And this year’s Oscar goes to…

Very recently, my namesake and I made a bet: Amit Tiwari, donning his soothsayer’s cap, has predicted that Little Miss Sunshine will walk away with this year’s golden statuette; I have my hopes pinned on Babel, the intertwined cross-cultural yarn filmed by the Mexican auteur, Alejandro González Iñárritu. The prize: dinner at the Delhi Dublin (inclusive of airfare, and at least, two shots of Pink Breast). In the event that neither wins, and the Oscar goes to one of the other three contenders- The Queen, Letters from Iwo Jima and Departed- then the bet’s off, and we go Dutch.

We do, however, agree on one thing: Helen Mirren’s portrayal of QE is a sure-shot winner for the Best Actress’s trophy. For the record, we are familiar with only two of the other nominees’ works: Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) and Penelope Cruz (Volver). Be that as it may, the Academy’s penchant for rewarding reel-life portrayals of real-life figures- remember Geoffrey Rush’s David Helfgott (Shine, 1996), Russell Crowe’s John Nash (A Beautiful Mind, 2001) and Julia Roberts’ Erin Brockowich (2000)- together with Ms. Mirren’s meticulous study of her character, right down to Her Majesty’s penguinesque walk, and the Americans’ underlying Anglophilia makes her the top contender. As far as Best Actor goes, I am quite sure that the young and talented Leonardo di Caprio (Blood Diamond) shall have to wait: although his character isn’t quite black & white- something that should work to his advantage- action heroes, as a rule, don’t get rewarded. Personally, my vote’s for Peter o’ Toole: he should have got one long ago, and it’s about time the Academy made amends.

This weekend, a billion cinema-aficionados shall undoubtedly be burning the midnight oil. For my namesake and I, that will mean staying awake till early Monday morning to figure out just who’s going to buy those tickets…

AJ Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Deux Videos: In flagrante delicto!

I. While you were Snoring

'le enfant terrible' saurav secretly video-recorded me while i was sleeping at SNT's: definitive proof that i am a polyphonic if somewhat loud snorer. the really astute observer, however, will notice an ever-so-slight dis-sync between the audio and video components of the recording. cfsl, i.e., the central forensic and scientific laboratory, has recently confirmed that the voiceover matches saurav's ;)

II. SNT's Challenge

yesterday, shailesh nitin trivedi put up a challenge: he said he could climb down a waterfall (tamraguda, about ten kilometres upstream from chitrakote) and come back in less than twenty minutes. in less than five, he returned- having covered less than 1% of his expected-itinerary. age, it seems, finally caught up with fancy. still, snt's joie de vivre is more than commendable: it's positively heroic.

this recording shows a footage of "the wannable-bastaria dr. livingstone's expedition"! no points for guessing that the white figure moving at the speed of light is none other than mr. trivedi. Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Portrait: Tushar Waghela

The Artist and his Portrait: 2.2.2007
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

ACCIDENTAL AGITATOR: CEMETERIES AND COOKING CYLINDERS

In this post, I would like to talk about two incidents that happened to me this past week: they shed some light on the problems concerning the urban areas of Chhattisgarh. My participation in both cases was quite by accident.

The first one took place while my friend Mr. Abhay Goyal was driving me to my father’s political secretary, Mr. Shailesh Nitin Trivedi’s house (where I am currently in self-imposed exile, studying for my law exam due next month). Enroute, an angry crowd had blocked passage: one of them saw me sitting in the front seat and soon, they were shouting “Amit Jogi Zindabad’. I had no idea what this was about. In any case, I had no option but to get out of the car. The activist NSUI state president, Mr. Vikas Upadhyay, and the local corporator, Mr. Anand Kukreja, were also there. I asked them what the matter was.

I was led to an empty plot, which had been dug up at various places. Earth moving vehicles were parked nearby. This was the site for an upcoming Housing Board shopping plaza. At first glance, there seemed nothing wrong with this scene. Except that it is the local burial ground: it has been so for the past fifty years at least, as documented in the patwari’s register. I saw at least four prominent cemented tombs. The paucity of cemented tombs can be explained as being due to the poverty of those brought to be buried here. In fact, the sole marker of recent gravesites is a jute rope tied around bamboo poles circumnavigating a rectangular burial enclosure. On closer inspection, I saw a sari dangling out from the cross-section of one of the dug-up pits. The deceased lady had been buried only three months before. Skeletal remains could be seen jutting out from mounds of dug-up earth. The whole scene was ghastly.

The corporator informed me that the PWD Minister, Mr. Rajesh Munat, had come there, and had a bitter altercation with the crowds, telling them that they were ‘enemies of development’. I was asked to do an impromptu ‘bhoomi pujan’- the laying of the foundation stone ceremony- right then and there for the construction of a proper, enclosed graveyard, which I did. On the next day, I was happy to discover that the earth moving vehicles had gone, and the earth was put back into the dug-up pits. The dead were finally resting in peace.

