Age of Irreverence!

The 'New Indian Express' in its editorial comment of July 19,2007 refers to the Presidential poll campaign of July, 2007 as marked by unprecedented acrimony witnessed in no earlier election for that office. The nomination of UPA candidate Prathbha Patil led to media exposure of the illegal and criminal activities indulged in by her close relatives and in which her connivance is difficult to disprove. There may be exaggerations but most of the details revealed by Indian Express and other print and visual media will stand the test of scrutiny. The Congress and UPA constituents remain silent about the blemished record of their candidate and Indian Express cautions that Prathiba's elevation to the highest office of the country will not lead to allegations being discarded on that count alone . It's reason, the editorial says, is because what is being demonstrated as the temper of these times is 'that the relationship between the people and power, or the people and their institutions is changing in dramatic ways.... The change is not all due to coming of new technologies and wider access to them. The new ways of seeing have also to do with a waning of deference and the establishment of a more intimate -- and a more irreverent -- equation with our institutions'.
This is a radical, even revolutionary departure from time and tradition worn practices. Indians always genuflect before authority; political,hierarchichal, social, religious or cultural. They seldom dare to challenge individuals or institutions which demand their implicit obedience. .One reason for this, pointed out by Dr.B.R. Ambedkar in many of his writings, is that our society has evolved in ways which show scant regard for the individual, for his rights and his autonomy. The individual was destined to fit into a collective unit, be it of the village or joint family or caste or occupation. The transformation, placing the individual at the centre, has been slow in arriving but is now an inevitability from which there is no return. In India, social change doesn't come in the Western manner through revolutions that shake the earth but at snail's pace,unfolding so slowly, one never knows it is there. Could this be because our concept of Time is different, not the Western linear time, advancing irreversibly in a straight line and against which man races but a cyclical movement where everything repeats itself?
The signs of the current change could be discerned by any one who read V.S. Naipaul's 'India - A Million Mutinies Now'(1990), which graphically pointed out new trends being initialized by individuals in this land of continental proportions and now acquiring a momentum and strength of their own that cannot be supressed. The individual, transcending caste,religion,language,gender,position is beginning to assert his self. In this assertion the awe for persons in power will decline. His Excellency, The President of India will become Mr.President of the Americans. Mr. Prime Minister will have to rise from his Honourable seat and get ready to be questioned by the commoner.

Dance,dance,dance!

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters!

