A Train To Nowhere

The other surprise in the railway budget is a new line that Mamata Banerjee wished in the heart of Buxa Tiger Reserve

Tehelka, 24 March, 2012

DEEP INSIDE the core of Buxa Tiger Reserve in north Bengal and at the heart of a vast forest landscape that includes Bhutan’s Phipsu wildlife sanctuary is the settlement of Jayanti. Set up during the Raj to facilitate mining, this was a busy railway station transporting dolomite and limestone till the mid-1980s before conservation became the priority.

Today, Jayanti is a sizeable village that appears larger with a paramilitary camp and the Forest Department campus adjacent to it. All that remains of the abandoned railway station is the canteen, since converted into a dhaba that serves jawans, forest staff and tourists. The iron tracks have long been dug out and sold as scrap.

In 2008, the Forest Department conducted a survey of the forest settlements inside Buxa under the voluntary village resettlement scheme. The villagers at Jayanti were keen to move out with the 10 lakh-per-family compensation package. What helped build this consensus was a rapid realignment of the Jayanti river, which threatened to wash the village away. While the threat persists, Jayanti has not been able to shift to safety because the village soon became a political battleground.

The guides’ association of Jayanti affiliated itself to the Trinamool Congress and locked horns with a proxy-Left Forest Department. These guides and a section of the villagers who offered homestay to visitors refused to relocate and demanded that sundry forest laws be bent to promote tourism. Relaying of the railway tracks to Jayanti from Rajabhatkhawa, cutting across the core forests of the tiger reserve, was one such demand.

Nobody took it seriously. The railway track till Rajabhatkhawa was broadened in 2001 and has claimed the lives of nearly three dozen elephants since. The railways has been under pressure to stop night traffic along that killer stretch. The idea of extending the same line to the interiors of a core tiger reserve seemed out of question, until Mamata Banerjee took over as the railways minister in 2009. Never to miss out on a chance to cultivate a support base, she ordered a feasibility study of the line.

“Soon after Mamata became the minister, rail officials conducted a low-key survey. But we never heard anything after that and, frankly, did not bother because it was never an issue here,” says Lal Singh Bhujel, a local activist who has been mobilising villagers for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in the area.

In 2011, Banerjee became chief minister. It was time to reward and cement her support bases. So Dinesh Trivedi, while hiking the fare against his party supremo’s wish, sanctioned the Rajabhatkhawa- Jayanti line in his budget. Many in Jayanti hailed the announcement.

“I have not been intimated about any such project yet. This was not in the agenda of the last meeting of the State Wildlife Board held on 6 February. A railway line through Buxa is certainly not good news for wildlife,” says RP Saini, field director, Buxa Tiger Reserve, adding that he would, of course, carry out any government decision within the sanctions of the law.

Siliguri-based Soumitra Ghosh, convener of National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, makes it clear that his organisation never raised such a demand. He is worried that railway connectivity to Jayanti may add to the tourism mess in the area.

In the political drama that followed the budget, nobody pointed out the absurdity of clearing a new line inside a tiger reserve, which requires a host of statutory clearances under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, to a village that may soon move out or be washed off.

Even the future of wildlife tourism now depends on the Supreme Court and if the court orders against tourism in core forests, the line will serve no one. Unless the very idea of a train to Jayanti is to expose, Mamata-style, the UPA government’s policy contradictions.

Congrats, Sachin! And thank you

Tendulkar has thrilled us in many impossible ways for too long. The 100th ton scraped off the pitch, the maestro, and his billion fans, now must get a life

Tehelka, 19 March, 2012

Even the most unlikely of milestones has been logged. Plaudits and platitudes duly recorded. Take a bow, Sachin Tendulkar. We have had enough.

Runs may still trickle, even flow on occasions. But it is time Tendulkar retires, certainly from the ODIs. Not because some losers would have us believe that his centuries lose us matches. Such nonsense discounts the fact that Tendulkar has scored more match winning hundreds than most batsmen scored in their entire careers.

Rickey Ponting, statistically the closest we have to Tendulkar, has hit 30 ODI tons. Tendulkar’s centuries helped India win 33 ODIs and 20 Tests. Only four other Indian batsmen have ever scored more than 20 tons in the five-day format.

True, many of his efforts did not translate into match-winning, or even match-saving, knocks. Not his fault. He scored so much and so routinely that some of his runs could no way have impacted his team’s fortunes unless his teammates matched up to his amazing consistency and skills.

No batsman will ever achieve in numbers what Tendulkar has. But his time is up. Not because it pains millions of his fans to watch him graft, even struggle, against both quality and average bowling. Tendulkar, and his fandom, has taken such tests in the past. In 2006, he was booed at Wankhede after edging one to the wicketkeeper after an agonising half hour at the crease during which he managed to score just a single.

Before and after that Mumbai ignominy, Tendulkar made emphatic batting statements while under scrutiny. Grounds across the world—Nagpur (October 2005), Kuala Lumpur (September 2006) and Sydney (January 2008) – bear witness, Tendulkar makes memorable comebacks.

Yet, the ‘thank you’ note is due.


Two decades ago, Tendulkar was the game’s most outlandish promise. Even generations that worshipped a certain Gavaskar or a Kapil were in awe of the boy wonder who played without a fear of his mighty opponents but with all the care for the correctness of his craft. And boy, did he score runs.

Over the years, Tendulkar’s game had to lose that daring spontaneity, that innocence of bounty. As his body aged, the mind took over from the instinct. While Tendulkar increasingly optimized the splendour and risks involved in his batting, we moved on to admiring the results in the record books.

We had little choice. Like all sports, cricket is also an indulgence. We could not have abandoned such a rare and precious love that we grew for a boy genius and his munificence even if we had to eventually find more mundane justification, such as statistics, to keep the flame aglow. Once his fans made that adjustment, Tendulkar rarely gave them a reason to complain, by keeping the bookkeepers busy.

But even when his game does not test its limits, it is often a treat to watch. On the occasional rough patch, the king of his craft unabashedly grinds like a scavenger. Now that is as big a demand on someone’s character as is the level of focus Tendulkar maintains after all the press, good and not-so-good. When one is deemed God, it anyway takes a lot to keep playing, and performing, by the same set of rules that apply to 21 others who are merely accomplished men on the ground.

***

In a world where change is the only constant, the mortals are programmed to hanker after permanence. But we are a reasonable lot. So when Sourav Ganguly called it a day, we reasoned that flair, like beauty, faded. When Anil Kumble hung up his bowling shoes, we knew hard work became harder with age. And with Rahul Dravid, we accepted that the wall knew best what was happening on the other side.

But with Tendulkar, we never believed that even the world’s most celebrated cricketing brand came with a sale-by date. When all his contemporaries have quit, we contemplated a grand occasion that would become the maestro. A few suspects among us even dared suggest that he could have retired from the ODIs after the World Cup win at Mumbai.

