Wheels of Fortune

Having trodden the more beaten end of the path last week, ambition drives me to pivot to the glitzy and stratospheric today. My motivation in changing gear from the Bicycle to a Bugatti is not entirely random though. It comes from realisation, grudging as much as bizarre, that the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport that drastically redefined the automobile pricing summit in India, is not merely about libertine luxury but actually a fulfilment of some much humbler prayers!

First things first: it is now three weeks since the Volkswagen (literally, People's Car) family launched Veyron from its Bugatti stables to add to the options for India's super-rich. The crown of the nation's most expensive motorcar offering is not quotidian: the Veyron sports a daunting tag, at INR 16Cr onwards — a little under 3X its nearest competitor! Yet, my middle-class, nitpicking mind did not miss the claim by its aptly named sole agent, Exclusive Motors, that the gap between Veyron and #2 was much larger. Perhaps they missed the launch of INR 6Cr Merc S-Guard in February (for some reason a day after my birthday, if only!); maybe they decided that cars not retailed by them did not qualify. Nevertheless the tab is impressive (not omitting an unkind, if pithy, suggestion to rebadge it Veyron 18 next year unless inflation bucks its double digit trend). Equally, for those still stuck to more commoditized mindsets, it is most instructive to note Bugatti's annual sales plan, all of a challenging 60-80 units worldwide, including a prospective 3-4 Indians globally.

Ignorance and presumed readership interest dictate my glossing over the car's intricate details (noteworthy stress in launch press releases, in any event, was on components of 'special materials — titanium, magnesium, etc' handcrafted at Bugatti's French HQ, perhaps playing to the khadi brigade; or 'Puccini sound system with digital signal processor' variety of abstruseness). Certainly, it should be safe to assume the Veyron would be a hedonistic delight, with top-notch safety features and on-tap performance (unlike me, some drivers are seemingly able to discern every tenth of a second in a 0-100 kmph dash, the car in question clocking a 2.7). Above all, its modest sales target and the excessive hype around price are highly suggestive — what may draw prospective buyers is badge value and exclusivity rather than trivia like its pacy 407 km/h, or worry over the 10% speed compromise with the roof off.

The performance numbers do beg an obvious question: where-on will the Veyron get a chance to perform thus for its privileged owner? Of course, one is not unfamiliar with the analogy of powerful sound equipment rendering vastly superior auditory experiences at lower volumes too. The applicable analogue here, however, is of the machinery largely on mute (disbelievers may try DLF Cyber City early morning, or all evening, to truly appreciate the engine's idle hum). And therein lies Reason #1 to have prayed for the Veyron's ilk — folks who buy this car would be from the ranks of the high-and-mighty, eminently better placed to motivate our civic authorities to build roads instead of potholed dirt tracks — chalo Sohna Road, or rather, most of Gurgaon, if you find the depiction pessimistic. Their frustration matters, unlike ours, hence my hope!

Unfortunately, the pristine-road fantasy may come up short against the brutal realities of our obdurate bureaucracy. Regardless, another Veyron attribute makes an even bigger, better case (raison d'être, if you will) for my fervour. Reason #2 is, simply, its price. One hears (and of late there is little to distract) corruption Rajas of contemporary India swindle 1,70,00,00,00,00,00,000 (please check my zeros, someone) Rupees improving connectivity; others siphon off the good part of a (relatively modest) few tens of thousands of crores when organising a sporting event, almost killing the proverbial goose itself; and an ideal housing scheme for Kargil War vets degenerates into a (paltry) some hundred crore scam.

Truly, arithmetic feels inadequate to grasp the enormity of these astronomical amounts — a picture may be better, worth a thousand words (crores, actually). For instance, growing up in Middle India, one imagined lakhs in the form of sundry cars; mention of a crore or two conjures visions of the apartment of our dreams; but, by God, a few hundred crore, and many times over? Head-reeling numbers and 'every day the paperboy brings more'. And how do they make that kind of money? Why want to? What to do with it? Enter the Veyron to up the ante for cars, and at least there is the start of improved perspective. Of course, humble India needs more such symbols, if only to help us learn the New Math (of the dubious) and enhance our imagination.

Obviously this is hardly intended to pull the VW car down (and is too far removed to be a case of sour grapes). Equally frankly, my congratulations to any actual buyer are half-muted — appreciation of its technological marvels or epicurean appeal has been sullied by the coincidental imagery — reminiscent of a generally eroding conviction in the balance of good and bad karma in the world.