Dance,dance,dance till you drop! - W.H.Auden.
India is a country with diverse physical traditions and dance forms. You can number them by the hundreds. But most of us feel threatened by movement. Trapped in rigid body attitudes we rarely use our bodies to create, express or communicate. The body has a language and a wisdom of its own and those who never discover or apply them are the poorer for it. This is the message, Tripura Kashyap, an accomplished dancer, choreographer and trainer, conveys in her book 'My Body,My Wisdom' published by Penguin Books, India. Reading the book brought realisation of my limited patterns of movement and deep inhibitions in moving the body beyond its functional requirements. It dawned on me that the doors had been closed tight to a whole universe of experience and drastic action should be taken to to kick it open. An email to Tripura wailing of my situation was promptly replied to and some time later she wrote suggesting I attend one of her movement training sessions in Hyderabad, where she lives. The sessions were organised by Rainbow Inc. and its Secretary, the indomitable Vaneeta Bhattacharya who was a significant presence through out the programme . The sessions were spread over two days and held in the pleasant surroundings of the Vidyaranya School, more of a garden than a school, in Saifabad, the heart of Hyderabad. Reaching there, I longed to go back to childhood, only to study in Vidyaranya.
The participants were a diverse lot and included quite a few educators for special needs children who had prior exposure to dance and movement. Nithin, a radiologist, Nirupam, a farmer from Haryana as he chose to describe himself, Sherin, a software engineer, Alina who works for the Nandi Foundation, Aparna, an architect and interior designer, Priti Anand, an editor for Penguin and myself were among those who were in it for the movement experience. But there was perfect rapport between these distinct groups. Nalini Praksh, an accomplished dancer in her own right had come down from Coonoor to understand Tripura's ideas.
It was pure dance that we practiced, creating and choreographing our own movements, individually and in groups, based on themes of our choice in place of traditional dance instruction where one is taught movements structured by others with performance as the goal. In the initial period of body preparation we were made to sit, stand, balance and lie down, to paint brush which is exploring space with hands and fingers and exercise legs by moving it in various positions in space. We expressed our names through a movement sequence. This was my first brief experience of choreography and dancing. Every participant had to go solo from one end of the hall to the other, moving the body in any sequence of movements of his choice. We had to imagine an animal or bird of our choice and then imitate its movements. We were divided into two groups and each group had to carry its members from one end of the hall to the other, one by one till only two remained, and one of them had to carry the other. So, the strongest and the tiniest amongst us had to be the last two to remain for the entire exercise to end in a success. The intensive sessions, spread over two days, helped us in sqarely facing our inhibitions on body movement and body expression and gave us the courage and confidence to explore and understand the world using our bodies and our senses.
In well-written and convincing passages of her book, Tripura destroys the myth that only dancers can dance. She states that the natural instinct for movement that all of us had as children became task-oriented and restricted as we grew up. Dance was a communal activity in ancient societies and denoted social interaction without distinction between the audience and performers.They knew no forms or styles of dancing and it was the natural movements of the body in its many daily activities like hunting, fishing, cooking, that were their source. Today, dancing is a formalized, technique bound and performance oriented activity requiring years of specialized training. Four elements combine in any dance - bodies, space, time and force.
Creative dance therapy on which Tripura devotes a few chapters removes our misapprehensions on the subject. Dance therapy is not meant for the physcially disabled or the mentally ill. It deals with the intimate connections between our bodies, our movements and the workings of our mind. The body can and does influence the mind and reflect the mind. An heightened awareness of the body, eye contact and spatial awareness are the qualities that this therapy can impart to us. Her collaboration with Santha Kumar, a psychotherapist in Bangalore and their successful efforts to conduct programmes that help normal functioning adults to explore the body and its potential and experience an unstructured, personalized form of movement expression make interesting reading.
Tripura writes of her collaboration with Aanand Chabukeshwar, a drama therapist and Zubin Balsara who uses music as therapy and how they combined dance, drama and music as therapeutic intervention in mentally challenged children at Sadhana Village in Pune.. What was of significance to me was Zubin's idea that music is not to be merely listened to but a process in which we should actively participate. Sounds being the vocabulary of music, Zubin helps us to discover and vocalize our personal vocabulary of sounds. To feel one's music physically pulsate through one's body is energizing, notes Tripura.
The days spend with Tripura and the other participants were wonderful. We shared a lot of ideas, overcame the inhibitions of our bodies and delighted ourselves in the joy of unrestrained movement. It is an experience I cherish and which I hope will recur many more times in this life.

A 'Crezendo' and After

The Puritans of his time, British poet John Milton wrote, prohibited bear fighting, not for causing pain to the bear but for giving pleasure to the viewer. The upholders of public morality in contemporary India seem to spring from the same gene pool. Their latest contribution in the crusade to contain public morals from contamination is the strident demand to ban sale of the Condom pack, Crezendo, manufactured by the state owned Hindustan Latex, for containing a vibrating ring, which they allege is a sex toy. What astounds me is that leaders of all political parties, spanning a wide ideological spectrum, from militant right to extreme left have come out publicly in support of the demand.
This camaderie crossing party lines was visible on earlier ocasions. The closure of dance bars in Mumbai, the response to actress Khusboo's comments approving pre-marital sex, the controversy over Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty at a public venue, all drove home the point that Indian politicians speak in one voice, though with varying degrees of intensity. There is no point in blaming the political class for holding retrograde views. They only reflect the conservative values and mores prevailing in the society of which they are a part.
The challenge facing Indian liberals, men and women, is to transform the old and establish a new order wherein sexual freedom is an article of faith and sexual relations between consenting adults remain the sole concern of the people involved. A sexually open society can never be against Indian traditions. The civilisational heritage of India is of sexual openness and experimentation. Sexual repression was never its agenda. The erotic sculptures in Hindu temples, the serious study of Kama Shastra, the practice of Tantra which says union with the divine can achieved through sexual ecstasy, all prove that our civilsation was never prudish.
Somewhere along the line, attitudes changed and we began to associate sex with guilt and secrecy. Society imposed restrictions we meekly accepted. The regimentation of sexual behaviour gained legitimacy. The need of the time is to write the liberal testament on matters sexual. But we must ensure the freedom doesn't degenerate into licentiousness. To allow so, would be to play into the enemy's hands.

