Sand Mafias and Sunday Swims

Delhi's best swimming spots lie at its fringes, in the Asola-Bhati sanctuary along the Faridabad border. Decades of quarrying hollowed out vast jagged craters in the red soil of kikar forests, where nilgai and hyena roam. When concern for the environment led to a ban on quarrying in the 90s, this 35 sq. km. enclave was declared a protected area, and the cavities began to fill with rain water.

The finest of these water bodies, Bhardwaj Lake, lies about 4 km. from the nearest human settlement, so the water is unpolluted by human or industrial waste. Judging by the dimensions of other quarries in the south of Delhi, its depth is considerable, so the silt settles far below the swimmer, who has the exquisite pleasure of stroking through clear, fresh water under open skies, without having to drive too far from home. In the summer, the one hour walk to and from Bhardwaj Lake does seem something of a chore, and by September this year, I had abandoned it for ICTM 2, named after the College of Traffic Management, from which you can get to the water in a 20 minute trot.

The urban detritus of partying students litters the shore of ICTM 2, smashed beer bottles and shredded styrofoam cups, empty packets of chips and namkeen, cigarette stubs and plastic cutlery; inexplicably, even men's undergarments and fragments of sarees. But when you dive out into the water, it is cool, dark and clear, and in a minute, you are with your breath and your stroke, with the lowing of cattle on the far cliff and the wheeling of a kite high above the scrub. Even the silver glimmer of a jet that was held by the earth at Palam just minutes ago adds to the sense of being isolated, privileged.

One morning, when the sky was bright with post-monsoon freshness, we had just gathered our wet swimming things, and begun to cross the rocks to the path that climbs out of the lake. Yielding a stout lathi, a sinewy young man of about 20 bounded down the hill towards us, a wispy teenager in his wake. He didn't stop until he was within touching distance of me, and raised his lathi to block our path. "Chai-paani ko kharcha", he demanded.

"What for?" I asked.

"Anything could happen to you..." the old threat-promise that a gangster will protect you from himself.

"And who gave you the responsibility to protect us?", I asked.

"Bhadana."

The word meant nothing to me, so he explained, "Bhadana, MLA. You want to talk to him?" He reached for his cell phone.

"Sure," I shrugged. Our would-be protector dialled a number, and held the phone to his ear. "Can't get through... the network...."

The reference to a higher authority, the lack of a connection - the threat seemed to fade. We passed by him, even as he demanded his protection money, and threatened to meet us again.

The very next time I came to ICTM 2, the same young man was running down the rocky trail, running with an enviable animality and infectious joy. I smiled at him, and he responded, with an uncertain smile that couldn't quite summon up a grimace. Later, as Sharad and I were about to enter the water, he appeared by the rocks, and regarded me somewhat uncertainly. "Swim?" I asked him. "No." he shook his head.

We stroked away, and did a fast lap to the far bank and back. "You don't get tired?" he regarded me. "Your breath doesn't swell?" He was intrigued by this grey-haired old man. Intrigued, and challenged. "Let me find something", he muttered, and went off to beachcomb. By the time I surfaced on the far side, he was in the water, wearing discarded underwear from the ICTM 2 picnic spot. His young energy almost made up for his lack of technique, and he dog-paddled across to me, his breath rasping with the effort, his eyes alight with the joy of accomplishment. I waited for him to reach me, and kept him quiet company for a few seconds. "Very good. Not too tired?"
 "I never tire!"

I waited half a minute, then, "Let's head back." A strange companionship.

A few weeks later, the swimming season now coming to a close, I visited ICTM 2 with a band of hard-core athletes. One of my company was struggling to put on his wet-suit, the other setting his GPS-enabled watch to his triathlon target distance of 2 km., while I postponed  swapping my last warm layer for the cold water. A skinny man of about 30 drifted down to us, unshaven and unkempt, but very much at home.
"Going to swim?".
"Yes."
"You can't."
I wasn't sure whether that meant we shouldn't, or may not, so, "Oh, we swim here every week."
"You must be coming very early, but I don't allow any one to swim here. In fact, you're not even allowed to come here, if you read the board."
"Never saw the board", I said, now getting ready to wade in.

