Form-Reform

6 June 2019

Two separate threads both linked to Bengaluru engage me closely, the first being how the INC never learnt their history correct and how the Nandan Nilakeni input confirms some thing I always have been saying about Mr Rahul. The second is about how an unseemly row has erupted over ISKCON’s Akshaya Patra even as Cambridge University will now study this sect too as part of their syllabus on Hinduism.

Nandan Nilakeni according to me, was the greatest amongst the Infosys Founders. Events have proved so right, especially when Murthy came back and his son was appointed as his Assistant when he ran Infosys once more, or how the other founders including the rabble rouser Mohandas Pai have turned out to be. Nandan was not just in politics but he managed a transition across Dr Manmohan Singh to Mr Modi and saved Aadhaar in the bargain.(https://www.ndtv.com/book-excerpts/rahul-gandhi-offered-me-hrd-ministers-job-in-2009-nandan-nilekani-2047900?pfrom=home-opinion)

Firstly, the INC missed a major trick, transition from Ms Sonia to Mr Rahul in 2009-10. It confirmed my pet theory, that plenty of reforms initiatives about the party and the government suggested by the then rising star, who managed a remarkable turnaround in UP for the party winning 22 MPs, was defeated within the party by her ‘Old Guard’ in concert with the PM and Ms Sonia by outwitting and strategising in a game where status quo won over strategic choices. The INC will keep ruing this missed bus for decades to come. The Italian ‘Mama-mia’ fetish is possibly the only external flavour,  a cultural bias that strengthened the hands of the Congress stalwarts, increasingly no longer mass leaders themselves, but who were deemed indispensable by the CWC and the President.

So Nilakeni confirms that Rahul was willing to try out a new scheme, bring a technocrat to head HRD of all ministries. It also confirms that not just Rahul was a risk taker, or intelligent enough to sense a window, but a decent soul who would call him personally to apologise for a failure to carry the day. Of course, people are now twisting this to say that the affable techno is playing politics, but reading Ms Sonia Singh’s book excerpt, it is clear that both Mr Modi and Ms Sonia were playing politics, and both had overt political concerns about Aadhaar. First Mr Modi worked like a typical Indian Satrap, who needed attendance at his durbar, to listen to his story before he approved a proposal. This mindset is not unique, it is so ubiquitous to India’s power seats including bureaucrats, ( matha tekna- bow the head is what fixers would tell you about such encounters), so it only confirms that Mr Modi is a ‘regular guy’. Both Mr Modi and Ms Sonia had concerns about the Aadhaar logo and slogan, whether it had political colour to it! Again very predictable fears of lead political actors. Then subsequently after Aadhaar was embraced by Mr Modi full scale, how the INC dumped its legacy innovation politically is again a repeat of how INC dumped Late PVN Rao’s legacy of reforms, forcing the polyglot polymath and perhaps the most cerebral PM ever to occupy 7 RCR, to disown his own work in the sunset years of his life. So INC shows in its DNA that any reform that electorally does not reward it with benefits obvious to it, is orphaned by the party!

So in a nutshell, Nandan tells us that Rahul is not ‘Pappu’ definitely. Only he is a scape goat, a beast of burden, whose unenviable task of rebuilding the INC will keep getting scuttled by the ‘High Command’. Status quo even at the face of an existential threat is what the INC did when it brought in Priyanka into the campaign and bit the dust in UP. So unless the entire CWC and Ms Sonia and Ms Priyanka were to remove themselves from the affairs of the party and offer Mr Rahul an opportunity to try reforming the INC, Mr Rahul is right in insisting that he go home.  We cannot thank Nandan for this sterling insight enough!

The Akshaya Patra issue is rather straight forward. The organisation has been feeding school children in Karnataka and Odisha for a decade plus now. Only the Mid Day Meal it serves is religiously dictated, devoid of even garlic and onion. So the narrow issue is about choice for children who partake the meal and why the state governments involved a religious entity to lean on the Mid Day Meal (MDM)programme.(https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/civil-society-asks-karnataka-govt-to-cut-ties-with-akshay-patra-62499) In TN where the scheme pioneered, initial project was a Municipality scheme which offered breakfast in 1920s in select schools in Chennai, subsequently when late Kamaraj as CM brought it as MDM, further modified by MGR as Sathuanavu ( Fortifying Food) scheme, across all government schools, tweaked by M Karunanidhi and then by Jayalalithaa, before it was adopted during the PVNR government in select districts, and then universally extended in 2005. The folks who argue that these children can eat what they want outside the MDM forget that for majority of these children this is the only freshly cooked meal served to them. In recent years, menus prepared by 5 star chefs have been hosted on the ministerial website, allowing the schools to fulfil the mandate of nutritious and tasty preparations.(http://www.mdm.nic.in/mdm_website/Files/School%20Health%20Programme/Nutrition_Support/Recipes-by-Oberio.pdf) The budget from the centre is only for vegetarian items, including cereals and pulses at fixed measures per child. (http://www.mdm.nic.in/mdm_website/)(Look under the listing ‘Meal Provision’ in the side bar on this webpage)Some states have added eggs, in TN eggs are served all days except those days when non vegetarian is also on the menu. ( In TN communities decide the menu along with school staff, the MDM is completely in-house and hyper local.)

So despite pointing out that first meat is ‘Hindu’ enough, that garlic finds mention in Ayurveda as lasuna with medicinal properties, that after a long deliberation on file and meeting Odisha has finally convinced Akshay Patra(AP) to outsource eggs, most people felt that one was meddling with a noble charity(https://scroll.in/pulse/905850/odisha-finds-a-way-to-serve-children-eggs-at-mid-day-meals-catered-by-iskcon-linked-ngo).  AP is not a charity since it receives substantial government funds to undertake its MDM scheme. It has a formal contract with agencies of the government too.So they jeered that if you want such a menu, build an organisation and do it yourself! Some took exception to suggesting addition of onion and garlic and said that it was anti Hindu and anti national to oppose AP! In the anonymity of today’s internet, I never thought I would be trolled about my patriotism, my religious beliefs, or my status as a citizen.  Or worse ‘meat’ would be referred to as ‘dead animals’ for which I pettily retorted that vegetarians consume dead vegetables! ( I was repeatedly addressed as jobless dissenter, lazy and offering needless opinion!)

It reveals a mindset amongst us that is almost strikingly similar to the oligarchs of the INC! Status-quoist, in mendacious denial about their objections to rational queries, capable of mounting offensive with any device or context in their wherewithal! It seems incapable to do what Nandan so large heartedly seeks of us, trusting ourselves to rise above our narrow prejudices and seek solutions for the greater common good! How reform is such dicey business in India and how a mindset is overwhelming us backed by blatant religiosity, utter lack of accountability and pseudoscience must not be lost on us! India owes a disproportionate debt to souls like Nandan, to people who still go against the grain, and insist on asking rational questions and on scientific foundation!