Tendulkar batted brilliantly during those six weeks last year. He would have believed he had enough in him to carry on. After his hundredth ton, he echoed Dravid on the idea of timing. Retiring on a high, both argued, is selfish; it denies the country one’s service while one is still good at the job.

Dravid, however, called it quits after a bad run because he did not think it was in the interest of the team, or his conscience, to deny a youngster and play a farewell series at home. Few have the stomach for Dravid’s inhumanly righteous standards. So we were not surprised when Tendulkar took the flight to Dhaka. Asian opponents on sub-continental tracks were our best bet for his hundredth ton.

***

Anyone who happened to wake up early enough on that chilly February morning in 1981 and tuned in to the ether waves from faraway Melbourne became indebted to Kapil Dev for life. With a groin injury, Kapil ran in exactly a hundred times and returned 5 for 28. A batting line-up bosting Chappell, Hughes, Yardley and Border was wrapped up for 83 in less than 50 overs.

The rest waited for their mega Kapil moment till 1983. For the generations that watched him play in the 1980s, he was the ultimate cricketing genius. But Kapil continued to play well into the 1990s. His last 16 Test matches earned him just 33 wickets before he finally quit one wicket ahead of Richard Hadlee who had retired four years ago and played 45 Tests less.

During 1992-94, Kapil did not do himself, certainly not his fans or Indian cricket, any favour. Sunil Gavaskar, who brought substance to Indian batting and earned his rightful place among the towering trinity of his time with Richards and Chappell, went past Sir Don’s tally of 29 tons and Geoff Boycott’s 8114 runs in 1983 while still in his prime. But even he was tempted to carry on till he scaled the summit of 10,000 Test runs in 1987.

In his Bradman Oration speech last December, Dravid spoke of how each cricketing generation influences the ones that follow. Gavaskar and Kapil were India’s first two champion cricketers, better than the most in the world. But their team rarely returned triumphant, perhaps because the rest of the eleven were not nearly as good. So fans were left to celebrate two individuals who obliged by chasing a few late personal feats. That tradition continues.

Such a sporting culture made Tendulkar’s departure impossible before his century of tons. To be fair, nobody thought after the World Cup that he would struggle to get there. The phasing-out-experience and easing-in-youth plan meant that he was, and still is, a necessity for the Test squad. But after Dravid snubbed an SOS call to the ODI squad in England with a pre-series retirement announcement, fans expected clarity from Tendulkar.

He was entitled to take it easy. It made sense that he would preserve himself for quality contests and give soft engagements a miss. We understood when he did not turn up against West Indies at home. But Tendulkar going to Dhaka would not have made sense, not unless he played 11 tests since the World Cup without a century, and then another seven sterile ODIs down under. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Irrespective of the stage, the opponent or the challenge, all of us just wanted Tendulkar to get it over with. As did Tendulkar himself.

***

The only ODI batting record not on Tendulkar’s book and worth his motivation now is perhaps the fastest hundred. But to beat Afridi’s 37 ball feat, Tendulkar will have to post one almost double quick than he has ever done. After Mirpur, even the most demanding of fans will not burden him with such a thought.

A number of firsts, besides of course the hundredth hundred, happened at Mirpur. It was Tendulkar’s first ODI hundred against Bangladesh. It was Tendulkar’s first ODI hundred in the subcontinent at a strike rate below 78. Possibly, it was also Tendulkar’s first hundred that cost India the match.

Tendulkar took 138 balls to reach his 100th ton. Playing at Sharjah in October 2000, he scored an equally tedious ODI century against Sri Lanka, also in a lost cause. But on that occasion, wickets kept tumbling and he was joined by the last recognised batsman Robin Singh as early as the 24th over.

At Mirpur, India was two-down till the 47th over. Yet, Tendulkar scored 8 runs from 9 balls during the batting powerplay. He failed to score off two free hits. At 83, he played out a maiden over to Mashrafe Mortaza. He would take another 10 overs to reach his century. Skipper Dhoni was justified in feeling that his team was at least 20-25 runs short.

Like all of us praying for him, Tendulkar wanted the century badly. But Tendulkar was also batting for India. He knew he slipped on that count. That is why his pointing at the tricolour on the helmet during a particularly muted celebration for such a colossal feat smacked of guilt. That is why his repeated insistence during post-century interactions that he plays for the country rang hollow.

Tendulkar has given the country his blood and sweat for 22 years. Nobody can take away any of that. But at Mirpur, once he got close, he was not ready to risk it for anything. Not even for his team’s cause. If it was a personal tryst with the annals of the game he was so determined to fulfil, the deity of cricket also extracted the price for such ambivalence. It did not look like Tendulkar was enjoying his game. It did not look good at all.

Few doubt that Tendulkar can still score as quickly as any of India’s young guns every now and then. But after the world cup triumph, he could not have any justification for playing ODIs except for the thrill of the game. Or for that hundred that would complete his legend.

After Mirpur, he has none.

So, Who Will Budget For Mamata?

Don't be shocked that Mamata Banerjee’s intervention turned the rail budget into a political tamasha. She is the product of a political culture that holds party far above government and will do anything to defend that order.

The Economic Times on Sunday, 18 March, 2012

Olympia aka Oly pub is a great Kolkata institution. Till the late 90s, this Park Street joint was much more than a cheap watering hole; it was where pseudo-intellectuals sparred and impoverished students like me could expect a few shots on credit from discerning waiters who would, on the odd occasion, tell us we had had a few too many.

Today, Olympia is a rundown den crowded by small-time builders, who shout for waiters in second-person offensive for panic refills. To be fair, the pub still serves a sumptuous chateaubriand and the mustard tastes as tangy on cocktail sausage. Fresh crops of students and pseudo-intellectuals have turned up. Some old patrons are still regulars. Renegades like me who have deserted the city also pay customary penance whenever in Kolkata.

Only a few months ago, I was there to meet a friend who was sharing a table with a bunch of acquaintances. A couple of them, my friend let out, were CPIM card-holders. Initially reluctant to be drawn into a discussion on the body blow Mamata Banerjee had dealt them in the Assembly elections, one of them soon worked up some fervour.

If there was a lesson in the defeat, I was told, it was that the party should never have loosened its grip on the government. But did not the government’s failure to rein in the party result in the poll debacle? Nonsense, the party was always above all else but some in the Writer’s Building (the secretariat) forgot what happened to Somnath Chatterjee.


I remembered Chatterjee soon after Dinesh Trivedi finished reading out his budget this Wednesday. A political giant known for his integrity, Chatterjee belongs to a league very different from that of Trivedi who joined the Trinamool after spending roughly a decade each in the Congress and the Janata Dal. In 2008, the CPIM stalwart upheld the non-partisan status of the Speaker’s office in the Lok Sabha. This week, the entrepreneur-turned-politician presented a hesitantly reformist budget.