Half an hour later, my companions were doing their last lap, but I had conceded to the cold of the water, and was pulling on my fleece jacket. "You give me a hundred rupees each." Quite matter of fact.

"You live in Anangpur?" I asked him.
"Yes, but I work here. Looking after Bhadana's sand."
"Sand?"
"Yes, there's sand everywhere - didn't you know?"
I hadn't really noticed, but I guess...
"Yes, he employs me. One day, he will make this into a landscape to rival Gurgaon, or Delhi, with bright lights everywhere."
"Unlikely. The Central Government has declared this a nature reserve, and that's not going to change in a hurry."
"You're probably right. Anyway, the JCBs run through the night, and in the morning, we don't let people come in. But you swim really well, Uncleji."
By now, my friends were climbing out of the water, and I turned to help them gather their gear. The guard of sand piles faded up the hill. "Nice meeting you - see you soon."

I missed my swim the next weekend, attending to business in my mountain village, but as my friends crossed the road at the Traffic College, they encountered a slightly hysterical young woman in over-sized dark glasses and pink fleece jacket. "Don't go that way, we were mugged." Two friends followed, another girl, and their male companion. "We've called the police, and 'The Colonel'. The guy had a knife."

"I don't know who the Colonel is", my friend Mohit recounted the incident. "But Sanju's a big guy, and Sonny's 6'2", so we decided to keep going. To be safe, though, we headed all the way out to Bhardwaj Lake, where we've never seen any local activity."

All the same, we decided to scour the Google maps for another water body in which to log our swims. Economic benefit and political power make for strong vested interests, and when they co-opt the under-employed, you have the makings of systematic violence, which is hardly worth challenging for a weekend outing.

Us and Them

The mornings are turning cool now, and this is probably the last time I'll swim in the Bhatti lakes this year.

About a kilometer in to the approach road, a pile of rocks signals that the quarries have been closed for business. It also serves as the marker for runners from Anangpur that their morning run is done. Many of their faces are familiar, and we exchange pleasantries as they stretch and bend before walking back to their homes.

"Lots of your friends are running around these parts."
"My friends?"
"Yes, the English-speaking kind."
"I heard there is some kind of race going on."
"A hundred - hundred and fifty of them. Up and down, through the night, little torches attached to their foreheads."

I know, of course, that running enthusiasts from Gurgaon have staged a Bhatti ultra-marathon this weekend, and it wouldn't be too much of stretch to say several of them are friends. I ask, though,

"Why don't you join them?"
"We don't have that kind of time. It's OK for these kind of people, who have lots of time. We have work to do, families to feed; it's OK to come out for an hour or two in the morning, but then we have to get back to reality."
"They work through the week. But, yes, they have the weekends off."
"Yeah, they punch things into the computer. But we have work, real work. And tension."
"True, that. Anyway, I'm off for my weekend swim..."

Us, and Them.
Clearly, I'm part of the 'Them'... the computer-punching, English speaking types.

Triumphalism among US Left

The polarisation of views in the US is amazing. I don't meet many Republicans, since it seems only the Liberals travel abroad, but the uniformity of views (and derision of the conservative heartland) is staggering, like some extremely sophisticated indoctrination. Like me, I don't think the Democratic liberals meet any Conservatives - they talk to each other, nod to each other, and assume that anyone who thinks otherwise is an asshole.

And this is what Clive Crook says:
"One of the things that strikes me as a foreigner living in the U.S. is that American metropolitan liberals despise every kind of bigotry, except the kind directed at the dumb hicks who inhabit the middle of the country. I mean, those people vote Republican!".

Here's his piece for Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-22/democrats-are-stupid-too.html

Fit at Fifty

Of course, I'm not fifty - I finished 57 years on planet earth this July. But this title is easier on the ear and year..

Last Sunday, I went swimming with a group of people, all around 30 years old. One of them sent me a facebook message that afternoon - I hope I can be as fit as you at 57. How do you do it?

I thought it was a question worth reflecting on, and this is what followed:

Fit at Fifty – and beyond

      1.   It’s got to be important to you. If not, our urban lifestyle, with its sedentary work and mechanised transport, makes it easy to live comfortably without moving the major muscles of the body, or driving the cardio-vascular system to levels which cause it to remain in fine tick.

