One cannot but agree with the objections voiced by Mr Dalmiya. Members of a committee such as this one, with the brief to investigate a serious and a very controversial incident, must be past cricketers whose positions in the cricketing world are above question. The names of Benaud and Imran Khan indicate that Mr Dalmiya had cricketers of a certain stature in mind. The ICC, on the other hand, has appointed a judge, a player who has only 18 test caps and another who was a talented batsman but was not known for his technical knowledge of the game. It is difficult to comprehend what criteria were used for selecting the members of this committee. For obvious reasons, past Indian players cannot come on this committee but there are many others with the required stature and distinction to be invited to come on board. Gary Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, David Gower, Mike Brearley, the brothers Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Duleep Mendis, Glenn Turner are names that come easily to mind. There many others whose competence to serve on such a committee is above doubt.

Disregarding this pool of talent, the ICC has picked out Hilditch who, in terms of cricket experience, can only be described, without any undue harshness, as a nonentity. There is no earthly reason for including a judge in the committee. The matter to be discussed and decided upon does not hinge on the niceties of law but on the ethics of the game and on the fairness of the punishments meted out. Included within the discussion of fairness must be the mode of appealing of the South Africans, especially that of Shaun Pollock, the captain. This can only be decided by former players who are aware of the pressures and tensions that operate in the “middle”. The ICC’s intentions may not be mala fide, but the formation of the committee has a whiff of insincerity about it.

Having no wish to join in the flurry of analysing and forecasting that’s going on, I invite our readers to consider once again an issue that, like the poor, never goes away — downsizing the government. The eminent committee chaired by that eminent former bureaucrat, K.P. Geethakrishnan, has given the government its eminent report. One cannot comment on it since one has not had the good fortune to read it, but, judging from the reports that appeared about what it said about the ministry of information and broadcasting — on which one had commented in an earlier essay — the approach has been robust. As robust as that of the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland. “Off with his head!” the Queen said from time to time, a most effective remedy for all possible ills. The Geethakrishnan committee seems to have done much the same.

Now that we’re about to engage in an armed conflict with Pakistan, which will cost us several hundred crores a day, the wisdom of the approach advocated by the eminent committee mentioned above gains in significance. Or does it? Would it be politically correct to balance expenditure on war with the elimination of several posts?

Even in these tense times there appears to be something wrong with the argument that eliminating offices and departments means a reduction of government expenditure. Of course, on the surface, it is obviously true; if you have less people to pay, your expenditure is less. But this argument, carried to its logical conclusion, would mean that the maximum economy would be when you have no jobs at all in government, and hence no expenditure. No government means no expenditure; and just imagine the savings.

But, tragically, there has to be some kind of apparatus to carry on governance; and this is where logically anyone concerned about government expenditure should begin. What activities are essential for there to be good governance, what absolutely unavoidable, vital activities? And what, on the other hand, are those activities that are unnecessary for the government to do — not unnecessary in themselves, but unnecessary for the government. Running hotels, for example, or steel mills, or factories producing wheels for railway carriages and similar activities.

One has no wish whatsoever to enter into an argument on this point; all one is saying is that the distinction must be made, and made without equivocation. The starting point is here, not in looking at the work done by different ministries and their offices.

Years ago, an exceedingly foolish officer in the finance department of the government of West Bengal thought he had discovered a very clever way of reducing expenditure on government vehicles, and managed to get everyone to agree to it being enforced. Every government vehicle, he decreed, would not travel for more than 40 kilometres a day. He had apparently done some calculations which showed that a fat sum would thereby be saved. Very soon, indignant district magistrates said that this new order meant they couldn’t even travel to some of their subdivisions, leave alone a remote area where it was essential they go. The gentleman concerned was unmoved; the order, he said stiffly, stood. Then one district magistrate sent a vehicle to a point 40 km from his headquarters, and having gone to that point in one vehicle, left it there and took the other vehicle for the next 40 km, where, as planned, there was a third vehicle to go another 40 km, and so on, till he got to wherever he had to. Some districts were pretty large in those days, remember, like the undivided 24 Parganas and Midnapore.