Chatterjee was promptly expelled from the party because, to quote CPIM politburo member Biman Bose, “he might have acted according to the Indian Constitution but the party constitution was supreme”. Nobody familiar with the tradition of party raj was under the illusion that Trivedi’s protestations of a fare hike being in the interest of the Railways, would remotely move his one-woman leadership.

Back in Oly pub, sullen comrades stared me down as I wondered aloud if Bengal had much hope if ‘party-is-supreme’ was the message the Left deciphered from the landmark verdict that voters took 34 years to deliver. Then, glasses hit the table with loud thuds. “You are an outsider,” I was told, fingers wagging, “You don’t need to bother about Bengal. We have looked after ourselves all these years.”

Dismissed, I asked for the bill. I remembered all those years.

+++

We did not even notice when it happened. That summer of 1990, students of our age in Calcutta were an impatient lot whose scrutiny was not restricted to Amitabh Bachchan’s morphed voice in Agneepath. We had strong opinions on the lack of sex in Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, the overdose of spirituality in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and the perils of Soviet glasnost.

Yet, we did not notice that three women – a UNICEF officer and two government employees -- travelling in a state car were brutally raped by local office bearers of the CPIM on the outskirts of Kolkata on May 30 because no newspaper reported it the morning after. But by mid-June, the truth was out.

The response of then chief minister Jyoti Basu – these things happen – did not help. So, in a letter to Mainstream, then information and culture minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee slammed the critics for not having confidence in the Leftist struggles and respect for the tradition of the Bengali intelligentsia.

All this while, Calcutta cheered the Roger Milla show in Italy. In theatres across the state, Dil and Ghayal became the year’s big grossers. Then the focus shifted to cricket. But before the new boy wonder could score his maiden test ton at Old Trafford, three Bangladeshi refugees were raped on 17 July in a Calcutta suburb.

The party did not blink. Its women’s wing head Shyamali Gupta issued a statement in CPIM mouthpiece People’s Democracy on 29 July, arguing that the rape victims lived in “unauthorised hutments along the railway tracks” and were “involved in foul professions” as “mistresses of notorious anti-socials”.

Calcutta moved on, prompting historian Tanika Sarkar to note how “there was no spontaneous and vast demonstration in this city of processions”, indicating “a somewhat unusually high threshold of tolerance in a Calcutta celebrated for its concern for women”.

+++

The only time I was forbidden to read newspapers at home was in 1982. I was in class five and my father would not have me traumatized with the details of how 16 Anandmargi monks and one nun were beaten and burnt alive in broad daylight on a south Calcutta flyover.

Roughly between the Marichjhanpi massacre in 1979 and the Suchpur butchery in 2000, the Left rule witnessed 28,000 political murders or four killings a day. Political violence escalated in the new millennium, culminating in the flashpoints of Singur and Nandigram. The latest in this series were the murders of two CPIM leaders, clobbered to death allegedly by Trinamool supporters on 22 February in Burdwan.

It is hardly surprising that Trinamool supporters consider violence a legitimate political tool or that the new chief minister matches up to her immediate predecessors in insensitivity when women get raped or infants die in hospitals. The political culture in Bengal has long developed consolidated traits and standard currencies of power.

When the Left defeated the Congress in 1977, it marked the emergence of a new politics in the state. The feudal, anachronistic Congress leadership was replaced by a new order that was subaltern and contemporary. A welcome, if bloody, land reform drive fortified the Left base in rural Bengal. The communists, however, employed an ideologically much less respectable strategy to garner urban support.

Lakhs were lured to join the party with the promise of jobs. Thousands of cadres employed in mills and offices across the state soon ensured that the party had a stranglehold on the system that would keep it in power for three decades and reduce governance to a joke. The rot also spread to villages once the benefits of land reform wore off and successive generations demanded fresh incentives for backing the party.

This political culture has struck such deep roots in Bengal that Mamata’s support base comprises mostly those who resented this party raj only as long as their own party was not in power. Therefore, unlike 1977, the Trinamool victory in 2011 was no triumph of an alternative politics. It was merely a realignment of forces within a political equilibrium that both draws from and feeds a larger social decadence.

+++

I watched the Calcutta book fair erupt into a fireball from a window high up Chatterjee International, the city’s tallest building, across the road from maidan that housed the largest gatherings. That January afternoon in 1997, flames escaped one of the numerous stalls serving food, a commodity Bengalis certainly rate over books, and rode the late afternoon breeze drifting away to the river.

Criminally unprepared, Calcutta lost that battle in its early minutes. At that moment, it was difficult to imagine a bigger villain than the callous fire department. But, finding my way through smoke and cinders to Montmartre, the very aspirationally named arena for little magazines where most of my friends camped, I saw what the city had come to.

For each book burnt, one was stolen. People of all ages, hooligans and bhadrolok, carried away as many books as they could. Many ransacked the stalls that escaped fire. The unfeeling brazenness of that loot could have put even last summer’s London hoodies to shame.

In 2010, when a fire killed 43 people on the two top floors of a150-year-old city landmark, Stephen Court, there was not a sky-lift in sight. In the only state that has a fire service minister, it surely took more than inefficiency to conduct business as usual with the full knowledge that not a single highrise in the city’s business district could be secured in the event of a fire.

Last December, when a fire broke out in the basement of AMRI, one of Kolkata’s most expensive hospitals, the hospital staff locked the gate on local volunteers and doctors abandoned their patients to a slow, stewing death behind glass facades. Mamata cancelled the hospital’s licence, observing, rather ominously, that such a disaster would be understandable in government hospitals because they were cash strapped.

+++

Cash strapped. That has been Mamata’s defence against every criticism of her government. Without any fiscal strategy, she continues to pressure the Centre for handing out doles, while outshouting even the Left on securing a free ride for the poor. But many in Bengal learnt to appreciate this free-dom even before Mamata started fighting for it.

In the early 90s, few of my friends bought train tickets because they were not supposed to. Usually, students flashed their identity cards and moved on. As per railways data, 90 per cent of ticketless passengers caught in and around Kolkata pay the penalties on the spot. Clearly, it is not just the poor who do not pay their way.

While a joyride is par for the course across the country, in few other places would ticketless passengers with a sense of entitlement team up with ruffians to thrash officials and vandalise railway property. Equally commonplace is political encroachment on railways real estate. After Trinamool came to power, its trade union wing INTTUC followed in the footsteps of its Left counterpart and set up offices in railway stations.

No surprise, then, that the Left echoed Mamata’s demand for a fare rollback. Not too long ago, the CPIM sealed its case due political obstinacy over the nuclear deal. Today, if Mamata and her Trinamool bandwagon appear far more unreasonable, it is because they are still testing the limits of their new found power.