As caprice scales new heights and honesty becomes scarce to the point of endangerment, some core beliefs need reassertion. Sceptic, yes; shades of grey, perhaps; but one ought not succumb to the ogre: no comfortably-numb turning tail. Selfishly and for posterity, the choice is to stay angry, lest we get stuck in a gilded Wheel of Misfortune.

The Cycle Diaries: Bihar 2010

My apology to Che-lovers for the title, but the pull of the wheel has been strong in this space these last few days, and it seems opportune to talk 'cycle politics' in my beloved home state. For the politically disinclined or oracularly averse — you would be hard put to find a self-respecting Bihari willing to answer to either description — the crucial eastern state is mid-way through polls to elect a new Vidhan Sabha. Truth be told, in the fractious cauldron of Bihar's polity where caste often looms larger than life, the election appears a tantalisingly close call (at the very least, it may hardly prove the cakewalk for the ruling NDA that the national media would have us believe). The battle is, equally, critical to fortunes of at least two regional satraps with thinly-veiled national ambitions. For the country's largest party too, securing a firm foothold in Bihar is crucial to its long-term consolidation plans.

Naturally, with such high stakes, it is a no-holds-barred fight, with participants of every persuasion eager to seize upon and amplify the minutest of issues. One idea that has thus assumed centrestage is the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojana. The scheme is simple enough: it entitles girls who pass Class VIII in government schools to state support in the form of a free bicycle, or INR 2000 to purchase one. (It should come as no surprise that although the Nitish Kumar government subsequently extended the scheme to boys, it is the promise of female empowerment implicit in its original version that has captured the public imagination in one of India's most backward states.)

On his part, Nitish has scarcely hesitated to ride this humble bicycle into the grime of electoral debate. He has extolled its virtues, from obvious aspects like education enabling gender equality to deft positioning as a philosophical lesson in striking balance. The latter in particular is a veritable coup de maître: in a single turn of the pedal, it transforms the potentially divisive edge of any female assertion arising from the scheme, and imbues it with a character of harmony and inclusion. The logic is crisp — indeed crucial in the extant male-dominated quasi-feudal milieu — but clearly there is bigger game afoot.

In the larger picture, Nitish knows that the issue of governance played more than its part in pitchforking the NDA into power in 2005 (and reinforced in 2009) when his predecessor's much-vaunted contempt for vikas as a demotic issue turned electoral turtle. (Traverse back in history and one could make an equally good case via Rajiv's freshman promise and appeal to change in the massive post-Indira assassination mandate.) In short, development may not be an absolute winning ticket but it can serve as a formidable consolidator in electoral sweepstakes. The wily politician in the Bihar CM reckons that he needs every card on the table to retain his edge in its complex electoral arithmetic. (This same appease-all desperation also motivates his covert courting of JD-U neo-converts and the occasional bahubali, moves that are denounced as capitulation by pro-vikas votaries in the intelligentsia.)

Equally, the pragmatic Nitish recognizes he is no Narendra Modi, lacking the BJP strongman's masterly leveraging of the governance plank, or indeed his enviable track record. Even Modi's biggest detractors (and Bihar's CM does occasionally assume that garb) cannot deny the single-minded determination that Chhote Sardar brings to Gujarat's development agenda, or his patience-is-no-virtue bias for action. Regrettably, Bihar under NDA rule has largely struggled to shrug off the negative-growth RJD legacy and benefitted partially from its shrunk-denominator effect. In a nutshell, it is no one's case that no good has come about in Bihar post-2005, but its pace has been painfully slow and corruption continues to sadly fester. The incumbent CM, therefore, has little choice but to root for the symbolism in his bicycle scheme.

The compulsions for Nitish's main challenger are, of course, entirely different. Shri Laloo Yadav is looking for a way out of the political Recycle Bin, hoping that the cycle of change prompts people to vote RJD's lantern back to power. The path is hardly rosy and the 60+ one-time kingmaker has struggled to brew a concoction to renew his spell, apart from hope in Ram Vilas Paswan's vote-transfer ability. After initial flirtations with the development plank by pointing to his record as Rail Mantri (a claim made hollow thanks to Didi's revelations) he tried one-upmanship too — promising Class IX students motorcycles if victorious (so much simpler to match 1-kg rice with 2, alas!) — but thankfully did not persist. It is, after all, one thing to turn animal fodder into millions, and quite another to conjure up finances for a mere-paas-motorcycle scheme (petrol bhi hai?). And then there is the minor happenstance of students not being of driving age, a fact that Nitish was quick to drive home, calling his bête noire's schemes as "always meant to land you in jail"!

