'Moral Police' - is it an Indian term?

The Mangalore pub incident has brought fresh set of write-up on 'Moral Police' of India. Did a quick Google search and found that Indians seem to be exceptionally obsessed with this term with a wide spectrum of connotations and usage. We as a society like broad ambiguous terms that we can conveniently deploy to our advantage whenever required and this term seem to be one such.


Any one from hired goonda to political leader taking a stand on issue of behaviour can be branded as a 'moral police'. There is no need for any authorization as to who can declare someone to be a moral police, just about anyone who thinks she understands the term can use it liberally.


There are no common civic code of conduct in India as far as I know. The 'nuisance' case is celebrated as  a prerogative of the authorities of law & order. The levels of economic and social inequalities has meant that the any code of conduct does not contain the dominant while the suppressed are made to feel that being permitted to live itself is a privilege. So, the dominant dictate and debate the code of conduct amongst themselves for themselves. But, they come from diverse traditions too and their aspirations and views of 'conduct'  covers a vast spread. 


As far as I know no political party has promised any 'liberate society' or 'moral conduct society' as part of its manifesto. So, ascribing 'moral police' to a political party or ideology is accusation by the lazy. Even worse is to ascribe moral values to the state apparatus.Neither the bureaucracy nor the judiciary have exhibited consistent standards on handling issues related to human behaviour, if anything they become wilful tools to censure the suppressed  of undesirable behaviour.  The law of the land is never seen as being fair to the suppressed and always seen as working on behalf of the dominant. 


Media tends to decide whom to paint as the 'dominant' and whom to paint as the 'suppressed', thereby programming public perception. The liberals will oppose the conservatives, the communists will oppose the right wingists, the democrats will oppose the feudal, the global will oppose the local, the free world will oppose the culture,...as each one of these fight the 'other' in yet another cause and the most verbal express their inability or ignorance in many words, we stand divided. Period. 


If only we don't give tall terms to simple civil expectations and start by adhering to some ourselves, we may be stronger and united. 

Prakash Karat: My candidate for PM

I have come to like the current CPM Gen. Sec. increasingly. He has the global commie-mindset and has come to realize probably, a la Chevaz is what gets the public going, which means stepping high on the anti-US rhetoric, talking tough, asserting stand...he is still not (thankfully) holding all day television gospels. I think he will make a good PM.

The 'Bush is a Fool' statement is perhaps the most daring statement of the fact (albeit well acknowledged and documented) by a Indian political leader. The last courageous statement I could think of was old man, George Fernandes at the beginning of the Nuclear deal dialogue.

Karat makes me think of possibilities of a commie PM for India. I am no fan of communists and their policies in every area, but, we are caught today with all round weak leadership. On the one side we have the BJP creating new frontiers in senility and on the other side the confused Congress with the young, old, in-between, all in a state of confusion. If the commies are the only strong leaders, maybe it is time they shed their permanent opposition position and took to leading the country. The only person who could have made from their ranks earlier was the immortal Jyothi Basu...he is no longer a candidate and with his strong views, Karat seems to be the next candidate.


Revised Post Gujarat Elections, Dec 2007
With the media repeatedly projecting Modi as the new face of BJP and the central leadership of this party not really in a mood to counter it, I am even more convinced that the coming years will see the emergence of two leaderships in the national mainstream, an increasingly assertive left, no longer know-toying, but, leading the Congress (or dropping it if need be for a Third Front with regional allies) under Karat and the committed right wing BJP, willing to take a different stand from RSS on issues, but, definitely clear in its orientation perhaps with Modi on the lead! I am even more inclined post-Gujarat elections that Karat may be the best bet in the coming years. The Congress loss in the Centre may finally bring to end the Nehru dynasty rule. This can only change if some of the regional players do take some daring steps, Mayawati, Uma Bharathi, Chandrababu Naidu, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lallu may be the men and women to watch out for, but, for them to make a national difference, it would require any two or more of them to work in tendem, that currently looks near impossible. So, coming times will see Karat Vs. Modi. My choice stays as of now.

