Times of Better Bharat

The figure, and what it leaves out

The East Godavari district administration expects Godavari Pushkarams-2027 to generate 2,800 metric tonnes of solid waste per day, and plans at least 20,000 toilets with 8,000 sanitation staff deployed to keep the gathering sanitary ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/godavari-pushkarams-2027-likely-to-generate-2800-metric-tonnes-of-solid-waste-per-day-says-official/article71674711.ece)). Take the number seriously — an official projection is worth more than sentimental silence — and then notice what the report does not give: the number of days. Without a duration, 2,800 tonnes a day is not a total, and a plan that cannot be reduced to a total cannot be audited. That is less a criticism of the district than a specification of what the public should ask for next.

A living tradition carries a maintenance bill

The strongest evidence for the continuity of Indian civilisation is not a date. Very early datings of festivals and texts are contested even among researchers who argue for deep antiquity, and no column can settle them. The stronger evidence is quieter: that practices whose origins nobody can fix are still being performed, at scale, by people who were not instructed to invent them. On that reading — a reading, not a settled finding — a river festival is a fact about the present before it is a fact about the past.

But continuity is not free. Precisely because the tradition is alive, it takes on material obligations. Twenty thousand toilets and eight thousand sanitation workers are the contemporary form of an old duty: the upkeep of a place of pilgrimage. Judged as heritage, this is the most interesting line in the story. Not that crowds generate waste — they always have — but that someone is now costing it in tonnes, and saying so in public.

The baseline we actually have

Pride should be disciplined by data. Nationally, safely managed sanitation reaches 62.8 per cent of the population and safely managed drinking water 76.4 per cent ([World Bank / WHO-UNICEF, 2024](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.SMSS.ZS)). Water stress stands at 66.5 per cent of available freshwater withdrawn ([FAO via World Bank, 2022](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWST.ZS)), while forest cover is 24.4 per cent of land area ([World Bank / FAO, 2024](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS)) against tree cover loss of roughly 1,25,678 hectares a year ([Global Forest Watch via Our World in Data, 2024](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tree-cover-loss)).

None of that is the festival's fault. It is the background against which a temporary city will rise on a riverbank. And the river has been generous this season: reservoirs in Andhra Pradesh hold 505.76 TMC after heavy rains, with a flood cushion of 655.59 TMC still available ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/reservoirs-in-andhra-pradesh-hold-50576-tmc-after-heavy-rains/article71674522.ece)). Water in the Godavari is not the constraint. What we do with it is.

The test to set

Three things, published afterwards, not before: tonnes collected against tonnes processed each day; toilets against peak footfall; and water quality at named points upstream and downstream, sampled before, during and after. Publish them even if they embarrass. A tradition that can be measured can be defended; one that can only be praised cannot.

Reverence for a river and engineering for a river are not rivals. The first without the second is a sentiment that ends up in the water; the second without the first is a drain. Bharat's heritage deserves both at once.

India and Myanmar have begun their first tri-service joint humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise, named Rahat Mitra ([PIB](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2333746)). The temptation in Delhi is to file it under photo-opportunity and move on. That would be a mistake — provided the services themselves resist the temptation to treat it as one.

The cheapest place to test a hard thing

HADR is the least threatening and most demanding form of military cooperation. Nobody has to pretend it is aimed at anyone. But three services deploying together — one airlift plan, one logistics tail, one communications net, one chain of command that crosses service boundaries — is precisely where most militaries discover they are three organisations with a shared letterhead. My judgement, not a finding of fact: India's principal operational deficiency has less to do with platforms than with the seams between services, and exercises of this kind are the low-risk way of closing them. The measure of Rahat Mitra is not the joint statement but whether the after-action report can name what failed. An exercise that produces no friction list has produced no value.

Why the eastern littoral matters

Myanmar sits on India's eastern approaches, and the Bay of Bengal, with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is the theatre through which a great deal of the region's commerce and almost all of its naval anxiety passes. The same week, the Indian Navy's INS Trishul completed a port call at Souda Bay in Greece ([PIB](https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2333722)) — a reminder that India now operates on a longer leash than the immediate neighbourhood. But reach without sustained presence is tourism. Sustained presence is built through habits of cooperation with the states of the littoral, and habits are built in small, dull, repeated exercises rather than in declarations.