Unsurprisingly, we have had some RJD leaders attempt murder-by-whispers too, with talk of bicycles being used to finance eloping couples, inter-caste marriages, and what-not. Such slander campaigns sit lightly, however, and most Biharis are too politically adept to miss the attempt to paper over Lalooji's misgovernance credentials (he once castigated Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, his most trusted lieutenant, publicly during an election rally for merely mentioning development, calling it an avoidable digression from 'the fight against communal forces'!). Hence, despite his core support base more or less intact (though there is some talk of post-Babri Muslim angst changing this at a local seat level), Lalooji has been left to ponder where the additional numbers will come from. One can never write him off too soon, but it has till now sounded like a far cry from the days of jab tak rahega samose mein aloo.

In a few days from now, we will get to know how it stacks up. Yet, irrespective of party inclination, a broader political lesson emerges — one that gives reason for hope to the Bihari in me. Holding its own amidst the high stakes and tightly strung social equations, the humble bicycle — campaign rally exhibit extraordinaire — epitomises the inevitable drive of economic progress and an inclusive agenda. Or as a much wiser man once put it, one cannot fool all the people all of the time.

In Driving Seat!

My credentials as a backseat driver are rather suspect, to say the least. Hence it is not easy for me to put on paper experiences of a motoring kind, but a Zen moment this Tue morning, amidst Cyber City rush hour traffic, did cause me to pause — hence this. (To make a full confession, one must add that it helped that this was also a week when Delhi formalised its intent to — finally — bid adieu to its dreaded Blue Line bus fleet.)

Now for the last few years, my chosen set of wheels has been a truck (actually two, both poor man's SUVs). Naturally, if for no other reason, this has put paid to any ambitions of one-red-light-to-the-next Formula 1 speed thrills that most Delhiites consider their bounden duty to practise. In fact, enough of them (any number exceeding zero is too many, in my book) take the killer-instinct facet of their nature too literally for anyone of sane counsel to refrain from indulging in pyrotechnics behind the wheel — unless desiring publicity as the day's victim in some horror tale of road rage. In such trigger-happy times, one is therefore left with little choice but to give the next horn-prone pup right of way, and enjoy the wafts of dhakchik-dhakchik music they leave in their wake. (Back in college, it was a source of much wonder for me as to how so much noise pollution was managed, till someone clarified that specialised — and naturally expensive — equipment was duly installed to create the jhankaar beat!) A show must be made if it can, after all.

Cut to 2007. With a good chunk of my motoring in Gurgaon, with roads that rivalled Laloo's Bihar for non-existence, one learnt new lessons in forbearance. The strip available to drive was narrow, the traffic unending, and the desire to be first in office all-consuming. With such an evolved mindset in the fellow driver, there was little to do but enjoy oodles of me-time stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. (This of course rendered the no-handphone law quite redundant — too little a distraction in a sea of red that a million feet on the brake pedal and no street lights produce!) Yet, to go back to the question of road rage, two competing species were found in abundance — the Call Centre cabbie, overworked, underpaid and an embodiment of the what-me-wait credo; and the local agri-culture aficionado, sometimes on a tractor, often on an LCV, for whom a 4 lane road meant 2 opposing lanes on either side of the median. Ouch.

In such a setting of bad-road-worse-traffic, and caught amidst a Darwinian struggle for survival between might-is-right tractor and no-waiting-no-stopping Qualis, it would be rank dishonesty to claim that my patience levels, though infinite, were never tested! Faced with an assault of the senses, it would be a body a much worse conductor of heat and or electricity than most folks of my acquaintance, including me, that would not occasionally boil over. And so, unfortunately, we succumbed. Thankfully we survived too. Yet, my lasting memory of any such skirmish was no sense of victory in getting the better of it, but clenched teeth, muttered breath, foul mood, and worse.

