Why Anna is not Gandhi?

The modern-time Gandhi is not a Gandhi. Gandhi, a fan of Jesus Christ, asked us to turn the other cheek, if we are slapped. Anna Hazare, an apostle of Gandhi, enquired whether it was just one, when he heard a man giving a tight slap to Sharad Pawar.

The disappointment at the ‘just one slap’ that he didn’t even try to conceal testifies folksy innocence so as exposing his non-Gandhian facet. It could even be a reflection on his hearty sense of humour. But it came out at wrong time. People want to see Gandhi in Anna. And, alas, he is not to be.

Not that his spontaneous response to the paraphrased slap gate was in supportive of violence, for the incident, in the first place, was so trivial that nobody including Pawar has taken it seriously. Public nuisance, committed by a suspected insane, cant be termed as violence. It was not a case for Anna’s sermon on the goodness of non-violence. But he preached the one after his initial lighter-vain reaction attracted severe criticism. And that, in fact, made him non-Gandhi. Gandhi did never take a U-turn on his stand, no matter how unpopular it was, to match with the popular sentiment or to avert criticism. On realisation of his stand not bought by anyone, he would dare to ‘walk alone, walk alone,’

Anna, in the first place, would have not joked on the news of somebody slapped somebody, if he were to be Gandhi. Gandhi’s endearing traits include a heartfelt laughter, but it was never at the expense of a slapped one. A joke cracked by him on such incidents, regardless of its power of punch, would have been uncivilized. As he pioneered civil disobedience, Gandhi was a champion of civilised culture.

The way Anna is gripping on Ralegon Siddi, his native village and open laboratory for his Gandhian experiments, has made him seen as a dictator. Assuming a tinge of dictatorship is required for a leadership to bring in order Anna is acceptible and even Gandhi wanted to be a dictator. “Sometimes I feel the requirement of dictatorship to bring in good. If you make me dictator for a day the only thing I would like to do uproot the toddy palms in the country. I will se to it not a single tree standing,” said Gandhi. His dictatorship was aimed at prohibition of drinking alcohol and it would have not hurt anyone. Anna too is earnest in bringing in prohibition, but flogging of drunkards is not acceptable. Many of the objectives of Talibanis might possibly be noble, but their method of implementation has made them demons. How can we, rejecting Taliban, accept Anna’s intolerant attitude of flogging the sinners?

“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding,” said Gandhi. Anna’s anger against corruption is righteous and it is respected. But, when it was vented out the form of an unreasonable verbal onslaught on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh it was clear that Anna had no correct understanding because he was in the firm grip of the two enemies.

Anna used the most effective weapon, given by Gandhi, to goad the government to the Jan Lokpal bill: fasting. But the methods adopted made people calling it blackmail. And Anna didn’t feel shy to say he would continue to blackmail, if his methods are called blackmail.
Tusha Gandhi’s observation on Anna can some-up and explain why he is not Gandhi: “Bapu’s method of fasting was completely different than that of Anna. Bapu would have not threatened anyone the way Anna has. During Bapu’s time, fasting was never used against an opponent. Rather, it was used to lead a friend to the right path.”

The court magic: foes are friends

This year, the judiciary showed its effectiveness in many ways. It looked so simple when the powerful paraded into jail as the judiciary turned the impossible into cheaply possible. It was magical.

While you can adjudge the metaphorical judiciary the man of the year award for having put a record number of corrupt behind bars, at national level in general, it deserves a state level bonhomie prize in Karnataka. It has achieved an impossible feat by bringing arch enemies close to be thick friends.

Just a year ago, the possibility of the JD(S) of H D Deve Gowda joining hands with Reddy brothers was unthinkable. The Reddys moving closer to Congress was unimaginable and Yeddyurappa befriending with Kumarswamy was just impossible. The judiciary has made all it possible. It played a leveler bringing them to book. And the birds of same feather flocked together.

The Reddys who had slapped a bribery case on him are now banking on Kumaraswamy for their man’s victory in Bellary. They had even filed a murder case against him, while he and his father retaliated with the charges of illegal mining. Now the chumminess is prevailing and Kumaraswamy has put his man to work for their man Sriramulu. The senior Gowda is generous enough not to put a candidate against him.

Yeddyurappa, after serving twenty-three-days of jail term thanks to the cases instigated by Gowda & Sons, has now pledged not to talk ill about the first family of the Karnataka politics. He has long forgotten that the former prime minister had once called him a bastard. The hatchets are buried. In response of the new found affability, the patriarch has shown his readiness to build a new political platform for the disgraced BJP man just in case he leaves the party.

