The Parliamentary Jamboree

New Delhi

 

It was a rousing setting- the sacred portals of the largest temple of democracy anywhere on the blue-brown Earth: The Sansad Bhavan, India’s Parliament House.

The twenty member Public Accounts Committee (PAC), known affectionately as the Pain in the Ass Committee in New Delhi’s power circles, was in full attendance.

It drew its membership from both the houses of the parliament and, in the time tested (but clinically defunct) tradition of bipartisanship, was headed by the leader of the opposition.

PAC’s charter gave it the priviledge of poking its nose into every big and small expense item on the union government’s agenda. And this was a task it performed with a zeal that could certainly be termed fervent if not outrightly missionary.

The fact that half of PAC’s members came from the ruling party and the other half from the opposition, meant that none of its proceedings ever concluded without a generous dose of bickering, mudslinging and hair tearing. But even by its own illustrious standards (and rather chequered history), the task it had at hand that day was something really out of the woods.

On the table was a project that had stimulated emotions across the country on both sides of the aisle. For those in favor, it was the only way the resurgent India of the day could answer the questions concerning economic growth and human development. For those opposed, no amount of chest thumping by its proponents could hide the justifiable concerns of human displacement and irreversible ecological damage it raised.

That two of the five beneficiary states were ruled by governments affiliated to the opposition party made the pitch still querer. Political expediency demanded the members belonging to the two halves to be seen doing what was expected of them- opposing one another. This however was an issue whose resonance went far further than that.

The absurdity called PAC was going to have a tough day.

“My honorable lady”, Mr. Gupta began on a well clipped, practiced and politically correct note, “and the eminent gentlemen.

“Our vision is grand. We want to accomplish something that’s never been been done before in the history of this nation.

“Ever.

“We want to subjugate the unbridled might of three great rivers, channel their unpredictable flow into the Yamuna and herald a golden era of growth, prosperity and abundance.

He took a short pause, letting the words hang in the air.

“We plan to succeed”, he exhailed finally.

The members forming the opposition benches of the PAC sat taut in their high chairs, looking down upon their sub-dued and battered looking colleagues from the ruling coalition.

Their hands fiddled impassively with saucers full of heavily subsidized tea and snacks piling in from the nearby parliamentary canteen. Their faces, honed through years of practiced statesmanship in front of the cameras, appeared like temples of intense, hallucinogenic concentration. Their eyes however betrayed a certain inwardly agitation. They were all keenly aware that they were taking part in an epoch making event. But history, as they all knew, could be a rather slipperly commodity.

It’d been about an hour since the TV crew had come in- the wily chairman of the PAC wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

Barely minutes ago the portly President and Chief Financial Officer of the Board of the Three Dams Company had been coughing his guts out, trying to convince the august gathering as to why the Indian exchequer needed to bankroll the thousands of crores he was demanding of them in fresh equity infusion.

They were all seasoned politicians and the fat, penguin like man had not amused them a bit. On their way to the parliament, they had trodden the rough, sun-parched and wind beaten fields of the nation. They had waded through the festering, shit infested drains of its villages and braved the asthametic, pollution riddled airs of its cities. They represented the suppressed, poor and downtrodden soul of the nation and were all, without exceptions, sons and daughters of the soil. They didn’t understans the language of finance; nor did they care a hoot. But, they did understand one thing: they were the legal guardians of the humble Indian tax payer’s hard earned contributions (the free teas, samosas, red light cars, aeroplane jaunts not withstanding) and weren’t going to let a bunch of serious looking technocratic gasbags rob them of it.

That at any rate was what they liked to tell anyone who cared to listen.

The TV crew did.

And so, they’d wasted no time telling the fat guy what they thought of his demands. As far as they were concerned, the flabby, double chinned, penguin like gentleman with two sad (and seemingly jaundiced) eyes could go screw himself.

Mr. Gupta of course understood all that. And he also knew that at that level, one’s battles are mostly faught alone. He could hardly feel any sympathy for his voluminous comrade.