Credibility begins at home

The sceptic's question is fair: can a state that struggles to surge at home sell itself as the region's first responder? In Andhra Pradesh, after Cyclones Arnab and Murasu, more than 1,000 specialised teams and over 11,000 personnel worked to restore the power network ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/power-supply-restoration-works-in-cyclone-hit-areas-of-ap-almost-over-says-official/article71674524.ece)); about 30,000 damaged electricity poles have been restored and another 10,000 replaced ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/for-nda-govt-welfare-relief-ops-take-priority-over-polls-and-politics-says-naidu/article71674483.ece)). That is a serious domestic capability, and it is the foundation on which any external HADR reputation rests. A country whose district machinery cannot move is not a regional responder, whatever its navy can do.

The bill for credibility

Capability of this sort is not free. India spends about 2.3 per cent of GDP on the military and remains a very large arms importer, at 2.86 billion SIPRI trend-indicator value ([World Bank/SIPRI](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS), [SIPRI](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.MPRT.KD)). Those two figures, read together, are the indigenisation argument in one line — but the counter-case deserves stating: imports buy capability now, and a two-front contingency does not wait for a domestic production line to mature. The honest reading is that India needs both and has been financing the delay of the second with the first.

The point

Rahat Mitra is worth more than its size suggests, because the strategic environment is not sentimental. A Trump-Xi-Putin meeting at APEC, as analysts discuss ([Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/6/what-a-trump-xi-putin-summit-would-mean-and-what-it-wouldnt)), would be a bargain among the strong. India's answer is not to join the queue but to be useful, present and competent along its own periphery — with Myanmar, in the Bay of Bengal, and in the Indian Ocean. Judged that way, a relief exercise is not a soft story. It is a hard test, and one this country should want to be marked on.

The chairperson of the Kerala Public Service Commission has reportedly declined to appear for a second round of questioning before the Special Investigation Team looking into the PSC examination irregularities case, informing the team of that decision in writing (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-psc-chairpersondeclines-to-appear-for-second-round-of-questioning/article71674983.ece). We do not know, from this report, what the questioning concerns or what the chairperson's reasons are. What we do know is the constitutional shape of the problem, and it deserves stating plainly.

An office held in trust

The Public Service Commissions are not departmental appendages. The Constitution establishes them as part of the machinery of the Union and the States precisely so that selection to public employment is insulated from the convenience of the executive and the influence of the well-connected. A chair is held in trust for the public, not owned by the person who occupies it. That is the whole point of constitutional morality: institutions outlive individuals and must be defended by the individuals who temporarily hold them — above all when those individuals are themselves the subject of inquiry.

Cooperation with a lawful investigation is a duty of office, not a favour extended to investigators. A person may lawfully have grounds to seek protection, to be accompanied, to have questions put in writing, or to challenge a procedure. The proper response to any of these is to say so openly and let the law adjudicate it. Declining to appear, without a public accounting, reads as an assertion that the office places its holder beyond the ordinary obligations of a citizen. Nothing in our constitutional order supports that reading.

The ladder belongs to the aspirant

There is a deeper reason for impatience. Article 16's guarantee of equality of opportunity in public employment is not decorative. For a young person from a family with no connections, no English-medium polish and no ability to buy influence, the impersonal examination is one of the few instruments that substitutes procedure for patronage. Caste hierarchy and class privilege flourish precisely where recruitment is personal; they are weakened where it is procedural and auditable. An irregularity in a public service commission is therefore not a technical lapse. It quietly redistributes advantage back to those who already hold it — and the loss is borne by the candidate who had only the merit list to rely on.

That is why the Maharashtra precedent matters. The inquiry commission into MPSC examination irregularities is inviting complaints by affidavit until November 16, with complainants required to affirm the truth of what they submit (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/maharashtra/mpsc-exam-irregularities-inquiry-commission-seeks-complaints-through-affidavits-by-november-16/article71674231.ece). Two States, two commissions, the same question: who speaks for the aspirant when the institution's own custodians fall silent?

The presumption, honestly applied

Let us be exact about what the report does not say. It does not establish guilt. The presumption of innocence applies to a PSC chairperson as fully as to anyone else, and the investigation must be fair, documented and concluded without fear or favour — not conducted as a spectacle. But the same even-handedness requires that cooperation be demanded of everyone, and that no office-holder be permitted to convert seniority into exemption.

