mines and railways if you cannot control the relevant unions the ministries were the next best option the corporations were happy they need not be apologetic with manmohan chidambaram and pranab there it was an enduring togetherness that indians loved then the gloves came off pota was passed in 2001 but pota had to be embedded and legitimized it needed emergencies a crisis is a marketfriendly thing it allows for governance a spate of floods the heaven sent tsunami the attack on iisc and tifr by terrorists completed the strategy the idea of unity and diversity gave way to unity and security diversity has a bad smell it exudes anarchy and disorder and ethnicity multiculturalism is okay for the west where it reeks of tourism and table manners but here multiculturalism confronts the terror of the minorities it means a timid majority exuding fears of train explosions and violence the word planning was too socialist too mechanical it smelled of obsolescence security had the right brand mix it allowed for sovereignty the clarity of territory and the sense of order and efficiency that the middle class loved it provided for the voyeurism of toughness every couch potato wants a rambo as defence minister the middle class realized that china was the rival not the enemy pakistan was pass the real enemy was within every fissiparous move from autonomy to secession had to be suppressed the strategy that unfolded was brilliant security had to be privatized and citizenship enveloped in certification indians took their indianness too much for granted nomads and sadhus walked around like the national flag citizenship had to be a collection of permits and permissions sanitized and rationalized one needed a policy but to clear the ground the right to information bill rti had to be blocked the simultaneous existence of pota and rti made india a society of oxymorons pota had to be immaculate rti made it sound like an addendum of doubt a liberals idea of liberalization the move to create rti went down like a ton of bricks the ngos protested but a quick move to audit all of them produced the required results all it required was the media to lose interest as a quick afterword pranab mukherjee withdrew the sengupta committee truncating its term a report on the unorganized sector to accompany rti was excessive it was an effort to take democracy literally mukherjee announced in parliament that c k prahlads the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid sounded right it promised investment without threatening to invert the pyramid modern totalitarian should not look indecent that would look like poor branding why bleed a philistine red when you can smell of peach blossoms totalitarian regimes should learn from populism populism is only a tyranny with enough votes tyranny must mimic populism instead of separatism the regime invented exclusivism india reinvented the special economic zone sez and proliferated it an sez is a state of mind embodying the mind of the state and