June 26, 1975

Thirty two years ago, on this day, and to be precise, at mid-night on June 25-26, a murder took place in the darkness and foreboding silence of Raisina Hill in New Delhi. A spineless Rashtrapati (as India's President is known), Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, signed the proclamation declaring a State of Emergency in the country, blindly putting his signature on the piece of paper send by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Democracy and Individual freedom had been murdered and their corpse buried. The young Indian Republic was facing the first major challenge to its existence, not from external enemies but from inside.
Day break saw prominent leaders of India's Opposition like Jayapraksh Narayan , Morarji Desai and many others put behind bars. Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution were suspended and Censorship imposed on the press. The ruling Congress party and its leader Indira Gandhi trampled on the democratic traditions carefully nurutured by the stalwarts of the freedom struggle, many of whom were also the founding fathers of India's Republic. What the British once did to their Indian subjects, Congress was repeating on citizens of free india. 'Indira is India and India is Indira' was the Congress slogan.
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's 'The Man Died' is about a similar situation in Nigeria. It's opening line ' The man dies who remains silent in the face of tyranny' echoes in me as I write this. Thousands of Indians, civil servants, judges, professors, journalists, doctors, technocrats, writers, all remained silent, before the ruthless might of the Establishment. They had died to ther conscience.
This blog entry is a tribute to those Indians who dared to fight the Emergency regime and stood up to the powers that be. It is not proper to list names, for all cannot be included. 'Indian Express' was the only English newspaper to challenge the dictatorship of Indira Gandhi. A 'Journalism of Courage' marked its presence. Justice H.R.Khanna boldly wrote a dissenting judgement allowing Habeas Corpus which led the New York Times to comment editorially 'If ever freedom and democracy returns to India, a grateful nation will erect a monument to Justice H.R.Khanna of the Supreme Court'.
This entry also salutes the rustic,illiterate, and simple people of the Indo-Gangetic plain, who in their millions, hit back through the ballot box in 1977, defeating Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party. They alone helped restore the democratic freedoms of the Republic . If they had done the reverse, perhaps, I would not be writing this entry today.

