Its not every day that one finds cause and effect answers on the same page of a daily newspaper. Its as rare an event as sighting a UFO or a comet, and therefore worthy of comment. Yet two coincidental headlines in the Times of India (Bangalore edition) of January 7 (page 3) revealed the sorry condition of the nation.
The lead story on the page recounted that even 70 years after India attained political freedom, 67 percent of households in the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 63 million) — proclaimed one of the country’s most industrialised states and #1 in terms of information technology (IT) software exports — are yet to receive the basic facility of piped water supply into their homes. Shameful as this statistic is, Karnataka is #1 among major states with 33 percent of rural households served with piped water against the pathetic national average of 16.85 percent. Hows that for the socialist model of development?
A reason for this abject condition of Karnataka’s citizenry is provided by a report in three columns on the same page. A surprise raid conducted by 12 officers of the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on a handful of government bureaucrats in Bangalore on January 5-6, revealed that they have accumulated wealth and assets valued at Rs.40 crore — a sum vastly disproportionate to their incomes. The ACB raid on the government officials revealed that B.S. Prahalad, a superintendent engineer (technical vigilance) of the Bangalore municipal corporation, owns two houses, one land plot, three commercial complexes, and land lots in Chikballapura and Tumkur townships, two motor cars, 731 gm of gold and 865 gm of silver.
Not any less enterprising, R.V. Kantaraju, deputy director of urban planning, owns five homes in Bangalore, 10 acres of agricultural land in neighbouring Ramanagara, 154 gm of gold and 4.5 kg of silver, a car etc. These rolling-in-wealth babus are just two examples of several officials with aggregate assets valued at Rs.40 crore unearthed by the ACB. Its impossible to believe there’s no connection between their wealth accumulation and the 67 percent piped water supply deficit of the states citizenry.
Racist propaganda blasted
There was a piquant irony in the comprehensive defeat of the India cricket team currently touring South Africa in the second test (after losing the first test as well) which went unnoticed except for individuals with long memories and awareness of Africas racial politics. All wickets in Indias second innings were taken by black Africans — Lungisani Ngidi (6/39) and Kagiso Rabada (3/47) with one batsman run out (Chheteswar Pujara for the second time in the match).
The irony is that during South Africa’s cruel and dehumanising apartheid era which lasted over a century until Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, white racist propaganda had spread the belief worldwide that black Africans were congenitally unsuited to play the complex and sophisticated game that is cricket. Even black Africans themselves were brainwashed into believing that they were racially unsuited for cricket, and that their forte was football and athletics.
This racist propaganda was pervasive in pre-independence Africa. In Nairobi where your editor read for his ‘A levels and played top-level school and league cricket, I never encountered a black cricketer. The Kenya team comprised only Europeans and Indians. Even in the former colonies of Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, the Brits insidiously spread propaganda supported by faux research that Africans were inherently unsuited for playing cricket. And to this day, this game isn’t seriously played in these countries. Ditto in Bishop Cotton Boys School, Bangalore where we had several black African football, athletics — and even hockey — stars, none of them ever picked up a cricket bat or ball.
Therefore, when Ngidi and Rabada demolished all the Indian batsmen in the recently concluded second test, they not only won a famous victory for South Africa, but also blasted this long-standing myth. The reality suppressed for hundreds of years by the white master race is that they were never given sufficient opportunity to prove themselves.
Nightmare scenario
A great deal of verbal jugglery is going on in the Supreme Court which is hearing a PIL (public interest litigation) writ petition against the Aadhaar card filed by a host of social activists — including a former judge of the Karnataka high court — protesting the indirect manner in which the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre is building a Big Brother central database which will make privacy of the citizen a big joke.
Slyly, the government itself isn’t directing citizens to provide all manner of data — name, address, e-mail, cell phone, biometric and a plethora of information. It is directing banks, telecom and sundry organisations to demand it from citizens for feeding into a central panoptic repository which can be accessed at the click of a mouse to target citizens. Curiously, the court seems unreceptive to petitioners counsel Shyam Divans warning of en masse surveillance as in Nazi Germany and police raj.
A Facebook post your editor received recently posited a scary situation. Suppose a 1975-type internal Emergency is declared in India in the near future. During the Emergency, several leaders of opposition parties were able to go underground and rally public opinion against it. But if the Aadhaar card can be demanded by all and sundry and be checked against a central database in real time, it will become impossible for proclaimed offenders to cash a cheque, use an ATM, cell phone, credit/debit card or book a train/bus ticket.
The original purpose of the Aadhaar card was to eliminate impersonation of BPL (below poverty line) citizens availing public services and subsidised foodgrains and rations from the governments public distribution system. The learned judges of the Supreme Court would be well-advised to restrict its use for these purposes.
Administrative convenience — it is submitted — shouldn’t be given precedence over fundamental rights which include the right to privacy.
