10 per cent reservation for general category poor untenable

Neo-poor among the middle-class may soon, if Parliament and half of state legislatures give their nod, get 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational avenues. Photograph shows fliers waiting to board their respective airbuses at Terminal 2 launge of the IGI Airport, Delhi. (Photo ©Sindhustan)

India devised a unique way of dealing with social inequality with the adoption if Constitution. It implemented a policy to economic empowerment of thosefound to be weak in their social status. It provided for reservation in jobs and education to those found to be socially and educationally backward. It was the time when only a few Indians were earning enough to sustain themselves. A handful had the resources to run businesses and business houses. Less than 12 per cent Indians were educated to take up government or corporate jobs. 

Practically the whole of India could easily have been categorised as socially and educationally backward. 

Economically, per capita income of an average Indian was less than Rs 250 in 1947. Economic backwardness was as universal throughout the country as illetracy and social backwardness. The framing of Constitution saw intense yet open minded debates. The result was provision to give economic power to those socially and educationally backward. It was considered okay for a period of 15 years to rein in talent and power in the matters of jobs and education. 

But who should be given this benefit? The whole of India was backward and upbeat after Independence. The British were there earlier to be blamed for all the ills and ailments. Providing earning through jobs or private vocation was the most difficult task. A commission called the Kaka Kalekar Commission was set up by the government in 1953 to decide who could be considered socially and educationally backward. The commission had to evolve its own criteria for identifying the people who could be classified as backward. 

Identifying individual backwardness would have been a mammoth task only to be matches by an honest conduct of census process. Not possible in 1953. Focus, that's why, must have shifted to community identification of backwardness. India's old communities had already classified itself in castes and the boundaries were invisibly thick. Kalekar Commission couldn't have pierced through these walls and formed new communities or future caste groups of people suffering from backwardness. Team Kalekar, hence, proceeded to identify 2,399 castes who could be termed backward.

But Kaka Kalekar was not happy with the findings. He penned a letter to the President of India requesting him to look for other alternative for economic empowerment of socially and educationally backward people. He argued that caste-based reservation in jobs and education was not in the interest of the nation. Incidentally, the government, too, didn't find the report convincing and it was rejected.

But those running the government were convinced that Indians needed protection and should be given concession in jobs and educational avenues as the topmost political leaders of the time were from socially and educationally forward class and also had relatively better economic background, they believed the have-nots were not capable enough to make a mark for themselves in generally backward society of India despite having seen the likes of BR Ambedkar establishing themselves as stalwarts of the same society. The problem was that the decision makers were not confident of their own ability to work for creation of enough jobs, education and earning avenues. 

Fearing a backlash from society, well-trained, by now, in Gandhian way of demanding rights, in the same way as against the British administration, a formula for reservation was enforced. Needless to state that only the forwards among the declared backwards benefitted from the limited earning and learning avenues that India has generated under the guidance of the government. 

There has never been enough in India, at least in the living memory. Population growth was organic due to societal belief and lack of other entertainment alternatives. This theory doesn't need any further authorisation after recent experience from Nepal, where massive power outages a few years ago coincided with unusually high number of pregnancies and child-births. 

While population kept rising, the penetration of scientific temper eroded people's belief in the theory of karma. Globalisation and internet fuelled their aspirations further. Money, muscle, sex, youthfulness and remaining central in and under all circumstances became the focal points of life. This aspiration was not compartmentalised by the invisible thick walls of castes. The cumulative effect is putting pressure on the government to provide for everything that the people can't get themselves. After all, the freedom was won in the name of prosperity, now better worded as achchhe din. This achchhe din is missing from everyone's life, almost everyone. 

If SC/ST or OBC individual gets an earning or learning avenues and a person from the other community sees this happening, she feels strongly agitated. Then she learns that it is the government which facilitated it. She first rallies for abolition of inequal rights failing which she demands such a right for herself. 

If elections are to be won to run government, people need to be on the side of ruling or aspiring to be ruling group, the party. Jobs and educational avenues are not enough to be offered to every desirous individual. So, what should a government do. Offer equalising proposal of reservation.