The tale this Tuesday, though, is not of victory. Running a wee bit late to work, and at just the final turn into the office building, my focus was tested by two gentlemen who, though not out of nowhere, decided to forsake the median they were perched on, and jump right in my straight line path. The traffic having just cleared up, my newbie enthusiasm for an automatic was finding expression, when one had to resort to testing that other nouveau feature — the ABS. The steed responded well enough, bringing me up well short of the duo — who were in any case a study in indifference. Perhaps it was appreciation of the advancement in automobile technology (we do love instant responses, don't we!) or satisfaction at my holding my own against the vagaries of time (a split second reaction), but the three of us (yes, that's me included) each broke into a smile. To make matters more profound, and at my gesture bidding them to pass (one has to do a Cyber City cross-country to fully appreciate this) they responded by waving me on instead.

And so, where there might have been righteous indignation or early morning vocal cord exercise (on either side), but surely all-round frustration, we had smiles, thank you! (Looking back, one is thankful too for the pre-brake speed that precluded any of the following traffic getting too close for comfort!) A good start to the day, we say. Or, in effulgent Diwali spirit, hope for more!

The Game of The Name

It's official now. In a widely reported 'confidential' note, Cabinet Secretary KM Chandrashekhar has mandated against indiscriminate use of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi’s names for government initiatives to "prevent proliferation of such association". The directive has not come a moment too soon. By one count, over 450 schemes have been blessed with these prefixes since 1991 alone, a fact that drew frequent critique from Opposition benches. It was also the subject of a petition to the Election Commission last year, suggesting the practice was in violation of the Model Code of Conduct. That the Government has finally chosen "to be sparing and selective" is, therefore, at best a case of better late than never.

Apart from displaying a singular lack of imagination, this publicity overkill was farcically counterproductive. It is one thing to name the most prominent road in every town in the country after the venerable Mahatma, once anointed as Father of the Nation, and another to affix Nehru-Indira-Rajiv (not in that order) to every government program impinging on all walks of life. As the journalist fathering the EC petition pointed out, from child-bearing, rearing, education, employment and marriage — schemes across the citizenry's entire life-cycle were blessed! Of course, the patronage extended to national challenges too: food, drinking water, shelter, electricity, destitution, handicap — you name it and ye had it, pardon the pun. State governments and central ministries seemed to fall over one another to appropriate these prize prefixes, hoping to curry favour with Congress's First Family. It is only natural that some of these schemes exist only in name: National Water Mission, Fellowship Scheme, Gramin LPG Vitrak Yojana, Creche Scheme, Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (all Rajiv); Old Age Pension, Matritva Sahyog Yojana (ditto Indira), to name but a few.

Faced with this assault of the ubiquitous, the aam aadmi, purported mascot of our ruling dispensation, could only respond with characteristic nonchalance. Unfortunately, this resignation meant even actions bordering on the absurd went unprotested. For instance, the powers-that-be were obviously unimpressed with the globally recognised Brand IIM. What else explains the desire to add 'Rajiv Gandhi' to the moniker for the Indian Institute of Management's fledgling Shillong edition? At least the hue and cry over the MoST use of Sonia Gandhi’s visage on NH signboards had the good lady herself ask its able minister to desist. (In any case, in the Congress scheme of things, few would have dared suggest removal, for fear of inviting questions on 'loyalty' that all party men wear on their sleeves.)

Perhaps one could explain schemes of a developmental nature needing such heavy-handed government guidance. However, even spheres like sports went rarely untouched. Tournaments of note carrying Gandhi-Nehru nomenclature ranged from cricket and football, through beachball and kabaddi, down to the Kerala Boat Race! In a nation short on sporting achievement (an odd CWG notwithstanding) this was surely a frittered opportunity to set examples from within the pantheon. Against this backdrop, is the apparent concern over potential "devaluation of the national leaders" anything but eminently laughable official-speak?

Think larger picture, and this name-rename obsession remains a quaint Indian construct. Having once had 'San 1942 August Kranti Marg' as my mailing address (read it aloud if you don't find it funny; it went by Hardinge Road in popular parlance), my acquaintance with this wasteful pastime is old (we moved to MacDonnell Road a.k.a Madhav Shrihari Aney Marg next!). In fact, contemporary India has been the stage for many puerile efforts over the years. Witness agitations to cleanse Bombay, Madras and Calcutta of their colonial past (more Ban-galores are in store for sure!); a facelift for Odisha and Uttarakhand; or name surgery for thousands of roads, lanes, and bylanes, and it is easy to understand why the Great Unwashed rarely care. Almost without exception, these cosmetic changes are shrugged off with the indulgent disdain Indians typically reserve for the political ilk and their shenanigans. At any rate, even if some such interventions have been accepted, they have done little to enhance the respective denizen's self-worth or quality of life.