     

     2.  Find sports you enjoy. Learn the techniques of the sport as early as you can, so the return to effort is high – whether it is the most efficient stroke in swimming, the right form in running, or how to optimise gearing and saddle height on a cycle. Once the muscle memory is in place, you will be able to pursue the sport well into your 60s and 70s, without huffing and puffing like a grampus, and without too many muscle pains and sprains. And since you enjoy it, the impulse to pursue it will not be dampened by the ups and downs of life.

   

      3.       Seek out like-minded friends. Research has shown that your levels of fitness are seriously influenced by the company you keep. So, if you have friends who are strong swimmers, you will at some level, strive to keep up with them. And, you will also learn about technique and equipment from each other. It also helps if you occasionally compete. Preparing for a race or match is a great motivator – not so much to beat the others, or the clock, but to do your best.

     

      4.       Measure it. Nothing works like tracking your own progress – speed, time spent, distance covered. Cumulating these on a monthly basis shows you how much time and effort you’ve put into the sport, and reduces the room for self-made excuses. It also helps you to push your fitness/sports time to the front of the queue of competing demands for your time. And gradually, you’ll learn what I have learned, that there is rarely a time when you don’t return from a ride, run, or swim feeling better – much, much better – than when you set out. Irrespective of how lousy or demotivated you felt before you set out!

      5.       Be well! I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping illness at bay. Every time one falls sick, and has to take time off from sports activities, the curve of improvement droops, and there is a huge setback to one’s fitness levels. In fact, a double whammy operates – firstly, you have lost several days of practice, which always results in a drop in performance; secondly, the body is struggling to repair itself, rather than build on itself. This obviously raises the question of how to keep well.

     6.       Listen to your body. I have learned a lot from the broad principles of Ayurveda, which tell you that food is the best medicine – and the worst poison; and that there are no universal principles of good food and bad food. Each of us is unique, though Ayurveda tries to classify us according to the ‘doshas’, or essential characteristics of our body types. And while I have read some of the detail of what food works for the ‘vata’ types, and what for the ‘kapha’, I think the most important take-away is, if you observe your body carefully, it will tell you what it needs to eat, and more importantly what it most definitely doesn’t.

This self-awareness does not come easily. The lessons and sensitivity develop slowly, and have to fight against widely accepted stereotypes (for example, if you want strong muscles, you must eat lots of animal protein) as well as the culture of our upbringing. But listen carefully to your own body – what food makes it feel strong, what makes it feel light, what makes it feel sluggish. Some foods will cause your body temperature to rise, others will make your intestines go cold. Listen to the effect different forms of food have on you.

Sleeping late suits some, waking early suits others. Monitor how you feel in the morning, especially if you have changed your sleep routine. Allow your body to tell you when it is feeling thirsty; and don’t eat when you aren’t hungry. Try not to let the mind interfere in this signalling. If you learn to listen to your own body, you will become much more resilient, with a highly developed immune system.

      7.       Be flexible. Flexibility of the body prolongs your active years. It needs to be cultivated. Though many sports will engender flexibility of the joints used (swimming for example), others tend to lead to stiffness – running is one. Cultivating a practice that enhances flexibility – yoga and tai chi are two of the best known – is hugely helpful, and reduces the chances of injury or strain as a result of intense sport activity.

      8.       Push yourself, but not too hard. In general, we are too soft on ourselves, and stop well before we reach the limit of our potential. One has to keep pushing the envelope, of distance run, passes scaled, or time in the water. This does not mean exhausting oneself or ending up with muscle strain, or cramps. Often it means slowing down, quietly observing one’s own ‘form’, the unnecessary exertions that do not add to speed. Whenever you find yourself gasping for breath, straining, or over-heating, ask yourseIf if you can do it slower, more easily. Usually, you can; then your breathing slows, your movement is more fluid, and you find you can run that extra mile!

Surprise Yourself. Run those extra miles.