More on the Indo-US Deal

I had earlier promised not to post further on this issue. But, it does not seem to leave us at all. The Americans want it, the PM is willing to sacrifice the government at one time and only his chair at other time for it (nothing is clear and neither seems to be happening, poor Deva Gowda). The Congress wants it, now, BJP too seems to want it (so if there is a chance of them coming back, it would come up again) and the US Ambassdor is talking to them too. Only the Communists are between the deal and the Nation, bless them for that. Here is one more news item that calculates the economics of the deal -

American Interest in Nuclear Deal by B.S.Raghavan in Business Line

...India’s plans of installing 40,000 MWs of nuclear power in the next 20-30 years, it is clear that the nuclear deal will mean a business of $80 billion for the lucky ones who win the contract. Allowing for the price escalation in later years, the figure may even exceed $100 billion, enough to inject adrenalin into the economy of the countries in which the supplier firms are located.

Remember, this does not take account of the requirements of components and spares, financing of service and maintenance and royalties on technologies — all of which may assure a steady flow of $10-20 billion more for the supplier firms during the life-time of the reactors. Certainly not a prospect to be sneezed at. As regards the intangible benefits to the US, an article “America’s Strategic Opportunity with India” by Mr R. Nicholas Burns, US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs and the point man for all that concerns the nuclear deal, published in the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs, gives an authentic exposition.

First and foremost, the deal is calculated to serve the national security interests of the US by bringing India into the international nuclear non-proliferation mainstream; second, it “will not assist the country’s nuclear weapons program in any way”; third, it gives the US control over the newly-to-be-built facility to reprocess spent fuel as it can operate only as per the specific arrangements and procedures laid down by the US; fourth, “should India decide to conduct a nuclear test in the future, then the US would have the right under US law to seek the return of all nuclear fuel and technology shipped by US firms”; and, finally, “an increasingly powerful India represents a singularly positive opportunity to advance (the US) global interests”.

Why would the US not pitch for it?

The Indo-US Nuclear Deal: A Time in History where things could have gone the other way...

Maybe my last post on this issue. Just to summarize and also share some of the things I have been reading. I had thought that the conclusion on this deal was foregone (My posting in late August which has since then come true). But, there are disturbing trends that need to be understood by all of us in India.

1. The 'we don't care' attitude of the Congress Party on this issue needs to be noted. There is little that has changed since August when the Left first came up with objections to the deal, which means, the new found arrogance in the congress leadership must stem from something else. Could it be that they have found out that in the case of an election, they stand a chance to win without much ado? I am sure intelligence agencies and back room technical boys in the Congress are capable of doing a month long job to come up with such conclusion, the time gap for the change in the Congress posture seems to be just right.

But, perhaps there are other reasons too. The recent issue of Tehelka carries an interesting news item, 'Young Brigade Goes Nuclear' which talks about the new bunch of young Congress leaders owning up the Nuclear Deal . Though the article carries interview with only one of the leaders named, if this is to be taken at face value, it is bad news. The Nuclear Deal somehow seems to have become associated with the 'paradigm shift' in the Congress. Nothing is more stupid than a young bunch of new comers talking of paradigm shift owning up to a deal that provides many opportunities for jingoism and showmanship. More importantly in this article, the Chairperson of Congress Future Challenge Committee is talking about 'creating a new USP' for the party! Nuclear Deal is the new USP for the old Congress! (USP for the uninitiated is a marketing term that means Unique Selling Proposition, used to promote the one feature in any product that needs to be communicated to the customer as being unique and ahead of the competitor, it is often a publicity gimmick as the fundamental product can only change itself in so many ways). Corporations provide for such flexibilities, a national government that is already fractured in its inheritance cannot. Certainly not a party that is responsible for much of the fracturing.

2. I am still to come across anyone of our nuclear deal promoters who thinks of this as a complete, cost-effective or clean solution. The entire debate has been dominated by scientists-technocrats who have an undying fascination for trying out latest technical possibilities and bureaucrats who are chest thumping about how this is a great deal that they have brokered, leave alone the fact that USofA does not get pushed by a piddly platoon of IAS officer from India. Obviously, the safety of the technology and the nitty-gritties of the deal have covered more print space than the priority and ethics of the deal.

I have been trying to understand the larger issues related to nuclear energy, if indeed energy is our problem for which we think this is the only solution as some of our eminent scientists want us to believe. (My earlier post on the on-line references) It was good to note that the Communist leaders too seem to be doing their homework on this issue to some extent (my posting on Sitaram Yechuri's article). Personally for me, an eye opener was reading the book, 'The Nuclear Barons' by Peter Pringle & James Spigelman. This book is a must read for anyone wanting to understand as the authors put in the sub-title, 'how (the nuclear barons) created our nuclear nightmare'. How the entire nuclear research, bomb and technology has been developed through scientific ambition, often mis-placed political ideas by technologists, political jingoism and commercial greed. Though this publication is two and half decades old, its gripping narration style and factual presentation makes it invaluable in understanding the evolution of the nuclear technology. I would like to quote a small portion from the Epilogue of the book that is worth reading:

' the core of the proliferation problem is the expansion of nuclear-generated electricity: more nuclear power plants mean more fissile material available for diversion into bomb projects. There is no way of preventing this at present: the nuclear materials market is too large and too diverse to be controlled through export sanctions and the current early-warning system of a diversion of nuclear material, known as safeguards, is inherently ineffective.

