K Natwar Singh: Love, economics and the IPL saga

When I was 25, once I asked Harold Nicolson if the British employed spies. Nicolson kept a straight face and replied, “We don’t run brothels.” Now, I know better

This has been quite a week. The 16th Saarc Summit in Thimpu, Bhutan, failed to achieve “Gross National Happiness”. As expected, the Summit was hijacked by India and Pakistan. The two prime ministers met and made some progress. I am glad the foreign ministers and foreign secretaries of the two countries will meet soon to reduce the “trust deficit”. Even little progress is welcome. There is now talk in some quarters about China’s keen desire to be a member of Saarc. Here, India should make it abundantly clear that no further expansion of Saarc is necessary. China does not qualify for Saarc membership.

The next riveting distraction and obsession was the ex-chairman of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The media could not care a hoot about India having fewer toilets than mobile phones. Lalit Modi is a disturbingly energetic and ebullient individual. He has for all time altered the character of cricket, probably for the worse. Is Mr Modi a case of arrested adolescence? He, for too long, lived on the edge. The abyss was right there.

In a lighter vein, I have been mulling over a tantalising possibility. What a superb Bollywood film the IPL-Modi saga would make.

Producer and director: Lalit Modi; script writer: Shashi Tharoor; dialogue by Sardar “Sherry” Siddhu; lady stars: Madams Zinta, Shetty and S Pushkar; advisers: Sunil Gavaskar, Rudy Kirsten, Shane Warne and K Pollard; music by A Raheman; photography by Anil Kumble; umpires: former prime ministers of the UK and Australia, Messrs John Major and John Howard, both cricket buffs; commentators: three heavyweight India politicians. Authentic hero Shah Rukh Khan to play the role of Lalit Modi. Finally, the female cheerleaders. These are to be selected by the producer-director. All must wear bikinis. The IPL I, II and III girls were over-dressed!!

The current session of Parliament too has attracted attention. The UPA government trounced the Opposition by comfortable margins. The Opposition more often than not subscribes to the dictum: united we fall, divided we stand. The UPA survives because the Opposition never arrives. They are at sixes and sevens. A united Opposition could bring down the UPA government. It cannot, because not one MP wants a mid-term election. Rightly so. The UPA has not even completed one year.

So many of us condemn the conduct of our MPs in both Houses of Parliament. And why not? The flaunting of thousand-rupee notes was not an edifying sight. But look around and you will see Korean MPs having a free for all, with Taiwan, Japan and Ukraine following suit, all democracies of one hue or the other. Conclusion: We do not have to imitate them.

A word about the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. Both ex-IFS. Both are handling their respective Houses with adroitness, calm persuasion, patience and with firmness when necessary. Three cheers for the IFS. Vice-President Ansari should schedule Question Hour at 4 pm. It might just help.

Phone-tapping, bugging, electronic surveillance and hacking are now so easy to organise that non-state establishments and law-breaking agencies are privy to what is supposed to be secrets. Technology is advancing so rapidly that only a very few countries or terrorist groups can keep pace with it. No government will ever publicly say that it is tapping phones. Why do governments resort to tapping phones? Several reasons. Security is the most important one. This is not debatable.

The phones of mafia dons, assassins, plotters against the state and hackers must be tapped. One caveat. Intelligence agencies must always be under the PMO. The buck stops there and nowhere else.

While undergoing a course at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1954, I asked Harold Nicolson, the author of Diplomacy, if the British employed spies. I was not even 25 and was naïve. Nicolson kept a straight face and replied, “We don’t run brothels.” Now, I know better.

Tailpiece
P N Haksar (1913-1998) was an outstanding civil servant of post-1947 India. Jawaharlal Nehru selected him for the IFS in 1948. Haksar at the time was practising at the Allahabad High Court. He was the only civil servant who inspired his friends and chelas to publish a book of tributes on his 75th birthday in 1988.

Haksar was not only wise but unusually witty. When he was deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, he asked his well-known economist friend Sukhomoy Chakravarty if he loved his wife. Sukhomoy, was a bit startled but replied that he most certainly did so. Haksar then asked him “to express this love in economic or even econometric terms”. He could not. Haksar’s firm belief was that “love, compassion, equity, tolerance, morality etc are non-quantifiable”.

The author is a diplomat, writer and former foreign minister