Soon after the Oly pub showdown, I met a political activist purportedly close to the chief minister, at Moulin Rouge, another Park Street institution. My latest article on paribartan had failed to impress him. Over a few drinks, his guarded critique turned belligerent. It was not possible to understand the change without living it, he said, adding that the masses behind didi could just walk all over sceptics in the media. Next, he lit up.

The manager came rushing. A few tense minutes later, our friend stubbed out the cigarette on his plate with a flourish. Then, ignoring my presence altogether, he looked the manager in the eye, sat back and hissed: “I’ll be watching you.”

Power corrupts everywhere. In Kolkata, even the illusion of power does.

DoPT comes to Hooda’s rescue

Haryana waves a timely and dubious DoPT note in the Centre’s face to scuttle a CBI probe and muzzle a whistleblower

Tehelka, 17 March, 2012

THE CENTRE has no jurisdiction to intervene in violations of Central Acts in states or to protect whistleblowers even if they belong to the All India Services. This is what MoS V Narayanasamy and his Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) told the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

The DoPT note issued on 16 February was cited by Haryana Forest Minister Captain Ajay Singh Yadav in the Assembly on 6 March as the sole defence against a CBI probe ordered by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) into multicrore forestry scams and violations of forest and wildlife laws in the state.

The whistleblower in question — IFS officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi — has been harassed by the Haryana government since 2007 for exposing the corruption and violations of laws that involve Chief Minister BS Hooda’s office, his ministers Kiran Chaudhary and Yadav, and a host of top IFS and IAS officials. In the face of stiff resistance from the Haryana government, it took the Centre five years, two Presidential interventions and a MoEF inquiry to revoke the illegal suspension order and chargesheet slapped on Chaturvedi by the state. The whistleblower’s claims were subsequently examined by the CVC and the CBI, which recommended a probe.












The Hooda government was desperate for an escape route. Back in March 2011, when the whistleblower wrote to the PMO seeking a CBI probe, his file was referred to the DoPT. Since then, all Central agencies involved agreed that cases flagged off by Chaturvedi deserved a CBI probe. But the DoPT came to the Hooda government’s rescue. Consider:
• The DoPT sent its note, marked confidential, to the PMO on 16 February
• On 24 February, MM Joshi, a serving IFS officer in Haryana and a prime accused in the scams and violations, filed an RTI application to obtain the note. His surprisingly specific application even mentioned the date on which the note was sent to the PMO
• In just three working days, the DoPT handed Joshi the confidential note, a thirdparty information, without inviting objections from Chaturvedi, which is mandatory under Section 11(1) of the RTI Act. Ironically, the DoPT is the nodal ministry for the RTI Act and for drafting of the Whistleblower Protection Bill
• On 6 March, the state government submits the note, obtained by Joshi in his private capacity, in the House to dismiss the MoEF inquiry as “ultra-vires” (beyond its power).

There seems to be more than mere questionable legal wisdom behind the DoPT note that was leaked, found its way to the Assembly, and ended up saving the day for the Hooda government. On 7 March, when the state wrote to the MoEF arguing against the CBI probe, the DoPT note was its only defence.

The MoEF, it is learnt, is livid with the DoPT note that renders the green ministry powerless

Forest and wildlife are on the concurrent list of the Constitution and Article 256 empowers the Centre to give directions to states for compliance of Central Acts. Also, the Central government, being the appointing authority, has overriding powers over the state governments in matters of All India Services, which is on the Union List.

While Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan is yet to go on record, the MoEF brass, it is learnt, is livid with the DoPT note that renders the green ministry powerless. Environmental lawyers and IFS officers, such as Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Upadhyay, Project Tiger’s ex-director PK Sen and head of the IFS association AN Prasad, contacted by TEHELKA were unequivocal that mere technicalities shouldn’t come in the way of justice and, prima facie, the note was unlikely to stand legal scrutiny.

So was it an oversight? Will someone be held accountable for leaking third-party information? Will the DoPT clarify that the note may not come in the way of the CBI probe that the CVC recommended? Contacted repeatedly, Narayanasamy promised to respond. He has not, yet. Once again, Haryana’s can of worms stays secure.

Watch out for Kingmakers

Both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are delusional. But the idea of a new third front is equally wishful

Tehelka, 13 March, 2012

Rahul Gandhi had already left the United States with a graduate degree from Florida’s Rollins College (no, not Harvard) when David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University came up with a curious finding in 1999. Their paper, Unskilled and Unaware of It, explored how “people tend to hold overly optimistic and miscalibrated views about themselves”.

Such overestimation—known since as the Dunning-Kruger effect—occurs because, “Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realise it”. Indeed, more than a century before this paper was published, Charles Darwin identified the phenomenon: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

It may not be surprising that Rahul Gandhi, still politically young and a novice on many a count, overestimated his electoral appeal. However, when a century-old party, and many of its veteran leaders, vociferously second that judgement, it cannot be blamed on ignorance but a delusion. A Gandhi is always the party’s best face at the hustings—the Congress has turned this tradition into an occult faith—even if that Gandhi is called Rahul and had come a cropper in Bihar in 2010.

If it is any comfort to the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears equally wishful about its electoral prospects. Barring Goa, where the party was handed a lollipop by the Congress, all other states have underlined how the BJP’s expectations were out of sync with its performance. Before the party can think of occupying the political space ceded by the Congress, it needs to work on a bulwark to arrest its own slide. Yet, the BJP’s national leaders, as if to vindicate the Cornell duo, are basking in the glory of their ally and the prospect of a walkover at the Centre.

This has encouraged many to bet wishfully on a new “third front”, a rainbow alliance of state chieftains. Anyone who remembers the marathon negotiations among Deve Gowda, Lalu Yadav, Chandrababu Naidu, GK Moopanar and SR Bommai at the Tamil Nadu Bhawan, Sharad Yadav’s 9 Akbar Road residence and Karnataka Bhawan on 31 May 1996, to put together a 13-party cabinet, will agree that regional ambitions and equations do not necessarily factor in national interests.

Denied a cabinet berth, ND Tiwari and his Indira Congress refused to support the Gowda government. Srikant Jena had to be left out to appease Biju Patnaik. Lalu extracted so many ministerial berths for Bihar that Virendra Kumar, chief of Janata Dal’s Kerala unit, could not be accommodated despite the Left Front and VP Singh himself rooting for him. The list of intrigues ran too long.

The first third front experiment did not succeed, partly due to its dependence on the Congress for survival. The inexperience of the ministers, few of whom had ever held any public office of consequence, also compromised the government’s efficiency.

One-and-a-half decades on, the politics has changed. Janata Dal has splintered with factions like Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) reduced to insignificance in Parliament. Tamil Maanila Congress has ceased to be. The Left have lost their strongholds.