Even withouth the link to nuclear profileration, nuclear power carries dangers of a magnitude that we ought not to accept. There is something profoundly stupid about continuing to multiply a series of engineering marvels that fifteen billion curies of radiation. We do not know enough about radiation and cannot be sure enough of our technical prowess to allow this system to dominate our energy supply. Morever, the instinctive human fear of radioactivity is not irrational, as the nuclear advocates assert; it is also so universal and so enduring that it is a political fact of life.

...The problem as the entire nuclear history illustrates only too forcefully, is that we have never been able to devise human institutions dedicated to minimizing their own activities. We must continue, therefore, to treat the claims of those in charge of the nuclear complex with suspicion; by their past actions they have not earned our trust or our confidence. Their almost compulsive sense of self-importance has been given a serious blow by the strength of the citizen reaction...but it has not been defeated. Those who want to expand nuclear power continue to repeat the old refrain that we have no choice, yet, that has always been wrong and it is wrong today.

The nuclear story so far has been about a scientific and technological revolution that transformed a yarning to understand and control the powers of nature from fiction to fact. It was a stunning achievement of many clever men. What is in question now is not their cleverness but their wisdom.'

3. US of A must be the biggest arms supplier to the world. It has been investing in arms in different parts of the world where it reaps a rich harvest of war in subsequent decades. I see the entire facilitation of the nuclear technological growth in the Sub-Continent as a way of investing in this region, so that in a couple of decades a successor of G.W.Bush may launch another armed search for WMD in India and a war would be justified. Indian government will buy the technology now, buy delivery mechanisms through back door deals later and will be held accountable for the same much later, perhaps politically isolated (not unlike Iraq after Desert Storm), and later invaded and destroyed. This would ensure that the commercial interest of the arms manufacturers in the US is taken care of for the next few decades, not to talk of the Haliburtons to re-build the country after its destruction. This may sound far fetched right now for us in India, but, history with other regional powers since the WWII cannot be denied. If further proof is necessary, then it is provided by Prof. Chomsky in his article on Indo-US Nuclear Deal:

The Indo-US deal mixes military and commercial motives. Nuclear weapons specialist Gary Milhollin noted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony to Congress that the agreement was "crafted with the private sector firmly in mind," particularly aircraft and reactors and, Milhollin stresses, military aircraft.
(Source: US/Indo Nuclear Agreement: Derailing A Deal, By Noam Chomsky, 08 August, 2007, The Khaleej Times)

4. The mix of young leadership wanting to make a 'paradigm shift' in the ruling party utilizing terms and models of the market, the eagerness of our technocrats and bureaucrats to move the country into another 'club' where there doesn't seem to be a non-destructive precedence and where the partner / promoter nation has clearly stated that they are looking at their own strategic and commercial gains from the entire deal, sounds like being in the middle of a political environment where an expression of the concerns is a statement of helplessness.

We as a nation have placed capacity to produce WMD at such a high level, that a government doesn't mind being pulled down in the process, this has never been done by any government before for any other cause including production of food grains. This moment in the political history can be seen as a point of departure towards accepting the role of a nuclear bully, capable of producing WMD at a speed if it so desires. The role and the script is not ours, nor the raw materials and technologies, but, our political eagerness to perform this role of a nuclear bully will bring in a major shift in our dealing with the world from now on. Time to recall what an old man said 6 decades back:

(Non-Violence) is the only thing the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, ‘Unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.’ - M. K. Gandhi, talk with a British Journalist, Sept 1946