He then sent a report to the chief secretary informing him that, for one official visit, he had used four vehicles where one would have done; four drivers were on duty, and had to be paid their allowances, which were necessarily double or more, since they had to wait for him to get back, again using four vehicles, each travelling 40 kms at a time. Then, like an accordion folding up, all four vehicles had to be brought back, each travelling no more than 40 kms a day, so that it took, on an average, two days, for all four to return. One could not administer a district, he pointed out mildly, if this was the way one had to travel, and incurring four times the travelling allowance costs that he would otherwise have done. The hapless finance department wizard was called in by the infuriated chief secretary and came out of the room like the Ancient Mariner, a sadder and a wiser man.

The point of this is that economy measures can at times be ridiculous; that is what one hopes the Geethakrishnan committee’s recommendations are not. And ridiculous they can become if they do not focus on the activity involved. That is what they need to ask, not how many people are working in an office. Is that activity essential to government functioning? If so, how can it be done effectively — effectively, mind you — with the least possible expense? Not, for example, by requiring four people to do the work of twenty but by finding out as accurately as possible how much one person can effectively do.

And, while measures of economy are being practised, a good look could be taken at the way government business is transacted. This can be effectively changed, but in the grotesque manner in which the government of India brought in the institution of desk officers, who were single-handedly required to do the work of a section consisting of a section officer, and half a dozen clerks. In other words, the procedures did not change in actual fact; all that happened was one wretched man got the workload of half a dozen. Decision-making has also to be handed down, simultaneously with structural chan- ges, and it rarely is.

A third rider. If it is decided that the government should not run hotels or steamship companies, then the means by which they will continue to run outside the government (if they are considered worth running) needs to be worked out clearly and given effect to first. Then, and only then, can one say, with the Queen of Hearts, “Off with his head!” or “their heads”, which would be more to the point.

All this, our champions of economy and frugality will cry out, will take time. It will. But it is only over time that one can ensure enduring economy, not the kind the wretched finance department man had dreamt up — and which he had to withdraw, incidentally. The key is to determine what activities properly belong to the government, provide realistically for them, and then firmly get rid of the others, but only when the alternative methods by which such activities can continue have been put in place.

This could well be a new year’s gift to the people by the government, but it needs to be put together carefully, and made to last. Noble sentiments about the virtues of economy and the rest are no better than gift-wrapping, which, like the wrappings of all gifts, ends up torn and on the floor.

The author is former secretary, ministry of information and broadcasting

Last year a friend gave me a collection of 51 of his poems marking two or three for my special attention. I was appalled. One was gloating over the inception of the RSS at Nagpur as a beacon of light. Another, a rustic idyll, warned a village maid from going to Manali his holiday home. It runs somewhat as follows:

He’s got the brass

Fortunately, this is the expansive interview moment. “My son is talking about disowning me now, but I disowned him when he married into that family,” says Vadra, who isn’t about to play any aggrieved dad role. “They’ve flung mud on me... now I’ll fling it back.” Despite his soft-spokenness, Vadra likes being loud. In everything, right from his clothes — a flashy blue tie decorated with gold crescents and glittering stars; to his cellphone — a dinky little brilliant silver gizmo that looks straight out of Star Trek; to his statements — “I’m not afraid of anybody, Kashmiri militants or Italian militants; or “If I am killed, three people will be responsible: Sonia Gandhi, Robert Vadra and Priyanka Gandhi.”

Despite the bombast, when talking about family ties, Vadra’s favourite word seems to be ‘perfect’. His relations with son Robert were ‘perfect’ till the public notice; ditto for his relations with Priyanka and Sonia Gandhi; and for that matter the rest of his family. The word doesn’t quite ring true given the fact that he has been separated from his family for the last two years. His wife and son Richard live in New Friends Colony. “The separation was a personal matter, but we were a very happy family...though over these last two years I have had little to do with them.” Last April, when his daughter, jewellery designer Michelle Vadra, died in a car accident, the family came together briefly.