To add up the numbers, a new third front will require Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mamata Bannerjee, Naveen Patnaik, N Chandrababu Naidu, and J Jayalalithaa (perhaps even Nitish Kumar and Sharad Pawar) to join hands. On a range of key issues—from women’s reservation to agriculture and industrialisation— these leaders stand on the opposite ends of the policy spectrum. More significantly, most of these leaders head what were originally splinter outfits that have not raised or nurtured too many political talents since.

Even the ragtag cabinet of 1996 flaunted a bunch of big names in the high-profile ministries—Indrajit Gupta (Home), P Chidambaram (Finance), Mulayam Singh Yadav (Defence), IK Gujral (External Affairs), Chaturanan Mishra (Agriculture), Murasoli Maran (Industry), M Arunachalam (Labour), Ram Vilas Paswan (Railways) or even CM Ibrahim (Aviation). Some of these leaders are dead, others not in a position to be part of a second Third Front (except Mulayam Singh Yadav, though he may not leave Lucknow for Delhi). The big mentors of the first Third Front, VP Singh, HKS Surjeet and GK Moopanar, are no more.

Who are the substitutes? Regional satraps who are such control freaks and untrusting of their own loyalists that they run virtual autocracies in their states. Such a political culture does not allow a strong second rung leadership. So Mamata, Patnaik, Jayalalithaa, even Naidu, pretty much run their solo shows. Tomorrow, even if they master unexpected flexibility to put together a coalition at the Centre, what common policies and agenda will they peddle? More importantly, where will they find minister material overnight?

Yes, the Samajwadi Party can send one of the Yadavs to the Centre. Nitish may oblige Sharad Yadav who was left out in 1996 due to his hawala stain. Pawar may feel tempted to finally fulfill his prime ministerial ambition and carry Praful Patel along. But it takes more than a couple of Yadavs, a Pawar and a Patel to run the country.

Therefore, if the state chieftains do not suddenly show the Dunning-Kruger effect, the next Lok Sabha polls are likely to be a race of kingmakers. Both the Congress and the BJP should dread a situation when they will be tempted, rather obliged, to carry ever more powerful allies on their back who will call the shots. Only, there may be just enough time for the two national parties to get real and put up a fight.


Cost-benefit of co-existence 


The urban greens demand that the rural poor live in conflict even where it does not help conservation

Tehelka, 10 March, 2012

THE ONLY potentially dangerous wildlife that still survives in our cities is the occasional snake, largely because it is difficult to spot. Whenever one is found, it is either killed or rescued (read dumped outside the city limits). Anything bigger stands no chance at all. Intruding leopards trigger lynch mobs. Straying elephants face gunshots or are violently chased away.

Panic is the only reaction and everyone finds it natural. The conservationists’ only complaint, in such situations, revolves around the lack of alacrity shown by the forest and police staff to ‘safely remove’ the wild animal in question. The same conservationists, however, frown every time villagers refuse to live in the terror of potentially dangerous wild animals. After all, wildlife does not understand the boundaries humans draw with protected forests, goes their argument, and often lives among people, making co-existence necessary. There is obvious merit in this theory. But it gets a little complicated in practice.

Elephants move in herds and range over hundreds of kilometres. Villages falling within their ranges accept conflict as inevitable and do not normally combat the jumbos. Effective mitigation measures do minimise but cannot eliminate losses of life, crop and property. But people know some will die of drowning or accidents when they choose to live close to a river or a highway because the obvious benefits outweigh the loss. Similarly, in elephant forests, better compensation and incentives can make co-existence durable.

But what happens when elephants leave their normal range? When Dalma elephants go all the way to the outskirts of Kolkata or herds move from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Odisha to Andhra Pradesh, from Karnataka to Maharashtra, from undivided UP to Himachal or from undivided Bihar to MP? More frequently, herds venture outside the normal ranges within state boundaries.

The elephant duo that entered Mysore last year was part of the herd that used to routinely move outside the Mandya forest division and venture as far out as 15-20 km, deep into agricultural fields. The sustained damage this herd caused the villagers in the area was considered a legitimate cost of conservation till two young members of the herd walked to the city, triggering panic and outrage. Was that hypocrisy?

Should conservationists will villagers to live in conflict with elephants that have moved out of their normal range and have no future in such landscapes? Or should they focus on finding out and fighting the factors that are causing such movement?

When elephants from Bannerghatta and the adjoining forest divisions of Hosur and Dharmapuri started showing haphazard movements, not much effort went into arresting the degeneration and fragmentation of the habitat inside their traditional range. As a result, large herds caused havoc in the agricultural fields. Some moved into AP and eventually settled in Kaundinya Wildlife Sanctuary and Lord Venkateswara Wildlife Sanctuary. These movements along non-elephant areas caused more than 50 deaths and extensive crop damage.

While poor villagers are still paying the price of conservation, these elephants are doomed, certainly unless some serious genetic management takes place. Koundinya is too small and degraded a forest for elephants. Lord Venkateswara sanctuary is a better habitat but, in both places, the elephant population is small and comprises related individuals. From the original 150-strong population that migrated, the number is down to about 40. Does it justify the loss of so many human lives and the huge amount of money spent in the name of conservation?

The effort, and sacrifice if necessary, should have gone to areas with real potential for elephant conservation. Instead, the greens want the wild to flourish under every village tree while getting rid of the last snake from their city gardens. No wonder conservation is often a dirty word for the rural poor.

Hooda faces a CBI probe

Open, 8 March, 2012

After the Open story ‘Why is Hooda Afraid of the CBI?’, 25 February 2012, the environment ministry—MoEF—has written to the Hooda government to register FIRs for a CBI probe of multiple forestry scams in Haryana. Referring to Sanjiv Chaturvedi, the whistleblower who has been persecuted for the past five years, the MoEF wrote: ‘It has been decided, with the approval of the competent authority, to assign the investigation into the allegations made by Sanjiv Chaturvedi… to the CBI.’ Two state forest ministers, officials in Haryana and at the Centre and CMO, no less, have so far brazened it out, defying inquiries. The state government will now have to file an FIR in three cases—construction of an illegal canal inside Saraswati wildlife sanctuary, development of a herbal park on private land in Fatehabad using government funds, and an afforestation scam in Jhajjar—and notify the Centre entrusting them to the CBI.

A grand joint misadventure

An NTPC power plant at the edge of the Sunderbans is the worst advertisement for Indo-Bangladesh ties

Tehelka, 2 March, 2012

THIS MAY sound familiar. A government acquiring land for a mega project even before the court has decided on its merit, or its impact on the environment and local communities has been assessed. Till we come to the dumbfounding bit: the location of this 1,320 MW coal-based power plant. The $1.5 billion project is coming up just 9 km from the Sunderbans, one of the earth’s rarest ecosystems and a UNESCO world heritage site. The project site is on the Bangladesh side of the vibrant mangrove delta but it is going to be run on Indian coal by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), one of India’s Navratna companies.

