Books: Fearless Tirade

Earlier this month, on the eve of the accession of Zhu Rongji as prime minister of China, Luo Gan, the secretary-general of the Chinese Cabinet, announced plans to eliminate 15 central ministries and cut the Government workforce by four million, all in the space of one year. In contrast, just a few months ago, the United Front government sharply hiked salaries of our non-performing babus and shelved plans to cut the four million-strong force by 30 per cent over the next 10 years.

There is no dearth of studies and analyses suggesting that India needs to tread the Chinese path. Cutting government, Central and state, which now consumes 40 per cent of the total revenue generated in the country just to maintain itself, is the only way resources can be generated for developing the infrastructure this country badly needs. More important perhaps is the need to replace the current administrative set-up with one which is accountable and efficient.

But, as S.K. Das, a serving IAS officer, points out, "This may not be acceptable to the political executive in India who have made use of the civil service to help meet the costs of electoral competition." As for the civil service itself, he says that it has developed resistance to change "the age-old attribute of an entrenched bureaucracy". Having studied the subject in some detail, including a sojourn in Oxford, the author has come up with a number of viable reform proposals. But he falters when he suggests that reform be located in the context of the World Bank and IMF's ongoing structural adjustment programme. Given the magnitude of the task -- the government and public sector employ 70 per cent of the Indian workforce -- there is simply no alternative other than to have the political leadership of the country lead the process. India has to await its Zhu Rongji.

AUTHORSPEAK: RANI DHARKAR
A Woman's World
The psyhe fascinates the professor turned novelist

She describes it as "something of a psychological disorder in women" and has used it as the title of her debut novel -- The Virgin Syndrome. As Rani Dharkar states, the virgin syndrome is a prevalent one "more so in India, where the idea of virginity till marriage is a fixation". Her novel, published recently by Penguin, explores this phenomenon and discovers that in reality it is no longer a fixation.

This exciting new social formulation, very assiduously put forward by Dharkar, could go a long way in putting Indian feminists in the right frame of mind as they trudge towards the next millennium. For all its bold thematic analysis, the book -- shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the Eurasia region -- is devoid of any overt feminist outbursts or, mercifully, the all-too-familiar embarrassed prudishness. Like her persona, Dharkar's writing too is understated. The novel's nameless protagonist -- a schoolteacher who squats on the pavement and contemplates life in a swift stream-of-consciousness-like montage -- argues the thesis of virginity. The tone of sexuality in the novel is set with such musings and sequences of eccentricity.

The Virgin Syndrome could at best be a veiled autobiography. A few real-life parallels are evident, though. Dharkar herself is born of urbane parents, single and a teacher of English literature at Vadodara's Maharaja Sayaji Rao University. "We are a very close-knit family and as children reading, writing and independent thinking were encouraged. There were books all around," says Dharkar. However, she asserts, "The book is not about me, but there are influences, memories and events that one draws from. That is inevitable."

The book was conceived six years ago and Dharkar draws from her "observations of the women around myself as well as my students. Many women came to me and said they could identify with the novel". She is currently busy stringing together a collection of short stories, "some rediscovered after years and others still in the mind". Says Dharkar: "Fiction is my genre and somehow I'm more comfortable with the short-story format." Her forte is understanding the psyche of individuals and Dharkar, buoyed perhaps by the favourable response her debut novel has fetched, is also planning to write a play which has "something to do with psychology and what makes and shapes people in different ways".

-Nandita Chowdhury