Vadra, continuing with his description of the family, says that when Priyanka and Robert were courting, she would often visit the happy family. “So she knew how we lived, in a disciplined way, but were a very liberal family with Robert’s mother being Christian and me a Punjabi. It was a great environment,” he says. Strangely enough, the ‘great environment’ fostered much bitterness.

That there is little love lost between father and at least one of his sons came through in last week’s notice and Vadra Sr’s subsequent disparaging comments about Robert. “As a father, I’m shocked by what he says... but now he has become a pawn in the hands of the Gandhi family,” says Vadra, describing his reaction to the announcement. In the public notice he issued last week, Robert stated that “one Rajinder Vadra and another Richard Vadra” were duping people by “promising jobs and other favours.” He went on to add that the two were not authorised to use his name. More importantly, they had “no access to him.”

Some of the “jobs and favours” included pushing candidates for various posts in the Moradabad Pradesh Congress Committee. One Congress leader also spoke about a recent visit Rajinder Vadra paid to his office. When Vadra sent in his visiting card, he had pencilled ‘father-in-law of Priyanka’ on it in bold letters.

Vadra Sr rubbishes all the allegations. “I have challenged them to provide one witness who will say that I gave him a job or that I cheated him. It’s all nonsense.” He also dismisses talk that the Congress is uncomfortable about the Vadra family’s RSS links. “I have no political affiliations,” he says. It is a little more difficult, however, to explain the donation of a school which is located on the Vadra family farm on the outskirts of Moradabad. Rajinder Vadra’s elder brother, Om Prakash Vadra, had donated the school to the RSS in 1995. Om Prakash remains the school chairman for life. “It [the donation of the school] should not be seen as a political move. My elder brother donated the property after his sons died prematurely in an accident,” says Vadra.

Explaining the timing of the notice issued on Robert Vadra’s behalf by advocate Arun Bhardwaj, a senior Congress leader said, the idea behind the publication of the notice was “to nip mischief in the bud.” Given the coming UP elections, the Congress would have found it difficult to explain the Vadra family’s links with the RSS.

The small terrace of Rajinder Vadra’s Amar Colony office looks out onto the by-lanes of this commercial area crammed with telephone fax booths and rows of garment shops. A few chairs have been lined up along one side of the terrace, which leads into a room, presumably the office, the door of which is kept discreetly closed. “I was always against the marriage [of Robert and Priyanka] because of the way the family treated Maneka Gandhi... imagine throwing out a woman like that. I was also against it because the Gandhi family was involved in the Bofors scandal. But the rest of the family wanted the limelight, so I had to give in,” says Vadra, who doesn’t quite describe his family with the warmth of a happy patriarch.

Vadra, who divides his time between his Amar Colony office and his home in upmarket Chhatarpur, an area on the southern outskirts of Delhi famous for its sprawling farmhouses, says that he always believed in leading “a very simple” life. “I work the whole day,” — he runs a brass and wood handicrafts business — “and in the evenings after a couple of drinks, I go to bed.” However, with the publication of the notice, “things have changed.”

He says that after he began speaking to the media, he has received threats. He describes the most recent: “When I went out on my morning walk, a man dressed in a long coat signalled to me from across the road. I looked around the road wonderingly. ‘You, you... I’m calling you,’ said the man. He then waited for me to go across, before walking past me. And as he went by, he opened the flap of his coat, and there was this very long gun tucked in there, the kind of gun that I had never seen before... it might have been an AK-47. He then dropped the coat close (sic) and walked on.”

And if that sounds like a threat straight out of Bollywood’s badlands, Vadra’s dramatic narration makes it even more fantastic. His friends and advocate are talking about police protection. But Vadra remains unfazed, busy planning a great vendetta. Which he isn’t ready to talk about just now. “You just wait and watch,” he promises deliciously.

Some more sibling rivalry