The government announced 10 per cent quota I'm jobs and education for non-reserved category aspirants. This means the offer is valid for all religious grouping, a secular offer. But this offer came on a ground that was first rejected, by virtue of its omission, by Constitution and then by the Supreme Court.

Nearly 25 years after the Kaka Kalekar Commission report was rejected, another commission came up in 1979, called BP Mandal Commission to decide on the proposal of provding reservation. 

Mandal commission reported in 1980, an election year, that caste-based reservation should be given to uplift socially and educationally backward people. For 10 years, the report was wrapping itself in dust before VP Singh facing threat to his PMO chair and a certain loss of power, brought the quota report out and issued an Office Memorandum to implement reservation for identified and declared OBCs. Reservation, 27 per cent, to OBCs failed to save Singh from losing power. 

The next in line, PVN Rao tried to counterbalance it in 1991 by giving another 10 per cent quota to the poor from general category people. 

Both the decisions were challenged in the Supreme Court, where Indra Sawhney case of 1992 still Stan's out as a landmark judgment. The court herein rules that caste-based reservation is constitutional, quota on the basis of economic backwardness not valid under constitutional arrangement and that total number of reserved seats can't breach the ceiling of 50 per cent. 

The new proposal, the 124th Constitution Amendment Bill, provides for raising the ceiling to 60 per cent. It is bound for a test in the Supreme Court. 

The Bill, interestingly, proposes to declare those having annual income for their nuclear family less than Rs 8 lakh may avail this quota benefit. Commensurate arrangement has been prescribed for land and property ownership. But taking one earning person per family, the Rs 8 lakh cap translates into asalary/income of Rs 65,166 per month. Compare this criterion of economic backwardness with the existing cap for BPL identification, just for fun 😊

It wouldn't take a genius of Chanakya to understand that the target community of this reservation scheme is a major chunk of middle-class, who is said to be angry with the government. In any case, if jobs in public sector are dwindling, what good use this 10 per cent cap can bring to the neo-poor community of the general category people?

When women used to visit Sabarimala temple

Woman protesters at Sabarimala temple. (Photo: Twitter/@iamsrp007)

Huge uproar followed today after two women aged below 50 years reportedly entered the Sabarimala temple. Identified as 42-year-old Bindu -  a CPI(ML) worker from Kozikhode and Kanakadurga – a Kerala governemnt employee from Malappuram claimed to have entered the Sabarimala temple at 3.45 this morning.

Protests erupted in various parts of Kerala with the BJP joining chorus. The BJP has called a shutdown in Kerala on Thursday to protest entry of women in the Sabarimala temple, which was allowed by the Supreme Court last year in a majority judgment by a bench led by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

The full ban on entry of women aged between 10 and 50 years was enforced after a Kerala High Court judgment in 1991. The order came on a petition that was filed after Devasam board commissioner held traditional rice feeding ceremony for his child at the Sabarimala temple in 1990. The ceremony was attended by women of the family and also some relatives. 

The petitioner challenged that entry of women in the Sabarimala temple for which there was a law passed by the state assembly. The law was not strictly imposed and women used to visit the Sabarimala temple, sometimes raking up controversy while at other without much notice. 

The first documented record of ban on entry of women in the Sabarimala temple is found in a survey by two British officials. They conducted the survey in 1820s but the report could only be published in 1890s and 1900s in two volumes. 

The report talked about the belief that Lord Ayyappa should not be visited by women of menstruating age. However, the belief did not necessarily translate into a complete ban on entry of women. 

Records have it that women from the Travancore royal family visited the Sabarimala temple. The queen of Travancore visited the Sabarimala temple in 1940s. It continued, though sporadically, till 1991. 

In 1986, a Tamil film was shot at the Sabarimala temple where actresses including Jayashree danced on a song. It led to a controversy and a fine was also imposed both on the film shooting party and the Devasam board. 

Former Karnataka minister Jayamala later claimed that she had visited the Sabarimala temple the same year. In 1995, a woman district collector visited the Sabarimala temple in order to gather first hand information from the priests and officials of the shrine. 

The matter of entry of women into the Sabarimala temple started making national headlines after a group of activists filed petitions seeking lifting of ban and quashing of the Kerala law that prohibited women from offering prayers at the Lord Ayyappa shrine.

