Not just AQI, what we need is a BSI!

One has always had the highest admiration and respect for Meryl Streep's acting qualities, graceful beauty and composure. To these qualities, I should now add her strong moral conviction and the courage to speak out: her takedown of Trump at the 2017 Golden Globe awards function was something to watch, and won her a standing ovation. (Hopefully our Bollywood marionettes watched it too).

But I find that she is also relevant to the India of today: as proof, here is another of her statements: "Funny thing about getting older, your eyesight starts getting weaker but your ability to see through people's bullshit gets much better."

I can vouch for the fact that never was a truer word spoken: at three score and fifteen, I can no longer spot the prettiest lady in a crowd before Neerja can bat an eyelid (as I was wont to earlier), and I take quite a few wrong turns on the road as the traffic signs have become as blurred as Mr Modi's visions for 2047, but give me a piece of bullshit and I can spot it for what it is instantly, through the layers of grandstanding, hypocrisy and ignorance which is the hallmark of our government and ruling classes.

IIT-Kanpur got it all wrong when it diagnosed the NCR smog as consisting mainly of vehicle emissions, construction dust and paddy burning. It failed to detect a major ingredient — bullshit (BS) — whose particles — BS 2.5 by lesser politicos and BS 10 by ministers — have seen a major increase since 2014.

These emissions are usually disguised as droplets of nationalism, religious revivalism or Viksit Bharat slogans. They affect, not the lungs, but the IQ of the residents here, which explains why the BJP keeps winning elections. In fact, I have a theory about this: the lower the IQ of a particular place, the higher its AQI readings. To test this thesis, I am now looking for a nerd who can build a Bullshit Index (BSI).

Readers would be well aware of the blasts of BS sprayed on a regular basis by those who decide the nation's destiny — that there is no connection between air pollution and lung diseases, that 2025 was the cleanest year in Delhi's history, that AQI and temperature are one and the same, that the EU trade deal is the "mother of all deals" (which presumably would make the trade deal with the USA the "mother-in-law" of all deals), that mountains should be defined by height, not ecological importance, that those who feed stray dogs should keep them in their homes (the largest adoption programme in world history, considering there are 70 million of these community dogs).

We can go on. That the US SEC's summons could not be served on Adani because it did not have an official stamp, that the globally acclaimed Sonam Wangchuk is a security threat to India, that we need to take "revenge" for centuries of occupation by outside forces, that it is one chief minister's personal mission to hound a minority community and expel 6 lakh of them from the state's voter list, that trade unions are responsible for the country's lack of progress.

It's a long list, folks, and getting longer with each BJP election victory, which is why the smog keeps getting thicker.

But the mother of all BS 10s was discharged recently by our suave, foreign university-educated (MBA, University of Pennsylvania) bureaucrat-turned-billionaire railway minister, who announced that he was banning the wearing of bandhgallas in the Railways because it was a (British) "colonial legacy".

Now, generations of IAS officers will agree that the bandhgalla is the nearest they have got to a hangman's noose, that it is an instrument of torture, especially during the summer months. It needs to go, for climatic reasons. But to banish it because it is a colonial vestige reeks of  ignorance and hypocrisy posturing as nationalism and desh bhakti. It also indicates that the hon'ble minister suffers from both long and short term memory loss.

He forgot that the bandhgalla is not a British invention — it (or a close variant) was the formal dress of the Mughal court and the ruling families of Mewar and Rajasthan; the more showy achkan or sherwani also belong to this apparel family. Worse, by landing up in Davos just a week later in a three-piece suit — indisputably British attire — he not only displayed short-term memory loss but also his lack of sincerity about banishing colonialism. 

Did he also forget that the whole system of railways in India was built by the British, replacing the humble bullock-cart, and changing the face of the country? Would he also like to ban (with a little help from the RSS, no doubt) the English language, the university system of education, allopathy, nuclear technology and the watch, sunglasses and pens which adorn our prime minister's personage, all products of colonial nations?

Perhaps he would like to rethink his passion for all things "colonial", be a bit more discriminatory and focus on those things and practices which truly reflect the worst of our colonial past and have no place in a modern India. Here is a short list:

Unelected (and usually unelectable) governors who behave like viceroys and lord it over elected governments; Raj Bhavans which function as opulent embassies of the Centre in the states (and sometimes as dens of conspiracy); summer vacations by Supreme Court judges (even though tens of thousands of cases are pending in that court and no other institution enjoys this facility); the humiliating practice of addressing judges as 'Mluds' in a free country; the royal trappings of just about everything in Rashtrapati Bhavan, including a cavalry regiment exclusively dedicated to escorting the President, on the lines of the Praetorian Guard of Roman emperors, or the Garde Imperial of Napoleon, or the Gardes Suisses or the Gardes Françaises of the Pope and France, respectively.

The President is no monarch, (or at least so we hope), and there is no need to display such in-your-face-pomp to the citizens of a democracy, especially when it comes at such cost.

There are plenty of colonial practices which need to be jettisoned, but we can surely do better than begin with the bandhgalla? When bullshit becomes state policy, one has to agree with the dude who redefined pranayam as: inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit. Which is why we need a BSI, folks.

More of the writer's works can be read here

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com