The second incident occurred at Abhanpur while we were driving with Papa from Rajim to Charama. Once again, we were caught in a two kilometer-long chakka jam. Then I received a telephone call from one Mr. Sanjay Yadav, a youth leader from Abhanpur. What follows is a text of the conversation:

Sanjay: Bhaiya, we have caught a truck loaded with LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) cylinders. They were being taken to Raipur, to be sold in the black market. It belongs to (the local minister) Ajay Chandrakar’s personal assistant (PA).

Me: What are you doing about it?

Sanjay: We have gheraoed the truck. The driver has run away. The police refuses to register an FIR. What shall we do?

Me: Have you done a chakka jam (stopped vehicular traffic) also?

Sanjay: Yes. How do you know?

Me: Because I am stuck in it!

Sanjay: Arey Wah! Where are you?

Nothing could have made Sanjay happier. Next thing I know, there were about fifty boys, all led by Sanjay, surrounding my vehicle. I decided to go with them. After having walked the two-kilometer stretch jam-packed with honking vehicles, I finally saw the truck. About five hundred people had surrounded it. The police was also there, huddled in one corner. The crowd was positively belligerent. Among them were members of the local press. I asked them for the facts. They told me that despite a severe shortage of cooking cylinders in Abhanpur, the local gas agency (run by the minister’s PA) was selling cylinders allotted to them in the Raipur black market. The TI (thanedar) came to see me. I asked him why he wasn’t writing the FIR, which in any case was simply a formality; after all, he was free to investigate the matter in whatever way he liked. The crowds continued to grow around me, as did the vitriolic of the anti-government sloganeering. Following is the conversation that took place between the TI and someone else who was at the other end of his walkie-talkie (mike):

TI: Sir, the crowd is becoming uncontrollable. Roger.

Other voice: Use force to clear chakka jam. Roger.

TI: But Sir, Amit Jogi has also come. Roger.

Other voice: Who? Roger.

TI: Amit Jogi. Roger.

(Static)

Other voice: Prepare a seizure report of the vehicle and register FIR. Clear chakka jam. Roger.

TI: Roger.

Subsequently, the seizure report was prepared in my presence, and two witnesses- Sanjay Yadav and the local Dainik Bhaskar correspondent- signed it. I left the spot, wondering what it was that I did to make the police change its mind about registering the FIR.

The lesson I learnt from becoming ‘an accidental agitator’ on not one but two occasions in the past week is this: Greed is the greatest enemy of Governance. It was greed- profit to be got from illegal hoarding and black marketing- that prevented handpicked allottees of fair-price shops in Kota from distributing essential food grains and cooking oil to their intended recipients: hapless, needy villagers; it was greed again that prompted the PWD minister to sanction the construction of a shopping plaza over a cemetery that happened to be on prime land; and it was greed that lured a minister’s PA to try to sell cooking cylinders in the black market. In each case, what emboldened them in their misadventures was not only the sense of impunity- that they could get away with it- that comes from being close to the powers-that-be but also the fact that their ‘victims’ were all poor, and therefore, expected to take things lying down, without uttering a word in protest. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

Almost suddenly, the People of Chhattisgarh are no longer silent. The sooner this government realizes this, the better for all of us.

AJ Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Naxalism: (M) FAKE ENCOUNTERS & SURRENDERS

Sometime back- January 20th, to be precise- I participated in a panel discussion on ‘Salwa Judum (SJ)’ organized at the Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi. The discussion- Reconciling Aspirations- was chaired by the noted Gandhian, Mrs. Nirmala Deshpande, MP, while my co-panelists included Mr. KPS Gill, Advisor to the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Prof. Yugandhar, Member, Planning Commission of India, and Mr. BKS Ray, the then ACS (Additional Chief Secretary) to the Government of Chhattisgarh (GOC). We were all allotted fifteen minutes each to speak. At the end of the discussion, the first and last named panelists extended invitations to me to ‘visit Salwa Judum camps’.

Just a day before, Ms. Arundhati Roy, the noted author and social activist, released a Report by the Committee Against Violence on Women (CAVOW) documenting the condition of women in SJ camps. She termed it: ‘very, very disturbing’. Late last year, a two-member team of the National Commission for Women (NCW) had arrived at a similar estimation of the situation after touring SJ camps. Mr. Gill termed the CAVOW report as ‘one-sided and propagandist’: he felt, perhaps rightly, that the GOC’s version should have been obtained. The CAVOW representative said that she had sought comments from GOC representatives, including Mr. Ray, but there was ‘no response’. As such, they had to go ahead with the publication of the Report without GOC’s version.

