Toppling Paper Boats: Modi At Sea

The red carpet walk where Narendra Modi pirouetted at the BJP’s national executive meeting was like a film star at Cannes endorsing a cosmetic company. It was not for a new film release.

If he was given the honour as the number one guy, it was just to keep the party’s face pretty. We will get to that in a bit.

His opponents are out of the woodwork. Two former chief ministers of Gujarat Keshubhai Patel and Suresh Mehta are helming what the newspapers call the banner of revolt.

Those in the party speaking against Modi are said to be close to Sanjay Joshi, an RSS leader who was a victim of Modi’s bullying tactics at the national executive. In their meeting, the dissidents spoke about an atmosphere of fear in the state. “A state of mini-Emergency in Gujarat is now being extended to the national level,” said Keshubhai, referring to Modi’s hustling Joshi out of the national meet…they felt BJP president Nitin Gadkari should not have succumbed to Modi’s blackmail or allowed him to hijack the party ahead of the Gujarat elections in December. Keshubhai, who yet again described Modi as a “dictator”, set the tone of the discussion, saying, “Crushing dissent is not the culture of the BJP or Sangh Parivar. We don’t want such despotic leadership.”

Why did they wait for the meeting to get over? Crushing dissent is very much a part of the Sangh Parivar culture; only, it is called party discipline. If it was all democratic, there would be a second rung leadership. Sanjay Joshi has become the rallying point because he isn’t big enough to be threatening. But don't forget he is a RSS man, and the RSS pulls the strings where the BJP is concerned where it matters.

They are talking about phone tapping. How is it then that Sanjiv Bhatt’s phone was not tapped when he says he has evidence of certain calls where Modi could be nailed?

It is surprising that they are complaining about it now when in 2008 Modi was all set to increase his spy network that would cost the state a staggering Rs 20 crore. Its main task was not to counter terrorism and foreign espionage. His spies were to watch every move of the state’s politicians, including the chief minister’s own men and rivals within the BJP, as well as prominent social workers and members of the business community.

Intensive spying by IB sleuths on local politicians at Modi’s behest have been doing the rounds since 2002, but six years later he increased it by almost 40 per cent. Around 400 government spies were active in the state and additional 93 spies were reportedly brought in from other departments or recruited afresh.

From Rs 17 crore spent every year on the spy network since 2003, the figure jumped to Rs 33 crore in 2008.

Politicians are an insecure bunch, and those like Modi use such blackmail tactics to stay in power and threaten people. It is entirely possible that all those who have been singing about economic development, including some Muslim businessmen, have been under such surveillance and just learned to keep their mouths shut.

Could Modi justify such expenditure? He is the one who rails against terrorism all the time, so why did he not deploy vigilante groups for more concrete efforts?

That is the point. I do not agree with this state of emergency in Gujarat extending to the national level. BJP president Nitin Gadkari knows that right now Narendra Modi is a good publicity stunt. The meeting was in Mumbai, and the message was not for the politicians of the party, but for the business groups in the city. Gujarat is the BJP’s piggy bank. Nitish Kumar may have streamlined infrastructure and made the backward Bihar liveable, and Modi has only added tinsel to gold, but the latter is, as I said in the beginning, a better photo-op.

Much is being made of L.K.Advani’s absence. Let us be pragmatic. Mr. Advani may not want a second term for Gadkari, but Modi is not his calling card. If anything, he has let a Modi flourish simply because the BJP needs a fishbowl. The senior leader is in complete command, as he was even during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s tenure as prime minister. He knows who to keep where. And Modi could push away a Sanjay Joshi, but not a Gadkari. This is the RSS at play, a game Advani knows only too well.

The more important point is that Modi has to return where he belongs. It is this sense of being rooted in one place that makes him both arrogant and insecure. His boasts are exaggerated and his fears result in paranoia about his own. Sometimes, I do feel a tinge of sadness for him. He has to live with so many ghosts and so many private moments grabbed from others. Does he have the luxury of a life of his own?