Education on a Sunday morning

A Sunday morning. We drive to the fringe of the Asola-Bhati sanctuary, on the Delhi-Haryana border. As we park our cars, a knot of teenage boys pass cheerily by, heading in the same direction as us.

A few minutes later we catch up, and it registers, via the acute sensibility that we Indians have for class and place, that these are not boys from the adjoining Gujjar villages, but from an urban slum.
 "Where're are you heading?", I ask them.
 "To the lake."
"Have you been there before?"
"No, have you?"

When I tell them I have, a flood of questions follow - how deep is it? Can you swim? Can your children swim? Then, as I answer obligingly, the questions get more personal, "What do you do?"
That's a difficult one to answer under the best of circumstances, so I tell them one of the many truths, "I used to teach - English". No, not in a school-school, but in a private center, to teach English to adults.

"And you've retired now?"
"Yes."
"Then how do you manage for money?"
Another boy is slightly embarrassed by his friend's transgression of propriety and interjects, "Oh he must not be having any money problems. He must own his house."
I admit as much, and he says, "We pay rent."
The others chime in, "Yes, we too."

"So where is 'home'?", I ask. It is in the nature of Delhi that their parents come from every state in North India - Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh.

"And your family?" they ask me. I tell them we're essentially Dilli-wallahs, though my parents came from Punjab. They nod. "And that's your son?", they point to my teenager, walking a few paces ahead, with family friends.

"And that girl with him? Which country is she from?"
Of Tamil-Swiss parentage, Mallika's origins would be difficult to pinpoint, so I am not surprised when they say, "She must be from another country."
I nod.
"From Bombay."
"And Bombay is another country?", I ask.
They look at each other, one nods, one shrugs...I let it pass.
"Actually, she's from Bangalore", I tell them. "Anyone know where that is?"
"Yes, I've seen it in the railway station - New Delhi to Bangalore City."
"And do you know where it is?"
Silence.
"Which state?"
Silence.
"Anyone heard of Karnataka?"
"Karnataka." A couple of them repeat the name, but it is clear it has little resonance.
"It is the capital of Karnataka."

We are approaching the lake, an abandoned stone quarry, now filled with rain water. Even though the water level is higher than I've ever seen, its still a good 100 feet below us, and the first viewing is always impressive. The boys hoot and whistle.
 "Wow! It must be deep!"
"Uncle, we won't swim in it! Are you sure you'll swim in it?"
"There must be dinosaurs in the lake."
"Dinosaurs?" I check the boy's face to see whether it is a joke. It isn't.
"Dinosaurs! Do you think dinosaurs still walk the earth?"
Not one of the boys is sure how to answer. I don't want to be harsh, so I say, evenly, "Dinosaurs disappeared from the earth millions of years ago."
They digest this. "And what about pythons?"
"Don't know about pythons, but I don't think this is the terrain for pythons."

Glad for the company, the boys splash around the shallows of the lake, while we do laps of its placid surface.

On the way home they talk of what they will do with the rest of Sunday. "I have lots of homework," one says. "Yes, I must study my Economics", says the other.

I don't dare to ask...

Happy Independence Day, Yokels.

Indira Gate, off-bounds. Rajiv Path, off-bounds.
Happy Independence Day, yokels.

A bunch of cyclists from different parts of the NCR decide to meet at India Gate, to observe Independence Day. As we approach Rajpath on the C hexagon, around 0615, a phalanx of policemen wave us back. I slow down, rather than turn. They get agitated.
"I'm not going to crash your barrier. Just want to know why India Gate is off-bounds. And till when." 
"The Prime Minister is making a speech"
"But that's at Red Fort!"
"Yes, but he's passing this way"
"So it will be open shortly...?"
"No, it will be shut till he returns, about 0830".

Cheers, we pedal off. We had set up a fall-back rendezvous, Khan Market, at 0700. Gives us enough time to sprint to Nehru Park and back. Except, we cant get back. At the Ashok Hotel roundabout, the cops tell us, "No slow-moving traffic beyond this point."

Aargh... We turn back, Shanti Path, Teen Murti Marg. More cops - more waving off. I slow to ask them for the best route - they get agitated. "I'm not going to crash your barrier, guys! Just tell me how to get to Khan market."

