Who's afraid of the new normal?

India, we are told, has now entered a 'New Normal' after that little ménage à trois with Pakistan and China in the first week of May in which we still don't know who came out on top, as it were. And there is certainly plenty of evidence to back this claim, viz. that we have plumbed new depths of abnormality.

Our primetime TV news channels apparently missed out on the ceasefire bit because they continue to fight the war every evening, three weeks after the ceasefire, and are all in favour of expanding it to Turkiye. The prime minister has just had another blood transfusion and has replaced the RBCs in his veins with sindoor, which perhaps explains why he goes red in the face every time he talks about the four-day war.

Mr Jaishankar has by now dropped so many bricks that he can use them to construct a mausoleum of his rhetorical follies; the latest brick (boulder, actually) being his response to a Danish journalist's question as to where the USA was during the recent conflict with Pakistan; our Delphic EAM's nonpareil reply — "the USA was in the United States". At least he knows his geography.

Not to be outdone by a mere bureaucrat, the Supreme Court broke new ground by appointing an SIT of three police officers to decipher and interpret the nuances of an English post by a professor. So move over Shashi Tharoor and Chetan Bhagat and Jug Suraiya — your lexicographic skills have now been replaced by a bunch of cops whose vocabulary consists almost entirely of four-letter words. We now eagerly await the scholarly interpretation of four of India's finest.

Other aspects of the New Normal are even more disturbing. I refer, for instance, to our new-found 'boycott Jihad', which involves boycotting tourism/visits to every country that does not see eye to eye with, or say 'aye to aye' to, us.

This dimension of our foreign policy is not guided by the Ministry of External Affairs, as you would expect, but by companies like Make My Trip or Ease My Trip, and anchors headed by the (dis)likes of Arnab Goswami, Gaurav Sawant and Navika Kumar.

And so, we have by now boycotted Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Canada. On the TRP chopping block are: France (for not sharing the Rafale source code), Colombia (for condoling the death of Pakistanis in our attack), South Africa (for daring to haul Israel before the International Criminal Court), Bhutan (for charging a tourism tax of Rs 1,200 from every Indian tourist), Russia (for signing a $2 billion project deal with Pakistan), the United Kingdom (for not returning the Kohinoor diamond), Antigua (for not returning Mehul Choksi).

We would have boycotted the USA also, but for the fact that the sons and daughters of most of our ministers are green card holders there, which could then be converted to yellow or red cards before they could say MAGA! There is, of course, no mention of China in this list of the damned, in keeping with our revered prime minister's credo that China's name should never be taken in vain, not even in pain.

Very soon, then, there shall be no country left which Indians can visit, and this is what gives me sleepless nights. Denied their globe-trotting opportunities, these bhaktourists would descend on the mountains, and villages like my Puranikoti, like a herd of locusts, and strip bare our little Edens, transforming them into something resembling Gaza.

The onslaught has already commenced after the Pahalgam massacre. Maybe the Himachal government should do something to make them boycott Himachal too, like proposing Kangana Ranaut's name as the next prime minister..... 

I am even more alarmed by another aspect of this New Normal, viz. water sharing, and not just with Pakistan. Our prime minister, who possesses a good turn of phrase, has announced that "water and blood cannot flow together" and has turned off the Indus tap. To which the Chinese foreign minister has riposted: "Do not do to others what you don't want done to you." Which is a pacifist version of the more militaristic Confucius: "Do unto others BEFORE they do unto you."

Confucius was Chinese too, and highly regarded in his homeland even today. I'm worried that President Xi may take him at his word and start doing something unto us: work has already commenced on the biggest dam in the world, on the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) at Grand Turn Canyon in Tibet, which can have ominous consequences for us should the descendants of Confucius be so inclined. And China has an even bigger Indus tap than we do — the river originates in Tibet and China, being the upper riparian state, can dam it any time it wants. Two can play at this game, is what the Chinese FM was trying to convey.

The consequences of this New Normal — denial of Indus waters — can be devastating for our northern states. It would be so for Pakistan too, but we are a democracy, unlike Pakistan, and it would be difficult for our government to manage the public uproar. The rulers of Pakistan, on the other hand, will take the consequences in their stride — its generals and Punjabi elite don't need the water, they have their Scotch and vermouth on the rocks, you see.

But what's sauce for the Pakistani goose is also sauce for the Indian gander, and Mr Modi's new water doctrine — that the upper riparian state can do whatever the hell it wants with the waters — may just exacerbate our own water wars.

We already have plenty of them: Tamil Nadu and Karanataka have been scrapping over Kaveri waters for decades; Delhi accuses Haryana of impounding the former's share of Yamuna waters (when it is not poisoning them, that is); Odisha and Chattisgarh are at loggerheads over Mahanadi river shares; Punjab and Haryana do not see eye to eye on the Sutjej-Yamuna Link Canal.

Our chief ministers, who are usually up on the slow-take on most matters, were quick to act on the New Normal on water-sharing. Just days after the four-day war, Punjab ministers quickly occupied the BBMB premises at Nangal, locked up the general manager, and stopped the flow of water to Haryan — it had exercised its right as the upper riparian state under the Modi doctrine!

Not to be outdone, the usually docile Himachal Pradesh (the baap of all alpha male riparian states, as its outspoken MP Kangana Ranaut would have said if Mr Nadda had not gagged her) declared that it would not let any water flow from its state if it was not given its rightful due in the BBMB projects. 

There are other, more alarming, aspects of this New Normal: how a couple of belligerent prime ministerial statements have lowered the nuclear threshold to a literal tripping point; how details of the war are revealed in Singapore to a foreign press but not the citizens of this country; how dozens of MPs can be suspended here and then sent abroad to defend the same government; the puzzle of trying to figure out where patriotism ends and nationalism begins.

Be prepared for new exciting times ahead as all traditional wisdom, the art of diplomacy and norms of governance are turned on their heads. As the Walrus would have said in Alice in Wonderland, at the risk of being hauled up for sedition: "My desire to be well informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane."

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

More of his writing may be read here.