Gandhi Must Fall hashtag in Africa, Ghana varsity demolishes Mahatma's statue

Mahatma Gandhi statue in the University of Ghana before it was pulled down following protests calling him a racist. (Photo: Twitter)

To the rest of the world, Mahatma Gandhi is an apostle of peace, non-violence and fight for the right to equality but to some activists in Africa, he is a "racist". A campaign is going on originating in West African nation Ghana to South Africa. Hashtag Gandhi Must Fall is bringing these activists together. They have claimed their first victim in a university in Ghana.

A statue of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi best known as Mahatma Gandhi has been pulled down in the University of Ghana. Indians consider Mahatma Gandhi the Father of the Nation but to activists in Ghana he was a "racist".

The demolished Statue of Mahatma Gandhi had been inaugurated by then President of India Pranab Mukherjee in June 2016. This was the first visit to Ghana by an Indian President.

But only two months after the inauguration of the Statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the campus of the University of Ghana in capital Accra, a campaign was launched in Ghana by a group of professors and students, who called Mahatma Gandhi a racist based on his initial writing in South Africa.

Before taking the cudgels against the British colonial rulers in India in 1915-16, Mahatma Gandhi had lived for 21 years in South Africa and waged a struggle for the right to equality there. During this period - 1893 to 1914, Mahatma Gandhi developed his tools - Satyagrah and Ahimsa - for struggle against the repressive colonial government.

During the period of struggle, Mahatma Gandhi also shed his own notions about racial differences and resistance to simplest of modern technology including the railways.

However, the protesting professors and students, who got enforcements from activists, rejected the evolving views of Mahatma Gandhi and singled out his initial writings to wage a war against his statue on the campus of the University of Ghana.

The inauguration of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi might also have been ill-timed. Mahatma Gandhi was being debated and protested strongly in Ghana when the statue was inaugurated in its capital two years ago.

The protests flowed from a book written by two South African authors, who quoted from the letters of Mahatma Gandhi to proclaim that the man who provided basic tenets of civil struggle to the likes of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Martin Luther King  Jr in the US was a racist.

Two instances were most cited by the protesters. In one instance, Mahatma Gandhi in 1904 wrote to the British administration in South Africa using the word "Kaffirs" for native black people. The word was considered derogatory as a reference to the native black people. Today, this word as reference to the black people is compared with another derogatory word, "negros". Back then "kaffir" was the word used by the colonial rulers to refer to the black people in South Africa.

Two years later, in 1906, Mahatma Gandhi again used the same word to protest the treatment being meted out to the Indians living in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "The Boer government insulted the Indians by classing them with "kaffirs."

Protest against Mahatma Gandhi on the ground in Ghana soon found way to online campaign platform, change.org where a petition to pull down the statue was signed in large numbers. Mahatma Gandhi's quotes were circulated on social media and referred to in public meetings by the protesting activists to boost their campaign.

One of the oft-referred quotes of Mahatma Gandhi in Ghana was this: "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

Finally on the intervening night of December 11 and 12, when the scores of Indians were hooked to screens watching the BJP versus Congress electoral battle in the Hindi heartland, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was uprooted from the plinth in the University of Ghana.

#GandhiMustFall - Statue of Mahatma Gandhi removed from University of Ghana campus.

Thousand of students signed a petition to get rid of it because of Gandhi's litany of racist statements against black Africans.https://t.co/so2cfCyt23 pic.twitter.com/wiZJUPDDoQ

— Tom Kavanagh (@_TomKavanagh) December 13, 2018

The Mahatma Gandhi statue was pulled down after Ghana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration approved a petition by the university council. The government in New Delhi has not reacted to the development till the time of writing.

The successful protest against Mahatma Gandhi statue in Ghana has revived a campaign in South Africa, which withstood a similar protest in 2003-04. In South Africa, the campaign is against a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, near an ashram where Gandhi lived. Hashtag Gandhi Must Fall is being pushed on social media.