"Go on to Shanti path. Then to the Ashok Hotel roundabout, down to Tughlaq Road"

"But we was just turned back from there..."

"Then we can't help."

"OK, guess we'll head home then."

We turn around. Then I stop and ask one of them, a grey-haired inspector my age, "Tell me, don't you think its rather sad that, on Independence Day, Indians can't go to India Gate to mark the occasion? What point Independence?"

He sees the point, shrugs. Then, But, Sir, you know during British times, Indians weren't allowed in Lutyen's Delhi?"

Is that official indoctrination, or just plain ignorance?

Happy Independence Day.

Image Management

As an agnostic, I can't subscribe to the belief that "God made us in his image".

Advertising, unlike God, is an obvious reality, and one of its more frequently deployed tools is to purvey images of people and life-styles that are currently in vogue, into which the product in question neatly fits. These days, for example, luxury housing goes with golf courses; Swiss watches go with German cars, and Italian dinners must be prefaced by Scottish single malts. If any of them is missing, you are a loser, and need to crank up the power on the treadmill of your life.

Freedom comes from rejecting all of the cookie-cutter moulds that the world asks us to pour ourselves into. Joy comes from finding what we truly relish, and rejecting all the second-hand prescriptions to make us feel good about ourselves.

It takes a fair amount of courage and self esteem to break away from the pack, and create a life that is genuine, meaning one that is a response to one's search within oneself for what brings meaning - in work, play, friends, and consumption habits.

Remember, though, that this is - or needs to be - a dynamic process. Too often, we create an image of ourselves, adjust ourselves to it, and it to our being, and settle into it. This, too, is a trap.

Our souls evolve, the world changes, the stimuli thrown at us are ever new. Often, we don't see them as being new, so we respond in familiar, comforting patterns. This is a shame - I believe we have the ability to constantly change, and there is great joy and liberation to be found in this continuous growth.

To find this growth, we must reject all images of ourselves - those purveyed to us, those our families seek to burden us with, and most of all, those we cast for ourselves.

Too much fuss over shit-all

Where Vasant Vihar  ends, the rocky outcrops of the Aravalis are home to a cluster of jhuggis, an area known by its topography, as a pahadi. Bored with the metalled roads of New Delhi, I turned my cycle onto a dry path of bleached ochre, making way for the odd motor-cycle heading to work, towards the tarmac of the city.

Through the keekar, the thorny acacia, I skirted the settlement, then a wider arc to stay away from the stagnant black water, the installation of plastic refuse and the wandering pigs. Near a clump of bushes, the path forked, and I hesitated. A 10-year old boy, with the most beautiful honeyed eyes asked me where I was going. "Just wandering", I said.

 "Hmm - if you take that road; it's a long ways before you exit."

"And this one?", I asked.

"It leads to the jhuggies."

"I think I'll take the longer track then. You're sure it doesn't trail off?"

"Of course. Have a nice ride." His liquid smile was echoed by his friend, a somewhat more reserved lad who had stood quietly by.

I pedalled on, shifting into the lowest gear, as the track narrowed and headed up. A minute later, a grown man emerged from another clump of keekar, empty Bisleri bottle in hand. Amused, yet sympathetic, he pointed at my front tire, to which a thorny twig had attached itself. "I think you had better turn around. You won't be getting very far with that!"

"True!", I grimaced. I dismounted, pulled out the thorn, and watched the tyre collapse. I turned back, towards the two boys.

The same honeyed eyes, the same liquid smile - "What happened?"

"Puncture - keekar."

"So, are you heading back?"

"I guess.

"Ah well. Have a nice day!"

"Thanks." I said. His friend stood by, still quiet; my little friend still squatting, his posture exactly the same as when I found him, his dark little pecker a few inches from the ground. Around him, rags and plastic, stones and thorns littered the underbrush. They both waved, and went back to being together, one squatting, one not.

Why do we make so much fuss about shitting in private?

Who wants loos in every home?

Not my chauffeur, for example.