The Congress that went on its foot all the way from Bangalore to Bellary to show the world the demons called the Reddys is now keen on supervising the comforts given to G Janardana Reddy at the Chanchala Guda jail. The mining lord is finding the VIP cell better than his Bellary palace to pull strings.

How did it happen?

Take Yeddyurappa’s case. After he refused to bend below the floor, Deve Gowda showed him the taste of his politics. His two men mounted fifteen cases on Yeddyurappa, while the governor played the supporting character sanctioning his prosecution. Deve Gowda’s direction turned superlative with a skillful script writing of Ananthkumar and able production management of L K Avani. Santhosh Hegde was just a light boy, but his contribution is worth mention.

After all Yeddyurappa is a Deve Gowda of BJP. He gave back with the same coin and as a result Gowda’s two sons and a daughter-in-law stood in the dock. The magic started working. Kumaraswamy first got anticipatory bail followed by Yeddyurappa getting an interim stay on legal proceedings against him. The cases against Kumarswamy and his wife Anitha were quashed followed by Yeddyurappa getting bail and anticipatory bail. Eldest son of the Gowda clan Balakrishne Gowda too got stay on his DA case. And at the end, foes are the best chums.

After the god mother dumped them, Deve Gowda was better god father for the Reddys. While Janardana Reddy moved close to Congress through CBI, Sriramulu struck a chord with Kumaraswamy. The realization was that all were in the glass cage of their own and throwing stone would bring mutual destruction. Better bet was to unit together to destruct the world.

With such a remarkable to feat to its credit, the court is shy of a step to complete accomplishment. The judiciary is still not able to goad Gowda going for a jadduki jappi with road builder Ashok Kheny. The long drawn battle between the two Goliaths is continuing taking its toll on legions of poor Davids called farmers, who are supposed to have lost their land for the express highway. The court can’t put an end it because the first Goliath Kheny is an expert in winning court cases- he has won 543 cases so far- and he is not scared of legal battle. The second Goliath Gowda is a diehard politician who sees a political opportunity even in the death of a farmer. Guess who can save us.

Mallya and Rajeev Chandrashekar: what's the similarity?

Corporate debt restructure (CDR) can be a fraud if a lender shows up his vulnerability as a reason for his failure to recover debt from a rich borrower. It’s the fraud especially when the public money is involved. It’s cheating when the government ruthless on common taxpayers spells out its intention to bail out a self-indulgent business house.

The lenders- a 13-bank consortium- could not figure out the way to get back money from the king of good time, after many rounds of deliberations and they have requested him to come out with a ‘credible’ plan. What a credible plan can the borrower propose other than finding a safe escape rout for himself?

And the debt burden they are trying to soften is not a small amount. It’s hovering around Rs.7057.87-crore that is almost equal to the budget size of the Bangalore city municipality. And whose money is it, after all?

Banks are not the only ones who are at Vijay Mallya’s mercy. His Kingfisher Airlines has defaulted payments wherever it found it possible. Oil companies, airports, and leasing companies are praying for Mallya’s prosperity so that they can fill their emptying coffers.

But, there is no apparent link between Mallya’s prosperity and his debt repayment. As the trend goes, with a rich borrower getting richer his defaulting rates go high and the lenders rally behind him with all possible CDR formulae. And the government finds itself in a fix and starts looking for ways and means to bail him out, because it would be a question of survival for the public companies for which the rich is owed to pay or repay.

So, better the oil companies and the airports bet on the pressurised government for the bail out package rather than indulging in a pointless prayer to the listless god. Let the economy go to dogs. If the bail out widens the fiscal deficit gap, then there is the tax tool to peg it up. Rest assure when the expert economist on the helm.

And then, Mallya is a Rajyasabha member. It would not be difficult for him to pull strings from the very corridor of power. He knows how importnat the power is, especially after Jitin Prasada spoilt his design to get a waiver of Rs. 600 crore from HPCL, last year. And you should have seen how cleverly he handled politicians in Karnataka to ensure his entry to the upper house. It seemed, then, the loss of Kingfisher Airlines was the gain of the legislators who supported his candidature. Fortunes of each JD(S) MLA went up by a Fortuner and a purse of cash. And the media reports on the political corruption were effectively stalled thanks to his efficient political secretary who is also his media advisor. An ex-journalist, she knows how to handle the hacks.