Ramachandra Gandhi - A Tribute

I confess that I never heard of Ramachandra Gandhi till reading newspaper reports announcing his death on June 13th at India International Centre, New Delhi. Of course, I had heard of his more famous brothers, Rajmohan Gandhi and Gopal Krishna Gandhi. The three are the grand children of two illustrious Indians, Mahatma Gandhi, on their paternal side and C.Rajagopalachari,India's last Governor-General, on their maternal side. Of course, it is not lineage that is on focus here but that Ramachandra Gandhi was a Professor of Philospohy with a Phd. from Oxford and an exponent of Advaita-Vedanta with a few erudite works to his credit.
Articles written about Ramachandra Gandhi in the Hindustan Times and New Indian Express, immediately after his demise, have convinced me to find and read his books and understand his ideas.
In the Hindustan Times, Sanjay Baru, now media advisor to the Prime Minister of India, has written of how he first met Ramu ( as Ramachandra is affectionately called),in 1979, immediately after joining the teaching faculty of the University of Hyderabad. Ramu was Prof. of Philosphy there. Ramu would jokingly say that his office was in the bathroom of Sarojin Naidu's Hyderabad home, 'Golden Threshold', (which the Nightingale of India had gifted to the University) while the Prof. of English sat in the bedroom. This, Ramu would say signified the status of Philosophy in modern University life in India. Sanjay is first introduced to Ramu at a seedy bar where he is enjoying his beer and listening to Hindi film tunes. Sanjay describes himself as being thrown off his feet when told that his fellow drinking companion was a Prof of Philospohy and the grandson of the Mahatma. Sanjay narrates how Ramu had launched a mini-chipko movement, with the support of students, against the cutting of a huge neem tree planted by Sarojini Naidu to build classrooms. And how the University authorities did chop it a few days later in the dead of night leading to Ramu resigning his job in protest. Sanjay shares more of his personal encounters which bring out the warm human being that the late Prof. was.
Chandan Gowda, writing in the New Indian Express devotes more attention to Ramu's philospohical inquiries, his deep understanding of Advaita and other Hindu scriptures and how he drew their connections with modern life from which they have been banished in the name of progress. Ramu was concerned that modern day politics had freed itself from trancendental concerns with the meaning of life and death to dwell in exlusive identities of caste,class,race,nation and religion. He warned that such identities wouuld only give false answers to the question of 'Who am I' or ' Who are We'. This reminds me of reading Raja Rao's book, 'The Meaning of India', where he quotes the French writer Andre Malraux telling Jawaharlal Nehru in Paris in 1936 'keep India from duality... let the great Sankaracharya, let him guide India. such my prayer'. Ten years later, Malraux confronts the Indian Socialist leader Jayapraksh Narayan in Paris with the question 'What influence has Sankara on the government of modern India? to which a startled JP could only smile . Ramu, Gowda points out, was very conscious of the fact that while economic domination of the West was widely criticised, there was little concern about the domination of the Western intellectual framework over the rest of the world. He considered the second as dangerous as the first and wanted to ensure that India's civilisational autonomy (svaraj) was preserved amidst the wild charge of globalisation.
Ramu's interest in Hindu names led him to discover that the word gandhi is a derivative of the word 'gandha' meaning perfume and that the gandhis are traditionally perfume sellers.
'Svaraj - A Journey with Tyeb Mehta's Shantiniketan Tryptych', 'Sita's Kitchen',
'I am Thou; Meditations on the Truth of India' and the novel 'Muniya's Light' are among his famous books.