Vir Singh comes from a village in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, and has been working with my family for over two decades now. Now in his mid-40s, he lives in a room attached to our house, a 'servant's quarter' in Delhi parlance, but his wife and 3 children live in the village, in a pucca house he has built on the family homestead. 3 brothers have individual homes on the plot of land, which I estimate is some 700-800 sq. yards in area. By his description, the courtyard around which the houses are arrayed is about 200 sq. yds. His own house has 2 large rooms, and a massive verandah that runs the length of the house - 90 feet long, and 12 feet deep. He put in a 'lintel' roof in 2001, and remembers every detail of its laying - how many tons of steel, how many bags of cement, how much he paid the contractor, and the number of liters of country liquor he served to the labourers who mixed and poured the cement. The exact dimensions of the concrete slab - 1130 sq ft.

Just to put that in perspective, that's almost the same area as a 3 bed-room flat in Delhi's Vasant Kunj, and a lot larger than the average Rs. 3 crore flat in Mumbai. But this substantial home has neither loo nor bathroom.

"How come?", I asked him. "Oh, I keep thinking I will build it", he said, "but there've been too many weddings this last year." Of nephews and nieces, of cousins and their children. He counts off 10 weddings to which he has contributed money in the last year or so. "They'll give me back the money when I get my elder daughter married next year." Clearly, that loo is not going to get built in a hurry. It's just too low on his list of priorities. The house came first, the buffaloes next, then cycles for the kids.

Over the next 10 years, his 2 daughters will need to be married, and he has a list of requirements that is startling in its detail, exactitude and costing - Rs. 32,000 for the beds, Rs. 31,000 for 1 'tola' of gold jewellery, Rs. 13,000 worth of winter bedding, 51 guests for dinner.....Rs. 3 lakhs in all. Then his 13-year old son will need to go to college. "He's very good at studies."

Social activists, who want to set the agenda for public spending on private lives, bemoan the fact that India has more mobile phones that loos. If they - or the government - had its way, India would have not had mobile phones; when they were launched, the government felt that mobile phones would cater to the need of the affluent. It was entrepreneurs who sensed how basic the need to talk is, and catered to it.

My conversation with Vir Singh underlined the fact that he couldn't care a s*** about a private loo.

To the extent this is reflective of others without a privy, those loos will not be built. And if public money is used to build them, they will be used to store fodder, or firewood.

Bribes are always paid in arms deals

The military-corruption complex

Amitabha Pande; former secretary to the Government of India

I have been quietly amused by the pother over the AgustaWestland helicopter scam, as though bribes were paid because the government exercised its choice in favour of that company and someone "tweaked" the requirements to limit the choice. This shows a lack of understanding of corruption in defence. This case (like others before it) will follow a predictable course: investigators will earn junkets to Rome, honest reputations will be damaged, major procurement will halt and procedures made even more tortuous and centralised. Meanwhile, rent-seeking, like water, will seek new outlets.

How we squander each opportunity for systemic reform by opting for the short-term excitement of hunting the corrupt! We so easily overlook two cardinal factors. First, in our defence procurements, most bribes are paid not for choosing X over Y but for simply proceeding with the procurement process and crossing the hurdles placed. The choice of vendor is generally made on reasonably strong professional grounds and merit is almost never sacrificed, because it is well established that whoever is selected will pay. Second, in a system where responsibility for a decision is so widely dispersed, the big fish invariably escape and small fish are caught for all the wrong reasons.

In this case, there appear to be two red herrings. First, that money was paid for tweaking the requirements and much is being made of who tweaked the requirements, and when. This does not sound right. Money is normally paid for restricting competition and tailoring specifications to favour a particular vendor, not for expanding it and allowing more vendors to compete. While being given a chance to compete may command a price, it does not guarantee eventual success, particularly when AgustaWestland's competitors may have had an edge in terms of capacity to pay bribes.

The second red herring is to draw attention to the role played by Air Marshal Tyagi and his relatives. Quite apart from the fairly convincing denial offered by Julie Tyagi and the former air chief, this was not an air force related procurement, where the air chief would have had a prominent role. This was a civilian requirement and the air force played, at best, the role of technical advisor to facilitate the SPG in meeting its requirements. In any procurement process, the determining role in laying down specifications (GSQRs) or in tailoring processes to benefit favourites is that of the buyer, not of those giving technical advice. Why should any payment be made to someone whose role was so peripheral?

