Some years ago when the Sachar Committee pointed out that our great secular socialistic government had done a pretty miserable job apropos of the welfare of the Muslim citizens of our republic, the imperious government of imperial India promptly decided to set up a Minorities Finance Corporation. Recently, a young woman was raped and killed in a brutal manner in imperial Delhi. Therefore, we now need a Women?s Bank. Presumably, all the investors, directors, employees, depositors and borrowers will be women. Sounds like a neat idea. One word of warning to Indian women: the only other country that has an all-women?s banking office is Saudi Arabia. I am not sure that Indian women want to have the privileges that their Saudi sisters are blessed with. An ominous prospect indeed and worth pondering over.

Maya-vaada is an old Indic, Vedic, Vedantic, Gandhian, Nehruvian, secular, socialistic idea. This means that the phenomenal world we see is an illusion. Therefore, it stands to reason that our great government deals with illusions. Muslim poverty may be a reality. But our response need only be an illusion?that is sufficient. Whether the finance corporation actually helps Muslims is beside the point. As long as it has an office in imperial Delhi and several government officials pretending to work, we have done our duty. It is pretty certain that a women?s bank is not at all likely to improve the safety or welfare of women. But that is hardly the point. We have given up on trying to improve our police or judicial administration (I doubt if even all the 300 million gods of India put together could fix our police or court system?so why should we mere humans even bother to try). But we can set up a women?s bank?and, therefore, we will. The beauty of this solution is that we can feel the warm glow of satisfaction of having ?done something?, or even better, ?having pretended to do something?.

We can similarly set up welfare programmes for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and any other disgruntled or oppressed/repressed/suppressed groups that we can keep conjuring up all the time. Better still, we can announce that we intend to set up such welfare programmes. The warm glow of satisfaction that even the act of announcing provides us is uniquely Indian?and anyone who dares to deride or criticise this is unpatriotic, unmatriotic and a lackey of sinister foreign elements forever plotting to distribute bombs in our country through tiffin boxes or threatening to lower our credit rating to junk status or otherwise unreasonably making fun of the Vedas, Gandhi, Nehru, Mother India, etc, etc.

In the years to come, our great government is bound to set up special programmes and institutions for left-handers, former smokers, the vertically challenged and so on. None of these will actually result in the improvement of the lot of these folks. But there will be nice offices in imperial Delhi, there will be government officials who will attend international conferences dedicated to the welfare of left-handers, former smokers and the vertically challenged and all of us can feel very smug and very happy that we have done something, and, of course, we have announced our good intentions. This is our tribute to the hoary, ancient doctrine of Maya.

The fact of the matter is that we have been independent for 66 years and are long past the phase where we could blame the perfidious British Raj for everything. We could have created an environment where all citizens (not just some groups) had the freedom and the opportunity to create wealth, better their own prospects and the prosperity of society at large. Instead, for 45 years we lived in our self-inflicted ?permit-licence Raj?. The under-appreciated Narasimha Rao freed us from this tyranny and Indians (all Indians including Dalits?just ask the leaders of the Dalit Chamber of Commerce) started doing well. But this will not do. The great will of our great government is not that all citizens should be free and should prosper. Our government?s policy is strictly Maya-driven. We will forever keep making promises, announcements and symbolic gestures and direct them at select groups, hoping to win their loyalty. If down the years, someone were to have the temerity to ask as to why these groups have not fared better, well then, we will just announce more programmes, set up more institutions, create more government jobs in Delhi, attend more international conferences, and we will feel good.

A few years ago, my good friend Sir Humphrey Appleby visited Delhi. After a few days in our imperial capital, Sir Humphrey came up to me and admitted with great embarrassment that however incompetent and hollow the British government might be, however much the British government may be committed to futile gestures, empty promises, pretences of improving citizen welfare while only talking about them and trying to fool the hapless residents of their island nation?nothing, he repeated, nothing came even close to the amazing abilities of the Government of India. ?Why, you have several hundred committees, empowered committees, secretarial groups, empowered secretarial groups, ministerial groups and empowered secretarial groups… and so many wonderful programmes, institutions, departments, corporations?did I say quangos?… no forgive me… all dedicated to making your countrymen and even your countrywomen feeling good, but, of course, achieving nothing. I am now a complete Indophile.?

It would have been nice if the Government of India had promised to give large grants to those states which implement the recommendations of the numerous police commissions; it would have been nice if the Government of India had increased support to state governments to set up more courts, appoint more judges and clean up their land registries. These would have been good for all citizens, including poor Muslims and young women who live under fear of assault. But our anxiety to help only some groups, and actually merely pretend to help them is entirely due to our loyalty to the grand idea of Maya.

The writer is a Mumbai-based entrepreneur