Mr. Gupta was a seasoned man. He was a reasonable man too. He liked to think of himself as an eternal optimist, someone who believed in seeing the glass three forths full. And he didn’t mind speaking what he believed. It ofcourse helped that when he spoke, people shut up and listened.

They were listening now.

“We embarked on this pilgrimage four years ago, knowing exactly where we were headed”, Mr. Gupta began afresh,

“We wanted to tame the mighty Yamuna and its tributaries, spread its bounty far and wide across these Great Plains, reinhabit regions in Rajasthan that’ve been parched for centuries, generate billions of kilowatts of clean and free electricity, turbocharge industrial growth, herald the next green revolution and provide a perennial source of dependable water supply to this great city and the capital of our nation.

“This project will make all that possible.

“What are we but foot soldiers on the path the founding fathers of our nation put us on? To borrow Pandit Nehru’s words, we wanted to be ‘the symbols of the nation’s will to march forward with strength, determination and courage’.

“We did more than we were asked of.

“While on the one hand we had the mighty Bhakra Nangal inspiring us on our way, on the other, we’d these hundreds of big and small interest groups, so called civil society evangelists, Western liberals and environmental hawks with dubious funding sources and thousands upon thousands of big and small farmers and villagers blocking our path, barricading us, dragging us back and breaking our souls.

“Western educated, funded and protected armchair intellectuals vomited claptrap hogwash on us, maligned us in the so-called libertarian op-ed columns of the national press, held protest marches, organized dharnas and did everything within their means to politicize and internationalize the issue.

“Hundreds of environmental assessment reports, funded dubiously by NGOs with questionable parentage were heaped upon us, public opinion set against us, suppliers’s credit denied and even the World Bank funding blocked for well over two years.

“We marched on, the end goal our only call.

“Says who that the path of nation building is paved with roses?

“We never doubted the enormity of the challenge.

“We were attacked, we were accursed, our project sites arsoned, our concrete trucks looted, our construction equipment stolen, many of our engineers murdered in cold blood, countless others harassed, threatened, beaten and persecuted.

“None of this has stopped us, ladies and gentlemen.

“None of this will.”

He took another pause at this stage, ostensibly to wet his parched throat but really to gauge the impact he was having on the gathering. 

He need not have bothered. The room that just minues ago have been a riot of jibes, arguments and insinuations, now looked saturated with a loud, open mouthed silence. The opposition benches looked especially ruffled. It certainly no longer looked, or sounded, anything like the piddly little pissing contest they had thought they would mount on the board of the Three Dams Company. They had come prepared with questions, sure of extracting their own pound of flesh. They now glanced furtively at their fact sheets, wondering if it would make a good TV to be seen questioning the nation’s fucking forward march.

The members from the ruling coalition, on the other hand, seemed surprised at the sudden outwardly pressure their swelling chests were beginning to exert on their shirt buttons. Forget the intra coalition dissent. They were the ones to have flagged off the project in the first place, afterall. They had had their own share of brick bats to weather. Rightly then, to them must belong the grapes of success. Mr. Gupta’s speech was beginning to feel like a soothing balm on their few open wounds. The embarrassingly pitiful bleats of the fat (and sad) penguin man now seemed a distant, distasteful dream. That the idiots from the state owned TV station were recording all this for posterity reassured them further. Come election season, these footages would be worth their weight in gold.

“We’re nearly there, ladies and gentlemen”, Mr. Gupta flagged off the second round.

“The arch gravity dam on the Tons River’s been raised to two hundred meters; that on the XXX to seventy five and the gravity dam on BBB to one hundred and fifty. The work on the Sonapur Hydel Barrage and the associated Trans Yamuna Canal is nearing completion. Concrete hasn’t ceased pouring even for a minute on any of the four construction sites in the three years, eight months, twenty three days and five hours we’ve been at it”, he said, glancing at his watch as if wanting to fill in the details on the elapsed minutes and seconds as well.

“The power isn’t exactly free; wouldn’t you think, Mr. Gupta?” the chairman of the PAC began cautiously.

His aides had been through the books of accounts submitted by the Three Dams Company to the ministries of Power and Water Resources.