My alma mater, the University of #Ghana was forced to pull down a statue of #Gandhi.
It followed the #GandhiMustFall campaign by lecturers & students who accused the #Indian Independence leader of using racist terms to describe black Africans.
I took this pics early this year pic.twitter.com/Adcq3rXVR4

— Benjamin Tetteh (@benjieluv) December 13, 2018

Why BJP questioning Rahul Gandhi's gotra is a setback to ghar wapasi campaign

Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the Brahma temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan. (Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia)

India is a growing nation. Economy is growing despite GDP growth rate adjusting marks with the change of government in the name of methodology. Various institutions may look like competing and fighting with one another: RBI versus government, judiciary versus executive, CBI versus CBI or any other friction in the establishment. But there is no denying that India is a major economic and strategic global player today.

India is growing and so are its needs, requirements and demands. India needs jobs in millions. India needs wealth creation in billions of dollars. India needs speed in the justice delivery system.

Justice is not limited to judiciary only. Delay in payment of wages to an entitled one is injustice. The government not providing health facilities to the remotest hut-dweller in the country is injustice.

Partial or total denial of food, house, education, health, employment, earning, well-being and other necessities of life is injustice. Murder, theft, corruption all are injustice. Delivering justice to a victim of injustice at speed must be ensured at all costs. And, towards this end, the people of the country elect government at almost every possible level - village, district, state and national.

But when election happens justice delivery machinery, policy and promises are not the most-talked about thing in the body politic of the nation. This exactly what is happening right now. The gotra of Rahul Gandhi is the talking point. Rahul Gandhi and his Congress party are hellbent on proving that he is a Hindu, a liberal Hindu, a Brahmin Hindu, a God worshiping Hindu, a temple-going Hindu who talks about leading the Indian society of Dalits and Muslims together.

The BJP and its support system have always put a question mark over the Hindu link of Rahul Gandhi. It needs to type a few keywords in the Google search engine to create doubt in the mind of an innocent citizen and voter about the religion of Rahul Gandhi. He has been proved anything but a Hindu. Some prove him a Muslim taking his Islamic ancestry to Motilal Nehru, the real empire builder in the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Some other would want you to believe that Rahul Gandhi is a Christian having adopted the religion of his mother and got rechristened in the Catholic belief. That Rahul Gandhi is only a political name.

But is this the question that one should be asking while she or he should be worried about delivery of justice? Or, should someone actually be answering this question? But it is happening. The BJP and its support system are asking the question, and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are supplying the answers believing that if this question is left unanswered the grand old party would not come back to power again.

So, first came temple-hopping idea and propaganda. It was followed by a janeudhari devotee of Lord Shiva. Janeu is a sacred thread that only high-class Hindu believers were once allowed to wear. Fortunately, more awareness about core Hindu philosophy renders janeu useless. One can be a devout Hindu without wearing the sacred thread.

But, Rahul Gandhi is not the one to believe in this. He would proclaim his credentials as a janeudhari - wearer (and bearer) of the sacred thread.

It doesn't seem coincidental that a close aide of Rahul Gandhi and a former Union minister announced in Rajasthan at an election rally that only Brahmins can speak about Hindu religion. He validated Rahul Gandhi's greater claim over Hinduism compared to Hindutva brand leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

While Modi calls himself a member of the backward caste, Amit Shah is broadly a baniya community member. Yogi Adityanath is a born Rajput. So, Rahul Gandhi, undoubtedly, knows more about Hinduism than all his top BJP rivals put together.

Then came his own announcement that he was a Brahmin of Kaul ancestry. By visiting the Brahma temple at Pushkar in Rajasthan, Rahul Gandhi connected himself with the near-century old tradition started by Motilal Nehru to offer prayer at this shrine. He identified himself by the same caste and gotra as of Motilal Nehru.

A gang the BJP supporters and leaders latched on the opportunity offered by Rahul Gandhi by announcing his caste and gotra. As the tradition goes, gotra of a person is determined by the gotra of his or her father. Patrilineal control has been firm over many things including gotra. Varna and its offspring, caste had been fluid in the past.

Varna was chosen by an individual according to his or her profession and status in society. Caste was rigid in comparison. But in cases of inter-caste marriages, the children got a caste lower than their father's and higher than that of their mother's. However, gotra retained its identity from the father side.