How Reason's Work

We give reasons and receive them from others each day of our lives. But have we, for a moment, paused to inquire into the how of these reasons. Charles Tilly did!
Charle's Tilly is a social scientist, a Professor at Columbia University, who spends the major part of his professional life analysing large-scale political processes like revolutions and democratization. During this he discovered two patterns that forced him to think in different terms. One, that fellow-social scientists, mass media amd students explained complex social phenomena as the decision-making of a few influential actors, neglecting the unanticipated consequences, incremental effects and the subtle negotiation of social interaction. It is obvious that people rarely accomplish what they set out to achieve and events unroll differently than planned for. Yet in explaining social and political processes, conscious deliberation is emphasised to the exclusion of all else.
Second, that social processes resemble an intense conversation rather than soliloquies or a grandmaster's planning of chess moves. But few stood convinced of what he said.
Addressing this double challenge led him into the world of reasons, how people give reasons, how people receive reasons and how the relations between givers and receivers are negotiated, established, denied or repaired by the social process of reason giving. And the search resulted in his writing a very excellent book with one of the shortest titles a book could have 'Why?'
The author does not lay bare his theory of reason for he sees no need to have one for his purposes. Nor does he depend on anyone's theory. It is not his lot to worry as to whether the reasons people give are right or wrong or good or bad. Nor is he concerned about how individual nervous systems process new information as it comes in or in intellectual discussions of why things occur as they do. He does not question their significance; only, they are not the subject matter of this book, which concentrates on the social process of reason giving at the person - to - person scale.
Reasons, according to Tilly, fall in four broad but overlapping categories. They are:
1. Conventions
2. Stories
3. Codes
4. Technical Accounts
The four varieties of reasons differ significantly in form and content. Reasons match relationships. Reasons also justify practices that would not be compatible with other reasons and/or definitions of relationships. Reasons, Relationships and Practices are aligned.
The types of reasons are explained in detail by Tilly, devoting a chapter to each. They must be read carefully to get a proper grasp of what the author is aiming at. Stories are reasons which interpret events in terms of cause and effect. They are circumscribed in space and time and have a limited number of actors and actions. They re-work complex social processes and simplify them. They are grounded in commonly accessible every-day knowledge and throw hints of justification or condemnation. Conventions are bound by the logic of appropriateness and can be recognised by their simplicity and by the absence of further discussion. Conventions follow widely recognisable formulas. Codes, like Conventions, gain their credibility from the criteria of appropriateness rather than from cause-effect validity that prevails in stories and technical accounts. Of course, codes serve a variety of purposes in addition to justifying reasons and are made up of specialised sets of categories, procedures for ordering evidence and rules of interpretation. Technical accounts, like stories, combine cause-effect explanations but they are based on a systematic specialised discipline.
The author engages in vivid descriptions to make the reader understand the issues of the book. In the process, he also introduces the reader to new ideas and writers. Tilly refers to frames, first introduced by Erving Goffman. It shows how the very structure of organisations establish frames that focus attention on some kinds of information while screening out a great deal of other information that could, in principle, significantly affect their operation. He quotes Russell Hardin on street-level epistemology, Aristotle on Rhetoric, Anatole Broyard on Illness, Jessica Stern on terrorism and Thane Rosenbaum on legal theory, to name a few.
If it is believed that people give reasons based on their upbringing, fundamental beliefs, group membership or deep down character, then they must give the same reasons across a wide range of social circumstances. Do they? In contrast, some may claim that people give reasons at two levels - deep,authentic reasons for intimate acquaintances and quick, superficial, convenient reasons for the others. Reading this book would distance you from such beliefs, which to the author, are erroneous . The book's arguments and evidence prove that the reasons you give match your relations with those to whom they are given. Or in reverse, the reasons people give you reflect their relation with you.

Why? - Charles Tilly.
Princeton University Press.

In the Greens!

I play tennis. I am doing so for many years. It has been the only game in which I have been involved. Cricket has flown over my head like a sixer. Near the tennis courts, where I have been playing for the last few years, tucked away is a Golf Club. I have always been curious about Golf but never toyed with the idea of learning it. All of a sudden, I decided to give it a try and submitted an application to the Golf Club, (www.trivandrumgolfclub.com ). The Executive Committee has accepted my application, made me a member-elect, and today I started training under an able coach. The first day on the practice greens was not without its difficulties and minor struggles, but under proper guidance I hope to catch on to all nuances of the game and become a seasoned golfer in the days ahead. I am bound to learn the game within six months and play with the Captain who will assess as to how far I have picked up the essentials.
Well, I look forward to happy golfing days and will share with you my experiences as a budding golfer.

Time Out!

The smallest unit of Time in ancient India was Prana (time-span of one breath) which approximated to 4 seconds. Modern medical research confirms normal breathing frequency as 15 breaths/minute. How amazing! It was the coming of Railways that first made British think about unified time for all regions of India . The current Indian Standard Time, 5.30 hrs ahead of GMT, was fixed as the single time zone for the whole of India by the British in January,1906 with the meridian passing east of Allahabad at 82.5 E longitude as the central meridian . In recent times, it's been a pressing demand that the East and North East of India must have a separate time zone as the sun rises earlier than in the other areas of India. For a country of India's width, from Tripura to Gujarat, which distance is almost 2000kms, it is only fair that two time zones be put into operation so that daylight can be better used in the East. The sun rises and sets in the country's Eastern border two hours before it does in the Rann of Kutch in the deep West. Even Bangla Desh has set its time half an hour ahead of IST.
The official thinking, controlled by a bureaucracy and a political leadership that is North centric has still not responded favourably to this demand of the East. It has traditionally been a neglected area of India but is increasing in importance as it becomes India's gateway to the Pacific.