What the Commission owes

The trust deficit this feeds is measurable, if only in the aggregate: India ranks 86th of 143 on the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index with a score of 0.49, down seven places (https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/downloads/WJPIndex2025.pdf), and the World Bank's governance indicators put rule of law at −0.13 and control of corruption at −0.28 (https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators). Those are national numbers about a climate of confidence, not findings about this case. They explain why institutions cannot afford silence.

The Commission should publish what it can: whether the chairperson sought any legal protection, on what grounds, and what steps the Commission has taken to protect the integrity of its examinations and the candidates who sat them. The constitutional answer to a question about a commission's integrity is never a closed door. It is a fuller record.

The report is brief: AIDSO has opposed a move to bring government schools under private adoption in Karnataka (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/aidso-opposes-move-to-bring-government-schools-under-private-adoption/article71674532.ece). A single sentence of news, and already two camps are reaching for their flags. One will say the state is abdicating. The other will say the objectors are defending a failing status quo. Both are arguing about intentions when the only thing that matters is the rulebook.

The constitutional point is narrower than either side admits

The state cannot contract out of its obligation to provide free and compulsory education to every child. That is not a partisan reading; it is the architecture of the constitutional guarantee. But a legal duty does not dictate the delivery model. A school can be run by the state and still fail its children; a school can be run under an outside arrangement and still meet every obligation, provided the obligations are written down, uniform and enforceable. Adoption becomes abdication only when the conditions are vague, discretionary, and impossible to reverse.

Let the numbers set the terms of the argument

The case for trying something is real. Learning poverty — children who cannot read a simple text by age ten — stood at 56.1% of ten-year-olds on World Bank and UNESCO estimates (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.LPV.PRIM). Public spending on education was 4.1% of GDP (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), and the Human Capital Index was 0.49 on a 0–1 scale (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/HD.HCI.OVRL). Those figures are an indictment. They are not, however, a certificate for any particular operator. The honest position is that the status quo has forfeited the benefit of the doubt, and any alternative must earn it in public.

Five conditions, published in advance

Any adoption arrangement should meet conditions set out before, not after, the first school changes hands. Admission without fee or screening, with quota entitlements untouched. Teacher qualifications and pay parity with comparable public posts. School-level learning outcomes published annually and verified by an evaluator with no commercial stake in the result. Full public audit of accounts. And automatic reversion to the state if the school misses the published threshold for two consecutive years.

That is a rule any citizen can check, and none of it requires anyone to be trusted.

The double standard to refuse

Here is where my desk's concern bites. Those who champion private involvement must accept the same measurement they demand of government schools — no exemptions, no celebratory anecdote in place of data. And those who resist it must accept the same discipline: if the defence of a public school rests on its dignity rather than its results, that school too must publish results and submit to the same evaluator.

Scientific temper in public life means exactly this: a claim is tested, not believed, and the test applies to your own side first. A scheme that will not publish its outcomes is not reform. An objection that will not accept measurement is not accountability. Equal application of the rule is the whole of the principle.

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser and the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade have begun an API integration between the Startup India and I-STEM portals, described as a measure to strengthen access to the country's national research infrastructure (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2333761).

It is a plumbing announcement, and plumbing rarely makes headlines. It is also, as these things go, the right kind of step: unglamorous, inexpensive, and aimed at a friction that costs a small firm weeks of letters and telephone calls. The judgement behind the release — that India's problem is not only building expensive equipment but letting people find and use what has already been built — is one worth testing seriously.

The gap the portal addresses

India spends 0.6% of GDP on research and development and has 259.3 researchers per million people, both on 2020 World Bank and UNESCO figures (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6). Against a 7.6% growth rate (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG), that is a thin base. Yet the Global Innovation Index places India 38th of 139, 52nd on inputs and 32nd on outputs (https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/). We extract unusual value from little. That is a compliment to our scientists and an indictment of our funding.

Given that, any measure that raises the utilisation of existing capital is worth more, per rupee, than a new building. A machine used by one laboratory for four months a year is a wasted national asset; a machine booked by six firms and three colleges is a different thing entirely.

