DDT is 3000
IT was with tremendous trepidation that I started DDT on 1st December 2004. "Where will you get material to write on tax matters on a daily basis?", my friends asked. I had no answer. Many of them were sure that DDT will fold up within a few days. On Day 1 or Day 3000, I never had a bank balance of ideas to draw from. The only one who supported, encouraged and believed that DDT can continue was my Managing Editor Shailendra Kumar. Within a month I was tired and found that writing a daily column is an impossible task far beyond my capabilities. But by that time DDT had become so popular that Shailendra would not allow me to stop. Given a choice, I would have given up latest by January 2005. But encouragement and support from the Netizens were so overwhelming that we had to continue. DDT had become essential and a daily addictive dose. After 12 years and 3000 editions, Shailendra has allowed me to call the curtains down, understanding the huge efforts that went into all these DDTs.
A former Chief Economic Adviser once asked me what exactly I do. I told him I make a living out of translating the Government notifications and laws into English! We started DDT with a mission to bridge(now bridges are no more in fashion; you need complicated fly-overs) the gap between the tax administrators and the stakeholders.Over a period of time it took different shapes and dimensions and I came to be accused of being a merciless critic of the Revenue Departments' law making machinery - especially by some senior officers. One of them even called me Mr.English.com. Though my English itself is below average, I found the language used by our babus in drafting the laws abominably poor. And when I started pointing out their silly mistakes, the concerned officers became furious.
True criticism is only against somebody or something that you love. By real criticism what you mean is, here is a great thing which has great value, but there is a lapse here which you are pointing out so that the laws, the departments and the officers whom you love are made better. The basic requirement to criticise a work of art (our laws) even irresponsibly is to prove that you love the work and you want it to be better.
In Chennai, there is a famous classic 180 year old statue of Lord Thomas Munro. This is supposed to be a great statue by a great sculptor Francis Chantrey and was installed with great fanfare in 1839. It seems at the grand installation function, a child remarked, "what a stupid statue this is!". People were flabbergasted, what is this child calling a great work of art imported all the way from England stupid. The child explained, "the man is on a majestic horse about to take off and there are no stirrups; how can he ride this horse without stirrups?" It seems due to an oversight, the sculptor did not put stirrups and the statue came to be called as the 'stirrupless majesty'.
We all know this story:
A vain Emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two weavers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor's ministers cannot see the clothes themselves, but pretend that they can, for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor does the same. Finally, the weavers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk play along with the pretence, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid. Then a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretence, blurts out "the emperor has no clothes!".
There is an Apocryphal story about Galileo.
It seems Galileo was made to kneel before the Pope and say that the earth does not move. As he got up, he is believed to have murmured, "and yet it moves."
I submit that DDT was only telling the government all these 3000 days that the horse has no stirrups; that the emperor has no clothes and that the Earth still moves.
Thank you for all the support all these 3000 days. I don't want to end DDT on the 3000th day; so we will have it for two more days.