Caste versus Class

MUCH reviled, our caste system – Jati pratha – finds its echo in many forms across societies, not only new and old but also modern and advanced. Am reading a book on Abraham Lincoln’s presidency years called Team of Rivals – The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln authored by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In sociology literature, particularly the left leaning, the caste system is shown with a negative slant, of it being a regressive social more that over time degenerated into a rigid, moribund organism that has stifled individual growth.

Now here is Salmon Portland Chase, a Republican competitor of Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency of Civil war America. The author, through him, narrates how the United States of nineteenth century lived by its own caste system – calling it class system instead. Not to be missed is the equivalence of each class with the corresponding level of our castes.

As Chase recounts describing the Washington D.C. life as he saw it to his friend Hamilton Smith, the classes were very brahmanically arranged. As the author narrates, “There were distinct classes of society in Washington”, Chase told Hamilton Smith. The first, to which he aspired, included the high government officials; the second, to which he was relegated, included teachers and physicians; and the third mechanics and artisans. There was, of course, still lower class comprised of slaves and labourers.

Now would not the high government officials, much envied for their status, correspond to the Brahmins, the policy makers? Or the lowest slaves and labourers to the Shudras? Societies might have devised different ways of tackling with the negative consequences of this hierarchy but it almost seems like a pan-cultures phenomenon. What say?

Why the coup could not have happened, can’t happen.

AMID the intended or unintended sensation around attempted/threatened coup by the Indian Army one factual point was totally missed. It was brought to my notice by a friend in one of the forces that proudly shoulder the responsibility of defending the country in peace time with the Army. A coup in India is as much of a possibility as a sky-flower or a hare’s horn, due to the counterweight provided by the paramilitary forces.

How? Here goes the explanation. The Indian Army is about a million strong. So two battalions, even if they were moved with the intent to occupy/displace Delhi administration, only means a drop in the ocean. As our experience with 1984 shows it would have max amounted to a mutiny rather than a coup. But, for a moment lets assume all corps commanders stood unanimously behind the general (unlikely in the Amartya Sen calculus of an argumentative Indian!). That’s where the paramilitary forces, firmly in civilian control, come in the picture.

Let’s begin with the Border Security Force (BSF). The peace-time frontier keepers have 189 battalions with total force strength of three lakh jawans guarding 7,000 kms land border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Take the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) that has over 3.5 lakh men and add to it the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) with another 50 battalions. Other sundry agencies like the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), and NSG – the civilian counterpart of the special forces – complete a total available strength of over a million. Add to it the state police forces and the number of men available under civilian command goes to over 3.5 million!

Which means each Army jawan is outnumbered one-is-to-three. My friend explains that this is how the whole national security architecture is based on a system of checks and balances. The Army has been trying for long now to gain administrative control of the BSF but to no avail with civilian masters proving much too smarter. No wonder that except for the precaution of calling back the Defence Secretary, the only other order the Home Ministry gave to counter an “Express” coup was to ask Delhi police to do nakabandi! Berate a stick – exactly what you do to get a cow out of your compound. Only this time it was a holy cow called the Indian Army.

Refresh @10 - II

IT was time for the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections in the back drop of the Godhra episode. I was assigned an interview on the economic costs of riots with Manu Shroff, a former editor of The Economic Times who was then retired and residing in Vadodara. It so happened that his neighbour was IG Patel, former Governor of Reserve Bank of India, former IIM-A Principal, former Director London School of Economics and much more. Fondly called IG by his near and dear ones, Patel too was spending his retirement years in the calmer confines of Vadodara, his home town. As I sat with Shroff, almost taking dictations on his analysis of riots’ impact, IG walked in. The two were thick friends. IG almost looked rural in a white half sleeves out-shirt and a dark pants. As I was introduced the duo got more talkative. It was tea time. So the interview became a long winding three way conversation with my inputs limited to stories of the scale of riots. As the focus shifted from Shroff to IG, he came into story telling narration mode and landed a scoop of memoirs in my lap. 

One fine evening of 1991, IG sat over dinner with a guest from Delhi – a former friend from his Cambridge days. It was incidentally IG's birthday as well. Just then his phone rang. It was PMO on the other side. The voice told IG that Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao wanted to talk to him and he was connected. Now this is as told by IG – “…Rao wanted me to take over as the Finance Minister in his cabinet. He was looking for a technocrat as the nation’s economy was in doldrums. He even offered that I take the next day’s flight and land in Delhi. But I was already in retirement mode. I knew what life in Delhi can be. The bureaucracy can be stifling. Then this thought stuck me. My guest was familiar with Finance ministry bureaucracy in and out. He had been in RBI. He was a noted economist. I suggested why not him?...” Rest as they say is history. The guest of IG that fateful day was Sardar Manmohan Singh – now India’s longest serving non-Gandhi Prime Minister!

Refresh @10 - I

IT was the peak of campaign for the 2004 general election in Vadodara. A gung-ho "India Shining" BJP presented quite a contrast with a brooding Vajpayee. A directionless Congress was behaving as a reluctant participant having mentally conceded the poll. Senior reporters were busy in covering more important events of the campaign – the trails and the Vajpayee-Sonia rallies. Cubs like me would do smaller side stories like press conferences and the stuff. One fine day, the chief reporter gave an assignment. Please go and meet Manmohan Singh. He would meet select journalists at Welcomgroup Hotel. It was my first assignment to cover a national leader. I sauntered excited to find only one more reporter - the PTI stringer waiting in the lobby. 

Moments later a Congress Seva Dal attendant ushered us into a suite. At the centre of the room just around the sofa stood our subject. In a fawning white Kurta and his trademark blue turban Sardar Manmohan Singh greeted the duo with a submissive Namskar both hands folded. Even a city neta's casual confidence was yet to arrive in the man.

Singh had the demeanor of a candidate out for his first interview. The PTI man shot off a question on what would be priorities of Congress if it came to power. I perhaps asked him what he thought of country's present economic situation given he was an Economist himself. That was rather patronising. The answers are difficult to recall now, but I do remember that we both had to strain ourselves really hard to get a word of what MMS spoke. Unassuming to the extent of being self effacing, one came out unimpressed from the meeting. Understandably, only one newspaper and one agency thought of covering him, dismissed in two columns next day. And not even a Municipal level Congress leader was present to escort someone who would be India's Prime Minister a fortnight later!