It is, therefore, incumbent on us to actively protest such name games beyond the issue of wastefully "associating names of national leaders". As a nation with superpower ambitions, taxpayer money and political interest are better served in actual pursuit of schemes like NREGA (pronounced Na-Re-Ga in the heartland) than its rechristening four years post-launch, apparently in tribute to his dedication to Gram Swaraj, after Mahatma Gandhi. Else we will end up with MREGA.

For Bettor or Worse

One more scandal. In Cricket. And with origins in our north-westerly neighbor. Before you yawn and throw the newspaper away, cursing them for rehashing old copy, pause a moment. Media-baiting apart, recycling strategy does not sell newspapers, at least on a sustainable basis — and mine certainly wears its readership high on its sleeve. If this be the truth, there must be more to it, including a reason why Cricket has kept company with controversy with striking regularity of late.

My brush with the purported gentlemanliness of cricket came from pages of the same newspaper, years ago. The mid-80s, newly launched HT Patna edition headlined "It's Not Cricket" for some fiasco on the ground — the kind that’s hardly likely to cause you to blink in our more cynically evolved times. A question to the Pater elicited an etymological explanation in the game's history and tradition-rich lore. Not sure if it significantly altered my on-field behaviour (or lack of notable achievement), but much before Atticus Finch, it was an excellent introduction to that intangible called sportsman spirit.

Those wistful memories, though, are not the only reason to grieve the morass of modern Cricket. Mind you, the actual charges the tainted trio from Pakistan (and Akmal D’Artagnan) stands in the dock for are neither unique nor original. More than a few of India's own, including our Hon'ble MP from Moradabad (though his erstwhile tarnished reputation has lately been alight with some other flame!) have shamed cricket and left even its diehard fans wondering whether on-field exploits are driven by sporting acumen or Mammonic influence. One can go so far as to argue that this skepticism; and an exposure overdose have led to Cricket's (relatively) flagging following — and the gradual rise of other sports.

In any event, no nation has made such inseparable acquaintance with controversy as Pakistan. Go back but a few years and Pak cricket has been newsworthy more for unsavoury dealings and repeated individual misconduct than genuine cricketing reasons. If unconvinced, try and picture best-batsman-of-generation Inzamam (thus spake Imran; move over Lara, Sachin!), Peter Pan cowboy Afridi, sex-n-speed (pun intended) posterchild Shoaib Akhtar, twice-named Yousuf (more pun intended) and check if images of occasional glory are not tainted interminably with talent-wasting notoriety. Indeed Pakistani cricketers come and go (often for multiple voluntary and forced retirements!) but despite several efforts to clean their Augean stables, the muck refuses to wash off.

Perhaps the internecine bickering and dubious (on- and off-field) debacles in Pak cricket could be brushed off as symptomatic of the rot in that country. The world has, after all, been comfortably numbed to bad news from Pakistan. Nor is it easy to mourn the absence of sporting events there, given what transpired when the Lankan Tigers last dared to venture. Yet, history shows that existence of exclusion begets politics of hate. An economically challenged, educationally backward, and socially fragmented state is fertile ground for unleashing the worst within. If no other, then this is good reason to shed a tear for Muhammad Amir. Not from the country's oligopolistic elite (on whose doorstep lies the blame for most of the mess that is Pakistan, and whose fiefdom the nation's cricket has traditionally been), Amir would not have had it easy. His was a long, heroic journey from the Swat Valley, now less famous for panoramic beauty than notorious for the war against Taliban, to match-winning brilliance at Lord's. For a nation short on inspiration, at least of the right variety, his fairytale rise was profoundly apposite. Those no-balls, alas, shattered that illusion.

At another level, we must ponder if too much is invested in the game in the sub-continent: the ridiculous shenanigans before, during, and after IPL ought to have triggered such thoughts anyhow. As a case in point, consider the pointless brouhaha over another no-ball and symphony of sympathy for Sehwag (he too woke up to it overnight!). For sure lament the decline in the spirit of the game with such incidents, but let us equally appreciate the larger context of its commercialization where, indeed, we have played a leading role. And certainly go easy on ill-founded, frenzied waves of jingoism — it is, after all, still a game :)

PS: My vote too, for legalizing betting. Like the war against tobacco teaches us, one plays them best when allowed out of the closet. Viva Transparency!