Politics of possessing arms

To me the entire nuclear deal with the US of A looks rather uninteresting and I have not bothered to follow the news stories. But, few amusing things that I observed which I wanted to share:
1. The entire deal seems to be about India'a ability to produce nuclear arms, or to put it in Bush lingo, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the American need to control Indian ability to create these WMD
2. America is willing to share some knowledge or skill or whatever if India will tell them what it does with the raw material that it used to make WMD. The American policy seems to say that 'as long as we know what you are doing, its fine with us'. What about the WMD of America, would they in return inform India what they do with their raw material or for that matter any other country? Seems rather unlikely.
3. Now there is a news that Australia who is one of the suppliers of the raw material with which we can make arms, wants to compel India to sign-up with America for them to supply us. In this day of free market economy, it looks childish. Australia should be happy to sell their raw material to whomsoever is willing to pay the highest price, what is their business what is done with these materials and how are the WMD to be deployed. Do they insist on such deals with all those people they supply stuff. In return can India too can ask Australia what the hell goes into the strange shining red un-edible thing the export to us in the name of Apple? Why not?
4. Our own political fight to me looks even more funny, the Commies want the ability to test shoot weapons, like the hero in old movies, they can once in a while target practice the WMD without being inspected by Uncle Sam. Some representative of Uncle Sam says, 'no go' for this, don't understand what is his problem. They should know that commies have never ruled India and are most unlikely to do anything on their own ever beyond street theater. And it is so harmless, after all Americans test shoot at real targets like Iraqis or Afghan mountain goats.
5. Now why would the commies be interested to WMD target practice is beyond my understanding. If it is deterrence, then against whom? Only Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka don't have nuclear weapons among our immediate neighbours. Bhutan is too small, Nepal are commie friends for now, Bangladesh are bengalis and hence friends of 80% of the commie leaders of India and that leaves Sri Lanka which has enough problems of its own for it to be deterred by a nuclear practice shot from India. The commie heads of India can be pre-occupied with meaningless banter endlessly.
6. What is the Congress' problem? It seems to be saying 'look we made a deal, we don't care what anyone thinks, we go ahead with', I suppose this is the PMs idea of 'inclusive growth' which is so much tom-toms these days.
7. And finally, Georgie old man, where were you all these days, we missed you. What an amusing analysis, if only Pranab and others in the Cabinet had any sense of humour they would have laughed their hearts out with his analysis. What is he supposed to have said, 'that in the US the head of the state cannot bluff so much' and, 'in China for such a deal the PM would have been shot'. That is by far the boldest reality statement on the two super powers by any politician in India today. Georgie's best since the time he (rather late in the day) admitted to being frisked on arrival at the US airport when he was a minister in the cabinet. At one stroke, he had lampooned the US President (how much Bush has bluffed in the US over the WMD among other things in the last few years is well recorded) and on the other, done a provocation on the Chinese, who have been doing a major PR as a built up for the Olympics.
8. P.S. - I think the only sad part of this entire comedy show being enacted is the non-participation of the old bunch of BJP jokers. Poor sods, they are so much caught up in self doubt these days.

Maybe my understanding is simplistic, but, I think realist. The US will prevail is foregone conclusion. Communists don't have the guts to pull the plug on the Congress, they have never had it going so good for them, they will eventually settle for some face saving formula. The congress does not care one way or the other, even if there were by-elections tomorrow, with no visible opposition, they perhaps can win with a better majority. Ultimately nuclear technology is the power and politics of possessing arms, the powerful and vulnerable want to own, possess, create, sustain as much arms as possible as they consider themselves weak without the weapons. The politicians don't understand arms, but, think it is their right to control them. Arms are no great development priority, inclusive or otherwise, nuclear arms are extremely destructive and there is no logic for nuclear energy for a poor country as the technology for it is extremely costly. We can live peacefully without both, but, we may then miss all the comedy!

De-Classified CIA documents on Communist Party of India

A few years back I remember reading a column by an ex-Communist party member who questioned the patriotic credentials of the communist parties in India and who had chronicled (there was a reference to a book, I have since then lost the article, anyone who knows more on this can shed light) their biased behaviour particularly during the freedom struggle. Certain facts that shocked on me included how the Communists wanted Independence being granted to India to be withheld for some time as Russia was still recovering from the War!

Of course all of are aware that though the grass root communist movement representing people often fights for the local issues, the national level party seems best suited to be in the opposition, as their protests are always louder than their positive contributions. While the 30 years of the Communist rule in Bengal is being celebrated, here is some news that might upset the celebrations. The recently de-classified documents from the CIA archives apparently contain the following revelations. They have been brought to light by a right of center blogger group from India and a detailed article on this issue is available here :

"HK Surjeet influenced by Russia to setup an underground organization

CPI did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army

China Russia insisted that the CPI must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.

With the PLA now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential liberator in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959

4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Peking

Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal

a foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas

letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies

Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in May 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party"