Even gotra was fluid in earlier times. We hear of nine original gotras and then their diversification in over 50. This clearly hints towards influx of people in the fold of Hinduism and their amicable accommodation in the system.

But, after a point of time - perhaps when new peoples and the old peoples did not mingle well culturally or socially, the new peoples were not granted the shade of any gotra making them an open people. So, while all Rajput sub-castes and even Gurjars have a gotra to identify with, the Parsis, the Muslims and the Christians don't have any gotra. Even those people who adopted Islam and Christianity lost their gotra by dint of conversion.

The case of Parsis is very interesting. They are perhaps the only people who have their motherland somewhere else and found exclusively in India. Still they did not get a gotra. Rahul Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Parsi. The maternal side believed in Christianity.

Since, Rahul Gandhi's grandfather was a Parsi, he is not entitled to have a gotra, according to patrilineal tradition of gotra among Hindus. Union minister Smriti Irani recently explained it beautifully while responding to a troll on Twitter. Smriti Irani identified herself with the gotra of her father. Her children may have to face the barrage of questions that Rahul Gandhi is facing today. However, they would be in more advantageous position than Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president does not have a gotra to identify himself with on the maternal side either.

Are you nuts??? I HAVE A GOTRA. BOTH PARENTS ARE HINDU. Father’s gotra - Kaushal. Mother’s gotra - Shandilya. Since Father’s gotra Kaushal so is mine. Get a life. https://t.co/n9gxsSZRKG

— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) November 28, 2018

To deal with the deficiency of gotra, Rahul Gandhi picked up the gotra of his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who like Smriti Irani identified herself with the gotra of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of Motilal Nehru.

The BJP is not happy with Rahul Gandhi picking up the gotra of his grandmother, great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather. The identification makes Rahul Gandhi a real claimant on Hinduism - a Brahmin with a gotra. The argument, for the BJP, is simple that gotra is decided by the lineage of the father.

It is here that the BJP goes against its own agenda. The BJP and the RSS have always supported what is popularly known as ghar wapasi campaign. It stands for reconversion of Muslims and Christians into Hinduism. These are the people who lost their gotra and, in many cases, caste also due to their association with Islam and Christianity.

If the BJP is not willing to let people adopt a gotra and a caste under the fold of Hinduism, the ghar wapasi campaign would hit a firewall. The whole ghar wapasi campaign would soon lose its cultural reassimilation touch that the RSS keeps talking about. How can a person be a Hindu and not have a caste and gotra.

If Rahul Gandhi is a Hindu - natural or adopted, he is entitled to have a caste and gotra. If he has identified himself as a Brahmin of Dattatreya gotra (an offshoot of original Atri gotra), the BJP would do harm to itself by taking Rahul Gandhi head on over the issue. It would lose its political vantage point of supporting ghar wapasi.

Why no insurance cover to people born with defects

YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Photo credit: Twitter/Newshunterinfo

The Delhi High Court has asked the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) to "explain the reasonableness" of not granting insurance cover to people suffering from congenital anomalies.

"What is the objection to giving insurance cover to them (people suffering from congenital anomalies)," the high court asked the IRDAI to explain before the next hearing on December 17.

"Give the justification for such exclusion," the court said to the insurance regulator.

IRDAI circular of July 29, 2016 denies the Persons with Disabilities (PwD) the right to seek insurance cover for themselves on the ground that their conditions are categorised under the scope of "congenital anomalies".

Congenital anomalies are also known as birth defects caused by single gene defects, chromosomal disorders, multifactorial inheritance, environmental teratogens and micronutrient deficiencies.

Moin Qureshi case and CBI muck

CBI Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana (Photo credit: Twitter)

The Income Tax officials conducted raided at multiple locations in February 2014 related to meat exporter Moin Qureshi, a Kanpur-based businessman. The CBI registered a case against Moin Qureshi three years later in February 2017. The case was being handled by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by Special Director of CBI Rakesh Asthana, the number two in the agency.  

Moin Qureshi case already had already former CBI Director AP Singh in soup. His BlackBerry Messenger messages with AP Singh finally led to the latter’s resignation as member of the UPSC. His predecessor Ranjit Sinha was also in the soup for his alleged proximity to and friendship with Moin Qureshi. Ranjit Sinha had come under the scanner for having been allegedly found to have paid unofficial visits to Moin Qureshi.