Post Script:
The Assamese film maker and Scientist Jahanu Barua, after 20 years of research in to time-zones in India, finds a strong case for a separate time zone for North-East India. As reported in the New Indian Express of Jan 24th, 2009 Jahanu Barua points out that the time difference between the eastern and western extremes of the country is more than 2 hrs. The Sun rises in the North-East at a longitude of 105 degrees east and hence north-east time is 7 hrs ahead of GMT. In the present situation the Eastern parts of India lose two to three hrs of daylight while the West gains time. This loss can easily be remedied by the country adopting two time zones, says Barua.

India's Spring Thunder!

Exactly 40 years ago, on May 24th, 1967, landless labourers in the remote West Bengal village of Naxalbari rose in arms against feudal landlords oppressing them. They were guided by Charu Majumdar, then a CPI(M) leader and the father of Naxalism , the name given to India's extreme left wing movement, borrowed from the village where it began. 'Chairman Mao is our Chairman' was their slogan. The movement soon spread to other regions where the mainstream Communist parties were traditionally strong like Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The Naxalites organised acts of violence against security forces and the feudal classes and their ultimate aim was to destroy the State.
Innocents being easy targets quickly fell prey to Naxalite weapons. This violence caused widespread revulsion and it was used by the Indian State to crush the movement with all its might. Means, not necessarily fair were taken recourse to by the State. This was aided by ideological splits within the Naxalite movement as to how the Indian Revolution should be conducted. The Naxalites were fragmented and by the mid-seventies their resistance crumbled under the force of counter-attack by the State . The movement did leave its mark on literature, art, polemics ,and political discourse. Many intelligent young men and women were attracted to it.
In recent years, Naxalites overcame their differences and various factions like the People's War Group, Maoist Co-ordination Centre and CPI(ML) Red Flag have united under one banner and one leadership. This, aided by the increasingly fragile internal and external situation have led to a resurgence of left extremism in India. The Government today considers it the biggest threat to India's internal security. The Government has admitted the existence of a 'Red Corridor' in India starting from Pashpuati in Nepal to Tirupati in India. The LTTE and Islamic terrorist groups are supposed to have contact with them. Their writ runs in many inaccessible parts of the Corridor.
Left extremist ideology of the Naxalites has a romantic touch associated with jungles and the chase, but it is one of the most reactionary and orthodox thought forms. Individual liberty is scarcely respected and dissent prohibited. Winds of change, influenced by human freedom, democracy and developments in technology is accepted by most Communist parties the world over who now strive to be part of the democratic mainstream. The collapse of the Soviet experiment, the economic and social reforms adopted by the Chinese Communist party and the changes in Eastern Europe have not convinced the Naxalites that an Indian Revolution is an impossibility. A civilisation, one of the oldest in the world, which has withstood the shocks and upheavals of thousands of years, has the strength and the resilence to bear and outlive Naxalism. India of the Buddha and the Chaitanya is not a land fertile for revolution. History will judge it a wise option if the Naxalites decide to end their self-imposed isolation and guerilla warfare and enter the democratic mainstream for Indian society will definitely accord a honourable place to them.