It all began in 2010 with an MoU between NTPC and the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDP) for setting up a power plant in Bangladesh’s Bagerhat district. The site, perilously close to the Sunderbans and about 60 km from the Indo-Bangla border, was apparently chosen because of its proximity to the Mongla port, convenient for importing coal required for the plant.

In 2011, Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB) moved the high court, which issued a stay order on the project only to withdraw it temporarily following a petition by the Attorney General. Then the Department of Environment (DoE) issued a primary location clearance, subject to an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study. Bangladesh had paid NTPC $2,50,000 in 2010 for conducting a feasibility study. The report submitted in April 2011 did not include any EIA.

Instead, Bangladesh allocated the equivalent of Rs 25 crore to acquire 1,834 acres in three villages of Lubachora in Rampal. Since January 2012, according to local media reports, Rs 1 crore (Tk Rs 2.5 crore) worth has already been distributed among 67 landowners. Then, on 29 January, NTPC Chairman Arup Roy Chowdhury and BPDB Chairman ASM Alamgir Kabir signed a 50:50 joint venture (JV) agreement. Already, the authorities are preparing to dredge 10 km of the Poshur river for easier access to ships carrying coal for the plant.

All this while a final court verdict is awaited, an EIA study yet to be commissioned and the funding of the project uncertain. Under the JV agreement, BPDP and NTPC will finance 15 percent each of the $1.5 billion project and the rest will be funded by loans. But international funding agencies such as World Bank do not finance projects without EIA clearances.

On its website, NTPC highlights its “commitment to environment”. But its Sunderbans plant will burn lakhs of tonnes of coal and spew massive amounts of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide (Indian coal is very high on sulphur content) and fly ash. The plant will discharge used hot water in the Poshur river, polluting the entire water system, the lifeline of the Sunderbans, downstream. A coal plant’s sludge waste contains hazardous metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead.

The cumulative impact on the flora and fauna of the Sunderbans will be devastating. The livelihood and health of 20,000 local fishermen, and possibly many more across the delta, will also be jeopardised.

“Indian laws will not allow such a project so close to the Sunderbans or, for that matter, any tiger reserve or biological hotspot. This plant may have serious consequences for the entire Sunderbans ecology, which is a shared heritage and cannot be managed in isolation. It is surprising that the project is moving ahead without a thorough EIA,” says PK Sen, former director of Project Tiger.

The NTPC website claims the plant will use “super critical technology” to “minimise pollution and environmental damage”. But that does not begin to reflect the impact of that minimised damage on the Sunderbans.

Contacted by TEHELKA, NTPC twice sought “more time” and is yet to answer queries on the project’s EIA, funding and threat potential. It is busy celebrating the “landmark in bilateral economic cooperation” which, if implemented, will result in an ecological disaster, a landmark Indo-Bangla ties would do well to avoid.

Creating Happiness? Certainly Not in Puri

Its mega university project stuck in the court, Vedanta withdraws free education to 500 children of project-affected families

Tehelka, 27 Feb, 2012

ON 30 JANUARY, Vedanta released its maiden national corporate publicity campaign — Creating Happiness, a 90-second film created by Ogilvy & Mather — across television channels. Binno, a little girl from rural Rajasthan and the face of the campaign, has already endeared herself to millions. The campaign also features 38 short films made by students of Film and Television Institute of India, Indian Institute of Mass Communication and other institutes, shortlisted by a jury including Shyam Benegal and Gul Panag. (At the time of going to press, Benegal told an activist that he was not on the jury anymore).

Understandably, thousands of victims of Vedanta’s environmental and human rights abuse see little endearing in Binno’s smile. Now among them are 500 children from Odisha’s Puri district who belong to families affected by the Vedanta University Project (VUP). On 10 February, they suddenly became dispensable liabilities in the MNC’s mega scheme of things.

The campaign with a media budget of more than Rs 100 crore, to quote O&M executive chairman Piyush Pandey, is “all about enabling India” and “looks forward to the people of India not just appreciating Vedanta efforts, but getting inspired to do something on their own to make India a happier place.” With that lofty goal, Vedanta’s communications and brand director Senjam Raj Sekhar told the media that the MNC “opened up all its projects and locations to budding independent filmmakers”.

But Vedanta kept at least one location under wraps. Only two of the 38 films in the competition feature Odisha. And neither tells the Vedanta story in Puri where the MNC began sponsoring the education of 500 children in the prestigious DAV Public School four years ago.

GADADHAR TRIPATHI from Chandanpur, Puri district, was among thousands of villagers approached by Vedanta for their land. In June 2006, Vedanta Resources Ltd had sought 15,000 acres from the Odisha government for setting up a university near Puri. A month on, the government signed an MOU with Vedanta Foundation (formerly Sterlite Foundation) for the project.

“The company took 6,000 acres of agricultural land from us. We were told that our children would get good education for free. We were also promised quality healthcare and jobs. It even promised to build good schools in our villages. We were happy,” says Tripathi.

In 2008, VUP signed a 30-year MOU with DAV to provide education for 500 children from the project-affected families up to Class X.

The project website — vedanta.edu.in — reads: In an honest attempt at forging a partnership for providing quality education to the largely deprived children of the rural areas, the VUP of Anil Agarwal Foundation has been supporting the children belonging to the project impacted village for admission into DAV Public School, Puri.

The students are being imparted free education and are being provided with free transportation facilities, reading & writing material, uniforms & bags and nutritious mid-day meals. A Vedanta press release of 19 August 2009 claimed that 414 students had been enrolled under the scheme.

“We admitted around 500 students by 2010-11,” says DAV Schools regional director Himansu Mohanty. “The company was paying for their fees, textbooks, uniforms, meals, etc. They also bought four buses and paid the running cost. Since many of these students were first-generation learners, they were not ready for English medium. So we created an Odia section within our premises where 350 of them were studying. Vedanta promised us three acres and a 10,000 sq ft building for this Odia medium school by 2012.” Instead, Vedanta dropped a bombshell on Mohanty in July 2011.

THE LAW Department of the Odisha government had raised objections soon after the MOU was signed in 2006. So the Vedanta Foundation changed its private company status and became Anil Agarwal Foundation, claiming to be a public company, and signed a fresh MOU with the state government in 2007. But the Registrar of Companies, Maharashtra, in 2008, called its bluff.

Gopabandhu Daridranarayan Seva Sangha, a Puri organisation, and others moved the Orissa HC in 2008 challenging the land acquisition for VUP. Among other objections, the petitioners pointed out that the government would have no control over the functioning of the proposed university and its fees structure, and that the quantum of land sought far exceeded the purpose of setting up a university.