Now, the CBI has lodged an FIR (October 16 or October 17) naming Rakesh Asthana as accused number one in a case of bribery. The case is linked to Moin Qureshi indirectly.

The CBI is investigating a Hyderabad-based businessman Sana Satish’s role in Moin Qureshi case. Rakesh Asthana headed SIT is looking into Sana Satish’s involvement in the case. In a parallel development, Sana Satish lodged a complaint with the CBI against a Dubai-based middleman Manoj Prasad, who was arrested by the agency on October 16 in Delhi.

Sana Satish gave a statement to a CBI magistrate on October 4 claiming that he was being harassed by the CBI officials and forced to pay bribe to get relief in the case and investigation. Sana Satish named Rakesh Asthana, Manoj Prasad and a Somesh Srivastava – relative of Manoj Prasad.

Sana Satish gave details of how he paid a bribe of Rs 3 crore between December 2017 and October 2018 – over 10 months to stay away from the CBI case. Sana Satish turned against the CBI and others after he was allegedly asked to pay more. The latest payment was made by Sana Satish on October 9 of Rs 5 lakh. The money was paid to a conduit in order to stay away from questioning by the CBI and relief from appearing before the SIT.

Meat trader Moin Qureshi

Sana Satish got the promised relief following which Manoj Prasad travelled to Delhi from Dubai. Manoj Prasad had come to Delhi allegedly to collect Rs 1.75 crore (accumulated bribery amount). Another CBI team apprehended Manoj Prasad.

On the basis of questioning of Manoj Prasad, the CBI lodged an FIR against its own number two. The CBI has put telephone intercepts, WhatsApp messages, money trail and a statement under Section 164 as evidence against Rakesh Asthana. Manoj Prasad has reportedly told the CBI that he was accepting bribes on the behalf Moin Qureshi for Rakesh Asthana.

A R&AW official, Special Director Samant Kumar Goel’s name has also been mentioned in the FIR but not as an accused. Samant Kumar Goel is, incidentally, number two in the R&AW. 

Samant Kumar Goel is said to be close to Manoj Prasad and Somesh Srivastava. He had been in regular touch with both Manoj Prasad and Somesh Srivastava. Samant Kumar Goel’s role is under investigation of the CBI. Samant Kumar Goel is also said to be close to Moin Qureshi and believed to have been meeting the latter regularly in Dubai.

The directors of both the agencies – Alok Verma of the CBI and AK Dhasmana of the R&AW have moved files to the PMO seeking action against Rakesh Asthana and Samant Kumar Goel respectively. 

Alok Verma wants Rakesh Asthana suspended while Dhasmana wants Goel relieved from services. Goel looks after West Asia affairs in the R&AW. Goel is a 1984-batch IPS officer of Punjab cadre and holds the rank of additional secretary in the R&AW. Asthana is a 94-batch IPS officer of Gujarat cadre.

The lodging of FIR against Rakesh Asthana came in a curious background of tussle between him and CBI Director Alok Verma. On September 21, the CBI informed the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) that Rakesh Asthana was being investigated in six cases of corruption. The probe was being done by the CBI in all the six cases including those of accepting bribes from controversial Sandesara Group, and jailed journalist Upendra Rai.

In its letter to the CVC, the CBI had said that Rakesh Asthana had launched a malicious campaign against Alok Verma to malign his image. Previously, Rakesh Asthana had sent a complaint against Alok Verma to the CVC. The CBI termed that complaint as “frivolous”. 

Rakesh Asthana had responded to this CBI letter to the CVC by writing to the Narendra Modi government. Rakesh Asthana complained against Alok Verma saying that he sought to impede his functioning, interfere with investigation and malign his reputation.

Rakesh Asthana had previously probed the fodder scam of Bihar and Jharkhand, the Godhra train burning incident of Gujarat, the 2008 Ahmedabad bombing case and examined Asaram Bapu and his son Narayan Sai.

Sleep, the saviour

Sleep is a helping intervention.