Sons and Lovers: N D Tiwari's DNA

The sympathies are with the guy who does not want to be called a bastard. Today, he has the courts on his side, and the police have forcibly taken octogenarian Congress leader Narain Dutt Tiwari’s blood sample for a DNA test.

Rohit Shekhar Sharma has people’s sympathies for only one reason – N D Tiwari was caught in a sex scandal. It is easy to add more salacious stuff to such notoriety and anyone who suffers on account of such a person will be deemed a victim.

Is Rohit really a victim?


Here are the facts:

His mother Ujjwala Sharma had an affair with Tiwari:

“Between 1977 and 1995 Tiwari, who was then a nobody, used to visit my father Sher Singh — a minister at the Centre. He said his wife could not have children because of some physical problems and persuaded me to have his child. He told me he would complete the formalities of marriage after their divorce,” she says.

Rohit was born in February 1979.

Tiwari allegedly assured her he would adopt him once he ended his marriage. “He came home for Rohit’s birthdays and festivals. He had become Uttar Pradesh CM by then. So I felt he should be allowed to choose the appropriate time for owning up to his son,” she says.

She is an educated woman, retired recently as Sanskrit lecturer. She was involved with him, aware that he was married. Since he knew her father, did she not bother to find out the truth about his wife? She says he was a “nobody” then, so he obviously could not exert pressure to silence her.

He snapped ties with her and the son in 1995. His wife had died two years ago. He was not interested in the relationship. She moved on and got married to Bipin Sharma; they have a son. Tiwari resurfaced in her life. Amazingly, she admits:

“Between 2002 and 2005 there was a semblance of a relationship between us.”

She had a husband, and went ahead to be with a man who was now quite a prominent politician, who had deserted her and the son, and shown no remorse.

In 2006, she and her husband parted ways. It was also the year Rohit started a campaign against Tiwari.

“In 2006, I started a campaign against him and sent out letters to everyone in Uttarakhand about our relationship. He kept telling people I was not his son but just a blackmailer. That’s when I started looking for legal options. This is not a battle for his property or money. I just want to make peace with myself. He had told me a 1,000 times in private that I looked like him. How I had inherited his nose. But if I met him in public, he would simply look through me. That hurt.”

If he knows, then this public acceptance does not make sense. I am also a bit wary about certain aspects. 

Take these pictures that Rohit has submitted to the court. The first where Tiwari is asleep bothers me. One assumes the mother clicked it, and this was when he was quite young and the situation had potential. Why would a woman take a photograph of her sleeping lover with her son obviously posing for the camera? Was she already collecting evidence? Tiwari may be an immoral man. But was he doing it alone?

Rohit’s concerns are emotionally understandable:

“While my mother was labeled unchaste and a badchalan aurat, Tiwari got away with it. No child should be called a harami or a bastard. I first learnt that Tiwari was my father when I was 11. My grandmother told me I was different from my brother Siddarth because I had a different father. It completely shook me up.”

This is a sexist society and the woman does have to bear the brunt of such slurs, unfortunately. However, Tiwari has not got away with it. His reputation is at a low, and has always been.

It must have certainly affected Rohit to discover who his ‘real’ father was. But, was it necessary for the grandmother to inform him? Who called him a bastard? Where was this announced? And why? He is the legal son of his mother’s ex-husband, who he says has been good to him.

And now, when the courts are taking his paternity concern forward, he says it will still be complicated:

“I will then have two fathers — one legal and another biological.”

So, what is this battle for?

• To get dignity for his mother? It will draw attention to something that is over. 
• To get his rights in terms of a name? Strange that he would want to be associated with someone he has no respect for and from whom he says he wants nothing.  
• To bring closure? If Tiwari turns out to be the father, of which he is reasonably certain, then what will it close? That should be it.