Meanwhile, two incidents have taken place, which should shed some light on the way SJ, the self-proclaimed ‘spontaneous people’s movement against Naxalism’, is running. The first involves the surrender of 79 ‘Naxalites’ from Keshkal at the state PHQ (Police Head Quarter) at Raipur. Subsequently, three dailies- Indian Express, Dainik Bhaskar and Chhattisgarh- reported that the surrendered ‘Naxalites’ weren’t Naxalites at all: in fact, most of them were innocent tribals who hadn’t the faintest idea why they were being paraded before the press with masks put on their faces. The political response to this exposé was typically skewed: both the Leader of Opposition (LOP) and the PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee) President congratulated the state police on this ‘commendable feat’; when 28 Congress MLAs and 2 Congress MPs issued a joint statement condemning the ‘fake surrenders’ and demanding a White Paper from the CM, the LOP told them squarely that they shouldn’t talk about things that don’t concern their constituencies.

Unhappily for the LOP, the elected representatives from Keshkal- Mr. Mahesh Baghel, who is Parliamentary Secretary in the GOC, Mr. Devlal Dugga, MLA from adjoining Bhanupratapur, and Mr. Sohan Potai, the local MP, all of whom belong to the ruling BJP- did issue detailed statements condemning the ‘fake surrenders’. Not only that, they met the CM and demanded strict action against the police officers that engineered the ‘fake surrenders’. Mr. Baghel went on to say on record that he personally knows many of the people who ‘surrendered’, and that many of them were in fact BJP workers. In the end, the CM relented to an IG-level inquiry. Two days ago, most of those who had surrendered were recruited as ‘SPOs’ (Special Police Officers) in the presence of this same IG conducting the inquiry. As SPOs, they will be given arms, a monthly salary of Rs. 1500/-, and a license to kill. I guess that is the price one has to pay to buy their silence?

The second incident involves the ‘encounter’ of two young men at Bandé in Kanker during ‘a joint-operation conducted by the Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh police departments’. Both were described as ‘dreaded Naxalites’. Yet again, the local political representatives of the district from both the major parties, the Congress and the BJP, launched a full-scale movement against these killings. The movement had two demands: an ex-gratia payment of Rs. 500,000/- each to the families of those killed; and registration of FIR (First Information Report) under section 302 of the IPC (Indian Penal Code) against concerned policemen. The Chhattisgarh police was quick to disassociate itself from these fake encounters, saying that it was a Maharashtra police operation.

Not surprisingly then, Prof. Yugandhar went on record to state that "the Planning Commission of India does not support [this] SJ."

It is clear to me from the above mentioned incidents that there is considerable desperation on the part of the GOC, particularly the state police department, to show ‘positive results’: both the fake encounters and fake surrenders are an outcome of enormous political pressure, which must most certainly have intensified after the GOC’s thrashing at the Kota bye-election.

And as with everything else about SJ, it is the tribal who must ultimately suffer.

AJ Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

Video: My First Speech in Chhattisgarhi

delivered on 18.12.2006 at birgaon, distt. raipur, chhattisgarh, on the occasion of Baba Guru Ghasidas's 250th birth anniversary. seated left to right: shailesh nitin trivedi (pol. secy. to ajit jogi), seema verma (Zila Panchayat member), satyanarayan sharma (MLA), self, omprakash dewangan (president, birgaon nagar palika).
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HAPPY 2007!

I return, my dear Reader, after a month-full of absences to pen a belated wintry tribute to the year gone by: 2006, my Annus Mirabilis. For truly, a lot of wonderful things happened: I got bail; Mummy got elected to the Assembly from Kota by an unprecedentedly huge margin; the High Court finally sorted out Papa’s caste-case. And somewhere along the way, I fell desperately and hopelessly in Love. By most estimates, the Tide has begun to turn: our devoted and ever-observant Bai, very recently, confided to my mother thus: “the sheer quantity of dry-fruit and mithai (sweetmeat) gift-packets this holiday-season far outnumbers those we use to get when sahab (my father) was chief minister.” That- “the gift-packets barometer”- incidentally remains by far, the single most definitive instrument for measurement of a person’s social position in contemporary India that I’ve come across.

For what it’s worth, I wasn’t too busy being happy: admittedly, the explanation for my procrastinated absences (notice: the plural) from this Page- Blog- is much more simple: let’s call it WRITER’S BLOCK. Ever since Kota, I’ve been meaning to write something- anything- but for some inexplicable reason(s)- post-electoral fatigue; exuberance at unexpected victory; the fact that I now make speeches in Chhattisgarhi, the language of my forefathers; travelling to villages simmering with a variety of discontents; a heart caught in the throes of unrequited L?- Words, those constant companions-cum-therapists ever-ready to soothe my ailing, aching Soul, just failed to come to me. And when they did, I didn’t quite know how to hold them together, in phrases, sentences, article, dispatches, so that they might make sense. Thankfully, that sort of thing happens very rarely in my life.

Now that “AJ is back”, you can expect to hear a lot more from me through these pages. Till then, here’s wishing all of you a Splendid New Year.

AJ Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......