There are three tracks of corruption in defence procurement. The first* is demand estimation, demand vetting, demand projection and inter se priority determination; the second* is technical, from framing the GSQRs to preparing the engineering specifications, technical trials, user trials and techno-commercial evaluations before the procurement process commences. Both are the jealously guarded turf of the services and brook no interference from outsiders. Neither the processes nor the practices are audited or subjected to independent professional scrutiny. However, this case being an SPG requirement, these tracks are irrelevant.

The focus should be on the third* track, the actual procurement, where the onus shifts to the ministry. In all transactions, there is an established hierarchy of rent collectors along the approval chain. This approval cycle is so complicated and lengthy that the opportunity for each functionary to collect his share of the booty along the chain is maximised. At no stage does anyone need to circumvent the procedure, because following the procedure itself provides the opportunity. Up to a certain stage, all that is needed is to keep the process moving forward, for the rent gets automatically paid at each stage of the transaction. These relatively small payments are meant to keep the ball in play.The beneficiaries are generally junior- and middle-rung babus, the network of personal staff attached to officers dealing with procurements, sometimes the officers themselves, service representatives at the middle level who participate in the PNC (Price Negotiation Committee) meetings, etc. The main commodity on sale is information.

Things start getting hotter as the negotiations move towards a conclusion. This is when the main political-level decision-maker needs to get closer to insider information through his trusted person, as he needs to know in advance who the likely winner will be. This is the time to summon the probable winner or his agent, the chief deal-broker, the political fixer and legal and financial facilitators and work out the final details of the pay-offs, sharing arrangements and routing. There is a flurry of official briefing meetings so that the decision-maker(s) can keep ahead of the vendors in the information game. At this stage, all the vendors have to open something like a letter of credit so that whenever the final decision is taken, the payments are automatically credited to the designated accounts.Occasionally, last-minute theatrics occur because of a falling out among the agents and the principal deal-brokers and fixers. If one of the major deal-brokers is antagonised, he can ensure (through selective media leaks or a sudden review of priorities) that the deal is either scuttled or pushed back sufficiently to enable him to regain control. However, such instances are rare and normally it is in everyone's interest to cross the final hurdle.

Corruption is deeply embedded in the architecture of defence transactions and anything short of a complete transformation of structures, systems and processes will not make any difference. There is no deal in which middlemen do not play a role and hefty commissions are not paid. Investigators needlessly focus on why a particular vendor was chosen or on procedural infirmities in the hope of catching the wrongdoer. Corrupt deals will always be procedure-perfect: ironically, if there are procedural flaws it is likely to be a rare, clean transaction. The focus should shift to looking at the money trails, who paid whom and when, the specific role of big-time deal-fixers and their political connections. Yet, in all the major investigations so far, the role of these brokers has never been properly investigated.

This is why the focus on nailing the corrupt ends up paralysing the honest and ensures that the corrupt find more ingenious ways of making money. Only systemic reform can change things. Naturally, that has few takers. Who would like to shut off such an important source of revenue?

The writer is a former secretary to the government and handled army procurement in the 1990s

Covering reality

A major deal come unstuck in China, and the FT raises important  questions about the big names involved:
The bank at the center of the deal is CDB Bank, which the FT calls a policy bank, meaning that it drives policy agendas. It is run by Chen Yuan, a princeling, in the nomenclature used for sons of powerful Communist party leaders.

Ping An, the company from which HSBC was trying to exit, is believed to have 2 bn dollars worth of investment by the family of Premier Wen Jiabao.

Clearly, HSBC got caught in the internal squabbles of the party!

That apart, what stuck me is that such shenanigans clearly lie at the bottom of the twists and turns in, say, the Sahara imbroglio, and its involvement in the funding of UP political leaders. Yet, not one paper has even hinted at these..

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4287c68e-5a57-11e2-bc93-00144feab49a.html#axzz2HRdfr6YX


Shows how weak our press is.

This also shows up in its lack of coverage of the HSBC laundering issue. But more of that later...