They looked bloated to him- didn’t they always? The elections were around the corner and the chairman didn’t want to miss any opportunity to embarrass the government.

Mr. Gupta allowed himself a little smile at the question. He liked to be baited sometimes. Better this than having to answer those environment scrutinators.

“You’re right, your eminence. There’s no such thing as a free lunch in life”, he remarked. This brought out an audible murmur of chuckles from the ruling benches. The chairman looked around indignantly, as if wondering who was pissing on whom.

“However, hydroelectricity’s is perhaps as close as you can get to it”, Mr. Gupta continued,

“At most conventional fuel based plants, the cost of fuel makes up anywhere between forty to fifty percent of the total costs of running the operations. A hydroelectric plant needs no feedstock; that is, you don’t need to spend a Rupee buying coal, diesel, natural gas or uranium to burn.

“Moreover, you don’t need to spend a paisa inventoring the fuel stock piles; natural water is freely available. You eliminate working capital; you eliminate interest costs.

“Finally, the immense superstructural strength built into the dams ensures that they are virtually guaranteed to provide a maintenance free service for upwards of hundred years of service life.

“Taken together, the above three take you as close to a source of free electricity as you and I can imagine.”

The great room filled with an audible, appreciative cackle from the ruling benches.

Obviously, Mr. Gupta was oversimplifying things. But what the hell? This was a showmanship contest and every bit as political as that priviledge motion the chairman had passed in the lower house of the parliament seeking a hearing on the subject.

He was hearing it now. And so would the nation when the puppets at the state television would start broadcasting the hearings on the prime time news service later that evening.

“Mr. Gupta, if setting up a hydroelectric power plant is really so simple as a primary school science project then howcome is it that I just heard your colleague demand the government, let me get this right, two thousand, eight hundred and seventy three crores as fresh equity”, the chairman retorted, craning his neck a bit towards the cameras as he spoke.

“Even a free lunch needs an oven to cook, sir”, Mr. Gupta replied simply.

The remark filled the already loaded environment with a loud guffaw of laughter from the ruling benches. Their ridicule filled the chairman with contempt. He looked towards his own benches for solace but was met with stony stairs of silence.

A lone warrior, he pressed his face squarely in the direction of Mr. Gupta.

“I don’t like your armtwisting tactics, Mr. Gupta. You gave a rousing speech just now. So you’re a great speaker. Congratulations. But that doesn’t answer why the project that was originally budgeted for eight thousand crore Rupees, of which six thousand an five hundred were to be provided by the World Bank, now needs a new dose of equity from the central government. What happened to the time tested principles of effective project management and accountability?” the chairman dug the stake deep.

Mr. Gupta spent a few silent seconds gathering his thoughts. The chairman needed to be put in his place; the consequences be damned.

“Cynicism, your eminence, is a good thing”, Mr, Gupta began afresh, “but cynicism won’t get us where we want to be. With due regards, you can continue pounding us till the vutures come home but the fact remains that the project’s been plagued by controversies of diverse nature right from its inseption. We’d to spend precious time getting through the maze of environmental, land, water and a plethora of other big and small clearances. Environmental lobbyists, disgruntled villagers and myriad other trade groups and local business lobbies pestered us on continuously, severely impacting our progress across various phases of development. Mid way throught the construction, the Supreme Court ordered us do devise and implement a new compensation plan for the villagers in the XXX, YYY and ZZZ regions whose lands and villages would’ve been submerged under the three planned reservoirs. Consequently, a significant chunk of the initial equity invested by the centre and the three states into the project had to be diverted towards this.

“As I explained earlier, we’ve tried our best to soldier on under the circumstances, propped in no small measures by the short term bridge financing we were able to secure from the World Bank. Now that the Three Dams Act’s been passed into a law by the honorable Parliament, we believe the time has come for the original project sponsors, that is yourselves and the respective states, to pump in additional equity to enable us to approach the World bank for the much needed term loan financing and finish the unfinished work.