Three tests it must pass

First, upkeep. An instrument is not a building; it is a flow — consumables, calibration, and above all a trained hand. A public institute in Thiruvananthapuram is currently under criticism for cardiac and neuro procedure backlogs amid faculty attrition and what is reported as tardy equipment upgrades (https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/sctimst-faces-flak-for-surgery-backlogs-appointment-cancellations/article71674905.ece). That is the warning. A booking portal that lists machines nobody has serviced is a directory of disappointments. Institutional budgets need a standing maintenance line, and instrument technicians need a career, not a contract.

Second, money. A startup that finds the machine may still not afford the slot. User-charge vouchers for approved firms and MSMEs would turn a directory into a subsidy with discipline.

Third, geography. The hub-and-spoke logic applies here as everywhere: the great instruments will sit in a few clusters, but a second tier of smaller equipment at district institutions — with apprentices trained to run it — spreads capability rather than merely advertising it.

A door, not a room

Separately, India has concluded negotiations for association with the EU's €93.5-billion Horizon Europe programme (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-eu-conclude-negotiations-for-association-with-horizon-europe-research-programme-101793973487913.html). That is welcome, and it is a door rather than a room: what matters is the terms on intellectual property, data and researcher mobility.

Self-reliance is not autarky. It is the ordinary dignity of being able to book your own country's machines, and then to build better ones. A portal is the cheapest element in that chain. The compounding element is the queue of users standing behind it.

The Supreme Court has described the stopping of vehicles and construction to check pollution as "old, tried, failed tools" ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-on-stopping-vehicles-construction-to-prevent-pollution/article71674613.ece)). On the same day, the Capital moved to GRAP 3 as its air neared the severe mark ([HT](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/ht-evening-news-brief-november-6-grap-3-imposed-in-delhi-fir-on-chawri-bazar-building-collapse-us-midterm-russell-brand-101793971785250.html)). The Government and the air-quality commission have resisted the word "complete failure". All three positions can be held at once, and the honesty of holding them is where the argument begins.

The emergency is the confession

A ban is a brake. It is not an engine, and it is not a diagnosis. A society that must periodically switch parts of itself off in order to breathe has already made its decisive choice somewhere upstream — in how it builds, how it moves, how it farms, how much it burns. Emergency governance is the confession of a design failure, not the failure of the emergency. Read that way, the Court's phrase is not an acquittal of anyone; it is an indictment of a shape of growth that treats the air as a free dump and then asks the citizen to pay for it by staying home.

What the ledger actually shows

The air figures are not ambiguous. India's population-weighted PM2.5 stands at 48.9 µg/m³, sixth of 143 countries measured, roughly ten times the WHO guideline; Delhi remains the world's most polluted capital at 82.2 µg/m³ ([IQAir](https://www.iqair.com/world-air-quality-report)). The Environmental Performance Index places India 176th of 177 at 22.46 — a figure that is [CONTESTED], since the Environment Ministry has rejected the index's methodology outright; and, for fairness, the same index records a ten-year change of +7.47, which is movement in the right direction and should be said aloud ([EPI](https://epi.yale.edu/)).

But the air is a symptom. The accounts a civilisation should be reading quarterly are older ones: forest cover at 24.4% of land area ([World Bank/FAO](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS)), tree cover loss at 1,25,678 hectares a year ([Global Forest Watch via Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tree-cover-loss)), and 66.5% of available freshwater already withdrawn ([World Bank/FAO](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWST.ZS)). These are the numbers beneath the number.

Alignment, not amputation

This is a judgement, and I offer it as one: the alternative to prohibition is not licence but alignment. Stopping construction does not settle how we build; the difference lies between a site that is a wound and one that is managed. Stopping vehicles does not settle how we move; it only postpones the question of a city designed for the many rather than the few. A tree, by contrast, is not a restriction on growth. It is growth — the cheapest filter, the cheapest shade, the cheapest flood defence we possess, and the one we keep failing to plant and, more fatally, to keep.

Restraint as a discipline

The dharmic vocabulary here is not decoration. The old idea of yajna — an offering in which something smaller is given up so that something larger may live — is a workable description of ecological citizenship, and of moderation as sufficiency rather than deprivation. This is a case to be argued, not a settled doctrine. But it has a practical edge: the inner turn, without the outward one, curdles into private comfort; the outward turn, without the inner one, becomes enforcement — imposing from outside what has not been cultivated within. That is precisely why bans fail.

Pin the Court's phrase above every municipal office. Not as permission to stop trying, but as a standard: measure the tree, the soil, the water and the lung — and publish those as the results that matter.