In November 2010, the HC rapped Vedanta for “misrepresenting facts and playing fraud on the government”. It also noted that two rivers flowed through the acquired land, which was also in the vicinity of a wildlife sanctuary. The ruling was simple: “Lands shall be restored to the respective land owners irrespective of …whether they had challenged the acquisition of their lands or not”.

Vedanta moved the Supreme Court against the judgment and the appeal is still being heard. But the MNC, it seems, has given up hope and its university project. It has virtually shut down its once buzzing Puri office. Even the project website has not been updated since April 2010. Its own project in jeopardy, a deeply unhappy Vedanta Resources Ltd saw no reason to keep Puri’s 500 children happy.


BUT FOR his thoughtfulness, says Mohanty, the Vedanta-sponsored students’ dreams would have ended seven months ago: “It was in July 2011 that Vedanta intimated us that they would not be supporting these students beyond 31 March 2012. I did not break the news to the children because it would demoralise them. As the new educational year is drawing close, I had to issue the circular last week.”

According to the circular, students will now have to pay for everything — except for school fees which, thanks to Mohanty, the DAV Trust has waived for now. From textbooks to uniforms to school bus, the new arrangement will cost each student more than 1,000 a month. “We are all farmers. Our monthly income is Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000. How can we spend Rs 1,000-Rs 2,000 for a child’s schooling?” asks Tripathi, whose son Prabhakar is in Class III.

Purno Ranjan Swain, from Podi village in Puri district, gave four acres to Vedanta and now runs a small shop. His son Aryan is in Class III, studying English medium. With a monthly income of less than Rs 3,500, he sees no future for his son at the DAV Public School. “Almost all these kids will have to leave the big school now,” he says.

To apparently smoothen that exit, Vedanta, the DAV circular says, will provide each student “a one-time assistance of Rs 2,000 to facilitate the transition”. For those who manage to stay on, the DAV Oriya medium school will now be limited to Class VIII. “I know the promise was of education till Class X. But Vedanta has not given us the land meant for the Oriya school without which the school will not be acknowledged and our students will not be allowed to take the board examination anyway,” explains Mohanty.

Puri District Collector Arvind Agarwal says he is yet to look into the matter: “The company has never informed me about the decision to discontinue their education programme. Perhaps they consider the scheme as part of their university project that has not taken off yet.”

The district administration had coordinated with Vedanta for its university project-related corporate social responsibility activities in 2007-08.

Jayant Das, president of the Orissa Bar Association and counsel for the petitioner in the HC case, says the MNC has no justification for linking the fate of a particular project to its commitment to social welfare.

“It is not the fault of those children that Vedanta’s lies were nailed by the HC. How could they put some children in a school that is beyond their means and then just abandon them?” questions Das. “With this decision, Vedanta has revealed that social welfare for the company is only a tool to lure and mislead people.”

Contacted by TEHELKA, Vedanta’s Raj Sekhar denied that the MNC had “anything to do with DAV in Puri” before promising to “get back after checking the facts”. But of course, he did not, not in the middle of an ad blitz.

Meanwhile, little Binno continues to spread happiness on television.

Why Is Hooda Afraid of the CBI?

And why his state Congress government is trying every crooked trick in the book to stall a CBI inquiry into charges of largescale corruption brought to light by a whistleblower forest officer

Open, 25 Feb, 2012

Sanjiv Chaturvedi did’t see it coming. In the beginning, the whistleblower IFS officer thought he was fighting petty private interests skimming off taxpayers’ money and flouting wildlife norms. Five years on, he is up against pretty much the entire Haryana state machinery.

Last December, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) wrote to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) that the CBI was ready to probe plantation scams worth several crores, a number of violations of forest and wildlife laws, and the motive of the Haryana government in slapping fabricated charges on the whistleblower who had flagged off these irregularities. The CVC advised the MoEF ‘to take up the matter of registration of FIR with the state government and subsequent transfer of the case to the CBI’.

For two months, Minister for Environment and Forests Jayanthi Natarajan sat on the CVC memorandum. After all, the corruption cases in question involved Haryana CM BS Hooda’s office, his cabinet colleague Kiran Choudhry, and nearly a dozen IFS and IAS officers. Then, after Natarajan received a few calls from the media, her ministry wrote to the state government last week, not asking it to register FIRs, but seeking its opinion on the issue.

Over the past five years, the Haryana government has made several attempts at defending itself against Chaturvedi’s charges. Each time, the central authorities have found its defence inadequate, even “misleading”. In fact, when the case was referred to the CVC in June last year, MoEF secretary T Chatterjee noted why “it may not be prudent to request the state government to further investigate as their stand is quite clear,” which was “rhetorical…without any documentary support”.

A Congress minister deferring to the clout of a party strongman is not surprising. What is shocking is the extent to which the Hooda government has gone to scuttle a probe into what seemed, in the beginning, to be departmental cases of embezzlement and violation of rules in private interest. But surely, Hooda knows better because his government has been recklessly bending rules to hound the whistleblower.


I met Sanjiv Chaturvedi in August 2007, just a week into his suspension. As a Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), he had annoyed the then forest minister Kiran Choudhry by broaching two instances of irregularity and corruption—construction of an irrigation canal through Saraswati wildlife sanctuary without statutory clearance, and investment of public money in a herbal park on land belonging to, among others, an MLA who is now Chief Parliamentary Secretary (Forest).

So blatant were the violations that PC Rawat, then Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) of Haryana, could not issue an outright denial. “Not a big violation” was all he said on camera. Chief Wildlife Warden RD Jakati and his fuming minister refused to even go on record.

Soon, NGO Wildlife Trust of India went to the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court in the sanctuary case. In July 2008, CEC member-secretary MK Jiwrajka agreed, in his report, that ‘the construction works were started a) without obtaining approval under the Forest Conservation Act; b) in violation of the provision of the Wildlife Protection Act and c) without obtaining… permission from the honourable Supreme Court.’

Yet, Jiwrajka absolved the accused and closed the case because “on a suggestion made by the CEC, the irrigation department has voluntarily deposited Rs 1 crore…for undertaking conservation and protection work”. This, after the Haryana government had spent Rs 2.2 crore to pay lawyers in the case to defend the violations.

The CEC’s mandate, however, does not allow it to give a clean chit, or offer compromise solutions, to anyone found guilty. The apex court’s notification on its terms of reference clearly states that the CEC will ‘place its recommendations before the [Supreme] Court for orders’.

In April 2008, NGO Ekta Parishad moved court in the herbal park case. In August, the Prime Minister’s Office sought a response from the state. The Hooda government did not oblige. Instead, it transferred the management of the private land to the forest department in February 2009. The CEC in its October 2009 report exonerated the state. But transfer of management under Section 38 of the Indian Forest Act, 1972, does not affect ownership of the land. The case is still with the Supreme Court.