Will N D Tiwari be forced to accept him when he already did in so many other ways? We are talking about a traditional idea of institutionalised relationships when this one was far from traditional in every aspect.

I will not offer lip sympathy for Rohit Sharma because I do not think he is doing it only so that he can sleep well at night.

Here, let me recount another case that is not known to many. A prominent person from the entertainment industry had an affair with another well-known woman from the same field. His wife had no intention of divorcing him, so he made no promise of marriage. They were the cool couple. Suddenly, she decided she wanted to be a mother and stopped taking her pills without his knowledge. At some point they drifted apart, or he left her for a younger woman. This time, his wife was ready to divorce. Woman #1 already had a daughter. Woman #2 had a son; he accepted him. Woman #3 had a daughter. Now, they are one big family, all in the same field.

It is a world where these things are socially acceptable. Yet, the second woman could be said to have wanted to use the child as bait. It is another matter that he did not go along, but did not shirk his duty either. But could she cry foul if he had not? Would the son have taken him to court? The man’s acceptance is not generosity but a bit of a kick to be considered a potent ladies’ man at his age.

So, why did Tiwari not go along and claim to be a father when he had no compunctions making merry in government circuit houses? Would this not add to his stock rather than deplete it?

When the jokes about the jab that might do him in are over, perhaps people will try to understand that by playing the ‘who wants to be called a bastard?’ game we, the observers, run down invisible illegitimacy that exists on a far larger scale, beyond the cocoon of looking for the real daddy.

(c) Farzana Versey

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My view on the earlier sex scandal: Old Man and the She

Half Truths: Satyamev Jayate (Doctors in trouble)

Doctors and medical frauds should concern us all. I have had some horrid experiences that made me revaluate the dependency we have on medicines. Capsules, doctors, hospitals have been a prominent part of my life. So, I was truly glad to watch yesterday’s episode of ‘Satyamev Jayate’ because there are many of us who have no option but to blindly trust our bodies with those who are qualified but treat us as organs, rather than people.

This time, the host cut down on the vicariousness and concentrated on more information. However – yes, there is a clause – for much of the show the emphasis was on how people are forced to take medicines when they do not need any. One particular example was of a man who flashed a packet of ORS and said that he could have been cured of his diarrhoea and vomiting with this at Rs. 15 instead of the few thousand he spent at two different hospitals.

There are such cases. But ORS is available over the counter or can be prepared at home. What if people start thinking that since most doctors are going to fleece you/mislead you, it would be better to self-medicate? What if it indeed turns out to be a serious illness?

The solutions were simplistic. Go to a chemist for generic medicine and you save money. This is for drugs that are expensive and for major illnesses. What about those we take for common ailments?

It would have been topical had the show also brought up the recent case of a poor man whose wife was denied admission to a hospital after an accident and his sorry tale of running from one to another to another till she died.

The tale of a village in Andhra Pradesh where all women had their uteruses removed should have been seen from the population control perspective rather than medical malpractice. Someone is responsible at a higher level; this cannot be doctors just wanting to make women sterile to earn money.

It is perturbing to know that India spends only 1.4 % of its budget on healthcare. And it was good to see the efforts made by some to use the pay-in-advance scheme, where the poor and the rest can benefit based on their capacity.

The racket and the treatment are two different aspects. Aamir Khan, it is being said with much appreciation, grilled the Medical Council of India (MCA) chief. All he managed was a schoolmaster version of extracting a promise to behave. Taking away licenses from doctors for malpractice is all very well, but how many doctors do we have with regard to ratio of population? Many people still visit quacks. Then, there is the ancillary industry of homeopaths and ayurveda, and these days they are all meshing.

I only hope that we don’t see a spurt of ‘actions taken’ and then the lull. This is an ongoing problem, a tragedy of our country.

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Let me share something I had written earlier about exposing a doctor:

A few years ago I had followed up a case of neglect that could have led to death. A wrong blood group diagnosis prior to surgery. In a chawl at the far suburb of Ghatkopar in Mumbai resided this lower middle-class family; they put all their papers and trust before me. It was late night when I left them.