Sleeping is beautiful. No matter how much one wants to keep awake, she would love her sleep. If you are a morning riser, nothing seems more beautiful than catching up a few last fleeing naps. Alarms go on snooze mode as if they act on their own. You don't remember doing anything to alarm many a time. You regret having overslept only when some emotional or financial matter is involved about time on that particular day. 

There are only few people who wake up from slumber to do nothing. Sleep is like charging the ever dying battery of your cellphone. Even if the battery is dying, you wish it lasts till you reach home in the evening. Yet you can't resist the temptation of scanning one or the other app anticipating any SocMed droplets. As you reach home and plug your charger in the socket and connect your phone, you feel having been resuscitated.

Once I heard a few psychologists and psychiatrists saying on Doordarshan that "loss of sleep does induce any chemical change in brain". Also heard in a BBC radio documentary that "sleeping is an acquired character".

Acquired means human beings were originally not meant to sleep. They didn't require to sleep to keep doing what they did - hunt, eat, defecate and procreate. But as they developed a line of thinking that goaded them for doing non-consumptive work, they started hunting more than they required. Food became a little surplus. The feeble bodied - owing to old age or post-infancy-childhood emotional connect - started getting food arranged by more able-bodied persons. This led to the arrival of non-essential leisure.

Animals take rest because they understand their food takes time to get digested and also to store energy for next hunt. Humans developed a different tendency of not-putting in extra hard work that someone else could do. But this could lead to fights among the herd, we now call community. Privilege must have been challenged as those who were going out to hunt and gather food put their lives at risk.

Life has, naturally, been more prized than emotion or finances. Love for one's life is the fundamental cause behind the demand for right to equality. By the generation this fight for equality happened, the humans might have developed skills, tools and art of hunting big with greater ease. This gave them plenty of leisure.

Secondly, humans are one of those species which can't see in the dark. Their eyes are equipped to see only in the light. It is not certain if they ever had the ability to see in the dark. It is largely presumed that during their hunting-gathering phase, they did not have the ability to see in the dark. They had to have forced-leisure at night when the sun lit the other half of the world.

But some of the animals, humans hunted and which must have identified humans as their enemies, had the ability to see in the dark. A number of predators see with their thermal imaging powers. Movement by humans would have made them an easy target. Animals know that life moves. Movement is a sign of life. Moving object is a prey.

Leisure due to excess of food and immobility for the fear of life perhaps induced the attribute of sleep among humans. But the waking gene is still active. You might have gotten out of your slumber feeling very hungry or thirsty. Nature calls are the most frequent reason for coming out of slumber. These wake-ups are physical necessity-induced.

You also get up if someone calls out for you. Or, some rumbling is happening in the surrounding. The waking gene gives power to the brain to identify threat and induce fear in the sleeping person making her come out of slumber and run for life.

It is fear for life that causes a sleeping person wake up even at the slightest of rumblings. If a person is sure of the surrounding sounds - for example sleeping in the room where a power generator is running - she would not get up by its sound. 

A child usually doesn't get up hearing the pressure whistle of the cooker but she would get up if you turn the pages of a newspaper. She is used to that sound of pressure whistle as it reaches her while she stays in the womb but the other sound does not.

Fear, food and defecation wake you up naturally. Rest civilisational wake-ups.

Human brain is considered most productive. It is supposed to be the only living entity that produces and works for producing things that the body can't consume. Brain being brain, it put the act of sleeping to work. Information is key. Brain needs information. Because brain is a problem-solving machine. It is designed to solve problems, seek answers to questions, unravel puzzles.

For all these functions, brain needs information, stored. Power storage of information was difficult or inefficient in purely consumptive phase. It was not required. New problems were slow at coming. But as non-consumptive phase began, volume of problems, situations swelled. 

A better repository of information was required. Brain put its sleep to use. Information was recycled during sleep. Brain became the other kidney. Unnecessary information was filtered out. Necessary ones were stored. This arrangement allowed humans to improve with every single sleep.

Sleeping still improves us. It has now become a bigger necessity than ever. We don't receive information any more. We live in information. Information is drowning us. Information is suffocating us. Information is killing us. Sleep can save us. Sleep should be given a chance. Sleep should not be adulterated. Sleep purification is required for survival of humans and to prevent them from becoming a colony of man-made machines.