. At the same time, they are not so small that they will probably grow in the next six to seven years.

These are the segments that would increasingly spend significant amounts on IT in the next two to four years. All the three italics are important, we believe, for the IT vendors to develop specific market development strategies.

So, according to Dataquest, beyond business as usual, if there has to be significant marketing/market development activities by IT companies, then it should be in these micro verticals.

That, in short, is what these seven micro verticals stand for. But that too must come with a few qualifiers. This does not mean that the ease of market development in each of these are similar. This also does not mean that each of these segments, by themselves, would be very heterogeneous. Take cooperative banks, for example. Some of them have deployed core banking solutions much before many large PSU banks did. Some others do not even have basic branch computerization.

And one disclosure: one of the micro verticals is actually not, in the strict sense of the word: greenfield telecom operators. It is just a subset of a vertical, not a micro vertical. But we believe from market development perspective, the IT vendors would do better to treat it as a micro vertical.

Why & How We Did It
One of the most common complaints that we hear from the sales guys in many IT vendors is that a vertical is too heterogeneous to develop a selling strategy for it. And we discoveredquite accidentallythat most vendors who have done well in a segment have, in a tactical way, taken a micro vertical approach. In some cases, it is organization-wide. In some cases, some smart middle level sales managers have done that and succeeded. We formed that into a hypothesis and tested it by talking to both vendors and users. In more cases than not, the hypothesis was proved to be true.

That is when we decided that a micro vertical approach is a tactics that could be turned into a strategy. And that is when the idea of this story was born.

The next challenge was to identify the micro verticals. This is where we followed an informal process of just creating a shortlist of more than fifteen micro verticals which came from our panel discussions, informal discussions, as well as by following the general macroeconomic indicators and government policies. For example, if infrastructure is a thrust of the government, there has to be growth in that sector. But does rapid growth and higher spending automatically lead to higher IT investments? Not always.

That is when we decided to follow a formal filtering process. We identified four important parameters to judge the hottest micro verticals.

The growth potential of the segment: This was the most important parameter. The assumption here was most businesses today consider IT to be strategic and the growth of business and investment means growth of IT. We assigned the highest weightage to this parameter.

The importance of IT to business: While all businesses today consider IT as strategic, some of them are far more dependent on IT than others. Some may run without significant IT investment. For example, even in one of our identified micro verticalshospitalsIT is still not that strategic, as compared to say, telecom, which runs on IT. We assigned the second highest weightage to this parameter.

Size of the segment: This was more of a filter than a parameter. If there is a completely new segment with lots of IT deployment potential but is too small to make an impact, does it make sense to invest marketing time and effort on that at this time? Probably not. That was the reason behind introducing this filter.

Applicability of generic IT solutions: This was another parameter that we decided to introduce after much debate. Strictly speaking, we could have done without this. But since we wanted our story to appeal to a larger section of vendors, we wanted to exclude micro verticals with closed/dedicated solutions. The reason is not to undermine their importance but treat them separately as stories.

Introduction of this filter resulted in one immediate casualtyfilm productionthat is included in the table as the eighth micro vertical. This, naturally, had the lowest weightage.

Then we assigned scores to each of the short-listed micro verticals. This required some primary and secondary research. Based on the score and weightage, we arrived on the seven micro verticals to watch out for.

We also present, the individual ratings of each micro vertical.

Even before a line of script has been written and the first shot canned, Milkha Singh’s act of selling his life’s story to filmmakers for just Re1 has already been extremely inspiring.

An orphan of the Partition who struggled against trauma and adversity, the very mention of his name creates a wave of excitement. Therefore, when the Flying Sikh (so nicknamed because of his splendid athletic record at the Tokyo Asiad (1956), Cardiff Commonwealth Games (1958) and the Rome Olympics, 1960) decided to help capture his life on film there was jubilation all around.

His passion and a burning desire to see his country prosper in sports are evident and he has been pained by India’s dismal performance in international sports, especially athletics.

The film will, no doubt, be a source of inspiration to many, but whether it will translate into medals is a moot question because inspiration alone is not enough. The ground reality is such that India is unlikely to get medals till professionals take charge and politicians are restricted to ceremonial duties in sports.

Last year, Indian Olympic Association chairman Suresh Kalmadi supervised the spending of nearly Rs200 crore on creating a magnificent, international class sports complex in Pune for the Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG). Post-CYG, the infrastructure has not been of much use to most sports associations in the city who are unable to hold training camps or tournaments there because of high rentals. This same complaint is heard from national associations also. Thus, very often, the CYG complex is hired for entertainment shows or college youth festivals.

Although Pune has been famous as the cradle of Indian hockey, having produced such legends such as Babu Nimal, Joe Philips and Dhanraj Pillay, the city lacks a decent hockey ground for its children. Till recently, a newly constructed hockey stadium was left neglected to the extent that the ground could not be played on and the fittings and fixtures were stolen and vandalised. The irony is that this did not bother any of Pune’s politicians — including Kalmadi — even after it was brought to their notice.

The lack of grounds with synthetic surfaces such as astroturf for junior teams at the inter-school level — inspite of heavy government subsidies — is part of the reason for India’s poor performance in international hockey. A small country like Holland has 400 such grounds across schools. Indian professionals say that the game is lost by the time our best players reach the national team because of inadequate practice on synthetic surfaces in the formative years. India needs such grounds in every promising city and European coaches to elevate standards in hockey.

As has happened in cricket, the day-to-day running of various associations has to be left to professionals and a steady stream of talented players has to be identified and trained to consolidate team strength. Too much dependence on just a handful of star players is not good for Indian sports. Professionals also lament the complete lack of a long-term national vision and a road-map to achieve specific goals in sports. There’s plenty of money today, but no direction. Politicians are efficient when it comes to spending crores of rupees in constructing stadia and sports complexes; but disastrous in sports administration and management.

Indian sport needs Milkha Singhs by the hundred to inspire and guide budding talent,along with visionarieslike Sam Pitroda to chart a roadmap for revolutionary change. We have done it in telecom; we can do it in sports.

Till that happens and till politicians are kept at bay in sports, we can only dream of winning medals. An inspiring film will make us feel good. Winning medals is an altogether different ballgame.