Next morning I decided to meet the doctor. I entered the clinic and after a very long wait his wife, also a doctor, told me he was not in town. It was a lie for the fruit vendor outside had in fact given me the exact address and also confirmed his presence.

When I went out, I told him he wasn’t in. “Aisa kaise ho sakta hai? Hum ne khud dehka aatey hue aur unki gaadi bhi yahaan hai.” (How is it possible? I saw him enter and his car is still there.)

It was raining outside. I crossed the street and lay in wait, hoping for something. Nothing. The showers were getting incessant and I was drenched. It must have been the time of a blink of an eye when I saw THE car get out of the gate. I couldn’t move. Where would I? How? It was a helpless situation. I left. An hour later a colleague from a magazine told me that he had got a call from the doctor, he was a nice man, very influential. The message was that I should keep shut.

I did not.

What happened? Did the family get anything out of it? No. Except that they had raised their voice. No action was taken despite their case being put before the medical council.

Slowly, it was almost forgotten…a year or so later I was shocked to read that this doctor had been given some award by his own fraternity.

The media today has a greater reach, more influence. It should use it as a weapon against offenders and act as a shield for those who need protection.

As for me, that scene still haunts me of a car that escaped and the rain that wouldn’t stop. It haunts me that I could do nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Sunday ka Funda

An ass, carrying a load of wood, passed through a pond. As he was crossing through the water he lost his footing, stumbled and fell, and not being able to rise on account of his load, groaned heavily.

Some Frogs frequenting the pool heard his lamentation, and said, "What would you do if you had to live here always as we do, when you make such a fuss about a mere fall into the water?"

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A fable

Heads you win?

As though the brain is not complex enough, it rattles us with its ability to turn the tables on us.

We have heard of cases of leading scientists, philosophers, writers who were considered failures. This only proves that academic prowess is not a good yardstick to judge the ability to create and be innovative.

However, how do we explain the sudden genius of a man who is beaten up?

I first read about Jason Padgett, a school dropout, a while ago. Outside a karaoke bar, a few muggers assaulted him. The kicks on his head caused severe concussions. The results were remarkable and shocking:

Now, wherever Padegtt looks, he sees mathematical formulae and turns them into stunning, intricate diagrams he can draw by hand. He is the only person in the world known to the skill, which experts say, was caused by his head injury.

Not only is he a maths genius but according to neuroscience tests also an "acquired savant":

Savant syndrome is the development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic, that develop to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person superhuman.

Is Padgett's genius 'mindful'? It is said that due to injury a certain part of the brain is overcompensating. Does this not occur in instances of physical disabilities, where the visually impaired have a sharpened sense of smell and hearing? Or those with motor dissonance?

Some people lose their memory after such accidents. I wonder if this too is a loss that resulted in a gain. Does it mean Padgett has lost his memory of being a failure?

If we use this example, then is genius limited to certain areas? Are we confusing skill for genius? What if the formulae he sees suddenly tranform into incoherent patterns that might make complete sense to him but not to others immediately?

Isn't artistry of greater value when there is consciousness?

That would be heady.

Ask the vexpert - 31

Question: My husband wants me to perform oral sex on him early in the morning without brushing my teeth. I am confused if I should go ahead with his fetish.

Sexpert: If you brushed before going to bed at night, your mouth is clean enough in the morning. Occasionally, ask him if he would like a cup of tea instead and postpone his desire till you have brushed.

Me: Cut your toothbrush to size and attach, add paste. Alternatively, stick brush wipes to condom. Oral and oral hygiene both done. This is not a fetish. You husband is big into time-management. Or, he’s still cutting his teeth at experimentation.

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Question: I am 21 years old and my penis is 7 cm when erect. Whenever I masturbate, the semen just oozes out instead of coming out with force. Will I be able to become a father?