“The dams we’re building would be certified for a design life of hundred years. Having paid off the World Bank loan in its first twelve years of operation, the power plants would all be there for you, producing free electricity (and countless votes for you all) for many many decades to come.”

“But does that justify the bill you’re asking us to foot?” taken aback by Mr. Gupta’s fresh onslaught and the desertion from his own benches, the chairman parroted the only line he could latch on to.

“Sir, our charter and our debt agreement with the World Bank give us the flexibility of raising this capital from the private sector. But why would the honorable member want us to do that?” Mr. Gupta countered with soft words but searching eyes.

This was a key moment in the debate. The cameras bore down on the chairman.

“Why would the honorable chairman want the drive, vision and foresight of this great parliament to be sold to a group of private, profit seeking individuals who’ve had no role to play in this mission of nation building?” he finished his little monologue.

“I would request you to refrain from twisting my words and drawing sweeping inferences”, the chairman belched out in defiance. The issue of privatization was as hot a potato for his own party as it was for the ruling coalition.

“I apologize if I offended your eminence in any way. But, in the absence of any funding from the union government, what options do we really have?” Mr. Gupta craned his neck down in mock deference to the chairman.

“Yes but..”, the chairman began.

“Enough of that, Mr. Chairman”, the diminutive, white sari clad lady from the ruling benches now got up.

She held the portfolio of finance in the ruling combine’s coalition government and shadowed the opposition nominated chairman of the PAC.

“Mr. Gupta has presented his case in a lucid and dignified manner. The books of accounts of the Three Dams Company were made available to you fifteen days ago. If you have anything specific to claim, please do so; else, let’s just get on with it.”

“Where do you want me to start?” the chairman shot back.

“The project’s actuals are slipping on every single line item from the budgeted amounts. Why should we just take Mr. Gupta or the Three Dams Company at its face value?”

“So what’s your claim?” the lady asked.

“Isn’t it clear? The public exchequer is being plundered. Crores of rupees are being siphoned off in the name of nation building. Where’s the accountability?”

“Mr. Chairman. Now that’s what I call posturing. The genleman there has just provided you the details”, she said, pointing towards Mr. Gupta.

“None of us can disagree with what he’s said but obviously, that’s not how you see it. He forgot to add a few details which I’m sure you’ll understand as a man of eminence. So, let me ask you this: do terms such as inflation, interest rates and balance of payments mean anything to you?” she continued.

“Don’t humor me, madam. I don’t need lessons in elementary economics from you or your ilk”, the chairman replied.

“Good. So pray tell me, for how long have you armtwisted us into lowering the interest rates in the name of getting out of the deep recession that your government plunged this country into when you were in power?

“Let me answer that- four years.

“And in those four years, the interest rates have gone down eighteen times.

“Essentially, you left us a defunct treasury and a budget deficit bigger than the hole in the ozone layers over Antarctica. Who do you think we are? Some sorcerers with magic wands? What option did you leave us but to print more money?

“About thirty percent of the cost overruns on this project can be directly attributed to inflation; and all of it’s down to the crassness with which you run this country when you were in office.”

“Oh! So now you want to blame it all on inflation and deficits! Who’s running the government, you or I? Who controls the Reserve bank, you or I? So, whose job is it to keep the inflation under control?” the chairman reminded the lady her duties.

“Mr. Chairman, thanks to you, it’s now a problem for the entire nation. You put us all into this royal abyss and now you want us to keep digging deeper.

“You stonewalled all out efforts to approach the World Bank and the International monitary Fund for help; you forced us to keep cutting the interest rates and increasing the money supply; you left us with no other option but to increase public spending to stimulate the economy and now you want us to suspend all our public works programs and drive millions of hard working individuals out of employment.

“What do you want us to tell them? That a bunch of fat guys sitting in the parliament want to hold them to ramsom? That they don’t want them to work hard and put an honest day’s food on their kitchen tables?”

“That’s not my problem, mada…”, the chairman made to begin.

“Say that directly to the nation if you have guts, Mr. Chairman”, the white clad lady roared like a cornered lioness, pointing a finger in the direction of the rolling TV cameras.

The chairman had been bated.