The success formula in this sort of riddle seems to be one, and it is amazing to note a similarity in the methods of Mallya to that of his fellow Rajyasabha member elected from Karnataka. Rajeev Chandrasheakr is now a media baron in the state claiming his iconic right over Namma Bengaluru got entry to the Rajyasabha through the same JD(S) rout as Mallya did and before that he had got a CDR settlement with the banks and shored his company up from the debt burden of Rs.2000 crore.

It’s a old story that Rajeev Chandrashekar and his father-in-law TPG Nambiyar stage managed a quarrel between them that ended in an out-of-court settlement. Nambiayar had complained that his son-in-law had fraudulently diverted funds from BPL Ltd to subsidiary companies floated subsequently after the flagship company availed bank loans to the tune of Rs. 2000 crore. He managed to get a CDR scheme, in 2005, which converted the debt burden to mere Rs.80 crore to be repaid in equated monthly installments.

But, till now not an installment is paid and the banks are not complaining. We know how the MP did this. But, we won’t write it because we are scared he will pull us to the court. Moreover, he is in the forefront of the anti-corruption crusade, these days.

The TCS Story...and beyond- a book review

When a person sets out to tell the story of an organization he headed and was part of it for more than four decades, unavoidably it becomes his life story. So, ‘TCS Story …and beyond’ is also the story of S Ramadorai told by himself.

And he doesn’t deny it. “This book is autobiographical because my own life and that of
TCS have been inextricably linked,” says Ramadorai.

What strikes you, while reading the book, is that there is an enthralling story teller in the garb of a star CEO and the trait helped Ramadorai building a loyal core team around him, while for the work force, at large, he was a charmer. And he says attrition was never a problem for the TCS when the rivals were finding talent retention an imperative challenge.

This of skill of story telling is evident in the book by an unlikely author, as his self-description goes, and makes for an absorbing reading, which otherwise would have been a retired business executive’s self-congratulatory autobiography. While a lucid and intimate style of writing takes you through a great journey of a conglomerate pioneering such a significant domain as IT that changed the face of new India, it will have you so engrossed that you will forget wondering there was a flipside of the success story. If there was any, in reality, the book gives no hint. Ramadoaria suffers from a lifetime disappointment that he could not convince his management to take up hardware business though.

While it is autobiographical, the book is an authentic document of the contemporary history as it outlines shaping up of IT industry and modern Indian economy that steered the change in governance and policy making as a result of which the country ushered in era liberalisation.

Early steps taken by a fledgling TCS, in the late 1970s, were historical as they seeded the IT industry. And we find a visionary in Ramadorai, who was at the forefront to find the way. The first real ‘outsourcing’ contract the TCS signed for Burroughs was a pretty small with an amount of $ 24,000 and involved converting a hospital accounting package called the Hospital Information System. Following this, the company began to establish itself with IBM and work onsite. Recounting those moments, Ramdorai writes, “Even so, winning just one client was a big thing. It was very tough, but somewhere deep down I believed that we were not building a mere business but a new industry for India, and that was a dream worth working towards.”

Further, a management meeting at IISc, in Bangalore, that gave a vision to the company to become ‘Top 10 by 2010’, the way it opened to Y2K challenge and tackled it to spearhead Indian industry through the IT boom, and going public through IPO are the footprints of the modern history and the book traces them in an endearing fashion.

Computerization of National Stock Exchange (NSE) carried out by the TCS gave rise to dematerialization that revolutionized investment market and turned the stock trading a household affair. And the way the Tatas fought against the nightmarish license raj and taking part in the strife that ultimately uprooted it is an absorbing episode of a thrilling saga.

The narration of the book unwittingly adopts the language spoken by the IT world and it is interesting to note how the country got to speak in a new idiom with the evolution of the new domain.

Although it is an insider account of an industry leader that provides a deep insight into the Indian IT industry you will be disappointed if you are expecting to get the details of the strategy that made the TCS the market leader as a wily CEO does not spill beans on that count. And he is so conspicuously silent on the contemporaries- Infosys, Wipro and others.

Towards the end of the book Ramadorai has put in his thoughts on education in India and how vocational training has to be brought in and strengthened as that would open up more avenues of employment for the students passing out of the numerous schools and colleges. It would give a different means to livelihood to the millions who today strive to find a job and then try to find satisfaction with whatever job comes their way rather than being able to select a job as per their abilities and likes.


Although he says he is “unlikely candidate for writing a book”, Ramadorai finds writing consuming and he is happy with his “first-time writer” role. As there is a next-time for any first-time, we can expect lot more from his pen. And he is welcome because the new generation is ready for the benefit.