Sexpert: Whether it oozes or spurts does not matter. As long as the sperm enters the vagina, it will have the motility to reach the ovum and cause pregnancy. If your spermatic fluid contains enough sperms (and there is no reason why it may not) you can become a father.

Me: Your semen is like the reluctant fundamentalist. Or let us say that what you thought was liquid asset is stuck in fixed bonds. The oozing out is a result of the exit load it entails.

You’ve got the medical opinion about becoming a father, so yes you will. And who knows, the child may make up for the trickle and be a ‘force’ to reckon with?

Friends and Foes: The Case of Rajat Gupta

'Friends of Rajat Gupta' is not the sort of thing you’d read about, much less imagine it as a movement.  But in the closed world of the famous rich, protecting one of their own is crucial in some ways to their own reputation.

The case is pretty simple. Gupta, former head of McKinsey & Co. as well as a director at Goldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble, gave away vital information to fund manager Raj Rajaratnam involved in insider trading that earned him what we in India would call 'oopar ki kamaai' (in the literal sense topped earnings, euphemism for illicit money).

On Monday, Gupta's trial began in a Manhattan federal court. Those who understand financial skulduggery and the legal machinery that might pin it down believe that the courts won't be able to prove a thing, unless Raj Rajaratnam who has been charged guilty last year testifies. With evidence.

Will the Friends of Rajat group play any role? Is their testimony of his character of any consequence? Since the trial is on and the case is subjudice, is their public display of support not against the law and tantamount to interfere in the legal process?

Mukesh Ambani, Adi Godrej and Deepak Chopra have been certifying his impeccable credentials.

Dr. Chopra, who is on the witness list, has said:

“I have known Rajat Gupta for 25 years and am pleased to call him my friend. Rajat has devoted many hours working in fields that are close to my heart -- particularly in promoting global health through the eradication of infectious diseases."

Without getting into the merits of the case, I'd like to pose a few general queries that could apply to any such case, in another country or India:

The open letterchallenges the press and public portrayal:

"The REAL Rajat known to us over several decades is completely at odds with the public narrative. To our collective knowledge which spans a lifetime and covers hundreds of friends Rajat has:

1-always upheld the highest of ethical standards;

2-been judged, without a chance to tell his side of the story; and

3-been mischaracterized by people who have little or no knowledge of him."


Most of these people have not worked with him. What we know of people through personal interaction could be at odds with their professional persona and aspirations in an entirely different environment.

The 'Real' can also be a perception.


1. Ethics is abstract territory, more so in the realm of business. A few 'tips' to a friend might be seen as ethical in the narrow sense. It would be a bit strange, though, to imagine that a Wall Street veteran wouldn't know how it might be used.

Did he benefit from it? Let's just say that if there's nothing like a free lunch, then his luncheon was a large spread, at the very least. It could be a symbolic gesture or symptomatic of a malaise.


2. He is given an opportunity to put forward his version. It probably causes consternation that this is being done in a court and not across the table, or under it.


3. People who are under the scanner for misdemeanours are judged on those and not based on their history.


It is arrogant for public figures to arrogate to themselves the right to dismiss characterisation based on their 'social' knowledge of a person. Besides, philanthropy is often refuse if not a refuge.

It bespeaks of scant respect for law, for propriety, and even for ethics.

Rajat Gupta may or may not be innocent, but this sort of gathering of support is an indication that perhaps there is more at stake than one man's tip-off to a hedge fund manager.

It is particularly disconcerting because the Occupy Wall Street movement that spread throughout America brought people to the streets who had suffered from just these kinds on insider deals.

Is Gupta a victim, a fallguy? Possible. But the lobbyists will speak up for him. And they might win because the good American Indian is vital for politics. A bit of whispered trade secrets could well be hushed up if the kitty is replenished for some loose 'change'

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A detailed look at The Wall Street Fall