Damp Squib

Months ago, the draft of a new Direct Taxes Code for India had drawn much public acclaim, including in these pages. This was not without reason. For starters, the existing system was visibly knocking on the doors of obsolescence. Hence, any review intended to simplify its archaic tenets (thereby reducing repeated recourse to judicial interpretation) was hugely welcome. Next, a forward-looking document shorn of its predecessor's dotage could enable the taxman to better engage and deploy New Age tools. This promised a sea change in efficiency and effectiveness of Direct Tax administration (on counts like evasion detection, internal security etc) making it a progressive legislation worthy of a budding economic superpower billing. Last and not least, the very idea of promoting larger debate prior to finalization bespoke intellectual honesty and inclusiveness rare in our policymaking experience. A thumbs-up for this wiki approach was much in line.

However, implicit in all these arguments (in fact providing them overall credence) was the game-changing nature of actual changes proposed to the tax framework. If it were to fall prey to back-room intrigue and lobbying, as the more cynical amongst us foretold, it would be a real pity in the face of path-breaking promise. Even as these fears lurked, the revised discussion paper one heard of a few months back also sounded headed in a compromise-riddled direction. And sadly that is exactly what has finally come home to roost in the proposal formally introduced in Parliament this week.

So how has the cheer of the finest toast for Pranab-da soured into old-wine-new-bottle despair? Selfishly or otherwise, my first disappointment is in the largely superficial personal taxation changes. In fact, perusing the reams of newsprint dedicated to laud the 'extra income' (a princely INR 24,000 at the upper end) through marginally tweaked tax slabs, one wonders when our mainstream media will mature beyond cliché. (To avoid sounding like a stuck record, we steer clear of media-bashing — richly deserved as it may be. There is zero surprise in our Fourth Estate's centrist and arguably pro-Congress slant.) In any event, basic math of inflation on the cast-in-stone slab values itself beats hollow the DTC's pithy positioning as a taxpayer windfall.

Going beyond this, one must rue the lost potential of a truly simplified tax framework. With 6.5% incidence sacrificed at the altar of exemptions and political expediency, the Government had a clear shot at reducing cost and complexity. Removal of potentially distortionary criteria would have improved investment decision-making for aam aadmi and HNI alike. Equally, a move to EET could have boosted long-term savings (PF withdrawal is an example). All that has been belied. Perhaps most importantly though, the survival of the exemption regime has reduced the leeway to lower rates and punt on increased adherence, ultimately limiting the ability to fund GOI's ambitious developmental agenda.

The saving grace has been the refusal to tinker with Capital Gains Tax that would have created an artificial portfolio churn opportunity (en masse profit-booking in March, followed by resumed longs in April, a cost minus any economic value add) that has been avoided. (In lighter vein, the DTC is also the government's first assertion of having achieved its gender equality goals. So the deduction differential allowed for woman taxpayers stands withdrawn, unless merely saved for a subsequent budget to reinstate!)

Elsewhere, the other notable revision in the Bill versus its draft is the compromise on corporate taxation. It is an easy argument that GOI frittered a chance to overhaul capital allocation in our economy. The erstwhile proposal to predicate MAT on gross assets vs book profits represented a fundamental change in the much-misused play of lowering tax liability via investment-led depreciation. From being a tool to manage tax, investments could have emerged into the light, to be evaluated for true CBA. The Big Business lobby however (including relatively genuine voices in its capital-intensive cohort) ensured we are left with Photoshop-type interventions to lower tax rates through elimination of cess, surcharge etc. If these were temporary inclusions in our tax regime, as successive FMs gave us to understand, it hardly needed a large-scale DTC exercise to get rid of them. Equally, there is no surety that some other flavour suiting the incumbent political mood will not 'force' the government of the day to resurrect these ostensibly stopgap devices.

All told, this residual pot of half measures still sets the Taxman back 1% of their INR 5.8 lakh crore annual kitty, without any redeeming expectation of increased adherence. A solitary hope remains — with the suspense of end-Feb Budget jitters gone, we could leverage a long-term Tax structure come 2012. If only the redoubtable Mr Mukherjee had been inspired by the spectacular doomsday caper of the same name, the changes would be a bit more appreciable...