V.S. Achuthanandan - 'Smart' Moves

This blog has an entry dated May 15, 2006 welcoming V.S. Achuthanandan as the new Chief Minister of Kerala. On May 18th, he completes one year in office and it is time to take a bird's eyeview of what's been happening. The Chief Ministerial post had been eluding VS, as he is affectionately called, right from 1991. In 2006 at 83, with the party apparatus controlled by leaders who have no love lost for him, few expected VS to become CM even though his health was perfect, walk brisk and intellect razor-sharp, thanks to yoga, naturopathy and spartan dietary habits. Yet, he overcame insurmountable odds with persistence, patience and the support of the masses.
Leaders who occupy political office amidst high expectations soon fall with a thud. M.Karunanidhi of Tamil Nadu and Buddhadev Bhattachrjea of West Bengal who assumed office in the same week as VS are sliding down, thanks to the attack on the Dinakaran office in Madurai and the violence at Nandigram. But in Kerala, as he completes his first year in office, VS is riding the crest of a popularity wave, the common people swooning over him in admiration for his integrity and boldness while his enemies in the party and vested interests run for cover.
During the initial months VS was in an euphoria, settling down so to say, as it was the first time in his long political life that he was savouring the privileges of office. But he soon made it clear that it's business when he summoned the Director-General of Police and ordered him to immediately cancel the transfer orders issued to an upright, senior IPS officer while he was raidng the recording studios owned by the wife of a fellow IPS officer on receiving genuine complaints of copyright violations. This send a message to the people that the government stood by rule of law and would not bow before the high and the mighty. The entertainment industry which had been bearing the brunt of copyright piracy was thankful to him. Here was an intrepid leader, who would call a spade, a spade.
It was in Smart City that VS proved his long-term commitments to the development of the state. Smart City was a knowledge-based industry township, the icon of a new Kerala, that would be developed by Teecom Investments, promoters of the Dubai Internet City. The previous government which invited them finalised a deal which was a virtual throwaway of public assets that would have cost the exchequer dear. VS, as Opposition Leader checkmated the same and during the elections he was accused as anti-development on this count. VS stood his ground, renegotiated the agreement and on May 13th, Sunday, Teecom and the State government inked a pact which is widely appreciated as it is sober, balanced and on no account a sell-out of public interest. The investment will create 90,000 new jobs in the IT/ITES sector in the next 10 years. The State Government has 16% equity in the project which can be enhanced to 26%.
Munnar, often described as the Kashmir of the South with its misty peaks, rolling tea gardens, hill streams, grasslands and wooded forests was once an inaccessible part of Kerala, nestling in the Western ghats, its high culture and life style directed by English tea estate managers and a sublatern culture of near illiterate tamil plantation workers. The ambience, traditions and dress rules of the High Range Club in Munnar bear testimony to a bygone era. The departure of the English tea garden owners and managers led to the real estate and building mafia laying hands on this pristine land in the name of tourism promotion. Forests were encroached upon, bogus sale documents registered, revenue records forged, building permits sanctioned, all with the connivance of corrupt officals. Tata Tea which took over the British owned tea estates in Munnar was a willing collaborator and a habitual offender. They also appropriated thousands of acres of public lands. Their policy was to run with the hare and to hunt with the hound. Concrete monstrosities called resorts, totally out of sync with the natural setting began to mar the skyscape of Munnar. Tourists started descending in hordes and the accompnaying vehicular pollution, garbage and noise began to endanger the undisturbed habitats of precious wild life and choke natural resources . It was only a matter of time before Munnar would lose its charm to become an urban jungle. VS, as Leader of the Oposition visited Munnar to bring to light these illegal operations but the government turned a blind eye to it. The mafia was so powerful. When VS became Chief Minster, every one believed that his party would not allow him to touch these land-grabbers as all politicans and officials were dependent on them for funds and free vacations . VS, a seasoned political tactician bided his time for the final blow. Technology had developed beyond the imagination of land-grabbers. Remote Sensing by which lands could be digitally mapped and surveyed by satellites from space came to aid the government. With all its might and in full resolve, government moved ahead and started demolishing resorts and illegal construction on forest lands. No one has dared to come forward with title deeds and revenue records which are the only way of proving ownership, for they know these are fictitious and challenging the government in court with forged records would lead to perjury. The operation is continuing and the land mafia are on the run.

VS has distinguished himself in 365 days. His enemies are lying low, but it is early to write them off. Let us hope they don't have the last laugh.