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Chaturvedi’s suspension order, approved by the CM in August 2007 without seeking his explanation, did not cite any grounds. When the state failed to substantiate the order in a mandatory detailed report to the Centre, the MoEF concluded that the suspension was “not sustainable, as the grounds…were not found to be justified”. The President of India revoked the suspension in January 2008.

But Chaturvedi had also been served a chargesheet by the state government soon after he was suspended. Even after his suspension had been revoked, Haryana did not withdraw the chargesheet. In August 2008, then principal secretary (forest) recommended that the charges be dropped because Chaturvedi was only doing his duty. But forest minister Choudhry returned the file to PCCF Rawat’s office for further comments. It would stay there for 15 months—that is, till Choudhry was forest minister.

Suspension lifted, Chaturvedi waited for six months before the state put him in a non-cadre post, but the move was stayed by the Central Administrative Tribunal. He was finally posted as DFO, Jhajjar, in January 2009.

Within one month in Jhajjar, he unearthed a fake plantation scam worth several crores. A chargesheet was served on 40 forest staffers, and 10 were suspended. Suspecting involvement of senior officers, Chaturvedi insisted on a vigilance probe. Instead, the Chief Minister’s Office had him transferred to Hisar in August 2009.

Two weeks in Hisar, Chaturvedi unearthed yet another plantation scam, and confronted his seniors by repeatedly seeking permission to initiate criminal proceedings for the embezzlement of public funds. Things came to a head in January 2010 when Chaturvedi sealed a large plywood unit that had, in collusion with senior forest officers, deposited Rs 26,000 instead of Rs 22 lakh, as licence fee.

The Chief Minister’s Office responded by declaring his post vacant when he was away on official training for 18 days in March 2010. After a month without a posting, Chaturvedi was made DFO (production) in the same division.

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Captain Ajay Singh Yadav succeeded Choudhry as the state forest minister after the November 2009 Assembly polls. PCCF Rawat had retired. In the next five months, two successive PCCFs and then Financial Commissioner (forest department) recommended that the charges be dropped against Chaturvedi. The new Forest minister was unmoved.

In April 2010, Keshni Anand Arora, a trusted officer of Kiran Choudhry’s in the tourism department, became the new Financial Commissioner (forest department). On Arora’s recommendation, an inquiry officer was appointed in May 2010, nearly three years after the chargesheet was slapped on Chaturvedi.

The inquiry meant that Chaturvedi would not be promoted, sent on deputation or even be allowed to quit the service. His next promotion was due in months. After nine years in the IFS, he was keen to leave Haryana on a central deputation. He was already saddled with a range of false cases, from the ridiculous (stealing a Kachnar tree) to the alarming (abetment to suicide). Even his personal life was not spared and he was described as a ‘person of a (sic) dubious character’ in the chargesheet.

His back against the wall, Chaturvedi appealed to the MoEF in May 2010 but got no response. By August, Chaturvedi was desperate and wrote to the President. In September, the Cabinet Secretariat asked the MoEF to take ‘appropriate action’ and the ministry set up a two-member inquiry committee.

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The inquiry ran into several hurdles. The IFS division in the MoEF tried to undermine the probe by issuing a ‘note’ instead of an ‘order’ while instituting the committee. Then, asked to comment, para-wise, on Chaturvedi’s charges within ten days, the Haryana government took 51 days to reply. Since an inquiry was already going on, the voluminous reply argued, the Centre would have to ‘kindly wait’.

It did not. Additional Inspector General Shally Ranjan submitted her report on 8 December, recommending that the Central Government quash the ‘fabricated chargesheet’ against Chaturvedi and send a strong directive to the state asking it to order a CBI inquiry ‘to prosecute the real culprits’. However, Inspector General (forest department) AK Srivastava, Ranjan’s senior colleague in the panel, and MoEF Secretary Vijai Sharma subsequently dropped the word ‘CBI’ from their file notes.

Then Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh decided to give the Haryana government one more chance. On 18 January 2011, the state reiterated its stand, without furnishing any new details. The next day, the MoEF issued an order. The President quashed the chargesheet against Chaturvedi.

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Snubbed twice by Presidential orders, the Hooda government was still unfazed. In March 2011, a belligerent state forest minister Ajay Yadav wrote to Ramesh, requesting him to ‘institute an enquiry in the matter of quashing the chargesheet and especially the tone, tenor and contents of the enquiry report’.

Around the same time, Chaturvedi also wrote to the MoEF, seeking a CBI probe into the irregularities he had been pointing out all along. In April 2011, the ministry sent a confidential note to the CEC seeking its opinion.

The MoEF inquiry report had recommended that the 2007 CEC order in the Saraswati wildlife sanctuary case be immediately challenged in the Supreme Court as it ‘rendered the punitive clauses’ of forest and wildlife laws ‘infructuous’ and could set a bad precedent.

Citing these ‘adverse criticisms’, CEC member-secretary Jiwrajka refrained from offering any ‘advice in the matter’ and added that ‘the decision taken by the CEC’ in the Saraswati wildlife sanctuary case ‘does not preclude either the MoEF or the state from initiating penal action’ or approaching the SC.

In June 2011, MoEF secretary Chatterjee noted that ‘the documentary evidence submitted by Shri Chaturvedi is robust and in clinching support of his allegations’and that there was ‘need for an independent investigation’. Accordingly, Ramesh replied to his Haryana counterpart’s letter, dismissing his protestations on the quashed chargesheet and informing him that the MoEF was seeking the advice of the CVC on an investigation into the charges made by Chaturvedi.

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The Haryana government was not ready to give up yet.

A few days after receiving Chaturvedi’s dossier of allegations, Prabhat Kumar, director, CVC, wrote a note on 13 July to the MoEF, observing that Chaturvedi’s complaints were ‘serious in nature’ and that the ministry should take up the issue of his protection with the state. The same day, in another note for his boss Additional Secretary Hari Kumar, he concluded that a ‘CBI inquiry may not be required at all as the matter has already been considered by CEC and the elements of corruption angle (sic) is not prominently there’. The Additional Secretary agreed.

Vigilance commissioner R Sri Kumar was not convinced and decided to seek the opinion of the CBI. On 1 November, the CBI said it was willing to probe all charges, but the letter was acknowledged by Prabhat Kumar’s office after a month. On 16 December, the CVC finally wrote to the MoEF.

Chaturvedi is still waiting. After 10 transfers since 2007, he is still very much a pariah in the Hooda administration and does not feel safe in Haryana. He is waiting for a central deputation, for a CBI probe, for Union Minister Jayanthi Natarajan to do what is right.

It has been five years.