Leave 'Em Kids Alone!

An article, tucked away in the inside pages of the newspaper two Sundays ago, rekindled some of my fondest childhood memories (with a twist). It bespoke an impending rewrite of ten bestsellers from the 'Famous Five' series originally authored by the iconic Enid Blyton. Yet, news of the tweak, planned to better their appeal to contemporary pre-teen palates, left me somewhat disquieted.

To talk joys first, my acquaintance with the four kids and their canine cohort (hence the Five) arose in rather happy circumstances. An infrequent happenstance of academic achievement led my father to gift me one of their novels as reward (likely expecting an encore!) from the neighborhood bookstore. The Five were thick with me in but a few pages. For the uninitiated, three were siblings: the eldest, Julian, an early introduction to 'first among equals'; the spirited and fun-loving Dick; and archetypal kid sister Anne. Accompanied by their feisty cousin George (never Georgina), their wondrous tales of adventure made them much more than adolescent characters on elegant typeface. And Timothy, Tim, or mostly Timmy, mongrel pet of supernatural gifts and even higher loyalty, was the dog's dog. If more was needed, he was added motivation for many a young boy to yearn for Man's Best Friend about the house. (No doubt an almost equal number of mothers held the ruthlessly opposite view, and we know how such debates conclude!)

In any event, Ms Blyton’s words and (albeit in smaller fashion) my animated imagination conspired to lend myriad hues to the sketched images. Convenient neighbourhood landmarks and sights from memory were cheekily appended, Rushdiesque, to suffuse them with vividly pulsating life. The Five were my friends next-door, yet magically faraway, in a subliminal construct that only childhood innocence and suitably stimulatory literature can produce. My love affair with the written word commenced with them (and a flock of the prolific Enid’s finest); kept alive thereafter by assorted characters from Fiction and more.

Imagine then, to have editorial scissors run amok this merry company! Guided by the singularly insipid beacon of market research to light the way, a team is attempting to "sensitively and carefully" reconstruct the original. The primary onus, one is given to understand, is to correct an ostensibly antediluvian slang. Unfortunately, such a stance sits well with spin-doctors, not purveyors of young adult literature — but it is perhaps symbolic of our analysis-paralysis times.

To begin with, the charge that today’s young are shying from Five's idiom, while not incredible, sounds frankly tenuous. For it to stick, one must believe that the set of 21 penned over a like number of years ending 1963 — amazingly alive and kicking for many of us through the mid-80s — has managed to age significantly over the succeeding two decades. Equally, it surprises me enormously that a generation at least a thousand times brighter than ours at an equivalent age, needs editorial crutches to understand Blyton’s oeuvre. One can dismiss mine as a jaundiced eye, but such misconceived research may be better illustration of testing biased hypotheses than allegedly passé language or deficiency of acumen.

Of course, true to spin-doctor form, the author's name has been invoked in justification of the exercise. We are reminded how a "passionate" advocate of child literacy as Blyton would appreciate the need for her immortal characters to mouth appropriate conversation-style dialogue. She was, in any case, famously disinterested in the views of critics over 12!

One wonders where such surgery would end, however. Would one, for instance, make George try less hard to be a boy in case not setting the politically correct example to today's youth? Or perhaps have in Anne not the occasionally tear-prone, timid young lady that she was, for fear of hurting Women's Lib? One ought to cleanse the precocious Ju of his 'girls will be girls; boys, boys' elder brother complex. The inappropriately named Dick must need drastic repositioning, surely. Persisting, we could turn our attention to plots and paraphernalia: highlight dangers of presenting camping out as fun; review gypsies’ portrayal lest they take umbrage; check for animal rights violations in Timmy's caricature; evaluate Uncle Quentin’s absent-mindedness as endangering the scientific community; and more!

Incidentally, there would remain a profusion of Blyton waiting to be tackled. Secret Seven, Barney, Mallory Towers, St Clare's — we could be at this for some time (thus keeping certain unnamed cash registers ringing)! Perhaps the indefatigable Blyton preordained the dangers she was flirting with - she had not one but two sets of Five adolescents solving mysteries around England. Now if only she had not let the other group be led by the redoubtable Fatty...

PS: The last named, Frederick Algernon Trotteville, has already been blessed with a trim nouveau visage last year... Who blames Kareena Kapoor for Size Zero fixation?